Envy

by J. R. Ward

Chapter 28

  "Here, let me help you. "

  Reilly braced her stance between two boulders the size of wing chairs, and then bent down and reached her hand out.

  Veck looked up at her for a moment. "Thanks. "

  Their palms met and clinched, and then Reilly cranked back, putting all her weight into the lift. Even with the ballast, he was like pulling a car up out of a ditch, and she had the very clear sense that if he hadn't jumped, he would have gone nowhere.

  As he joined her on the plateau, they looked around. They'd been working the quarry's long slope for a number of hours, shining flashlights into shallow caves and outcroppings of rocks. The search and rescue officers were tackling the steep side and the other CPDers were far over on the left or going around the rim with the dogs. Minutes passed slowly, agonizingly, the sheer expanse of what there was to cover overwhelming her.

  And the undercurrents with Veck, the things unsaid, didn't help.

  God, she hated this whole thing. Especially the fact that they were trying to find the body of a young girl.

  "There's another cave over here," she said, jumping off a boulder and landing in a crouch on the muddy ground.

  The terrain had looked rough from the rim of the quarry. Up close, it was an obstacle course, the kind of landscape you wanted to wear hiking boots to tackle - so good thing extra outerwear and backup evidence kits weren't the only gear and supplies she kept in her trunk. Good thing also that the rain from the night before had stopped or this would have been beyond grueling. As it was, the tops of the rocks had already dried from the sun so at least they had some firm footing; the puddles and mud in the low spots slowed them down enough.

  "You ever been here before?" Veck asked after he landed next to her. As usual, he didn't have enough clothes on -

  Hold up, let's rephrase that, she thought: As usual, he wasn't dressed warmly enough, and his footwear was more office-bound than Outward Bound. Not that he seemed to care: Even though his shoes were no doubt ruined, and his black windbreaker had all the insulation of a sheet of paper against the cool breeze, he was soldiering on, sure as if he were perfectly comfortable.

  Then again, they were working up a sweat.

  Wait, what was the question . . . ?

  "Like most people, I've known about the quarry forever. " She glanced up to the rim. "But this is my first visit. Boy, it's like something ripped a giant pot out of the earth. "

  "Big something. "

  "They say it was created by glaciers. "

  "Either that or God was a golfer and the pin he was aiming for is in Pennsylvania. "

  She laughed a little. "Personally, I'll put my money on prehistoric ice. In fact, this is just called "the quarry" - it's never been one, just looks like one. "

  They surmounted another boulder, jumped off again, and pressed onward toward the dark maw of the cave she'd spotted. The one they were heading for looked larger than the others they'd been to already, and up close, its entrance seemed tall enough to get through without bending down - although there was no way Veck's shoulders were going to fit unless he turned sideways.

  Shining her light in, there was nothing but a whole lot of rock wall and dirt floor, and God, the stink. Dank, musty. They all smelled the same, as if the place had one and only one kind of body odor.

  "Nothing," she said. "But I can't see the end of it. "

  "Let me go in further. "

  Now would have been the perfect time to modern-woman it and hit him with a Hell, no, I'll take care of this. But heaven only knew what was in there, and she was not a huge fan of bats. Bears. Snakes. Spiders.

  The great outdoors was the one area where she skewed solidly chick.

  After she stepped aside, Veck pivoted and squeezed into the thin space. The fact that even his chest was a tight fit reminded her of just how much she knew about his body.

  Glancing away, she tried to find the next target. Desperately.

  "Nothing," Veck muttered as he reemerged and made a red X with spray paint on the stone.

  "Wait, you have - " She rose up on her toes and brushed the cobweb from his hair. "There, much more presentable. "

  He snagged her hand as she went to turn away.

  When she jerked in surprise and then looked around quickly, he said, "Don't worry, no one can see us. "

  Guess that was true: They were down in between three massive rocks. But that was hardly good news, because privacy was not what they needed. Spotlights. A stage. Bullhorns strapped to their faces, was more like it -

  "Look, I know this isn't appropriate," he murmured in a voice that made her heart pound even harder. "But that shit that Kroner said - about knowing me?"

  Reilly exhaled in relief. Thank God it wasn't about them. "Yes?"

  Veck released his hold, and paced in a little circle. Then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew the smoke away from her. "I think on some level, that's what scares me most in this world. "

  Feeling like a fool for freaking out, she eased back on the sun-warmed flank of a boulder. "What do you mean?"

