Killer Smile

by Marilyn Pappano

  Sam’s smile was for her only. When he turned back to Daniel, he was scowling. “Can’t you get it through your thick skull? This guy wants you dead.”

  Daniel snorted to go along with his gesture. “People want all the time. They don’t always get.” He was living, breathing—and, for a long time, broken and bleeding—proof of that. All he’d wanted was Natasha. All he’d gotten was betrayal.

  And a new job. A new place where he belonged. New friends.

  And maybe another chance with Natasha.

  Aw, jeez, which would be worse? Getting outmaneuvered by a guy who called himself by such a goofy name or falling for and losing Natasha a second time? He’d barely survived the first. He might not survive the second.

  Grinding his teeth until his jaw hurt, he fixed his attention on Sam. “I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got cases. I’m supposed to appear in court next week on the Hilliard case. What do you think? This guy’s going to stroll into the police department and shoot me?”

  “It’s happened before,” Sam said stonily.

  “Yeah, well, people who open fire in police stations tend to get shot themselves. He can’t get himself killed, because to get Natasha, he’s got to get rid of us all and there are two more besides me. In public might be the safest place for me.”

  Sam stared at him a long time. Daniel had no idea if his statement had swayed him, or if Sam was considering the consequences of forcing him into hiding: a lot of resistance, a lot of annoyance, a lot of whining. Hey, Daniel tried to be dignified most of the time, but he wasn’t above juvenile pettiness to get his way.

  After a moment, Ben elbowed Sam. “We don’t let him go out by himself very often. We can watch out for him.”

  Sam sighed heavily. “If you get yourself killed—”

  “Yeah, I know, you’ll kill me.” With one victory down, thanks to Ben, Daniel pursued the next. “Natasha needs to leave town.”

  He didn’t expect her to sit there quietly, and she didn’t disappoint him. “You can’t make me go.”

  “It would be safer.”

  “Only if he leaves with me.”

  “Damn it, Natasha!” An instant after his outburst faded, he realized all three of them were staring at him. She knew he swore on occasion; she’d heard it. Sam and Ben had probably heard it a time or two, but there had been too much teasing from everyone in the department about the times he didn’t swear for them to remember. Okay, so what? Now they knew this was beyond important to him. Figuring out stuff like that was what they did.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose then glanced around the room. The restaurant was three-quarters full, and two more customers were coming in the door. “We should move this conversation someplace else.”

  “Like the holding cell back at the office?” Sam asked drily. He picked up the checks and paid all four at the cash register, then they followed him outside. When he started to cross the street, like sheep, Daniel and Ben fell into step.

  Natasha stopped short. “You’re not putting me in a holding cell.”

  Sam backtracked and took hold of her arm. “The sooner we get you inside, the better I’ll feel. Just come along, Nat.”

  She bared her teeth at him, reminding Daniel of the day they met. Does anyone call you Nat? he’d asked, and she’d growled. Only once.

  She grudgingly let Sam pull her along. Once they reached the opposite sidewalk, he released her, and the four of them quickly covered the short distance to the courthouse. The entire time, Daniel’s head was swiveling left to right, ahead and behind, searching for anyone who fit Ozzie’s description and anyone who didn’t. Even though relief spread through him as they climbed the steps into the department—without him stepping in the puddle—there was frustration, too. There had been no one paying attention to them.

  At least, no one he could see. But there were all those buildings, all those windows. Who knew what was hiding inside and looking out?

  Natasha looked relieved, too, when Sam turned into the conference room they’d occupied the day before. Had she really thought he might lock her in a cell?

  If the decision were Daniel’s, he would go for it. A bed, three meals a day, someone always in the building to keep an eye on her... They had bathrooms, showers, televisions, even computers with games and Wikipedia to pass the time. And she would be safe. What could be better?

  His house offered that and more. Comfort. Privacy. They had always been compatible as roommates. They kept the same hours. They both liked it cold at night. They both woke slowly and easily and usually in a good mood.

  She fit just right against him in bed.

  Before he walked once more into a room with Natasha in it, he needed to go down the hall to the holding cell and beat his head against the iron bars. This situation was making him crazy. She was making him crazy. The thought of her being in danger. The memories that kept dragging themselves from the darkest parts of his mind right back center stage. The awareness. The disquiet.

  The possibilities.

  No possibilities, his self-preservationist side insisted.

  Always possibilities, his argumentative side disagreed. For some reason, it always sounded calm and rational like Jeffrey while the other side sounded like Archer in a snit because he knew he was going to lose.

  As long as there’s breath in your body, Jeffrey would say.

  At least one person didn’t intend for Daniel to die of old age.

  Pushed against the wall in the conference room but seldom used was a couch that had once sat in the lobby. The story was that the chief before Sam had moved it back here because it invited people to sit down and stay a while, and he didn’t want people sitting down and staying a while in his lobby. Sam and his people sat and stayed a long while in this room, but not on the couch. No one ever got too comfortable in this room.

  Except Natasha. She’d kicked her shoes off, tucked her feet onto the cushions beside her and folded her arms across her chest. Without being asked, Sam got the space heater from against the far wall, stretched out its cord and turned it on where it would warm her corner of the world.

