Lover in the Shadows

by Lindsay Longford

  Molly retreated. She couldn’t help her backward step. Not for the life of her could she have stayed unmoving in the face of his inexorable advance.

  “Shoes?” he reminded her gently, his hands resting easily on his narrow hips, not touching her. Yet she felt the press of his broad palm hot at the base of her spine.

  She bolted for the kitchen.

  As fast as she moved, he followed right on her heels through the living room into the kitchen.

  She’d left the knife in the middle of the floor. She saw it as soon as she stepped into the room. How could she have forgotten it? She jerked to a stop. Then, moving in slow motion, her brain disconnected from her body, she reached down, picked the knife up by the wooden handle and turned to face John Harlan, the knife extended toward him.

  Arms folded across his chest, he rested against the arch of the door between the kitchen and the living-room hall. Satisfaction moved across his austere face like a faint cloud as he remarked, “A mite large for peeling vegetables, I’d think.”

  “Yes,” Molly answered, her words mechanical as she felt the knife tremble in her outstretched grasp.

  He smiled, the edges of his thin, beautifully shaped lips curling up. His smile didn’t begin to reach to the depths of his golden brown, watchful eyes. “Interesting decorating idea. You often store your kitchen utensils on the floor?”

  “I dropped it. When I heard the doorbell.” Stiff-legged, holding the knife out from her as far as she could, Molly walked to the sink and let the damned thing fall into it. Sagging over the basin, she drew shallow breaths as she stared at the dried water spots on the stainless steel. Numb, she wanted to pray, but found no words as the walls closed in on her.

  No way out.

  Crackle and static as the detective spoke into his handset. “Yeah, Ross. In the sink. Yeah, when you finish down there. No hurry.” And then again he was close behind her, the heat from his body radiating against hers. “Your knife, Ms. Harris?” On the surface nothing more than mild interest, but underneath, oh, underneath where it counted, she heard the quiet threat in his deep voice. Lifting the knife from the sink by its sharp point, he repeated, “Yours?”

  She nodded. Of course it was. She’d already admitted as much. Everything in the house was hers. Had been hers since her parents had been killed a year ago. Home invasion. Burglary gone out of control, the police had decided.

  Murdered. Their blood on the floor, the walls.

  The police had never caught the killer. Or killers.

  Molly tugged once more at the neck of her sweatshirt. Air. She needed air. Running to the door to the porch gallery, she flung it open and stood shivering in the morning air, gasping.

  The rain had become a silvery drizzle in the gray light, the soundless shapes down at the bayou emerging from the mist and disappearing back into it. The murky coil of water drifted by them.

  Even chilled, she found the wet air hard to breathe, and she couldn’t stand the rasping sounds she made. Weakness to let Detective John Harlan see her fear.

  When he closed his palm over her shoulder, she jumped.

  “Might be a virus after all,” he murmured as her breath rattled in her throat. He raised his eyebrow, an elegant arch of black against his night-pale skin.

  His grasp of her shoulder seemed heavy, but she knew the force was all in her own mind, not in the actual weight of his fingers curving over her. “Maybe you’re right,” she whispered, the air cool and damp against her face. Her pulse pitter-patted at the base of her throat. “Maybe I am coming down with a cold.”

  “Or something. But we’ll see, won’t we?”

  She nodded.

  He slanted his head toward the bayou. “In the meantime, to help you stay healthy, shoes?” His words once again seemed to carry another message, but Molly couldn’t decipher it or his slow, appraising glance, which began at her feet, moved leisurely over her and ended at her fingers clenched in the neckline of her shirt.

  “All right.” Molly looked at the sinuous bayou. Down there. Someone had been murdered during the night.

  “I think you might even know the victim.” He turned her back into the kitchen with almost no effort.

  “What?” Her knees gave way and she lurched against him before she regained her balance. She couldn’t have resisted the strength in those thin fingers if she’d had to. She felt the implied power and yielded. “All right. I don’t think I’ll be able to help you, though. I’m sure I don’t know her,” she said through stiff lips.

  “Won’t know if we don’t go look, will we?” He scratched the center of his broad back against the wall and watched as she pulled on her sneakers and tied them. “Ready?” And there he was, his hand clamped around her elbow. Despite his impression of lazy strength, he moved too fast for her.

  Pulling free, she stopped. “Why do I have to identify whoever that is?” Wildly she pointed to the bayou but didn’t, couldn’t, look again in the direction of the sullen water drifting past her property. “Was?”

