God help her, this was the man she wanted.

16

Jack lay back in the recliner and tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Gia had taken him completely by surprise tonight. They had made love twice—furiously the first time, more leisurely the second—and now he was alone, more satisfied and content than he could ever remember. For all her knowledge and inventiveness and seemingly inexhaustible passion, Kolabati hadn’t left him feeling like this. This was special. He had always known that he and Gia belonged together. Tonight proved it. There had to be a way for them to get back together and stay that way.

After a long time of drowsy, sated snuggling, Gia had gone back upstairs, saying she didn’t want Vicky to find them both down here in the morning. She had been warm, loving, passionate… everything she hadn’t been the past few months. It baffled him, but he wasn’t fighting it. He must have done something right. Whatever it was, he wanted to keep doing it.

The change in Gia wasn’t all that was keeping him awake, however. The events of the night had sent a confusion of facts, theories, guesses, impressions, and fears whirling through his mind.

Vicky’s description of the yellow eyes had shocked him. Until then he had almost been able to convince himself that the eyes outside his window had been some sort of illusion. But first had come Gia’s casual mention of the putrid smell in Nellie’s room—it had to be the same odor that had invaded his apartment Friday and Saturday night. Then the mention of the eyes. The two phenomena together on two different nights in two different locations could not be mere coincidence.

There was a link between what had happened last night at his apartment and Nellie’s disappearance from here tonight. But Jack was damned if he knew what it was. Tonight he had looked for more of the herbal liquid he had found in Grace’s room last week. He had been disappointed when he could not find any. He couldn’t say why he thought so, and he certainly couldn’t say how, but he was sure the odor, the eyes, the liquid, and the disappearances of the two old women were connected.

Idly, he picked up a piece of chocolate from the candy dish beside his chair. He really wasn’t hungry but he wouldn’t mind something sweet right now. Trouble with these things was you never knew what was inside. There was always the old thumb-puncture-on-the-bottom trick, but that didn’t seem right on a missing person’s candy. He debated popping it into his mouth, then decided against it. He dropped it back in the bowl and returned to his musings.

If he had found some more of the liquid among Nellie’s effects, he would have had one more piece of the puzzle. He wouldn’t have been any closer to a solution but at least he would have had a firmer base to work from. Jack reached down and checked the position of the little Semmerling where he had squeezed it and its ankle holster between the seat cushion and armrest of the recliner. It was still handy. He closed his eyes and thought of other eyes… yellow eyes…