by Nora Roberts
“Yes. I was stun-gunned, drugged, tied up, gagged, locked in the trunk of a car by a man who wanted to kill me just for the pleasure it gave him.” Those calm blue eyes fired like her pistol. “If I’d had a gun, I’d have used it then. If anyone tries to do that to me again, I’d use it now, without a second’s hesitation.”
A part of him regretted she’d given him exactly the answer he’d needed to hear. He handed the Beretta back to her. “Let’s hope you never have to find out if you’re right.”
Fiona holstered the gun, then picked up a bag and began to gather up the spent cartridges. “I’d rather not have to prove it. But I feel better.”
“That’s something then.”
“I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t think about you driving up and hearing gunshots.” She leaned down, gave Jaws a body scrub. “You handled that, didn’t you? Big noises don’t scare you. Search and Rescue dogs need to tolerate loud noises without spooking. I’ll get you that beer after I pick up the targets.”
Odd, he thought, he’d learned her moods. Odd, and a little uncomfortable. “Got any wine?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll get the bodies. You can pour out some wine, and maybe use your sexy voice to score us a delivery. I feel like spaghetti.”
“I don’t have a sexy voice.”
“Sure you do.” He took the bag, walked across her makeshift range.
By the time he’d finished, she was sitting on the back deck, two glasses of red on the little table.
“It’ll be about forty-five minutes. They’re backed up some.”
“I can wait.” He sat, picked up his wine. “I guess you could use a couple decent chairs back here, too.”
“I’m sorry. I need a minute.” She wrapped her arms around the nearest dog, pressed her face into fur and wept.
Simon rose, went inside and brought out a short trail of paper towels.
“I was okay when I was doing something.” She kept her arms around Peck. “I shouldn’t have stopped.”
“Tell me where you put the gun and I’ll get it so you can shoot more soup cans.”
She shook her head and, on a long breath, lifted it. “No, I think I’m done. God, I hate that. Thanks,” she murmured when he pressed the paper towels into her hand.
“That makes two of us. So what set you off ?”
“The FBI was here. Special Agent Don Tawney—he’s the one from the Perry investigation. He really helped me through all of that, so it was easier going through all this again with him. He has a new partner. She’s striking—sort of like the TV version of FBI. She doesn’t like dogs.” She bent down to kiss Peck between the ears. “Doesn’t know what she’s missing. Anyway.”
She picked up the wine, sipped slowly. “It stirs up the ghosts, but I was ready for that. They traced the scarf, the one he sent me. It’s a match for the ones used on the three victims. The same make, dye lot. He bought a dozen of them from the same store, near the prison. Near where Perry is. So that squashes even the faint hope that somebody sent it to me as a sick joke.”
Fury burned a low fire in his gut. “What are they doing about it?”
“Following up, looking into, pursuing avenues. What they always do. They’re monitoring Perry, his contacts, his correspondence, on the theory that he and this one know each other. They’ll probably contact you because I told them you were staying here at night.”
She folded her legs up, drawing in. “It occurs to me that I’m a lot of work to be involved with right now. It’s not usually true—I don’t think. I’m not high maintenance because I know how to maintain myself, and I prefer it. But right now . . . So if you want to call a time-out, I get it.”
“No you don’t.”
“I do.” She turned her head to meet his eyes straight on, and now, he thought, there was the faintest light in them. “I’d think you were a cold, selfish bastard coward, but I’d get it.”
“I’m a cold, selfish bastard, but I’m not a coward.”
“You’re none of those things. Well, maybe a little bit of a bastard, but it’s part of your charm. Simon, another woman’s missing. She fits the pattern, the type.”
“Where?”
“South-central Oregon, just north of the California border. I know what she’s going through now, how afraid she is, how confused, how there’s this part of her that won’t—can’t—believe it’s happening to her. And I know that if she doesn’t find a way, if there isn’t some intersection with fate, they’ll find her body in a matter of days, in a shallow grave with a red scarf around her neck and a number on her hand.”
She needed to see something else, he thought. Control meant channeling the emotion into logic. “Why did Perry pick athletic coeds?”
“What?”
“You’ve thought about it, the FBI, the shrinks, they’d have a lot to say on it.”
“Yes. His mother was the type. She was an athlete, a runner. Apparently, she just missed being chosen for the Olympics when she was in college. She got pregnant, and instead of pursuing her interests or career, she ended up a very bitter, dissatisfied mother of two, married to a forcefully religious man. She left them, the husband, the kids—just took off one day.”
“Went missing.”
