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“You’re sure?” Simon said.
Amber nodded. “He set up thesechess puzzles. He…”
“We need to sweep the apartment,”Simon said, his gun already in his hand. Amber managed to recover from thesense of horror that she felt at Colm intruding on her life like that for asecond time long enough to do the same.
Together, the two of them movedthrough Amber’s apartment, checking every space, every possible spot in whichColm might be hidden, making sure that it truly was empty. Amber’s hearthammered in her chest as she did so, wondering if they were about to take onthe serial killer there and then.
“Clear,” Simon said at last. Eventhen, Amber saw him searching.
“What are you looking for?” Amberasked.
“Colm likes traps. I want to makesure he hasn’t left anything behind that might hurt you,” Simon said.
The thought of that made tensionrun through Amber’s body as she and Simon went through her apartment carefully,checking for any sign of devices that shouldn’t be there.
Yet, Amber’s attention was slowlystarting to drift back towards the chess boards. They were the things he’d mostobviously altered in her apartment when he’d broken in. They were the messagethat he was trying to send her, and she suspected that Colm was more interestedin challenging her mind than simply striking at her with a bomb or a gun.
Amber rushed over to the chessboards, remembering the one he’d left with Sinead. She focused on the puzzles,trying to solve them. Each was much simpler than the one he’d left with Sinead:long checkmates but ultimately straightforward, once Amber saw that the trickeach time was to sacrifice the queen. She wrote out the moves, then got out herlaptop, trying to input the sequence the way she had last time. She tried onepuzzle first, then the other, then both combined.
Nothing yielded any results.
“This has to do something,” Ambersaid. “It has to. Or maybe the puzzle is meant to be symbolic. Maybe the queenis meant to represent my mother, or-”
“Or maybe he’s just trying to getinto your head,” Simon said, taking hold of Amber’s arms and leading her awayfrom the board. “Maybe he knows that the only way to beat you is to get youthinking in circles, worrying about what’s going to happen next.”
“Well, it’s working,” Amber said.“I don’t know if I can do this, Simon. I don’t know if I can outthink him. If Ican keep everybody safe.”
“Amber, you’re the most brilliantperson I’ve ever met,” Simon said. “If anyone can outthink Colm, it’s you. Andwhat he thinks is your biggest disadvantage is your biggest strength. You havepeople around you. People who care. People who will help you.”
It was exactly what Amber needed tohear in that moment. More than that, she was suddenly aware of just how closeto her Simon was. She was still held by him, and it was easy to move evencloser, doing it almost automatically, without thinking.
She kissed him without thinking,too, and after an instant, he kissed her back with the kind of passion thatthreatened to sweep both of them away completely. They were wrapped up in oneanother’s bodies for those seconds, so that Amber barely knew where she endedand Simon began. When they finally pulled apart from one another, she wasgasping for breath.
A part of her wanted to move in tokiss him again, but she knew that if she did so, it wouldn’t stop there. Thekiss would turn into more, would carry them both all the way into the bedroom.
Simon seemed to realize the samething in the same moment. He took a step back from her, as if the distance werethe only thing stopping him from crushing Amber to him again.
“I was going to suggest that Ishould stay and watch for danger,” Simon said.
“You could still stay,” Amberreplied. “On the couch.”
It took an effort for her to addthose last three words.
Simon smiled. "Amber, we bothknow that it wouldn't be that. Not now. And we're in the middle of a case. Wecan't, we have to focus.”
Amber knew he had a point, eventhough she still wanted to ignore that point completely. If Simon stayed there,they would end up in bed together, and while a part of her thought thatwas the best possible thing that could happen, she also knew how complicated itwould make things for them. They had not one, but two, killers to catch. Thiswasn’t the moment for either of them to give in to what they felt, no matterhow tempting it was.
Simon took another step back. “I’msorry, Amber, I’ll see you in the morning.”
He pretty much fled her apartment,which left Amber feeling as if there had been a whole conversation there leftunspoken between them. At the same time, she knew that it was probably saferthat way.
She shut the door carefully afterSimon, going around and checking her apartment thoroughly before she dared toset her gun down beside her bed. She needed to get some sleep. She and Simonhad found a lead in the astrology case, thanks to the pendant they’d found.
In the morning, they wouldhopefully find more answers, but for now, Amber needed to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Puzzle pieces moved around Amber.Everywhere she looked, there were fragments of puzzles, giant wooden blocksshifting in interlocking patterns that didn’t quite seem to make sense.
