She’d wanted to kiss him so much she’d barely been able to stop herself. One minute she’d been scared half to death. The next she’d been in Cade’s arms and aware only of his lips mere inches from hers. But even though she’d always thought of herself as a liberated woman, some primitive inner voice—undoubtedly imprinted by her mother and grandmother and a hundred earlier female ancestors—had told her to wait for him to make the first move.
He hadn’t made it, though. And when he hadn’t she’d almost been reduced to tears right there in his arms. But now that she had her emotions under control and was thinking sensibly once more, she knew it had been just as well.
Until she’d completely sorted out what was going on, until she was sure there wasn’t somebody intending to scare the devil out of her again—or worse—she had to keep her wits about her. And she’d bet her life that kissing Cade Hailey would render her totally witless.
She’d bet her life. Bad phrase, she told herself, looking at him again.
“I still don’t think we should waste our time talking to Harlan,” he muttered. “I still think I should just break his neck the minute he walks through that door.” His expression said he was only half joking. “You’re sure that’s a bad idea?” he added when Talia shook her head.
“Positive. We aren’t a hundred percent certain it was him.”
“I’m a hundred percent certain.”
“Well, it’s still a bad idea. If you break his neck you’ll get arrested for murder.”
“Then can I at least push him off the balcony? The most that would break is an arm or a leg.”
Talia smiled—with surprisingly little effort. The situation no longer seemed half as grim. They’d talk to Harlan, and things would probably be all right once he knew they were on to him.
Then she glanced toward the bed Cade had told her was Harlan’s and felt a little less sure that talking to him would take care of the problem. He’d left the TV remote on his bedside table, lined up perfectly parallel to the edge. And on the dresser, his laptop and printer were precisely centered—as if he’d carefully measured in all directions before setting them down.
Not that obsessive behavior always indicated serious pathology. Sometimes, though…
Finally deciding she’d worried in silence long enough, she said, “Cade?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Maybe you should tell Bud you want to room with someone else. I’m sure he’d get somebody to switch with you.”
“Switch with me and get stuck with Harlan? Nobody’d be very happy about that idea, especially not now that they’re settled in. Besides, maybe it’s just as well I’m with him. This way, I can keep an eye on him.”
Good point, she thought. She’d feel a whole lot better knowing someone she trusted was keeping an eye on their weirdo. And she really was convinced Harlan wasn’t a homicidal maniac, so it was awfully unlikely that Cade’s safety was at risk.
If she actually believed Harlan was dangerous, they wouldn’t be sitting here waiting to confront him. Instead, she’d have insisted on letting Boscoe and Rebuzo handle the situation—despite Cade’s feeling that the detectives wouldn’t take their suspicions seriously. He was sure they’d figure it was just a ploy to cause Harlan grief. To get back at him for saying Cade hadn’t been in their room when Mrs. Wertman was killed.
At any rate, she was certain they could handle Harlan on their own. He was simply a man with a warped psyche, and warped psyches were her specialty.
“Show time,” Cade suddenly whispered.
At the same instant she heard a key in the lock. Her pulse leapt. Cade, though, leaned back in his seat, looking the picture of composure.
The door swung open and Harlan paused in the doorway, obviously surprised to find Talia in his room. “Hey, Cade…Talia.”
His speech, she thought, seemed slightly slurred. And when he closed the door and started across the room he didn’t look too steady on his feet.
“Where’ve you been?” Cade asked.
Harlan flopped onto the edge of his bed and began taking off his shoes before answering. “Some of the guys were in the bar, so I had a couple of beers with them.” He reached over and grabbed the remote. “You two mind if I watch a little TV?”
“Actually,” Cade said before he switched it on, “we want to ask you about something.”
“Yeah?” Harlan shot them a puzzled look.
“Yeah. Earlier, when we were talking to you in the dining room, you said you were on your way up to the room. To phone your mother.”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t come up here.”
“Sure I did.”
Cade shook his head. “I was here, Harlan. Not long afterward. And you hadn’t been here, had you?”
“Oh…well, actually, no.”
“So where were you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Harlan,” Talia said quietly, “somebody stuck a gun in my back and threatened me.”
Harlan eyed her uncertainly. “You aren’t saying you think it was me…are you?”
“We’re just asking where you were,” Talia said.
Harlan wiped his hand across the back of his mouth, not taking his eyes off her. “Hey,” he said at last, “you guys joking around or what?”
“No joke,” Cade said.
Harlan glanced at him, then back at Talia. “Look, the only gun I own is behind the desk at the Gates Motel. I left it there for my mom. But even if I had it here, why would I want to threaten you?”
“I don’t know. Would you?”
“Good God, Talia,” he snapped. “Who do you think you are? Ace Ventura?”
“Just tell us where you went after you left the dining room,” Cade demanded. “You said you were coming up to the room, but you didn’t. So what did you do? That’s all we’re asking.”
“This is really making me mad, you know!”
Talia caught Cade’s eye and pressed her lips together, telling him to try letting the silence work for them. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod and they simply waited.