“You could say—except she’s alive and well. The FBI tracked her down once they’d identified Perry. She lives—or lived—outside of Chicago. Teaches PE in a private girls’ school.”
“Why the red scarf ?”
“Perry gave her one for Christmas when he was seven. She left them a couple months later.”
“So, he was killing his mother.”
“He was killing the girl his mother was before she got pregnant, before she married the man who—according to his mother and those who knew them—abused her. He was killing the girl she talked about all the time, the happy college student who’d had her whole life in front of her before she made that mistake, before she was saddled with a child. That’s what the shrinks said.”
“What do you say?”
“I say all that’s just a bullshit excuse to cause pain and fear. Just like whoever’s killing now uses Perry as a bullshit excuse.”
“You stand there because of what he did to you. Motivation matters.”
She set down her glass. “You really think—”
“If you shut it down a minute, I’ll tell you what I think. Motivation matters,” he said again, “because why you do something connects to how you do it, who you do it to, or for. And maybe what you see at the end of it—if you’re looking that far.”
“I don’t care why he killed all those women, and Greg, why he tried to kill me. I don’t care.”
“You should. You know what motivates them.” He gestured to the dog. “Play, praise, reward—and pleasing the ones who dole all that out. Knowing it, connecting to it, and them, makes you good at what you do.”
“I don’t see what—”
“Not done. He was good at what he did. It was doing something he wasn’t as good at—When he deviated from his skill area, he got caught.”
“He murdered Greg and Kong in cold blood.” She shoved out of the chair. “You call that a deviation?”
He shrugged and went back to his wine.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Because you’d rather be pissed.”
“Of course I’d rather be pissed. I’m human. I have feelings. I loved him. Haven’t you ever loved anyone?”
“Not that way.”
“Nina Abbott?”
“Jesus, no.”
There was just enough shocked derision in his tone to carry the truth. “It didn’t seem that far-out a question.”
“Look, she’s gorgeous, talented, sexy, smart.”
“Bitch.”
Pleased, he let out a short laugh. “You asked. I liked her, except when she was batshit crazy—which, looking back, was pretty damn regular. It was steam and smoke, then it was just drama. She liked the drama. No, she fucking loved the drama.
I didn’t. That’s it.”
“I guess I assumed there was more than—”
“There wasn’t. And it’s not about me anyway.”
“So you just expect me to be logical and objective about Greg, about Perry, about this. I should be analytical when—”
“Be whatever the hell you want, but if you don’t think, if you don’t step outside and look at the whole, you can shoot that gun as much as you like and it’s not going to help. For fuck’s sake, Fiona, are you going to pack it twenty-four/seven? Are you going to strap it on while you’re running your classes, or driving to the village for a quart of milk? Is that how you’re going to live?”
“If I have to. You’re mad,” she realized. “It’s hard to tell with you because you don’t always show it. You’ve been mad since you got here, but you’ve only let it sneak out a couple times.”
“We’re both better off that way.”
“Yeah, because otherwise you’re Simon Kick-Ass. You come here every night. There’s probably some mad in that, too.”
Considering, she picked up her wine again, walked to the post to lean back, study him as she drank. “You’ve got to stop what you’re doing, toss some things in a bag, drive over here. You don’t leave anything, except what you forget. Because you’re messy. It’s another thing you have to do every day.”
She’d managed to turn it around so it was about him after all, he realized. The woman had skills. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“That’s true.” She nodded, drank again. “Yeah, that’s true. You get a meal and sex out of it, but that’s not why you do it. Not altogether anyway. It has to irritate you, to some extent. I haven’t given you enough credit for that.”
“I don’t do it for credit either.”
“No, you don’t work on the point system. You don’t care about things like that. You do what you want, and if an obligation sneaks in—a dog, a woman—you figure out how to handle it and continue to do what you want. Problems are meant to be solved. Measure, cut, fit the pieces together until it works the way you want it to work.”
She lifted her glass, sipped again. “How’s that for looking at motivation?”
“Not bad, if this was about me.”
“Part of it is, for me. See, it was okay when this was an affair. This you and me. I never had one before, not really, so it was all new and shiny, sexy and easy. Really attractive guy who gives me the tingles. Enough in common and enough not to make it interesting. I like the way he is, and maybe partly because he’s so different from my usual. I think it’s the same with him about me. But that changes without me realizing it—or at least without me admitting it. Affair becomes relationship.”
She sipped again, let out a little sigh. “That’s what we have here, Simon. We’re in a relationship whether either of us wanted it or were ready for it. And as stupid as it is, as useless and wrong as it is, part of me feels disloyal to Greg. So I’d rather be pissed. I’d rather not admit I’m not having an affair with you, a no-problem, casual little fling I can walk away from anytime.”
