by Nora Roberts
He picked up his beer, took a contemplative sip. “If you’re just a wack job and I back off, it says I can’t handle the rough spots. If someone’s trying to make you out to be a wack job, same goes. And I miss out on figuring it all out. Plus, I’m not giving up the food and sex.”
“Fair enough. But if you change your mind later on, I won’t hold it against you.” She reached for the water pitcher she’d brought over, the one she used for spring water and thin slices of lemon.
He took her hand across the table, waited until her gaze shifted to his. “It’s not just about food and sex. I have…” What, feelings? he asked himself. Feelings could mean any damn thing. “I care about what happens to you.”
“I know you do.”
“Good. Then we don’t have to analyze and dissect it all for the next hour and a half.” Her hand felt soft in his, and delicate. He laid it down, but kept his over it on the table. “We’ll figure it out, Reece.”
And right at that moment, with his hand warm on hers, she believed him.
WHEN THEY’D EATEN and put the kitchen to rights, when she was sitting with the tea she liked, he tried the next step.
“Will you be okay here alone for an hour?”
“Why?”
“I thought I’d go get Rick, and we’d take a look at your place.”
“Don’t.” She shook her head, stared into the flames of the fire he’d built in the living room. “He doesn’t believe me about what I saw on the trail. He’s done what his job says he has to do, and by all accounts he’s done it well. But he doesn’t believe me. I went by his office this morning. I saw him, and Debbie and Hank. And when I brought out the sketch, talked about showing it around Jackson Hole, all I saw on their faces was pity.”
“If someone’s been breaking into your place—”
“If they have, we’d never prove it. And how would they? I had a dead bolt installed.”
“Locks get picked. Or keys get copied. Where do you keep your keys?”
“In the inside pocket of my purse.”
“When you’re working?”
“In the inside pocket of my purse, or if I don’t carry one, in my jacket pocket. Right jacket pocket because I’m right-handed, if you want specifics.”
“Where are the purse, the jacket when you’re working?”
“In Joanie’s office. She’s got a copy of the keys in her key cupboard thing on the wall in there. I don’t think we’re going to leap to the conclusion that I mistook Joanie for a man, she killed her lesbian lover, and is sneaking into my apartment to torment me.”
“Wouldn’t be hard for anyone to slip into the office, make an impression of the key, have one made.”
The cup shook in her hand before she set it down. “You think it’s someone from the Fist?”
“Possible. Possible it’s someone who was staying in the area when this happened. And who stayed on when it got out—which it did fast—that you saw something.”
“But no one’s recognized the woman.”
“I didn’t say she was from here, or around here.”
Reece sat back. “No. No, you didn’t. I guess I just assumed that if she wasn’t, he wasn’t.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Could be someone from the Fist, or who comes in with some regularity. Or someone who was camping, hunting, paddling in the area. Someone who knows how to cover his tracks, which rules out city slicker for me. Who knew you were going to be gone most of the day today?”
“Who didn’t?”
“Yeah, that’s how it goes. Should make a time line,” he considered. “You said you keep a journal.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll have a look through it.”
“Not in this lifetime, or any other.”
He started to scowl, then grinned instead. “Am I in there?”
“Of course not. Whoever heard of a woman writing about a man she’s attracted to and/or their sexual exploits in her journal? That’s preposterous.”
“Maybe I could just read about the sexual exploits, to make sure you got all the details.”
“I got them. I’ll look through it, write down dates and times, if I noted them, that things happened.”
“Good, but not tonight. You look wiped. Go to bed.”
“I could just stretch out here for a few minutes.”
“Then I’d have to cart you up when you conked out. I’m going to head up to my office, do a little work.”
“Oh.” Her gaze slid over to the front door. “All right, maybe…”
“After I check the locks. Go on up to bed, Slim.”
It was silly to pretend she wasn’t exhausted, so she got to her feet. “I have the breakfast shift tomorrow. I’ll try not to wake you when I get up.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Thanks for the shoulder, Brody.”
“You didn’t use my shoulder.”
She leaned down, laid her lips on his. “Yes, I did. A couple dozen times just tonight.”
SHE KNEW he’d check the locks because he’d said he would. And even while she readied for bed, she heard his feet on the stairs. When she peeked out, the light was on in his office, and she heard the lightclick-clack of his keyboard.
Knowing he was there made it possible for her to get into bed with the bedroom door open and unlocked.
Knowing he was there made it possible for her to close her eyes and sleep.
18
BRODY CROUCHED in front of Reece’s apartment door with a penlight and a magnifying glass.
He felt a little ridiculous.
Though he considered being able to sleep in mornings one of the big perks of writing fiction, he’d gotten up when she had. And had ignored her claims that she could easily walk from the cabin to the diner.
Sure, he thought now, no problem at all for a woman who may or may not have a homicidal stalker focused on her strolling along by herself in the dark for a couple of miles like some idiot character in a bad slasher movie.
Besides, he’d not only gotten the first two cups of a fresh pot of coffee when he delivered her to Joanie’s, he scored bacon, eggs and home fries before the place had even opened for business.
