Fire of the Prophet by Earl Merkel

Author:Earl Merkel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Thrillers
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

April 29

Geo​rgetown District

Washington D.C.

Katie Casey stepped into the kitchen, her hair disheveled and her feet bare. She noted the scarlet ember at the base of the Braun Drip-Matic on her counter, saw the carafe was still half full of the life-sustaining fluid, and almost sighed in relief.

Dad made coffee. Thank God.

“Dad?” No answer. She knew, with the certainty of a homeowner familiar with the sounds and rhythms of her own abode, that she was alone in the townhouse.

There was a note on the counter: “See you tonight, if Hotel Katie is still accepting guests?” It was propped against the two wine glasses, still dotted with water-drops and inverted on a paper towel.

I should invite him to move in, Katie told herself. He’d make a great housekeeper. Though I don’t know why he bothered to wash both glasses.

Once again, her brow furrowed as she remembered a late-night confab that could only be described as bizarre indeed.

She had heard that some fathers reacted to potential suitors of their daughters like a…well, like a Kodiak bear protecting the den. And it was only natural that the object of this not-quite-open animosity might respond—if not in kind, then certainly with the degree of not-quite-hostile reserve that Jeffrey Connor had displayed.

Even to the point of declining, somewhat curtly, Katie’s offer of the by then over-aired Chardonnay. It had puzzled Katie, but not deterred her from pouring her own drink, the first of several. She had needed all of them, given the surprising air of mutual tension she had sensed between the two men. She had even, after leaving the room, heard her boyfriend’s voice rise once; despite trying hard, in her own third-floor bedroom the words had been too muffled to hear.

Not the way I had planned the evening to go, she thought, with a rueful half-smile. Not the way I had planned to wake up, either: alone, mildly hungover, and with my father somewhere in…where did he go, anyway?

More to the point, what had happened after I finally gave up and went to bed? Katie mentally shrugged; despite the presence of her father in the house, she had half-expected Jeff to slip into her room anyway. He had not; perhaps a quarter-hour after she had retired, she had heard her front door close with a bang. A few minutes later, she heard the door of her guest room down the hall close, more softly but with the same air of finality.

This time, her sigh was audible.

She filled a cup, took a sip, and grimaced.

This isn’t my decaf. Dad must have been up and out early to pick it up. Guess that speaks to his frame-of-mind pretty clearly.

Katie Casey found herself gritting her teeth at the absurdity of it all.

Men, she thought. They’re worse than babies.

• • •

Had Katie known what had transpired after she climbed the steps the night before, she might have revised her opinion, if not in a favorable way.

“I’ve been alive too long to believe in coincidences, Connor,” Beck had said softly, though his voice was like brass.

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