by Arlene James
“But he didn’t take advantage of me,” Jillian protested.
“No doubt!” Gerry said with a snort. “It was probably the other way around.”
Jillian felt a sense of resolve, like a small, cold chunk of steel in the pit of her stomach that slowly expanded to fill her chest. She sat back on her heels. “As a matter of fact, you’re right,” she said evenly. “He didn’t come to me. I came to him. And he turned me down.” The hitch in her voice caught her unaware, and with it came a tiny crack in the armor of her resolve. Hurt and embarrassment flowed through. She bit her lip, head bowed.
“I knew it!” Gerry was crowing. “She threw herself at him! She admitted it.”
Camille’s voice, when she finally spoke, was as chilly as an Arctic blast. “Is that right, Jilly? Is that what happened? You threw yourself at him?”
Jillian swallowed, a profound sadness beginning to overwhelm all else. “I asked him to make love to me. He refused.”
“And you did the same thing with Janzen!” Gerry accused. “Admit it!”
“No.” Jillian raised her head to look her sister straight in the eye. “I never approached Janzen. Never. He came on to me, and I sent him away—repeatedly. I wanted nothing to do with him, ever. You know that.”
“Do I?” Camille asked, and the very last vestige of hope to which Jillian had clung evaporated. “You must have done something,” Camille went on cattily. “I see that clearly now. He would never have just chosen you over me. It doesn’t make sense, but I wouldn’t believe you could betray me that way.”
“Betray you?” Jillian exclaimed. “Is that what you really think?” But it was, of course. She could see it in Camille’s eyes, the desperate, deliberate belief. “Dear heaven,” Jillian whispered. “You would really rather believe that I stole him from you than that he might actually prefer me to you. Are you that insecure?”
“Don’t be stupid!” Camille snapped.
“How dare you?” Gerry huffed at the same time.
Jillian closed her eyes, knowing that nothing would ever be the same now. She could no longer delude herself, no longer hold on to the vague idea that if only she was good enough, quiet enough, meek enough, helpful enough, plain enough, Camille might actually love her. She had indeed been used, but not by Zach, not even by Janzen, at least not compared with how her own sister had used her. It hit her, almost humorously, that Zach had been right all along. He’d pegged Camille right from the beginning, and her, too. From the very first he’d seen her for exactly what she was, needy, alone, pathetic. She’d have laughed if it hadn’t been so sad, so heartbreaking.
Slowly, she unwound her legs and got up off the couch. “I’ll leave right away,” she said softly.
“Leave?” Camille echoed. “And just where do you think you’ll go?”
“I don’t know,” Jillian said. “It doesn’t matter.”
Gerry scoffed. “Doesn’t matter?”
“Not anymore,” Jillian said dispiritedly. “Not anymore.” She walked around Gerry and Camille, her legs seeming to weigh twice what they should, but she would not waver now. This was, in fact, long overdue. She wasn’t a child who needed someone to protect her anymore; she was an adult, at least as sensible as moist What had happened right here in this very room last night told her that. She had never offered herself to Janzen Eibersen, despite what Camille chose to think, and she never would, no matter how lonely and desperate she might be. The only man to whom she had ever offered herself was the only one decent enough to turn her down, and she found reason to be proud in that. Yes, it was time. And she would be fine on her own. She would be just fine, and if not, she would still be better off away from here—whatever happened.
Jillian groaned and rolled over on the lumpy, dusty couch, trying to find a comfortable position.
“How long do you think you can keep this up?” Denise asked, and Jillian slit her eyelids open just a tad. It was enough to blind her, the sunshine pouring through the windows slicing into her head like splinters of glass. She squeezed her eyes shut again, sighing.
“I’ll find someplace else to go,” she said groggily.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Denise said, wedging her butt onto the edge of the couch next to Jillian. “Let me get a bed in here. We can curtain off one end of the room and—”
“No,” Jillian said, pushing up into a sitting position. She blinked against the glare and lifted her arms, trying to stretch out the kinks in her shoulders and spine. “I’m One here for now. I’ll find a permanent place soon. I just need a roommate to share the expenses.”
