Killer Smile

by Marilyn Pappano

  He used to claim he burned a whole lot more thinking about her.

  He probably still did. It was just that the passion these days was negative.

  After hanging his jacket in the bathroom, he took the chair opposite her, unwrapped a foot-long cheesesteak with all the trimmings and took a bite. “They said Jamey brought you back.”

  She nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her. “Yeah. He carries a gun.”

  “I know,” he said drily. “But he’s more Stacia’s type than yours.”

  She wasn’t surprised he remembered Stacia’s type. Wasn’t surprised he remembered her own favorite sandwich, right down to the dressing. She was kind of surprised that he admitted to it. Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to claim amnesia? She would even have gone along with it, though deep in her heart, she knew he never forgot anything that had been important to him.

  But then, neither did she. Every major fact about him was seared into her memory.

  That he’d loved her more than he should have.

  That she’d loved him as much as she could but just not enough.

  That she’d broken his heart.

  That she’d damaged her own heart.

  And that he would never, ever forgive her.

  * * *

  They’d eaten a few bites in silence when Daniel took a good look around the room. His first glances were always fairly comprehensive. In an emergency, he didn’t have time to scrutinize every detail, but he’d learned to see enough. This time he noticed the fussy bed that Jeffrey would describe as whimsical, the old armoire that Archer would admire the workmanship on, the marble top on the dresser and the two suitcases standing next to it.

  Suitcases in a hotel room were hardly out of place, but their presence gave him a jolt. He’d traveled with Natasha enough to know that the first thing—well, sometimes the second—she did in a hotel room was unpack, even if they were staying for just one night. She hung clothes in the closet and folded them in the drawers and put the suitcases out of sight, wanting no reminder that the stay was temporary.

  He shifted his gaze to her. She’d noticed what caught his attention and was plucking off little pieces of bread from her sandwich, her cheeks tinged pink.

  “You were planning to leave this morning.”

  Her shoulders jerked in a shrug.

  Without calling. Without letting him know. After telling him someone was stalking her, she’d intended to load her car and take off and leave him to figure out where she was going on his own. He wanted to think, Of course. That’s what she does. She runs away. But how could he hold it against her when his last words to her had been, Don’t feel like you need to stick around any longer? When his last action had been driving off and leaving her to make her way back to her hotel alone after she’d just told him she was being stalked?

  She’d intended to do what he’d told her to do. What he’d wanted. Sort of. Mostly.

  He chewed another bite while getting a firmer grip on his control, then asked, pretty calmly he thought, “Where were you going?”

  “I hadn’t decided.”

  “What about staying with Stacia?”

  “I won’t put her in danger.”

  “Your parents?”

  A snort escaped her. “Mom’s on husband number five, Dad’s with girlfriend number eight and husband number three has taken up with girlfriend number three and they’re staying at the house between their travels. Between all the extended families, grown kids, grandkids, kids’ friends and such, when Stacia and I went there for the Labor Day cookout, we didn’t know most of the people living in our house.”

  Daniel winced for her inside. People always thought his upbringing had been unconventional because his fathers were gay and he had no mother figure, but his life had been predictable and boring compared to Natasha’s. Her parents had never shared a responsible day in their lives. The only constancy in their house had been inconstancy. He couldn’t remember a time when fewer than five adults had lived in the house—not counting any of the Spencer kids—and their romantic entanglements had been more complicated to sort out than the cleverest criminal enterprise ever. The best thing he could say for her mom and dad was that they did love their kids.

  But, apparently, they loved anyone. Everyone.

  After another bite, she changed the subject, at least to another aspect. “Claire thinks this was just vandalism. That my car was picked because it was parked on the street instead of the lot out back. Wrong place, wrong time. Do you think...?”

  The hope in her voice was faint, and he didn’t like being the one to shoot it down. “No, I don’t. I think he figured out that you were planning to leave and wanted you to stay. He lured you here, Natasha. Maybe he knew that you would have to locate the other two. Maybe he knew you were friends with my fathers and they’d give me up in a heartbeat. Maybe he was prepared to play out the game wherever you ended up. But now that you’re here, I’m guessing he doesn’t want you to leave until he deals with me.”

  It felt funny saying those last words. He wasn’t superhero material, but he’d always taken care of himself. When kids had bullied him about his parents in elementary and middle school, he’d been unflappable. No one had ever been able to get under his skin. No one had ever dealt with him, and some idiot who called himself RememberMe—the guy had probably been going for romantic, but gagging was Daniel’s first impulse—wasn’t going to be the first.

  “How could he have known I was coming here? I was on the road for two and a half days. Do you think the same car could have been behind me all that time and I didn’t notice?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he had a tracker on your car. Maybe he’s bugged your phone. Maybe he’s hacked your tablet. Maybe he knew you contacted Archer and Jeffrey and assumed this would be your destination. Jamey’ll look over your car for anything that survived the fire. Our IT guy will check your cell and tablet. We’ll need copies of those emails and texts anyway. Did you by chance bring the cards and gifts?”