  “So, no one ever calls you Nat?” Sam asked. The bared-teeth outside hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “No one who knows me. Not ever. Back in the beginning, I told RememberMe I didn’t like the name, and he ignored me.”

  Didn’t like it because it was too similar to the pesky little insect that sucked a person’s blood. When they’d been out once with Flea Martin and her husband, someone from work had jokingly called them Gnat and Flea, the bug girls. Neither woman had been amused.

  Sam sat in one of the desk chairs, turning it to face her. “You’re not setting yourself up as bait to draw this guy out.”

  Natasha’s gaze flickered around the room, from Sam to Ben, settling in another chair, and finally to Daniel, who was taking the opposite end of the couch. “There’s not one woman in my life who tries to tell me what to do, but you guys...”

  “I’m getting closer to forty every day, I’m the chief of police and my mother still tells me what to do,” Sam remarked.

  “So does mine.” Ben grinned.

  “I don’t have a mother,” Daniel said, “but both of their mothers boss me around. So does Mila’s grandmother.” Another thing on the plus side of his life since his bride-to-be abandoned him.

  Sam leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Look, I know this isn’t fun, and we don’t have any legal authority to make you stay in town or to stick to your hotel room or to only go out when you’ve got an armed escort. But this guy’s got damned impressive computer skills. About the only thing he doesn’t know is that we took your computers and phone. I think you’re pretty safe at the Prairie Sun, because the guests are familiar with each other and Claire knows everyone. But if you leave town and he follows you...it’s not carved in stone that he has to kill the exes before he can kidnap you. He jus
t needs them dead for everything to be perfect between you. If you leave, you’ve got no one to call for help, no one who will even know you’re in trouble. And it won’t make Daniel and the others safer. It’ll just throw Wacko’s timetable off a bit.”

  It was hard asking a person to be rational when every emotion in her body was screaming the opposite. Daniel understood that. Truth was, Natasha had never been the most rational woman, even in the best of times. She was accustomed to being happy and spontaneous and carefree, a grab-your-chances-with-both-hands-and-let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may sort. Live for the moment and think about tomorrow tomorrow.

  But she was also a sensible woman. She didn’t want to face her stalker alone. She didn’t want to just disappear from life, never to be seen again, and she understood that could be exactly what he had planned for her. She didn’t want to break Stacia’s heart, or Daniel’s, or anyone else’s because she’d tried to do the right thing and it hadn’t been right at all.

  And it would break Stacia’s heart, and Daniel’s and everyone else’s, if this bastard killed her.

  Especially Daniel’s.

  “Okay.” The word sounded flat, but there was relief and even a touch of hopefulness in it. She didn’t have to deal with RememberMe alone. They would be with her. They would keep her safe.

  If Daniel had his way, RememberMe would regret he’d ever been born.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon when the chief, accompanied by Daniel and Ben, gave Natasha a ride to the hotel. They’d talked endlessly about dangers and risk and assessments, along with ordering pizza, and she’d listened, swearing to herself she would be the most cooperative person they’d ever seen. They wanted to keep her and Daniel alive. Far be it from her to make it more difficult.

  Besides, she wasn’t the only one with restrictions. Daniel had been instructed not to answer any calls alone, not to interview any witnesses without a fellow officer, not to leave his house in the morning or go back in the evening without someone to ensure he was safely in or out. His restrictions chafed more on him than hers did on her. She was desperate, not brave, while he was the opposite.

  The rain came back in the minutes it took to circle the block to the hotel. Daniel and Ben got out first and ushered her inside, and Ben took her key to go upstairs and check her room. The chief remained parked out front until Ben came back down and returned the key. “I’ll be in town if you need anything.”

  Daniel nodded and gestured toward the stairs.

  Natasha twisted around to watch the other detective walk out to the chief’s SUV. “Your ride’s leaving without you.”

  “My car’s across the street.” Daniel indicated the stairs again, and after a moment, she began climbing them.

  “Are you the one stuck babysitting me?” she asked, trailing her hand along the banister.

  “There was a time when you anticipated afternoons in a hotel room with me.” His tone was level, steady, with just the slightest shade of cynicism. “But that was before the time you couldn’t bear to be in the same room with me. You remember, when you sent Stacia to give back my engagement ring.”

  Her foot in midair, she froze. The air that had been comfortable an instant ago now raised gooseflesh even beneath her heavy sweater, and the homey flowers-wood-vanilla scent took on an acrid flavor. The reason was far different from this morning’s upset, when she’d realized RememberMe’s obsessive love would eventually turn to hate, but the churning in her gut and the tightening in her chest were very similar.

  After a moment, she forced her foot onto the next step. Slid her hand. Lifted her other foot. Climbed another step. She’d been preparing for this conversation since she’d left Los Angeles, but on the stairs, halfway between the public area and the privacy of her room, wasn’t the place to have it.

  Could she ever be prepared to explain decisions she didn’t understand herself?