Denise studied her for a moment, then shook her head. “I still can’t believe she threw you out.”
“Camille didn’t throw me out,” Jillian insisted for the dozenth time. “I told you. I made the decision myself.”
“And about time, too,” Denise pointed out. “But why now? She’s been jerking you around for years.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jillian muttered. “It’s done, and it’s for the best. I won’t be going back.”
Denise studied her a moment longer, then abruptly nodded. “Right. Okay. Well, at least you’re getting a lot of work done. The piece is looking great, by the way. Even Worly says so.”
Tillian smiled. “Thanks.” She yawned, pushing her hands through her hair. “I have to get going. Don’t want to be late for work.”
Denise got up off the couch and reached for the light blanket that Jillian had kicked off. “How’s that going by the way?”
“Work?” Jillian shrugged. Every day at the deli was pretty much like the last, especially since Zach had made himself scarce. She couldn’t really blame him. No one liked to be lied to, especially when he was trying to help. She sighed, wondering how she could have screwed up any more. Not only had she kept the truth from him, she’d thrown herself at him in every way she could manage, not to mention ruining his stakeout by letting Janzen get a look at her. She was convinced now that was how it had happened. What else could it have been? And then to have Gerry find them together like that, make all those baseless accusations. She winced at the very thought of it. “Work’s fine,” she said belatedly.
Denise just looked at her and began folding the blanket. When she was finished, not one corner was squared with another, and Jillian had to smile. That seemed to reassure Denise somehow. She visibly relaxed and tossed aside the blanket “Want some breakfast?”
Jillian subdued the urge to wrinkle her nose. Cold pizza was Denise’s breakfast of choice. And lunch. And dinner. And... “Sure,” Jillian said enthusiastically, bouncing up. “Why not?” It was then that her gaze fell on the letter lying on the floor just inside the front door, obviously having been slipped through the mail slot. But the mail didn’t come until late in the afternoon, and even at a distance she could see that this particular envelope bore no stamp. A shiver of foreboding seized her, and suddenly she saw a picture of Zach Keller’s face, but it was too late for that. Too late.
Lois tapped on the door, then opened it and stuck her head inside the room. “Got a minute, Boss?”
Zach tamped down his irritation. Lately, everything irritated him. Living irritated him. He put down the tape recorder into which he had been speaking and tossed aside the case file. Leaning back, he waved her into the room. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, a sure sign that someone waited in the outer office. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got a guy out here who wants to see you. Name’s Whirly or some such thing.”
“Never heard of him. What’s it about?”
“The Waltham case.”
Zach mentally recoiled. “There is no Waltham case.” After two weeks of complete calm, Camille had called, four days ago now, to tell him that Janzen Eibersen had taken a job out of state. In her estimation, the whole fiasco was behind her and his services were no longer needed. He had his sources confirm what her sources had told her. Eibersen had indeed taken a job with a radio station in Juneau, Alaska. He didn’t
have to go, of course, and even if he did, he wasn’t due to report there for sixty days, but Camille seemed to think that didn’t matter. Zach hadn’t argued with her. He hadn’t dared. Now this. “Tell him I’m busy.”
The door opened behind Lois and a ghoul slipped inside. “I ain’t going nowhere till you hear me out, dude.” He was tall and skinny, with long, lank hair dyed ink black and a silver nose ring. Folding his tattooed arms over a black leather vest, he struck a belligerent pose.
Zach sighed. “Listen, whoever you are—”
“Name’s Worly,” the man said stubbornly, stepping forward and sticking out his hand.
Worly. Denise’s Worly. Jillian’s Denise. The hairs lifted on the back of Zach’s neck. Rising slightly, he nodded Worly toward a chair and waved Lois out of the room. She backed up to the door and folded her arms much as Worly had done a moment earlier.
“If this is about Jilly,” she said, “I want to hear it.”
Resigned, Zach dropped back into his chair and nodded. “Sit down, Mr.—”
“Just ‘Worly,’ dude. You know, like, just ‘Worly.’”
“Sit down, Worly.”
