Arousing Suspicions

by Marianne Stillings

  Narrowing one eye on him, she said, “No need. I can take care of myself, cowboy. But thanks for your concern. You can just mosey on along now like a good little wrangler and go brand something.”

  “Tabitha?” A man’s voice emerged from the fog a split second before he did.

  From the corner of his eye, Nate had seen a vague figure approaching through the mist, but Tabitha jumped at the sound of his voice.

  “P-Peter?”

  He stepped forward, coming within a few feet of her. He wore a heavy parka and a knit cap pulled low over his forehead. His jaw was un-shaven, and in the dim light Nate couldn’t quite make out his features.

  Speaking to Tabitha, he gestured to Nate and said, “Is this man bothering you, Miss March?”

  Nate fought down his sense of irritation and focused instead on the small book the man clutched in his left hand.

  “Peter?” Tabitha said, shifting toward him, her eyes wide. “Are you okay? You look…awful.”

  Griffin never took his eyes off Nate. “You’re intruding, pal. Take a hike.”

  “This guy a friend of yours, miss?” Nate drawled. “Don’t seem very friendly.”

  Did he have a weapon?

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Bob cautiously making his way toward them, the uniforms undoubtedly behind him in the fog. Now that Nate had made contact, to ensure Tabitha’s safety nobody would do anything until he gave the signal.

  Griffin was standing too close to her. Nate needed to get between them, then take the guy down nice and quiet. No need for violence. After all, he only wanted to talk to him.

  Just then a group of people emerged from the fog, chattering and filling the path with in-the-way bodies, temporarily obscuring Nate’s view of both Tabby and Griffin.

  As the crowd cleared, he saw Griffin make a grab for her, snaring her wrist in his grip.

  “Peter, don’t!” she choked, her eyes wide with alarm.

  That changed everything.

  Nate rushed forward, thrusting his free arm around Griffin’s neck, putting him in a lock.

  “Police officer,” he growled as Bob and three uniformed officers, weapons drawn, materialized out of the fog. “You’re under arrest for assault—”

  “What in the hell?” Griffin choked. “Let me go! I didn’t do anything!”

  He began to struggle, reaching forward, clawing at the mist with his fingers, making a grab for Tabitha. But she stepped back, tears in her eyes, both hands covering her mouth.

  “Peter,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do—”

  “You set me up?” he rasped as Nate kept him in a hold. “You fucking set me up? I trusted you! You were the only one I trus—Goddamn you! Let me go!”

  “Settle down, pal,” Nate warned. “Don’t make this—”

  Behind them, a woman screamed and one of the uniformed officers turned in her direction. Griffin lashed out with his foot, kicking the officer in the side of the head, sending him sprawling onto the wet grass. The woman screamed again.

  A crowd gathered, and one of the other officers shouted for them to stay back. Griffin took advantage of the distraction to elbow Nate in the gut. Not a hard blow, but enough to knock him off balance.

  Griffin was as big as Nate, and quick. His fist came back, smashing Nate in the nose, nearly blinding him with pain. As the two men grappled for domination, Griffin broke free of Nate’s hold.

  Like a shot, he was on the run, Nate right on his heels.

  “Hold your fire!” he yelled to the uniforms as he drew his own weapon.

  All of a sudden there were too many people in the way, blocking Nate’s view of Griffin, slowing his pursuit. A man stood frozen in the confusion, two women ran for cover, another man shouted and pointed, a dog barked and pulled at its owner’s leash.

  Cussing, panting, his nose bleeding like a son of a bitch, Nate peered into the fog trying to tell which way Griffin had gone.

  “Fuck!” He ran his fingers through his hair. The fog closed in, welcoming the fleeing suspect into its embrace, but shutting Nate out.

  For an hour they combed the entire area, but it was too late. Griffin had vanished.

  Tabitha watched in horror as Nate and his partner and two of the cops took off after Peter. The third stayed with her, the one Peter had kicked in the head. The officer positioned himself between her and the small crowd that had gathered.

