“Since I’m feeling safe…”

Coltrane wondered what she meant to say.

“Why don’t I stay down out of sight until we get to your place?”

“It’s a long drive,” Coltrane said.

“It won’t be if we keep talking the way we are. Tell me about your photographs.”

11

“ALL CLEAR,” Coltrane said as his garage door rumbled shut.

“Ouch,” Tash said. “I’m going to need a couple of aerobics classes to get my back into shape after this.” She rose, massaged her spine, and got out of the car. But it was obvious that she wasn’t that creaky. An upward stretch of her arms accentuated her trim body. She had changed from her loose-fitting sweatsuit to a pair of blue slacks, a gray turtleneck sweater, and a jacket whose color resembled the raspberry tint of what she had previously been wearing – obviously a favorite color; it added a depth to her dark eyes and hair. When she stretched, she turned modestly away, so as not to emphasize her breasts in front of him, Coltrane assumed. No matter, that upward stretch and a slight twist this way and then that were a pleasure to behold, her body assuming the dancer’s grace she had exhibited when he first saw her, although Coltrane continued to have the uncanny feeling that he had first seen her long before that.

Watching in wonder, he suddenly found himself in darkness.

“What happened?” Tash asked in surprise.

“The garage opener’s overhead light is supposed to stay on for a minute after the door goes down, but it’s been cutting out much sooner. I’ll go over and turn on the switch.”

Footsteps scraping on concrete, he inched through the darkness and approached where he estimated the door to the house was. Reaching blindly, he touched the door and groped toward the switch on the right, all at once flinching from a shock, seeing a spark as a hand brushed past his and reached for the same switch.

“Oh my God,” Tash said, “I’m sorry.”

“Whoa. You really do give off static electricity.”

“I thought you were having trouble finding the switch. I was looking in that direction when the lights went off, so I figured it would be easier for me to… I really am sorry.”

When Coltrane turned on the light, he discovered he was startlingly close to her. Again, her beauty amazed him. Her subtle perfume filled his nostrils. Trying not to look flustered, he unlocked the door to the house and opened it, guiding her in. “Can I get you something?” He hoped that she wouldn’t notice that his voice was slightly unsteady. “More wine? Coffee? Something to eat? It’s close to dinnertime. I could make some-”

“The photographs.” Tash ignored the house and its unique furnishings, fixing her gaze on him.

“Of course. They’re the reason you’re here, after all.” He led the way downstairs, unlocked the vault, and pushed open its metal door. Cool air cascaded over them.

Tash hugged herself.

“That’s the way I felt at first,” Coltrane said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Will I?” Tash looked around at the austere shelves and blinked from the overhead glare.

Crossing the vault with her, he had never felt so aware of being alone with a woman.

En route, he had explained how he had happened to find the chamber. But she still wasn’t prepared when he freed the catches and pulled out the section of shelves, and she certainly wasn’t prepared when she entered the chamber and came face-to-face with her look-alike. It might have been the garish overhead lights that caused what happened next, but more likely, Coltrane thought, it was blood draining from Tash’s face that made her look abruptly pale.

She wavered. Afraid that she was going to collapse, Coltrane reached to catch her, then stopped the impulse when she regained her composure, standing rigidly still. He could only imagine the turmoil she must be suffering. For his part, as he looked from Tash toward the wall before her and the life-sized features of Rebecca Chance, he suffered a sanity-threatening unbalance. The photograph was Tash. Tash was the photograph. But it wasn’t, and she wasn’t. The face in the photograph was almost two-thirds of a century old.

“I…” Tash swallowed as if something blocked her throat. Her voice thickened. “How on earth is this possible?”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me.”

With palpable effort, she turned from the photograph. “And you say there are other photographs?”

“Thousands of them. I was so absorbed by them that I never took the time to count them.”

“Show me.”

The distress in her eyes frightened him. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? This is more unsettling for you than I expected. Perhaps you should-”

“I want to see them.”

“Yes.” Coltrane felt powerless. “Whatever you want.”

He picked up the top box, suddenly remembered what was in it, set it aside, and picked up the next one, carrying it out to one of the shelves. Tash followed, stepping so close that he felt her shoulder against him as he opened the lid.

Rebecca Chance stepped out of waves onto a beach, just as Tash had stepped out of waves a few hours earlier.

Coltrane felt the air that Tash’s forced breathing displaced. In her need to look at them, she would probably have pushed him aside if he hadn’t stepped out of the way. Then the echo of his sideways movement dwindled, and the only sound in the vault was the smooth slide of photographs being hurriedly turned, one after the other after the other.

Totally preoccupied by them, Tash was equally oblivious to him. It gave him a chance to indulge his need to admire her.

“What’s in the first box?”

“Excuse me?”

Tash had reached the last photograph in the box so quickly and pivoted toward him so unexpectedly that he had been caught staring at her.

“You set a box aside before you picked up this one.”

“Did I? I don’t remember. I-”

“Why didn’t you want me to look inside it?”

“No special reason. The photographs in this one are more interesting is all. I-”

Tash reentered the vault. Before he could take a step to prevent her, she came determinedly back into view, carrying another box, and Coltrane had no doubt which box it was. The previous evening, after he had shown Jennifer the nudes of Rebecca Chance, he had put the box on top of the others rather than at the bottom, where he had found it.

Tash narrowed her eyes, as if she suspected he had tried to betray her. Then she opened the lid and straightened at the sight of Rebecca Chance’s naked body, the glistening chromium beads draped over her. Tash didn’t seem able to move. Slowly, with a manifest effort of will, she turned to the next photograph and the next. Because there weren’t any clothes, the thirties style of which would have identified the period during which the photographs had been taken, these images could as easily have been taken now, and could as easily have been of Tash – if that was how Tash looked naked.

Again she seemed paralyzed. But this time, when she finally moved, it was to look at Coltrane. “You were trying to protect my modesty?”

“Something like that. I wasn’t sure how comfortable you’d feel with me in the room while you looked at photographs of a naked woman, especially when that woman looks just like you.”

Tash studied him.

“I thought it would be sort of like looking at…”

“Myself?” she asked.

“It’s an awfully personal situation.”

“Thank you for respecting my feelings.”

Coltrane nodded, self-conscious.

She touched his hand. “Show me what’s in the other boxes.”