He smiled. “You see? You could do this if you wanted. Dinner and conversation. It’s not so difficult.”
He expected her to remind him again that this wasn’t really a date, but instead she said nothing. She drifted away, down toward a shadowed corner, a disappearing act that only begged for him to follow. He found her standing on one side of a display case, hidden from view of the front desk. She was slouched against the wall such that her hips jutted out toward him slightly, and she twirled the end of her hair around one finger. “If this were a date,” she said slowly, “what would happen next?”
Reed checked either direction before taking a small step forward. “It’s not a date,” he said, but all of a sudden he felt less sure.
“Yes, but if it was one,” she said, looking up at him from beneath a dark fringe of lashes. No matter what else changed, her stark gray eyes were always the same. His mouth went dry. She licked her lips. “What next?”
“I’d—I’d see you home.” He nodded to himself, pleased with his answer.
Ellery’s lips curled up with her smile. “Oh, like a proper date. I get it.” She stretched out one finger and ran it over the middle of his silk tie; he felt it down the back of his spine. “But what if it was one of those improper ones?”
Blood started coursing through his ears as his brain rang out the alarm—danger, danger, abort, abort!—but he found himself drawing even closer, into her intimate space. She smelled like cinnamon tea and her own warm skin. “Ellery, what is this?” he whispered to her.
She shrugged again, the one he’d liked so much earlier, and ducked her gaze. “Your idea,” she murmured back. “Remember? You were explaining to me how I should be going on dates.”
He swallowed, trying to recall his exact words. Whatever they were, this wasn’t the scenario he’d had in mind, but his neurons were fizzing like sparklers now and he had no coherent thought beyond yes. His hand reached out almost of its own volition and brushed tentatively against hers. Her mouth parted at the contact but she did not pull away. “I’m not meant to be doing this,” he said as he threaded their fingers together slowly, back and forth.
“Mmm. Don’t be you then. Be someone else.”
His eyes squeezed shut at the suggestion. If only it were ever that easy. She knew very well it was not.
“You don’t know me,” she said softly as their fingers continued a leisurely, loose exploration. “You’re just some guy on the T who saw me and asked me out.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled wryly. “That’s definitely not me,” he said, but he could not seem to stop touching her. It had been so long since he’d been here like this, this painfully sweet moment; he’d taken a few women to bed since splitting with Sarit last year, but he’d never held their hands. Ellery had beautiful hands.
“You were waiting for the train when you saw me standing there,” she told him. “You saw me standing there, and you thought … what?”
“That you’re beautiful,” he filled in automatically, because it was true.
Her smile slipped, just for a second, and he wondered if she’d ever heard the words before. He didn’t have time to question it because she started talking again. “So you asked me out, and I said yes, and here we are,” she said, her voice low and breathless. “We’re alone and you’re finally able to touch me.”
His fingertips dragged over her palm at the words and he felt every ridge of her skin. He was waiting for her to stop him, slap him, break the spell somehow, but her body was warm and open and so he kept going. Their breath fogged up their darkened corner, making the air hot and close. His thumb rubbed the rounded fleshy part of her palm and then ventured higher, to the impossibly soft skin of her wrist.
It was there he met the scars.
Ellery went rigid and he tried to draw back, but her hand had grabbed him fast. “What are you thinking now?” she asked tightly. She wasn’t loud, but her voice had lost its playfulness. Before he could summon a reply, she answered for him. “You’re probably thinking I’m a suicide survivor, right? I mean, that’s the sunniest scenario—that I tried to off myself.”
“Ellery, please.” He tried to extricate himself but she held him still.
“I look pretty from a distance,” she said. “Up close is a different story.”
“I’m damned close,” he whispered back, “and you look fine.”
