REGINA LOOKED AT A disk of dim light on the ceiling and said, “I didn’t need this.”
Trotter kissed her on the belly, sternum, throat. “I did.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said. She managed to make it sound like a command instead of a plea, but that didn’t change the fear.
“I’m not, Bash,” Trotter protested. “I wouldn’t.”
She kept looking at the ceiling. If she looked at the man whose bed she had climbed into so willingly an hour or so ago, she would have burst into tears.
“You would. You’re doing it now.”
“No, I’m not.” The beginnings of a laugh were in his voice.
“You called me Bash.’
Now he did laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really. It’s just that since we met in New York I’ve been trying to figure you out, and it turns out your father had already done it for me.”
“Leave my father out of this. You can’t use my father against me.”
“What are you talking about, ‘against’? I’m just saying that he was perceptive when it came to his children. You’re one of the most visible young women in America, what with your job and your family and your money; you do a highly visible job very well, a job you like. Don’t you?”
“You’re doing the analysis,” she said, “Dr. Trotter.”
“You only need a doctor if there’s something wrong with you. But I’ll go on. You love your work. You actually believe in the stuff most journalists only give lip service to. You know what it takes to be a good editor, and you do it, but you’re bashful. You have maybe twenty percent of the self-confidence you deserve to have.”
“That’s enough,” she said.
“Not quite. Why did you come home with me?”
“You were driving.”
“That’s not an answer. I know why I brought you here. Why did you get out of the car? Why did you come upstairs? Why are you naked in my arms right now? Hard as a statue at the moment, but naked in my arms all the same. I hope you’re not going to claim I raped you.”
Why had she come here? Why had she let it all happen?
With herself she could be honest. It was because she had wanted this since she’d first seen him. He was big, and handsome enough, but more important, he was intelligent and confident. And dangerous and mysterious; any woman who denied the attraction of danger and mystery was lying.
And he seemed attracted to her. From the very first. Regina had never thought of herself as the kind of woman who would be attractive to that sort of man. Regina had had two love affairs in her life, a number so low compared with some of the other girls at school, she refused to speak about it at all, even with her closest friends. They probably thought she was a virgin. One was with the son of the president of a lumber company, who saw their relationship like some kind of arranged marriage of the Renaissance, with the son of the King of Pulp Production marrying the daughter of the Queen of Newsprint—a sort of Ferdinand and Isabella of the paper world. The other had been with a poor but honest boy from Buffalo who (and Regina would always love him, at least for this) had asked her out without knowing what Hudsons she belonged to. It was wonderful until he found out. Then he spent two thirds of the time intimidated to the point of impotence at the thought of her wealth and his unworthiness to share it, and one third of the time acting like a hunter who has brought down a record trophy. He seemed almost relieved when Regina had called it off.
She had dated other men, but they had all been variations on a theme, and Regina had made her retreat each time before things got as far as the bedroom.
The worst of it was, she liked sex, and she suspected she had a natural flair for it. But self-respect was more important, and if who and what she was meant that she had a choice among being seen as a commodity with an incidental vagina, being held in something like awe, or resorting to cheap anonymous pickups, she could do without.
But it got difficult. She got lonely and she got horny, and whatever there was to say about Trotter, one thing she was sure of was that he couldn’t be placed in one of the three categories.
He kept her guessing; he drove her crazy. She wanted nothing to do with him. But she also started taking the pill again. She stayed angry with him for a week, but when he said he wanted her to come to his apartment to talk, she had gone willingly.
They’d talked. He liked her brother, in spite of his naive politics. He liked Hannah Stein.
Regina had said she liked her, too, Jimmy needed someone like her.
Trotter hadn’t asked her what she needed, he just gave it to her. He took her in his arms and kissed her gently, then hard. Regina seemed to remember that hers had been the first tongue to cross the frontier. Then she was in the bedroom, naked against him, coming, more than once, almost before she knew what was happening.
A thought—something about loving this man—flashed across her disarranged mind just before sanity set in, and she realized this man was some kind of undercover agent. Deception was his livelihood, his way of life. Convincing a woman he wanted her, and “proving” it, were probably all part of a day’s work. She wondered how she could have been stupid enough to hide that from herself all this time. She stared at the circle of light on the ceiling and wished she were dead.
“I’m leaving now,” she said, and started to get up.
One strong hand on her shoulder forced her back to the mattress. “Not yet,” Trotter said. Regina felt a small tickle of fear.
It must have shown on her face, because Trotter said, “Don’t be afraid. You can go in ten seconds. You can go now.” He let go of her shoulder. “I’ll drive you home, if you trust me. Just answer my question or tell me positively you won’t.”
She looked at his eyes, close to hers because of his myopia. They were eyes that had seen too much and had given up everything but hope.
No actor could put that much in his eyes, no matter how practiced at deception. Could he?
“If I trust you,” she whispered. Part of her brain called the rest fool; if she didn’t get up, dress, walk out the door, and call this whole business off this second, she’d have only herself to blame for anything that happened after.
“Don’t hurt me, Allan,” she said. This time, it was a plea, and she didn’t care.
“I won’t,” he told her. “I wouldn’t.” His hands were gentle.
There was a noise on the stairs. Trotter froze. Regina felt the tension in him and froze, too.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“There shouldn’t be anyone out there. There’s only this apartment over the garage, and the people I rent from are away for a couple of days.”
Regina watched, fascinated, as Trotter went into action. He was out of bed and into his pants in seconds. There had been no sound; he hadn’t even made the bedsprings creak or the change in his pockets jingle. He went silently to the door, listened at the crack as he eased off the lock and the chain bolt, then threw the door open and plunged into the stairway. She heard his voice yell, “Call the police!” then the slamming of the outside door.
Call the police and tell them what? Regina would have to look at whatever it was in the hall, and quickly, but she was naked and didn’t want to be. As she stood up, she pulled the bedspread free and wrapped it around herself. Shaking under the rough cotton, she went to look at the stairs.
Someone was lying there, faceup, head down. It was the body of a woman, but the face was no longer a woman’s face. The color was wrong, and the expression on it could not be described as human.
Regina recognized it, anyway. Hannah Stein. My God, Hannah Stein.
Regina found herself sheltering a sudden hope that the figure on the stairs might be alive, a hope that had been let in by her love for her brother. She picked her way down the stairs to see if she could help.
Hannah Stein couldn’t be helped. Her head was at a right angle to her body, and there was a smell in the hallway that told Regina that death had not even left her brother’s fiancée the dignity of continence.
Regina would have been sick, but there was something taking up too much of her brain to make room for nausea.
Hannah’s hair was wet, plastered by water into dark spikes. It didn’t make any sense. She’d have to talk to the police about this. Talk to Allan.
Why in the name of God should Hannah’s hair be wet?