Deception

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  Feeling that chill again, Sam glanced sharply down the hall. Her brother’s apartment was on the first floor of what had once been a turn-of-the-century townhome, now subdivided into four dark, irregular little dwellings. He shared the lower level with an eccentric, nearly blind elderly woman, so Sam had little hope that her neighbor had seen anyone coming or going. Upstairs was a struggling artist who painted unfortunate depictions of famous Charleston landmarks on old bricks and sold them down at the Market, and a man whom Sam was pretty sure sold his body when he wasn’t selling drugs. All in all, it wasn’t the friendliest environment, and she couldn’t imagine any of the building’s inhabitants leaving her any kind of neighborly gift.

  Aside from her fellow tenants, no one except her employers – both at the bar and at the company she’d stripped for – knew that she’d taken over Donnie’s lease. And any mail which came her way was delivered to the post office box she’d rented. Discounting Justin, a handful of nurses and a couple of girls who worked with her at the bar, she didn’t think that anyone else in this town even knew her full name.

  So who the hell could have left a box addressed to her in front of Donnie’s door?

  Feeling that familiar prickling of skin along the back of her neck, Sam scooped the box – which was light – into the same arm with the sack of groceries. With her free hand she worked the deadbolt on the battered wooden door.

  She turned it back immediately when she was on the other side.

  Uneasy, Samantha deposited both the box and the food onto the tiny piece of laminate that served as a kitchen counter, flipping on the switch which bathed the whole living area in florescent light. It didn’t take much – the entire place was basically one big room, except for the tiny bathroom which had been added to make it rentable. Inching forward, Sam peered around the door into the tiled environment, satisfied by the absence of anyone lurking behind the shower curtain.

  This place her brother had rented six months ago still smelled slightly of old gym socks and moth balls – an unpleasant combination to which she would never grow accustomed. But as she glanced around for signs of anything out of place, she noted that it was at least clean, and as orderly as she’d left it. The plaid sleeper-sofa sagged in the middle and the tiny dinette had seen better days, but in the way of men her brother had purchased a large, flat-screen television to dominate the small room. Sam picked up the remote and punched the button to turn it on low, suddenly feeling the need for some background noise in the otherwise silent apartment.

  After gathering up the remains of the morning paper, whose headlines continued to speculate about the whereabouts of the mayor’s AWOL teenaged daughter, missing since July, Sam pushed a wayward lock of hair from her eyes and returned her attention to the box. Feeling a bit like Pandora, she had the uncomfortable suspicion that opening it would lead to a whole host of problems she hadn’t foreseen.

  “Get a grip, Sam. You’re turning into a head case.” She pulled a knife from the utensil drawer, realizing that she’d also developed the disturbing tendency to talk to herself. Probably because she spent so much time reading aloud to her brother and carrying on one-sided conversations that she’d grown entirely too used to hearing the sound of her own voice.

  Slicing through the clear tape which held the flaps of the box together, Sam peered inside as they popped open and another box was revealed. This one was hot pink, featuring a black velvet ribbon tying the top and bottom pieces together, as well as the insignia of one of Charleston’s most exclusive boutiques embossed on the outside. She’d definitely never ordered anything from Intimate Expressions. The packaging alone probably cost more than she earned in an entire shift at the bar.

  Curious despite her unease, Sam lifted the ends of the ribbon until the bow slipped loose from its knot. Then she pulled off the top, only to discover layer upon layer of pink tissue paper. An expensive fragrance, something like jasmine, wafted out as she separated the tissue. Tucked beneath all the aromatic packing was the most beautiful negligee she’d ever seen.

  Leaning a hip against the counter, Sam studied the incredible garment. Of shimmering cream silk and nearly transparent black lace, it looked like it must have cost a fortune. She lifted it, noting the way the fine material shifted like water beneath her fingers, and it spilled out from its folds to fall from thin black straps toward the floor.

  Huh.