“What about if you saw these?” she demanded, as if he hadn’t spoken. She used her free hand to tug down the collar of her dress. In the darkness, he truthfully couldn’t even see the scars, but he knew that they were there. “Now maybe you’re thinking—whoa, this lady’s not your average garden-variety crazy. She must be a special breed.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“No?” Her hand tightened on his to the point that she was hurting him. “You accused me of murder once. How’s that for crazy?”
He gritted his teeth. “I didn’t know you then.”
“You knew me well enough to write a book. You knew, and you thought it anyway. Hell, you thought it because of what you knew about me, about what happened with Coben. Some other guy without a psychology degree, what’s he going to think?” Her voice was rising rapidly now.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“Oh, screw your sorry. I don’t want it. Maybe it can happen like you say, where I meet some nice guy and we have a nice dinner and then maybe even a nice kiss or two, but sooner or later, he’s going to know the truth. He’s going to see the scars and he’s going to know about the farm tools. What if we’re on a date and some nutbag throws a rubber hand at me? What if he’s the kind of guy who wants to cuddle in bed at night? How do I tell him I don’t sleep unless I’m alone? Hmm? What if … what if he wants kids? Too bad, nice guy, because I had that possibility ripped right out of me.”
“Ellery, please. Please stop.”
Her eyes went wider, her fingers biting into his flesh. “You still don’t get it. There is no stop.”
“I get it,” he said. “I do. I know what a monster he was.”
There was a moment where he heard only her harsh breathing and the sound of his heart slamming against his ribs. Maybe, maybe he had found the right words.
“You don’t know,” she told him at last, her voice cracking painfully. “You hunt these guys, Reed, and you see what they do. But then you get to go home.”
She released his hand in a sudden flash, pushing past him in such a burst of movement that it took his addled brain a second to parse her words and realize what had happened. His hand throbbed as blood flow returned, and he dashed after her. “Ellery! Wait!” She wasn’t in the main lobby when he got there, and the lingering cold air told him she’d fled into the streets. He ran outside without bothering to put on his coat. “Ellery! Ellery, where are you?”
Snow slapped at his face, raw and wet. He put out his hands to wave it off but it just came coursing down from the sky. He could see only a few yards in either direction. He staggered first one way, then the other, calling out to her, but she was gone. There was no one but him standing in the winter wasteland. He bit back a curse and walked back to the front of the hotel, where the taxi he had summoned drifted into view. He grabbed his coat from the bench inside and ducked into the backseat of the car. Reed ordered the driver to go slowly around the block while he pressed his face to the cold window and scanned the snow for any signs of life. Every few seconds, he tried her cell. No answer.
Reed had dated enough to recognize the fuck off signal when he got it, so he sat back with a sigh, scrubbing his face with both hands. What the hell was he supposed to do now? His stuff was at her place for the night. Eventually, he gave the driver Ellery’s address and just hoped she’d cooled off enough by the time he got there that she would let him inside.
You get to go home, she’d said. He gave a humorless grin to himself in the dark. Maybe not tonight.
He shut his eyes, partially from exhaustion, partly to block out everything on the outside. The taxi inch
ed its way through the driving snow, an interminable silent ride into oblivion. Reed swayed with the car and let the motion carry him away.
He was jolted upright again when the taxi slammed to a sudden stop. The driver cried out something in Urdu. Reed didn’t know the words but he recognized the meaning: holy shit. A strange light flickered ahead on the street, and Reed sat forward so that he could get a better look. Fire.
He grabbed his cell phone and started dialing 911 even as he leaped from the cab. Outside, he could get his bearings, and he could see it was Ellery’s building—and there was Ellery, standing in front of the fire. It was a vehicle of some sort, now reduced to a metal shell inside the flames. “Ellery!” he called out, scrambling toward her. His shoes kept slipping on the icy street.
The blaze went up behind her, ten feet in the air. The falling snow couldn’t touch the burn.
“Ellery,” he gasped as he reached her. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at him, dazed. “That’s my truck.”
