Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(103)

I finally went off to sleep. It was almost morning. Another day was starting. It really doesn’t stop.





Chapter 120


T HERE WERE still two mysteries that had to be solved, or at least dealt with in a better way. There was the mystery of Casanova, and who he was. And there was the one featuring Kate and myself.

Kate and I visited the Outer Banks in North Carolina for six days at the end of August. We stayed near a picturesque resort town called Nags Head.

Kate’s clumsy metal walker was gone, though she did carry around a knobby, old-fashioned hickory cane at times. Mostly she practiced karate exercises with the hardwood cane. She used it as a karate stick on the beach, twirling the cane around her body and head with great dexterity and skill.

Watching Kate, I thought that she looked almost luminescent. She was back in good form. Her face was close to the way it had been, except for the dent. “It’s my stubborn streak,” she told me, “and it’s permanent until the day I die.”

It was an idyllic time in many ways. Everything seemed just right for us. Kate and I felt that we both deserved a holiday, and much more.

We ate breakfast together every morning on a porch made from long gray planks, which overlooked the shimmering Atlantic. (I made breakfast on my mornings to cook; Kate went to the Nags Head market and brought home sticky buns and Bavarian cream doughnuts on her days.) We went for long, long walks along the shoreline. We surf-cast for blues, and cooked the fresh fish right there on the beach. Sometimes, we just watched the shiny boats patrolling the water. We took a day trip to watch the crazy-ass hang gliders off the high dunes in Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

We waited on Casanova. We were daring him to come after us. So far he wasn’t interested, at least he didn’t seem to be.

I thought of the book and movie The Prince of Tides. Kate and I were a little bit like Tom Wingo and Susan Lowenstein, only mixed together in a different, though equally complex, way. Lowenstein had brought out Tom Wingo’s need to feel and give love, I remembered. Kate and I were learning everything about each other, the important things and we were both quick learners.

Early one August morning, we waded into the clear, deep blue water in front of the house. Most of the beach community wasn’t up yet. A lone brown pelican was skimming the water.

We held hands above the low waves. Everything was picture-postcard perfect. So why was I feeling as if there was a gaping hole where my heart ought to be? Why was I still obsessed with Casanova?

“You’re thinking bad thoughts, aren’t you?” Kate bumped me hard with her hip. “You’re on vacation. Think vacation thoughts.”

“Actually, I was thinking very good thoughts, but they made me feel bad,” I told her.

“I know that crazy-ass song,” she said. She gave me a hug, to reassure me that we were in this thing together, whatever it was that we were in.

“Let’s take a run. I’ll race you to Coquina Beach,” she said. “Ready, set, prepare yourself to lose.”

We started to jog. Kate showed no signs of a limp. The pace picked up. She was so strong in all ways. We both were. At the end, we were running nearly full-out and we collapsed in a wall of silver-blue surf. I didn’t want to lose Kate, I was thinking as I ran. I didn’t want this to end. I didn’t know what to do about it.

On a warm, breezy Saturday night, Kate and I lay on an old Indian blanket on the beach. We were talking on half a hundred subjects at one sitting. We had already feasted on roast Carolina duckling with blackberry sauce that we’d made together. Kate had on a sweatshirt that read: Trust me, I’m a doctor.

“I don’t want this to end, either,” Kate said with a heavy sigh. Then, “Alex, let’s talk about some of the reasons we both believe this has to end.”

I shook my head and smiled at her characteristic directness. “Oh, this will never really end, Kate. We’ll always have this time. It’s one of those special treasures you get every once in a while in life.”

Kate grabbed and held my arm with both her hands. Her deep brown eyes were intense. “Then why does it have to end here?”

We both knew some, though not all, of the reasons.

“We’re too much alike. We’re both obsessively analytical. We’re both so logical that we know the half-dozen reasons this won’t work out. We’re stubborn and we’re strong-willed. Eventually, we would go boom, ” I said in a half-teasing tone.

“Sounds like the old self-fulfilling prophecy to me,” Kate said.

We both knew I was telling the truth, though. Sad truth? Is there such a thing? I guess that there is.

“We just might go boom,” Kate said, and she smiled sweetly. “Then we couldn’t even be friends. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing you as my friend. That’s still part of it for me. I can’t risk a big loss yet.”

“We’re both physically too strong. We’d kill each other eventually, Nidan,” I told her. I was tying to lighten things up.

She squeezed me a little tighter. “Don’t make jokes about it. Don’t make me laugh, damn you, Alex. I want this to be our sad time at least. It’s so sad I might cry. Now I am. See that?”

“It is sad,” I said to Kate. “It’s the saddest thing.”

We lay on the scratchy wool beach blanket and held each other until the morning. We slept under the stars and listened to the steady beat of the Atlantic. Everything seemed gently touched with the brush of eternity that night on the Outer Banks. Well, almost everything.