Flirting with Disaster & Fanning the Flames

by Victoria Dahl

  Her throat thickened, but she didn’t have time to cry.

  An hour later, she drove from her home with all her paintings boxed for shipping, one angry Bear hiding under her seat, enough clothes to get her through a week away and $20,000 in cash. Just in case.

  She stopped next to the sheriff’s truck just as fat, sullen snowflakes began to fall from the sky. The deputy rolled down his window, and she was surprised to realize she recognized him as the boyfriend of Jenny, one of her favorite bartenders in town.

  “Ms. West,” he said politely.

  “Hi. Are you here to follow me?”

  He frowned. “Ma’am, I’m here to be sure no one bothers you for the next little while, so yes, I’m afraid I’ll be following you to wherever you want to go.”

  “But that’s all? Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, thanks. It’s Nate, right?”

  He relaxed and winked. “Yes. Known as Jenny’s boyfriend when I’m not on official business.”

  “All right.” She started to roll up her window then rolled it back down. “I’m sorry if this is weird.”

  “I’m sorry if it’s weird for you,” he responded.

  She drove away, off to explain to her girlfriends that Isabelle West was actually a fugitive of justice who’d likely committed several felonies on her long run from the law. Shit. They’d probably love it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TOM LEFT HIS disciplinary hearing and walked straight out of the US Marshals Service building and down the front steps. It was spring, finally—for a couple of days, at least—and he needed a walk.

  A week’s suspension without pay, which he’d start serving tomorrow, and a demotion that had more meaning on paper than it did in reality. Tom had been lucky. Really lucky. He could have been fired, could have lost his pension, but in the end, his “temporary lapse in judgment” had been outweighed by the corruption he’d helped expose in a case that had left a good police officer dead.

  The gun hadn’t been registered, of course. It had disappeared from the evidence room in a Chicago police precinct over twenty years before, and it hadn’t shown up since then. But the fingerprints on it...those had been on file. And they’d belonged to Captain Kerrigan.

  Fingerprints were only a small piece of evidence, of course, and the man hadn’t yet been charged with any crime, much less murder, but the wheels were turning. Kerrigan had stepped down from his new position as deputy superintendent of the police department, and a special prosecutor had been brought in from Washington, DC, to head up the corruption case. This time, it wouldn’t be only small-time cops going down.

  Tom was relieved with how his own disciplinary hearing had turned out. He’d been on desk duty since January, and he was ready to get back to work after the suspension. But he’d do the same thing all over again, given the choice, even the parts that had left him hollowed out and yearning inside. He’d do it for her.

  Tom tipped his head up to the sun, feeling the heat on his face and trying not to think about Isabelle. An impossibility considering where he was going.

  The Cheyenne office of the FBI was even less impressive than the Cheyenne marshal’s office. The place looked like an accounting firm, and not a successful one, but the metal detector inside the building’s entry gave away that it wasn’t just another door.

  Tom showed his badge and told the guard he didn’t have his service revolver on him, and he was escorted to a tiny seating area while a receptionist made a call. It seemed unnecessary. Tom could hear the phone ringing in a room just a few feet away.

  “Deputy Marshal Tom Duncan to see you,” she said about five seconds before a young agent stepped out of that open doorway.

  “Deputy,” the guy said, holding out a hand. “I’m Special Agent Browning.”

  Man, they made Special Agents younger every year. “Nice to meet you. I hope I’m welcome here.”

  Browning laughed. “More than welcome. From what I hear, Chicago’s pretty pleased to be rid of that Gates guy. Nobody liked him.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “He probably won’t be charged for selling information, but he’ll never be in law enforcement again.”

  “I guess that’ll have to be good enough,” Tom said.

  Browning clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Come on in. I have that box right here. I just need you to sign for it and affirm that you’ll deliver it to Ms. Pozniak.”

  “It’s West,” he corrected him. “Legally now, from what I understand.”

  “Right.” Browning sat down and slid some papers across his pristine desk. This guy was organized. No wonder he was moving up quickly. “Nice of you to take this stuff personally. I’m sure it’s a difficult situation for her.”

  “Yeah.” Difficult. Tom glanced at the cardboard box. It wasn’t much of anything, from what Tom had seen on the evidence sheet. The box was sadly small. He signed all the paperwork and left with the box under his arm. He had a week to drive it out to her, but he planned to leave this afternoon.

  Mary was waiting by his car when he returned to the marshal-service building. “I heard,” she said. “You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine, but you’re the one who’ll have to give up the acting-supervisor gig when I get back in a week,” he said, pushing her affectionately away from the door of his SUV.

  “You know I don’t care about that.”

  “Don’t pretend you haven’t loved being in charge,” he said.

  “Well, if it had to be someone,” she said with a smile, “then I’m thrilled it was me. Are you leaving tomorrow?”

  “Today.”

  “Oh. Okay, just...”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Be careful. I mean, I don’t know what you’re hoping for, Tom, but...”

  He wasn’t hoping for anything. He just wanted to make things right for Isabelle. “I’m only trying to make amends for what happened.”

