Crash Into You

by Ellison, Cara

  He didn’t have that with Shelby. He’d never had that with anyone.

  Mark hoped the subject of his love life was dropped. It was a distinctly depressing subject.

  He browsed some soft cotton t-shirts and grabbed a stack of them in teal, beige, white, black and gray, then six pairs of soft, stretchy yoga pants. Unaccustomed for shopping for women, he guessed Aimee was a size four. Thin, fit, with taut womanly curves. He prayed he was right; last thing he wanted was to insult her by either over or under estimating. He also grabbed some cashmere socks for her since the hospital socks didn’t look as comfy as these.

  As he signed his name to the credit card slip, Larissa tried again. “We’re going for a fifty mile bike ride tomorrow morning. Why don’t you come with us?”

  “Can’t,” Mark said and shook his head. “But I’ll give you a call when I get some time, and I’ll call when I need some help out at the cabins.”

  “I bet you will,” John joked. Larissa punched her husband playfully in the arm.

  “I’m holding you to that,” she said and hugged Mark again.

  By the time Mark arrived home, May had climbed up on the bed and was sleeping curled up on the pillow beside Lauren. She lifted her head and looked up at him with her ice-blue eyes as he came into the room.

  “May, off the furniture,” he whispered. May’s sweet, wise face looked at him as if he were crazy. She had been an amazingly easy puppy to train, not messing in the house, not begging for table scraps and not jumping on the furniture. But she didn’t seem inclined to move from her cozy spot by Lauren’s side.

  He gently picked her up and put her on the floor. She stretched extravagantly then lay down.

  Lauren’s eyes opened.

  “Was she bothering you?”

  Lauren licked her dry lips. “No. I like her.”

  “She seems to have taken a liking to you too. If she gets on your nerves, let me know and I’ll get her out of your room.”

  “She’s sweet.”

  “I brought you some medications. I’m going to get an IV going for you, which will keep the antibiotics flowing, and I’ll give a little morphine to help the pain. It will also help you sleep.”

  “Mkay,” she murmured.

  Mark held her slender arm, daubed the inside of her elbow with rubbing alcohol, and as gently as he could, slid the needle into her vein. Once he got the morphine flowing she exhaled. “Wow. Nice.”

  “What’s he pain on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life?”

  “Six but dropping.” She turned her head slightly to look at him. “Why are you being so nice to me?” Her drugged gaze searched his in a cautious way that made him think she was not used to people being kind to her.

  “You were in my barn. That means you’re my responsibility,” he said with a gentle smile. It wasn’t the truth, but the truth would just confound her. It confounded himself. He just liked her. Simple as Mother Goose.

  Mark sat by her beside until the narcotic had lulled her back to sleep. Then he got up to leave. “Come on, May,” he whispered, ready to shut the door.

  May looked at him, then put her head on her paws in a gesture that made it clear she wasn’t moving.

  “Suit yourself, weirdo,” he whispered.

  He left the door open to let May come down when she was ready and walked downstairs.

  Today had been so surreal he wasn’t sure what to do. A glance at the horses outside in the paddock reminded him they still needed to be fed.

  Mark fed and groomed the horses, and as he brushed them down, his thoughts veered back to Shelby. She’d been on his mind off and on for a month, and never in a good way. He was trying to remember what he liked about her. They had some history and that did count for something, he supposed. When he returned from Afghanistan, she’d been quietly supportive, even if she didn’t really know what to do for him when he became withdrawn. That was about that time she began to express her desire for “more.” She suggested moving into his condo in Arlington. He wasn’t ready for that so she countered they should at least be engaged. He was definitely not ready for that, yet the total insanity of her wedding campaign had to be experienced to be believed. She left wedding magazines around her apartment where she knew he would see them. When they were out, she’d “spontaneously” see a bridal salon that she just had to pop into. She pouted when she saw weddings on television, glaring at him with increasing anger. It became an all-consuming obsession with her.

  Claustrophobia was not sexy. The harder she pushed, the more he withdrew; he barely even recognized her.