7
Detective Ned Banyon was no one she had ever met before, but as usual, he knew Ellery, or at least the legend of her. “Car fire,” he remarked when they met, only in Boston-ese it came out cah fiyah. “Trouble just seems to follow you around, now don’t it.” She recognized him only by his type: early fifties, with a rounded paunch and a buzz cut to camouflage a rapidly receding hairline. He’d arrived at the scene holding a Dunkin’ Donuts cup and wearing the grim expression of someone working the overnight shift in the middle of a snowstorm. Now he was standing in her living room with his boots dripping a puddle of melting snow and salt onto her hardwood floor. He looked around at the walls as if cataloging them for evidence, taking in her framed poster of Led Zeppelin’s Mothership album and the picture of the Chicago shoreline as seen from near outer space—as close as she dared get to her origins. She felt every sweep of his eyes on her apartment like they were up and down her body. She had invited exactly one person into her home, ever, and that was the other guy standing there with them, watching her intently. “Any idea who might’ve wanted to torch your truck?” Banyon asked.
“No,” she said, avoiding both Reed’s and the detective’s eyes. She didn’t plan to answer anything beyond precisely what was asked. She hadn’t even removed her jacket because then she might be forced to solicit Banyon’s coat, too, and she didn’t want to make it seem like she was inviting him to stay.
“Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around the building lately? Anyone you didn’t recognize?”
“No. I wasn’t here when the fire started.” She had run out on Reed at the restaurant and taken the T home, which is when she’d stumbled on the blaze. She had to have missed the arsonist by only a minute or two.
“But you showed up even before the fire engines,” Banyon said. “Awful convenient timing.” He had apparently done the same math that she had and reached a similar conclusion. Someone had wanted her to see the show. “Any other signs of trouble?” he asked her. “Anyone you seen following you, that sort of thing?”
She felt Reed’s gaze on her acutely. “No.”
Banyon turned to Reed. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re stayin’ here, aren’t you?” Banyon nodded at the roller suitcase parked by the couch and the folded blanket and pillow sitting upon it. He obviously hadn’t missed much during his visual inventory. “You see anything unusual today?”
There was a short silence while Ellery held her breath to see if Reed would bring up the note slipped under her door. “I didn’t see anything,” Reed said finally, and Ellery exhaled.
Banyon scrunched up his face as though he didn’t quite believe them, but it was going on midnight and he plainly wasn’t going to be bothered any further. He gave Ellery his card. “You’ll be wanting a copy of our report for your insurance,” he said. “And if you think of anything else—or you have any other issues, big or small, you call me, okay?”
Ellery took the card but made no promises as she showed Banyon out the door. When she turned back around, she practically bumped into Reed and her dog, both standing right in her path. “Jeez, the two of you,” she muttered, stepping around them. “Give a girl some space, why don’t you?” She shrugged out of her coat and put it on a hook as she went by.
“You didn’t tell him about the note,” Reed said as they followed her down the hall to the bathroom, Bump’s nails click-clacking on the floor. She shut them behind the door and turned on the water to wash her face. The fire lingered everywhere on her body—ashes in her hair, the taste of burning plastic in her mouth. She had been so close to it that her eyelashes were singed.
She splashed cold water on her face for a few moments and then rose up, watching in the mirror as the droplets ran down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. She looked pale and haggard, nothing like the woman who had dressed up for dinner only a few hours before. On the other side of the door, Reed and Bump would not be ignored. Bump’s blackberry nose snuffled underneath along the crack, seeking her out, as Reed continued his argument. “This person isn’t playing around anymore,” he told her. “It’s not a prank.”
She yanked open the door, and he startled backward at her sudden appearance. “We don’t even know it’s the same person.”
“You don’t know it’s not,” he said, following her again as she walked to her bedroom. He halted in the doorway but kept right on talking. “And let’s just consider that implication for a moment, shall we? That would mean you have more than one person threatening you. How is that any better?”
“Sixteen thousand messages,” she told him tartly as she pulled out her gun. The dog still needed to go out. She was going to have to face the streets once more tonight.