Worly dropped into the same chair Jillian had chosen, sprawling as though his bones had suddenly turned to liquid.
“What’s on your mind?”
Worly crossed one leg over the other and picked at the toe of his rope sandal. “It started nearly a week ago. First it was a letter. She didn’t let us read it, but—”
“She?”
“Jilly, man. She got this letter from Eibersen, and I could tell it scared her, you know, because he knows now where she is.”
Zach sat up straight at that. “You’re telling me she’s left her sister’s?”
“Weeks ago.”
He almost came out of his chair. “Where is she?”
“She’s been crashing on my couch, camping out, you know, and, dude, it can’t be too comfortable. We picked that thing up off the side of the road, just off Jefferson, you know, over on the other side of—”
Zach leaned forward, arms spread across the top of his desk. “What about this letter?”
“Not just one, dude,” Worly said. “Every day there’s like four or five, and they don’t come through the mail, you know, like normal stuff. We find ’em all over, in the cars, taped to the door, inside these weird packages.”
“Packages?”
“Weird stuff. Knives and nails, broken bits of glass, cans of spray paint. He writes these stupid poems and says crap like, ‘Why don’t you just cut my heart out?’ and ‘What’s it gonna take to make you love me?’ I don’t like the sound of any of it, man. I think he’s building up to something.”
Zach reined in a growing sense of alarm. “I’m told he’s taken a job in Alaska.”
“Yeah, he keeps writing about that, saying how they can start a new life together there, and he says he ain’t going without her. I don’t think she’s safe. I mean, dude, I came home late last night from a gig, you know, and like, the front door’s standing open, and there’s this box sitting right at the foot of the couch where she’s sleeping, and it’s, like, actually ticking, you know. I thought it was a bomb, swear to God! It was this ugly clock, all battered and beat-up, and this note says, ‘Time’s running out.’ I don’t like it, man. I just don’t like it. She’s not safe. We gotta do something.”
Zach nodded and rubbed his hands over his thighs. His blood had run cold when Worly had mentioned the door standing open. Eibersen clearly had gone inside the apartment to leave his little package, but would he be content with that next time? He wouldn’t be the first man to think of rape as a kind of seduction. “You have to get her out of there,” he said. “Eibersen’s already demonstrated that he can get to her.”
“Don’t I know it, man, but where’s she gonna go? Back to her sister’s? I don’t think so. She’s trying to scrape up the money to get a place of her own, you know, even got that old jalopy of hers for sale, but, dude, it ain’t worth the price of the rubber on it now, and at that, those tires are bald. B-A-L-D, man. Slick.”
Zach got the point only too well. Jillian needed someplace safe to go until Eibersen either left town or could be properly discouraged, but her options were limited, and at the moment he was blank himself. “I’ll think of something. I don’t know what, yet, but something.”
“She could have stayed with me,” Lois said, speaking up for the first time. She’d been so quiet Zach had forgotten she was there.
He nodded with relief. “That might work.”
“I said, ‘could have.’” she pointed out. “My daughter and her kids moved in with me after her divorce last month, if you remember.”
“Oh. Right.” Crestfallen, he pushed his hand through his hair. “I don’t suppose even temporarily...”
“I wish. We’re four people in a two-bedroom apartment now. My grandson’s sleeping on the couch as it is. In a few more months, maybe, when my daughter’s back on her feet...”
“No way,” Worly said, shaking his snaky hair. “This dude’s not waiting months to make his big move. I can feel it, man.”
“You’re right,” Zach agreed. “She needs a safe place now.”
“Your apartment building is like a fortress,” Lois noted.
Not that he hadn’t already thought it himself. “That’s true,” he said. “But my deed has more restrictions than an arms control pact.”
“There are ways around restrictions,” Lois said slyly. “You could tell them she’s your sister.”
“Which would buy us all of a week.” he said dismissively. “Hell, if she was my wife, I couldn’t get her in longer than that without submitting in writing a request to have my lease altered.”
“Well, hey, dude, that’s the perfect solution, then, isn’t it?” Worly said, sitting up straight. “I mean, you could just, like, tell them she’s your wife, right?”