Eventually Harlan focused on Cade and said, “I didn’t come upstairs because I didn’t want to have to walk in here by myself. Okay? You were still sitting in the dining room and…Look, I know it sounds stupid, but who’s to say the killer won’t strike again? So I phoned my mom from downstairs. Then I just wandered around for a while and finally went to the bar, hoping some of the other guys would be there. That satisfy you?”
CADE WALKED TALIA next door in silence, then did his bathroom and balcony check once more—carefully locking the French doors when he came back in. He knew he was only making her more nervous, but he had to be certain she was safe before he left.
“What do you think?” she asked when he was done. “You still think it was Harlan?”
“I don’t know. What about you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, either. But if it wasn’t him, who on earth was it?”
Cade merely shook his head. There wasn’t much point in saying he didn’t know again. He seemed to be saying it every second sentence.
“If anything bothers you during the night,” he told her, instead, “anything at all, remember I’m just on the other side of that connecting door.”
“So’s Harlan,” she murmured.
“Yeah, well…” Cade gazed at her and tried to make himself start back to his own room.
The longer he stayed here the greater the risk he was going to do something really stupid. But she looked so desperately in need of a hug that he could feel his willpower disappearing like smoke on a windy day.
“Look,” he said at last, “if you’re going to be afraid in here on your own I could stay. I’m sure we could get a cot brought in or something.”
For a minute he thought she was going to say yes, and it almost made him wish he hadn’t opened his mouth. She had to be incredibly vulnerable at the moment. So the only right thing to do was play the perfect gentlemen. But he was a normal,
red-blooded male. And if he ended up spending all night in here with her…
Then she murmured, “No,” and he wished she’d said “Yes.”
She said, “No” a second time, almost as if she had to convince herself it was the right decision, then added, “I’d just as soon not be the subject of rumors and innuendos tomorrow. And if you spent the night in my room I’ll bet Harlan would be only too happy to tell everyone about it.”
“Well, I guess I’ll get going then.” He resisted with all his might, but the words still came out. “Unless you think a hug might make you feel better.”
“Oh, Cade, I think it would make me feel a whole lot better.”
When she moved closer, he wrapped his arms around her and simply held her, breathing in her intoxicating scent once more. Then, resting his chin on her head, he closed his eyes and told himself he was a fool. The way she made him feel…
Silently he cursed himself for letting this happen. Maybe someday he’d find another woman he could risk falling in love with, but he should have been more careful around Talia. He’d known all along that spending so much time with her was playing with fire, and he’d already been burned badly enough to last a lifetime.
Since he hadn’t been more careful, though, all he could do now was try to ignore the fact he’d become addicted to her scent. Ignore the rush he felt when she walked into the room. Ignore the way he was feeling this very moment, with her body soft and warm and lush against his. He wanted to kiss her so much he could taste it.
But if he kissed her he’d be done for. He’d never be able to stop at a kiss or two. And what kind of guy would take advantage of a woman in the shape she was in? A woman who probably wasn’t even thinking straight?
No, this definitely wasn’t the time or place—regardless of how he was feeling.
He held her for a few more seconds, until she looked up and murmured, “Thanks, Cade. A hug was exactly what I needed.”
“Glad I could help out,” he managed hoarsely, relieved that his voice was still working at all. The warmth of her breath on his neck had almost done him in.
“Well, see you in the morning,” she whispered when he dropped his arms and stepped away.
Once he made it to the door that separated their rooms, he risked looking back. “Don’t forget to lock this behind me. And don’t forget how close I am.”
“I won’t.” She gave him a little smile that warmed his heart.
He forced himself to step into his own room, knowing he sure as hell wouldn’t be forgetting that they were so close. He’d probably lie awake all night, thinking about nothing except her in her bed, just on the other side of that damn connecting door.
Chapter Seven
By the time Cade heard the lock click on Talia’s side of the door he was wondering whether she slept nude, as he did, or if he should be imagining her in a sexy nightgown. Then David Letterman’s voice brought his musings to an abrupt end.
Dave was in the midst of working his way through one of his Top Ten lists, but Harlan seemed oblivious to that. He was sitting on his bed, propped up against the headboard, furiously keyboarding on his laptop. He’d changed into a pair of black kung fu pajamas, which made Cade realize he hadn’t thought to bring anything to sleep in. It had been a long time since he’d shared a room with anyone.
When Harlan didn’t even look up from his computer, let alone say anything, Cade simply walked past the beds and into the bathroom. For all he cared, Harlan could stay angry at him the entire time they were stuck here. Hopefully that wouldn’t be for long.
He grabbed his bathrobe from the bathroom door, thankful he’d at least remembered to bring it, and decided he’d better sleep in his briefs. After he’d finished in the bathroom he marched past Harlan’s bed again, climbed into his own, and turned his back to the glow from the bedside lamp.