Reed stared at her. “I’m sorry—what?”
“More than sixteen thousand messages,” she said. “That’s how many emails I got after the story hit the news this summer, at least before the department shut down my account. My address at the Woodbury PD was public information, and let me tell you, the public made sure to use it. Lots of people wanted to congratulate me. Others had different ideas. ‘Dear Ellery: I had a dream about you the other night. You didn’t have any hands.’ Or, ‘Dear Ellery: I think about you all the time when I’m gardening.’” She shot him a hard look. “That one had a picture of a hoe attached to it.”
Satisfied with his stunned silence, she pushed past him and went to find Bump’s leash. The dog trotted after her eagerly as he picked up on her mission. “Did you save these messages?” Reed trailed them both to the door. He had never even bothered to remove his overcoat.
“No,” she replied wearily. “What would be the point?”
“To find out who’s doing this.”
“Sure, right. We find him. Then the next him. And the one after that. Where does it stop? People will say shockingly disgusting things from the privacy of their computers, just to get their rocks off.”
She went to yank open the door, but Reed put his hand on hers to stop her. The touch shocked her enough that she drew back. “This guy isn’t satisfied with just sending messages through the internet,” he told her in a low, urgent voice. He pointed to the nearest window. “He’s right out there, and he’s started setting things on fire.”
“Good,” she said, meeting his eyes with defiance. “I hope he is out there. If he’s dying to give me a message, well, then let’s have it.” She pulled the door so hard it came flying open, and Bump surged into the void. She held up her hand when Reed tried to follow. “I can take care of myself.”
She took the stairs instead of the elevator, burning off nervous energy as she rushed down each flight, blood roaring in her ears. Her heart was thudding by the time she hit the streets. The snow had stopped but the city was frozen under the weight of it, dark and silent. Ellery took Bump to the side of the building where her truck had been parked, but it was now gone, the smoking remnants having been towed away. She glanced up and down the deserted street but saw n
o signs of life anywhere. The stink of the fire hung in the cold air, noxious and acrid. Convenient timing, the detective had said. Someone had been on this very street, waiting for her. She shivered inside her coat as Bump ambled idly around her feet in the snow. She felt eyes on her all of a sudden. “Hurry up,” she urged the dog, a flash of fear hot on her neck.
She turned around wildly but there was no one there. Only when she thought to look up did she see—it was Reed, a dark angel set against the glow of her windows, watching her from above.
* * *
In the morning, her eyes cracked open against the bright white light of day. The floor-to-ceiling windows in her loft had blinds to hold back the worst of the sun, but all the snow-white surfaces outside magnified the rays and trained them as if through a crystal into Ellery’s bedroom. She curled up like a mole, burying her face in Bump’s soft fur. He thumped his tail on the bed and whined in appreciation as she petted him. She had corralled him in her room last night, partly to keep him away from Reed on the couch, and partly because she wanted the company. She ran her fingertips over his muzzle and he licked her hand once before flopping against her, his solid body wriggling as close as it could get. Bump was no kind of watchdog—he spent most of his day dozing in a patch of sun—but he had known no other version of her. To him, she was perfect just as she was.
She rubbed her hand over his familiar barrel shape a few times before she became aware that Reed was talking to someone, a faint one-sided conversation from the living room. Curious, she got up and padded on bare feet to the door, which she cracked open so she could listen. It took her only a moment to realize he was talking to his daughter.
“Sweetheart, yes, I agree that this boy shouldn’t have taken the soccer ball if you were in the middle of using it,” he was saying, “but that still doesn’t give you the right to call him a—a snogglepus.” He paused. “What is a snogglepus anyway?” There was a pause, and then Reed made some sort of strangled noise that was partway between a laugh and a cough. “Okay, I see. With horns and a pig nose, you’re saying? And you drew him a picture? Well, no wonder he was cross with you.”
No Mercy--A Mystery Page 13