Passion

by Marilyn Pappano

  And then there was the blood.

  “Your arm is bleeding.” She said it flatly, without emotion, without the slightest hint of the satisfaction she took in knowing that her frantic efforts to free herself had caused him at least a moment’s pain, with no sign at all of the shame that accompanied the satisfaction.

  “It’ll stop.” He sounded just as flat, just as unfeeling, but his fingers tightened briefly around her arm. Then he raised his head and looked at her, his blue gaze locking with hers. “Don’t make me hurt you, Teryl.” His words were simple, his voice quiet, but it was a plea as surely as her own earlier request—Please don’t—had been.

  “Let me go,” she whispered.

  “I can’t. I need you.”

  “Please… I’m not worth anything to you. I don’t have any money. My family doesn’t have any money.”

  “I don’t want money.”

  That wasn’t a reassuring response. If he was telling the truth, if he had no interest in making a trade of her freedom for someone’s cash, then what did that leave for a motive? Sex? Murder?

  Or both?

  Choking back another pitiful plea, she forced herself to ask quietly, calmly, “Then what do you want?” It was better to know what she was up against. Better to find out what he intended to do to her than to wait, unknowing and afraid, for him to do it.

  On the highway an eighteen-wheeler rushed past, buffeting them, rocking the Blazer from side to side. He glanced in the rearview mirror, then, still holding her arm, awkwardly shifted into first gear and eased the truck farther onto the shoulder. There he shut off the key and turned in his seat to face her. “You never asked my last name.”

  Teryl felt a twinge of discomfort, tinged again with a sense of the ludicrous. There was an accusation in the cool, weary tones of his voice, a rebuke that said she should have been more careful, should have shown some caution, some morals, some simple common sense. It made her own voice defensive when she replied, “I didn’t think it was necessary. I didn’t think, after last night, that I would ever see you again.”

  But when she had, when she had turned around in the hotel lobby and he’d been standing there, she had been pleased. She had been so pleased. Now she wished he had just walked out of her life. Now she wished he had never walked into it. And the words he said next merely doubled her wishes.

  “My name is John Smith… but you probably know me better as Simon Tremont.”

  Teryl stared at him—simply stared. Of all the things in the world he could have said, that was the one she wasn’t prepared for, the one she never would have expected. He thought—he believed—he was Simon Tremont.

  Oh, God, he was crazy. She had been kidnapped by a crazy man. She had gone to bed last night with a man who was absolutely, one hundred percent, certifiably insane, and now he’d taken her hostage. Now he intended to—To do what? To play out his fantasy? Was she meant to be the adoring fan to his Tremont? Was that why he’d chosen her—because she hadn’t bothered to disguise her admiration for the author? Or was it simply because she’d been so damned easy?

  “If I let go of you,” he began haltingly, “will you promise not to try to get away?”

  The crazy man was asking for a promise, and she gave it readily, unable to speak over the lump of fear in her throat but nodding instead. He didn’t immediately release her, and when he did, it seemed an effort. She could actually see him forcing his fingers to loosen, to uncurl from around her arm. The instant she was free, she drew back as far as possible, and she cradled her arm to her chest, using her free hand to gingerly rub the place where he’d held her. Already her skin had turned red and dark purple. Already there was swelling around the damaged tissue that would soon form ugly bruises encircling her forearm in roughly the same shape as his hand.

  And he expected her to believe that he didn’t want to hurt her, she thought bitterly.

  Staring out the bug-splattered windshield, he drew a deep breath, then spoke in a flat, unemotional voice. “Tell me what you know about Simon Tremont.”

  Yesterday he had asked if Tremont was a pseudonym, and she had lied. This morning he had asked where Tremont called home, and her only answer had been a nonanswer. She wasn’t going to answer this time, either, she decided. She wasn’t going to tell him anything he could use to support his delusions.