On the television, Letterman had progressed to a segment of Stupid Pet Tricks, and Cade was certain Harlan had upped the volume just to annoy him. For a few minutes he lay listening to Dave’s wisecracks, the laughter of his studio audience, the wailing of a dog imitating a country-and-western singer, and the clicking of Harlan’s keyboard. Then his patience gave out.
He sat up and glared at his roommate. “Look,” he said, “we’re supposed to start deliberating at nine-thirty in the morning. So do you think you could knock it off for the night?”
“What I think,” Harlan said, finally looking at him, “is that you owe me an apology. Talia, too. But I’ll settle for just yours at the moment.”
Cade thought about that for a minute and realized that if Harlan really wasn’t their weirdo, he was right. They did owe him apologies.
“All right,” he said. “If we jumped to the wrong conclusions, I’m sorry.”
“Fine.” Harlan clicked Letterman into oblivion. As the TV went dark, he turned off his laptop, closed it and carried it to the dresser.
“My mom,” he announced, heading back across the room, “always says people should never go to bed mad.”
That said, he got into bed and switched off the light, leaving Cade with the unsettled feeling that Harlan had just behaved more maturely than he had.
He punched his pillow a few times, then tried to go to sleep. But just as he’d expected, sleep wouldn’t come. He simply lay there thinking about Talia, about how damn good it had felt to hold her. He let himself dwell on that for a few minutes, then couldn’t keep his thoughts from moving on to what it would be like to kiss her…touch her…make love to her.
Forcing his thoughts from that, he started working his way through every trick he knew to help himself fall asleep, until he made it into that never-never land where you slipped back and forth between sleep and waking.
He drifted there for a while. And then he shot bolt upright, a scream ringing in his ears.
For a second he thought he’d been dreaming. Then there was another scream and he knew it was for real. And, oh, God, it had come from Talia’s room.
Frantically he fumbled in the darkness, trying to locate the switch on the bedside lamp. Finally he found it and light spilled onto his bed—and over Harlan’s empty one.
TALIA SCREAMED in terror once more. The man still didn’t move. He stood motionless on her balcony, a black shape illuminated by the moonlight.
The sheers prevented her from seeing him clearly, but she could make out that he had his arms raised and his palms pressed against two of the panes in the French doors. When she tried to get out of bed she discovered her legs were frozen with fear. Frozen, yet trembling at the same time. Her entire body was trembling. She was going to die in this bed, the victim of some psychotic killer.
The door was locked, but all he had to do was break one of those panes of glass and—
“Talia!”
At first she didn’t know who was shouting her name. Then she realized it was Cade, that he was pounding on the door between their rooms.
“Talia!” he yelled again. “Unlock the door!”
His words spurred her into action. She flew out of bed and across the dark room, her heart racing. When she couldn’t get the door unlocked, tears began streaming down her face. Then the lock clicked, the door opened, and she was in Cade’s arms.
“What happened?” he whispered against her hair.
An instant later she felt his body tense.
“Oh, my God,” he said. He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders, pushed her against the wall and started across the room.
It wasn’t until he reached a moonlit patch in the darkness that she noticed he was wearing only a pair of white briefs. It made him seem so vulnerable to harm that fresh fear flooded her—fear for him this time. She tried to call his name, tried to tell him not to go near the balcony, but no sound came out.
He paused to grab something that was glinting silver on the dresser, something a stray moonbeam had caught. Then he continued on, clutching the object like a knife. Talia stared at it, finally realizing he’d grabbed her comb. He was going to confront a
crazed killer with only her steel rat-tail comb for a weapon.
When it dawned on her she should be doing something to help she started for the phone. But before she reached it Cade shouted, “Harlan! What the hell are you doing out there?”
She turned and stared through the darkness at the moonlit balcony. Cade was standing in front of the French doors now, close enough to have identified Harlan through the sheers.
“Harlan!” he yelled again. “Harlan, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
Something clicked in her head. “Wait,” she said. “Don’t say anything more. Let me come over there and have a look at him.”
Cade shoved the sheers aside and she could see Harlan clearly now. He didn’t move as she walked toward the balcony doors. His palms were still pressed against two panes of glass, and he was staring straight at her, but she doubted he saw a thing.
“He’s sleepwalking,” she murmured.
“What?”
“I think he’s sleepwalking.”
“Well, I think he’s faking! I-”
“Cade, let me handle this, okay?”
The look he shot her said he didn’t like that idea one bit. And even though he didn’t try to stop her when she unlocked the doors, he was brandishing the pointed end of her comb like a stiletto.
“Harlan?” she said quietly, opening the doors and resting her hand on his arm. “Harlan, you’d better come inside. It’s cold out there.”
She drew him into the room. “We’re just going to walk you back to bed now,” she told him.
“Talia,” Cade whispered, “are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes,” she assured him even though she wasn’t. She’d certainly studied a little about somnambulism, even recalled watching a video on it. But she’d never actually seen anyone sleepwalking, let alone dealt with it.
But was sleepwalking what Harlan was doing? Or was he faking, as Cade had suggested?
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