Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

  “They won’t get him,” Rachel whispered. “He’s long gone.”

  “Let me know what you find, okay, pal?”

  “Will do.”

  Mason disconnected, and looked at Rachel. She shook her head at him. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t look at me like I’m some broken fragile flower in need of saving. I’m not that.”

  “No, not a fragile flower. More a milk thistle. Pretty purple flower that stings like hell.” He drew a breath. “Look, I don’t think you need saving. I do think you’d be an idiot to go home tonight. I’m a cop, and I’m armed, and I wouldn’t want to spend the night there with this maniac on the loose.”

  Her forehead puckered in thought. “Yeah, that would be stupid, wouldn’t it? I wonder if he plans to kill me.”

  “That’s what he does.”

  “Not women, though.”

  “But he knows that you’re...inside his head somehow.” He rolled his eyes. “Listen to me. What the hell am I saying? Inside his head?”

  “I am inside his head. You fucking know I am, and you fucking know why. Don’t you think we’re beyond denying it any longer, Mason? I’m in his head because I have a piece of your warped brother in me, and he has a piece in him, and that connects us somehow. Just like it connected me with Terry Skullbones.”

  He drew a breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay, okay, I admit it looks like it might be true.”

  “Might be?” It was her turn to roll her eyes, and then she turned away.

  “I don’t know how, but...but, Rachel, doesn’t that make it even more important for you to stay alive? You might be the only person who can help me catch this guy.”

  As he said the words, he realized they were true and turned her to look at him. “If he’s figured that out, then you really aren’t safe.”

  Not a single sarcastic reply emerged. She just lowered her head, so her hair fell down over one eye. “Thanks for believing me. Finally.”

  “You’re welcome. Please don’t go home tonight.”

  She looked him in the eyes then and pushed her hair behind her ear. “I’ll go back to my sister’s.”

  “It’s almost one. Just stay here. It’ll be morning before we know it, anyway.” When she didn’t seem to jump on the idea, he said, “We’ve got chaperones, Rachel. You’ll be perfectly safe. I promise not to try to seduce you.”

  “You think I’m worried?”

  “Come on, soothe my pride, act worried.”

  She smiled. It was an unwilling smile, but in a second it was full-blown and he had to return it. “You know you could charm the socks off a centipede, right?” she asked.

  “I’ve been told as much, though never in quite those words.” And he’d never expected to hear it from her. “Spend the night with me, Rachel.”

  She met his eyes for a moment, then turned and walked back inside. “Okay.”

  * * *

  So Myrtle and I spent the night in Mason’s bed. He slept on the new sofa, and his nephews were in one of the other bedrooms on the bunk beds we’d put together earlier.

  I didn’t sleep well, partly because I was in a strange bed, but mostly because a serial killer was stalking me. Okay, and maybe a little bit because I was spending the night so close to Mason, a guy I wanted to bang in the worst way, even though my gut said it would be a bad idea.

  I hadn’t contemplated why overly much. But since I had time on my hands, I let my thoughts go there. I’d been blind through my teens and my entire adult life. I hadn’t dated. I hadn’t flirted. I hadn’t had any steady relationships, nothing beyond a couple of poorly-thought-out one-night stands that meant nothing. Now I was a sighted adult for the first time in my life. I needed to figure out what that meant, who the sighted Rachel was, before I brought another person into my life. And there was part of me that knew sleeping with Mason would mean just that—bringing him into my life. It wouldn’t be a meaningless roll in the hay. Not with him.

  So there couldn’t be any roll in the hay at all. Period.

  I tossed and turned, dozed and started awake a dozen times over, and by six-thirty was up and taking a shower in the adjoining bathroom, where the only supplies were strictly male. Mason was apparently a man’s man. He had one single product in his shower, a combination body wash, shampoo, conditioner that I hadn’t even known existed. It smelled rough and woodsy. Familiar, too. It smelled like him, I realized, as I sudsed up and rinsed off again. The stuff wasn’t bad, though I imagined my hair would look like hell all day.