  When he quit the Central Intelligence Agency, she had been ebullient; she thought the change signaled a bright path forward for them both. How wrong she had been.

  Within weeks of his resignation, the first allegations of murder in Afghanistan arose. The ensuing scandal was a grotesque orgy of blame, blackmail, and wild speculation; in that kind of environment the simple truth was the first casualty.

  The upper echelons of government scrambled to capitalize on the scandal and make a name for themselves. “He is a doctor out of control, complicit in the reckless murder of a detainee we now know was innocent,” the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had bellowed in front of news cameras.

  Mark’s identity had been classified, but his superiors at CIA were all too aware of who he was and the trouble he was causing. He resigned. His direct boss and thirteen others were fired.

  His career was in ruins. People he thought were friends were suddenly unreachable. The other people accused of torture were advised by their attorneys not to speak to him. Everyone was in classic CYA mode.

  When he was finally cleared of wrong-doing, he felt nothing but disgust at the agency, the war, and the entire intelligence apparatus.

  He needed time to get his mind right, to figure out what to do about his life now that he had no career and, though she was much less a consideration, figure out what to do about Shelby.

  His friends would have been amused by his quandary. Normally he was very decisive. But when it came to Shelby, he just didn’t know. Every time he got close to calling it off, he’d wonder if he was throwing away a relationship with real promise – plus, she could be very sweet and convincing when she wanted to be. He wanted to be loyal; he prided himself on his loyalty, but he also wanted to be happy.

  Because he could not ask her to marry him, they floated aimlessly in a less-than-stellar relationship that refused to die only because Shelby clung so hard when Mark tried to pull away.

  He watched the horses eat their oats and hay, backlit by the purple and orange sky. Spanner Ranch was a peaceful place, a good place to heal his heart and his wounded psyche. It was also a good place for Lauren to heal her body. He listened to the silence of the cooling air, and watched a hawk dive and spiral in the fading light. She had been so afraid that someone was after her. If she was right, she was, at least, one step ahead of her pursuer and safe as long as she was here. He would protect her.

  Six

  Carlos hunkered down in the passenger seat of the ten year old white van, watching the row house on Ontario Street. The beater was probably a little out of place on the street of mostly Jettas and starter BMWs, but not enough that it would cause serious scrutiny. It helped that the sun hadn’t yet come up and the shady trees made the street look even darker.

  At twenty past six, he spotted Seth’s Jeep turn onto the street, then slow as he looked for a place to park on the curb.

  “That him?” one of his bodyguards asked from the backseat.

  “Yeah.” Carlos slid down low in the bucket seat as Seth passed. Over the rim of the dashboard, Carlos watched as Seth parked two cars in front of them.

  He got out of his car, scanned the road, then hurried toward the townhouse. Seth was about six feet tall, a smidge too fat. No doubt he thought of his bigness as pure muscle. Carlos, on the other hand, was pure sinew and strength. And he was ready to use it.

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sp; Seth was walking up the flagstones and digging in his pocket for the key when Carlos stepped out of the van and slammed the door closed, sending the sound careening through the peaceful neighborhood.

  Seth jumped as he turned around. Carlos grinned. Seth was nervous as a cat. Good. Carlos took a handful of the mook’s scruff of hair and dragged him up the steps of his townhouse. It was early; people were just waking up to get ready for work and the street was still empty. There wasn’t anyone to see.

  “Open the door,” Carlos growled into his ear.

  Seth, pressed up against the door, tried to turn to face Carlos. Carlos grabbed the pistol from his waistband and shoved the cold barrel hard into the cop’s kidney. “Open the fucking door, Seth. You want me to kill you right here?”

  The door opened and Carlos immediately threw him up against the wall of the entryway. Seth lifted his hands to defend himself but Carlos easily pistol whipped him, cracking the butt of the gun on Seth’s cheekbone. He slumped against the wall, too stunned to produce much more than terror signals with every heartbeat.

