by Lis Wiehl
As he took it, his other hand slipped the bar of soap into one of her bags. “Let me give this to you. As a present.”
She smiled, but only inside. Outside, she let her mouth twist. “I really couldn’t.”
“No,” he insisted grandly. “My treat. To help make your day better.”
“Well, if you insist . . .”
“I do. Now, can I help you out with your bags?”
They ended up spending fifteen minutes next to her car, talking. Clark told her about how he had graduated from high school the year before. The night, which cloaked his features, seemed to inspire a new confidence in him. He wanted to be an artist. His blue-collar parents worked in a factory in eastern Oregon and hunted whatever was in season. They didn’t understand him. They had refused to help him pay for school unless he majored in something that might actually provide him with a paying job, so he was taking a year off and working at New Seasons to make some money.
It was easy to figure out what to say in return. Elizabeth carefully watched his reaction to every sentence she said and adjusted the next accordingly. And with every word of Clark’s, every glance, every change of expression, she accumulated a small hoard of facts about who he was and what he longed for.
Then it was simple enough to become the woman he wanted.
When Clark said for the third time that he had to go back inside, Elizabeth kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you again. Talking to you has completely turned my day around.”
He raised his hand to his face, looking dazed. “Would it be possible—I mean—could I talk to you again?” He looked down at his shoes. “I mean, not at work?”
She grinned. “What time does your shift end?”
They ended up at his place, the most dreary apartment imaginable. Worse even than the tacky motel where she had been forced to kill that stupid girl. She had told Clark it wasn’t a good idea to go back to her place, that her ex might be watching her house. The minute he got her inside the door, he started kissing her. It was a relief to close her eyes so she didn’t have to see the threadbare couch, the scarred coffee table, the tiny rooms that hadn’t been painted in this century.
Sex didn’t mean anything to Elizabeth. It was a tool, just like a smile or a compliment or a lie or a threat. Each had its place.
“Can I draw you?” Clark said afterward.
It was such an odd request that she laughed a little, then stopped cold when she saw the hurt in his eyes. This boy was like a puppy.
“Sure.” She pushed herself up on one elbow. “Sheet on or off?”
“Off?” he said, making it sound more like a question. He got up and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled on the pair of boxer shorts he had discarded so eagerly only a few minutes before. From a small table, he took a pencil and sketch pad.
She enjoyed watching his eyes trace her curves as he sketched in her long legs with sure strokes, then slowed a bit as he came to the middle.
When he set down his pencil, she asked, “Can I come look?”
He reflexively clutched the sketchbook to his chest. “Sure. But I’m not very good.”
Elizabeth got to her feet and came around behind him as he slowly lowered the sketch. Her breasts, she thought critically, were too small. Maybe she should rethink implants? But the rest of her looked good— taut belly, strong but slender legs.
“Do you like it?” He looked up at her and bit his lip.
Right. He meant the drawing. Well, everything looked in proportion. Only a few lines suggested her hands and feet, which Elizabeth had heard were hard to draw, but at least he hadn’t bungled them. And her face was even fairly recognizable.
“It’s beautiful. Can I have it?” There. That should make him feel better.
But instead of handing it over, he put it close to his chest again. “Can I hold on to it for a while? Because I’m sure that when I come home from work tomorrow, this will feel like the most amazing dream. I’ll need proof.”
“Proof?” Her tone was playful.
“Yeah. Something I can see and touch.”
She pulled the sketch pad out of his fingers and gave him a sly smile. “How about this?”
What’s this?” Clark asked later, tracing a bruise on the inside of her upper arm.
She had bumped into the corner of the pec fly machine.
She gave him the sad little smile that she had practiced for moments such as these. “I don’t really want to say.”
“You can tell me.” He puffed up his scrawny chest. “You can tell me anything.”
“I had a little argument with my ex-husband. That’s why I was having such a bad day.”
His eyes widened. “He hurt you?”
“It’s not like you think. He doesn’t usually leave bruises.” She looked away, like she was lying. Well, she was, but not in the way Clark would think.
He pushed himself up on one elbow. “He doesn’t usually leave bruises? Can you hear what you’re saying? You need someone who can take care of you and make sure nobody hurts you.”
Elizabeth made herself relax as he covered her face with his eager, slobbery kisses.
She had only been with Clark for a few hours, but she could tell that he would be willing to do anything she wanted. He already appeared to believe that she was the one true love of his life.
There was always a use for people like that.
At two in the morning she told him she had to go, that she couldn’t risk enraging her ex if he drove by her house and saw that her car was still gone. Elizabeth just wanted to get back to her house, to her own things, to her 600-thread-count cotton sheets, not the scratchy polyester blend on Clark’s bed, even if they had been, thankfully, clean. It took another thousand kisses before he would let her go. Fifteen minutes later, she was showering his smell from her skin.
When her alarm rang at five, Elizabeth turned it off with a groan. Her head ached. She wanted to lie in bed and luxuriate in her memories of last night. How easy it had been to make Clark fall in love with her.