  She had no idea what to make of it, nor a clue as to who could have sent it. She hadn’t been involved with anyone back in Columbia, having no time to devote to anyone or anything but her studies and the jobs which helped fund them, and since she’d been here romance was probably the last thing on her mind. Any number of men from the bar had made passes, but they weren’t exactly the type to patronize fancy boutiques. John Deere and Harley Davidson were more their speed. So this was… a mystery.

  And it kind of freaked her out.

  The knock on her door gave her her second heart attack of the night, and she clutched the mysterious gift to her chest. Good God. She was going to have gray hair when she woke up in the morning. Seeing as how it was after one a.m. and she wasn’t exactly expecting company, Sam figured it was probably one of her upstairs neighbor’s customers come banging on the wrong door. It had happened before, and given the nature of the man’s business, she had no doubt it would continue to be a problem. Hopefully if she just yelled through the door, redirecting the person upstairs, they’d leave her in relative peace. She inched over toward the door, pressed her ear against it for a second, and after detecting movement outside offered directions.

  “If you’re looking for weed or sex, try apartment 3B.”

  There was a pause, and Sam waited for the sound of feet hitting stairs. A second later, someone cleared their throat.

  “Samantha?”

  Oh, shit. Someone put her out of her misery. Unless she was very much mistaken, she’d just solicited a cop on behalf of her neighbor. Squeezing her eyes closed in the vague hope that she was wrong, she held her breath and sort of wished him away.

  “Sam? I know you’re in there. It’s me, Josh.”

  Of course it was. Because she hadn’t suffered enough already. Apparently there was some sort of humiliation lottery, and she’d somehow drawn the winning number.

  “Sam, come on, honey. May I please come in?”

  Well. Why the hell not? Sam reached for the dead bolt but then realized she was still holding the negligee. She glanced at it briefly, wondering if maybe Josh had…

  Nah. That would never happen.

  After tossing the garment back into the box and pulling the lid closed, she worked the lock on the door and swung it open. There, in all his shining, perfect glory, was the reason she’d probably never get married. What was the point in dragging someone else into a farce? She’d only end up comparing her husband to Josh, like she’d done with every other man she’d met in the past eight years, and like the rest he’d end up a dollar short and a day late.

  How was it that one person could be both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to you?

  JOSH’S breath backed up in his lungs when Samantha opened the door. Something about her managed to pull at every one of his heart strings. He knew it was probably a bad move on his part, tracking her down like this, when she obviously hadn’t wanted anything to do with him last night. She’d probably been embarrassed, sure, but…

  That didn’t explain the Houdini she’d pulled eight years ago. They’d been close, then. Really meant something to one another, or so he’d thought. And then she up and left town without a word. He’d tried to track her down, probably would have reported her missing at some point – Lord knew he’d suspected foul play when he’d first discovered her gone – if he hadn’t eventually run across her brother, who’d told him that Sam was taking classes, putting herself through school. Josh had been… really proud of her.

  Incredibly hurt, but really… proud.

  And now, here she was, looking sheepish and defiant and lovely
, standing in the doorway of a hovel of an apartment in a part of town that made him itch to palm his weapon, and he wanted so badly to just wrap her in his arms and take her out of here and never, never let her go.

  But she’d run away from him once, and he couldn’t risk smothering her again. So he’d just see that she was okay, offer whatever support or friendship he could, and sweat bullets thinking about her living beneath a drug-dealing male prostitute.

  Shit. Who was he kidding? He wanted her out of here tonight.

  “So… is it okay if I come in?”

  Sam stepped back, and he moved past, careful not to touch her. After all these years and well, after seeing her – all of her, God, he had to put that image out of his mind – last night, he didn’t trust himself to behave at all appropriately if he got her in his arms. He’d have her pinned beneath him on that broken down sofa so fast it would make her head spin.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not helping the cause, Josh. Beating back his libido, he waited for her to lock the door.

  “How did you find me?” Sam turned, pressed her back to the door, and looked at him with guarded eyes. There were smudges of fatigue beneath those hazel beauties, and he felt something inside of him crack.