  Carlos leaned in close, so his face was nearly touching Seth’s. “You know why I’m here?” Carlos asked.

  Seth allowed a little squeak of fear to part through his slack lips. The edges of his eyes were tight. He was scared like a little girl. Carlos smiled, enjoying it. Let the little pussy sweat it out.

  Carlos chuckled and backed off. He took a long look around the entryway. A nice collection of arty black and white photos of boats hung on the wall. On the table was a picture of Seth and a woman in a park. Carlos picked it up, studying the girl. Pretty, like one of those Ralph Lauren models with long, rich brown hair and green eyes. She didn’t look too happy to have Seth’s arm around her, but Seth was grinning like a damn baboon.

  Carlos tossed the portrait back on the table, knocking over a collection of glass figurines. Seth flinched as two of them crashed to the hardwood floor and shattered.

  It was fuckers like this Carlos couldn’t understand. He had a nice little place here, nice honey. And then he goes and screws over Carlos. That wasn’t smart.

  He grabbed Seth by the collar and pulled him into the living room. Good furniture – those fancy rugs and silk furniture you couldn’t eat on or fuck on. This kind of wealth – modest as it was, but completely legitimate – puzzled Carlos. It seemed crazy if you could already afford stuff like this to venture into trafficking. Some people were just adrenaline junkies, he supposed.

  Carlos shoved Seth to the sofa and held the gun slack in his hand, just reminding him that they were equals here.

  Seth sat on the edge of the sofa, his hands by his sides like he was going to get up and run. Fat chance of that. Still, he was a cop and he was armed, so Carlos lifted the gun to Seth’s head, enjoying the look of abject terror in the fat fuck’s face.

  Carlos sat down next to him, lifting the barrel to his ear, letting the cool metal whisper against the sensitive skin, and asked in a conversational voice, “Seth, where the fuck is my money?”

  “My ex-girlfriend has it,” he said. “I’m going to get it for you.”

  “Why does your girlfriend have my money?”

  “She…” He grasped for a lie.

  Carlos knew whatever was going to spew from his lips was a lie and he was tired of being jerked around. He grabbed Seth’s right hand and wordlessly jerked back his index finger until he heard the satisfying crack of breaking bone. Seth wailed, trying to reclaim his hand from Carlos’s iron grip. He sank to his knees on the floor.

  Carlos leaned in close to Seth’s sweating, crimson face. “I want my fucking money.”

  Seth nodded hysterically. His face had gone pale with shock and agony.

  “Where is the girl?”

  “I….”

  “You want your other hand fucked up too? You want me to just shoot you and finish this? I’ll do it Seth. It’s no problem if you want to make me do it that way.”

  “She’s in Oregon.”

  “Oregon? What the hell, Seth? I try to be nice to you. I try to give you the benefit of the doubt and you tell me my money is on the other side of the god damn country?”

  “She took it.”

  “You have twenty-four hours, Seth to get six hundred thousand dollars that belongs to me.” Carlos stood up and looked around the house again. “This is bullshit. How much you make every year?”

  “What?”

  “What’s your salary at the police department?”

  “Seventy thousand.”

  “How much does the girl bring in?”

  Seth shrugged. “Depends.” It infuriated Seth that the seventy thousand figure included Aimee’s income.

  Carlos shook his head. “You’re a dumbass,” he said, almost to himself. “You have this beautiful place. You make money. And you try to fuck me over. You’re a dumb man.”

  “I’ll get it to you,” Seth said, holding his deformed finger gingerly in his other hand. Carlos was pleased at the beg in his voice.

  “Yes,” Carlos replied. “You will.”’

  He walked out of the house, slamming the door so hard one of the pictures of the boats fell off the wall.

  Bella, the tiny white puffball of a biscon frise that Bryan bought for Jake last Christmas, had a very rigid schedule. She had to be out the door at six thirty in the morning, or she’d piddle on the carpet. Her bladder was apparently the size of a hummingbird’s.