  Women’s voices came from the second floor—the wine women—filtering out through their open doors. Rob stood in one of the doorways that sat opposite each other, his shoulder against the jamb, his dark hair damp and slicked back as if he’d just come from the shower. He smiled when he saw Natasha and was about to speak when his gaze shifted past her to Daniel. He closed his mouth and turned his attention back to the women inside the room.

  Her key turned easily in the lock, and she swung the door open, walking in without apprehension. At least, no stalker apprehension. After all, Ben had cleared the room a few moments ago.

  But there was apprehension. It tingled along her spine and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It made her stomach hurt, and her head, and her heart.

  She set her purse down and turned on all the lights. Normally, she loved having the curtains and blinds open, but not today, when she couldn’t see anything but rain, and RememberMe was probably out there. Instead, she stopped at the foot of the bed, rested one arm on the rail then immediately pulled it away from the bony birds and their beaks. “Is there something you want to say, Daniel?”

  He closed and locked the door and leaned against it. “I had a lot to say five years ago. I just couldn’t find you to say it. You skipped our party. You didn’t answer your phone. You didn’t go back to your apartment. Stacia quit answering the phone after my first two dozen calls. You just...disappeared, Natasha. I deserved better than that.”

  Clearing her throat didn’t help to steady her voice. Taking a breath didn’t steady her hands, either, or the thudding of her heart in her chest. “I was a bit crazy those first few weeks.”

  “I was a bit crazy those first twelve months.”

  Color warmed her face, and panic fluttered all the way through her. She wanted to talk about it, to explain what she could even if it was pathetically little. If she’d never seen him again, then maybe she could have pushed it to the corner of her mind that kept ravaging guilt and impending breakdowns at bay forever. The more time passed, the easier she could pretend that it didn’t matter anymore. The past was past. Words couldn’t fix actions.

  She used to be better at pretending than she was these days.

  But words still couldn’t fix actions. And in this case, her words were just a disjointed muddle. Sorry, scared, didn’t think, didn’t trust, couldn’t.

  “What do you want to know?”

  His scowl deepened. “There’s only one question, Tash, isn’t there? Everything else is just a variation of it.”

  Why?

  Why did you break up with me? Why did you do it that way? Why didn’t you tell me you had doubts? Why didn’t you talk to me? Why did you send your sister to break my heart? Why didn’t you give me a chance?

  She knew the questions. They’d haunted her for a long time. So had the answers. Non-answers, really.

  She pulled a chair from the table, sat down, crossed her legs and folded her arms over her chest. But that position felt too calm, too open, so she undid those things and instead rested her heels on the seat of the chair and hugged her knees. It made her a smaller target, less vulnerable, and would help hold her together if she needed it.

  “We never talked about why I broke up with Kyle or Eric.”

  Daniel took a hesitant step, then another. Keeping a physical distance from emotional involvement was one of his coping mechanisms. He could resist tears or pleading or sorrow from across the room, she knew, but not so much when he was within touching distance. After what seemed forever, he sat down in the second chair.

  “Truth was, I didn’t much care,” he admitted, his gaze on the enamel teapot sitting at the back of the table, filled with mums in glorious shades of copper, auburn and gold. “If you had married either one of them, you wouldn’t have been available when we met, so I was glad you hadn’t. What went wrong between you and them, I never thought it had anything to do with us. We were different. I was different.” He paused, and his intense gaze reluctantly locked with hers.
“I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

  “No. Yes.” She rested her forehead on her knees, missing the old days when her hair was long enough to fall around and hide her face. Knowing there was no insight to be found in avoiding his look, his question, she raised her head again. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about this. It’s been a major part of my life from the moment I decided to break up with Kyle.”

  “So you dealt with it by breaking up with Eric. And me. And Zach.”

  “I thought... I hoped...” Her deep breath smelled of flowers and herself and that so very special scent of him. It warmed her a little. Scared her a little. Saddened her a lot.

  “You know my parents. Relationships have been a revolving door for them my whole life. Even when they were married to each other, they weren’t conventional. Nick didn’t care so much, but Stacia and me...that’s what we always wanted. A conventional marriage, family, home. They were never going to give us that. They just weren’t capable of it.”

  None of this was new to Daniel. He’d told her a long time ago that it was certainly a change with his gay fathers being the traditional, stable, monogamous role models in his and her relationship. She wished her mother and father showed one-tenth the commitment to each other and their children that Jeffrey and Archer did.

  “So, your mom’s on husband number five, and your dad’s on serious girlfriend number eight, with a couple more wives in there along the way. So...what?”

  Her resolve crumbled a little. His question wasn’t sarcastic; he was sincere in wanting to understand the connection. “I don’t know. I wanted to be married. I wanted the whole bit—marriage, kids, house, pets, fifty years with the same man. I thought Kyle was the man I wanted it all with. When he proposed, I was over the moon with delight. Then the doubts set in. Stacia asking me, ‘Are you sure he’s the one?’ Mom saying, ‘If it doesn’t work out, there are always other chances.’ Little voices reminding me, ‘You are your parents’ child. You don’t know how to commit. You don’t know how to be married to one person. You won’t be any better at it than they are.’”