  But, if she was reading the grimly accepting expression on his face correctly, he didn’t really expect an answer. His words confirmed it. “Let me tell you what you know about him. He’s been with the Robertson Agency from the beginning. He signed with Rebecca while she was still in New York City, and with his first two books, she earned enough to move the agency to her hometown of Richmond. She had never met Tremont, never even spoken to him—until recently, at least—and neither had anyone else, not even his editor at Morgan-Wilkes. All of their contact with him had been by mail.”

  So far, so good, Teryl thought. But none of this information was private. Every devoted Tremont fan knew that much. It was all part of his mystique.

  “He lives—” John broke off with a pain-filled grimace, then started again. “He lived in Colorado in a place so remote that most people in the area never knew he was there, and he got his mail at one of those mailbox places in Denver. At least, he did until a few months ago.”

  The muscles in her jaw clenched and tightened. How many devoted Tremont fans knew he’d lived most of the last eleven years in Colorado? How many knew his mailing address had, indeed, been a Denver box? For that matter, how many people knew his real name was John Smith?

  But none of that would be impossible to uncover, she silently insisted. In this high-tech age, if you were resourceful enough—and fanatical enough—you could learn virtually anything about anyone. And if you were claiming to be that person you were interested in… Well, that was fanatical enough for her.

  “You want to know how much Tremont made last year? So much that he quit counting the zeroes on his checks. So much that if he quit the business today and never wrote another word as long as he lived, he still couldn’t spend all that money.”

  “You haven’t told me anything that isn’t common knowledge,” she said, her voice quiet and even, carefully pitched not to upset or anger him. “All of Tremont’s fans are well acquainted with the mystery surrounding him. As far as the money, he’s the best-selling author in the country. Of course he makes a fortune.”

  He looked at her for the first time since he’d released her, his troubled gaze settling heavily on her. “Are all of his fans also well acquainted with the fact that the Thibodeaux books are your all-time favorite Tremont books? While they’re all asking for Philip’s story, do they know that you’re more interested in Liane’s? That you even included a note with one of his contracts asking if he was going to write her story?”

  A chill settled deep in her stomach. Her friends who also read Simon’s books knew how much she loved the Thibodeaux series. They knew that, while she found Philip interesting, she was fascinated by the younger sister. But he wasn’t her friend, damn it, and not even they knew she had written that note. Hell, no one knew except her… and Simon… and this man. How?

  “It wasn’t a contract,” she disagreed, hostility—and fear—sharpening her voice. “It was a royalty statement. How do you know about that?”

  “Because you sent it to me, damn it!”

  His shout, and all the rage behind it, made her flinch, shrinking back against the door until she could retreat no farther. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “How could you be Simon Tremont? I’ve met Simon. I’ve talked to him. I’ve sat across a table from him. I’ve read his work.”

  Lowering his head, he rubbed his eyes with both hands, then blew his breath out. When he looked at her again, the anger was gone, not just controlled but completely hidden behind the blank weariness that etched his face. “You’ve met a man claiming to be Tremont. What proof did he offer? What proof did you ask for?”

  “He knew Rebecca. He knew me. He was the man
I’d talked to on the phone. He knew everything there was to know about Simon’s business. He knew Simon’s real name, knew his address—”

  Interrupting her, John recited the address—box, city, and zip code—from memory. “Sound familiar?”

  Stunningly so. But she responded almost immediately with a stunner of her own. “He wrote Resurrection.”

  The silence that followed her triumphant pronouncement was repressive, and the rising temperature, too warm now and sticky as the heat from outside seeped in, made it more so. She wished for cool air, for a blast from the air conditioner, for noise or music, for anything to alleviate her discomfort and chase away the suffocating closeness in the cab as John stared at her.

  “He wrote Resurrection,” she repeated, her voice softer now, gentler. “You can’t explain that away, can you? If he’s not Simon Tremont, how did he come up with the story? How did he write the book that perfectly matches the outline that’s been sitting in our files for more than a year? How did he write the best book that Simon Tremont has ever written?”