  “Stay behind me, ma’am,” he ordered. “I don’t think the suspect will come back, but just in case.”

  “I understand.” She took in the blood on the side of his head. “Are you all right, Officer?”

  Clutching a white handkerchief in his fist, he put it to his temple and grinned. “I’ve gotten worse just roughhousing with my kids.”

  Dear God, she hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. What had she done? Maybe she should have met Peter alone after all…

  No, that would have been really stupid.

  She glanced around. What if Nate’s pursuit of Peter got one of them hurt? She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to either of them…

  But especially to Nate.

  Shut up, she told her conscience. She had enough to worry about besides whether she was letting herself fall for some cynical cop.

  As the hour grew later, the crowd, with little exciting left to see, dissipated. Tabitha narrowed her eyes and tried to peer through the fog, but nothing moved out there now.

  She pulled the collar of her jacket more tightly around her throat. Damn, it was cold tonight.

  As the officer continued to keep tabs on the situation via his radio, Tabitha paced. Why didn’t Nate come back? How long would he pursue Peter before either catching him or giving up?

  Dammit, why had Peter grabbed her like that? That had given Nate the excuse he needed to use force rather than reason. Men. Total and complete idiots.

  A police helicopter hovered overhead, the rhythmic beating of its rotors obliterating all other sounds. As its searchlight illuminated the mist around her, she thought she saw something in the grass a few feet away. As she walked toward it, the bright beam brushed it again, and she bent to pick it up. Nate’s glasses, lost in the struggle. And three feet away…

  Moisture from the wet grass seeped through the fabric of her jeans, chilling her knees and shins as she knelt down to take a closer look. She reached forward to pick up the dream log, when a voice stopped her.

  “That’s evidence. No touchy.”

  Tabitha yanked her hand back as she raised her head to see Nate emerge from the mist. His sweater was torn, his face smeared with blood. He had a bruise just below his left eye, and a cut lip.

  He looked glorious, like a medieval warrior just returned from battle. She wanted to peel his clothing away and bathe him, tend to his wounds, feed him a bowl of hot gruel and a mug of mead…

  “You look like hell,” she whispered, while some insane joy quickened the beat of her heart at the realization that he was okay. “You should see a doctor.”

  “Are you all right?” he said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  Crouching down next to her, he took his glasses from her shaking fingers. “Thanks.” He put them on and leveled his gaze on her. “You sure you’re okay?”

  She nodded, suddenly unable to speak. How sick was it that with his hair mussed, his slightly stubbled jaw bruised, and wearing those glasses, he looked hotter than ever?

  Instead of telling him that, she said, “Does this kind of thing happen to you all the time?”

  Pulling a plastic bag from his back pocket, he said, “Not so much anymore. Your friend got away.” Using the edge of his sweater, he eased the dream log into the bag and sealed it. “Where’d you park?”

  When she gestured toward the waterfront, he rose, and with a touch to her elbow, brought her up with him. “Let’s go.”

  “Why are you angry?”

  His mouth flattened. “You shouldn’t have agreed to meet him without consulting us first. We could
have used a policewoman as a decoy and had more control over the situation. And kept you out of harm’s way.”

  “But there was no time—”

  “Wait right here,” he ordered, and turned away to talk with the other cops for a moment.

  When they were done, with a nod of his head in her direction, Inspector Stocker and the uniformed officers left. As they walked away, Nate took her by the arm.

  “Here’s the plan, little Miss Sherlock. We’re going to your car, which we will use to go to my car, which I hope to hell hasn’t been towed away by now. Then we will proceed in an orderly fashion to my apartment, where I will obtain clean clothing, after which, we will proceed to your house, where I will park my carcass on your couch, unless you have a spare room.”

  “Wh-wha…why?”

  “For the simple reason that it’s nearly three in the morning, I’m dead on my feet and need some shut-eye before I take this diary in to have it analyzed, dusted for prints, and a copy made that I can read. In the meantime,” he growled as he soldiered her along the path to her car, “Jack Griffin or Peter Whose-its may take it in his head to get even with you for setting him up. If he does, I want mine to be the first face he sees when he comes knocking on your door.”