  “You don’t need to make any amends,” Mary snapped. “You risked everything to help her!”

  “Mary,” he said. They’d had this discussion a dozen times. “She’s had it a lot rougher than I have. She didn’t do anything wrong, and she lost everything except her actual life, and she was damn worried about that, too.”

  “That wasn’t your fault!”

  “No. But I didn’t exactly restore her trust in people, did I?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. You’ll do what you want. Just say hi to Jill for me while you’re out there.”

  “You just said hi to her two weeks ago.”

  Mary’s cheeks flushed. “She was in Cheyenne for a meeting. She picked me up here, and we had dinner. That’s all.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “We’re taking it slow,” she protested. “Both of us.”

  “That’s smart,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She looked away. “But a little frustrating.”

  Mary walked away while he was still laughing at her. Not that he had any good reason to laugh. He knew all about frustration.

  Tom drove home to change into jeans and a green button-down that Mary had once said made his eyes look nice. He grabbed the bag he’d already packed and hit the road for Jackson.

  Okay, so maybe he was hoping for something, thinking Isabelle might have softened toward him a little. There’d been a lot of changes in the past three months, after all.

  In February, with all the new activity on the case, the FBI had finally requested DNA samples of a John Doe who’d died about five years before. The man had been living in Central America with a fake passport. The DNA tests proved that he’d been Malcolm Pozniak.

  His remains had been long since buried in Ecuador, but the US Embassy had still had his personal possessions in a box in storage. Tom had fought hard to have everything sent to him once it was processed.

  He’d also fought hard to get the charges that had been pending against Isabelle dropped. He wasn’t sure how much of a difference he’d made. After all, sh
e’d had an attorney. But all but two misdemeanors had been tossed out. She wouldn’t be serving any time. She didn’t deserve to.

  So maybe, after all those changes and with the danger having released its hold on her life, maybe she’d changed her mind about him a little.

  Or maybe she’d been so busy and stressed, she hadn’t been thinking about him at all. Or maybe she hated his guts.

  However it was, he couldn’t leave it the way they’d said goodbye. He needed to say goodbye when she wasn’t crying and so damn angry and... He still couldn’t believe he’d touched her like that. He’d thought she’d needed it the way he had. As a moment of grace. Of connection. Of knowing they’d make things better. But that hadn’t been it at all.

  “Damn,” he muttered as he pulled onto the highway out of town. Damn, indeed. It was going to be a very long drive, but he didn’t have much doubt that the drive home would be even longer. It was one thing to drive toward hope, and a very different thing to know you were driving away from it.

  * * *

  LAUREN STOOD UP from the corner table she’d managed to snag at their favorite restaurant. “Congratulations!” she said, holding up a glass of champagne as Isabelle approached. “You’re not a felon!”

  “Oh, my God,” Isabelle groaned. “You’re the worst.”

  “Are you kidding me? That’s a big deal!”

  “Thanks.” She took the glass Lauren handed her and downed a big gulp.

  Yesterday she’d signed a deal in her lawyer’s office that would allow her to plead down to two minor tax-fraud counts for using a fake name and social security number. All other charges, including the stickiest one of withholding evidence in a federal murder case, had been wiped away. She was a free woman, basically. And not just free, but legal. This morning a state judge had granted her a name change. She was no longer living a lie.

  “Where’s Veronica?” Isabelle asked. This would be Veronica’s second girls’ night out with them. She was a little quiet, but Isabelle had been quiet with the other women at first, too. It wasn’t easy to trust people. She understood that.

  “She’s running late. Something about a deadline for her column. She told us to start without her.”

  Isabelle took another sip. “Did she think we wouldn’t?”

  “She’s new. So how are you holding up? You look good. You stopped losing weight.”

  “Yeah, I felt like eating again once they told me they probably wouldn’t even need my testimony. The gun has Kerrigan’s fingerprints on it, and ballistic tests confirmed it shot the first bullet. I won’t have to go back there and face those people.”

  “Good. And everything else?”

  “Everything else is good. I just started a new commission. It feels great to get back to work.”

  “Mmm.” Lauren sipped her champagne and watched Isabelle over the rim of her glass.

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “I heard Jill saw Tom a couple of weeks ago.”

  Isabelle felt her face go hot for a brief moment before it went ice-cold. She shook her head. Her ears buzzed. “I don’t want to know about that.” She’d known Jill might have seen Tom when she met Mary for dinner, but Jill hadn’t said a thing about it.

  “Isabelle,” Lauren said, “you still like him.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “He lied to me about everything.”

  “You lied about everything, too.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “How is it not the same?” Lauren pressed.

  “Because,” she started then had to swallow the thickness from her throat. “Because...” She felt her face crumple, and there was nothing she could do to stop the sob that escaped. “Because I didn’t want him to do that to me.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Lauren said, sounding slightly panicked. She grabbed Isabelle’s hand and squeezed tight. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” Isabelle said, covering her face with her other hand. “I thought it was real and so good, and it wasn’t real.”

  “Isabelle, shh. You don’t know that.”

  “He was lying!”

