Crazy in Chicago (11 page)

She shook her head and reached for the door. No. She'd done enough. What would be, would be.

* * *

The rhythmic motion of arms cutting through the water, the repetitive nature of swimming lap after lap in the apartment building's indoor pool, and his growing exhaustion, encouraged Cody. He touched the side and executed a racing turn. Forty-six.

Four laps later, he stopped, done in. He propped himself against the side of the pool and reveled in the relief seeping through him. If this didn't make him sleep, nothing would.

Roberta stood on the deck at the other end of the pool, preparing to dive. Her simple, plum-colored, one-piece suit complimented her high breasts, small waist and full hips. Plump wasn't the word he'd use to describe her.

He watched as she executed a clean dive and performed a competent crawl through the water toward him. He'd been surprised when she hadn't talked about Madame Carabini's unsettling suggestions on the way home. He'd had trouble thinking of anything else, however ridiculous they'd been. Erik and Allie linked to his disappearance. He snorted.

Roberta stopped beside him. She hung onto the side of the pool and slicked her wet hair back. Drops of water hung like dew drops on her dark lashes. “Had enough?”

“Yes. Fifty laps is more than enough for me. Let's go.”

Cody hauled himself out of the pool. Roberta followed. After drying themselves off and donning robes, they headed upstairs.
 

When they reached her door, Roberta turned to him. “Coming in for some warm milk?”

“I thought you'd never ask.” From her serious expression, Cody suspected the milk was a ploy to get him to discuss what the psychic had said. He knew it wasn't a ploy to get him into her bed.

He followed her inside. The living room exuded a comfortable, lived-in feeling. He hung his towel over the back of a chair and followed her into the kitchen. He could see himself spending a lot of time here.

Roberta busied herself preparing the milk. The white terry cloth robe, wrapped primly around her, accentuated her golden skin, and set Cody's mind to wondering the best way to get her out of it. But she had other things on her mind.

“So what did you think?”

“About what?” Cody pretended obtuseness.

“About what Madame Carabini said.” Roberta grimaced.

“Bunk,” he said flatly. “I think it's all bunk.”

Roberta sighed. “But what about the light? We didn't tell her about that. And she certainly acted frightened.”

“Acted is probably the operative word.” Cody folded his arms across his chest. “The lady's been doing this sort of thing for a long time. She's a master at it. The light was a lucky guess.”

The microwave beeped. Roberta retrieved the mugs of milk, stirred them, and handed one to Cody. She leaned against the counter. “Are you going to talk to Erik? Investigate his background?”

“Why would I bother?” Cody took a sip of milk. “It's all foolishness.”

“But you don't have anything else to go on. What have you got to lose?”

“It's just too weird, too . . . ephemeral. Blue lights. Strange, cold places. Voices, or maybe not voices. Feelings and impressions. I can't believe it has anything to do with me.”

“What does it matter if it's weird or not? Not sleeping and feeling sick are weird, too. Besides, there's nothing else to pursue.”

Cody sipped his milk and tried to close his mind to her questions, the same questions that plagued him whether he liked it or not. He set down his mug. “I don't like weird stuff,” he said finally. “I'm a reporter. I like facts and figures, things I can see and touch.”

“But it's all you've got left.”

He shrugged. “That may be right, but I don't choose to pursue it. I'm not interested in tall tales and weird possibilities.”

Roberta's brow puckered. She looked at him as if he were a puzzle she had to figure out. Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Don't tell me you're superstitious!”

He shook his head, unwilling to discuss a subject that struck far too close to home. “I've just had more than my fair share of weird, that's all.”

“What do you mean?”

Cody didn't want to explain. But as he looked at Roberta, her face a picture of tender concern, his resistance started to melt. She seemed to want to know, to care what he meant and why. Ever since he'd returned to work after his disappearance, apparently healthy and normal, no one had seemed to care about the demons that made him run. No one, at least, until Roberta. But was it an illusion?

He wavered and then, won over by her sincerity, decided. “Okay,” he said. He took another sip of milk, then looked past her to the kitchen cupboards. “I'll tell you. My father was a fairly normal father at first. But when I was around eight, he started to change. Little things at first. He bought crystals. He grew his hair and wore a pony tail, gave up his suits for jeans and sandals or flowing robes. He started meditating and cooking brown rice and tofu.”

He paused, remembering what it had been like for him and his mother. As always, with the memories came the fierce pain of his first and sharpest disillusionment. He swallowed and plowed on.

“It was all right at first. Funny, even. My mother used to tease him about what the neighbors would think. But as he got deeper into mysticism, into unusual avenues of thought, everything started to change for the worse. He claimed he had visions. He stopped washing. He had a direct line to God, or should I say a whole army of gods that he personally named. He said he was in touch with other dimensions, other beings. Eventually they became more important to him than my mother and me. He didn't come home at night. He quit his job. He and my mother had terrible fights. He refused to get help. Finally, one day, he just up and left.”

Lost in memories, Cody stopped. Pangs of embarrassment and bewilderment assaulted him as he pictured, as clear as if it had happened yesterday, his father stopping to talk to him and his friends. Pre-adolescent boys, gawky and uncertain, they'd guffawed nervously and looked away while his father had waved his arms and launched into rambling monologues about the meaning of life and his astral travels. Cody remembered wishing a hole would open in the floor and swallow him. How he'd tried to distance himself from his father. And yet, his father's eventual desertion had devastated him.

“Your father. Where is he now?”