  Tabitha stopped in her tracks, halting Nate’s forced march. “I know he was surprised and…and…angry, but after he cools down, I mean, you don’t really think he’d try to hurt me—”

  “Yes, O Magnificent But Daffy Swami, I do.”

  “And here I’d wanted to nurture you!” she sputtered, pulling her car keys from her pocket. “I have news for you, Inspector, I can change nurture to neuter with a little imagination and a sharp knife!”

  As they reached her white Civic, with a quick motion, he turned her, backing her up until her butt was pressed against the passenger door. His hands came down on the roof on either side of her body, trapping her.

  “I don’t think you want to do that, Tabby,” he murmured, leaning closer. His eyes held a glint that could have been menace—or lust. “I don’t think you want to do that at all.”

  Chapter 13

  Pin your socks in the shape of a cross at the foot of your bed, to keep bad dreams away.

  FOLKLORE

  He’d lost the book! In the struggle with that cop, he’d dropped the goddamned dream log!

  Peter fought to calm himself and think.

  Maybe the cops wouldn’t find it. The night had been dark and foggy. Some kid could come across it tomorrow and toss it in the trash. Nobody knew what it was, just a bunch of scribbling that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody who didn’t know. Even if the cops did find the thing, it was just one of those blank-page journals his sister had bought and never used. He’d never put his name in it; it would be quite a stretch to connect it to him.

  Fingerprints. Damn, yeah, fingerprints. But he’d never been printed, so even if they lifted some, there was nothing to match it to.

  But Tabitha…she’d seen it and could identify it as belonging to him.

  Peter’s stomach squeezed hard, and he thought he might puke.

  Well, nothing he could do about the diary now, he thought. Damn. The only thing he could hope for was that it had been overlooked in the fog. He sure as hell wasn’t going to go back there to look for it.

  Dawn played with the horizon, lightening it a shade or two, teasing the sun to rise and give California another perfect day.

  He slid the Jag into the garage and turned off the ignition. Finally able to relax, he let his tired body slump behind the wheel as anger and depression hollowed out his insides.

  She’d set him up. The woman he’d trusted with his innermost thoughts, with his worst fears and literally his most horrific nightmares, had set him up. She’d been his last hope; now he had none. There was nowhere to turn.

  His heart in shreds, his brain a tangled mass of emotions, he walked from the garage toward the private entrance that led upstairs to the bedrooms.

  His eyes burned in their sockets as he quickly took the flight of back stairs at the opposite end of the upper hallway from the grand staircase. At the landing, he stopped and listened before heading for his room. The only sound came from the ancient grandfather clock that stood in the marbled foyer below, its deep and steady ticking like the beat of an innocent heart.

  Peter rubbed his eyes. Sleep, rest, a total and complete zone-out, that’s what he needed. He’d sort all this out tomorrow. Somehow, some way. He wasn’t a killer, he just couldn’t be. But the dreams…so real…so violent…

  “Peter?”

  He jerked around to see his sister standing a few feet away in the open doorway of her room. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore her gold and black running outfit.

  “Z-Zoey,” he stammered. “Kind of early to be going for a run.”

  His sister was three years older than he and nearly as tall. She looked as beautiful as she had when they’d crowned her homecoming queen twenty years ago. A well-disciplined exercise fanatic, she was toned and trim and her clear complexion glowed with health. Her eyes were blue, like his, like their father’s, and at the moment were bright with alarm.

  “Are you hurt?” she said, taking him in, rumpled hair to soggy shoes. “What’s happened? Is that blood on your shirt?”

  “I’m okay,” he rushed. “It’s okay. I just need to get cleaned up, get some sleep. It’s…it’s not what it looks like. Just a little accident.”

  Her delicate chin lifted and she looked deeply into his eyes. He hadn’t fooled her at all. She knew him better than anyone, better than he liked. When she spoke, her tone was almost parental.

  “Something’s been going on, Peter, and I want to know what it is. You come and go at all hours of the day and night, and you just look like hell. I think it’s time we talked.”

