Loosening up a little, Nick looked up and down her body, from the top of her head to her toes. After all, she had invited him to. “Not exactly,” he said. “It’s not that you look too old to be a student. You seem too focused.”
“That’s the last thing I am.” Sara’s laugh was genuine, and Nick felt himself relax even more. “Just say it, I look too old to be a student.”
He refused the bait and pushed the compliment another way. “Too polished anyway.”
“I’m an actress,” Sara said. “Well, off and on, anyway. Off right now. That’s why I’m back here in Seattle.”
“You’re from Seattle originally?”
“My parents live in Bellevue.”
“You’re staying with them?”
Sara shrugged. “For a while. Maybe I’ll get my own place one of these days. Or maybe I’ll just head back down to LA.”
“You’ve got something to head down there for? A project, I mean—a movie?”
Sara shook her head. “I’ve been lucky enough, I guess. But I haven’t pursued it as much as I should. I’m thinking maybe I’ll do something else entirely. Get into business, I don’t know.”
Nick’s cell phone vibrated, and he glanced down at its screen. Recognizing Laura Daly’s personal line from the Telegraph building, he remembered the staff meeting this morning, the first one for the month of October, when assignments would be handed out by the editors. The senior editor would no doubt be wondering where he was. “Excuse me,” Nick said. “I’ve got to take this.” He pressed a button on his phone and raised it to his ear. “Laura?”
“Were you planning to grace us with your presence, Nick?”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Nick threw a quick, embarrassed smile at Sara.
“Don’t sweat it. We’ll talk when you come in. Listen, you somewhere close? There’s something I’d like you to do now. A couple of blocks from here. It can’t wait. You got a pen?”
Nick cradled the phone against his shoulder and searched through his bag for pen and paper. After scrawling down an address, he snapped the phone shut and looked apologetically at Sara. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, really? That’s too bad.” When Sara glanced down at her watch, Nick noticed a gold and platinum Rolex loose on her wrist, its face set with diamonds. Not exactly the watch of a struggling actress.
“I wish I didn’t have to. It’s work.” He closed the lid of his laptop and gathered his belongings from the table, scooping them into the soft leather shoulder bag he carried as he pushed his chair back from the table.
“Well, I enjoyed meeting you, Nick.”
“It was good to meet you, too,” Nick said, in a hurry.
“You’re not forgetting something?”
Nick stopped to make certain he had grabbed all his things from the tabletop, then looked up at Sara, meeting her friendly gaze. He wasn’t certain what she was referring to, and his expression reflected his puzzlement.
“I thought maybe you were going to ask me out.” Sara’s tone was playful, but she dropped her eyes, bashful.
Nick ran his fingers across his unshaven cheeks as he tried to assess her sincerity. He hadn’t been expecting the approach.
“I have a weakness for shy guys,” Sara said, as if she were answering an unspoken question.
“I thought the pictures might have frightened you off.”
Sara laughed sweetly. “The pictures are why I’m here.”
Nick measured her for a few more seconds, once again intrigued by this woman. There was more to her than her pretty face, he thought. Her appearance camouflaged it at first, but then, as much as her beauty validated her, the juxtaposition served too to heighten the observation. She was dangerous. At last, Nick relaxed into a smile. “I suppose I could ask you out for a coffee. But we’ve done that already, haven’t we?”
Sara met his eyes. “It’ll have to be something more, then.”
Repeating the innocent words in his mind, Nick felt a sudden thrill pass through him, taking his breath away. “That sounds promising.”
“Give him an inch and he takes a yard. I meant dinner.”
“Really?”
“You sound tentative. You don’t want me to see who you are after dark?”
“Now you’re just mocking me. I’m shy, that’s all. You said it yourself. That’s what makes me so irresistible.”
“You go to work now,” Sara said. “Here’s my number.” She reached across the table and took Nick’s phone from him, tapping a few numbers onto the display and then saving the number under her name. “Give me a call. I’m free tonight, if that’s not too soon.”
“No,” Nick said, wondering how he would be able to wait that long. “It’s not too soon. I’m free tonight, too.”
Sara watched him as Nick found his way through the crowded coffee shop to the exit. It was an unguarded moment for her, and her face reflected what she felt inside. Had he turned back around, her wistful expression would have confused him. Standing behind him as she had worked up her nerve to approach him, looking over his shoulder at the photographs this self-possessed man had taken that morning at the crime scene, Sara hadn’t expected to like him. Not like this. Not this much.
chapter 4
After leaving the coffee shop, Nick headed downtown. He parked his car at the Telegraph, then cut back a few blocks on foot to Fourth Avenue to stake out the address the senior editor had given him over the phone. The rain had let up, but a drizzle was soaking through his clothes. Across the street from his target, he took his camera from his bag, checking its settings as he killed time, brushing water off its lens, scoping out the neighborhood. A few pedestrians were wandering in and out of some of the storefronts, but for the most part this section of town was abandoned in the middle of the day. A wind whipped up for a few seconds, scattering cold raindrops in its wake. Nick turned his back to it, waiting for it to die.
The address belonged to a nondescript three-story brick building. A massage parlor occupied the second and third floors, above a rundown store selling vitamins and health supplements. A small neon sign glowed feebly in a curtained window on the second floor, spelling out MASSAGE in dusty red letters. The heavy blackout curtains in the windows had been sitting undisturbed so long they were streaked and faded. One or two had come loose from their rods and had been tacked back into place with nails.
After ten minutes, the flimsy, worn door leading up to the second floor hadn’t been disturbed. Except for the glow of neon, there wasn’t any sign of life upstairs. The clerk in the vitamin shop on the ground floor had spotted Nick, leaning against a street lamp half hidden by an old and rusty, junked car, and every so often the greasy-haired man would glance at him, trying to figure out what he was doing there. Nick looked up at the sky, measuring the light. It was dark, but he wasn’t going to have to worry about the resolution of the photographs. He made a few adjustments to the camera’s settings, then snapped a picture, examining it for shadow on the LCD screen. Satisfied, he raised the camera back to his eye and took a few pictures of the neon sign and the front door.
Some minutes later, an unmarked squad car slowed in front of the parlor before continuing down the street. Nick watched it slow again at the end of the block and come to a stop at the curb in front of a fire hydrant. The brake lights glowed bright red, seeming to streak the heavy air with their color, then went dark. All four doors swung open. Nick zoomed the camera in a few notches,