DARK MIRROR, SHATTERED

By DixieHellcat

The cel phone went off while I was standing in Party City picking out purple balloons for Broadfest. So what if it was only Tuesday afternoon, and Clay’s concert with the accompanying descent of Lecherous Broads from all over the Eastern US wasn’t until Friday night. This was my first turn as Broadly hostess, and I intended to do it up right.

It was not my personal phone that rang, though. If it had, the whole store would have been treated to the rousing opening licks of Invisible. No, it had to be my work phone, and that, since I was supposedly off duty till Wednesday morning, couldn’t be good. I set my purse on the counter and fished it out, careful not to give the clerk a heart attack by letting her see my gun in the bottom of my bag. “Miami police, Special Cases Unit, Lieutenant Del Marshall.”

“He’s done it.” The voice was that of my second in command, Detective Chris ‘Deacon’ Irvine. The fact that Deac was calling me after hours, and not greeting me with his usual breezy salutation of ‘fearless leader’sent my heart hovering down around my belly button. The three words he spoke, and his flat tone, dropped it to the vicinity of my knees, because I knew exactly what he meant. ‘He’ was the serial killer the SCU had pursued for over a year. ‘Starslayer’, the press had dubbed him, although none of the four kidnap-murders thus far laid to his charge were exactly household names. Still, they were rising celebrities, and our greatest fear was that he would keep escalating, that local lights would no longer satisfy his twisted needs. That was the ‘it’ we dreaded; the ‘it’ Deac had just spoken.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed. “He’s gone big time?”

“Very big. Our boy may just earn his nickname with this one, if we can’t find him first.”

“Who?”

“That singer guy, Clay Aiken.”

I was quite certain my heart had stopped beating. My face began to tingle, my ears to buzz and my sight to fail. I gripped the counter to keep from falling. Faintly I heard Deac call my name, and fought my way to the surface of the tsunami of shock that had nearly overwhelmed me. “Yeah, I heard you, but the damn cel keeps fading,” I lied. “Get the team together. I’m on my way.”

+++

To this day, I don’t remember the drive back to the main police station downtown. The SCU always looked glum when another Starslayer episode began, but the faces that met me when I walked into our offices gave ‘glum’ a whole new dimension. Detective Jovian Hayes was swearing as I entered the conference room. “It’s not even like this Aiken guy’s just another top 40 pretty boy. He’s known all over the world for the charity stuff he does. The media is gonna be crawlin’ all up our asses on this. If the fucker pops him it’ll be on our heads—“

“The fucker isn’t gonna pop him,” I declared with a feigned confidence that I hoped covered the trembling of my legs. “Because we’re not gonna let the fucker. We’re too damn good to let him.

What’ve we got? Are we even sure this is Starslayer? It could just be one more hopped-up cubano seizing a chance for easy money and street cred.”

Concepcion Hernandez, Hayes’ partner, shook her head and brandished four fat file folders. “I pulled the four previous Starslayer murders, Lieutenant, and the method of abduction matches. Apparently, Aiken and his bodyguard went to Aventura Mall in north Dade to do some shopping. They were dropped off by security from their hotel, the Intercontinental, driving an unmarked white SUV. They stayed most of the afternoon, and came out looking for their escort, according to witnesses. A white SUV stopped some distance away. Witnesses said the driver got out and ran up to them, said his tire had gone flat. They walked back with him. Next thing anybody knew, the SUV was racing away and the bodyguard was thrashing around on the pavement. He’d been tasered, and the getaway ran over his foot too. He’s at Jackson Memorial Hospital now.”

Connie’s matronly air belied her toughness, and her gift for reading crimes and criminals. I swallowed a cry as her words shredded my last hopes for a simple kidnapping, an opportunistic hood we could handle with ease. In all but the first killing, Starslayer had incapacitated a person accompanying their target, using a stun gun—and marks on the bodies we recovered showed he had done the same to his victims to control their struggles. Like all cops, I had had to experience being tasered, and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy; but the thought of it being turned on Clay, of a whip of lightning lashing the body I had secretly desired … “All right,” I forced out through dry lips. “So the MO matches, and we’re pretty sure it’s him. What’ve we got to work with?”

“Security tape from the mall parking lot.” Jo held up a video cassette, his plump brown face finally betraying a trace of his usual cheer. “One woman jumped in her car and tried to follow them, but she lost him.” Had to be a fan, I thought with a faint inward smile of kinship. “She got a partial plate number, though. We’re running it now. Description of the driver was Caucasian, age indeterminate, long dark dreads, baseball cap, sunglasses, heavy facial hair.”

“Totally disguised, in other words.” Deac let out an explosive sigh.

“Okay.” I tried to take a deep breath, and then another when the first failed to do the job. I would trust these three people with my life—I had on numerous occasions—but I could not trust them with my emotions right now. I couldn’t let them see I felt anything more than my usual anger at each new attack. I couldn’t let them know professional frustration was now joined by personal fear…because they didn’t know I was a fan. They didn’t know I was Delilah of the Lecherous Broads for Clay Aiken, occasionally accused of being the famous DJ of that name; defender of the Clayfaith, smacker down of trolls, and host of a Miami Broadfest that now might never happen. I had kept my work life and private time separate, and had never been as glad for it as I was at that moment. If my supervisors knew, they might pull me from the case, afraid I’d let it cloud my judgement. I could not let them do that. “Okay,” I repeated, conscious of curious eyes on me. “Looks like midnight oil and overtime for us, mis amigos. Jo, get that tape to the CSI lab, and let’s see if the whiz kids in Forensic Imaging can clean it up for us and give us anything more to go on. Connie, work the tag angle. We need to know every vehicle that has that partial tag, white SUV or not, and account for the whereabouts of both vehicles and tags this afternoon. Deac, check out the hotel staff. How did this asshole know where Cla…where Aiken was and what escort vehicle he was looking for? This smells like an inside job.” I took the files from Connie. “I’ll hang onto these, but I hope to hell we don’t need ‘em. I’m going to JMH to talk to the bodyguard.” I had never met Clay’s bodyguard Jerome, and always wished to, but not this way.

“Don’t panic, people.” As ever, Deacon was our calming voice of reason, and I clung to his stability. “We know serials stick to their routines once they establish them. Their rituals mean everything to them, and Starslayer’s not proven himself to be an exception. He holds his victims for five to seven days, issues a communique or two, demands ransom or public statements or such, before he…does anything else. Let’s all pray he doesn’t change his game plan. If not, we should have time.”

We should have time, I repeated bitterly in my head as I went to my car. I tossed the files in the back seat. I didn’t have to look at them to see what the killer did. I knew. We had pored over the horrific photos, and before that the horror of the bodies themselves, trying to piece together the madman’s rationale. He had written it in the mutilation he left for us to find, drawing us a picture of himself as a dark mirror that sucked into itself the reflected light of his victims’ renown. Not this time, please, I begged the cosmos as I drove to the hospital. Clay’s light is so bright, we can’t let this evil put it out.

+++

I found Jerome in Jackson Memorial’s justly celebrated ER, having finishing touches put on a walking cast for his crushed foot. It must have been painful, but he hardly acknowledged it; the physical pain was clearly nothing compared to the emotional distress on his face. “I should have known better,” he lamented. “When I called the hotel for our ride, they didn’t say they were sending a different driver, but I didn’t think anything of it when this guy ran up. He said he’d run over a nail and his tire went flat. He was real apologetic, like he expected Clay to throw some diva act, but he just laughed and said ‘I’m no good at changing tires, but I can guard the truck, I guess’.” Jerome’s mouth twisted in an ironic half-smile. “We walked out into the middle of the parking lot. The guy said the driver’s side door was stuck, so he took Clay around to the passenger side to toss his bag in back—he’d bought some new sandals, his old ones had just literally fallen apart, stinky ol’ things….I went around to the driver’s side to look where he said the flat was. I didn’t see anything, but all of a sudden I heard this sizzle, like a bug zapper, and a little grunt and a thump from the other side. I looked up—I didn’t see the guy, or Clay, and then—“ He suppressed a shudder. “It felt like somebody doused me in diesel fuel and turned a blowtorch on me. I fell out on the pavement, jerking like I was having a seizure.” With a grimace, he gestured toward his foot. “I didn’t even feel this when it happened. People ran to me, trying to help, and somebody called you guys, thank heavens. Do you have any idea who did this, Lieutenant Marshall?”

“We do.” He was sitting on a procedure table in a curtained-off cubicle. I sat down beside him in a rickety plastic chair. “Not a name, yet, but this case is similar to four others over the past year and a half, similar enough that we think we’re dealing with the same man.”

“That’s a start then,” he sighed. “I’ve got calls in to Clay’s management, and RCA, and his mom is on her way down from North Carolina. The man wants money, I guess? How long before we hear something, do you think? How long before he lets him go?”
They were good questions for him to ask—and very bad ones for me to contemplate answering. “That’s the problem,” I said slowly. “We’re not sure the money is his motivation. He, uh, seems more…He gets off on the notoriety of taking someone known to the public. He likes the media feeding frenzy, the reactions of others, fans or whatever. He has asked for ransoms before, and they have been paid, but—“

“But what?” Jerome demanded, his dark face ashen. “Did…did he hurt them?”

I hesitated, but I could not lie. “Yes,” I admitted. “And then he killed them.”

“Oh, Lord…What did he do to them?”

“I don’t—“

“What did he do?” he almost shouted. “I need to know what Clay’s facing, what I…failed to protect him from.”

“You didn’t fail,” I tried to reassure him. “It’s not your fault. Clay would tell you that himself, I suspect. I’m sure he wouldn’t blame you. There’s no need for me to go into details of past cases, because this one is different. There’s a chance he won’t go as far this time. He’s never struck at someone this big. When he realizes what he’s done, he may lose his nerve. He may just let Clay go.”

Jerome had bowed his head while I spoke, then lifted his burning eyes to mine. “And he may not,” he said quietly. “If he gets off on the fame of his victim, this could be the biggest rush of all. Tell me what the SOB’s done before. I need to know.”

Though I shook my head, he would not be denied. “The first death attributed to him was Kella Velasquez, in March of last year. She sang with a local band that had just gotten a recording deal, and a good bit of publicity in the Miami area. The second was Morris Dewitt last summer; he was a dancer who’d moved to New York, performed in some well-received shows, then came back here to teach. The third was Jason Tarleton, Dewitt’s lover, an actor who’d just landed a role in Barry Manilow’s musical that opened on Broadway last fall. Then early this year, he killed Lamarcus Jackson, a University of Miami wide receiver who was about to sign a hefty contract with the Falcons. We hadn’t heard anything from him since then, and we hoped he’d burned himself out, he wouldn’t escalate further.”

“But he did.” The man wouldn’t back down. “What did he do to them?” As a fan, I knew what I might not have known simply as a law officer; Jerome’s relationship with Clay was from all accounts one of friendship and mutual respect. I didn’t want him to keep blaming himself for Clay’s abduction, but I had to admire his refusal to shrink from truth, however awful.

“Different things…We believe Starslayer sees himself as a cipher, a nobody, with nothing special to set himself apart. So he does it by preying on those who do have that special something. He…acts out a lot of hatred toward them.” Maybe that would satisfy him, or maybe I could plead police confidentiality.

It didn’t look likely, judging from the steadiness of his gaze. “Starslayer,” he said.

“Not our coinage, by the way, but the media’s.”

“Figures.”

Silence stretched between us like a big cat. “Kella Velasquez’ throat was cut,” I said finally, reluctantly. “Morris Dewitt’s legs and feet were, well, dissected, basically. Jason Tarleton’s face was sliced up, and Lamarcus Jackson was mutilated in a similar manner to Dewitt, except with focus on arms and hands.”

How was I saying all this so calmly, when inside I was a screaming hysteric, knowing someone I had never met but adored was in the grasp of the same lunatic? Looking back, I still don’t know. I guess I was numb with shock; that, and trying to stay calm for Jerome, who looked faint. “Jesus, Savior,” he whispered. “He hates their talent. He went for what made each of them who they were.”

Despite it all, I had to smile, if tightly. “You’re good,” I said. “You got it right away.”

“How did he…how did he kill them?”

Damn. Above all, I had hoped not to be put to this question. “I just told you,” I said softly. “According to autopsies, the injuries were inflicted while they were still alive. They died of shock, loss of blood, etcetera.” Only an inarticulate little noise of pain answered. “I’m sorry. We are going to—I am going to do everything in my power to keep that from happening to Clay. I swear it.”

Jerome’s eyes narrowed—had I sounded too fervent? I wasn’t at all sure I wanted him, or anyone else associated with Clay, to know I was a fan either, lest it damage their trust in me. On the other hand, I hoped I could justify whatever trust they might put in me. “I believe you,” he said, and I breathed easier. “Please, though…don’t tell Clay’s mom what you just told me.”

“I wouldn’t,” I assured him. “With any luck, there will no need for her to ever know it.”

“Luck? More like the grace of God.”

I wasn’t a religious person, but I had to agree with him on that. I had friends who believed with all their hearts that a higher power had guided Clay to his destiny. If so, he never needed a divine hand on him more than right now.

+++

Nor did we. The unit worked far into the night, chasing down every lead we could find while it was hot. The techs in our Crime Scene lab enhanced the mall’s surveillance video till we could read the white SUV’s full license number, but the tag turned out to have been stolen off a ’79 Chevy Malibu up on blocks in somebody’s front yard in Overtown several months ago. Later in the evening, a sheriff’s deputy writing a speeding ticket on I-95 north of town spotted something lying in the grass along the shoulder and checked it out. It was the tag, and urgent bulletins were immediately issued as far north as Orlando and beyond. By now, though, I had to admit disconsolately, Starslayer could be holding Clay prisoner anywhere between here and Atlanta.

Luck, or providence, or whatever, did not turn its face toward us as the night wore on. A bewildered gaggle of drivers from the Intercontinental denied any knowledge of what had happened, and every one had firm alibis. We set up lineups for Wednesday morning anyway, so the witnesses could take a look, and then, far past midnight, I made my weary way home.

I let myself in my front door, realizing I was clutching the old Starslayer files. With each death, the viciousness of his demented rage had burrowed deeper into my subconscious. I had wanted justice for these four people, whose only crime had been being damn good at what they did and being admired. Now, he had struck at someone not merely good at what he did, but just plain good, and loved by millions for it; and I did not intend to let the son of a bitch get away with it any longer.

I dropped the files beside the phone, on the credenza just inside the front door. They joined the stacks of others that covered my house. Work and Clack, that was the décor. In my bedroom, where there weren’t files, there were printouts of Clayfic, notebooks of downloaded pictures, and a big file box under the bed full of, God help me, teen magazines. Work and Clack summed up my life too, especially since my divorce last year. In my last months with Teddy I had resorted to fantasizing about Clay while I was with him—not the sort of thing one tells one’s husband, however much one dislikes him—not just ‘with him’ in bed, but in most other situations too. Fandom, and the Broads who had become my dear friends, had given me the courage to finally shove Teddy’s macho shit out of my world. Granted, I hadn’t yet put together much of a world to replace it, but I was working on that.

Broadfest had been meant to be a big step on that path. Now, reluctantly, I forced myself to check my email. No surfing; I couldn’t yet face my fellow fans in all their shock and grief. My in box was full enough of hurt, though, in the form of messages from other Broads who had planned to come to Miami. Along with their concern for Clay, they had understandable worries about travel arrangements, hotel rooms and plane tickets they couldn’t cancel. Come on, I emailed them. We’ll do something, even if it’s just keep watch. I know some people who work downtown. I’ll check around, and maybe they’d let us get together near the arena Friday night, if nothing has changed by then.

Yeah, I knew somebody downtown, all right. I couldn’t very well tell them I knew most of the property owners, though. That was the other side of this game I was playing. I couldn’t let my bosses know I was a fan, lest they pull me off the case; but neither could I let the other fans know my place in the investigation, or it might compromise the search. My online friends knew I worked for the Miami PD, but I had never elaborated on my position, thankfully. Still, I was peppered with questions about what the police were doing to find Clay, and I couldn’t blow them off; their hearts were aching just like mine. I answered as well as I could, trying to be noncommittal yet compassionate. Finally, I crawled into bed and stared up at the night through the skylight until I fell asleep, for once not playing the dream-game of ‘where is Clay right now and what is he doing’.

I didn’t want to think about that. I hoped for a chance to ask Clay to forgive me my cowardice.

+++

After a few fitful hours of sleep I dragged myself out and cleaned up to take on Wednesday. I finally got the nerve to cruise a few Clay sites on the web, and noticed something interesting. Yesterday afternoon, word had been posted on one message board, and quickly spread to numerous others, of a Clay sighting at the mall, complete with mention of the white SUV. I guessed someone had spotted him and Jerome, and phoned or text messaged a friend at their computer, who in turn posted. It wasn’t uncommon among fans, but it could explain one of the early mysteries of this case. How had Starslayer known where Clay was, and what vehicle to use to lure him into a trap?

Maybe the same way he knew to prey on Clay’s intrinsic good nature, and his willingness to go out of his way to help someone, even in a situation as simple as a flat tire. Maybe he lurked. Maybe he had lurked for a while, researching, planning, dreaming, waiting for the right moment.

Maybe he was lurking now, loving the chaos he was causing, taking his sweet time to heighten his anticipation…and his captive’s terror…

I slapped my laptop, in fury—and sudden epiphany. If my guess was right, two could play his sick game, and the Broads—the whole of Clay Nation—could unknowingly help me win.

+++

“Here’s my thing.” I paced across the SCU’s main office area. “This animal gets his rocks off on the grief he causes the admirers of the people he targets. There’s no bigger or more visible fandom than Clay Aiken’s. I think he’s had this in mind since tour dates were announced back in April. I think he’s hung out online, checking out the fan sites, and when someone posted Clay was at the mall, he seized his chance. He would know Clay Nation likes to keep track of Clay, and chuckle over what he might be buying at a store or riding at a theme park or whatever. That’s where his ‘inside’ info came from.”

Deac propped his feet up on his desk. “I thought they were Claymates.”

“Only one group. Nice folks, but still, only one group. Clay Nation is the preferred term for the fandom as a whole.”

“You picked up plenty about these people from just an hour spent surfing.”

