If Looks Could Kill

“Madison, honey, you’re having a nightmare. You have to wake up. Madison, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She was soaked. She’d kicked the covers away. Darryl had his arms around her, and instinctively she clung to him in return.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked her.

“No, no, it was nothing. I’m okay. I, uh, thanks. Thanks, Darryl. You’re great.” She kissed him. But when he wanted to take it further, in his efforts to soothe her, she curled away from him, a nagging sensation of worry refusing to leave her.

Three days later, a message from one of Kyle’s buddies at the FBI on their answering machine told her that her dream had been real. Fallon had died as the result of complications from a virus, along with her premature, stillborn daughter. The funeral was Friday, in Manassas, Virginia.

Madison’s entire family attended the funeral. Her own father had always gotten along exceptionally well with Kyle and Rafe, and Jordan Adair and Roger Montgomery still remained friends. Darryl, naturally, attended with Madison.

Kyle looked like hell. He wasn’t quite twenty-six, but he’d already acquired a few silver strands of hair at his temple. His grief was terrible. Madison felt numb.

In church, she remained on her knees, head bowed, through most of the ceremony. She wondered if she might not be a terrible human being, if her jealousy might not have killed Fallon. The logical side of her brain tried to assure her that it couldn’t be so, but she still felt somehow responsible, and it was an incredibly bad feeling. She wanted to run away.

She had only a few moments alone with Kyle. He came to her while she was kneeling by the coffin during the family’s last viewing.

He knelt at her side, and she tried very hard not to cry while he adjusted the prayer book in his dead wife’s hands. “At the end, she told me that you knew,” he said suddenly. He stared at her in a way that gave her chills. “She said you were with us, that she was glad you were there. She told me I should look out after you.”

He wasn’t staring at her, though, as if he wanted to look after her. He was, in fact, staring at her as if she were a demon straight out of hell, as if he wished she would get as far away as possible from the beloved body of his wife.

Madison stared at him in return. “I have no idea what she meant,” she lied. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You have no idea?” he repeated. And his voice was deep, rumbling with a strange anger. “What kind of a witch are you, Madison?” she thought she heard him whisper. And she saw his hands, folded prayer-fashion over the coffin now, tighten. Tighten with power and anger. Then he stretched his fingers out, as if aware of his terrible tension. He stared at them, handsome face taut with grief, blue eyes glittering. His hands slowly began to clench again, as if he would like to wind them around her neck, as if he, too, wondered if she couldn’t somehow be responsible….

“No!” Madison whispered beneath her breath, then hurried from his side. She forced herself to go through the funeral and over to Kyle’s house, where friends and family gathered after the service. When she said goodbye to Kyle and Roger, who stood at his side, she said it with a new sense of finality.

Madison immediately changed her major from criminology to communications. She’d always avoided acting, because of her mother, and writing because of her father, but she discovered she had a flair for photography, and though she had avoided modeling because of Lainie, she found herself giving in to friends in the school of photography who needed help putting together portfolios for job interviews.

On a spring break trip to Las Vegas, she married Darryl. Nine months later to the day, she gave birth to Carrie Anne Hart.

Darryl went to work for an engineering firm in Fort Lauderdale. Madison did runway modeling and an occasional photographic shoot while being a mom and working on her own photography.

Two and a half years after their marriage, Darryl came home to find Madison in tears. He wanted to know what was wrong. There was nothing wrong, she said. She was wrong. Their marriage was wrong. He was wonderful, but she didn’t love him the way that she should.

Well, he wasn’t so wonderful, he told her. Then he admitted to having an affair with one of his file clerks.

Madison wasn’t sure why she was so furious, when she was appalled at herself for never having really loved Darryl. He wanted to patch things back together. He was so contrite that it was terrible.

In the end, oddly enough, they managed to part as friends. Good friends.

But Darryl accepted a job offer in the D.C. area. He needed to start over; she understood.

When all three of them could manage it conveniently, Madison saw to it that Carrie Anne went to stay with her father for a few days to a week. On those occasions, Madison began to accept more and more modeling jobs. While she was off on location in the Keys on one of them, she and some of the other models got a little giddy on a drink the bartenders were calling a Storm Front. She was surprised to find herself singing on stage with the hotel’s poolside band, and even more surprised to discover that she was good.

She was alarmed when one of the photographers showed her a few of the pictures he had taken while she was performing.

She looked exactly as Lainie had looked before her death. Long, thick auburn hair, large, bright blue eyes. She was taller, about five-foot-eight, but her face was Lainie’s classic oval, her nose, her mouth…just like Lainie’s. She had loved her mother, even though she hadn’t wanted to grow up to be her, wild, headstrong, going through husbands like toilet paper, heedless of the feelings of others….

Joey King, leader of the hotel band, wanted her to take a job with them. He was young, excited.

“We’re on the brink of something really good happening. I’ve sold some of my songs, we’ve had the big music people down to see us—”

Madison finished her drink and stood. “Joey, I don’t want to be a performer. I have a daughter. I have a career that’s going better than I actually wanted it to.”

“Because you look like your mother,” he said.

She stared at him, and he shrugged.

“Sorry, but she was famous. I’ve seen lots and lots of pictures of her, and you do look just like her. Is that why you don’t want to perform?”

“Joey, honestly, I just don’t want to go out on the road—”

“All right, all right, no going on the road, I promise.”

“Groups can make it or break it on the road,” she reminded him.

“I have a wife and two kids myself,” he told her. “Lots of groups have survived nicely just by doing local gigs and being studio musicians, and we have some great studios here. My sizzling desire for fame and fortune has been somewhat dampened by the reality of life,” he added dryly. “So, would you do a few demos with us? Would you sing live with us now and then, when we’ve got some of the suits in the audience?”

His flames might have been dampened, but he was still a determined dreamer. And she liked him. He was blunt and honest, not to mention she’d had fun singing with the band.

She shrugged. “Sure,” she told him. “Sure…”

Madison closed her eyes for a moment, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. Time to stop thinking about the past. Time to get moving.

Life had settled into a pattern for her, and she was happy, she told herself firmly

Well, okay, maybe not completely happy—she was too restless to be happy. She was a young divorced mom living in the same city as most of her family, so she had people who loved her around her—yet she was independent.

There were still the dreams, and when they came, she called Jimmy. But the dreams weren’t all that frequent, and she was resigned to having them. Sometimes she would go with Jimmy to a crime scene, and sometimes she was able to get a feel for something, or have a flash of insight. She was seldom tormented by the visions.

As she had been today.

She straightened her hair and skirt, and caught sight of herself in the mirror again. “Don’t whine, Madison! If you’re not happy as a little lark, at least you’re basically content in life!”

But her reflection remained grave. She felt restless. Uneasy.

As if, suddenly, things were going to come full circle.

As if the past itself were going to come back and haunt her life….

She gave herself a serious shake. She was working tonight. And come Monday, she would help Jimmy. She’d helped him before. Tonight it was time to have some dinner with Carrie Anne and her dad, if he was around, and get going.

Yet as she started for her daughter’s room, she still couldn’t quite shake an uncomfortable feeling. Not just the fear and pain the dream had evoked for a stranger.

An unease that curled around her heart…

Much, much closer to home.