by Kate Aeon
A long silence. Then, “Shiny silver lockers?”
“That’s what she said.”
“I’ll want those notes,” Brig said.
“Sure. Come by the ER and pick them up. I’ll bring them with me. But they’re in my handwriting — she had me write things down while she read the cards.”
“No one is going to think you’re a conspirator in this, Alan,” Brig said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Alan clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “I’m going to go wake Madame Believeme from her cozy sleep and send her back home. Unless you think there’s any danger to her.”
“I think there may be a danger to you. I think Ms. Rain, however, will be just fine until we arrest her. Please do not mention to her that we are pursuing that outcome. I’d rather not have to chase her across the state.” He said something to someone with him — for a moment his voice got muffled as he covered the receiver with one hand.
Alan waited.
“Anyway,” Brig said after a moment, “you going in to work tonight?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come by for those notes. Now, are you calm enough to deal with her?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t touch her. Don’t threaten her in any way. Don’t damage anything that belongs to her. Just tell her to leave, watch her to make sure she doesn’t leave anything behind or steal anything, and when you get her out of the house, do not have any contact with her again. You understand?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll see you later. I’ve got to catch a couple hours of sleep first. I’ve been up straight through since yesterday on this.”
Alan stood in the dining room for a long moment after he hung up the phone. Janet had seen him as a surefire social ticket, a way to pay her way through life without her having to work at it — a conveniently busy husband whose job would give her plenty of free time for her extracurricular activities.
Phoebe evidently had an angle, too. She’d married the lawyer first and was going for the doctor second. The scumbag that Janet had driven off with was a stockbroker.
It was all about the money. Sooner or later, it always came down to that. To some women — to the women he seemed to fall for — men were nothing but credit cards with dicks.
And it didn’t matter whether you’d known them all your life or for just a few days. Brig’s jaundiced view of women as a whole was looking truer and truer by the minute.
Chapter Twenty
Phoebe woke to Alan tapping her on the shoulder, saying, “Okay. You did a good job on me, but now it’s time for you to go home.”
She opened her eyes to see him staring down at her, anger and hatred twisting his features.
“What?”
“I heard the news, con girl. Brig’s good — he checks all the angles. And he found out about the report. And about how you got your first husband.”
“How I—”
“You and I aren’t talking. You aren’t saying another goddamned word. Not one. And I’m standing here watching you just to make sure you don’t steal anything on your way out the door. You’re gathering up your things, and then you are going home, and I never want to see you again.”
He leaned against the wall and stared at her.
Phoebe sat up, dazed. What had Brig told him that had made him hate her? How could he hate her? She had just experienced the most magical, wonderful few hours of her life, and they had been with Alan, and now he was looking at her like he hoped she would catch fire and burn to ashes before his eyes.
What could Brig have said that would have caused him to look at her that way?
How she’d got her husband? Michael? How she’d got him? There hadn’t been any chicanery in that. Not on her end, anyway. Michael had lied through his teeth.
“Talk to me, Alan. I haven’t done anything wrong — honestly. What did Brig tell you?”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
The last thing she remembered, as she was drifting off to sleep, he’d been holding her. Touching her. They had been wrapped in the comfort of each other, and she had let herself relax. Trust.
Surely there had to be some way to get back to where they’d been. Brig was mistaken. He’d gathered information on the wrong person. Alan would see that if he would just tell her what Brig had told him and give her the chance to explain.
“Alan — just tell me what he told you.”
“No chance. You gold-digging fraud. You charlatan. Just get out of here. Now.”
Gold-digging fraud. Charlatan. Anger boiled through Phoebe’s blood. She could have forgiven Alan’s unjust accusations if he had at least been willing to tell her what had gone wrong, what he had been told. But he wasn’t even willing to consider doing that. Brig had told him something, and Alan had decided that Brig had it right, and he wasn’t even willing to think there might be a mistake somewhere. Was not even willing to give Phoebe a chance to defend herself.
Her temper snapped.
She rose. “Con girl? Charlatan? Who the hell do you think you are? I’ll let you in on a little secret here, doctor-boy. Not every woman on the planet is aching to climb into your bed and be Mrs. Doctor and live in some pathetic cage of other people’s expectations while you go off to be Marcus-goddamned-Welby.” She looked him up and down, hurt and betrayed and detesting him and detesting herself for having fallen for him. “You don’t have anything I want. If your kid hadn’t come to me—”
“My kid didn’t come to you, and I cannot believe that you’re caught and you’re still trying to use Chick. We’re going to find out how you did your tricks with my daughter. How you used her. We’re going to find out, Phoebe.”
She stared at him. “Your heart knows she’s real. But you’re willing to deny her out of your own fear. You’re a fool, Alan MacKerrie. And you deserve the life you’ve had. The life you’re going to keep on having.”