I cut my eyes at him as if mildly annoyed. “I do have a life, Christopher.” That earned me a flash of his winning smile. In his rookie days, someone had hung his nickname on him to make fun of his deep Christian faith, but he embraced it as a mark of honor. If not for that and his deliriously happy marriage, people would have been placing bets throughout the department on how long it took after my divorce for us to end up in bed together. As it was, the fact that I hadn’t hit on him hard had led a few folks to insist I had to be gay. With his long blond ponytail and beach-boy physique, it would have been hard for any woman to turn him down, just on looks alone, though I’d never been attracted to muscle men. I preferred long leanness, and it didn’t hurt if that were spiced with gorgeous sea-green eyes, or expressive hands, or a nice round butt…I dragged myself back from the warm carnal embrace of Broadhood to cold fluorescent RL. “And I do spend some of that life online. I have friends there who share my interests, and who have interesting interests of their own. Several of them happen to be big fans of Mr. Aiken, so thanks to them I know my way around their neighborhood. So, I suspect, does Starslayer.

“This is my idea. What if I set up a chat, made it known across the boards I’d do my best to answer questions, implied I’m leaking a little something to reassure the fan community? Wouldn’t that be catnip to our boy? Wouldn’t he jump at the chance to eavesdrop on us, so to speak, and to participate in the angst of the people he holds in his hand; maybe even ask pointed questions, or incite more anguish—“

Deac’s eyes lit up like the blue lights on a patrol car. “And he’d never know we’re setting him up. If we hold the chat from here, with the high-tech security on the department’s computers, we can run an instant scan on anyone who acts suspiciously—find out who they are, where they’re dialed into their ISP from, the whole enchilada.”

“Exactly. The only drawback is the time it’ll take to set it up. I have to post it, get others to spread it, and arrange admittance. Then too, we don’t know when he would be online, so we can’t, say, post it now and hold the chat tonight. He might not have time to get hooked up. It’ll have to be tomorrow, dammit, and I don’t like wasting a minute!”

“It’ll work,” Deac tried to reassure me while I paced some more. “We’ve got time. You know he always makes some public proclamation, and that hasn’t even happened yet. He’s had this victim barely 24 hours—not nearly enough time to get his kicks properly.” I fought back shivers at the awareness of how true his words were. What kind of sadistic games did this cat we chased play with the mice he caught? What might he be doing to Clay, even as we spoke? We didn’t know. No one had yet lived to tell; but I swore to myself that if it lay anywhere within my power to make it so, Clay would be the one who did.

I straddled a chair, and for the first time I took a department computer to our infamous Purple Pages. “Lecherous Broads for Clay Aiken??” Deac snorted. I shrugged. <Hey all> I typed. <I have an idea that may help folks get through all this a little easier. Most of you know I work for the Miami police. The team working Clay’s> I started to type kidnapping, but decided so bald a word might hurt. <case are keeping a tight lid on it, but I know some things I can share without risking the investigation. I can be available to answer questions for people, tomorrow night, say around eight. Pass the word to other boards where you hang out. Everyone concerned about Clay is welcome.> I added brief directions as to how to hook up, and posted the whole.

Deac commended my slyness, especially when I used my secondary email address rather than my primary. I rarely used the other, so this way we would have an easily identifiable list of everyone who signed up for the chat…and the chances of someone at work happening to see personal correspondence from my sister Broads was low. Deac didn’t realize just how sly I was.

+++

We couldn’t put all our eggs in one basket, though, so we spent the rest of Wednesday chasing every lead we could. Most ended badly. I also had the difficult task of meeting with Clay’s worried manager, his distraught friends and coworkers, and worst of all, his mother. Telling them we had nothing was too damn hard. Tired and dispirited, I did manage to phone around downtown and connect with the owner of a large parking lot across from the arena. As it happened, she was a fan too, and eagerly agreed to help with a candlelight vigil on Friday night, at the hour when we all should have been inside falling under Clay’s spell. I explained it to the team as another opportunity to set a trap for our prey. It was true enough—I could see Starslayer turning up at such an event—but they didn’t have to know that if this went on that long, the gathering would be as much a balm for my own aching heart as anyone else’s.

By late that night we had worn out every lead we had. I staggered to the couch in my office for a restless doze. As the hours slipped through our fingers, my distress built. There had been no word from Starslayer, no public proclamation or demands, and that worried me. Was this just an acceptable variant of his usual game, or had he changed the rules? I steeled myself to be ready for anything, be it the stern satisfaction of capturing our prey, or the alternative I shrank from even considering. If I stood at last over Clay Aiken’s lifeless body, I would have to be prepared for that too, and prepared to go on. I was glad to be too tired to dream, for fear of which future I might see.

Thursday morning, I logged onto my email and found literally scores of requests to join tonight’s chat. I set them up, wondering if one among them might be the one we sought, who came looking not for solace but for the thrill of the suffering he was causing. That was the only bright spot, though. Thursday went pretty much as Wednesday had, our frustration mounting as each new opening slammed shut in our faces. We must have traced half the white SUVs in south Florida, and every slim redheaded male between the ages of eighteen and forty. By late afternoon, Hayes and Hernandez’ normal bickering (we always wondered why they didn’t just break down and get married, since they already acted it) took on a weary, almost frantic edge. I sent everyone home, then walked next door for a Cuban sandwich. I could live on the things, but tonight I could barely get half the savory flattened bread, meat and pickles down. Dread and expectation were fighting it out in my gut as I returned to the SCU offices. I let myself in and turned to lock the door.

“I smell Cuban sandwich.” Deac rose from behind his desk. “You didn’t bring me one? I’m hurt.”

I nearly went through the glass door. “What are you doing here?”

“While you’re running the chat, I can look for quirks in the responses. Two pairs of eyes on a screen are better than one.” His searched mine. “This case is starting to get to you, Del. I can see it. What kind of cop would I be if I left my fearless leader without backup?”

I just stared back at him. Somewhere in the back of my skull, for one of the few times I could recall, the desires of my heart framed themselves as a prayer, to Anyone who might be listening: a prayer for protection of my secret, and of gratitude for a friend. “Thanks,” I said simply, and handed him the foil-wrapped leftover half of my sandwich. “Here. Don’t say I’m inconsiderate. Now let’s get this bus rolling.”

When I got online, people were backed up by the dozens waiting to be ‘buzzed’ into the chat. Deac pulled up a chair to sit beside me. “Whew,” he marveled. “What is it about this guy?”

I shrugged the question off, intent on getting the chat started, but I wondered if, even had I been free to do so, I could have answered it adequately. I typed in a brief welcome, and promised as much info as I could divulge without compromising the search for Clay—and could get away with. “If he thinks I’m just a flunky trying to grab some spotlight, it may make him more likely to slip up,” I told Deac. “And if he does slip, hopefully he’ll figure I’m not knowledgeable enough to catch it, or I’d be afraid to take it up the chain of command for fear of being canned.”

Deac’s approving grin quickly faded, as the screen filled over and over again with lines of copy. Scores of fans, most of whom I’d never met online or otherwise, poured out their grief and fear in this place they felt safe. “They don’t even know him, and they act like he’s family,” Deac puzzled.

I just nodded. My focus had to be on keeping the chat going while we monitored for strange comments or suspicious questions, but as hours online went by I felt myself drawn more to this other side of my life, my own apprehension welling up to join that of my kindred spirits. I tried to reassure the others as best I could without overstepping the bounds of my supposed position. To a question about the investigating officers I replied <The Special Cases Unit is on it. I don’t know them but I hear they are good>

<u better hope theyre good> was the next comment <or Clays gonna end up as dead as the others>

Outcries burst across the screen, and as moderator I stepped in. <hey, we’re all in this together, no need to be brutal!>

<people need to face the truth> retorted the poster, whose screen name showed as FallenIdol; rather inappropriate, I thought, considering the circumstances.. <the cops around here look like the Police Acad’y movies. Theyre incompetent idiots. They havent caught the Starslayer in over a yr, what makes u think they can now? when they find Clay Aiken hes gonna be dead under some pier with his voice box cut out just like that tramp Kella Velasquez>

<GODDAMN TROLL!!> somebody pounded on their keys, but I sat frozen staring at the words on the screen.

“Um,” I said softly, “wasn’t our official position that Kella Velasquez’ throat was simply cut?”

“Yes,” Deac said without hesitation from behind my shoulder. “We never made public that her larynx was removed. It was one of those telltales we withheld from the media.”

<Calm down people> I typed while Deac moved to another computer.

“I’ll start a trace on this one,” he said.

The chat moved on, but the belligerent poster had struck a nerve. Now people wanted to know about Starslayer, his history and methods. I stepped with caution, knowing the source of this anguish might be right among us, and tried to strike a balance, reassuring the anxious fans that his usual routine was to hold his hostage unharmed for a time, without being so emphatic as to goad him into doing something different, something awful, just for spite.

FallenIdol popped up again. <heres a photoshop I did thatll give u a feel for whats probly going on now>

I clicked on the link accompanying the post. (you can too, gentle reader)

I could have screamed, but no sound would come out; I was as silenced as the helpless face that appeared on the screen. “Chris?” I whispered. “Do you think this is a chop?”

Deac looked over and nearly gasped. “Dear Lord…I don’t know whether to hope it is or hope it isn’t.” His fingers flew over the keyboard where he sat. “Send it to me and I’ll shoot it over to CSI. Jimmy Cho’s working tonight—if he can’t tell, nobody can.”

I persuaded my hands to move enough to do that, then just sat and stared. Elsewhere on the screen, a good chunk of Clay Nation was probably melting down, but I could not move, captive of that horrible image, as its subject was himself a captive. His face was pale, his eyes huge and averted from the lens, and his mouth smothered with duct tape. Is this just some sick joke? Maybe it is a computer creation. Have I seen that picture before?… Is that a bruise on his cheek? Christ, he looks so scared… Oh God, not in my city, not to my Clay…

“Boss? Hey, fearless leader?” I registered that words were being spoken, but my brain could not force them to make sense. “Del.” I started. My mouse hand had risen to my chest, palm out, as if to reach for the screen and rip that nasty stuff from his beautiful face. I glanced quickly at Deac, striving to veil my horror with an irritated frown. “Back him up,” he said.

“What? The pic? Yeah, yeah, I saved it—“

“No, Del, the chat. These women are ripping into our suspect like harpies. He may get off on it, or he may leave, or he may get pissed. None of the above sounds like a really good option for us. Get in there and back him up!”

Jolted, I tore my eyes at last from Clay’s gagged and frightened face, shrank the picture and dove into the fray online. <HOLD UP PEOPLE!!> I cyber-yelled. <As much as we hate to admit it, we have to face the fact that Clay is in deep trouble. FI is right, so don’t kill the messenger, it’s not his fault>

<thank u madam> he returned <but what makes u assume im male?>

String him along a little, I thought. <Oops, I didn’t. My bad. But a woman rarely calls another woman ‘madam’>

<touche. ure gd for a minor police functionary. maybe u should be hunting the Starslayer. at least ud be a challenge to him>

“I think he’s flirting with me, the sick fucker.” <If I were I doubt he’d make it to jail alive> I typed before I caught myself. <Ok, enough of this. Fighting among ourselves won’t do us or Clay any good>

<Delilah’s right> a Broad piped up. <Clay always talks abt his faith & trust in God. Wherever he is now I’m sure he’s holding onto that. The best we can do for him now is to do the same—support each other & pray>

<yes!> agreed another chatter. <However you do it do it. If you’ve never done it before do it. Doesn’t matter. Pray for Clay!!!>

<and for the cops!> the next post added. <Special Cases unit, right Delilah? They’ve got to be goin nuts, & under so much pressure>

<& for the families of the other people who were killed> read the next line. <This must be so hard for them, hurting for mos over their loved ones, & then this happens & suddenly it gets all the attn. They loved their people as much as we love Clay>

<Maybe the attention will accomplish what couldn’t be done before> This poster was a Broad I knew to be a Christian.<Maybe this has a purpose too. Like all those rotten things that happened to Clay that turned out to be for the best>

Reading over my shoulder again, Deac made a little noise of admiration. “You wouldn’t see many fan clubs in this situation who gave a care for the earlier victims.”

“It’s not a fan club. It’s just the kind of people Clay draws to him.” I replied past the lump in my throat.

<Pray for good news!> someone posted.

The next words onscreen made me catch my breath. <close your eyes, fold your hands, for a moment let your sorrow fade>

As I expected them, the following lines popped up in quick succession.

<why oh why are you afraid>

<has this world robbed you of your faith>

Deac drew in a sharp breath too. “That’s a song,” he said. “I know it. It’s a Christian song. ‘Good News’.”

“Clay sang it on his Christmas tour last year.”

The lyrics continued, several people at once now posting each line as if singing them in unison.

<bow your head, speak not a word>

<let the silence take you far from here>

<holdin hands & singing kumbaya isnt gonna save anybodys life> FI interrupted.

<Don’t be so sure!> challenged the Christian Broad. <’The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still’>

“Clay’s favorite Bible verse,” I breathed.

The posts went on and on, through the end of the song.

<good news, good news, an angel brings good news>

<good news, good news, I leave you with good news>

In my head I could hear Clay’s sweet voice lifted in those words of faith. “Yes,” I whispered as tears blurred my sight. ‘Oh, yes, I hope you do, Clay.”

The chat began to break up afterwards. I said good night with a quick word about the vigil. By the time I finished and logged off, I felt I had reassembled my composure. “Well, we sure got a lot out of that, I think!” I said with forced briskness. “This ‘FallenIdol’ is looking better all the time. Did you notice he dissed the cops ‘around here’, as though he’s right here in South Florida? Between the photo and the slip about Velasquez’s murder—and he called her a tramp, too. Seemed to be taking things personally.”

“So did you.” Deac put his hand over mine when I tried to get up and turn away. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

I went nauseous with fear, but fought to keep my tone level. “Please don’t say anything, Deac. I’m afraid the chief will pull me if he knows, and I don’t want that. I was good enough to lead this team in pursuit of Starslayer for over a year, and I intend to be leading it when we take him down. My being a fan won’t affect my work, except to make me more determined. I still owe my best to the people this squirrel’s killed. Now I owe it to those people online too, and I owe it to Clay.”

“Clay Aiken…what is it with this guy?” This time Deac asked the question with no hint of his earlier half-scorn, but in a tone of serious curiosity.

“It’s hard to say. It’s not just the singing, as magnificent as his voice is. He’s got a quick mind, a sharp wit, and a good, good heart.” I finally dared look Deac in the face. “Rather like you, in fact.” He nearly blushed. “Like a lot of folks say, ‘we came for the voice and stayed for the man’. A friend of one of the other Broads is a reporter, and she says it’s like he wakes something in people that they forgot they wanted, something honest and sincere…Clay’s so true to himself, and faithful to his God, even after some terrible experiences. He’s just—real. He’s lifted so many people up by being who he is, done so much good and brought so many people together. If not for him, and the friends I made through him, I’d still be chained to that vicious jerkoff I married. And now this sonofabitch wants to destroy him, and take that away from the world? Over my fuckin’ dead body.” Deac softly snickered. I bit my lip, then realized I never used to do that before I got Clayverted. “Please, Deac. I haven’t screwed anything up yet from having an emotional connection to this, and I won’t. Please don’t tell.”

“Tell? Why? If you didn’t have that connection, you’d probably never have had the background to pull off that performance you just gave, and we wouldn’t have the new leads we have now.” Deac’s hand folded over mine, now clasped on my knee. “I didn’t know he was a brother in faith. I was praying anyway, but this’ll make it a little more personal for me too.” His grin was fiercely eager. “Now, oh fearless leader, whaddya say we call Jimmy and see if the verdict is in on that photo?”

It wasn’t yet, so we occupied ourselves checking on the trace Deac had started on the mysterious poster. In a while we had his Internet service provider; we called them and invoked every law we could think of to get his personal info. “Your hunch panned out thus far,” Deac applauded. “He is right here in Miami.”

“John Philip Taylor,” I mused. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“Probably busted him back in the dim and misty.” Deac went to work on the keyboard again. “We’ll run him through the system.” After he entered the info in the department’s massive criminal database, we debated whether to call Hayes and Hernandez and have them come in. We were still arguing pros and cons when the phone rang. Deac answered, listened and nodded. “We’ll be right over.” He hung up. “That was Jimmy. Says he has a verdict for us.”

+++

“It’s real,” Jimmy declared in his cluttered corner of the crime lab. ‘I wanted you to come down so I could show you a few points.” With his cursor, he pointed out a half dozen indicators of authenticity on the blown-up image of Clay on the computer screen. “This is Starslayer’s current hostage? And you got this how?”

“From the perp himself, by all evidence,” Deac replied, “blowing smoke in an Internet chat room and never thinking anyone with access to this kind of technology was around.”

“Man, you’re good.” Jimmy shook his head with a grin. “Hope you nail him.”

I had managed to get through Jimmy’s tutorial through sheer force of will, making myself focus only on the technical minutiae; but when Jimmy moved away, the whole picture came back into hideous perspective. “You okay?” Deac asked with solicitude in his voice.

“He’s not looking at the camera,” I said. “How like him. It’s that stubborn streak, and that need to be in control of his life. He felt so vulnerable as a child, running from an abusive father; he says because of that, he always feels like he has to be prepared for anything. Now here he is, helpless, obviously scared out of his mind, and yet he’s controlling what he can. He won’t look at the camera. He said when he was a kid he never let the bullies see him cry, and he’s still refusing to. Whenever this photo was taken, the bastard hadn’t broken him.”

Deac listened, then nodded. “I think I’m looking forward to meeting this guy. Might even have to take a couple of my old Stryper CDs out of the changer to check the crooner out.”

“I bet your wife would appreciate it.”

He chuckled, and we found a terminal to check on the database search on John Philip Taylor. “He’s clean. No priors.” I nodded, looked back over my shoulder at Clay’s white and tense face on the other screen, and leaned on the desk for support as a wave of weariness rocked me. “Go home and get some sleep, Del. We can’t hit this guy now. If for no other reason, wherever he is, he knows his surroundings; we don’t. Darkness would be his friend.”

“Darkness his friend,” I repeated dryly. “How apropos.” It pissed me off, but Deac was right. If Taylor were holding Clay somewhere and we rolled up, he could easily kill him before we got to him. With a quick hug of thanks I slipped off for home.

+++

In my living room, I went through my DVDs and found the one full of downloaded video smuggled out of Clay’s Joyful Noise tour. I put it in, selected the last track, and watched it several times. It was medicine for me, really. I needed, desperately, to see him that way; on stage, singing of the center of his faith; handsome and joyous and free; on fire with power, be it his or one even greater, and sharing it unselfishly. I needed to hear him sing the words we had shared online.

We break the bread, we pour the wine, and angels descend with a heavenly sigh…

I felt myself grow drowsy on the sofa. As I drifted off, I hoped that if Clay visited my dreams it would be this shining and sublime face I saw, and not the one that had haunted me this night, the one that now lay atop the pile of files near the door, defiant yet defenseless.