Not a bad trade-off.
Now he was squatted down, playing detective. Since he didn’t have any personal experience with breaking and entering, he couldn’t be absolutely certain the lock hadn’t been picked or tampered with, but he couldn’t see any signs of it.
He considered, again, overriding her and bringing in the sheriff. Still, he didn’t think Rick could do any more than he was doing himself at this point.
Then there was the matter of trust, he thought as he sat back on his heels. She trusted him, and if he went around her on this, he’d be breaking that trust.
Claims she’s in love with him—but no pressure. Women. She was just mixing up heat and…companionability with theL word. Then she was vulnerable on top of it with what she’d been through. Was still going through.
He straightened, took out the key she’d given him. Then stared at it in the palm of his hand.
Trust. What were you supposed to do?
He unlocked the door, stepped inside.
There was a scent to the air—light and subtle. Reece. He’d have recognized it anywhere now. And he found himself unreasonably angry that whoever had come into her home had walked through that same personal scent.
Light spilled through the windows now to fall on the bare floors, the saggy, second- or thirdhand furniture, the bright blue spread she’d bought for the narrow daybed.
He could only think she deserved better. He could probably help her out, slip her a few extra bucks so she could buy a rug, for God’s sake, some paint.
“Sliding down a slippery rope there, Brody,” he reminded himself. “Buy a woman a stupid rug, the next thing she wants is a ring.”
Besides, she had the view that no amount of money could buy. Who needed rugs or a couple of decent pictures on the wall when you had the mountains painted on the
sky outside your window, and the lake all but pooled at your door?
He unhooked her laptop, put it and her thumb drive into its case to take back with him. She’d need another night, at least, away from this place. She might as well have her stuff.
Idly, he opened the drawer on the little desk Joanie must have had hauled up for Reece. In it he found two sharpened pencils snapped in half, a black Magic Marker and a slim leather-bound book he recognized as the sort some people use to carry around pictures of their kids or pets. Curious, he flipped it open.
The photo of a sharp-looking older woman sitting on a bench in what looked like a nicely tended garden had thick black X’s over the face. There were others. The same woman in a white shirt, black pants, holding a poodle the size of a postage stamp. A couple in long bib aprons, a group holding glasses of champagne. A man with his arms spread wide in front of a big wall oven.
Everyone had X’s over their faces.
In the last, Reece was standing in a large group of people. The restaurant, Brody concluded. Maneo’s. Hers was the only face in the group shot that was unmarked, and it was beaming with smiles.
Under each person, in small, neat print, was the single word:DEAD. And under Reece was written:INSANE.
Had she found this yet? he wondered. He hoped not, and slipped the book into the outside pocket of the laptop case. He’d take it out later, decide how to handle it, when he got home.
Though he hadn’t intended to invade her privacy quite so deeply, Brody began to search the drawers of the squat ugly dresser.
He buried the discomfort of pawing through her underwear, reminding himself he’d already taken it off her a few times. If he could touch it when she was wearing it, it wasn’t weird to touch it when it was folded in a drawer.
Okay, he admitted, it was weird.
But it didn’t take long to go through the dresser; she didn’t have much. The woman traveled light, he decided.
The kitchen drawers were another matter. This was where she put the weight. It was all ruthlessly organized. No jumble. Obviously the woman didn’t know the meaning ofjunk drawer. He found measuring cups, spoons, whisks—why would anyone need more than one?—and sundry kitchen tools and gadgets.
There were several whose purpose eluded him, but they, like her pots and pans in the cupboard below, were tidily stored.
He found a nested stack of bowls, casserole dishes in a couple of sizes.
Again, would anyone need more than one?
In the next cupboard he found what he recognized as a mortar and pestle, with the bowl filled to the brim with pills.
He pulled it out, set it aside.
Brody went into the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet all the bottles he’d seen before were there, lined up on the shelf. And empty.
Little booby traps, Brody thought, with another simmering surge of anger. Clever bastard.
Because they wanted to ball into fists, he shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the walls.
Neat block printing again, he noted, nothing scrawled. But with some of the words overlapping there was a sense of frantic. Certainly of madness. The detail of having some of the words travel up from the floor onto the wall, or back down again, was a good one.
Whoever did it was very deliberate, very careful, very smart.
Brody got the digital camera he’d brought along. He took pictures from every angle he could manage in the tiny room, took close-ups of the entire question, then of individual words, then of separate letters.
When he’d documented the room every way he could think of, he leaned against the jamb.
No way she could come back in here with this. He’d just go down to Mac’s, see if there was something he could use to get the marker off the floor, the tub and tiles. No big deal.
He could pick up some paint while he was there. Room that size wasn’t going to take more than a quart, probably. A couple of hours, tops, and that would be that.
It wasn’t like he was buying her a rug or anything.
Mac asked questions, of course. Brody figured you could probably buy toilet paper in the Fist without eliciting questions, but that was about it. Anything else was going to come with a: So what’re you up to?