“Get out. And be grateful your little pregnancy plot didn’t work. Because I would have gotten my child away from you, and you wouldn’t have gotten a penny.”
Phoebe couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “You’re insane,” she whispered. She pulled off Alan’s T-shirt, dropped it on the bed, got her little bag of clothes, pulled on clean ones, watching him the whole while. He’d averted his eyes while she was dressing, but the second she was done, he was staring at her again, with that look that told her he wished she was dead.
She felt tears building behind her eyes, running down the back of her throat. But she didn’t let herself cry. She’d known all along that the magic she’d felt with Alan was just a tease — some temporary thing to let her know how much better her life could have been.
Now at least she knew she was lucky not to be involved with Alan MacKerrie. She grabbed her cane and, with the bag holding her few belongings tucked under her arm, headed for the door.
Phoebe wasn’t happy about going home. Home, to whatever Michael had planned for her. But she didn’t really have a choice, did she? She couldn’t afford a single night at the cheapest hotel. Had no credit cards. No place to run. No one to run to.
So she went home, fighting to keep her feet against the gusts of wind that kept catching her from behind. The palm fronds made a sort of wet-sheet-snapping noise that she couldn’t remember ever having heard before, but she didn’t give it much thought. She had bigger problems than a bit of wind.
Home was exactly the same as she’d left it. Or at least it was exactly the same as the police technicians had left it.
Phoebe threw her backpack on the floor, dropped onto the couch, and cried. She sobbed until she couldn’t breathe, until she was hiccuping and gasping. She felt foolish, but she just couldn’t stop herself. Even though she’d known she was going to get hurt when Alan decided to move on, she’d been hoping somehow that he wouldn’t ever go. That he might come to love her. She’d never thought that he would turn on her.
It wasn’t as though she loved him, she told herself. She wasn’t lo
sing anything real. She didn’t even really know him.
Someone had told him lies about her. Someone had made them believable enough that he had turned away from everything he had seen of her to believe those lies. Because he didn’t know her. Because some lies seemed safer and less crazy than the truth.
She could look at him rationally, and see that he was a good man who had been hurt. The two of them had only had a few hours together, really, and those hours had been strange. Wonderful in many ways, but not something that any sane person would look at and say, “Yes, you have a future there. Yes, this is a solid rock on which to build your life.”
Logically, she could tell herself that. But illogically, she felt like her whole world had collapsed on top of her. Her mind knew she didn’t love him, but her stupid heart seemed to think it did. She kept crying, feeling like the world’s biggest fool.
She closed her eyes, rolled into a tight ball on the couch, and gradually her sobbing stopped. Gradually exhaustion overcame her, and she dozed.
And the phone rang.
Phoebe pushed her head into the couch cushion and closed her eyes tightly and clenched both fists. She didn’t want to answer it. But it might be the FBI with news about Michael. It might be Alan wanting to say he was sorry. It might be Brig with information about the phone calls or the rose or... It might be important.
It wasn’t important. Everyone who mattered, who could have helped her, had turned away from her. Everyone had decided she was a con artist. A fraud. Everyone.
But still she hoped.
She got up, hobbled to the phone, and picked it up.
“Fucking the doctor didn’t turn out too well, did it?”
Michael’s voice. Michael’s amusement. She slammed down the phone.
It rang again immediately.
She snarled, but picked up. “Get out of my life.”
“Hey! Don’t hang up on me, babe. You’re trying to go get yourself a new husband, I’m trying to help you. As long as we’ve been planning this, as much work as we’ve put into it you can’t think I’d drop out on you when things got bad.”
“What?” Phoebe said. The voice was Michael’s, but the words belonged to a complete stranger.
“They found out about us, honey — but don’t worry. I think we can still get the doctor for you. We drug him again, you hypnotize him and convince him that his kid says he’s going to have to marry you because that’s what she wants. It’ll still work. He still wants you, even if he and his friend are on to you.”
She held the receiver, staring at it, bewildered — and then she realized what it was. “You know the police found your phone taps. You think they may be recording what you say. So you’re trying to implicate me in whatever you’re doing.”
“Amazing,” Michael said. “When I was his client, Michael told me you were treacherous, but I really didn’t think you’d try to sell me out. No, I didn’t know the police were listening in on our line, but I guess I do now. I’m outta here. Deal with the mess you’ve made by yourself.”
And he hung up, leaving Phoebe staring at the phone and wondering if the police had heard that conversation, and if they had, what they made of it. Did they think she was working with the man who was threatening to kill her?
No. They didn’t think anyone was threatening to kill her at all. They’d found the bug on her window, and they’d found the taps on her phone line, and Brig had found out something about her past that made him think that she was responsible for these things — or at least in on them.