  She waited a moment, but when he said nothing, she gave a little shake of her head. “You can’t explain it,” she said finally.

  “No,” he said at last, quietly. Defeatedly. “I can’t.”

  Maybe she had won, she thought, hope rising, expanding. Maybe now he would acknowledge that he couldn’t pull this off. Maybe he would turn around and take her back to New Orleans. Maybe he would let her go.

  But her hopes were shattered as quickly as they had formed. “I need your help, Teryl.” Desperation shadowed his voice, made it unsteady and made her skin crawl. “I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m not asking you to believe me. I just need your help to prove that I am who I say I am. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not going to kill you. But I have to have your help.”

  Her gaze locked fully with his. “And if I don’t give it?”

  His fingers knotted around the steering wheel, and a corresponding knot formed deep in her stomach. “Then I’m prepared to take it.”

  “You’re threatening me.” Her tone was accusatory, her expression belligerent. “You just said you wouldn’t hurt me, and now—”

  “It’s not a threat, Teryl,” he said quietly, silencing her. “It’s a promise.”

  She had never been so utterly miserable in her life.

  Teryl rested her head so that the shoulder strap from the seat belt offered some support, but with every bump on the narrow road they were following, her forehead banged against the window, and the muscles in her neck were tight enough to spasm any minute now. Her back hurt from long hours in the same cramped position—as far from John as she could get—and she was hungry, sleepy, and needed a bathroom desperately.

  She was almost too miserable to be afraid.

  But not quite.

  Reaching up, John turned on the map lights, then pulled a road atlas from between his seat and the console and tossed it onto her lap. Sometime this afternoon, somewhere south of Montgomery, he had done the same thing, had instructed her to find a route to Virginia that would keep them off the interstates. She hadn’t asked why; she had assumed that it had something to do with all those state troopers they kept seeing, first on I-10, then on 65. Maybe he had thought she would do something crazy, like this morning—something to get their attention, something to force a confrontation.

  She had thought about it, had thought about it long and hard, especially when one young female trooper had come up alongside them. She had thought about grabbing the wheel again, about creating enough of a disturbance to get the woman’s attention, even about forcing both the trooper’s car and the Blazer off the road, but she had hesitated, too afraid of failing and rousing John’s anger, and after a moment the woman had passed them and disappeared up ahead.

  D.J. would have done it. Of course, D.J. never would have gotten herself into such a mess. Oh, she would have picked up John last night; she certainly would have taken him to a hotel room—although not her own—and she would have used him so thoroughly that he wouldn’t have had the energy to move for a few days. Then she would have walked away without even a backward look, and if he had dared show up at her hotel this morning, she likely wouldn’t have given him the time of day.

  But D.J. had guts. Teryl was just a spineless, helpless, sniveling fool.

  D.J. took control. Teryl took orders.

  She had followed John’s orders, what few he had given, all day. Now, atlas in hand, she sat waiting for the next one.

  “See how far it is to the next town.”

  “What state are we in?” she asked wearily.

  “Should be Tennessee. The last town was Morrison—no, Morrisville.”

  She flipped through to the Tennessee map, found the highway they were on, and began searching for Morrisville. When she didn’t find it, she checked the index, but it was no help. “There’s no Morrisville on this road. Are you sure we’re in Tennessee?”

  “We have to be. Jesus, we’ve been driving all day.”

  She couldn’t remember seeing a sign welcoming them to Tennessee, but then she hadn’t been paying attention to signs. She had spent most of the day staring blindly out the window, coming to life only when he prompted her for further directions. Now, seeing the white glow of a highway sign ahead, she squinted to make out the numbers underneath the state designation. No wonder she hadn’t been able to find Morrisville; she had been looking on the wrong road. She was bending over the map, searching for the new road, when John swore with such viciousness that she flinched, and the atlas slid from her limp fingers.