His face appeared in my sleep all right, but not in either guise I would have anticipated. I dreamed I lay in my bed, reclined on my side with a sheet pulled up over my shoulders. Moonlight flowed through the skylight and illuminated the man lying beside me. His eyes were bright and calm, and his lips curved in the half-smile I knew from a hundred photographs, an expression at once so sweet and so suggestive. For what felt like half the night, we lay there in quiet, just looking at each other. Then he leaned toward me, and as our lips met I felt his skin hot against mine, and realized I wasn’t wearing a thing under that sheet, and neither was he…

I woke with a start, suddenly more afraid than I had been since this ordeal began. As unashamed as I was to be called a Broad, lechery had no place here now! Maybe I was losing my grip; maybe I should take myself off this case. Maybe Deac’s trust in me was misplaced. If I slipped up, Clay would die, and Starslayer would escape, and every life he took after that would be on my head—but if I pulled myself off the case, whoever replaced me wouldn’t have the past with Starslayer I did, or the knowledge of Clay and his Nation. Then, if the same results emerged, how would I feel? I hugged a sofa cushion to my chest, shaking. “If Someone is there…tell me, what do I do?” I said to the empty room. Talking to entities that weren’t physically present had always seemed a bit off to me—but hey, Clay did it, and he definitely wasn’t crazy!

The heavens didn’t open, but I felt a definite shift in my mood; the moment of panicky self-doubt faded, replaced by certainty. Whatever happened, I would not abandon Clay to torture and death. I got up, got ready for the day and checked online. The picture of Clay captive had made the rounds, not surprisingly, but I was secretly thankful no one had called it anything but a photoshop in exceptionally poor taste. My email contained messages from several Broads who had arrived in town overnight. Originally, I had planned to take today off, get together with them for lunch and then hang out at my house Clacking till I tossed together supper and we trooped back downtown for the show. That wasn’t going to happen now, but perhaps something good would. I replied with regret that I had to work, but hopefully we could meet tonight before the vigil.

On my way out the door, I paused to look with deliberation at the photo of Clay. The horror in his eyes shook me, but the rebellious turn of his head spurred me on. He hadn’t given up. Nor would I. The picture lay on top of the old Starslayer case files, and I picked up the one labeled with Kella Velasquez’s name. One thing that had bothered me since last night was Taylor’s gratuitous insult of her, calling her a ‘tramp’. Why? In seconds I dropped the file on top of the stack and yanked my cel from my purse while racing to my car. “Deac,” I said urgently when he answered, “John Philip Taylor was Kella Velasquez’ boyfriend. I told you the name rang a bell! He was in the band she sang with. The other guys voted him out a few weeks before she died, and she broke up with him around the same time.”

“The boyfriend! Yeah. I remember now. But he had an alibi.”

“An ironclad one. His cousin in Clearwater swore he was partying with him all night the night Kella was kidnapped.” I tossed the files in my back seat and fired up my engine as I slid behind the wheel. “But alibis were made to be broken. Here’s the contact info on the cousin. Give him a call. Let him know we have new evidence, and make it abundantly clear that if he’s lying, and if Taylor is arrested for Kella’s murder, Clay’s abduction, or spitting on the sidewalk, then he’s subject to arrest too, as an accessory.”

When I got downtown a half dozen media crews were doing standups out front. I dodged them and went in the back. “The cousin cracked,” Jo greeted me with a tight grin. “Said Taylor begged him to lie for him. Taylor claimed he was doing a drug dealer’s girlfriend from South Beach. The dealer supposedly had ears in the department, and Taylor told him if he told the truth the dealer would hear and take him out.”

“Bingo,” I said. “What if we’ve looked at this wrong all along? Maybe Velasquez wasn’t meant to be the first victim of a serial killer. Maybe it was a crime of passion, Taylor striking out at her, and through her at his failure. Then, all the publicity, and all of a sudden he feels like somebody: a being of power.”

“And he escalated from there.” Connie nodded. “Deacon told us what you two did last night. We should have enough to bring this guy in now, between this new info and that. Especially this.” She held up a print of the photo (I found myself thinking of it that way, as THE photo), her face grave. “Pobrecito…If this boy’s still alive, we’ve got to find him now!”

“Yeah.” I tried not to look at the picture. “Where’s Deac?”

“Getting a search warrant.” Deac walked in from the copy room with a fax in his hands. “Let’s find out when Judge Knight’s birthday is and send her flowers or something.” He handed me the legal documents. “The ISP is still sending Taylor’s bill for Internet service to this PO box, but he’s moved four times in the past year and a half. The last time was just a few weeks ago, to an address in the suburbs, which is where I obtained the search warrant for.”

“And what’ll you bet me that his moves coincided in time to the murders?” I snapped. “He’s trying to avoid leaving a trail. This was a part of his pre-planning for another attack. He figures after he kills Clay he’ll pull up again.” I tapped the search warrant. “We’ve got a little surprise for him this time.”

“We can’t just go up and knock on the door,” Connie protested. She still held the picture of Clay, close to her bosom as if to protect it, or him. “If he’s got Clay elsewhere, he can destroy any evidence that would lead us there. Then even if we arrest him—which we don’t have a warrant for yet—he can just clam up, and he gets exactly what he wants. We never find the boy, and he dies a slow agonizing death somewhere, helpless like this, of hunger and thirst.” God, on top of everything else, I hadn’t even dared consider that, and my heart literally shuddered in my chest.

“Besides which, if he does have Aiken there and we barge in, we could end up in a standoff, with the hostage caught in the middle, or used as a human shield,” Jo added. “But then what do you suggest?”

I was thinking fast. “I suggest a little undercover reconnaissance.” I bent over a computer and pulled up a city map. The address on the warrant was in a lower middle class neighborhood inland. “There’s a convenience store two streets over. Let’s meet there and use it as a staging area.”

“For what?” Deac demanded.

“I don’t know, babe. I’m making this up as I go. But by the time we hook up there, I’ll have something, I promise.”

+++

I did, too. I was, if nothing else, a woman of my word.

“What we need,” I said as we slugged soft drinks in the 7-11 parking lot, “is a look inside the house, without arousing Taylor’s suspicion. If we find something there, great. If not, we put a tail on him, a good one, because if Clay’s not being held in that house Taylor will have to lead us to him.”

“And sooner rather than later, God willing,” Deac agreed. “But how do we get in without him getting wise? We could claim to be fund raising for the Benevolent Association, I guess.”

“Can the snark. It’s not becoming on you.” I reached in my back seat and pulled out a long, lightweight cane, reflective white, and collapsed into four sections that folded together.

“What is that?” Connie frowned curiously.

“Oh, a little something my best friend left in my car last weekend.”

“Your best friend the massage therapist?” Jo’s dark eyes glittered. “The black, blind massage therapist.”

“We’ve only known each other since we were sixteen. If I can’t act blind enough by now to convince any yahoo on the street, no sighted person can.” I snapped the cane out to its full length and adjusted my sunglasses. “People are scared of blind folks. You should see them squirm around to keep Audrey from bumping into them in a crowd. She likes to tell the really obnoxiously paranoid ones ‘the blindness isn’t catching…it’s the blackness that is’.”

“She is one spicy sister.” Jo’s grin widened. “You think she’d go out with me again sometime?”

I almost howled with laughter, the kind that’s more release of tension than amusement. Finally we had something to go on; we didn’t feel impotent anymore, and my team’s behavior was starting to show it. I hoped mine would too: once Taylor was in custody, if he were truly our man, and Clay was safe and free. “I’ll see what I can do, Jovian,” I told him. “Thing is, Taylor’s not likely to suspect me of anything. Who knows what he may leave lying around for a blind chick to not see?”

Connie chuckled in appreciation. Deac wasn’t thrilled at my going in alone, but he finally conceded. “It could work. Let’s do it.”

I took a few moments to organize. Take off my watch, wipe off my makeup—thank goodness my short hair had no style to speak of—and I was on my way. I walked down to the corner and over a block; then I extended the cane and began a standard sweeping motion across the pavement in front of me. Up the block I saw the house, just one of several nondescript little homes in a row, with a small attached garage, door closed. My heart accelerated. I kept my gaze ahead, so my cane actually had to do some work. Method acting, I guess. I slowed as I approached, moving now as if disoriented and feeling my way. A narrow flagstone path led to the small porch at the front door, and when my cane hit it I paused, then swept some more with the red tip, before I fumbled up it to the door and knocked. There was no reply. My stomach tied itself in knots. “Hello?” I called. “Is someone here? Can somebody help me? I’m blind, and I need some help, please!”

The door opened. John Philip Taylor was a very ordinary looking guy, about thirty I guessed, wearing baggy black pants with suspenders and a T-shirt that used to be white. “What is it?” he asked in the tone of a person interrupted.

“Oh, thank heavens! I’m so sorry to bother you, but I wondered if I could use your phone?” I felt for mine in the pocket of my light blazer and held it up, careful not to look directly at it, him, or anything else for that matter. “My battery is dead.” It was, too, in case he decided to take it from me and monkey with it; an old one I hadn’t gotten around to recycling. I didn’t mention the good one was in my other pocket, with my police issue phone...which was turned on so Deac, Jo and Connie could hear whatever happened. It was a cellcert of sorts, which I found blackly amusing. “I had a doctor’s appointment, and I had to take the bus alone ‘cause my sister had to work, but I must have gotten off at the wrong place. I’ve been walking for—gosh, I dunno how long, I left my Braille watch at home—but it’s so hot, and I just want to call a cab and go home. Do you mind?”

He made an annoyed noise and reached for his pocket. Uh-uh, bunky, that’s not gonna do. I let out a startled little sound, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp, and let my knees fold as if heatstroke had hit me. When I pitched forward, the man didn’t have much choice but to catch me. “Whoa, watch it!”

“Oh—oh, I’m sorry—it’s so hot—could I come in for just a minute, please? I feel the air, it’s so cool…”

He hesitated. C’mon, fishie, take the bait. “Okay, but wait here a minute. I, uh, just moved in and I’m about to have the place painted, so all the furniture is covered. I’ll have to go clean off a place for you to sit down. And once you come in, don’t try to move around. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

I’ll just bet you don’t. “Oh, that’s fine, thank you…” I leaned against the door frame while he went back inside. He mumbled something, and then was back. “I heard a voice. Did I interrupt you, Mr…?”

“Smith. Taylor Smith. Not at all. I was…on the phone with my wife. She’s still up in Michigan with our two kids. I’m trying to get the house ready for them to move down.”

My grandmother would have said this man could lie quicker than a dog could trot backwards. “Oh, how nice for you! I’m sorry to be such a bother. My sister was supposed to recharge my phone last night, and believe me, she is gonna get a piece of my mind…here, let me walk sighted-guide, I’ll show you how,” I added as he took hold of my forearm. Instead I bent his elbow and rested my hand in it so he could escort me inside. “Let me know if there are steps or anything. Do we have far to go?”

“No, the living room’s right here.” Behind my shades I scanned the foyer, but saw nothing suspicious, and my hope began to fade when he turned directly left. I might not get much if all I saw was these two rooms—

Then the room came into full view, and I gasped. “Ohh, that air conditioning feels so good!” I exclaimed, to cover the real reason for the gasp. Clay sat on the far side of the room, in a straight-backed chair, still wearing the green polo shirt, its placket now ripped almost all the way down his chest, and khaki shorts Jerome had described to me. One flip-flop clung to a bare foot; the other lay a short distance away. His ankles were taped to the chair’s front legs, and his arms were stretched behind him; similarly bound, no doubt. More tape swathed his lower face than we had seen in the photo Taylor had flaunted. That picture, I could see now, had likely been taken just after his capture; his hair was limp now and curly from sweat, and his eyes looked glassy, the left one wandering badly. I remembered him writing that it got worse when he was tired or stressed. He watched our approach, his gaze almost wild, but he did not make a sound. I could have been sickened, but instead I was overjoyed. He’s alive, and basically okay I think—oh, he’s alive—

Taylor guided me to a seat on a battered sofa. “This is old furniture that came with the house,” he said with hearty apology, “so it’s the only thing I didn’t cover. Don’t care if it gets ruined, it’s so ugly—well, you can’t see that. Sorry. It must be a real pain in the ass, not being able to see.”

“Yes, it is! But kind folks like you make things easier.” I took the cel he offered me, punched in a cab company number, then discreetly pushed End with my lip while I turned my head in that stereotypical ‘blind’ way that drives a lot of blind people straight up a wall. “They’ll be here in a few,” I said after chatting briefly with a dial tone. “Could I trouble you for something cold to drink? Water, juice, I’m not picky, just something with ice.”

“Certainly!” Damn, he sounded jolly. I figured out why the next moment, when Taylor started toward a door, then paused in front of Clay. With a broad grin, he put his index finger to his lips, then pointed it at me at me; his thumb extended upward, then jerked down in that iconic gesture of kids mocking gunplay. Clay shuddered silently. Shit, he’s threatened to shoot me if Clay makes any noise. Sure, he’s enjoying himself, torturing Clay this way. Oh, you are about to get your ass handed to you on a plate, mister. I couldn’t tell the team listening what was going on, but I had planned for that. I also needed more information before I called them in, but I knew now how to get that too. Taylor moved down a hallway, apparently toward the kitchen. He would be listening for sounds, and for all I knew he had surveillance somewhere in this room; but I could defeat that as easily.

From where I sat, Clay was on my left, only a few feet away. I studiously avoided looking straight at him for a few seconds, while I took my tinted glasses off and rubbed my eyes. I sighed happily and shifted on the ratty couch, turning slightly so my face was toward him. Then I made eye contact, and inclined my head just a hair. If possible, his eyes were even more gorgeous than in pictures, even red-rimmed and darkly shadowed. Once he could not mistake that I was indeed looking at him, I flicked my gaze down to my hands in my lap, then back up to his, then back down. As I’d hoped, he got it, and when he looked down my fingers began to casually move. U SIGN? I fingerspelled. His shoulders jerked as if in surprise. U SIGN? I repeated. BLINK 1 YES. Come on, Clay, I know people who’ve seen you sign, you can get this.

His eyes, now huge with disbelief, met mine again, and after a long moment they closed deliberately, then reopened.

I tried to keep a poker face in case of other eyes watching, but inside I shrieked for joy. Thank God for my deaf boyfriend in sixth grade…how appropriate, that inclusion gave me the tools I need to do this now for you! HE ALONE? I spelled. We had always felt Starslayer worked alone, like most serials, but it never hurt to be careful. BLINK 1 YES 2 NO.

Yes he signaled: the answer I wanted.

GD, I spelled, then held up one finger for a pause and reached into my pocket, the one with the open line. With my thumbnail I tapped on the mike: dash-dash-dot, dash-dash-dash—GO—the signal for the team to move in. The four of us could take Taylor alone, and with the hostage practically in my lap I didn’t need no stinkin’ arrest warrant. Then I continued U OK?

The pause was longer before he replied. Depends on one’s definition of ‘ok’, huh? I thought. Finally he signaled yes.

THK GOD, I signed, and his eye blink was an emphatic agreement. I shifted again and ran my hands through my sweaty hair with a little sigh as if of great contentment to be in cool air. That let my jacket open a little—just enough for Clay to see my gun in its shoulder holster. I put my shades back on, looked directly at him and smiled, then spelled C-O-P. This time his eyes closed and his shoulders slumped a little, as though in relief. The whole exchange had taken barely a minute.

Footfalls sounded in the hallway, and I tilted my head. “I hear you, Mr. Smith!” I called cheerfully.

“I bet you do,” he replied as he re-entered with a tall glass and placed it carefully in my hand. Cold condensation glistened on its outside, and Clay swallowed hard and stared at it intently. “Is iced tea okay?”

“Wonderful!” I declared and took a big swig—or rather, I made it look like I took a big swig. Who knew what might be in this stuff? Taylor made small talk while I swirled the glass. The nutcase had balls, I had to give him that; or else the thrill of entertaining in the same room with his captive was too stimulating to pass up. In a few minutes a knock sounded on the front door. “Oh, I hope that’s my ride. I told the man to come up to the door, so he can walk me to the cab. I can’t thank you enough for going to such trouble.”

“My pleasure.” And the last pleasure you’re gonna get for a very long time, you evil prick.

As he stood to go to the door, I stood too, but as soon as his back was to me I reached for my gun, placing myself between him and Clay. Taylor got the door half open before it burst inward—my team had a gift for making three seem like a whole SWAT team. He tried to slam it, and succeeded in hampering them long enough for him to begin a turn toward me, his hand going to one baggy pants pocket. His movements seemed so slow—things really do in instants of crisis—but the direction of his turn didn’t surprise me at all. As Connie had said, he was the kind to let himself be caught, if he could get in one last blow; he was clearly hoping he could get off a shot at Clay before he was taken. I wasn’t going to let that happen. By the time he faced me, my feet were planted shoulder width apart, my arms extended and my weapon firmly gripped and pointed at him. “Don’t try it!” I yelled. “Put it down!” He hesitated. “Now,” I snarled. He would have to go through me to get to Clay anyhow, but for an instant I almost wanted him to try, to give me a reason to fire.

In the next second, Deac’s expertly aimed chop sent the pistol flying and brought him down. Black belts are so nice to have around the office. “Yes!” I hissed through my teeth, and spun on my heel while holstering my piece. “Lieutenant Del Marshall, Miami PD,” I told a startled Clay. “Happy to meetcha.” With that I slipped behind the chair and found, as I had thought, that his wrists were wound with plenty of duct tape and secured to the rungs of the chair’s back. “Hold still,” I said and crouched, pulling my Swiss army knife. “I’m going to cut your hands free and I don’t want to nick you.”

He had begun to squirm and grunt, struggling against the bonds, but when I folded my hands around his he calmed. Seeing Taylor cuffed and hustled out of the room certainly helped calm him too. It took me only a few moments to slice through the silvery stuff, and Clay let out a muffled but gut-deep groan of release when his arms were finally free to move. Despite all my best intent, the sound sent a shiver right through my girly parts, and I forced myself not to wonder whether he might make similar noises in more pleasurable circumstances. “I’ll let you start getting that stuff off by yourself,” I said and laid my knife in his lap. “That’ll probably smart less than if I started pulling at your hairs.” He grunted in resounding agreement, his fingers already working at the tape over his mouth. “I need to go check on my people, but I’ll be right back, okay?” His eyes were still big, but not nearly as fearful, and he nodded.

