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…
And then it struck him—the thought that had
eluded him last night. Those eyes… yellow with dark pupils… why
they had seemed vaguely familiar to him: They resembled the pair of
black-centered topazes on the necklaces worn by Kolabati and Kusum
and on the one he had retrieved for their grandmother!
He should have seen it before! Those two
yellow stones had been staring at him for days, just as the eyes
had stared at him last night. His spirits rose slightly. He didn’t
know what the resemblance meant, but now he had a link between the
Bahktis and the eyes, and perhaps the disappearances of Grace and
Nellie. It might well turn out to be pure coincidence, but at least
he had a path to follow. Jack knew what he’d be doing in the
morning.