Cody blinked. Roberta looked horrified, and indignant, like an avenging angel ready to seek out and throttle his father.

Cody smiled faintly. Her passionate response was endearing, but unnecessary. He shook his head. “I don't know. India, maybe. I think he's a member of some new sect there. Don't know. Don't care.”

He sipped his milk, then set it down on the counter again and looked at Roberta intently. “I decided when he left that I would never be like him. I've tried to be the exact opposite of him in every way.”

He grimaced and rolled his shoulders. “But look what's happening now. I disappear. No one can explain it, not even the police. Suddenly, a year later, I can't sleep. I feel sick. I see blue lights, haunting blue lights. Worse, I have this damn assignment on UFOs, one which puts me in touch with a lot of really strange people, people who remind me of my father. I don't like it. I'm starting to think I'm turning into the one person I never wanted to be: My father. Either that or I'm slowly losing my mind.”

The admission out, he picked up his mug and headed for the living room patio doors. He stared blindly outside. He'd voiced the fear he'd never told anyone, the fear gnawing at him more and more as each sleepless night and nauseous day passed. The fear intensified by the flashes of blue light and the comments of Madame Carabini. The fear fed by Roberta's constant probing.

He didn't know how long he stood there, alone with his demons, trying to convince himself he'd never be like his father. Suddenly he felt the feather touch of Roberta's hand on his arm. He turned to face her.

She tilted her chin and looked up at him. Her beautiful, blue eyes brimmed with tenderness. “I don't think you're weird at all,” she whispered.

When he said nothing, she repeated her statement. “I don't think there's anything weird about you. I see a man who's searching. A man who's strong enough and brave enough to look for the answers, and will face them when he finds them. There's nothing weird about that.”

He looked down at her, moved by the gentleness, by the conviction and belief he saw shining in her eyes. No one had looked at him like that, for a long time. No one had believed in him like that.

He drank in the caring in her eyes, letting it seep inside and fill him with wonder. Silently, he moved to the sideboard and set down his mug. He needed to hold her in his arms, to—

 
His gaze lighted on a file lying on the sideboard and half-hidden by magazines. He started to move away when something drew him back. It was the bold label in black marker, a label reading, “Disappearances, Walker C.”

Puzzled, he picked up the file folder. “What's this?”

In a flash Roberta crossed the room and reached for the folder. “Just a file,” she said.

He dodged her. “It's got my name on it.” He opened it and started to flip through the contents.

“Yes, but . . .”

The file contained clippings on his disappearance, right from the original announcement through to his re-appearance. And they were originals, not the photocopies he'd given her to read the other day. She—or someone—had highlighted parts of the stories with yellow marker.

“You usually keep files on your neighbors?” Cody looked at her from under raised brows. His mouth twisted.

She flushed. “No. I . . .”

“These aren't copies. They're originals. So you had them long before you'd ever met me.” He tossed the file back onto the sideboard. “What I want to know is why? And why you didn't tell me the other day you already had them?”

She fiddled with the chain around her neck, pulling it back and forth. Finally, without looking at him, she responded in a small voice. “Ever since I began working for SUFOW, I've kept my own files on unusual disappearances, ones for which there were no obvious explanations. I was looking for clues, for the possibility of—”

“Of what?” He cut her off. “The possibility that I might have been abducted by aliens? Is that it?”

Anger spurted up inside him, anger that he'd been used, anger that her sweet concern had all been a ruse. Anger that he'd been stupid enough to confuse affection with manipulation.

She stared at him in silence, then looked away. “Yes.”

“Oh great.” He reacted with fury, a fury heightened by hurt pride. He'd just spilled his guts, something he never did. He'd been about to take her into his arms and tell her how much she meant to him. And now this.

“And all this time I thought you were interested in me, if not as a lover, at least as a friend,” he ground out.

Bitterness surged through him. He looked at her with hard eyes. “Now I discover I'm just a specimen, another case for one of your boss's crazy books. Is that why you wouldn't got out with me?”

“It's not like that. I wouldn't . . .”

He grabbed his towel and headed to the door. “Never mind. I can imagine.”

The door slammed after him.

 

Chapter 6

 

In the glimmer of light from the stars filtering through the sliding doors, Roberta reached for the phone and began picking out the digits. Halfway through the number, she paused, then replaced the receiver in its cradle. She couldn't call Cody now. It was after midnight. He probably wasn't asleep, but what if he was? She'd hate to wake him, especially now.

She stood up and pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the door. She should have gone after Cody as soon as he'd left two hours ago. But to do what? That was the problem to which she had no answer. To tell him that she cared about him? To tell him she was sorry that she hadn't told him the truth? To tell him that he was more than a potential ticket to the first real abduction case of her own?

She sighed and turned away from the door. She crumpled the hem of her silk boxers in her hands. The problem was that she did care. She did like him, far more than any researcher should care for a potential subject. She hated to see him suffering from insomnia and nausea, and the uncertainty they bred. She wanted to help him.

None of which was helped by the physical attraction side of the equation. Her pulse speeded up every time Cody came near, for that matter, every time she thought of him. Her body tensed in delicious anticipation of a touch, a kiss that shouldn't happen. Her insides melted when he smiled at her.

But, dammit, she still thought there was a good chance he'd been abducted by aliens. Certainly pursuing and proving it would be good for her, bolstering her reputation and giving her the credibility she craved, with Garnet and everyone else who counted in the field. After this evening's visit to Madame Carabini, an alien abduction appeared more likely than ever.