Across the foyer was a small storage room. Taylor sat on the floor, ranting about the little wimp that got away. Connie leaned against a rusted-out old clothes washer, her gun trained on him and her phone to her ear calling for backup to process the scene and an ambulance. Deac and Jo had begun searching the house. I kept an eye on Clay from the doorway, watching as he peeled the tape off his wrists, wincing, and flicked it angrily to the floor. The layers that had gagged him now clung to one cheek by a few stubborn strands. A self-willed corner of my brain insisted on noting that the stickum had spared his sideburns—I knew at least one Broad whose joy that Clay was alive and safe would only be increased by word that those ‘coppery runways of love’ as she fondly called them, were intact! He sat and took several deep breaths before he picked up my blade and reached for his bound ankles. Suddenly the knife dropped to the floor, and he gasped faintly and clutched his upper legs. I hurried over. “Are you all right?”

His head hung forward, and his hands gripped his bare knees with white-knuckle force. “When I bent over I got really dizzy.” His voice was a weak rasp. “I was afraid I’d fall—I don’t want to fall again…I’m sorry I dropped your knife, I hope it’s not broken or anything.”

I went to the floor and patted his legs. “It was my grandfather’s. Believe me, it’s been treated worse. I’ll get these. You just sit still and get your balance back.” I scooped up the knife and set to work on the tape. “When did you fall before?”

“The first night he had me. When he went to bed I kicked around and tried to get loose, but all I did was knock the chair over. He heard and came back, but he just laughed and left me lying there all night.” Clay pushed up his right shirt sleeve. “Bet I’m banged up on this side.” He was right; the bicep and surrounding tissue was black and blue. “In the morning he came in with this stun gun thing—he used it on me at the mall, and in the truck when I started fightin’ him—and said he’d use it if I acted up again. He asked if I understood, and I nodded…and he did it anyway. Lord, those things hurt.” He drew another shaky breath and gripped his knees again.

Both his ankles were free from the chair now, but I kept my head lowered, biting my lip and struggling to control my anger. I hadn’t known the other victims’ backgrounds. I did know Clay’s, albeit from the outside, and I knew he had been hurt enough in his life that he deserved no more. My professionalism, in other words, was close to sailing right out the damned window. Finally, I trusted myself to look up. With the tape off his face, I could see his unshaven cheeks were pale and gaunt, freckles standing out in stark contrast. I laid my hands over his. “He can’t hurt you anymore, Clay. I promise.”

“Yeah—yeah.” He nodded slowly, his gaze turned inward as if trying to process the fact that he was alive, and free and safe. Then he refocused on me. “Thanks to you…I’m sorry, I can’t even remember your name! I’m usually really good about that.”

“Considering the circumstances, I’m not about to get my feelings hurt,” I grinned. “It’s Del.”

One auburn eyebrow lifted. “Del?”

“When your name is Delilah, it’s tough getting good ol’ boys in blue to take you seriously.”

“Delilah.” His voice was stronger now, and his soft accent made the name that had embarrassed me much of my life sound warm and wonderful. “It fits. She was beautiful and sneaky, too.” His tense hands relaxed, and he turned them over to take gentle hold of mine.

Startled, I stared up into the tired green eyes that now held a tiny spark, and felt myself blush as if touched by their heat. Suddenly, and at the most inopportune time, I was reminded I was kneeling between his big feet, and how many times I had happily imagined myself assuming this position! I reached up and brushed away the last bit of sticky on his face, and the duct tape fell away. Underneath the cinnamon stubble, his skin was silk sleek and hot to the touch. “Let’s get you over to the sofa,” I managed.

His cautious attempt to stand was interrupted by an odd noise; he glanced behind him, and flushed. The sound was like velcro, and when my look followed his I saw its source—the back of his shorts was stuck to the seat. He stopped. “I really had to use the bathroom,” he said, not looking at me. “I couldn’t move, or talk, and I couldn’t get the message across. I fell asleep, and when I woke up…it felt warm, and then all cold and sticky and stinky…”

I had been a cop for nearly ten years, since right out of college. I had seen a lot, and earned a rep for toughness; but that one small casual cruelty, and the hint of shame in Clay’s low voice and his averted gaze, pushed me over the edge. At that moment, I wanted two things more than I had ever wanted anything I could recall: I wanted to hold this wounded man and soothe his trauma away—after I walked in the next room and blew John Philip Taylor’s brains all over the water-stained wall. Murderous rage was off limits of course, but reining in that impulse took al my strength, and left me none to stop myself from wrapping my arms around Clay’s body. “He did it on purpose. It was part of his game,” I murmured into his torn and sweat-stained shirt front. “He sees nothing special in himself, so he hates those who do. He exists by taking it from them. He wanted to hurt you, and humiliate you.” I gripped him tightly, trying to force back tears. “He wanted to strip you of everything that makes you unique…but he didn’t realize that with you, that was impossible,” I whispered, and didn’t know if he heard, and didn’t care. He had started when I first embraced him, but then I felt his long arms go around me and hug me hard. Finally I was able to compose myself and move away. “Now,” I said brightly, “get over here and lie down. You’re worn out.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know?” he retorted with that twinkle in his eye building in earnest. Damn, this was rapidly becoming a very intriguing interaction with a very attractive man!

I left my arms around him, and called it support, as I walked with him over to the sofa. Even those few steps were difficult for him, his legs clearly weak and trembly. “I, um, hear your left eye gets a mind of its own when you’re tired,” I fibbed. For some strange reason, I didn’t want him to know how I knew.

He flopped onto the sofa with a happy sigh, and I stuck a couple of the worn cushions under his feet to stave off shock till the EMTs arrived. “Could I have a drink of water?”

“Sure.”

He laid his head back, eyes half closed. “What day is it?” he mumbled.

“Friday.”

“Friday?” His eyes flew open. “Oh crap, I’m supposed to do a show—“

“Chill out, superstar.” I laid my hand on his chest. “Nobody’s asked for their money back yet.”

“I don’t want people to get upset,” he said faintly, but managed a wan smile.

“Believe me, the only thing worrying your fans right now is you, and that fear we’re about to put to rest. They’ll like even better finding out that they helped.” At his quizzical look I quickly explained.

It was my turn to be surprised when he nodded. “He did that from this room, last night, on a laptop. He got mad at them for prayin’, which made me mad, and more determined not to give up. That helped me so much, knowin’ they were out there prayin’.”

I hadn’t realized my palm was still resting on his chest. Through his dirty undershirt and the remains of his shirt, I could feel his heartbeat. So small a contact, it felt almost overwhelmingly intimate. Hastily, I moved my hand away. “One drink of water coming up. Anything else? When’s the last time you ate?”

His eyes had closed again. The lashes fluttered against his cheeks, and he pursed his lips in thought. Even dry and split, those full lips were attention-grabbers. “We ate at the mall...Jerome and I got lunch at the mall, before…Jerome! Is he okay?”

“Fine. About to fall on his sword, blaming himself for what happened, but he’s fine. So you ate there. What about since then?” He shook his head, one arm raised to cover his eyes. “Clay, you haven’t eaten since Tuesday?”

“Haven’t had anything. My stomach hurt pretty bad the first day, but it got easier afterwards. I got really thirsty later, though, more than hungry even; and I got dizzy and kinda lost track of time…”

Murderous rage crept up my spine again, but like angels to the rescue, Deac and Jo chose that moment to stroll into the living room. “We got a few things,” Deac began. “Most notably a white SUV in the garage, with a cel phone, a wallet, and a bag from a shoe store in Aventura Mall in back. Size 13 1/2s?”

Clay moved his arm and blinked up at the newcomers. “Cool. He went through my pockets. And I wondered what happened to my sandals. Isn’t that a crazy thing to think about?”

“Not really,” I said and made introductions before I passed along Clay’s information about Taylor’s laptop, which Jo immediately took off in search of. I asked Deac to stay with Clay while I went to the kitchen to rustle him up a snack and some fluid—starved and dehydrated, no wonder he seemed weak and dazed, and his face had felt hot.

“I’ve got lots of allergies,” Clay warned me.

“I know,” I replied, halfway out of the room, and then bit my tongue, still reluctant to give away how much I did know about him.

He didn’t comment on that, but what he did say stopped me cold. “Please, be careful. I know there are things in there I’m allergic to. He…said he was thinkin’ about killing me that way. He said he’d never watched anybody die of anaphylactic shock.” Deac drew a breath of surprise; so soft that only I who had heard it before would have caught it. “Either that, or drown me, but he decided that wouldn’t be any fun, seein’ as how my heart would probably stop from fright before he got me close enough to water.”

I barely made it into the shabby kitchen before my legs gave way and I had to sit on the scarred Formica top of a small table. How good it was that at last we’d gotten this monster off the streets—but my reaction was only partly due to that. The part that wasn’t scared me even more. Through the past days, I had striven to balance two roles, law officer and fan, and thought I’d done well. Now both had gone sprawling, knocked askew by a third role, something I had stupidly failed to anticipate: the response of a woman to the suffering and courage of a remarkable man.

To get myself in hand, I concentrated on scouring the kitchen for something safe for Clay to eat and drink. In the refrigerator, I found a package of fresh mushrooms, another of shrimp, and two cans of nuts, all neatly arranged in a row. To Clay, any of them would have been as deadly as strychnine. Just to be sure nothing adulterated got by me, I cut a fresh orange open and squeezed it into a glass of cold tap water with sugar and ice, then peeled the seal off a new jar of peanut butter and scalded a knife to spread it on crackers. While I stirred the orangeade I phoned the Intercontinental and gave those anxiously waiting in Clay’s suite the happy word.

As I finished the call I heard a new rumpus at the front of the house, probably uniformed officers and EMTs. It’s been on the scanner a few minutes, so the press’ll be crawling up in no time, I thought, and abruptly I did not want them, who had been so needlessly mean to Clay at times, to break the news first. Swiftly I popped the good battery back on my personal cel, scoured my brain cells, and finally dialed the one phone number of a Main Page Broad I could remember. For all I knew, what I was about to do was downright unethical, but it just felt right. The legions who had wept and prayed and literally gotten Clay through and out of this ordeal deserved to be the first to hear. Not wanting to be heard, I sent a simple text message whose meaning any fan would instantly get: GOOD NEWS—PERP CAUGHT—CLAY SAFE—TELL THE NATION!

With a wry grin I hurried out with my load. In the living room, Deac knelt by the couch where Clay still lay. Their hands were clasped and both heads bowed while he spoke quietly. It didn’t surprise me a bit. I’d never made fun of Deac’s faith, but I had, sad to admit, been less than respectful on a few occasions. This time I stood silently till they looked up. “Hope that was grace,” I grinned and sat down, nudging Clay to sit up. “Curb service, just like at Sonic.”

“Thanks.” Clay grabbed the glass, and I recalled with a pang the tormented look in his eyes when Taylor had handed me a drink. “What’s this?” He downed half of it in one swig, and his weary face brightened. “Wow. That is amazing.”

“If you think that’s amazing, I’ll cook you a real meal sometime.” Shut up, Del. You will not. You know you can’t. This is getting silly. You got your suspect, you saved a life, and that’s as far as it goes. Quit flirting. You have nothing in common with him. Nothing, except this gaping hole that had opened in my heart, that ached every time I looked at him.

Connie and Jo’s entrance was a welcome reminder of my duty. “Taylor’s on his way downtown,” Connie announced happily. When I introduced her, Clay wiped peanut butter off his fingers (onto his shorts leg) to take her hand before returning to his meal. What a geek, I thought lovingly. “We haven’t located the laptop yet though; but we’ve got him nailed on this one even without that. And we have enough to reopen the Velasquez investigation, even if we can never definitively tie him to the other Starslayer murders.”

Clay looked up abruptly and tried to say something. “Not with your mouth full,” I said. “God knows I don’t want to have to explain to the chief how we rescued Clay Aiken from Starslayer and then let him choke on a peanut butter cracker.”

Even his glare was appealing, far too much so. He swallowed. “Beg your pardon, fearless leader.”

I gaped. “Ohh, Detective Irvine, you are so getting busted to meter maid for this.”

Deac shrugged with a smug look. “Hey, I just figured the guy deserved to know what he was getting himself into.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sputtered. “Never mind, I’m not sure I want to know. So, you were saying, Mr Snark?” I returned my attention to Clay.

“The laptop’ll be with his notebooks,” Clay said. “Scrapbooks, really. He had four of them, one for each person he—killed. They have newspaper articles, and pictures, and notes he kept. He showed them to me, with…with the one he started on me.”

“Praise Jesu, that’s one that won’t be finished,” Connie declared.

“Okay,” I nodded. “If we can find those, that’ll be a little more proof, even if not a direct link—“

“No!” Clay exclaimed. “The pictures weren’t like from the papers. He took them, before and—and after he killed them.“ He grimaced and swallowed again, hard. “And he told me things, too. He’d read a clipping, and laugh and reel off all this stuff it didn’t say. He thought it was funny that the police kept some facts quiet, so they could tell who the real killer was and who was just posin’.”

“And he let one slip, and that’s how we found him. Poetic justice,” Deac snorted, then hesitated. “Clay, the things Taylor told you about the other murders: how much do you remember of them?”

“Maybe not all, but I remember plenty. How much do you want?”

“You’d do that?” I got out, still shocked by his revelations. “It’s going to be hard enough on you to testify about what he did to you, but this...this is a whole other level, Clay.”

“So?” His tone was uncompromising. “You said you don’t have the evidence to get him for those other killings. Now you do. I want to be sure he can never, never do to anyone else what he did to those poor people!” He tossed off the last of his drink, his eyes glinting green fire now. “Where do I sign up?”

The profound silence was broken by two cheery EMTs lugging their gurney into the room. Connie unleashed a torrent of Spanish praises on Clay, kissed the top of his unwashed head and took off to join her partner. Deac followed after a word of goodbye and blessing. I coaxed Clay, protesting he was fine, to sit on the stretcher. The EMTs raised the gurney, and he made an unhappy little noise when one moved to start an IV in his left arm for hydration. Before I realized it, I had taken his right hand in mine. “I called your hotel to tell your mom and everybody you were okay,” I said, as much to distract him as anything. “I’ll call them back in a minute and let them know which hospital to meet you at.”

His wrist was red and abraded from his struggles to free himself, except for one narrow strip of pale skin with its soft bronze fuzz intact: the area covered by his trademark WWJD bracelet, still miraculously in place. His long fingers curled around mine. “Can’t you come with me?”

Yes, whispered a crazy yearning voice from deep inside me. I’d go with you, wherever, whenever, forever… “Afraid not. I’ve got to stay here and be sure the I’s are dotted and the t’s crossed. We don’t want this clown to slip through a crack thanks to some legalistic bull—uh, crap. And somebody has to keep the news hounds off your trail, too.” I shoved a semblance of a pleasant professional smile onto my face. “For now, you get some rest and let these folks take care of you. You can play Junior Detective later.”

His look of disappointment morphed into mild offense. “Not that much junior.”

“No, you’re right.” I didn’t say I was well aware I was exactly five years, eleven months and twenty-two days older than him. “Deac and I’ll come by and check on you after we mop up here, okay?”

He shrugged, and I let go of his hand. The EMTs prepared to take him out, with a jovial reassurance that somebody at JMH should know where housekeeping kept the Goo Gone, to get the duct tape off his ankles with minimal discomfort and loss of hair. He traced the edge of the crisp white sheet covering him with his fingertips, then looked up and captured my eyes with his. He did not look away from me, till they carried him down the front walk and turned toward the back of the ambulance parked on the street. Then, and only then, I saw his head and shoulders settle back onto the pillow. I stood at the door and watched them pull away, lights off and siren silent to avoid attention, as I had told them, and wondered why I felt as if my heart and lungs were being carried away.

A CSI van pulled up and I shook off the strange paralysis to help them. While they photographed and print-treated and bagged evidence, I joined my team in searching for the smoking gun. It took only minutes to find the notebooks. “Damn, they’re practically in plain sight!” Jo marveled. “That’s surprising.”

“Not really,” I disagreed. “He was sure we’d never find him, so why hide them? Just like he felt safe in showing them to Clay, boasting about his crimes. He was sure Clay would never live to tell.”

“Cocky muthafucka,” Jo growled. “Guess he got shown.”

We had thought our case files on the Starslayer killings were bad. Taylor’s personal dossiers were far, far worse. Four street-hardened cops could take only a few moments before we had to slam the binders shut. “Madre de Dios,” Connie finally whispered. “I don’t think the families need to see those.”

“We don’t have the final say, but I agree.” I flipped open the fifth binder, and looked down at a dozen photos of Clay bound and terrified. “One thing’s for sure, the media do NOT see these. They’ve got one, let ’em make hay of it if they will. Let’s find the laptop—the original digital files will be on there.”

As if summoned by the word, less than ten minutes later a uniformed officer came to tell us reporters were milling around out front. I left the team to continue their search while I went out to give a statement so terse it would have done Sergeant Friday proud. My co-workers did me proud, because by the time I shooed off the last buzzards, they had not only found the computer, but a digital camera, complete with memory card containing the pictures of Clay. We carried the lot back to the station (along with Clay’s other flip flop, which I retrieved) and processed it, before I went to check in on Taylor. His public defender looked ill at ease, and Taylor himself was raving.

“I see somebody trying to lay groundwork for an NGI plea,” I told Deac late that afternoon as we headed for the hospital.

“Ya think?” he said sarcastically. “I can’t think of any other defense that would give him a snowball’s chance in a certain place much hotter than Miami. Even with that, he may not have much of a chance if Clay sticks to his guns and testifies.”

“He will,” I affirmed.

“Yeah, you know, I believe he will.” We rode on for a few moments in quiet before he let out a small thoughtful laugh. “I think I’m starting to get it. He’s a heckuva guy.”

He is, I thought, too much so for my comfort.

In a private room at Jackson Memorial, we found Clay tucked comfortably into bed. Only Jerome and Faye Parker were there. “The nurses ran everybody else off a few minutes ago,” Clay confessed. “And I’m trying to run Mom off now. Go on. You need to get some rest! You too, Jerome. Nobody’s comin’ in here after me!” A shower, a shave and some fluid in his veins had done wonders for him. Though dark circles still underlined his eyes, he was downright feisty. “Okay,” he said after his mother and his bodyguard had reluctantly departed, “so where are the scrapbooks?”

“What?” I burst out. “We are not going there tonight, Mr. Aiken. You are gonna eat, and rest, and then eat and rest some more. Don’t worry, we won’t let your memories go flat, but tomorrow is soon enough.” The truth was, I felt I needed time to prepare, to see that horror again—and to see it with him. The thought of him sitting there, powerless for days to do anything except think about the depravity this maniac had wreaked on his other victims, and about what he intended to do to him, sickened me.

