Silence echoed through the house. A silence that mocked as Margaret waited for the phone to ring.
She had become accustomed to small noises amid the quiet. The heater kicking on in winter. A newly made ice cube falling in the freezer. The creak of a wall for who knows why, except that the house was old and perched on a hilltop where the wind whirled between ocean and bay.
Tonight Margaret heard none of these. Only the ticking, aching silence.
Dear God, protect Kaitlan.
Shortly after eight Margaret had tiptoed across the hardwood floor to D.’s office and leaned an ear against the door. No sound from within. Holding her breath she eased open the door, tensing against his sure anger at her intrusion. But she found him in his chair at the computer, legs splayed, head lolled to one side and mouth open. Sleeping.
On his monitor—a randomly rolling ball against black void.
She leaned against the door, its knob in her hand as hard as the fist of a corpse.
Through dinner, while cleaning the kitchen and mopping its floor, she’d clung to the hope that the clear mind D. had displayed with Kaitlan would remain. That given this deadline of all deadlines, he would rise above his weaknesses—because he had to.
How foolish she’d been.
Repelled and angered by the futility of the room, she’d shut the office door and hurried away.
Now Margaret stood in the library, facing the bookcase containing the first editions of D.’s novels. She’d been driven to this place with the sense that something here could help their situation. But what?
She scanned the ninety-nine books, shelved in order of publication.
Margaret’s eyes landed on Fractions, D.’s first in his Ben Seitz mathematician-turned-detective series. It was followed by Division and Decimal Point. Margaret’s gaze skipped around then, from Tumult to Ransacked, Perilous Hope to Midnight Vision, In the Making, Out of Madness, Last Speck of Dawn, Black Over Water, Sky Bright, From the Mist. She knew them all. Many she had edited. Those written before she’d started working for D. she’d read on her own. Ninety-nine inciting incidents and story arcs and resolutions, spanning over forty years of work.
They say a writer’s worldview emerges through his stories. Over the years Margaret had seen an element repeat in D.’s books. After Gretchen died it appeared even more strongly. Through symbolism and subtext throbbed what Margaret had come to call his “vain empires” doctrine, the phrase taken from her favorite passage in Paradise Lost. Always D.’s main characters were in one way or another bent on the dark pursuit of some obsession in their lives—only to discover that their private little empires were all in vain and brought only emptiness.
A truth about Darell Brooke himself that he could not, would not see.
Out of the Blue. Lights Across the Water. River’s Edge.
Margaret stuck a hand in her hair. Why was she here?
On impulse she pulled out All But Dead, not remembering the story. She read the prologue. Oh, yes. Coal miner Ed Bramley and his nightmares, his epileptic daughter.
Margaret replaced the novel and opened a second—one of D.’s earlier works on the top shelf—and scanned the first two pages. This one she barely remembered.
Wind gusted at the windows. Margaret lifted her head to gaze into the night. The lights of Half Moon Bay dimmed, then disappeared. Fog was rolling in.
She checked the clock. Just past nine. Was Kaitlan still at the restaurant? Was she safe?
Margaret’s limbs fairly trembled with tension, anticipating the phone.
A clue.
Her eyebrows raised. Yes, that was it. She was looking for a clue in one of D.’s books. Some plot point that would ignite an idea of what they should do—one he had surely forgotten. His past novels were nothing now but a jumble in his head.
Had he ever written a story about a female protagonist trapped as Kaitlan was—one who couldn’t go to the police and had no evidence to present if she did …
Margaret slid out another novel and read the first chapter until the story surfaced in her memory.
No. Nothing here.
She lowered the book and focused out the window again, seeing only her dulled and anxious reflection. The fog now blocked out all view.
The wind had died down. The house was so very still.
Kaitlan.
This bookcase held thousands upon thousands of pages. Where to begin? It could take weeks to find what Margaret needed—if she found it at all.
She put the book back on the shelf and buffed her upper arms, chilled in the warm room of rich wood and leather.
Frustration balled in her throat. She should be moving, working, doing something. Tearing down the hill to the restaurant—did Margaret even know which one it was?—and rescuing Kaitlan. Just barge in and take her, who cared which people saw?
And what then, Margaret, after tipping your hand to Craig? What then?
She gazed at D.’s novels—the very reason Kaitlan had come to him for help in the first place. Somewhere in one of them must lay a crucial piece to this puzzle. A piece that had slipped into the milky waters below her and Darell’s consciousness.
Random reading wouldn’t do. She needed a systematic approach.
The oldest books first. These were the least familiar.
Margaret reached for D.’s first novel on the far left of the top shelf.