  Look at me, being all girlie-girl and worrying about my hair. Since when, Rache?

  I shrugged off the voice of my inner bitch, then wrapped myself up in a towel and walked back into the bedroom just as the door opened and Mason walked in.

  He stopped dead and stood there looking me up and down. I stopped, too, holding on to my towel and starting to shiver. He didn’t retreat and I wasn’t about to, so I said, “My eyes are up here, Mason,” while pointing at them for him.

  His gaze rose and I said, “That’s better. Did you want something?”

  “Yeah.”

  I tipped my head to one side. He looked completely flustered and I felt a little flattered by it. “Well?”

  “Um...”

  And then someone walked in behind him, a tiny curvy big-haired blonde with cleavage up to her chin. She spotted me in my towel and her jaw literally dropped.

  “Who is this, Mason?” she asked in a squeaky voice that made me want to pull out her tonsils, preferably through her nose.

  That was completely unjustified.

  Not it wasn’t. Look at her, she’s everything I hate in a woman.

  Yeah. She is. You’re right.

  My inner self agreed with me for a change. Imagine that.

  “Mason, who is this?” she demanded again.

  “This,” I replied, “is someone who wishes you would get the fuck out of her bedroom and let her get dressed.” I held up an arm, forefinger extended, though the middle one was itching to take its place. “Out. Now.”

  “Come on, Patty, I’ll explain in the hallway.” Mason took the bimbo’s arm and turned her around, and I told myself I was being unfair. I had nothing to base the term on except her low-cut blouse, overdone eyeliner and big hair. Okay, yeah, that was plenty. Bimbo.

  “Sorry, Rache,” he said as he hustled her out and closed the door.

  I turned to look at Myrtle. She was lying on her back under the covers, head on the pillow, “arms” sticking out, jowls flopped backward to reveal enough teeth and gums to make her resemble a horror movie monster, and snoring.

  “A lot of help you are.”

  By the time I got dressed, combed my hair and went downstairs, the bimbo was nowhere to be found. The boys were apparently still sleeping, and Mason was pouring coffee that smelled like heaven.

  “Where’s your, um...friend?”

  “Honest to God, Rachel, I completely forgot I’d invited her. She left in a huff after finding a half-naked author in my bedroom.”

  “Somehow I don’t think it was the author part that bothered her.” I slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry if I messed things up for you. She your girlfriend?”

  “No. And don’t be sorry. I really was hoping I could get what I wanted from her without having to date her.”

  “And by date you mean bang.”

  “Yeah, to be crude about it.”

  “To be honest about it, you mean.”

  He set a cup of coffee in front of me and my mouth watered. I added cream and sugar a little too eagerly, stirred and sipped. Ahhh. Like a the prick of a needle to a heroin addict. Nice.

  “So do you regularly lure women here hoping to get something from them without having to bang them? I’d think it would usually be the other way around.”

  “You have a mean streak, you know that?”

  “You should be flattered. I don’t reveal it to just anyone.”

  He smiled. “I kinda
figured that out all by myself. You’re nothing like your books.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll take that as a compliment. So, what’s the story on the blonde?”

  “I met Patty while I was arranging for Eric’s—I met her because of Eric. I needed a favor from her, so she came by to help out.”

  I shrugged. “She was certainly...buxom.”

  “That she was. And helpful.” He laid a sheet of paper in front of me—no, it was three sheets, stapled together. With a long list of hospitals, complete with their addresses. “What is this?”

  “It’s a list of the hospitals where Eric’s organs and tissues were sent for transplant.”

  My eyes widened and I lifted my head. “The bimbo got you this?”

  “She’s not a bimbo. She’s a nurse. And yes, she got me this.”

  “Just in hopes you’d screw her?” I blinked and shook my head. “Are you that good?”

  He leaned closer. “You’ll never know.”