“The arraignment is on Monday,” Deac added. “He won’t have to plead then, but we think he’s planning an insanity defense. He’ll probably even try to say the notebooks were part of his psychosis, that he thought he was Starslayer. Of course, he doesn’t know about our secret weapon—namely, you. Once a trial date is set and a judge assigned, we can probably get him or her to let you give your testimony on tape, given your position—“

“No.” Clay’s reply was quick and firm. “I want to be there. Those people he hurt can’t be. They can’t speak for themselves, but I can. He made me see what he did to them, what he wanted to get away with. So I want to make him see me. I want him to see how he failed.”

His simple words, and the small shrug with which he spoke them as if they were the most self-evident points imaginable, robbed me of air again, in a way the most virtuoso concert performance could not do. If I didn’t get out of that room fast, I was likely to become a blubbering blob in his startled lap; lechery, professionalism and everything else be damned. Somehow I heard my voice carry on its hearty way, assuring him we appreciated his efforts, and departing with a jaunty suggestion that he check out the late news, if he felt up to it, to see what the fans who had planned to hear him sing tonight were doing with their time instead. I’d checked online before leaving the office, and found that the vigil I had planned with such foreboding had become a joyful spontaneous celebration.

I was supposed to meet the Broads to attend, but as Deac dropped me at my car in the department garage downtown I would rather have been crawling home. I was plain worn out, I decided, and I found myself envying Clay’s strength, so much greater than mine. With, to put it mildly, some trepidation, I headed for Broadfest Ground Zero at a hotel near the arena. When our original plans blew up, we hastily revised the agenda, to meet in a suite several Broads were sharing and walk to the vigil. I was halfway up the elevator when I remembered the TV cameras in my face outside Taylor’s house. I might not even be able to go to the vigil without being swarmed. I couldn’t decide if that were a good or bad thing.

There was no time to consider how the Broads might react though, as the suite door swung open. I had never met any of the women inside in the flesh, though they had supported, encouraged and cheered me on through some of the roughest times of my life. Now here they were—every one with her mouth hanging open, seeing at their door only the cop they had seen on their TV screens announcing Clay’s rescue. Then the Broad who had opened the door put it together. “Delilah,” she gasped.

I opened my mouth to say something, I didn’t know what: something apologetic, or meant to set them at ease, I guess: but then it all crashed in on me. All that came out was a small sob, followed by a bigger one. The next thing I knew, they had drawn me in and gotten me to a bed to sit on as my knees crumpled, and wrapped me in a huge group hug while I cried. As the storm of emotion ebbed, I heard them exclaim to each other—was I okay? Was Clay really okay? I had to pull myself together enough to reassure them on that score. After that, I told them what had happened—nothing that would jeopardize prosecution, just pretty much what I’d told the press, except with a little greater detail, and much more and truer feeling. I tried to explain why I wept: from months of strain suddenly released in barely an hour; from the weight of realizing what we had been unable to save Taylor’s other victims from; and, crazily enough, from the uplifting force of Clay’s fierce determination to help put an end to Starslayer’s reign of terror.

All the Broads got in a good cry, before several collaborated on a sort of disguise for me. They saw my problem as clearly as I did, but hoped a change of clothes, candlelight and somebody’s Burberry bucket hat would conceal me well enough, and persuaded me to come to the vigil turned victory party with them. By then, I had told them all I could safely tell, except for the deepest source of my tears. It was the thing that made me feel a strange disconnect even in the midst of the rejoicing throng in the parking lot across from the arena, the thing that brought fresh moisture to my eyes even lying in my lonely starlit bed that night.

It was that, in some pernicious way, I felt I had failed. To succeed as a woman in a man’s realm, I had always braced myself to handle every possibility, no matter how unspeakable. On this case, like every other, I had thought I was prepared for anything.

But I wasn’t.

I wasn’t prepared to fall in love.

I prayed not to dream, but if my earlier prayers had been answered, the answerer was offline tonight. The darkness of my sleep was bursting with Clay’s incandescent presence. The tired hands I had unbound and clasped to offer comfort now traced paths of fire along my skin; the sweet mistreated mouth drank deep of mine, and whispered absurd endearments into my ears; and the eyes that had riveted me even in their extremity held me their willing hostage.

I woke aching with desire and doomed need, wanting to run and hide from these useless feelings that could never see fruition. After a while, though, I persuaded myself to lie back and doze, and gather recollection. Instead of rejecting my dreams, I let myself embrace them, and embrace him within them. It was, after all, the closest I would ever get. He would go his way with gratitude to me for saving his life, and I must go mine with secret thanks to him for saving mine—for reawakening something in me I had thought long dead. When at last I got up, I took down the pictures and calendar on my bedroom walls and stored them away with the rest of my Clack. As good as other fans were, and as much as they loved Clay in their way, I felt in myself the forming edges of something that went far beyond anything they could ever experience. I had seen so much more. He was all I had imagined, and more than I ever could have imagined. Fandom would never again be enough for me, and the only thing that would be enough was not mine to possess.

I arrived at work to find my office the epicenter of a deluge of national media. The department’s public information officer was mightily pissed, since none of them would talk to him—not Today, or GMA, or Kimmel—and certainly not that handsome devil John Seigenthaler, the weekend anchor from NBC News who declared his intent to stay on the phone till he talked to me personally. He did, and I did, and he was one charming Southern piece of work; but the conversation only made me yearn for that charming Southern piece of work probably recuperating in a peaceful safe hospital room, or a spacious comfortable hotel suite.

It took me most of Saturday morning to dispose of the press. “I’m famished,” I grumbled.

“I saw half a Cuban sandwich in the fridge,” Connie offered. “Age undetermined, but we could get forensics to run it if you’re suspicious.”

“Fatua,” I yelled across the work area. Her laugh was freer than I had heard it in a long time.

“Oh, c’mon, boss, you grew up in this town. Even if you are Anglo, you can do better than just call me a smart aleck.”

I stuck my head in the fridge and spied the foil packet I had given Deac on Thursday evening. Some gratitude, I snickered to myself, then froze when a familiar giggle drifted in through the open office door. I stood up so quickly I nearly bashed my skull. Through the half-glassed walls of our work space I could see into the hallway, and ambling down from the elevator, looking as at ease as old college buds hanging out, were Deac, and Jerome (limping), and Clay.

The door into Special Cases Unit opens inward, and the refrigerator is behind it. I stood in silence, sandwich in hand, as they walked in. Connie scrambled up from her desk to hug Clay, and Jo even pulled his nose out of the massive law book he was studying for his night class to greet him. “Where’s—“ Deac began when I pushed the door shut.

Clay turned. He was wearing his glasses, and jeans and sneakers and a pale blue dress shirt, untucked, with a darker blue tie. He looked infinitely better than even the previous evening, calmer and more rested, and damn fine; but was it only my imagination, or did the cheerful smile on his face fade a trifle when he saw me? Probably, I thought with genuine regret. I saw him at his weakest, the way he hates to be seen—we’re alike in that much. It makes sense he might be uncomfortable around me. The fact that it made sense didn’t stop it from tearing my heart out by its roots. Maybe it was for the best, though; if he didn’t want to be around me that would make my disconnecting fantasy from reality an easier task.

The hint of shade passed from his face the next moment when he saw the opened foil packet in my hand. “Cuban sandwich!” he said with renewed cheer. “I’d never had one till just now! We were comin’ in the door as Chris was leavin’ for lunch, so he took us down to this little bitty mom and pop place down the street.”

“Where this guy ate two whole ones.” I thought Deac meant Jerome, till I saw him nod toward Clay with much respect.

“Yes, they are great,” I replied, glad for a neutral topic of conversation. I laid it on the break table as Clay moved toward me. His hug was quick, for appearances’ sake it seemed, which I supposed was just as well. Still, while I heated my leftover and took it to my office, he followed me, after ordering Jerome to sit down and put his hurt foot up. In front of my desk, he sat and chatted like a friendly acquaintance while I ate, and dropped a few casual bombshells along the way.

For one, his mother had returned to North Carolina that morning, alone. I had halfway expected him to go home with her to recuperate. “She has her business to take care of, and I know this whole mess has made her crazy. She needed to get home and get back to her normal life.”

For another, he planned to get back on the road Monday, for his scheduled shows in Atlanta, Nashville and St. Louis. “Clay?” I sputtered. “Are you—I mean, do you think that’s wise? I assumed you’d reschedule your shows for the next few weeks at least, and get some rest…”

“That’s what my management wanted me to do, and I did think about it—but then I saw the news last night, and all the people out by the arena.” Now I was doubly glad I had steered clear of cameras the night before. “My fans—they’ve always been so supportive, more so than I deserve probably, but this past week…I could feel them with me, sometimes, especially when I was really tired and scared; like hands on me, or voices tellin’ me to hold on. I know the doctor would say I was pretty sick, and hallucinating even, but I don’t think so.”

“They love you, Clay,” I said simply, trying to swallow my lunch and my hurt. “They were thinking of you and praying for you the whole time. If you need time to heal, they will understand. They only want what’s best for you.”

“This is what’s best for me. I love them, and I love performing. I don’t want to crawl in a hole, even for a while. And they went to all this trouble, and they still came, a lot of them, even not knowin’ what was gonna happen. I want to give them something, to thank them for all they’ve given me.” In the face of such passion, what could I say? As I cleaned up my trash he continued, “Anyway, I’m here a couple more days, so I figured we could go through those notebooks, if you have time. You did say ‘tomorrow’, y’know.”

“Huh? Yeah, I did, but I meant in the abstract, like ‘in the very near future’, not literally today…”

My startled protests died away as Clay’s steady gaze across my desk held me fast. “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” he asked, very quietly. “Do you have a plan that doesn’t include me testifying? If so, just tell me. I’ve offered help before in crises and been turned down. Rejection’s nothin’ new to me. if I’m not needed, or welcome—“

“No!” I cried, and almost reached for him. “That’s not it, not at all! You’re what’s holding this case together. You’re the only living link between Taylor and the people we know he killed. Your willingness to testify—it—it’s incredible.”

“But?” he prompted after a long few moments of silence.

I didn’t know how to explain myself. “It’s so soon, Clay,” I said finally. “He hurt you so much…are you sure you want to go back into that so soon? Are you sure you can? I don’t like the idea of you doing something that hurts you more, out of some sense of duty.” He did not reply. “What I said about your fans, how they want what’s best for you—I guess I want that for you too.”

At my admission, the impulse of a smile tugged at one fair cheek. “I’m all grown up, Delilah.” You certainly are, I thought, spellbound by the unruffled self-assurance of the man. Then the smile took over his face and turned it all into boyish charm. “It’s nice of you to care, though. It really is. I appreciate it. But I want to do this. I need to.”

With that, he sent Jerome on his way, pointing out that if he wasn’t safe surrounded by police, where on earth would he be? I enlisted Jo and Connie to put out any fires, while Deac pulled the books from the locked evidence closet and carried them to our conference room. We flipped on the sound system, and listened dumbfounded for the next three-plus hours as Clay guided us through John Philip Taylor’s twisted psyche like Dante’s guide through hell. Our awe didn’t arise so much from any false stoniness of emotion—Clay showed plenty of emotion, and I felt a small piece of my heart break every time. What amazed us into silence was the sheer volume of detail, how much he had, in the midst of his own terror, been able to recall. What we recorded was more than enough to take Taylor off the streets for good.

When the fourth book was shut, the room was quiet till Deac switched off the recording equipment. “Purpose,” he said. At Clay’s questioning look, he expanded, “Some of your fans said you felt like everything that had happened to you—being a star and all—happened for a purpose.” Clay nodded. “They thought this might be too, and me personally, I think they may be right. I can’t be glad for what you went through, but I know we might never have gotten this guy otherwise. So I thank God for that, and for you having the guts to follow through.”

Clay glanced away. “Thank you,” he said quietly. I would have added my praise, but he seemed almost embarrassed for some reason, so I settled for a pat on the shoulder before I started gathering the books up. Deac left to take a call at his desk, and I was about to take the books back to the closet when Clay touched my arm. “Wait. We missed one. Where’s mine?”

I blinked, honestly startled. “Well, we were all there. I didn’t see a need. I mean, do you really…”

He was hardly listening, his eyes roving the stack of notebooks in my arms and reaching for the one he sought. I tried not to wince when he opened it, even knowing he had seen the contents before. With studied carelessness, he turned the pages, perusing what would have been the last photos taken of himself alive. “Wow, these wouldn’t have been flattering to find in Rolling Stone,” he said, but the effort to be flip was belied when he bit his lip. He didn’t know I knew what that meant. “Still won’t.”

“They won’t be found in Rolling Stone,” I said. “Or any other media outlet, as far as I’m concerned. Taylor put one online just to get a reaction, claiming it was photoshopped, so that one is out of our hands; but if I have any say in it, these will never be seen by anyone outside the legal system, ever.”

“Somebody may get ‘em eventually.” He closed the cover and handed it back to me. “But thank you for trying.” He followed me out to the closet. I locked it up and was ready to suggest he call Jerome when he said, “Where is he?”

I didn’t have to ask who he meant. “Downstairs in a holding cell, unless they’ve already transferred him to the city jail. They were going to do that sometime today.“

“Can I see him?” he said unexpectedly, and then flushed. “I—I think I might feel safer if I could see him locked up. That sounds really sissy, doesn’t it? You thought you were lookin’ at a pretty stable guy, but now the truth comes out.”

“What truth?” I asked gently. “The truth I see is a man far braver and stronger than most people would be in his very large shoes.” That made him grin a little. “And a man far braver and stronger than he’s giving himself credit for. What you asked doesn’t sound sissy. It sounds normal. Sometimes facing a fear is the way to overcome it. Give yourself a break, Clay.”

I went to the nearest phone and made a call, and minutes later we were in the basement area where all cells were monitored. I pointed to one video screen, and Clay stood watching Taylor bounce off walls. “He’s tryin’ to act crazy,” he said flatly. “He never acted like that around me. He knew everything he was doing.”

“We know.”

Abruptly, as though he sensed the regard, Taylor pounced toward the camera mounted in the ceiling tile. Clay flinched for an instant, but he did not budge, and his eyes never left the monitor. He stared back at the bulging eyes staring at him, his hands clenching at his sides. My hand seemed to take on a will of its own, and crept into his. The unwilled staredown went on, until Taylor let out a very fake manic shriek and bounced away. Clay’s fingers tightened around mine, then relaxed. “We’ve got him,” I murmured. “He won’t hurt anyone anymore, because of you.” He sighed, and smiled slightly as my pager went off. “Oh sh—I forgot. We contacted the families of Taylor’s victims yesterday, and they wanted to come in and be briefed. You’re welcome to come if you like.”

Clay looked surprisingly uneasy at the suggestion. “I don’t know that they’d welcome me…not when I’m alive and their loved ones aren’t.”

What was left of my heart split right in two, anguished at the very idea he might feel guilty for being a survivor. “On the contrary, I know these people well. I’ve worked with them for months on this. You being alive is going to get them the justice we’ve worked for, but that’s not the only reason I think they’d be very happy to see you. They’re good folks. They’re glad just to know one more person didn’t die at Taylor’s hands.”

They were more than glad to see him. Lamarcus Jackson’s grandma, who raised him, was all for adopting Clay, and Jason Tarleton’s sister covered her mouth to stifle a shriek when I explained our online sting. Blushing furiously, she confessed she was a Claymate, and she had been in the chat that night. Kella Velasquez’ parents and Morris Dewitt’s brother spilled their ache and relief. The meeting was the first and only time throughout the ordeal that I saw tears in Clay’s eyes, and they were not for himself. His gentleness with the wounded warmed the broken pieces of my heart.

Our elevator ride back to SCU was quiet, until I remembered something. I returned to the evidence closet, rummaged in the box we had brought from Taylor’s house, and fished out Clay’s black rubber flip flop. “It’s not officially evidence, I just left it there so it wouldn’t get lost,” I said and handed it to him.

“Whassup, Cinderfella?” Jo jibed in passing, and got whacked by Clay with the shoe for it. Connie took a swing at him too, playing protective mama, and they got into another round of their usual squabbling. It was amazing to see how my street-toughened team had taken Clay instantly to their hearts.

Clay was laughing too, and tapping his hand with the flip flop. Then he turned back toward me, those sparkling eyes pinning me where I stood. He seemed about to say something when his phone rang. It was Jerome, outside waiting to pick him up. I got another hug, perfunctory compared to the sprighty farewells the rest of my team got, and Clay Aiken walked out of my life. Or at least I thought so.

Things appeared to get back to normal after our brush with celebrity. We worked on putting together the Starslayer case. At Taylor’s arraignment, he acted sufficiently freaky that a judge sent him to a mental facility for several weeks’ observation, until his first court date, where his lawyer clearly intended to submit an insanity plea. We kept the fact of Clay’s testimony close to our vests, to bring out at the hearing. It frustrated me to have to play these games to put away a threat like Taylor, but it was just another game, and the games were getting harder and harder to take.

Clay called every few days, to check on the case, and that was initially hard to take as well. His easy demeanor helped me start talking myself out of my infatuation, though, and I found myself confiding in him about other cases, the ones that maddened me most: the pedophile posing as a priest who we had to let go on a technicality, or the mob boss who got a free ride because everybody knew his cousin was connected to powers in high places. Having a willing ear to bend was surprisingly comforting. I began to look forward to his calls…and sometimes it seemed he didn’t even make a pretense of asking about Taylor or the upcoming hearings. We just talked, about things, about ourselves, and got acquainted on a new level. On some nights, he would call after a show, and say he just wanted to hear a friendly voice. I teased him about how many thousands of friendly voices he had heard already that night. “That doesn’t count,” he said. “I wanted to hear yours.” I talked about this or that, and sometimes he hardly spoke at all.

Another night, the phone rang far after midnight, and I answered to silence. Finally Clay’s voice gasped, “I…I’m sorry, Delilah. I must’ve hit the wrong button…”

“Are you okay, Clay? Where are you?”

A big engine whined in the background. “Uh…between Spokane and Boise, I think…guess I lost track of the time zone…”

Considering Miami was in the same time zone as Raleigh, I seriously doubted that. “You should be getting some sleep then!”

“Well, yeah…and so should you. I’m sorry. I’ll let you go.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m just happy it’s not work calling!”

There was an odd, anxious tightness to his voice, that barely loosened as we talked. I repeated my friendly scolding about sleep, and this time he admitted, “I wish I could. I…keep having…dreams.”

