“My money’s on the hotel parking lot,” Ben said at the same time Daniel’s thoughts turned that way. “There’s only the one light. There’re no cameras. It’s hidden from view, and there’s very little traffic. Chances of being seen are minimal.”
If Natasha wasn’t already pale, the color would have drained from her face. “So I was driving around town with a dangerous chemical that spontaneously ignites in my car? Aw, jeez, I’m going to start walking everywhere I go.”
“You practically do that anyway,” Daniel absently reminded her. It was a nothing comment, but for a moment, everyone went still. Ben wore his usual unflappable expression. Sam was looking curiously from Daniel to Natasha and back again.
Daniel didn’t look to see what was on her face. He didn’t want to think about all the hundreds of miles they’d walked together—in the city, the country, the mountains, on the beach. They’d talked and laughed and sometimes argued and sometimes been silent, but they’d always been close in a way that his rational brain could never completely figure out.
Like his father, he hadn’t needed to understand it to appreciate it.
Gradually, the conversation resumed, small talk about car insurance, reports, paperwork. When the food came, the grimmer topic obviously hadn’t affected anyone’s appetite. Even Natasha ate as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Everyone needed a break from reality now and then, or they would all go insane.
After they’d made a dint in the food, Sam turned the focus of the discussion Daniel’s way. “What are we going to do with you?”
His fingers tightening on his fork, Daniel forced a grin. “Chief, you’ve been asking that since the day you hired me.”
“You’ve got the potential to be a good detective. Little Bear and I have put enough work in on you that I’d hate to lose you now.”
Daniel took the dry comment the way it was intended. He was a good detective. Sam wouldn’t have kept him on if he wasn’t. Every chief, if he held the title long enough, had to lose an officer someday, but Sam hadn’t yet, and he really would hate it. Though only a few years separated them in age, Sam was mentor to everyone in the department, and he took that responsibility seriously.
“He knows where you live,” Ben said.
Daniel didn’t insult them by suggesting that his prowler could have been anyone, two-legged or four. They knew, just as he did. “He didn’t try to get inside.”
“Maybe because he didn’t have a chance.”
That came from Natasha in a soft, unsteady voice. Her eyes seemed unusually blue in the porcelain of her face, rousing every protective urge he’d ever possessed. He wanted to promise her he would survive this. Wanted to squeeze her hand the way she’d squeezed his back at the hotel. To take away her worry and fear and give back the security she was so desperately in need of. To—
Whoa. This was Natasha, he reminded himself. Who got engaged on a whim then fled like a frightened deer. Who had humiliated him in front of God and everyone. Who had broken his heart and driven him nearly fifteen hundred miles away from her, his fathers and his job. Who’d been the best and worst and most disastrous thing to ever happen in his life.
“I have an alarm system,” he said in measured tones. “I sleep with a gun and a Taser and pepper spray. I’m not going to let some stranger in my house. I’m not going to be taken by surprise.”
That much was said to the table in general, but he paused, locked gazes with her and added just for her, “I’m not Kyle.”
Chapter 6
He certainly wasn’t Kyle, Natasha reflected once Daniel finally broke eye contact with her. Kyle was kind, good-natured and expected the best of everyone. He was friendly and helpful, and while he knew there was an uglier side to people, he didn’t experience it often enough to be wary.
Kyle had been an easy target for RememberMe. Daniel wasn’t. But RememberMe knew that, knew Daniel was a cop and therefore was well armed and suspicious, and he wasn’t put off by it. He wasn’t heading out of town in search of Eric or Zach instead, both of whom were certainly easier victims.
Which meant he was prepared.
So was Daniel, she had to admit.
But there wasn’t enough preparation in the world to make the idea of someone wanting him dead bearable.
The chief pulled another piece of paper from another pocket and handed it to her between bites of ham with thin, dark gravy. “Redeye,” the waitress had called it. “Your guy doesn’t yet know we’ve got your devices. Your texts and emails from yesterday.”
Hands trembling, she unfolded the paper. Probably unaware of it, Daniel leaned close to read it with her, so close she smelled his scent and felt his warmth, his solidness, real, tangible, assuring. For a long time, she couldn’t focus on the words printed on the paper, not because she was afraid to see what her nightmare had written. She was concentrating on breathing deeply of Daniel, on absorbing as much of him as she could, on reveling in the fact that he was there beside her, exactly where she needed him.
After a moment, he pulled the printout from her and settled back in his chair. He scanned the messages in silence, his mouth thinning, his jaw tightening, then he snorted and dropped the page in the middle of the table.
“You want to read it next?” Ben asked her. “They’re your messages.”
She tried to reach out, but her hand wouldn’t cooperate. After a tiny shake of her head, he picked it up and, more courteous than Daniel, read the words aloud. “‘Did you like my surprise this morning, Nat? I thought it was pretty spectacular, all those beautiful flames on such a gray day. Don’t worry about the car. I’ll get you a new one. A better one. You should know, there’s nothing small about my romantic gestures.’”
“Any of his gifts been over-the-top before?” Chief Douglas asked.