  “You don’t have to.” His hand returned firmly to her elbow. “It will probably be unpleasant.” He walked her to the gallery. “I’m sure you want to cooperate with us, don’t you, Ms. Harris?” Silky smooth with warning, his voice vibrated through her. “There’s no reason not to help us unless you have something to hide. You don’t, do you, Ms. Harris? Have anything to hide?”

  He’d moved her to the stairs leading from the gallery to the lawn and onto the grass before she could speak. Raindrops splatted her face as she looked at his fingers gripping her arm.

  “Of course not.” Glancing at him, she said, “And I don’t need your help walking across my own yard. You can turn me loose.” She shot him a glance filled with all the frustrated anger and fear and hostility boiling in her. “Unless you’re arresting me?” Saying the words out loud diminished her fear and gave her strength. She shrugged herself out of his grasp, surprised by the ease with which she freed herself.

  “Arresting you? Now why would you think I’d arrest you, Ms. Harris?” The amusement glinting in his golden brown eyes disabused her of the notion that she’d had anything to do with the fact that she was now walking unaided down the sloping, rough terrain leading to the bayou.

  Detective Harlan was playing games with her. Watching her reactions, he was enjoying toying with her.

  But then he had nothing to lose.

  She did.

  Her freedom.

  Her sanity.

  “As I said, why would you think I’m arresting you?” His voice intruded on her chaotic thoughts.

  Letting her antagonism snake between them, Molly slipped her cold hands into her jeans pockets. “Doesn’t it make sense that I would think you were trying to see if I had stabbed that woman, whoever she is?”

  “Ah, well, Ms. Harris, I don’t remember saying she’d been stabbed.” Though his heavy eyebrows drew together in puzzlement, his voice mocked her.

  “You told the other detectives to pick up my knife for evidence. I assumed—”

  “Assumptions are dangerous, Ms. Harris. Especially where murder’s concerned. I’m a cop. I don’t assume anything. I just, well, I just look at what I find. Evidence. You know.” He was so close to her that his thigh brushed against hers, a solid flex of muscle.

  Avoiding him, Molly stepped sideways. She couldn’t look at the black plastic bag on the ground at the water’s edge. She’d seen the body bag in that quick glance through her living-room window and hadn’t been able to look at it since then. She lengthened her stride, trying to put distance between herself and Detective Harlan. With his air of casual menace, he made her uneasy, made her skin itchy. “I knew because you told the other detectives to collect the knife,” she insisted dully.

  “Of course I did. Such an interesting place to find a knife, wouldn’t you agree?” His long legs kept effortless pace with her shorter, hurried strides. His warm hand on the inside of her arm stopped her before she could break into a run. “Are you a murderer, Ms. Harris?�
� he asked politely, his low voice skimming over her skin, frightening in its indifference.

  Molly saw the dead woman’s face framed by the partially zippered plastic bag. She swayed, his hands slid to her waist, and with John Harlan’s imprisoning arms around her, Molly felt the world go cold and dark.

  She came to sitting on the wet grass, Harlan’s hand pressing her head between her knees. Nothing had changed.

  Everything had changed.

  “Ah, you did know her then?” His fingers were firm around the column of her neck.

  “Yes.” Letting her head rest on her knee, Molly wiped the tears, the rain, whatever, away from her face. “She was my friend. My maid. Had been my maid for two years. I fired her three months ago.” She pressed her face against the frayed denim at her knees, drying the hot tears burning her eyes, her mouth, her soul.

  “I see.” He hunkered at her side, the fabric of his slacks tight against his muscular thighs.

  “No! You don’t!” With Camina lying on the ground in front of her, her frizzy blond hair splashed against the black plastic, Molly was suddenly filled with explosive rage. Using John Harlan’s arm, she pulled herself upright, and he rose with her in a graceful unwinding of muscle. “Someone killed my friend!”

  “Simple cops that we are, we were able to figure that much out, Ms. Harris. I know our reputation is occasionally less than what we’d like, but, trust me, we had no trouble identifying this as murder.” His laugh was rough-edged. He stepped close to her, but he didn’t let his wide shoulders block her view of Camina.

  He was standing knee-to-knee with her, his palms flat and hot at her waist. Such heat in his broad hands. Rain glittered in his hair, spotted his black jacket, the gleam of his black shirt. She could smell the heat of him rising to her in the rain, clean, fresh. This close to him, she realized for the first time that he wasn’t as tall as she’d thought. He’d seemed enormous, terrifying, as he’d stood on her front porch. In fact, he was under six feet.