Ah, now it started making sense. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Mostly it’s—I fall into the SUV, and I hurt so bad I can’t breathe. I don’t know what’s happening—I can’t think, maybe I’m sick and they’re takin’ me to a hospital—but then the truck stops, and my arms are pulled behind me and somethin’ goes around my wrists, and I can’t move. I try to yell, and a hand slaps tape over my mouth, hard…and when I twist around I can see him wrappin’ tape around my ankles, tight, and painful, and he looks up at me and smiles, and I think dear Lord help me, and I go to kick him and he—he shocks me again, and I scream but nothing comes out…”

“Shh, slow down, it’s okay.”

His words came out in a rush, as if he had bottled them up for weeks. “I’ve gotten so I don’t yell when I wake up, so I don’t wake everybody else on the bus…but I lied when I said I hit the button by mistake, and I didn’t forget the time change either, I just thought maybe if I heard your voice I’d feel better…I’m sorry I woke you up…but I wish you were here!” he blurted, and that startled me. I wish I was too, I thought and almost wept inside.

“I am, Clay. I’m right here. Are you in your bunk? Lie down, and I’ll talk to you.” I spoke quiet words of reassurance, and his breathing, so ragged I could hear it even over the phone, began to calm. “There, now,” I grinned. “What better could I do if I were sitting next to you?”

His sigh was sleepy. “Put your hand on my chest…like you did that day, while I was layin’ on that ratty ol’ couch…it felt so good…”

“Just imagine it. Feel it? I’m there.” We talked only a few moments more, before Clay, nearly asleep, flipped off the phone. I lay back down and dozed off, wishing I were touching him, and he me.

+++

It was eerily appropriate that Clay’s Miami concert was rescheduled for the Monday of Taylor’s hearing. He phoned me at the office the Saturday before. After our usual exchange of information, his next words startled me. “So, when can I take you up on that home-cooked meal you promised me?”

Alarm gripped me. “Well, uh, I’m supposed to get together with some friends from out of town tomorrow—“ I certainly was—the Broads! We had rescheduled our Clackfest for the Sunday night before the show. I remained a Broad, watched his TV appearances, gossiped with the others on the Purple Pages, and tried to remind myself of what I was: a cop, a professional. At odd moments, though, especially at night, my resolve crumbled. I remembered the security of his embrace, the determination in his eyes, the courage in his heart, and my heart and body ached as one. “And you’ll be busy getting ready for your show, and then to get back on the road—I just don’t know that there’s a good time …” Being associated with him was becoming entirely too comfortable, and I definitely did not need to be alone with him for any amount of time if I hoped to get over these feelings and get on with my life. But then, what was it I had once said to him about overcoming fear? I grabbed my babbling tongue and forced it to stop, then took a deep breath and said, “So how about right now? You can let Jerome know so your people won’t worry. After all, you already told him, if you’re not safe with the police who are you safe with?”

Oddly enough, he seemed downright relieved. The hotel dropped him at the station, and after delighted greetings from my team we went on our way. All the way to my house, I puzzled over why he had brought my offhand wisecrack up, why he had held me to it, if he were so uncomfortable around me. I still hadn’t come up with an answer when we walked in the front door. A tall stack of case files on the credenza leaned precariously. “Bring a lot of work home?” he teased as he straightened it.

“Yeah. To be a woman and get ahead in a field like law enforcement, you have to work twice as hard—which thankfully has never been difficult for me.” I tossed my head and he laughed. “My ex-husband made fun of me. Of course that only made me work harder.”

“Made fun?” he scowled. “What kind of…Never mind. Ex-husband, you said.”

“Yeah. I, uh, made some new friends online, and they encouraged me till I made the break.” I excused myself to change clothes, puzzled anew at Clay’s reactions. He had seemed strangely pleased when I spoke of my divorce, or maybe he was only surprised that I was weak enough to piss away several years on Teddy. Quickly I slid out of my businesslike khakis and dress blouse and into shorts and a T shirt, nothing that looked flirty. With a glance around me at my bedroom, still looking strange without Clack decorating it, I trotted back out.

Clay sat in the big heavy wooden chair beside the credenza, with file folders lying in his lap and papers in his hand. I gulped—didn’t he know he couldn’t see those? “Those are confidential,” I said with more sharpness than I intended.

“I know. I didn’t look in them.” I stopped beside the credenza and looked down. The single sheet he held was the printout of THE photo. “This is the one he plastered all over the world?”

“It’s the one he posted, if that’s what you mean. Most people thought it was a fake.” The eerieness of looking from the fearful face in the picture to the still face studying it made me suppress a shiver.

“When does it go away?” he asked quietly. “Being scared, I mean. Does it?”

“It does. The time it takes is different for different people, because what they need in order to get back to normal is different. You may need to learn to feel safe again, to trust again, to feel in control of your life again. The key is to be patient with yourself, and kind to yourself. You have family and friends and lots of people who love you very much, and plenty to keep you busy. I think you’ll do fine.” He would, but I still wished with all of my foolishly lovesick heart that I could be there to help him.

“There’s no file here with my name on it. How come you still have this here?”

“For inspiration.” The long lashes almost resting on his cheeks flew up as his attention lifted to me where I stood. “When you look at this, all you see is the fear, because you remember feeling the fear. That’s natural. But you know what I saw? I saw your courage. You wouldn’t look at the camera, or the person holding it. You didn’t want him to see you were afraid, did you? You didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. That’s what I saw: that you were still fighting, with the only thing he couldn’t take from you—your will. And seeing that in you made me want to keep fighting.”

He looked bemused. “You learned an awful lot about me from one photograph.”

I shrugged, still reluctant to let him know how much I really knew. “I do my homework.”

With a small smile he put the paperwork aside and stood. “Too much, I think. No homework tonight, okay?” Looking up at his height was almost as surprising as finding him taking my shoulders gently in his big hands. “I mean it, Delilah. Be a person tonight, not just a police officer. Okay?”

“I don’t know if I remember how,” I admitted, frankly unnerved at the prospect, especially with this man under my roof.

“I bet you do.” His arms slid around me. I rested my hands against his body for an instant before a welter of weary emotion pushed my resistance aside, and let him hold me, and let me hold him in return. We stood there till Clay’s stomach growled, and I found myself giggling like a teenager. “Okay, I don’t know my way around a kitchen very well, but I want to—do stuff! I can’t sit still, even on the bus. Will I be in your way?”

“Never!” After forced immobility, I still wouldn’t want to sit either. He rolled up his sleeves and undid his tie, and I led him into the kitchen and guided him through the easy meal I had planned. Thankfully I had plenty of food on hand, for the planned Broadfest. I would have liked some time alone, to regroup, but I felt less unsure around him now. I thought I could check myself. So I allowed myself to take simple joy in his presence, an occasional touch, and the warmth of his blossoming smile.

We put together a dish of chicken tetrazzini, and carried it with a fresh salad and some crusty Cuban bread into the sunroom. I was accustomed to Deac lowering his head to say grace when we ate together, but I had never been moved to join him. When Clay did it, I suddenly was. It might have been simple acknowledgement of his powerful faith…or maybe I was feeling that power touching me deep inside where nothing ever had. While we ate Clay regaled me with stories of his life on the road and in the studio, and trying to balance humanity and stardom. After we cleaned up the dishes, I fixed tall drinks (orange juice and cranberry ginger ale. If it doesn’t have a name it should). I took them back to the sunroom, but found Clay standing at the back door looking out at the early evening. “Let’s go outside.”

“What, that close to the ocean?” I teased. “That facing fear thing seems to have taken hold! What’s next, toss you in a room with a cat?”

“I don’t think so!” he said with a mock shiver. “One fear conquered at a time, please. I just want to be outdoors.” More healing, I thought with a hidden smile. We walked out back and sat on the bench overlooking the sea, close enough to hear its rush and ebb but far enough away for his comfort. I let him continue to talk, enjoying his soft Southern accent and his enthusiasm about using his celebrity to help others. After a while, though, he halted. “I think I’ve totally monopolized the conversation.”

“No, it’s wonderful,” I assured him. “I don’t have much to contribute to conversations that aren’t about police work,” I added with a twinge, “and you did say for me to try to not be just a cop tonight.”

“All right, then. I won’t leave you out. So tell me about your work.” I recounted several recent cases, and answered his questions, until he asked, “Have you ever…” He paused, bit his lip, then began again, “Has anyone you encountered through a case ever…been interested in you?”

“Interested? There was this guy once who claimed he was psychic. He chased me all over Dade County trying to tell me his visions about a series of carjackings. Turned out to be mental, but harmless.” I cocked my head at Clay’s intense look at me. “Interested how? What do you mean?”

“I mean…” He faltered. “Well, you’re an amazing woman…so smart, so caring, too caring maybe. I think you’re burnin’ yourself out, y’know it? But you’re still doing this. You walk into a place where you knew this guy was, knowing what he’d done, and you get between his gun and a total stranger…” He almost stuttered. “I—I—this isn’t comin’ out right. I just wondered—how would somebody know what was right, or wrong, to feel—because how could a man see you, or know you, and not be…”

He stared at the ocean, and I stared at his sculpted profile, unable to accept that I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. “Clay…are you saying you think you feel something for me?”

“I don’t think!” he burst out. “I know. And I know what it must be, because I have never felt this. I can’t stop thinking about you. I tried to tell myself maybe it was just because of—what had happened—it was pretty traumatic, so maybe my mind was messed up, maybe I would have felt weird toward anybody who had the nerve to come look for me, and get me out of there before I died. Not that bein’ dead itself would be so bad, I guess, since heaven’s past that, but gettin’ there—that way— I’m kind of a weenie when it comes to pain—“

“Stop that!” I cut him off. “Just stop it! Do you think I am blind? Do you think I didn’t see what Taylor did after I came into that house?” I raised my hand to make the gun-firing gesture. “You think I don’t know what that meant? I bet he came to you before he let me in, and he told you if you made a sound he’d kill me, probably right there, in front of you, and then you’d be as much a killer as he was—“ I choked and rushed on. “I didn’t do a thing for you you hadn’t already done for me. You gave up your only chance to escape, in order to protect a total stranger. What makes you call yourself weak? Because Taylor got you? He got bigger and more physical men than you, and killed them horribly. But you survived. You beat him. Never, ever, think of yourself as weak. You are so strong!”

“It’s not all me,” he replied, looking a bit dazed by my outburst, and perhaps surprised he had gotten a word in edgewise. “It’s God.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have given that any thought at all before, but now…I might.”

“That’s good. That’s really good.”

“I wouldn’t have if not for you, and for the people who love you, and they way they…we love each other. You wondered how I knew so much about you. Okay, I admit it. I’m a fan. I have been for years. Other fans helped me out of an awful excuse for a marriage. I admired your voice, your interviews, your books, your charities.” It was too late to turn back now; the words would no longer be denied. “Then I met you, and you were so much more than any image, so much more. I admired the image…but God help me, I think I’ve fallen in love with the man.” I returned his startled stare, tears sliding down my cheeks, but determined to rise, at least once in my life, to that strength he wielded so effortlessly.

What I expected I didn’t know, but it wasn’t the smile that set his face alight like the glory of the dusk sky. “Ohh, Delilah,” he sighed, and caressed my damp cheek with the backs of his knuckles. The self-containment I had fought for slipped away like a wave; I reached out, and he pulled me into his arms again. This time, it was no pro forma hug—he stroked my hair, touched my forehead with his lips, and murmured praise of my wonderfulness, so extravagant that I laughed amid the tears.

“No man’s ever said anything like that to me.”

“Then they were idiots,” he retorted. “Plain ol’ idiots. You’re a treasure, Delilah. You’re such a rare person. How could a man make fun of you? How could any man not love you?”

“I don’t know what kind of person I am, Clay. I think I’ve put so much into being a cop, I’ve forgotten I was ever anything else. Being a fan of you touched that, but you—you grabbed it, and dragged it out of me, and that scared me. If I’ve acted cold toward you, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to handle what I was feeling.”

If his smile had surprised me, his laugh shocked me. “That makes two of us then. I thought I’d flat lost my mind. There I was, about to die, and you and your officers came in and stopped it; and all I could think was how beautiful you were, and how fearless, and…I didn’t know if it was some perverted obsession, or what. I talked to your detectives—they’d follow you into a hurricane—and I talked to Jerome, and even Mom, but they both think you hung the moon, so they were no help. I was really nervous about comin’ to the police station, but I needed to, in more ways than one. I thought maybe seein’ you again could get me over whatever this was.” He took my face in one large hand, and I turned my head just enough to kiss his palm. “It didn’t!” he mock-complained. “So I ran. I do that, sometimes. But I couldn’t stay away. Every time I called you—to hear you talk about tryin’ to help kids, and how crazy you got bangin’ your head against a wall—I wanted to be with you. I tried to reason myself down, and nothing changed. I prayed about it, and all I saw was the compassion on your face that day we met the families of the people Taylor killed. Then I thought, okay, surely if I go to her house, I can break this crazy fixation. She’ll pick her nose or kick the neighbor’s dog or something, and that’ll be it.” He shook his head, with a wide-eyed shrug of baffled amusement. “But everything I see only makes me love you more.”

“And here I thought you were so tense around me because I…found you, in there, helpless, and I know how you hate feeling vulnerable, and I thought maybe you hated me for seeing you that way—“ He made a sharp noise of protest. “It was so hard to keep playing Miss Tough Cookie, when all I wanted to do was hold you and tell you everything was going to be okay, and make all the fear go away.”

“It’s gettin’ better all the time,” he grinned. His hand still cupped my cheek. The last rays of day lit the soft fur on his arm with a warm ruddy fire, and I imagined him naked on the beach at sunrise, his body glowing as if born of light itself. “You didn’t tell me you were a fan. That explains how you knew where to look.”

I nodded and snuggled up to his side, where I fit so perfectly the space might have been made for me. As evening faded into night, I told him everything, from that phone call in Party City to this moment. He responded in kind, and when he came to things he could not speak of, and remembered terror shook him, I did what I had yearned to do before: I held him tight, till the fear subsided. Finally, we sat in silent companionship with the night and the sea and this strange beautiful new thing we had made between the two of us. “So, now what do we do?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” he replied with all honesty, “but whatever it is, it is going to be we. Us. Together.” A sigh and a smile were all the agreement I could muster. I couldn’t recall ever feeling so relaxed as I did in his arms. “It’ll come. I think it’s part of the purpose too. I needed you, and this was maybe the only way I could find you. And…I’m vain enough to think maybe you needed me too—“

“Not vanity.” I straightened and glared at him. “Truth.”

He looked as if he had some wisecrack in mind, but when our eyes met I saw the snark fade from his face. “Truth,” he repeated, and moved forward to find my lips with his. We kissed for a long time. I moved to nibble his ear, his cheekbones, the smooth hollow at the base of his throat where copper hairs peeked out from the neck of his undershirt. He let out a soft moan, and his fingers tangled in my hair and tugged me back up by it to kiss me again and again. His touch was gentle but unyielding, his mouth tenderly demanding. With a gasp, he finally pulled away. “I’m sorry,” he panted. “That wasn’t very gentlemanly for a first date.”

“Gee, and you didn’t even bother to tell me this was a date!” I giggled, and then sobered. “If you make love the way you kiss, Clay, I am going to be the happiest woman on planet earth. Not to mention one of the most tired.”

His smile was almost shy now. “I can’t say when that will be, Delilah. I’m not a wham bam thank ya ma’am kind of guy…and I hope we’ll have a very long time to do all that.”

“No rush,” I whispered. “Delayed gratification is a beautiful thing.”

Night now fully surrounded us, and behind us the house was dark. I picked up our glasses and we got up to go inside. With my hands full, Clay opened the door into the sunroom. Enough moonlight filtered in through the shaded glass walls for us to find the door into the house. His hand gripped the handle—and I hissed, “Stop.” He frowned and opened his mouth, but I silenced him with a frown and sharp shake of my head, then tilted my head in a listening posture. In the silence, I heard again what I had registered without full consciousness of it, and he heard it too: a rustle, a crack, a bump.

Someone was in my house.

With us sitting right out back, I hadn’t bothered to set the alarm. Swearing mentally, I set the glasses carefully down and inched the door open. The handle was harder to move than normal, but I managed. The living room was unoccupied. Another whisper of movement sounded, from my right, down the hallway where bedrooms and bath were. I took a cautious peep but saw nothing. With a quick breath I shot across the hall into the entranceway. I had left my gun and handcuffs on the credenza, as usual. They were gone, and my backup piece was in my bedroom—in my box of Clack—

A curse almost burst from my lips, as I realized Clay was right behind me. At some point I was going to have to explain to him you don’t follow a cop into a burglarized house. This wasn’t the time, though. His body was tense, but his big eyes were wary and watchful, and he moved with remarkable quiet. Alone, I would probably have risked going for my other gun; as it was, the only option was to slip out the door, get clear of the house and call for help. One hand went in my pocket as the other went for the front door knob, and two facts made themselves felt at the same instant. One was that the inside knob had been neatly unscrewed and removed. The other was that my car keys were in the pants I had changed from, which were also in my bedroom.

“Hello, Lieutenant Marshall…”

At the voice that wafted down the hallway, Clay froze, motionless except for his hands rising to cover his open mouth. I swallowed a scream. Dear God, it can’t be…Taylor. “I see your clothes in your bedroom. Did I catch you at a bad time? Getting up to tinkle, maybe? Taking a little stroll on the beach in your jammies?” The clink of handcuffs followed the flight of his voice. In the darkness, Clay’s face was ghostly white, his eyes huge and dark as bruises. Jesus, I’ve got to get him out of here, now…”Back doorknob’s fixed too, so don’t bother trying to run. Just c’mon. You’re gonna spoil my surprise. We’re going to have a little party, just the two of us. You were so intent on finding out my methods. That’s what everybody kept asking me. I decided it’s selfish to keep it all to myself. I’ll share. In fact, I’ll give you a personal show, just to reward you for being such a smart little cop…”

I put my hands on Clay’s hips and moved him to stand flat against the wall. Through his clothing I could feel his flesh quiver. My only advantage was that Taylor apparently didn’t know Clay was here—he had come hunting only me. I drew Clay’s head down to me. “Stay out of the way,” I barely whispered. Clay stared back at me. Was he so undone by terror he wouldn’t get it? I had to hope he did, as I pivoted around him, crouched and crept to the corner to look down the hallway again.

Before I could see anything something grabbed me from behind and jerked me back. I sprawled on the floor of the entranceway, my breath knocked out of me by the fall—and by the roar of gunfire in my little house. Plaster exploded from the far wall, where a bullet had hit: a bullet that would have taken my head with it. “I see you!” Taylor cackled in a singsong mockery of my blind-chick voice, and eager footfalls sounded in the hall. Still dazed and now panicking, I struggled to rise.