And now that he had, what would be the next stage of The Game? What would Clark give her willingly? And then what would she take? Elizabeth knew in her bones that he was going to be useful. And for more than a six-dollar bar of sandalwood soap. She just didn’t know for what. Not yet.
Her hand reached for the phone to call in sick to work. But then she remembered. Boot camp. Boot camp and her new best friend, Cassidy Shaw. Cassidy Shaw, who could also give Elizabeth so much.
Unless those stupid friends of Cassidy’s interfered.
CHAPTER 32
Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse
You can’t hide your head in the sand anymore,” Nic said to Zoe Barrett. They had called Colton Foley’s fiancée in for a meeting in Allison’s office, without telling her what it was for.
“Zoe, what we have to tell you is difficult,” Allison added, naturally falling into the good cop role. “But we got a search warrant for your fiancé’s student locker. And this is what we found.”
Nic slid the photographs out from a manila envelope and began to put them down one at a time, as if she were dealing a deck of cards.
The first photo was of the hollowed-out textbook. Zoe glanced at it and then back up at Nic, her face blank. The next was a fan of money.
These weren’t crisp notes from a bank, but wrinkled bills rifled from victims’ purses. Zoe’s expression didn’t change. Nic slapped down the next photo, which showed a bundle of plastic restraints. The same kind that had been found in their condo. The kind that had supposedly been Zoe’s idea. Her face still showed nothing. A credit card. The girl’s expression was still blank, but then Nic tapped on the photo. Slowly, Zoe leaned closer, and Nic could hear her suck in her breath when she read the name on the card. It was the name of one of the victims. The next photo showed six pairs of panties, one torn at the side. Zoe’s eyes widened. And then Nic slapped down the trump card. A gun. Zoe put her fingers to her lips.
“Ballistics says this is the gu
n that killed those three women.”
Zoe pushed back from the table. Her face was clammy and pale. “Someone could have put that stuff in his locker. It must be a mistake.”
“I know this is hard,” Allison said, “but think it through. The only one who could have all these things is the man who committed these crimes. And the evidence shows that it’s Colton.”
Zoe took a shaky breath and squeezed her hands together in her lap. “It can’t be true. This is not the man I know. It’s just—not. It can’t be.”
Nic said nothing. Allison patted the back of Zoe’s hand. After a moment, the young woman took a shaky breath.
“Did you know he had a gun?” Nic said.
“No.” Her head hung down so that now she spoke to her hands, twisting on her lap.
“Those plastic restraints. Do you know who brought those into your apartment?”
Nothing but silence.
“Who brought those into your apartment?” Nic repeated, her voice so soft it was nearly a whisper.
The girl was broken now. No point in playing bad cop.
“Colton did. He said it would be fun.” She raised her wet, splotchy face. “And it was. And now I have to think of what that meant. What he did to those women. Did he want to do it to me?”
Nic and Allison were silent.
“All I know is that I loved what I saw of Colton. This man—the man who had these things—is not the same man. Now you’re saying he had another side, one that I never saw.” Zoe’s voice wobbled. “But what I don’t know is which version is true.”
“Maybe they’re both true,” Nic said into the silence. “Some people have two sides. And one they keep hidden.”
By the time Zoe left, she had agreed to help them. But Nic knew that that could change. Colton Foley had his hooks in the girl. Give him a few minutes on the other end of a telephone and he could probably convince Zoe that black was white, up was down, and that there was a perfectly good explanation for how those items had ended up in his medical school locker. It all depended on what you chose to believe.
Look at Makayla. For years she had been deathly afraid of the water, and Nic had aided and abetted in that belief, babying her, letting her daughter make excuses for not even dipping her toes into a pool. But then she had brought her to Elizabeth at Cassidy’s gym.
Instead of acting like she expected Makayla to be frightened, Elizabeth had taken a hands-off approach, not asking if she was okay, not checking in with her over and over. Instead, she had simply expected Makayla to do what she said. Nic had watched part of the first lesson, but then Elizabeth said it would work better if it were just the two of them.
Driving home after the lesson, Makayla had chattered about how she had even ducked her head under the water. Before, getting her to put her head under water would have been like dunking a cat. In a way, it made sense. Without Nic observing, without Nic reaffirming her fear, Makayla could let go of being the kid who was scared of water.
After Zoe left, Allison went to the bathroom and Nic grabbed her coffee cup and went into the kitchen. She was trying to cut back on coffee—she had read on the Internet conflicting reports about its relationship with lumpy breasts—but she figured a half cup wouldn’t hurt her. Too late, she saw that Leif was there before her. At the FBI field office she could wear her armor and keep her distance. Here at the courthouse, seeing him unexpectedly, her defenses were down. She hoped her expression was neutral.
“Good morning.” Leif gave Nic a nod. Completely professional.
So why did it feel like someone had reached into her chest and given her heart a twist?
He hefted the pot. “Do you want some?”
This was harder than she had thought. Why had she ever given in to him in the first place? She should have kept her private life separate from her work life. She had lived by that principle for ten years. Every night when Nic left work, she tried to really leave it, putting it out of her mind as soon as she put her key in her car’s ignition. And at work, she made no mention of her home life. But Leif had slipped past her defenses.