  She left her chair, hefted a suitcase onto the bed and unzipped the outer pocket. “The gifts were in the trunk of the car. I thought I should keep them, but I didn’t want them in my house.” Pulling out an armful of thick envelopes, she laid them on the table between them. The top one was labeled “Emails #1.” The envelopes were full but not so stuffed that the edges were wearing. He counted seven of them.

  After adding her phone and the tablet, she sat down again. Ignoring what was left of her sandwich, she folded her arms over her chest. “Could someone give me a ride to a store to get a prepaid cell? I’m really not comfortable with the idea of sticking my head out the window and yelling, ‘Nine-one-one!’ if something happens.”

  The room had a phone, Daniel had noticed, but landlines could easily be cut. “We’ll take care of it.” He could pick up a cell phone when he left here, activate it and send one of the uniformed officers over with it. About a half dozen of them who’d seen her yesterday or this morning had already asked if she was single and if there was anything going on between them.

  Ben thought the first few had seriously wanted to know. He thought the last few had done it just to see steam rise from Daniel’s ears.

  Steam had not risen from his ears. His blood pressure hadn’t risen, either, and he hadn’t practically ground the top layers off his teeth.

  “I tried to call Flea.” He wasn’t used to having to redirect his thoughts all the time—or, actually, not at all. The chief had told him on more than one occasion that he sometimes had a bad case of tunnel vision, looking straight ahead and not opening to all the possibilities. This morning, the only time his focus had been good was at the hospital when he’d interviewed their domestic violence victim.

  “She couldn’t talk,” he went on. “Said she would call me back later. Jamey says there was definitely some sort of solvent used. Of course, they could smell that. He and Ben ar
e checking the surveillance cameras that had a view of the car overnight. The nearest camera is at the courthouse door, so it’s not great footage. They’re not done yet, but the only thing that’s caught their attention so far is that no one went near the car in the hour preceding the fire.”

  “Maybe it really was spontaneous combustion.”

  He remembered her flip comment when he’d first approached her outside that morning. “About the only thing that spontaneously combusts around here is hay.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. If hay has more than 22 percent moisture when it’s stacked or baled, it begins to release flammable gases that will auto-ignite when the temperature inside the hay gets hot enough.”

  “I actually meant ‘really’ in a dry, surprised way that you know anything whatsoever about hay. In LA, you only knew what it looked like from what you’d seen on TV.”

  She was right. “Cedar Creek’s not LA. We deal with different types of situations here.”

  “What other types of situations besides self-burning hay?”

  “Well, you do not honk at cows that have gotten out of their pasture onto the road. They surround your vehicle and stare at you while chewing—” he mimicked their big eyes and exaggerated mouth action “—waiting for the treats they expect you to give them. And some people here do their gift-shopping at the feed store. Oh, and the best frog legs in town are at the gas station on South Hickory but only on Fridays.”

  She laughed. She didn’t intend to—he could see it in her surprise—but it burst out anyway. It eased the lines of her face and the pallor of her skin and reminded him like a punch to the gut why he’d fallen in love with her. She was funny and optimistic and lighthearted and beautiful and smart and sexy, and she’d loved her family and their friends and his parents and their dog and him... She’d loved him most of all.

  For a while.

  Good times. Bad times. Times that made him just the slightest bit wistful.

  “How is Stacia?” he asked before starting on the last chunk of his sandwich.

  “She’s great. She got a recurring role on one of those crime-drama shows. She plays twins, one who died in the first episode and the other who wants justice for her death. It was creepy, seeing her made up to look dead, even though she was sitting right beside me when I watched it.” Natasha suppressed a shudder.

  “If it pays the bills...”

  “You still don’t watch television. Just the documentary stuff, right?”

  “And the occasional old movie. Last weekend I saw The Thin Man series, and this weekend it’ll be Cary Grant. Arsenic and Old Lace. His Girl Friday. The Philadelphia Story.”

  Emotion flitted across her face, amusement there and gone almost too quickly to identify. Sometimes I forget you have a sense of humor, she’d said last night.

  “I know. You still think it’s weird I like comedies.”

  “Old comedies,” she stressed. “When the writing was intelligent, the actors were talented and the setups were more sophisticated. I think it suits you.” She sat back, legs crossed, fingers loosely clasped in her lap. Her T-shirt was thin and long-sleeved, clinging to her breasts and waist and hips, and her black shorts did the same. They could have done double duty as a bikini bottom—they were that skimpy—and he wondered if RememberMe had ever seen her in them.

  Under normal circumstances, it would be none of his business. They had been together, and now they weren’t. If another guy saw her in the tiny shorts or the fancy lingerie she’d always preferred, if he’d seen her in nothing but her skin and they’d done wild, wicked things together, that was fine. But the key word there was together. If RememberMe was spying on her, if he was watching her dress or undress, shower, do any of the million intimate, basic, everyday things she did and she didn’t know it, the pervert level went high enough to launch it into Daniel’s business.