  “I followed you,” he admitted, glancing around and wondering if she was going to offer him a seat. The way she was hovering pensively near the door wasn’t the most encouraging of body language.

  “From the hospital?” He could see wheels turning in her head. She’d been jumpy in the parking lot, almost killing herself when she tripped over that cat, so maybe she’d sensed he was there.

  “Yeah. I was parked a couple of rows away from you in the parking lot.”

  The shoulder slump definitely showed relief. “So you saw –”

  “The thing with the cat. Yeah. But, you know, up until that point, you looked like you were ready to kick some mugger ass. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to mess with you.”

  She laughed, which was good. But then she regarded him with renewed suspicion. “How did you know I would be at the hospital?”

  “Well, aside from my superior detecting skills, I, uh, talked to Justin.” Josh saw the shadow move across her face, and he ached in places he’d forgotten he had. “He told me about your brother. God, I’m so sorry, Sam.”

  She moved away from the door finally, motioning toward the two chairs on either side of the small table. Josh eyed the sofa, but at least sitting together was a step in the right direction, and all things considered it was probably best to avoid that hide-a-bed temptation. Last thing Sam needed right now was a man looking to get in her pants.

  He pulled out her chair for her, to which she blinked and offered a surprised “thanks,” and then he moved the whole three feet it took to drop himself into the second chair. The seat creaked ominously, making him thankful that by genetics and lifestyle he kept himself lean. If he lived off super-sized fast food like some of the other guys in the CPD, he probably would have landed on the floor.

  SAM lifted weary eyes toward his. “Yeah, it uh… really sucks.” Which was the understatement of the year. “The hardest part is the, you know, limbo I guess you could call it. I feel like we’re both in a state of suspended animation. Waiting. And no matter what I do there’s no way to force an outcome. Donnie’s going to get better, I know it, but until his brain is healed enough to regain control of his body, there’s just nothing to do but… wait.” She rubbed palms which had suddenly grown sweaty across the top of her denim covered thighs. Good Lord. Sitting this close to him was… unnerving.

  “I checked on the case status today.” Josh looked across the table, all blue-eyed sympathy and ridiculously thick lashes. When Mother Nature had been doling out the natural beauty she’d hit Josh with a heavy hand. “There have been no new leads, apparently, in the past couple months. It’s basically grown cold. Do you have any idea, any at all, what might have happened? Who could have had motive to shoot him?”

  Sam studied him through narrowed eyes. “I’ve been over this a million times with the police already. I know nothing. I was in Columbia, at school, when it happened, and hadn’t even been here to see Donnie in months.” Which was her own little burden of guilt to bear. And because she felt that guilt and also a lingering sense of shame for what had transpired last night, she lashed out a little more angrily than she should have. “Is that why you’re here, Josh? In some kind of official capacity? Because the police think that Donnie was involved in something, and that I’ve just been holding out on them all these months? So they send you here thinking that maybe I’ll spill my guts to an old friend?”

  Josh leaned back in his chair, regarded her calmly, though hurt flitted briefly across his handsome face. “I’m here, Samantha, because I care. To be brutally honest, the department is overwhelmed right now with an influx of cases that rate a lot higher priority than your brother’s. Except I know how frustrating it is to be shoved aside and forgotten, to feel like you don’t matter enough to warrant the basic courtesy of some answers.”

  And ouch. Sam felt that cut to the bone. Her leaving like she had was obviously still a sore spot.

  “I can’t help you with your brother’s medical condition,” he continued. “From what Justin told me, nobody can. But what I can do is try to help you get some answers. Donnie didn’t put that bullet in his own leg, Sam. Wouldn’t you like to know who did?”