  Veck stared up at the sky, the shadow of his strong chin falling on his chest and giving the appearance of a dark arch cut out of his torso. "Like recognizes like. . . . "

  "You really think you'd tried to kill him," she said softly.

  "Look, this is going to sound crazy . . . but it feels like my father is always with me. " He put his hand up to his sternum, right at that black shadow. "It's this . . . thing, that's a part of me, but not me. And I've always been terrified that it's going to get out - " He cut himself off with a curse. "Oh, Christ, listen to this bullshit - "

  "It is not bullshit. " When he looked over, she stared right back at him. "And you can talk to me. No judgments. No other audience, ever. Provided you haven't broken the law. "

  His mouth twitched bitterly. "I haven't done anything that can get me arrested. Although I really wondered if I had with Kroner in those woods. "

  "Well, if you have a fear that you're like your father, and there's a bloodbath in front of you, and you can't remember a thing - of course you would. "

  "I don't want to be like him. Ever. "

  "You aren't. "

  "You don't know me. "

  His hard expression put a chill through her, in spite of the fact that her feet were dry and toasty, and she was wearing a parka and gloves. And he was so sure of being a stranger to her, that she wondered why the truism hadn't stopped them in time the night before. Then again, sex and sexual attraction had a way of making you feel close, when in fact it was just about two bodies rubbing together.

  How much did she really know about him? Not much other than what was in his H. R. file at work.

  She was certain of one thing, however: He had not, in fact, hurt that man.

  "You need to talk to someone who's a professional," she said. Because of course there had to be psychological repercussions to having a father like that. "Get this burden off of you. "

  "But that's the problem . . . it's inside me. "

  Something about the tone he used made that chill return - tenfold. Except now she was just thinking crazy. "And I'm telling you, you need to talk it out. "

  He resumed looking at the bright blue sky with its passing white streaks of cloud.

  After a moment, he said, "I was relieved when you left so quickly last night. "

  Well, wasn't that a slap in the face to bring her back to her senses. "I'm happy to have obliged," she said with an edge.

  "Because I could fall in love with you. "

  As her mouth eased open and she blinked like a fish, he tapped his cigarette and exhaled, the smoke rising up into the chilly spring air. "I know that's not helping anything. Both the fact that I said it now, and that it's true. "

  Too right. And yet, she couldn't help going there. "But last night . . . you told me you would never take me to your bed. "

  He shook his head, his upper lip curli
ng in distaste. "Absolutely not. That's where I've been with women who don't matter. You did - you do. " He cursed, low and deep. "You're not like the others. "

  Reilly took a deep breath. And another.

  And she knew that now would be a good time to set them both straight with something along the lines of, "I'm really flattered, but . . . "

  Instead, she just stared at him as he turned the cigarette around and looked at the little orange tip. Tracing the harsh and beautiful lines of his face, she tried to fight the pull toward him . . . and then gave up: In this pocket of privacy in front of the cave, with the breeze whistling between the boulders, and the sun on their faces, the gears between them started to slide back into place again . . . and she realized the true reason she'd left his house so fast.

  Screw the job issues: She felt the same way he did, and it had scared her off.

  "But it's tied up in all the shit with my father. "

  "I'm sorry, what?" she heard herself say.

  "This stuff with you . . . it's tied up with him as well. " His eyes flashed over to her. "He was in love with my mother. And even so, he sliced her up while she was still breathing and made a heart out of her intestines on the floor beside her. I know, because I was the one who found her body. "

  As Reilly gasped, her hand went up to her throat, and she instinctively took a step back . . . only to find that she was trapped against the rock she'd been leaning against.

  "Yeah . . . " he said. "So that's my family history. "

  Way to romance a woman, Veck thought as Reilly went snow white and tried to back away from him.

  Taking a hard drag on his cigarette, he exhaled away from her. "I shouldn't have brought it up. "

  Reilly shook her head - maybe to clear it. "No . . . no, I'm glad you did. I'm just a little . . . "

  "Shocked. Yeah. And that's only one of the reasons I don't talk about this shit. "

  She brushed a loose strand of hair from her eyes. "But I meant what I said. You can talk to me. I want you to talk to me. "

  He wasn't so sure she'd feel that way when he was through. But for some reason, he found himself opening his piehole.