“Want some?” he repeated, and Nic realized she hadn’t answered. Her eyes met his for a minute. He held her gaze without a flicker, but she saw how much it cost him to keep his words light. She had pushed him away with every weapon at her disposal, except the truth.
Now she wanted to fall to her knees, lean her forehead against his thighs, and weep. Tell him how afraid she was that her life was already lost, that she was walking around like a living woman who was soon destined to be bones moldering in a coffin.
Instead she just said “sure” and held out her cup. Careful not to meet his eyes again.
CHAPTER 33
Channel Four
Cassidy Shaw,” Cassidy said in a distracted tone. She was working on a story about a man who had conned dozens of Portland-area women into giving him money, clothes, cars, credit cards, and worst of all—love.
“Someone for Jenna on line one,” Marcy, the receptionist, said. “I told them she wasn’t here, and they asked to speak to one of her coworkers.”
“Who is it?” Cassidy felt a twist of annoyance. Coworker sounded like peer. Really, Marcy was far more Jenna’s coworker than Cassidy was. The girl had called in sick over the weekend, but no one knew when she would be back. Supposedly she had some kind of flu. With Cassidy’s luck, Jenna would show up in a day or two with a pretty flush and looking even thinner.
“A motel in Southwest Portland. The Barbur Bargain Motel.”
A motel? Cassidy had wondered if Jenna was really off enjoying the spring sunshine. But maybe she was carrying on some kind of torrid affair.
“Put it through,” she said with considerably less annoyance and more interest.
“Hello?” A man’s voice.
“This is Cassidy Shaw. I understand you’re trying to get hold of Jenna. Unfortunately, she’s out today, and I don’t know when she’ll be back. Can I help you?”
“Hm . . . are you a friend of hers?”
“Jenna?” Sensing it would be worth her while, she said, “We’re very close. We’re practically like sisters.” Well, they were, Cassidy thought. Jenna could be the younger sister who was always jealous of her older sister’s poise and success.
“We have something of hers that she left here.”
Cassidy imagined a sexy black teddy, a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. There had to be a way she could use whatever it was as a weapon. “What is it?”
“Her purse and car keys. The housekeeper found them in one of our rooms. We got this number from her business card.”
Purse and car keys? The little matter of Jenna having business cards Cassidy would address later. “When were they found?”
“Sunday around noon.”
Today was Tuesday. “Why didn’t you call yesterday then?”
He sighed noisily. “Look, lady, a lot of people don’t come here because they just need a room for the night. They come here because their house just got foreclosed on and this is the only place they can afford. Or they’re here to see someone at the hospital. Or they come here because they fell in lust with someone who’s not their spouse and they need someplace private. We’re more for emergency situations, like. I would never have tried to get hold of this Jenna lady at her house— but I figured her work would be okay.”
The reality of what he was saying began to sink in. Cassidy would never be more than five feet from her purse. Every woman she knew was the same way. So how could Jenna have simply left it behind? And her keys? That made even less sense. She tried to remember what Jenna drove.
“Let me ask you something. Is there a black Honda in your parking lot? I think it’s an Accord.”
“Parked at the far end of the lot. Is that her car?”
“It sounds like it. And it’s hard to imagine Jenna leaving her purse and keys. Why didn’t you turn her things over to the police?”
“We figured she had to leave suddenly. It happens.”
Cassidy im
agined irate spouses recognizing certain vehicles as they drove past. “And you’ve heard nothing from her since she rented the room,” she said, thinking out loud.
“It was actually two rooms.”
“What?”
“She rented two rooms,” he said. “Right next to each other.”
“You mean one of those suites where there’s a door in between and you can lock it or not?”
“No. They’re adjacent, but there’s no interior connection.”
This was making less and less sense. “Okay, you said you found her purse and keys,” Cassidy said. “What about the other room? Was anything found in it?”
“No. But there was something missing. The bedspread.”
Cassidy had a bad feeling about this. “Could you hold on to her keys and purse for a little while? I need to do some checking.”
After she hung up, Cassidy made a few phone calls, but hit nothing but dead ends. Then she called Allison. “What are you working on today?”
“Nicole and I are prepping for a grand jury presentation tomorrow. Why?”
“Do you think the three of us could grab a quick lunch? Because I think something’s wrong, but I’m not sure. I need your advice.”
“What’s wrong?”
Cassidy looked around to make sure no one was listening. It was second nature, making sure her stories stayed hers. Then she realized who she was subconsciously trying to hide from. Jenna.
“Something bad might have happened to our intern.”
“That Jenna person?”
“That Jenna person,” Cassidy echoed. “I can’t decide if I should keep my nose out of it or call the police. That’s why I want to run it past you guys.”
Allison conferred with Nicole, and the three of them agreed to meet in an hour at one of the many dedicated food cart areas scattered throughout the city. The carts were a popular addition to the Portland food scene. Even if you could only cook one thing, if you did it really, really well, with a cart you might be able to scratch out a living making it. And without the expense and overhead of opening a real restaurant.