  He brought the Blazer to a stop on the grass at the side of the road and jerked the map from her lap where it had landed. “For God’s sake, Teryl, we’re in Mississippi,” he muttered darkly, flipping through the pages to the M’s. “How the hell did you manage that?”

  Mississippi. They had left Mississippi behind a long time ago. If they were back in it again, then that meant they’d spent the entire day driving in a giant circle. It meant that after a long, edgy, tense day, they were little, if any, closer to Richmond—assuming that John truly intended to take her there. It meant another miserable long day to make up for today.

  The prospect was too disheartening. Feeling as if she just might fold in on herself, she couldn’t even find the energy to defend herself. “I’m not the one driving,” she said listlessly.

  “But you’re the one giving directions.”

  “And you’re the one not following them.”

  “Maybe they’re not worth following. Don’t you know how to read a map?”

  “I’ve never tried. I’ve never driven anyplace where I needed a map.” The discomfort in her neck was making its way steadily up into her head until even her scalp ached. Forget food. She wanted a bathroom and a bed. She wondered if, while he studied the map, he would let her make a quick trip into the dark woods that flanked the road. She doubted it. He had let her to to the bathroom only once today, when they had stopped for gas, and then only after he had checked out the small, smelly, windowless little room himself. Lunch had been candy bars, chips, and Cokes from the same gas station.

  She wished for a little of that Coke now to wash down a handful of aspirin from D.J.’s survival kit. What would her friend think when she found out—if she found out—that her gag gift had truly become a small part of Teryl’s survival?

  What would she think when she went to the airport tonight to pick up Teryl and Teryl never showed? How long would it take her to start worrying? How long before she called the hotel in New Orleans? How long before she found out that Teryl had checked out this morning and disappeared?

  Not that D.J.’s concern would do much good. No one had seen Teryl leave the studio with John yesterday. No one in the Quarter would likely remember them, except the cabbie who had taken them to the hotel, and he’d had little interest in her face; they had given him so much more to ogle. Probably no one at the hotel had noticed her with John this morning, not even the valet who had brough
t the Blazer. She was just so damned forgettable, and John had seemed so normal. There had been nothing about them that warranted attention.

  Being forgettable seemed an awfully poor reason for dying—and even though he’d denied it, she wasn’t convinced that John wasn’t going to kill her. Who could predict what a crazy person would do?

  Resting her forehead against the cool glass, she closed her eyes. “If I don’t take some aspirin soon, I’m going to throw up, and I can’t take aspirin without something to drink, and I can’t drink anything without going to the bathroom first.”

  He glanced at her—she felt the weight of his look—then closed the road atlas, tucked it away, and shut off the lights. “There’s a town about ten miles up. Maybe they’ll have a motel and we can stop for the night.”

  Twenty-four hours ago the thought of spending the night with him had been exciting, erotic, pleasurable. Twelve hours ago it would have filled her with fear and loathing. Tonight she didn’t care. He could do whatever he wanted, as long as she got access to a bathroom and a bottle of aspirin first and he let her sleep—or went ahead and killed her—afterward.

  The town was little, the business district no more than six blocks long. The three restaurants they passed were closed, she noticed, as was the only grocery store. So much for a real dinner. The only sign of activity in the entire place was at the convenience store located at the opposite end of town, right across the street from the lone motel.

  Teryl’s smile as she surveyed the place was mirthless. It was two stories, no more than sixteen rooms, cinderblock painted an offensive pale green, and ugly, God, so ugly. If there was a name, it was well hidden; the painted sign above the door read simply Motel. Underneath that hung a sign that read Vacancy. There was no way to add a No in front of it, she noticed. The owners probably found the likelihood of ever being completely booked so remote that they hadn’t wanted to waste money on something they would never need.

  John parked off to the side of the office, shut off the engine, and turned toward her. “You have to come in with me. Stay at my side and keep your mouth shut. Don’t even make eye contact with the clerk. Understand?”