“He sent a bouquet of roses once that was almost as big as my dining table.” It had been relatively early in their—their whatever-it-was, and she had been disturbed that he knew where she lived and concerned that the gift was far too extravagant. But a small naive part of her had been impressed. All the flowers she’d received prior to that time combined still wouldn’t have matched the size of that single huge, glorious bouquet.
It was the first time Stacia had said, This is creepy. Far from the last time she would say it.
“He thinks he’s romantic,” Daniel muttered.
“By crazy stalker standards, he is.” Ben went on to the next message. “‘Should I be worried that my surprise this morning had you spending half the day with Daniel? If I didn’t know you so well, maybe I would be. Have you told him everything about us? Are you going to? That I was the reason you broke your engagement with him?’”
Alarm shivered through her. “That’s ridiculous. I never knew he existed until last Halloween, and he certainly had nothing to do with—with what I did.”
“Crazy stalker,” Ben repeated with agreeing nods from both Daniel and the chief. “He believes you’re soul mates. He loves you, and you love him, and once he’s removed the obstacles, you’ll never want to leave him again. Isn’t that what he said in Thursday night’s email?”
She nodded glumly. “The only way I’d never want to leave him is if I’m dead.”
The last three words boomed in her brain, echoing ominously, tumbling her stomach about so violently that she couldn’t possibly take another bite of food. It had an effect on the men, too, leaving Ben and Chief Douglas unusually somber.
Anger, fierce but protective, flashed in Daniel’s eyes and made his voice harsh, his words clipped. “That’s not going to happen.”
Natasha couldn’t fill her lungs enough to steady her voice. “But...it does happen. Sometimes. Too many times.” When stalkers finally had to face the truth of their delusions, when the knowledge somehow penetrated their fantasies that they would never possess the object of their desire, no matter how ha
rd they tried, no matter how many obstacles they removed, their mind-set too often turned from You’ll always be mine to If I can’t have you, no one can.
RememberMe would want her dead because that was the only way she would ever, ever be his.
Daniel shifted in his chair, brushing her leg, drawing her stricken gaze to him. “I’m not going to let that happen.” A pause, a small frown wrinkling his forehead, and he amended the promise. “We’re not going to let it happen.”
She believed him. Believed he and Ben and Chief Douglas would do everything in their power to keep her safe. But the sorry truth was that they couldn’t stop RememberMe without finding him, they couldn’t find him without identifying him and the sole identifying bit of data they had came from Ozzie, who was not quite right and sometimes saw things that weren’t there.
She felt sick and helpless. She wanted to throw a full-blown tantrum, shrieking out her rage and frustration. Wanted to know why this bastard had decided to destroy her life. Wanted to run outside into the middle of the street and scream at the top of her lungs, Here I am, you sick, sleazy coward! You have something to say to me, say it to my face. Step up. For the first time in your life, be a man. Then burn in hell.
At least she would have the satisfaction of knowing he would hear her. He’d gone every other place she’d gone. He was surely skulking around out there now.
“There’s only a couple more.” Ben’s quiet, calm voice helped tamp down the hysteria rising inside her. “From last night—‘Why did you take him to your room? I saw how quickly you walked inside, trying to get away from him, but then you invited him upstairs. I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, Nat, but sometimes you make it hard. Like leaving home without telling me. Like taking your former fiancé to your hotel room. Sometimes I think you don’t understand what you and I have. We’re destined to be together. You and me. Forever. Everything’s already in motion. You can’t stop it. You can’t save Daniel, Nat. You can’t save him. You can’t save him.’”
Stillness surrounded them as Ben’s voice faded. They were just words, simple ones, harmless in themselves, but together they made a chilling reminder that words had power.
The bell over the front door rang, and a group of grumbling old men, by the sounds of their voices, came inside. Natasha wanted to take a casual glance over her shoulder, just to confirm that, but couldn’t dredge up anything the least bit casual inside her. If she looked, she would search their faces, then she would look outside. She would be drawn to the large windows, and she would frantically study every person, every car, every doorway or window or bush that might offer a man concealment. She wouldn’t be able to stop looking, staring this way and that, panic building until she lost all semblance of control.
She could even imagine how mad she would appear to everyone. She only had to look to Stacia, whose first network acting job had been playing a hysterical woman running for her life down the street before the unknown villain caught and killed her.
“There’s one more, a text that came this morning while you were getting coffee at the hotel.” Apparently having memorized the text, Ben folded the paper and stuffed it into his own pocket. “‘You can’t even save yourself, Nat.’”
Into the stillness came a great wheezing sound, interspersed with choking sounds. Her face burning, she realized the awful noises were coming from her. She couldn’t take a breath, and her lungs were burning and tight. Daniel pushed his chair back and stood, pulled her to her feet and the short distance down the hall marked Restrooms. There was a door for the men’s room, another for the ladies’ and a third that led outside to a tiny lot. Outside, in the cool morning air, he pushed her against the wall, nudged her feet apart with his boot then maneuvered her until she was supported by the building, thighs angled, and she was bent at the waist, head close to her knees, staring at mangled asphalt.