  "My mother was his thirteenth victim. " Man, he envied those guys whose "bad history" stories involved beer bongs, the defacement of public property, and maybe pissing in someone's gas tank. "I was on summer vacation from high school, staying in a rental house on Cape Cod with friends. It was the last night we had the place, and I was the last person to go home, so I was alone. He brought her into the living room and did it there. Afterward, he must have come upstairs and checked in on me - when I woke up, there were two bloody prints on the doorjamb to my room. That was the only clue something evil had taken place. He'd put duct tape over her mouth so I never heard a thing. "

  "Oh . . . my God . . . "

  Taking another deep drag, he talked through the exhale. "And you know, even back then, the first thing I did when I saw what was on the molding was look at my own hands. When there was nothing on them, I raced into my bathroom, checked the towels, checked my clothes - same thing I did after the Kroner thing, ironically. And then I realized . . . Shit, the victim. I called nine-one-one and was on the phone with them when I went downstairs. "

  "You found her. "

  "Yeah. " He rubbed his eyes against images of red blood on a cheap blue rug, a heart made out of human parts. "Yeah, I did, and I knew it was him. "

  He could go no further than that, with her or himself. The memory had been shut off for so long that he had hoped it had decayed in a thoughtful, arguably healthful way. But no. The scene he had walked into was still drawn in shades of neon, as if the vapors of the panic and terror he'd felt had tempered and distorted everything about the mental photograph except for its clarity.

  "I've read about your father - studied him in school," Reilly said softly.

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  "But there was nothing about . . . "

  "I was seventeen, legally a minor, and my mother didn't have my last name, so you wouldn't have known from that. Funny, that was when law enforcement first talked to my father about a victim. Needless to say, they believed him when he said he was grief-stricken - and God knows he was good at faking emotions. Oh, and the prints on the doorjamb? He'd worn latex gloves, naturally, so there was nothing to go by. "

  "God, I'm so sorry. "

  Veck grew quiet, but didn't stay that way. "I didn't see him much. And when he did come by, my mom would disappear with him. She could never get enough of him - he was her drug of choice, the only thing that mattered, the only thing she thought about. Looking back on it, I'm pretty damn sure he engineered her desperation, and it used to piss me off - until I realized what he was and saw that she hadn't stood a chance. As for his side of things? I guess the shit amused him, but the game got old after a while, apparently. "

  At that, he just petered out, like a sprinter who couldn't go the distance.

  "Anyway, that's why we're never having dinner at my parents' house. "

  Lame attempt at a joke. Neither of them laughed.

  When he got to the end of his cigarette, he ground the glowing tip out on the sole of his shoe - and noticed for the first time that his loafers were not going to come out of this mud bath alive. Reilly, on the other hand, had somehow managed to supply herself with a pair of hiking boots.

  So like her. She was always prepared -

  When he looked up, she was right in front of him. Her cheeks were pink from the wind and the exertion, and her eyes shone with the kind of warmth that came from not just a good heart, but an open one. Wisps pulling free of her ponytail gave her a red-tinted halo, and her perfume or shampoo or whatever it was reminded him of summer - the normal kind, not the last one he'd had as a "kid. "

  And then she stepped into him, put her arms around him, and just held on.

  It took him a minute to get with the program, because that was the last thing he expected. But then he embraced her back.

  The two of them stood there for God only knew how long.

  "I'm not in the habit of dating," he said roughly.

  "Coworkers, you mean?" She pulled back and looked up at him.

  "Anyone. " He smoothed her hair with his palms. "And you're way too good for me. "

  There was a brief pause and then she smiled a little. "So the couch is the preferred spot, huh. "

  "Call me Casanova. "

  "What am I going to do with you," she murmured, like she was talking to herself.

  "Dead honest? I don't know. If I were a friend of yours, I'd tell you to run, don't walk, to the exit. "

  "They are not you, you know," she said. "Your parents don't define you. "

  "I'm not so sure about that. She was the sycophant of a psychopath. He's a demon in a dapper mask. And along came baby in a baby carriage. Let's face it, up until now, my life has revolved around avoiding the past, wasting the press donand refusing to think about the future - because I'm terrified I don't just share my father's name. "

  Reilly shook her head. "Listen, I used to be scared that the woman who gave birth to me was going to come back and claim me. For the longest time, I was convinced that whatever my dad did legally wasn't going to be enough if she wanted me back. It used to keep me up at night - and I still have nightmares that it happens. Matter of fact - and you want to talk about crazy - I still sleep with a copy of the court-certified adoption papers next to me in my bedside table. My point? Just because you're afraid of something doesn't give it the power to come true. Fear isn't going to make it nonfiction. "

  There was another long silence.

  He was the one who broke it: "Scratch what I said before. I think I am falling in love with you. Right here. Right now. "