  “Hell, Mason, I could bang you right now if I wanted to.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “You’re a guy. I’m female and breathing. Any further questions?”

  “Okay, I concede the point.” He snatched the sheets of paper back. “We need to start checking out the hospitals on this list, see if we can find surgical admissions around the date of Eric’s death, try to generate a list of suspects.”

  “There must a hundred hospitals here, and for all we know, maybe more than one donation went to some of them.”

  “Yeah. Hard to believe one organ donor can impact that many lives.”

  “Hell, this particular donor impacted a lot more lives than that.”

  He looked wounded. I bit my lip. “That was cruel. I’m sorry. So we rule them out as suspects one by one.”

  “A lot of them probably live in other states, way beyond driving distance. I think we should start with the locals.”

  I liked how he kept saying we. Like we were a team. He really thought I could help solve this thing. It was about freaking time he took what was happening to me seriously.

  “I think we should work from somewhere else, though,” he went on. “Somewhere safe, somewhere the killer doesn’t even know about. He could find out about this place too easily, since it’s a matter of public record that I’m on the case.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Do you think he knows about my sister’s place?”

  “If he’s been watching you, yeah. He might.”

  I think all the blood rushed from my brain to my feet at that point. He was still talking, something about his family having a lake house in the Adirondacks, but I wasn’t hearing him anymore. I was looking for my purse. Still up in the bedroom. I sprinted there and back again in about three and a half seconds, fumbling for the car keys as I ran into the kitchen, passing him on the way. I was kind of surprised that my backdraft didn’t spin him in a full circle as I ran by.

  “Hey, hey, hold on a sec.” He grabbed my shoulder, and I turned and looked at him but my mind wasn’t on him at all. It was on Sandra, and the twins, and Jim. Shit, what would father of the year Jim do in the face of a serial killer? Probably try to reason with the guy, talk him down. You couldn’t talk down a psychopath.

  “I’ve got to go. I’ve get to make my sister get the hell out of town until this is over.”

  “Can’t you just call?”

  “I’ll call on the way. You can write me a ticket after.”

  “I really don’t think he’ll go after her so long as you’re not there.”

  “Don’t even pretend you know that, Mason. My family is in danger.” I glanced back toward the stairway I’d just descended. “And maybe so is yours, since you’re the lead detective and it wouldn’t be hard to find out your address.”

  In seconds I was out the door and diving behind the wheel of the twins’ car. Five miles later I realized that I’d forgotten Myrt.

  I clapped a hand to my forehead. How could I?

  My phone rang, and I grabbed it fast without even looking at the caller ID. “What?”

  “It’s me,” Mason said.

  It’s me. So our nonrelationship has reached the “It’s me” stage, has it? “I forgot my dog. I’m a horrible human being.”

  “That’s why I’m calling, to let you know she’s fine.”

  “Fine my ass.” I hit the speaker button and dropped the phone on my lap to avoid a ticket. “She’s blind, she’s in a strange place, and she’s on the second floor.”

  “She got up and apparently followed her nose into the boys’ room, where she whined until Josh woke up and brought her downstairs. He took her outside for a walk, and right now he’s sharing his pancakes with her.”

  I exhaled, and some of the tension eased from my spine, which had been so tight I’d thought it was about to snap. “I’ll deal with my sister and the kids, and then I’ll be back for her.”

  “Deal with your sister and the kids,” he said. “Then go home and pack a bag for you and one for Myrtle. Your house has been cleared, and given the footprints in the woods from that guy lurking there last night, so have you.”

  “Did they find the hammer?”

  He paused a beat before replying. “No. I think he took it with him.”

  “God, Mason. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Just do what you need to do and pack, okay?”

  I blinked, harkening back to our earlier conversation. “Is this about your lake house in the mountains?”

  “Yes. We’ll head up there this afternoon. We can work the case from there. Okay?”