The angel who had pulled me out of the path of the shot now gripped my shoulder to get my attention, and with a jerk of his head directed my notice toward the light switch on the wall above me. When I nodded, he stepped around me and across the entrance hall. Ropy muscles and tendons stood out in his forearms as he picked up the chair beside the credenza, the solid wood chair that had belonged to my grandmother, so heavy I could hardly budge to clean around. Taylor was just clearing the corner when Clay hefted the chair and hurled it at him with a shout that rang like the gunshot. I had gotten my feet under me, and at the same instant I lunged up to hit the switch. The living room blazed with light.

Taken totally unaware, Taylor yelped and tried to level the gun in his hand, but the big piece of furniture tangled him and knocked him down. My pistol, and my cuffs in his other hand, flew in opposite directions. I sprang to scoop up the cuffs and dropped into a squat across his back. With his hands restrained I grabbed my gun up from the floor. The muzzle fit at the base of his skull, as neatly as I had fit into Clay’s arms, as if it too had found its intended place. Now. You got one wish, Del, now you can have the other. One shot is all it’ll take. Closure for the victims’ families, and a life without fear for Clay. So simple. Say he tried to escape. No one will know. My finger tensed on the trigger.

“Delilah!” How had I become so quickly attuned to Clay’s voice that I could not keep from looking up at him when he called my name? It was, I decided later, the same immediate bond that told me the instant I looked up that I couldn’t get away with shooting Taylor in front of him. Clay was out of breath, his face flushed and his eyes ablaze, but his voice was low and earnest. “Don’t do it. Please, don’t.”

“Why not?” I demanded. “Give me one good reason.”

He rested his hands on his thighs and caught his breath, but never let me escape his gaze. “I wouldn’t let him make me out to be a killer,” he said. “I won’t let him make you a killer either.”

I haven’t figured out yet how the man takes my breath away, either.

At Clay’s words, Taylor twisted around under me and gaped up at him, the crazy act gone. “What the fuck—what are you doing here?”

“Use your imagination.” Clay’s delicious accent is ever-present, but I had never heard him drawl. This wasn’t quite that; more a languid, almost bored quality.

Taylor sputtered, his face darkening with frustration. “Well, you have to torture me with mercy, huh, Mr. Christian? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to take a little vengeance?”

“No.” Now Clay’s voice dropped in volume, and in temperature. His eyes still burned, but his tone was like ice. “Vengeance isn’t my department. I let Somebody else handle that. You’ll have Him to deal with one of these days. Besides, brains all over the place is way too gross for a little wimp like me to take, right?”

I hauled Taylor to his feet, marched him to the hall closet and shoved him in. When I slammed the door and spun, I found Clay once again right on my tail, this time with his arms wide open waiting. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Am I okay?” I all but fell into his arms, fighting back hysterical laughter. “Am—I—“ He just held me and waited. “I wanted to do it, Clay. I wanted to kill him. For what he did to those people…and what he did to you…” The laugh ended as a sob.

“I know,” he quieted me. “But you didn’t.”

I didn’t argue, not just then. I checked the land line and found it cut, so used my cel to call in. The department was in an uproar. Taylor had escaped during the transfer from the mental facility back to the downtown lockup, preparatory to his hearing on Monday. A night supervisor had called the Intercontinental, but when Jerome told him Clay was with me he had pursued no further. “Well—uh—Lieutenant—“ the sergeant stammered, “we didn’t want it to get out that he’d escaped, and we figured if Aiken was with you, Taylor couldn’t know that, so he couldn’t come after him—“

“But somehow it never occurred to anybody that Taylor might be more pissed at me for busting him than at Clay for not having the good manners to let him kill him!” I snarled. “Of course covering departmental ass was more important than any of the above, wasn’t it? Never mind. Screw it. Just send me a couple of uniforms and a CSI. Oh, and a locksmith from Properties to fix my fuckin’ doorknobs. Tell ‘em they’ll have to come in the living room window.”

I hung up on the confused desk jockey, opened the big picture window facing the street and sat on the floor to let my anger simmer down. The night air smelled of the bouginvillea lining the next door neighbors’ yard. Clay appeared, tucking his cel phone in his pocket, and sat down beside me. “Whoever built this house loved light,” he remarked after a few minutes of silence, “between all these big windows, and the sunroom.”

“Wait till you see—“ I halted and flushed—for all I knew he would never see it.

“See what?” I shook my head. “Oh, c’mon, what?”

“I was going to say…wait till you see the skylight in the bedroom.”

“Really? But couldn’t people in airplanes, um…”

“See in? No, it’s tinted one-way glass; and they’re up too high anyway. I don’t imagine you’d like it much though. You probably feel too exposed and observed as it is.”

“Well, if nobody can see in, it could be cool. Kind of like camping out without the bugs and stuff.” I giggled; I’d never thought of it quite that way. “Show me later. Promise?”

“I promise,” I said, and we sat and held each other and kissed for a few minutes. “They’ll be here any minute,” I said reluctantly. “We better tone this down if we don’t want ourselves on the cover of the Enquirer.” He snickered and stole one more kiss as blue lights appeared down the block.

We told the reporting officers exactly what had happened, except for the one part that was only Clay’s business and mine. When I walked the house with the CSI, it was the first time I had seen it since Taylor had invaded it; we had stayed in one spot deliberately, to keep the crime scene clean. I wanted no glitches in this new charge against him. In the kitchen, we found half of my cutlery drawer neatly laid out on the counter, meat cleaver, bread knife, shish kebob skewers, even the big needle I sewed up a turkey with, already threaded. “He had plans,” the tech said dryly. He certainly did, for me, and I fervently hoped we could get this cleaned up before Clay saw it. The CSI pointed his camera around the room. “If you two had stayed outside much longer, he might’ve gotten really bored and done your dishes.”

It was standard police humor, dark and cynical. I usually chimed right in with the best of them, but now the gallows wit failed to touch my funny bone. When we turned to leave the kitchen I saw what I had feared: Clay stood in the doorway, his face pale, his eyes missing nothing. I was torn, longing suddenly for him to hold me, but not wanting to make a spectacle of our relationship. Again, mysteriously, he knew, and clasped my hands in his for a moment as I passed. His touch helped, but letting go, I felt like a boat dragged from its mooring by a malign tide.

Taylor was hauled unceremoniously out the window and bundled off in a squad car, while the locksmith repaired my doors. About the time he got the front door fixed Deac rushed in through it, in ragged sweat pants and a damp ponytail. “I got out of the gym and heard on the scanner,” he gulped and hugged me, and then hugged Clay too for good measure. They walked away talking, while I finished up the unpleasant repetitive paperwork that comes along with being on the receiving end of crime. As the CSI packed up his kit and left, I took my gun to my bedroom and put it away. It felt strange in my grasp, as though my hand no longer knew quite how to hold it.

I sat down on the foot of my bed for a moment alone. Out in the hall I heard Deac and Clay approach. “You need a ride, man?” Deac asked. “I can drop you at the station, or your hotel.”

“Thanks, but I’m stayin’ here a while. I called the hotel to tell the relevant people—well, relevant person, ‘cause only Jerome really has to know where I am.”

Brief quiet answered. “She’s a big girl, Clay. She’s a cop. Don’t treat her like—“

“Like a human being?” Clay’s tone sharpened, and I worried we were about to be treated to that infamous though rarely seen Aiken temper. "Don't treat her like a human being? Like a woman? I can’t do that, Chris. She is a woman. And I—“

Clay stopped, and the silence was longer this time before Deac responded. “Wow.” I tried to imagine what Deac was seeing. Was Clay flushing and looking away, or looking the other man squarely in the eye? Did he smile when he talked about me? “I’ll say one thing: the female half of the human race should thank the Lord you’re a man of faith. As a player, you could be one fast operator.”

Both men laughed quietly. “No way. This is something else. This was meant to be. I believe it. If what I went through helps get some peace for the families of the people Taylor killed…and if it brought me Delilah…then it wasn’t in vain.”

“Purpose,” Deac said again. “I’ve sort of gotten a handle on the kind of guy you are. I don’t think I have to tell you how to treat her. She means a lot to me.”

“I know she does. Don’t worry. I want to make her happy. I love her, and for some crazy reason she insists she loves me too.”

Deac’s laugh was heartier now. “Hey, then it’s all good! Now, I’ve got to go, so where is my fearless leader?”

I opened the bedroom door. “I thought I heard you two.” They both grinned at me, one man I had been fond of for years and one I had loved for barely hours, their new friendship another part of this novel shape forming in my life. We walked to the door with Deac, and as he drove away I patted the arm of the old chair, now back in its place. “My great-grandfather carved this a hundred years ago, and you slung it around like it came out of a doll house. Do you have any idea how much this thing weighs?”

“Enough to knock a guy down,” Clay offered. “It must’ve been adrenalin, because I’m definitely not that macho. Hope it didn’t give me a hernia. It…felt good, though.”

“Of course it did. It was a chance to strike back.” I traced the delicate lines of carvery. “That’s three times you’ve saved my life. Once just now. Once in Taylor’s house. And once started months ago, when I first heard you sing, and saw you, and it began reminding me of what I was.”

“Told ya.” He put his arms around me as we walked back toward the bedroom.

“Yeah, and you were right about something else too.” I sat down on the bed again. He sat with me, and I settled against him as I had longed to do earlier. “I’m burnt out, Clay. I nearly killed a suspect tonight, in cold blood—and don’t give me props for ultimately not doing it. You get that credit. You stopped me. I would have done it. I wanted to do it, to take what’s a jury’s responsibility, not mine. And it’s not just that, it’s all the other stuff. I wanted to be a cop to help people, but the system gets in its own way. I’m tired of it. It feels all wrong now. I don’t think I can do this anymore; but I’m not trained to do anything else. So what’ll I do?”

“We’ll find out. God found us each other, we’ll trust Him to find what you need to be doing.”

“I don’t have much practice at that, but I’ll try, if you’ll help me.”

“Absolutely.” His lips skimmed my cheek. They were still a little roughed up, but they felt so good on my skin. “What can I do to help you right now? What do you want?”

Now, that was a question I could answer, but even as I eagerly opened my mouth I remembered he had already answered it himself, in the negative. I looked into his face, beautiful and real and loving, and laughed a little and shook my head. “I can’t ask that of you. What I want, right now, is for you to lay me down under this skylight and make love to me; but you said you didn’t think you could go there anytime soon—“

“That isn’t what I said,” he startled me by replying, and startled me more by looking abruptly ill at ease. “I said I didn’t know when. And I only said that because…well…I’ve felt so darn contrary, ever since I—came back—it’s like, sometimes when somebody wants me to do somethin’, I want to do just the opposite. And it’s not spite, I’m not mad at ‘em, I just—Mom wanted me to go with her, and I sent her home alone. My management wanted me to take time off, and I insisted on continuing the tour. Even this—even with you, and I know it sounds horrible, and selfish, and I can’t explain it. I don’t even understand it…”

“I think I do. Remember you asked how long it took for the fear to go away, and I said different times for different people, because everybody needs different things? That’s what this is. You need to feel in control of your world. You always have, right? It’s very deep in you. And then, you were forced into a situation where you had no control over even the simplest things, whether you eat or drink or go to the bathroom, or live or d-die—“ I strangled on a sob. God, if he had died, if I had never known him… “You’re taking back your life, Clay. That’s all. It’s not selfish, because you’re not selfish. You’re not trying to run anybody else’s life, just to reclaim your own.”

“But it wasn’t fair to you, for me to say what I did, knowin’—“ He bit his lip, still discomfited, but this time his eyes did not waver from mine. “Knowin’ how much I wanted you too. Sometimes, when I’d call you I’d lie in the bunk, and listen to you talk, and imagine you were there, and I could touch you, and you…would touch me, and make me…well, not that I ever thought you’d want to…I wouldn’t blame you for throwin’ me out for being such a jerk.”

Fireworks of joy burst in my heart, as well as points farther south. “I know jerks, honey. I’ve always been drawn to them when it came to relationships. They took what they wanted, and I had to fight for what I needed. I know about that, I react that way. But I see you, I know you, and you’re not like that. What you need right this minute isn’t all you are; it’s getting you back to what you are, the wonderful giving man you are.” I took his surprised face in my hands and kissed him firmly. “Take me, Clay,” I whispered. ‘I want you to.”

We lay back on the bed, exchanging long slow kisses. Clay’s hands moved down my back, tracing the curves of my butt, and pulled me to him. Through my shorts I could feel him straining against me, his jeans barely containing his arousal. Then suddenly, he started and pulled away. “We can’t,” he groaned, his dismay plain. “I don’t have, uh, y’know…protection.”

“I do,” I said. “I’m protected, so you are too. I haven’t been with a man since the divorce, and I know you’re not renowned for being loose.” He giggled. “I don’t know why I stayed on the pills, to be honest. Just convenience. Or maybe not having to contend with monthly company was another way of forgetting I was a woman.”

His eyes burned into mine, as if branding my soul as his. “Not was.” The low growl in his voice was startling, and exciting. “You are, Delilah. You are a woman.”

“Yes,” I breathed, and took one more step. “Your woman, if you want me.”

Poised as though to jump, his tension erupted in a lunge and a tight embrace. “I love you,” he whispered fiercely. “Please be mine.” At my gasped assent, his hands slid under my T-shirt, and he gave a delighted little gasp of his own when he discovered nothing underneath the fabric but me.

“I don’t have much there,” I apologized. “I go without a bra a lot, and nobody seems to notice.”

“I’ll notice. You’re gonna kill me every time I look at you from now on, wonderin’…” He peeled my T off and kissed down my chest. My small breasts had always been something of an embarrassment to me—Teddy all but demanded I get a boob job at one point—but Clay’s happy mumbles and nibbles made them and me quiver with pleasure. When he shifted back, I started to unbutton his shirt, but he caught my hands in his and moved them away. “Wait. Let me. Please?”

I could no more resist the tinge of need in his voice than I could have risen through the skylight and flown away. Letting the other set the pace, lead the dance, had left me short-changed in every relationship I had ever had; but on this night, with this man, I knew with the deepest of certainty that it would not.

A few minutes later, after his teeth and lips and fingertips had made a good start on driving me wild with need for him, he took off his shirt and peeled off his undershirt. I ran my hands delicately up his lightly furred torso, and watched him shiver a little. Here and there on his fair skin, I could make out slight discolorations—leftover bruises from his captivity, or marks left by the taser? I touched them and kissed them, but he wouldn’t let me linger, and he wiped away the tears that formed in my eyes. Then he took my hand and instead laid it on his chest, over his heart. His eyelids fluttered shut for a moment, and a trace of a beatific smile flitted across his face. “That’s so much better than imagining,” he sighed.

“Yes,” I murmured, and started to move my fingers back to one spot. “Is this—“

“Hush.” He captured my hand in his, and when I persisted he quieted me with his mouth and his tongue. His point was clear: tonight was not about the past, but the future. “Let me show you,” he whispered huskily as he guided my hand lower on his body, “where else I imagined you touchin’ me.”

It was like making love to a naked flame, his intensity striking sparks off me. His focus seemed narrowed to the single goal of rekindling every spark of womanhood in me. Not only did he light them, he fanned them into a roaring inferno. My taut body was gym-honed for the rigors of police work, but it remembered, too, how to soften and yield in the heat, as friction built my craving to join his. We strained together toward a final explosion, and when it came, the rush of climax flooded me with his molten fire, consuming me and bringing me forth anew. As we lay spent in each others’ arms, an old song floated through my head: like a phoenix, I have risen from the flame…I chuckled to myself. I was not who I had been the last time I lay in this bed. Someone new had come of this, and I looked forward to getting to know her.

(She, and I, were both pleased to finally learn I was right about his groan, by the way…)

I dozed off, but woke when the author of all this fuss slid out of bed to turn off the lights. The cool glow of the night through the skylight limned his slim nude body like a spotlight. He looked up at the moon and stars, and slipped back under the sheet beside me, smiling as he had in that impossible dream. I opened one eye and grinned sleepily. “What do you wanna bet if anybody asks, Jerome tells ‘em you’re someplace under police protection?”

“But I wasn’t under the nice policewoman,” he protested with a straight face.

I gasped dramatically. “Innuendo, from the sweet boy next door! Who knew?”

He started to giggle. “I always tell people I’m not as innocent as I look.”

“Truth,” I chuckled, snuggled up to him and dropped off again.

I woke one other time, when Clay stirred, and jerked and cried out faintly. His eyes flew open, and he stared up at the sky gasping. My arms tightened around him, and he turned toward me quickly. He was still half asleep, I thought, his eyelids heavy and his gaze confused; but when he saw me his tense body relaxed. With a small sigh, he nestled his face (now slightly scratchy with stubble) into my neck and went right back to sleep. I held him close and felt his pounding heart calm. Once, feeling that same beat with my hand on his chest, had so unnerved me; now, with my world upside down, I had ironically never felt so peaceful.

And, of course, it was, as the Broads like to say, all Clay Aiken’s fault.

+++

As it turned out, my drowsy joke wasn’t too far off the mark. The first phone call I got Sunday morning was from Clay’s publicist Roger, a pleasant man who had been deeply concerned about his client’s wellbeing, and not just as a client. Clay had this gift for making the people who worked for him feel more like a friend to him than an employee. Now Roger was a bit confused, since late last night Jerome had indeed told him only that after Taylor’s escape and recapture, Clay was staying in a safe place and the police were taking care of him. Mentally blowing kisses to Clay’s bodyguard for his discretion, I confirmed the facts, and helped Roger craft a short statement to that effect, noting that Clay would be back to work on Monday preparing for his concert.

With that to keep the media hounds at bay, I declared Sunday a day of rest, and Clay wholeheartedly agreed. I found him some scrub pants and a T-shirt to wear and tossed his clothes in the washer and dryer, and we spent the day lazing around and watching the drizzle over the ocean. Things went splendidly, until I was cleaning the waffle iron after lunch and it hit me. “Damn, the Broads!” I groaned.

“What?” Clay looked in from the living room.

“Uh, my—friends—from out of town. They’re supposed to come over tonight, and I haven’t called them to cancel!”

“You don’t have to.” Oblivious to my jaw dropping, Clay came to the door and continued, “I can go back to the hotel. It’s okay.” I couldn’t think of a word to say. “What?”

Finally I managed to shake my head. “Nothing.” Maybe he didn’t mean to blow me off; or maybe he did. Maybe yesterday had meant less to him than I had thought. Either way, if this feeling of being crushed was what true love was about I wasn’t sure I liked it after all!

“Oh no, you don’t. What’s wrong? You want to see these girls, don’t you?”