  “Well, you’ve been lying to me the whole time I’ve known you, and this is real, isn’t it?”

  Isabelle sniffed, but more tears just filled her head again. “Yes.”

  “And Jill? You’ve known her for more years than anyone, and you were lying to her and it was real, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s not the same,” she muttered, reaching for her napkin. She dumped the silverware and covered her face with the white square.

  “How?” Lauren didn’t sound very sympathetic.

  “He handcuffed me, in case you don’t remember! Brought the whole federal government down on my head.”

  “Now you’re just being silly. That’s a funny story you can tell about how you met.”

  “Shut up,” she snapped, but Lauren didn’t sound chastened when she spoke.

  “You can say whatever you want, but you still miss him.”

  Two more fat tears escaped her control at that. She wouldn’t admit that she missed him. She wouldn’t admit that she thought about him every day and looked up news stories online to see if he might be mentioned. He never was anymore. After the initial few stories, he hadn’t been named again.

  She took a big sip of champagne and a very deep breath and raised her chin. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  “You could get in touch.”

  “No.”

  “You could ask Jill to ask Mary.”

  “No!” she cried then looked around to see if anyone was listening. “Are you crazy?”

  “So you’re just never going to see him again?”

  Oh, shit. Tears spilled over her cheeks again, because she knew she was never going to see him again, and because she felt stupid. Stupid for still wanting to. Stupid for missing him so much when he’d been here for only a week. Stupid that she’d had to look up “how to stop thinking about someone” on the internet.

  She wiped at her face and then leaned closer to Lauren. “Why would he want to see me, Lauren? I lied, too. And he still might lose his job over it. I’m supposed to call him and say, ‘Hi, this is the crazy fugitive girl who’s still pissed at you and may have ruined your life. Want to go out for a drink so we can rehash that terrible week?’”

  “No. You’re supposed to say that you’re wondering how he’s doing. That’s all.”

  “And if he just tells me to fuck off?”

  “What if he does? You’re being a coward over that?”

  “I’m not being a coward! We had sex a few times. What makes you think it meant anything to him?”

  “Because he risked his job for you, Isabelle. For you.”

  “I’m sure he regrets it,” she snapped.

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I don’t want to! I’m still mad!”

  Lauren rolled her eyes as though Isabelle was the one being unreasonable.

  “Oh, hey, Veronica!” Lauren said, standing up to hug their newest friend.

  Veronica waved cheerily at Isabelle, though her smile faltered when their eyes met. Isabelle imagined that her face was a blotchy mess.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late. This last column was a challenge. Some guy had a question about sex, so there were a lot of substitutions to be made in his original letter. And a lot of stuff I had to look up.”

  “About sex?” Lauren asked, sounding surprised.

  “I don’t automatically know everything about sex just because I write an advice column, you know,” Veronica said, color rising on her cheeks.

  That made even Isabelle smile. “We’ve got to get you out more if the mere mention of sex makes you blush.”

  “I have pale skin!” she protested.

  “Okay,” Lauren said, “I have a hypothetical advice question for you. Say you lie about your identity to a man, and he later arrests you, but you guys really, really like each other...”

  Veronica’s eyes went wide as saucers. She glanced
at Isabelle as if she were afraid there was going to be a fistfight. But screw it. Lauren was slowly wearing her down.

  Isabelle waved a hand. “Oh, go ahead. Give your advice.”

  “I thought you were still furious with him,” Veronica said carefully.

  “I don’t know what I am anymore. Horny, maybe. And he—” she poured a second glass of champagne “—was really, really good. And sweet. And funny.”

  “Did he get in touch?”

  “No,” Isabelle said firmly. “He has not gotten in touch.”

  Veronica looked down at the table for a long moment. Her cheeks went pink again. She looked very young when she blushed like that. “I think...” she started before she looked up at Lauren, then Isabelle. “I think that he did something that was really good for you.” She raised a hand to stop Lauren from commenting. “And I don’t mean sex. I mean he did the right thing for you, even though neither of you liked it. So if he’s also sweet and funny and great in bed, then you’re being really stupid, Isabelle.”

  Isabelle sucked in a breath as if she’d been slapped. “What?” She looked at Lauren, but there was no help there. Lauren looked disappointed in her. “He hasn’t called me!” Isabelle said.

  “You told him you never wanted to see him again,” Lauren pointed out unhelpfully.

  “He...he...” Isabelle heard the panic in her voice and cut off her own words. She nodded. Swallowed hard. Nodded again. “He probably doesn’t want me. And I don’t want to know that, you guys. I can’t take that.”

  “Yes, you can,” Lauren said.

  Veronica nodded. “You need to find out.”

  Isabelle shook her head, but she knew they were right. The scary thing wasn’t that she still wanted him; it was that he might not want her. It was that he might walk away and leave her alone. The thought turned her skin to ice. She was so cold she felt like shivering. She was a problem, and he was going to walk away from her, and she couldn’t take that.

  She knew she was quiet through dinner, but Veronica and Lauren kept the conversation going, trying to keep it light. Lauren picked up the tab, claiming that getting a new name deserved to be counted as a birthday celebration.