  That aside, she presented an intriguing picture. Her legs were long and the muscles were lean. She claimed her only interest in physical activity was watching the Dodgers play, but they’d walked thousands of miles when they were together. Running errands back home, she would say, Why drive from the restaurant to the store? It’s only a mile and a half. Go to a restaurant, then decide she’d prefer the one ten blocks away: Hey, let’s leave the car here. We’ve already got a parking space.

  She was curvier than she would prefer and exactly the way he preferred—nice hips, narrow waist, luscious breasts—and the way she held her head had always seemed regal. Even with the short, sleek hair, mostly shorter than his own, she looked very elegant. Beautiful. A vision that should be frozen in time.

  Daniel would bet RememberMe had more than a few images of her. Probably an entire wall of them, candid shots taken at a distance, hiding in a crowd, capturing private moments he had no right intruding on.

  He didn’t realize he was rubbing his stubble again until she gestured. “Did you miss a spot shaving, or are you developing a nervous habit?”

  Temptation tried to pull his face into a rueful smile. “I didn’t notice it when I was at home and could do something about it, of course.”

  Rising gracefully, she pulled a plastic zippered bag from her second suitcase, removed the razor inside and laid it on the table. When she sat, she pulled her feet onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. For an instant, she looked so vulnerable. He had to look away, and when that wasn’t enough, he took the razor into the bathroom, wet it, shaved that narrow strip then dried both his face and the razor.

  For a moment, he looked at his reflection in the mirror. His own color wasn’t so good, his hair was drying in an unruly manner and the muscles in his jaw and cheeks and forehead were taut, forming lines where a man his age shouldn’t have them.

  He exhaled heavily, rotated his neck and lifted his shoulders, but none of it made him feel any more relaxed. He grabbed the plastic bag he’d brought lunch in and returned to the room.

  “Feel better?”

  “I wish all my irritants were that easily taken care of.” Another emotion flashed across her face, guilt this time or maybe hurt, and everything inside him got tighter. He fixed his gaze on the items she’d stacked on the table, and then he placed them inside the bag. “Someone will stop by in the next hour or two with a cell phone, and we’ll be in touch about dinner, any shopping you need, whatever. We’ll also need whatever information you have on Kyle and Eric and Zach—full names, birth dates, where they last lived, what kind of work they did—so if you could write that out and have it ready...”

  He had edged halfway to the door when she stood. “Daniel, I’m so sorry—”

  Because she looked so sincere and familiar and dangerous, and because he was remembering too much and feeling too much, he went past the control he’d always exercised right back to verging on hostility. “You’re always sorry, Natasha. You make everyone else sorry, too. You don’t need to apologize for the guy stalking you and setting your car on fire, and I don’t need an apology for you dumping me. Sometimes...” He picked up his jacket then unlocked and opened the door before looking back. “Words just aren’t up to the job.”

  * * *

  Nothing brought out the need to be active like the inability. Natasha spent fifteen rushed minutes on the phone with Stacia, blurting out everything on one of her sister’s breaks. She unpacked her suitcases. Stood near—not at—one window or another and watched the rain. Paced the length and the breadth of the room. Put on the makeup she’d never gotten around to that morning.

  She would have played Candy Crush, but it was on the electronic devices Daniel had taken. She could have lost herself in a book, but all her books were on the same devices. She could have surfed the internet—she’d been known to pass countless hours on Wikipedia, clicking from one link to another—but that access was on the devices. She had nothing to do but read a glossy twenty-four page magazine put out by the Cedar Creek Chamber
of Commerce, and she’d done it. Twice.

  After two hours, she was ready to climb the wall.

  Daniel had said it wouldn’t be wise to go out alone, but he hadn’t said she had to stay locked in her room. After trading her sleep shorts for a much more there pair, she shoved her feet into running shoes, grabbed her purse and went downstairs to the lobby.

  Claire was behind the check-in counter, typing on the computer. “Hey. How are you?”

  “I’m good. A little bored.”

  Claire’s gaze shifted outside. “Yeah, I’m wondering if we should start building an ark. I heard Polecat Creek is within a few inches of spilling out onto the street and Cedar Creek has already covered the beach and some of the picnic tables.”

  Natasha had no idea where either of those streams were but figured they must be significant if Claire found them worth mentioning. “I have to say, floods aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Oklahoma.”

  Claire snickered. “I bet not. Not with a guy like Daniel here.”

  Natasha rested her elbows on the mahogany counter. “You know him?”

  “Just to say hello to. After all, he’s swoony, and I’m...me.”

  Wincing inwardly at the woman’s self-deprecating shrug, Natasha wanted to tell her that Daniel was too genuine to care if she carried a few extra pounds. He never took anyone at surface value. A pretty face might turn his head, but it wouldn’t earn his interest if there wasn’t a lot of substance underneath.

  “Ooh, by the way...” Claire opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small shopping bag and handed it over. “Officer Simpson brought this by a little bit ago. He got a call as he came through the door and asked me to give it to you. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have forgotten it for long. That drawer’s where I keep my candy.”

  Hmm, chocolate sounded good. Natasha hadn’t had anything sweet since arriving here, and that was a long time for the sugar fiend inside her. “Two questions, Claire—do you have anything I could read? And do you have a vending machine?”