Parts of him came into her field of vision when he crouched in front of her. “Shallow, easy breaths, Tash. Just a little one in and blow it out. Then another little one in.”
Hearing him call her by the nickname that had only ever been his was almost enough to undo what effort she’d made to calm herself. She pushed it to the back of her mind, to marvel over later, and forced short breaths in, short breaths out.
It worked, tiny bubbles of sweet air squeezing into her lungs, relaxing the strained muscles in her chest and her throat. Each breath grew a little bigger, and the roiling in her stomach shrank in response. Her eyes were watery but clearing, and her panic was receding like the tides she’d watched so many times: retreating, returning, retreating a little more, each time leaving behind a wider strip of sand.
After a minute—or ten—Daniel peered up into her face. “Okay?”
She wiped her face with one hand then heaved a sigh. “I see wet sand but no water.”
He didn’t frown in bewilderment. He just shook his head and remarked, “And your family thought I was the odd one.”
Slowly, not wanting to jar any part of her that hadn’t regained its steadiness yet, she straightened but continued to lean against the wall. Daniel shifted to lean beside her. “My family didn’t think you were odd. Just black-and-white.”
“In their fifty-six-million-color world, that was odd.”
“The entire world thought—thinks they’re odd. They’re proud of it. Stacia, Nick and me not so much, since we desperately wanted to be seen as normal.” Her laugh, meant to be normal as her family never was, wobbled instead. “I’d take their kind of odd happily right now. RememberMe wouldn’t be interested in me at all if I were Mom-and-Dad weird.”
“I don’t know. Men will overlook an awful lot for a beautiful woman.” There was a pause, broken by a series of honks from the sky. A flock of Canada geese flew overhead in loose formation.
“Aren’t they headed west?” she asked, part of her mind still focused on returning her systems to pre-panic state.
“Male navigator. I imagine one of the females will take over and turn them south soon.” He watched until the higher buildings blocked the geese from view, and then he stared at something on the ground. “I think you should leave Cedar Creek.”
Of course he did. He’d said so Thursday night, and he’d probably said it again Friday. Still, pain, tiny but vicious, pricked at her insides. She managed to keep her voice steady, though. “What if he finds me again?”
“I think he found you here because he knew you would try to warn the rest of us and I was the only one you could find. By the way, Ben told me this morning that Eric is in Seattle, and Zach is in Hawaii.”
She had no clue what had drawn Eric to the Pacific Northwest, but it was a no-brainer what had drawn surfer-boy Zach to the Big Island. “I never told him I knew how to find you. Hell, I never told him anything after the first few months.”
“He had you under surveillance, Natasha. He knew where you were going, what you were doing, who you were talking to. He was smart enough to realize if you were in touch with the Harper fathers, they would tell you where to find the Harper son. I’m betting he already knew where I was, just like he knew where to find Kyle.”
Finally he gave her a sidelong glance. “If we can get you out of town without him knowing, he’ll stick around to take care of me. If he’s here, trying to kill me, he can’t be wherever you are.”
She swallowed hard. “If he’s following me someplace else, he can’t be here trying to kill you.”
Irritation flashed across his face. “You want to take this guy on face-to-face? Natasha, he’s nuts. He thinks you belong to him. You were right in there. If he ever gets control of you, you’re not going to live up to his expectations. His illusions will be shattered, and he’ll blame you, and he will almost certainly try to kill you. What kind of chance do you think you’ll have alone with him?”
Staving off a resurgence of queasiness, she smiled thinly. “You’re awfully sure I’ll disappoint him.�
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“You gonna fall madly in love with him?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then you’re gonna disappoint him.”
She sighed, her first deep breath in a while. “At least he’ll have company. The list of people I’ve disappointed is long.”
The quiet between them was sharp-edged. She waited for Daniel’s response, dry or bitter and accusing. He opened his mouth, but then closed it again and continued to gaze off toward his boots.
They stood there a long time. The sun went behind the clouds, came back out then disappeared again, and the air seemed to cool a few degrees with the next breeze. More rain? Bring it on. If she couldn’t drown her troubles, maybe the rain would drown her.
“You good to go back in?”
She pushed away from the wall, testing her legs. They were steady. She didn’t need the building to hold her up anymore. “I’m good.” She walked to the door before stopping to face him. “Daniel...” She needed to apologize, but as he’d told her at lunch yesterday, sometimes words just aren’t up to the job. So instead, she said something else she needed to say. “Thank you.”
Without waiting for his response, she stepped inside and walked quickly down the hall.
* * *
Daniel had learned as a young Harper that arguing with people who held authority over him was rarely a good idea, but that didn’t stop him from disagreeing—loudly—with Sam. “If you force us both into hiding, it’s just going to cost the department time and money, and I’m going to turn into a crazy-maker.”
“You already make me crazy, Harper.”
He jabbed one finger in the air toward his boss. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw Natasha press her lips together, a sure sign she was trying to resist a smile. “He’s right, Chief. He can drive a sane person straight into the heart of Loony Land in no time flat. And I grew up there, so I know loony.”
Killer Smile Page 13
