Call After Midnight. Tess Gerritsen

His anger surprised her, yet somehow it also reassured her that he was human.

      “Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be there in half an hour. Look, Tim, something else has come up. Someone’s broken into Sarah’s apartment. No, nothing’s been touched. Can you get me the number of this FBI friend? I want to— Yeah, I’m sorry I got you into this, but…” He turned and gave Sarah a harassed look. “Okay! Half an hour. My trip to the woodshed. Meet you in Ambrose’s office.” He hung up with a scowl.

      “What’s wrong?” she asked.

      “So end eight glorious years with the State Department,” he muttered, furiously snatching up his overcoat and walking toward the door. “I’ve gotta go. Look, you’ve still got the chain. Use it. Better yet, stay with your friend tonight. And call the police. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

      She followed him into the hallway. “But Mr. O’Hara—”

      “Later!” he called over his shoulder as he stalked away. She heard his footsteps echo in the stairwell, and moments later the lobby door slammed shut.

      She closed the door and slid the chain in place, then slowly gazed around the room. Her stack of Advances in Microbiology lay on the coffee table. A vase of peonies dropped petals onto the bookshelf. Everything was as it should be.

      No, not quite. Something was different. If she could just put her finger on it…

      She was halfway across the room when it suddenly struck her—there was an empty space on the bookshelf. Her wedding picture was gone.

      A cry of anger welled up in her throat. For the first time since she’d returned to the apartment, she felt a sense of violation, of fury that someone had invaded her house. It had only been a photograph, a pair of happy faces beaming at a camera, yet it meant more to her than anything else she owned. The picture had been all she had left of Geoffrey. Even if her marriage had been mere illusion, she never wanted to forget how she had loved him. Of all the things in her apartment, why would anyone steal a photograph?

      Her heart skipped a beat as the phone rang. It was probably Abby, calling as promised. She picked up the receiver.

      The first sound she heard was the hiss of a long-distance connection. Sarah froze. For some reason she found herself staring at the empty shelf, at the spot where the photograph should have been.

      “Hello?” she said.

       “Come to me, Sarah. I love you.”

      A scream caught in her throat. The room was spinning wildly, and she reached out for support. The receiver slipped from her fingers and thudded on the carpet. This is impossible! she thought. Geoffrey is dead....

      She scrambled on the floor for the receiver, scrambled to hear the voice of what could only be a ghost.

      “Hello? Hello? Geoffrey!” she screamed.

      The long-distance hiss was gone. There was only silence and then, a few seconds later, the hum of the dial tone.

      But she had heard enough. Everything that had happened in the past two weeks faded away as if it were a nightmare remembered in the light of day. None of it had been real. The voice she’d just heard, the voice she knew so well—that was real.

      Geoffrey was alive.