Now You See Her Linda Howard(60)

The face was much more difficult, the expression not one she had ever seen. The late summer dawn crept closer as she painstakingly filled in a lovely face that had turned ashen, dark eyes open and glazed in death, lipsticked mouth slack. The studio was already filling with light when she methodically put her brushes into a can of turpentine, capped the tubes of paint, and returned to bed as quietly as she had left it.

The sun was streaming brightly in the window when Sweeney woke. She was huddled in a tight ball, her arms wrapped around herself in an unconscious effort to conserve heat. The chill was incredible, colder and deeper than it had ever been before. She was shaking so violently the bed trembled.

Richard. She needed Richard.

Whimpering, she managed to crawl to the side of the bed. The red numerals on the digital clock were dimmed by the bright light, but they were undoubtedly a one, a zero, a three, and a four. Ten-thirty-four.

Why hadn't Richard called?

He should have called. If she didn't call him, then he called her. How fast their routine had been established! She had come to rely on him even faster. His absence shook her, rattled a newborn security that she was just beginning to believe.

"Richard," she whispered, as if she could call him to her. Her voice was thin and weak.

Don't panic, don't panic, she thought. She could do this. She wasn't likely to die, she reassured herself; she just thought that she would. Whatever weird rules governed this psychic stuff, she had never heard that practicing it killed off the practitioner. Not that she'd had time to research clairvoyance or anything like that; she had concentrated on ghosts. Maybe a psychic only got one shot, like a male praying mantis.

Call Richard. Maybe he overslept. He had probably been out late on that business dinner.

She reached for the bedside phone, but as she did a sickening certainty shot through her. The painting.

She was beginning to notice a trend: the more work she did, the colder she was when the reaction hit her. This was the coldest she had been.

During the night, she had put a face on the victim.

Urgency drove her to her feet. She stumbled to the studio, her coordination slow and clumsy. She had to know, she had to know now. Every second could count. Richard thought she did the work after the fact, but deep inside she wasn't certain, and that uncertainty kept her feet moving, even though they felt as if they didn't belong to her and didn't go quite where she wanted to place them. She wobbled across the room, wincing at the effort it took to move, at the deep internal aches that were beginning to make themselves felt.

Then she reached the painting, and wished she hadn't. She hung in front of it, blood roaring in her ears, shaking so hard she clenched her teeth to keep from breaking them.

Candra.

She stared at the canvas until her eyes hurt, hoping the features would suddenly rearrange themselves into someone else's. She was mistaken. She was seeing only a superficial likeness, and because Candra was so prominent in her life these days, naturally she jumped to that conclusion.

But the face was eerily accurate, with the photographic quality of a Gerhard Richter painting. And Sweeney knew she was very, very good at portraits.

Candra.

Oh God, oh God.

She didn't know Candra's number. It would be unlisted, because Candra had once said she never allowed her number to be published. The gallery. She slould be at the gallery, and Sweeney knew that number.

She made it to the living room and the cordless phone. But the phone rang and rang, and finally an answering machine picked up. Frustrated, Sweeney disconnected. Her hands shook so violently she dropped the phone, and when she bent to pick it up, her strength seemed to give out and she just kept going, down to the floor.

She landed on the phone, a hard plastic corner digging into her ribs. Groaning, she managed to sit up and cradled the phone in her lap while she punched in Richard's number.

One of his assistants answered, her voice strangely muted.

"This is S-Sweeney. Is Richard in?"



"I'm sorry, Ms. Sweeney, but he won't be in today." She hesitated, then said, "Mrs. Worth—Candra—

has been killed."

"No," Sweeney moaned, almost weeping.

"The housekeeper found the… the body when she arrived this morning. Mr. Worth is with the police right now."

She was crying after all, Sweeney discovered. She gulped, and in a thick voice said, "Tell Richard I c-called."

"I will, Ms. Sweeney, as soon as possible."

So Richard had been right; she couldn't help, couldn't stop anything. Sobbing, Sweeney rested her head on her drawn-up knees. What good was any of this, then, if she couldn't do anything about the horrors she painted? Why suffer this savage chill, when there was no opportunity to keep bad things from happening? There should be a payback, something to make this pain worthwhile.

Her leg muscles suddenly protested their prolonged tension and knotted into cramps so vicious she cried out. Panting, crying, she dug the heels of her hands into her thighs and stroked toward her knees, trying to knead the muscles into relaxing. Over and over she did it, but her muscles seem to knot again just behind the stroking motion.

Once she had seen a trainer rub a cramp out of the calf of a football player. He had used both hands in a back-and-forth motion. She held her breath to steady herself and placed both hands on one thigh. She could feel the knotted muscle between her palms. A half-cry of pain burst from her throat as she began that brisk washing motion, but within seconds the pain began to ebb, at least in that thigh.