  Guilt crashing down on her like an anvil, Sam ran trembling fingers through her hair. It still smelled of smoke from her shift at the bar, which made her uncomfortably aware that she needed a shower. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “It was entirely out of line to come down on you like that. It’s just that… when the police questioned me before, they made me feel like Donnie was some kind of criminal. And he’s been in trouble a time or two, you know that, but it just seemed really unfair. What’s to say that he wasn’t just the victim of a random gunshot? Maybe he got in the middle of some kind of turf war. That isn’t all that uncommon in this neighborhood, as I’m sure you know. Or maybe he was car-jacked. There’s still no sign of his truck, and if you ask me, that’s a pretty good indicator that something’s amiss.”

  “If that’s true, Sam, then why did he run? When he woke up, found himself in the hospital, why not just tell someone that he’d been caught in the crossfire, or that his vehicle had been stolen? He bolted, Sam. He was bare-assed, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, and he climbed down off that gurney and took off. Blood tests showed he wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t high, and unless he’s gone insane since I last saw him, chances are he was scared. My question is: what was he afraid of?”

  That premonition of danger, of opening something that was going to come back to bite her in the ass, swamped Sam again, causing her to shudder. Rubbing her hands down arms bare beneath her T-shirt, she looked at the man across from her, a man she had once instinctively trusted with her life, and wondered how much to tell him. Not that she knew anything, really, but she’d been feeling the presence of… something for weeks. Probably her overactive imagination, but when Josh put Donnie’s situation in those terms, she couldn’t help but wonder: had she inadvertently drawn the attention of whoever had shot her brother? Was that possible? And what could Donnie have been involved in that would cause him that kind of fear?

  “I don’t know,” she admitted to Josh. “If Donnie was messed up in something, I honestly don’t know what it might have been. Like I said, I hadn’t seen him a whole lot recently, and whenever I talked to him he sounded fine.” But he hadn’t told her about moving. In fact, there were probably a lot of things she didn’t know about her brother. The thought made her stomach convulse.

  JOSH nodded his head, accepting that as the truth, and then scratched the back of his ear as he looked around. Jeez. The place really was a shithole. And he just couldn’t stomach the thought of Samantha staying here night after night. It was probably a miracle that she hadn’t been burgled. Or worse. She’d directed him upstairs in response to his knock, which s
uggested it wasn’t the first time that had happened. And the next time the visitor might not be inclined to simply leave her alone.

  His eyes drifted back to hers, and he found her watching him, expression pensive. There was still an unaddressed issue hanging heavily between them, and he figured he might as well take it on.

  “About last night –”

  “Josh –”

  “Samantha, don’t interrupt me. I have something to say and you’re going to listen to me while I say it.” The hard-ass, don’t-screw-with-me-I’m-a-cop tone shocked her speechless, which was good, and Josh figured he better go ahead and get this out before she realized he was a fraud. Where she was concerned, he was no bigger and badder than a whipped dog. “I’ve done some homework and figured out that you’re stripping to make extra money, because between paying for this place and trying to keep up with your brother’s hospital bills, your job at the Roadhouse isn’t cutting it as far as income.” She sucked in a small breath, and he figured he had about another thirty seconds before she got good and pissed that he’d completely invaded her privacy. “Yes, I followed you, and yes, I made some discreet inquiries – the little known benefits of being a cop.” He wasted a couple seconds to offer a tight smile.

  Samantha wasn’t impressed.

  “Now before you kick my ass, listen to my proposition. I have a new condo with an extra, empty bedroom. You need a place to stay that’s safe. And best of all, it’s free.” He held up a hand when her mouth opened in protest. “Your brother’s lease is just about up here, am I right?” When she nodded reluctantly, he risked reaching out for her hand. “Do you really want to renew it, Sam? Wouldn’t that money be better spent helping your brother?”

  Seeing the conflicting emotions on her face, Josh figured he’d pushed her enough for one night. He’d planted the seed, now he’d give it time to germinate. The lease was up in three days; he knew, because he’d tracked down the slumlord who owned the place and inquired. Three days should give her plenty of time to let logic overcome pride and whatever other reservations she might have. Until then, he could request a patrol car be sent around each night.