Avery sat down on the arm of the sofa. He absently draped his arm over her thigh and caressed her knee with negligent possession. When Zee moved away, he glanced up at her and smiled. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
And then he remembered. She watched as memory crept back into his eyes, eating up the warm glow in his gray irises until they were cold and implacable once again. He gradually lifted his arm away from her.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Did you ever take care of birth control?”
“No. And neither did you.”
“Terrific.”
She couldn’t let his contempt intimidate her into keeping her distance. For the remainder of the day, she didn’t intend to get any farther away from him than she was at the moment.
* * *
“Irish, line two’s for you.”
“Can’t you see I’m already on the frigging phone?” he yelled across the pandemonium in the newsroom. “Put ’em on hold. Now,” he said, speaking into the receiver again, “did you try knocking?”
“Till my knuckles were bloody, Mr. McCabe. He’s not home.”
Irish ran his hand down his florid face. The gofer was calling in with news that made absolutely no sense. “Did you look through the windows?”
“I tried. The shades are down, but I listened through the door. I couldn’t hear a single sound. I don’t think anybody’s in there. Besides, his van’s not here. I already checked the parking lot. His space is empty.”
That was going to be Irish’s next suggestion. “Christ,” he muttered. He had hoped that Van would be at home, sleeping off a night of overindulgence, but obviously he wasn’t. If his van wasn’t there, he wasn’t at home, period.
Irish reasoned they might have gotten their signals crossed and that Van had gone straight to the Palacio Del Rio, but after checking with the crew there, they reported they hadn’t seen him either.
“Okay, thanks. Come on back in.” He pressed the blinking light on the telephone panel. “McCabe,” he said gruffly. He got a dial tone in his ear. “Hey, wasn’t somebody holding for me on two?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, they’re not there now.”
“Guess they hung up.”
“Was it a guy?” he wanted to know.
“A woman.”
“Did she say who?”
“No. Sounded kinda ragged out, though.”
Irish’s blood pressure shot up. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I did!”
“Jesus!”
Arguing with incompetents wasn’t going to help anything. He stamped back into his office, slammed the door behind him, and lit a cigarette. He couldn’t be certain it had been Avery on the phone, but he had a gut instinct that it had been. Maybe that’s what was making his gut hurt so bad—his rotten instincts.
He took a swig of antacid straight from the bottle and yanked up the telephone again. He dialed the hotel and got the same cool voice as before. When he demanded to be connected to the Rutledge suite, the operator began her same unruffled litany.