  He swallowed past a painful lump in his throat. Taking in a breath, he blew it out slowly, letting his shoulders drop, letting his heart quiet, letting it all go.

  “Yeah, Zoey,” he said quietly. “Let’s talk.”

  “So he spent the night at your house?” Rajani Jaspreet’s dark eyes widened, gleaming with mischief. She tucked a lock of shiny hair over her ear and leaned across the small café table. “In your bed? Did you have sex? Tell me you had sex with this guy. Tell me the earth moved.”

  Tabitha assessed her best friend over the rim of the paper Starbucks cup she held in her hand. “He slept on the couch in my office. By the time I got up he was gone, but he’d folded the blankets, made coffee, rinsed out his mug, and put it away.”

  “He folded…rinsed…put…” A dreamy look crossed Jani’s face. “God, if he was that considerate with a coffee mug, imagine how he’d be in bed.”

  “Not going there.” Tabitha sipped the decaf orange nonfat no-whip iced mocha through her straw. The glop of crushed ice rattled as the volume of liquid in the dome-lidded container dwindled. “What time do you have to pick up the girls?”

  Checking her watch, Jani said, “Not until three. We still have a half an hour, and don’t change the subject. His name is actually Darling? How perfect is that? Tabitha…Darling…”

  “Stop it!” Tabitha tried to suppress her smile, but it didn’t work very well. “Grown-up women do not play that game.”

  Jani snorted. “Right.”

  The two had been best friends since college. They’d each married about the same time, but while Tabitha and Cal had problems right from the start, Jani and Jay’s marriage had flourished. After Jay finished med school, they’d gone ahead and begun their family, which consisted of Anjali and Meera, who, at the ages of two and five were probably the prettiest, smartest, most angelic creatures on the planet…when they were asleep. Awake, they were black-eyed, raven-haired, giggling she-devils, into everything and impossible not to adore.

  “Jani,” Tabitha said with a halfhearted scowl. “Nate Darling is totally wrong for me. First off, he’s a cop. Second, he’s arrogant. Third, he’s dictatorial. Fourth, skeptical—”

/>   “Apparently he’s also a hunk and a half with a sexy case of myopia, and you haven’t had a good roll in the hay since Cal left.” She drained the rest of her jasmine iced tea and set the empty container on the table. “Seduce him. You’re beautiful. He won’t resist. He’ll thank you for it. You’ll thank yourself for it. Hell, I’ll thank you for it because you’ll stop being so snippety and edgy all the time.”

  “Wha—I’m never snippety and edgy!”

  Jani arched a brow.

  Tabitha sighed. “Point taken. And I’m not beautiful, but thank you for saying so.” She rolled her straw between her fingers. “He investigated me, behind my back.”

  Understanding softened Jani’s eyes. “Well, he is a detective, and you do have a suspicious client. I wouldn’t beat him up too badly over that, Tabs.”

  Tabitha considered her friend’s words. “Yeah, you’re right. I only got upset because it was him, and now he knows stuff about me. If I only thought of him as just a detective, that would be one thing, but I, uh, I don’t.”

  “What do you think of him as?”

  “I obviously find him attractive, and I don’t just mean physically. I think he’s somebody I could be with.”

  She sat back in her chair and tilted her head. “He’s very smart, and has this sort of off-the-wall sense of humor…just the kind I like. And he’s got a social conscience. He volunteers on his own time at a women’s shelter. And then there’s this look he gets in his eyes sometimes, like there’s something deep down inside his soul that he’s a little bit sad about. A yearning for something he’s lost.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jani said with a sympathetic smile. “Nothing is more attractive to a woman than a man who needs her. You’re falling, aren’t you?”

  “I feel like I am, but it’s so confusing.” Furrowing her brow, she said, “At what point does love begin, anyway? First you find someone physically attractive according to your own criteria of what’s appealing. Then you interact with him for a while and he either continues reinforcing that attraction until you realize you’re in love, or his words and actions have the opposite effect, and you eliminate him as a possibility.”