Zach’s heart thumped once and stopped. “I—it’s not quite that simple. I’d have to, um, submit papers.”
“Like a marriage license,” Lois said, coming closer to the desk. “They aren’t hard to get, you know. You just have to apply.”
How had he known she was going to say that? Why had be thought it himself? He gulped. “I—I’m not sure that’s smart. What I mean is, I couldn’t... That is...”
“For goodness’ sake, Boss, haven’t you ever heard of a marriage of convenience? You know what an annulment is? A divorce, even.”
Zach sliced a hand through the air. “I’m not hearing this!” He got up from his chair and turned toward the window, hands at his hips. “Just let me think, will you?”
“Hey,” Worly said, “whatever. Just do it fast, man. I’ve got another gig tonight, and I don’t like the notion of her being at the loft alone.”
Zach stared out the window a long moment. His apartment would be the safest possible place for Jillian, but could he bear to have her that close, even for just a week? Maybe he had no choice. Maybe somehow he never had. He shook his head and turned.
“Lois, I want you to get in touch with that psychiatrist we consulted with on the Michaelson case. Shorter, I think his name is. I want info on obsessive fixations. Then call Gabler and tell him to get back on Eibersen. I want him watched every minute. I’ll go downstairs and talk to Jillian in a little while.” He looked at Worly, an unlikely hero at best, and actually felt himself smile. “Whatever else happens, I can promise you that she won’t be alone at your apartment anymore, if I have to stand guard myself.”
Worly unfolded himself from the chair, swept back his freaky hair and wobbled his head in a nod. “Cool,” he said and stuck out his hand. “My old lady said you was the man.”
Zach came forward to give that hand a hearty shake. “I don’t know about that, but thanks for coming in. You did the right thing.”
“No sweat, man. Gotta protect our Jilly girl. I mean, who else has she got, right?”
Who else, indeed? He couldn’t tell this character how desperately he wish
ed that she did have someone else, anyone else, but him.
Chapter Seven
Zach hung up the phone and frowned down at the notes he’d taken. Dr. Shorter had generously given his lunch hour to listen to Zach’s tale of Janzen Eibersen and answer his questions. Zach only wished the information was more encouraging. Part of him wanted to let Jillian go, to believe, even, that she deserved these difficulties for having lied to him, but in his heart of hearts he knew that she’d only been trying to protect her sister’s vaunted ego. He doubted that she’d even understood that she was in as much—or more—danger as Camille. Heck, she probably still didn’t understand how precarious her situation was. The question now was, what to do about it? He knew what the next step had to be, and he’d put it off as long as he could, but no more. It was time to talk to Jillian.
He pushed back his chair, got up and reached for his jacket, but before he could get both arms in the sleeves, his cell phone rang. He paused long enough to unclip it from his waist, extend the antenna and turn it on. “Yeah?”
It was Gabler, the operative he’d sent to find Janzen Eibersen. “He’s in the building!”
“What?”
“He’s in your building! He’s coming after you, man!”
“Me?”
“Who else?”
Zach knew who else. He flew out of the office, his jacket trailing by one arm, and tore past Lois’s desk. “What’s wrong?”
“Stay here!” he shouted, running for the elevator, the phone gripped in his hand. He punched the button and waited frantically for the car to come and the doors to open, fighting the impulse to take the stairs, which would, ultimately, be slower. “Gabler?” he shouted into the phone, hoping Gabe could get to Jillian more quickly than he could, but the other man had broken the connection. Zach punched off the phone as he stepped into the elevator, which was blessedly empty. Someone on a lower floor signaled, however, and the car slowed again immediately after taking off. Zach hit the wall with his fist in a panic of impatience as the car came to a stop and the doors slid open. Ruthlessly, Zach punched the door closed again, leaving a middle-aged man in a starched white shirt and suspenders gaping in confusion. The elevator car dropped straight to the lobby this time. Zach managed to clip his phone to his belt once more and get his jacket on properly before the elevator touched down. Squeezing through the doors while they were still opening, he sprinted across the marble floor toward the deli.