  At exactly six thirty, Bryan stepped outside and set Bella on the porch. She delicately ran across the dewy patch of grass that was their postage stamp front yard and did her business.

  The street was quiet, just barely rinsing purple in the first brightening hues of morning. It was still pleasantly cool, a respite before the day’s temperatures soared into the nineties.

  A slamming door shattered the peace of the morning. A short Hispanic guy erupted from Seth Sabich’s front door. He glanced at Bryan and flashed a grotesque sneer designed to intimidate. Bulky with prison muscle and wearing what Bryan thought of as gangster clothes – baggy jeans, a long sleeve shirt buttoned to the neck, and a red bandana around his head – he was not one of Sabich’s usual visitors. In fact, for a detective at the Metropolitan Police Department, a visitor like that was downright bizarre.

  Instinctively, Bryan feigned disinterest in the man, and walked over to pick up Bella. He only looked up when the van roared from the neighborhood.

  Sabich’s door flung open and Seth stepped out. “Hey!”

  Bryan tried to pretend he didn’t hear Seth’s loud cry in the silence of the morning, but when he called out again, Bryan realized he was trotting over to speak to him.

  “Good morning,” he replied calmly.

  As he neared, he noticed Seth’s swollen eye and bloody lip. He cradled his right hand, which was magenta and mangled, in his left. Still, his posture conveyed that authoritarian instinct, the demand for total submission.

  Bryan pretended nothing was amiss.

  “You saw him come out of here,” Seth said. When he spoke, a black space in the side of his jaw became visible, and Bryan realized with a chill that the Hispanic man had knocked Seth’s tooth out. Whatever was going on, Bryan wanted no part of it.

  “I wasn’t paying attention,” he answered blandly, smiling in the vague hope that Seth would take him for a simpleminded fool and leave him alone.

  Seth’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. “You didn’t see anything,” he growled. It was a statement of fact.

  Bryan shrugged. “Whatever, man. I really wasn’t paying attention.”

  Seth’s gaze bore into him like nails, holding him in place. “You and Aimee are pretty close,” he said.

  Bryan tried to keep his face neutral, giving away nothing. “We are neighbors,” he said lightly. “She’s always very kind to me. To us. Jake and myself…”

  A look of disgust washed across Seth’s face, then vanished with the veneer of a bureaucrat’s impassive glaze.

  “Did she ever mention her sister?”


  Bryan frowned. “No. I didn’t know she has a sister.”

  Seth starred at him dubiously and Bryan felt the situation was getting ridiculous. Blood was smeared over Seth’s lips. He finally said, “Are you okay?”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Seth said.

  Jake opened the front door and looked out. Bryan met his gaze, and Seth backed off. “You didn’t see anything,” he muttered again.

  Bryan watched him walk through the pretty pansies that Aimee had planted this spring, then jog up the steps to his house.

  Holding Bella, Bryan hurried to his front door.

  “What on earth was that about?” Jake asked as he came inside.

  “Fucking psycho,” Bryan replied and double-locked the door behind him. He walked into the kitchen to make Bella her breakfast. “That asshole ---“

  Jake quickly shushed him. “These walls are thin,” he said in a low voice.

  Bryan dumped a bit of soft dog food in the dish with kibble and placed it on the floor. He washed his hands and turned to Jake. “Some Hispanic guy came blazing out of there. Seth was all beaten up. And then he tells me that I saw nothing while asking if I heard from Aimee. Something weird is going on.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing, of course.”

  “He’s a fucking psycho. I hope she’s okay.”

  Bryan frowned. Seth looked so crazy. Aimee was probably safe right now, but for how long? H didn’t want to think such thoughts. Silently he wished her godspeed.

  In the master bathroom basin, Seth spit out blood, then rinsed with water. Carlos had busted his lip and sliced up the inside of his cheek pretty good, but it could have been much worse. It was just a warning. He had to find Aimee. He’d been unable to reach Kimberly in Portland– or rather, she still refused to speak to him or put Aimee on the phone. But he could not imagine where else Aimee might be.