He really does say ‘gurrls’, and I almost laughed despite my hurt feelings, remembering the Broads’ running joke that only Clay may call us gurrls, and when he does our toes curl. The hell of it was, he had just talked as if he didn’t care whether he spent more time with me or not, and my toes were still curling, damn him. “Yes, I want to see these women very much.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

I was looking off across the kitchen at nothing in particular, but now I looked right at him, and saw only innocent curiosity on his fresh-scrubbed freckled face. Perhaps he hadn’t realized what he had said, or meant me to take it as I did. I could bury my hurt, as I used to, or vent it. I chose to vent. “The problem is I have to work tomorrow, and you have your show tomorrow night, and then you’re back on the road and I don’t know when I’ll see you again—and I’ve gotten entirely too used to being with you, entirely too fast—I don’t mean just ‘being with you’, in the sexual sense, just being with you, and…I just wish you sounded like you liked that as much as I do, which is foolish of me to even say, isn’t it—“

“Delilah—“ Clay crossed the kitchen in two long strides and caught my shoulders in his big hands. “Darlin’, is that what you thought I meant? I didn’t, I swear I didn’t!” I pressed my lips together—good God, what’s happening to me, I never used to cry!—and he hugged me tight. “Dontcha remember what I said last night? We’re gonna have all the time we want, I promise, cross my heart. Don’t ever say it’s foolish of you to want to feel needed, baby. It’s not. I need you. I want you to know I need you. But I’ve been selfish enough. You should get with your friends and have a good time.”

“I have a good time with you. And you are not selfish, either, I told you that! I just don’t know…”

“Sure you do. These are the girls you said helped you get yourself together, and get out on your own, right?” I nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. It’ll be okay.”

He had almost talked me into it when—“Shit, no. I can’t. Your guy Roger already put out that statement, that you’d be hiding out, more or less, till Monday. It’ll look too strange for you to suddenly pop up at the hotel.”

Clay refused to give up; he was determined I would have my ‘party’. “They know you have to work tomorrow, don’t they? So they won’t stay all night. I can just hang out in the back of the house. I’ll use your laptop, or read or somethin’. It might be nice to have some quiet time to myself.”

His honeyed tones could be so persuasive, but I had to level with him. “That might not be best for you, Clay. These aren’t just any bunch of friends…they’re fans. They came to see you before, a lot of them anyway, and now they’re here to see you tomorrow night.”

‘Fans?” Surprisingly, his eyes brightened with new interest. “What kind? Or do I dare ask?”

“Um…Lecherous Broads?”

He laughed out loud. “I should’ve known!” Then suddenly, he stopped laughing. “Hey, I’ve got an idea.”

That sounded dangerous, but it was really very simple, yet so touching I nearly boo-hooed again. I called the Broads with directions to my house, and Clay helped me organize snacks and Clack (some of which amused him, and some of which quietly amazed him) then retired to the bedroom when the first cars appeared in the driveway. In moments my house was overrun with happy women in purple hugging me and laughing. I found spots for them to sit, fifteen or so, and got current circumstances out of the way by giving them a brief report about the previous night’s excitement.

“Clay’s in a safe place now, resting,” I told them, “but he knows what the fans did to help him. He’s very grateful, and he wanted to do something more than his show tomorrow to let people know. I told him we were getting together tonight here, and if he feels up to it he said he might call and say hi.” That set off a burst of excitement! “Hey, calm down!” I laughed. The shrieks were already subsiding though, and everyone agreed they could handle themselves. I pulled out the food and we plunged into the boxes and bags of video, audio and photos contributed by various attendees. I had more fun than I expected, but I felt a bit guilty on occasion, knowing Clay was lounging in the bedroom listening. When the conversation veered to the lecherous, which with this bunch was inevitable, I felt even more strange, torn between amusement and true arousal! They just didn’t know where that tense smile pasted on my face came from, when they rhapsodized about his thighs or his butt. I wondered if he could hear that part, and what on earth he was thinking. Thankfully, I was able to steer the topic elsewhere, and soon we were giggling about puppies and kids and weird coworkers and big rain puddles…when my cel phone rang.

The room fell silent as I answered. “Hey,” Clay said softly.

“Hi,” I replied, and tried not to let a goofy in-love grin slip.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

The grin vanished and my brain began to race. Was he sick? I could put the Broads off with an explanation, but I wanted to go check on him, or at least get somewhere where we could really talk. “That’s okay,” I went on, striving to keep a lid on my alarm. “If you don’t feel like it—“ A noise went up from the room, something between a groan and a squeal—we won’t get to talk to him, but that’s HIM, on that phone right now—

“That’s not it. I’ve been back here listenin’, and you all sound like you’re havin’ such a great time. I’m not a party guy, but I…I’m feelin’ kind of lonely.”

“Oh. Um, well, do I need to shut this down and come—“

“No! I mean, not ‘no’ like I wouldn’t love just you an’ me in here, but, like…do you think anybody would mind if I came out there and sat with you all for a little while? I don’t know that I’d be very good company, but I just want to be with people. They’re your friends, you know them. Would they get upset, or be mad?”

My throat ached at the uncertainty in his voice. If it were any other group I’d be more concerned that they’d lose their fannish minds and stampede him; but as I looked around at the puzzled faces, I hoped my only real worry was that they’d smother him with kindness! “Let me check,” I told him and lowered the phone. “Broads, I need brutal honesty here. Can you handle yourselves with Clay? Can you deal with him as a person, not a fan?” Every one looked at me like I was crazy. “That’s what I thought.” I took a deep breath, and found myself thinking God, take care of this. “I have a very lonesome material witness holed up in the back room, who would really like to join the party.”

Eyes began to bulge. “He’s here?” one Broad gulped, and my heart sank.

“Please, if it’s too much for you, say so!” I pleaded. “I’ll take him and we’ll go someplace else. You can stay here as long as you want, just lock up when you leave. He’s been through so much, all alone, and he needs company, but he doesn’t need to be overwhelmed…” Clay’s words to Deac about me rose un-looked-for to my lips. “He just needs to be treated like a human being. Like a guy. That’s all.”

My eyes burned with frightened tears, and the lump in my throat shut off my speech. The Broads still stared, but not with the wild look of idol-chasers about to pounce. “We know that, Delilah,” one of the older ones said in a tone of gentle aggrievement, as if to say ‘what do you take us for’. Every head, including a couple topped with tiaras, bobbed in agreement.

“Okay,” I said, and lifted the phone to my ear. “Did you—“

“Yeah.” The reply did not come from the phone. I jumped and looked up from the chair where I had crashed near the TV. Clay stood in the doorway, all rumpled clothes and long limbs and hair that hadn’t seen anything other than some shampoo and my shower. He was without a doubt the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, looking shyly around at the roomful of women. “Uh, hi,” he said with a tentative smile.

Fir a split second the air seemed sucked right out of the house—and then the Broads swung into action. A cheery chorus of hi’s rang out. Three Fic Ho’s on the sofa promptly vacated, plumped the cushions and escorted him to it before they plopped down on the floor beside him. Other Broads got him juice and crackers, and swept the heaps of Clack aside. They inquired how he was, but no more insistently than they might if their own loved one had been a target of crime. In short, I was so proud of them you would have thought each and every one was my blood sister.

Clay didn’t seem to mind being fussed over (and what man would?) He got himself comfortable and started getting introductions. In no time he had everyone talking, and did the unthinkable: he had managed to become not the center of attention, but part of the group. One Broad had an interest in reflexology and ended up at the end of the couch giving him a foot massage. Two others worked with the disabled, and he engaged them in a lively discussion about theories of autistic mind over chips and salsa. I kept myself as busy as I could. It was enough that they knew he was here; if I stayed too close to him for too long I would totally give us away. Clay didn’t help matters any, though. Every time I looked across the room or in from the kitchen, even if he was deep in a conversation, his eyes were searching the room, until he found me. Despite my wish to keep our relationship quiet, I could not help but look back at him, and smile, and feel as if I were floating in bubbly.

When I noticed him sitting quietly, his head rested against the sofa back, and absorbing the ongoing chatter around him with a small silent smile, I knew it was time for last call. “Okay, Broads, if we want this guy singing to us tomorrow he needs to get some rest!”

Clay tried to get up to say good night, but the Broads would not have it. Every one of them knelt by the couch for their goodbyes, and every one got a hug and a little whisper in her ear from him. They packed up their Clack and I escorted them to the door with a murmured request that they keep this confidential. Not till then did I notice most of them were quietly crying. “He’s…so…” one Broad struggled.

“Yeah, I know. It really is hard to put into words, isn’t it?” It was even harder for me!

I got another big group hug. “We’re so glad you’re taking care of him” was the consensus

With a promise to meet them Monday evening before the concert, I sent them on their way. I sat down in the big old chair in the entranceway for a moment, thinking with a wry smile I would never look at it again without thinking of the man who had saved my life with it. In the living room, Clay had dozed off. I dimmed the lights; the dishes could wait. I sat down on the floor and leaned my head back against the front of the sofa. His arm drooped, found me, and began to drowsily tug at me till I pushed myself up onto the couch and lay down with him, my back side pressed against his front. The long arms wrapped securely around my midsection. “That’s better,” I said. “I thought I might fall off. I feel safer now.”

“I feel safe,” he mumbled sleepily. “I feel so safe with you…want you to feel that way too.”

“I do, Clay,” I breathed. “I feel so incredibly protected.” I had never allowed myself to feel I needed protecting, but my heart did; and now that I had it, it felt wonderful.

He gave a contented little grunt, and I snuggled into his embrace. “Broads are a great bunch of girls…”

I’d have to talk to him about that gurrl thing, I reminded myself with a chuckle, and closed my eyes for a few moments.

+++

The few moments turned into the next morning; and, notably, the night passed in peace, with no nightmares to comfort. I threw myself together, and Clay called Jerome to pick him up at the police station. Before he left to get the concert together, he pulled me into my office, pulled down the shade, and kissed me, hard. “That’s for today,” he said and slipped something in the back pocket of my jeans. “This is for tonight.” It was a laminate, a VIP backstage pass. “I called Roger while you were in the shower. Call him and leave the Broads’ names. He’s got front row roped off in purple for ‘em.”

I giggled, and then dove into my work. Well, it was still ‘my’ work, but it felt so weird, as if I were peering and moving through water or glass. It felt like those last few days of school before graduation, when it’s all over but the shouting. For now, it was still my work, but this was no longer my place. I took a few moments between tasks to find my procedure manual, and look some stuff up

The media would no longer be kept at bay. I spent all morning talking to national morning TV shows (although I briefly considered refusing to talk to Fox, just for spite). The story stayed the same: Clay had been en route to a safe house, just as a precaution, and stopped over at mine for a bite to eat when Taylor came looking for me. I enjoyed emphasizing Clay’s aggressive role in apprehending the escapee…I swear it turned Diane Sawyer on. The only part I got as big a kick out of was when some substitute ignoramus at CBS insisted on referring to Clay as Taylor’s last victim. “I don’t think of Mr Aiken as a victim,” I corrected him crisply. “He’s a survivor, and a victor, not a victim.”

I figured some variation on that would probably end up being the next main-thread title at the Clack House.

In the afternoon, I sat on my secret and went with Deac to Taylor’s hearing. On the way back, I was twice as happy. Now I had two secrets, for the two men most important in my life. “Let’s stop by Personnel,” I told Deac casually. “I need your help with something.” Once there, I explained calmly that it was time for me to move on, and shocked both him and the assistant chief into silence by asking how I went about recommending Deac for promotion and reassignment as the new head of the SCU.

“But what are you gonna do, Del?” Deac sputtered—after he picked me up off my feet in a very unprofessional hug!

“I don’t know,” I grinned. “But I’ve decided maybe you’ve been right all along. There does appear to be Somebody directing things. I think I’ll let Him direct me and see what happens.”

With that, I clocked out and rushed home to change and meet the Broads for supper. I kept the backstage pass in my pocket, and their new seating arrangements a secret as well, until we arrived at the arena. Most of them nearly passed out when the usher told them their tickets were invalid, and those still standing joined them in a resounding THUD when, grinning, he showed them to their new seats. They tried to give me the credit. I shook my head. “It’s all—“

“CLAY AIKEN’S FAULT!!” they yelled in unison, and fell with shrieks of glee into the front row.

I felt a bit sorry for the opening act. Hopefully somebody paid a little attention to her. God knows most of the packed house didn’t—they were too busy saving their strength, for the scream that went up when the house lights went dark after intermission nearly took the roof off the place. I had seen Clay live twice before, and both times been affected by the sparkle in his eyes and the delight on his face at the reactions of his fans, but the utter joy that spread across his features when he appeared on stage that night was so luminous there was almost no need for spotlights. He choked up a little as the ovation continued, which of course just made everybody scream louder. Finally, the tumult did settle. Other than a heartfelt ‘thank you’ he did not mention the past week; but after the last song of the set, he disappeared from the stage for a few moments. The house lights did not rise, but the volume of the crowd did. He had sounded great, but I wondered if he might still be fatigued, and not do an encore. Then the keyboard began, and amid gasps of recognition at the familiar introduction, the slender silhouette returned to the stage. Anyone who had been online Thursday night, or had read the accounts of our trap, knew the significance of the song Clay began to sing: “Bow your head, fold your hands, for a moment let your sorrow fade…why oh why are you afraid…has this world stripped you of your faith…good news, good news…”

Thousands stood, and sang, and hugged and cried and stretched out their arms toward the stage. At the end of the song Clay stood and reached out to them, as though to hug every one of them, and I knew his heart longed to no matter how impossible that was. I said a gentle good night to the Broads and stepped around the corner of the set to go backstage.

I figured I would lie low and stay out of the way till I could get a minute alone with Clay, but as soon as he spotted me he galloped down the hallway and scooped me up. “So much for discretion!” I yelped.

“Discretion? Back here? All these people know my business. Some of ‘em I pay to know my business.” Somehow he had already managed, in just a few minutes, to shower and change from his stage clothes to wrinkled basketball shorts and a T-shirt. His eyes were still damp, but his grin was positively giddy. “Welcome to my world, Lieutenant.”

It was going to feel so strange to no longer have that title I had worked so hard to get, but it oddly didn’t seem as all-important as it once had. “I have some good news for you,” I told him. “It’s about Taylor’s hearing. Between the escape, the new charges of attempted murder against me, and the announcement that you were going to testify to corroborate the evidence in his scrapbooks, I guess he realized he couldn’t win. He didn’t go for an insanity defense. If he had and lost, the DA would’ve gone for the death penalty. He pleaded guilty. Probably get four life sentences, plus more years tacked on for aggravated kidnapping on you, plus a bonus for his little adventure Saturday night. So he’ll live, but he won’t be going anywhere for a very long time.” He looked pleased, but slightly bemused. I touched his cheek. “That means there will be no trial, Clay. You won’t have to testify. It’s over.”

His jaw dropped and he just stared for a moment, before he folded his arms around me. “It’s over?” His voice quavered. “It’s really over.”

“Yes.”

He pressed his face to my shoulder for a moment, then looked up at me with realization and happiness bursting across his features. “Do the families of the other people know? That’ll be great, if they don’t have to sit through a trial.”

“They know.” I wasn’t surprised at all that he thought first of others; it was yet another of the multitude of things I loved about this man. I squeezed him, then moved away as Jerome approached with a concerned look, to share the news with him. He nearly crushed me in a bear hug before he hustled off. I shared with Clay my movement at the police department. “So I’m stepping out. I’m going to trust something comes along. And I’m going to trust in us.”

“That’s good. Let’s sit down someplace, I need your advice.” Curious, I followed as he found a quiet corner amid the chaos of load-out and sat down on a metal packing crate. “I’ve been thinkin’ about what went on this past week, and I’ve made a decision. It’s not fair to expect Jerome to manage keepin’ me out of trouble, and keep an eye on everything else that could go wrong too. I’m going to hire somebody to be in charge of security, when I tour, when I travel and so forth.”

“I think that is a marvelous idea,” I agreed.

“I’ve been makin’ a mental list of what I’m lookin’ for in this person. Obviously, I want somebody with a security background. A hard worker, but not mean or nasty. Somebody smart, and brave. Somebody who can get along with people, and lead people, and make people want to do what needs doing. They’ll have to deal with fans a lot, so it ought to be somebody caring, somebody who understands what’s goin’ on from their perspective…” I realized he was scooting closer to me. His hand curved over my thigh. “And since she’d be spendin’ an awful lot of time with me, it wouldn’t hurt if she was beautiful, and it would really be a plus, hiring-wise, if I were insanely in love with her.”

Now it was my turn to stare. “You had this planned,” I accused when my mouth decided to start working again. “When we talked Saturday—when you talked me into quitting the force—when you talked about trusting God to find me a job, you already had this set up!”

“No, I didn’t. I worked on it all day today, when I wasn’t rehearsin’. I had to be sure it wouldn’t violate this contract, or step on that person’s toes. I had it in mind, yeah, but the Lord still had to make it happen.” His freckled face grew serious. “Last night, when I said you made me feel safe, I didn’t mean just the obvious. You are great at what you do, and you could keep anybody protected. But you…what you said about me feelin’ funny around you, because of—what happened—well, you were pretty on the money. I did, kind of. You saw me like—that—tied up, beaten down, and I just knew you’d write me off as…”

“Sissy?” I asked when he fell silent. “Wimp? Weenie? All those awful words you kept using for yourself? Those awful words you’ve heard? No way. I know different. I’ve seen different.”

“Exactly,” Clay admitted. “You didn’t condemn me; but I didn’t know you wouldn’t. So it was even crazier that I felt immediately drawn to you the way I did, but I did. I do. It’s rare to find somebody you feel like your heart and your whole self is safe with. Professionally, I need you, Lieutenant Marshall. You said you wanted to help people—I do too. You can help me do that. Personally, I need you, Delilah. I love you. Please come with me.”

“Do you even have to ask?” I said. “Never mind. I guess you do. I do too. I need to say it, and I need to hear it. I tried not to need to feel safe. I buried it but you found it, just like you found all those other parts of me I denied for so long. I love you, Clay. I will go anywhere with you.” I started to put my arms around him, but he forestalled that by picking me bodily up and depositing me in his lap. “Hey, now this doesn’t look too professional!”

“Don’t care. Nobody better challenge me. I’m the boss around here, after all.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You catch on quick, new employee. Good at following orders?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then quit arguin’ and kiss me.”

“Yes, sir!” I giggled.

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Thanks to Shari for the dream sequence and feedback; Carol and friends for South Florida info; Julie for THE photo; and Cella for getting to the point (tmClay)

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~ Posted 2.7.2005 ~

You may contact the author at theleewit@mindspring.com

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