But there wasn’t anything in her past that would make anyone believe that. She’d been a nice kid with poor parents who had grown up poor but with ethics, who had worked hard and made herself into the woman she wanted to be, who had then married the man she’d promised to marry and who had lived to regret it. That was her life story. Where in any of that did Brig get con artist?
It was working for the psychic hotline. That had to be it. Phoebe knew some of the lines had been investigated for fraud and other illegal activities. She knew the Psychic Sisters line wasn’t the best line out there. But it was the best she could do at the moment and she was scrupulously honest in her dealings with clients, even though she suspected she would have made more money if she’d cheated a bit.
God, when Alan had chased her out of his house, she’d seen such loathing on his face. He’d hated her. And he looked like he thought she’d betrayed him, too. That he was certain she’d been out to trick him or trap him or use him or take him for his money? What did he think of her? How could he think she would ever do anything to hurt him, when she loved him?
She froze. No, that couldn’t be right. She didn’t love him. She was never going to love anyone. It didn’t work out for her. She hadn’t known him long enough. She wouldn’t consider falling in love with another professional man, anyway. Look how things had turned out with the last one. Lawyers, doctors, probably scientists and professors, too — all trouble.
But as Phoebe scrambled for excuses and reasons why she couldn’t love Alan, why she didn’t love Alan, she had to face the fact that no matter what her head insisted, her heart still thought she had fallen in love with him. Her heart loved his rare smiles and the amazing way he touched her. Her heart loved his calm, deep voice, and the muscular, heavy lines of his thighs, and the way he felt when he entered her. Loved his belief in doing what he could to make life better in his little corner of the world. Loved his passion. Loved his shoulders and the way they felt beneath her fingers, and the way he breathed when he was asleep.
She loved going to bed with him, exhausted, and waking up feeling as if the world was a wonderful place after all.
She loved the fact that he’d actually thought to bring her vegan subs.
She loved the way he loved his daughter and the way he’d kept his word to a woman who hadn’t deserved him — who hadn’t been good enough for him. Phoebe would have done anything for Alan, and she would never, never have betrayed him or hurt him.
But he hated her. She’d seen it in his eyes. He hated her the way he must have hated Janet after she’d been the cause of Chick’s death. And all the hatred Alan hadn’t been able to take out on Janet had come through his voice at Phoebe in those venomous few minutes when he’d made sure she didn’t steal anything while he got her out of his bed and out of his home.
Oh, God.
How could he have believed whatever Brig had told him about her? Couldn’t he tell from just being with her that she was honest? That she was a good person? Why couldn’t he tell? She could tell everything that she needed to know about him.
But if he couldn’t tell, if he couldn’t have faith in her, then he couldn’t be the right person for her, could he?
As if that mattered.
Michael, dead Michael, was coming for her, using high-tech spying devices and phone taps and God only knew what else. Michael had found her, just the way he’d sworn he would before she found the courage to run, and he was going to kill her, just the way he’d threatened to. And no one was going to believe her until she was dead. No one was even going to care.
Because the one person who might have cared now hated her.
But Michael was going to kill Alan first. And now Alan thought he was safe. Brig thought so, too. They both believed this whole business was a con game of Phoebe’s, and Alan wouldn’t know that because he had touched her — because he had dared to make love to her — Michael would kill him no matter whether Alan was still in her life or not.
How was she supposed to save Alan? He wasn’t going to believe anything she had to say. He wasn’t going to have anything to do with her. The police thought she was a fraud, the FBI had declared Michael dead and closed the case, Alan thought Phoebe had used Chick as some sort of trap to lure him into falling in love with her — or getting her pregnant apparently, and meanwhile Michael could reach Phoebe when she was asleep. Could move things around in her house, leave flowers lying on her. Watch her. Call her without getting caught.
/> Bastard.
Phoebe found her phone book and called the first locksmith listed. “I need to have you come and change the locks on my house immediately,” she said. “Just the front door, but I’m going to need three deadbolts with different keys.” She listened while the locksmith expressed disbelief. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure. And while you’re here, I’m going to want to have you check two sliding glass doors and make sure they can’t be penetrated from the outside. And two windows.”
The locksmith quoted a price to her that sounded outrageous. Phoebe didn’t have that much money. She was going to have to float a check, overdraft her account, and then work twice as hard on the phone line to make enough money to cover all the bank charges that overdrafting would generate.
But a spotless bank record and no debts would be meaningless if she were dead.
Because Michael was calling her by telephone tap, he was probably also doing his little magic tricks with her mug and the flowers by means of being able to come through one of her doors or windows. The idea that he had been physically inside her house — that he might even have touched her — horrified her, but she was going to put an end to it.
And if Michael was really dead and some bit of insanity or obsession on her part was making her think that her caller sounded like Michael, and if her caller really was some other psycho — well, new locks would work on him, too, wouldn’t they? Once she could be sure that she was safe inside her own home, she could figure out how she could keep Alan safe.