  I wanted to say no. But how the hell was I supposed to say no when I was also wondering if it would be safe for me to return to my own home—my fucking haven—for long enough to pack?

  So instead of arguing with him, I said, “Okay.”

  “Okay? Why was that so easy?”

  “Because I’m wondering if this bastard is going to be lurking in my bushes with that fucking hammer when I get home.”

  “I’ll be there waiting when you get there. I’ve just gotta run the boys home first and pack some stuff.”

  “Do you think they’re safe, Mason?” The killer was their father, after all.

  He paused for a long moment. “If this is what you think it is, someone continuing Eric’s crimes because they inherited his illness through his organs, I don’t see how they could be targets. My brother would never have harmed his sons. But I’m going to try to find a way to get Marie to let them take a few days off school and come with us, just in case. Why don’t we meet at your place at noon?”

  I nodded at the phone and felt my throat going tight, and there was a burning behind my eyes.

  “Okay?” he asked when I didn’t answer.

  I cleared my throat, but my voice still came out tight. “You’re really a decent guy, aren’t you, Mason?”

  “I try to be.”

  “It’s weird. I mean, that your brother turned out...the way he did.”

  “Keeps me awake nights. We were both raised in the same home, by the same parents. He was adopted, but still...”

  “I didn’t know that.” I was starting to like this guy. You know, as a person, not just as a sex object.

  “Noon at my place, then,” I said. “Take good care of my dog, okay?”

  “You’re not really the tough, thick-skinned chick you pretend to be, are you?”

  “If I wasn’t, I’d never have made it this far in life. Trust me on that.” I hit the end call button and headed straight to Sandra’s, but I was on the phone the entire twenty-minute drive with my favorite travel agent.

  * * *

  “The Bahamas?” Sandra blinked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “Yep. One weeks, all-inclusive, at a really high-end resort. It’ll be amazing. The chance of a lifetime.”

  “And you say you won this?”

  “Yep. Sweepstakes I forgot even entering. I guess my luck is changing, right? But it’s a trip for four, and I don’t want to leave Myrtle,
and I’m way behind on the current book, so I thought of you. Misty and Christy will go insane.”

  “Yeah, I imagine they will.”

  Sandra pushed herself back from her desk. She’d been hard at work when I’d burst in to interrupt her and offered her a dream vacation wrapped up in a package of lies.

  “This is too much. We can’t accept it.”

  “Call it an early Christmas present.”

  “It’s only October.”

  “Then call it an early Halloween present. Call it birthday presents for all of you for the next three years. Call it whatever you want. But you’ll lose it if you can’t leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” She shook her head. “The girls have school, soccer, I have deals pending, Jim has—”

  “None of that is as important as the trip of a lifetime, Sandra. You can make this work. Come on, start delegating your important stuff and delaying the rest. Wrap up what you can, have Jim talk to his boss. You can do this. I guarantee you the girls would rather spend a week at Flip-Flops All-Inclusive Beach Resort than play soccer. And they both get straight A’s, so a few days off school won’t kill them.”

  Sandra lowered her eyes. “This week’s a bye. They’d only miss one game.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s really going on here, Rachel?”

  I hated when she got that look. The one that said she could see right through me. It was way worse than our mom’s had been, that penetrating gaze of hers.

  I licked my lips, lowered my head. “Okay, you want the truth, I’m gonna give it to you. I don’t have time to dick around here. The guy who killed our brother is still out there. He’s obviously trying to get to me, and since I’m going out of town to a safe haven with Mason for a few days myself, I’m afraid you and Jim and the girls might be in danger. He might try to get to me by harming you or the girls.”

  She went completely white and dropped back into her desk chair as if her knees had turned into oatmeal. I wished I hadn’t said it, but it was done and I couldn’t take it back.

  “The girls!” Her head came up, eyes wide. “The girls are at school.”

  “There. That fear right there, that’s how I’m feeling. That’s why I want you out of here, out of his reach, until Mason and I can find him.”