He didn’t say anything about painting at Reece’s. People were bound to get the wrong idea if they found out a guy was doing household chores for a woman he was sleeping with.
In short order he—a man who considered anything domestic above brewing coffee a form of hell on earth—was back in the bathroom, on his hands and knees, scrubbing.
REECE TURNED the door handle gingerly. She hated that it wasn’t locked. She hated the throat-closing fear that Brody was lying inside hurt, or worse.
Why was he still here? She’d expected him to drop back in downstairs with her key long before her break. But he hadn’t, and his car was still outside.
And the apartment door wasn’t locked.
She eased it open. “Brody?”
“Yeah. Back here.”
“You’re okay? I saw your car and didn’t…” She stopped a couple of paces into the room, sniffed. “What is that? Paint?”
He stepped out of the bath with a roller in his hand, paint specks on his hands and in his hair. “It ain’t the perfumes of Araby.”
“You’re painting the bathroom?”
“It’s no big deal. You’ve probably got two feet of wall space all told.”
“A bit more than that.” Her voice was full of emotion. “Thank you.” She walked over to take a look.
He’d already done the ceiling, and all the cutting in around the tiles, had primed the walls. The color was a pale, pale blue, as if a cloud had dipped, very briefly, into the lake and absorbed a hint of its color.
None of the red letters or smears remained anywhere.
Reece just leaned against him. “I like the color.”
“Not a lot to choose from if you want a quick cash-and-carry at the mercantile. Though they had a nice Pepto-Bismol pink that caught my eye.”
Now she smiled, and kept leaning. “I appreciate your restraint and your illustration of good taste. I’ll have to pay you back in food.”
“Works for me. But if you want the rest of this place painted, you’re on your own. I forgot I hate to paint.”
Now she turned to him, nuzzled. “I can finish it up after my shift.”
“I started, I finish.” He caught himself pressing his lips to the top of her head. But it was too late to stop the gesture. Too late, he realized, for a lot of things when she tipped her head back, used those eyes on him.
“I’d rather have this done than diamonds. Just so you know.”
“Good thing. I’m fresh out of diamonds.” When she laid her head on his chest, sighed, he was sunk. “I didn’t want you to have to see it again.”
“I know. But I wonder if I could bunk at your place tonight anyway?” She nuzzled a little more. “You know how the smell of paint takes a while to fade.”
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want you breathing in the fumes.”
She tipped her head back again, and this time lifted her mouth to his. Long and slow, and impossibly warm, almost unbearably sweet. His free hand slid up her back, curled to take a fistful of her shirt.
With a laugh she stepped back. Glowing, he thought. All the stress, the strain he’d seen in her the night before, gone.
“I’ll just need a few things from here to…What, were you going to grind up something?”
He was still riding on the kiss, on the look on her face and only managed, “Huh?”
“You got out my mortar and pestle.”
And he cursed himself for leaving it out. “Reece—”
“What’ve you got in here? It looks like…” That glow that had beamed straight out of her eyes and into him faded.
“I don’t take them.” Now, when she faced him, those eyes were desolate. “I just keep them, in case, and to remind me of what I’m working to get away from. I don’t want you to think I—”
&
nbsp; “I didn’t put them there.”
“Then…Oh.”
“They’re booby traps, Reece.” He set the roller in the tray, moved to her. “He’s setting traps for you, and you can’t step into them.”
“What do you think he’s saying with this?” She dipped her fingers into the bowl, let pills sift through them. “‘Why don’t you grind these up into a nice paste, spread it on toast points and send yourself into oblivion’?”
“It doesn’t matter what he’s saying if you don’t listen.”
“It does matter.” She whirled around, and instead of desolation, those gypsy eyes flashed with temper. “I can’t answer if I don’t listen. I can’t let him know he’s not going to send me back, not to the pills, not to the doctors. I’m not going back into the dark because he’s a killer and a coward and a son of a bitch.”
She grabbed the bowl, and even as Brody braced for her to hurl it, she upended it in the sink, then wrenched the water on. “I don’t need them, I don’t want them. And fuck him.”
“Should’ve known you weren’t the type to throw crockery.” He laid his hands on her shoulders and, with her, watched the pills melt. “He doesn’t know what he’s up against with you.”
“I’ll probably panic later when I don’t have them. My security blanket.”
“I imagine Doc would write you a prescription if you need the blanket.”
“Yeah, I imagine he would.” She blew out a breath. Down the drain, she thought. She’d sent them down the drain to prove something. “I’ll just hold that in reserve, and see how I do without the blanket.”
He thought of the photo book he’d tucked away, thinking to protect her. It wasn’t protection she needed, he realized. It was faith. She needed someone to believe she was steady.
“There’s something else. It’s going to hit you a little harder than this.”
“What?”
Even as she glanced around, looking for the trap, he crossed to the laptop, took out the slim little book. “He did it to upset you. Don’t let him win.”
She opened the book. Her hands didn’t tremble this time, but her heart did. “How could he do this to them? All they went through, all they lost, and he crosses them out like they were nothing.”