She watched the dogs scramble off the porch like runners at the starting gun, then bound around the side of the house.
“I guess you’re going to have to remeasure and refit. That’s dinner. We should eat inside. It’s cooling off.”
She walked into the house, leaving him wondering how the hell the conversation had flipped on him.
IN THE KITCHEN, Fiona gave the pasta a quick buzz in the microwave. By the time Simon came in, she’d dumped the spaghetti in a bowl, set the garlic bread on a small plate and brought the wine to the table.
When she turned with dinner plates in her hands, he took her by the shoulders. “I’ve got some say in what this is.”
“Okay. What is it?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
She waited. Waited another moment. “Are you figuring it out now?”
“No.”
“Then we should eat before I have to heat it up again.”
“I’m not competing with a ghost.”
“No. No, believe me, Simon, I know it’s not fair. He was my first, in every way.” She set the plates down, crossed over to get the flatware, napkins. “And the way I lost him left scars. There hasn’t been anyone since who was important enough to make me take a good look at those scars. I didn’t know that’s what I’d have to do when I started falling for you. I think I’m in love with you. It’s not like it was with Greg, so it’s confusing, but I think that’s what it is, going on with me. And that’s a dilemma for both of us.”
She topped off both glasses of wine. “So I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know when you figure it out on your end.”
“That’s it?” he demanded. “Oops, we’re in a relationship, and by the way, I think I’m in love with you. Let me know what you think?”
She sat, tipped her face up to look at him. “That pretty much sums it up. Love’s always been a positive in my life.” She scooped some spaghetti onto his plate. “It adds and enhances and opens all sorts of possibilities. But I’m not stupid, and I know that if you can’t or don’t feel it for me, it’ll be painful. That’s a dilemma. I also know you can’t force love, or demand it. And I’ve already dealt with the worst. If you can’t or don’t love me, it’ll hurt. But I’ll get through it. Besides, maybe I’m wrong.”
She took a portion of pasta. “I was wrong about being in love with Josh Clatterson.”
“Who the hell is Josh Clatterson?”
“Sprinter.” She wound pasta around her fork. “I pined for him for nearly two years—tenth and eleventh grade, and the summer between. But it turned out it wasn’t love. I just liked the way he looked when he ran the twenty-yard dash. So maybe I just like the way you look, Simon, and how you smell of sawdust half the time.”
“You haven’t seen me run the twenty-yard dash.”
“True. I might be sunk if I ever do.” When he finally sat down, she smiled. “I’m going to try to be logical and objective.”
“It seems to me you’re doing a damn good job at it already.”
“About you and me? I guess it’s a defense mechanism.”
He frowned, ate. “It doesn’t work as a defense once you tell me it’s a defense.”
“That’s a good point. Well, too late. I meant logical and so forth about Perry and what’s going on now. You were right about that, about the importance of understanding motivation. He didn’t try to kill me just because. I represented something, just like the others had. And failing with me, he needed to inflict punishment? Do you think punishment?”
“It’s a good enough word for it.”
“It had to be more severe than the others. Death ends—though I imagine if he hadn’t been caught he’d have come for me again. Because he’d have needed to end it—to tie off that thread. How am I doing?”
“Keep going.”
“He understood it’s hard to live when you know, when you understand someone you love is dead because you lived. He knew that, understood that, and used that to make me suffer for . . . breaking his streak, spoiling his record. What then?” she asked when Simon shook his head.
“For leaving him.”
She sat back. “For leaving him,” she repeated. “I got away. I ran away. I didn’t stay where he put me, or . . . accept the gift. The scarf. All right, say that’s true, what does it tell me?”
“He’s never forgotten you. You left him, and even though he managed to scar you, he was the one who was punished. He can’t get to you, can’t close that circle, tie off the thread. Not with his own hands. He needs someone to do it for him. A stand-in. A proxy. How does he find one?”
“Someone he knows, another inmate.”
“Why would he use someone who’s already failed?”
Her heart knocked at the base of her throat. “He wouldn’t. He waits. He’s good at waiting. So he’d wait, wouldn’t he, until he found someone he believed smart enough, good enough. The women he’s killed—thi
s proxy—it’s a kind of building-up. I understand that. They’re a horrible kind of practice.”
“And they’re bragging. ‘You locked me up, but you didn’t stop me.’ ”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good.” For an instant those tawny eyes went fierce. “Be scared, and think. What motivates the proxy?”