  Only a man.

  Then Molly looked into his face and realized that John Harlan was every bit as terrifying as she’d believed.

  Nothing merciful in his golden brown eyes, no amusement in the mouth curling in a smile, nothing but steel in the grip of his hands. Implacable.

  And he was hunting her.

  Acknowledging the understanding between them, he tipped his head. “There’s something else I want you to take a look at.” Marching her in front of him like a captive, he kept his hands tight around her waist. The toe of his shoe bumped the bag. He nodded to one of the technicians, who unzipped the plastic farther down.

  “I can’t. I can’t.” Sobs bent Molly in two. She saw the dark, rain-wet blood on Camina’s blouse. That was enough. Covering her mouth, she pleaded, “No more, please. I want to go home.”

  “In a minute.” Harlan was impatient as he stepped around Camina, leading Molly to the dock. “She was found there.” He indicated the body on the ground and then pointed to a trail of blood leading from it to the pier. “But she was killed here. On the dock. Why was your maid—your friend, I think you said—waiting on your boat dock last night, Ms. Harris? Who was she waiting for?”

  There were muddy footprints at the edge of the dock. A smudged pattern danced from one end of the dock to the other, the outline of Camina’s footprints washing away with the drizzle.

  And then, of course, the blood. Couldn’t forget that. There was always the blood.

  “Why was your maid on this dock last night, Ms. Harris?” Harlan’s voice was relentless. “Tell me. I know you’re hiding something, Ms. Harris. I just haven’t figured out what. But I will, you know. Sooner or later, I’ll find out. I always do.” Like water plinking into a sink, driving a person crazy, his words fell around her. “You know you want to get out from under the burden of what you’re keeping to yourself, whatever you’re hiding behind that cool little mask.” He touched her face. “Think what a relief it will be to tell me everything, Ms. Harris, to get rid of all those secrets you’re guarding so earnestly.” He paused and lifted her hand, traced the wound.

  “I don’t have anything to say. I’m not hiding anything.” Molly looked him straight in the face.

  “No secrets? Ah.” He paused. “Well, we all have them, you know. Believe me—” he curled her fingers over the gash in her palm “—there’s nothing you can say that I haven’t heard before, Ms. Harris. There’s nothing you can’t say to me.”

  His voice caressed her, seducing her with its false gentleness, until Molly wanted to tell him everything. But she couldn’t. She anchored herself with that knowledge even as his words continued to curl around her.

  “Tell me, Ms. Harris. It won’t be hard. And you’ll be glad when you don’t have to hide anymore. You won’t have to lie. Won’t have to worry about what you’ve said or not said. Everything finally out in the open. Secrets will destroy you, you know. Why don’t you tell me? Everything. And then you can sleep.” And, though he wasn’t touching her, his hand seemed to brush over her cold face, warming it. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you? And you’re tired.”

  Even though she’d insisted that she’d slept all through the night, he’d known somehow she hadn’t.

  Tender, filled with understanding, the flow of his voice surrounded her. “I know you’re hiding something, Ms. Harris. And I want to help you.” He brushed her hair away from her face. The wet ends clung to her cheek, and he lifted them free. “Let me help you. You need to tell me. And you will—like I said, sooner or later. So why not now?”

  Weaving a seductive pattern around her, into her weary, frightened mind, John Harlan’s hypnotic voice went on and on, and she fought it, fought with every ounce of energy left in her.

  But oh, yes, she wanted to tell him. She was so tired of being alone. And she wanted to sleep with no shadows hovering at the edge of her mind. To sleep…

  The thought stirred in her sludge-thick mind and wouldn’t go away.

  His was the voice of her demon lover, cajoling her, and she wanted to surrender to the velvety ease he promised. She could sleep if she were in jail, if she were safe behind metal bars hard as the steel she sensed in John Harlan. To yield to sleep, to let his cape wrap around her and to forget, if only for one night…. To sleep.

  “I…” She shook her head. Raindrops scattered onto him from her swinging hair.

  “Yes?” he encouraged. “Go ahead.” He led her closer to the disappearing trail of Camina’s footprints. “What happened, Ms. Harris? Did she come here last night to ask for her job back? Is that how it started?” He waited, his warmth in front of her, the rain cold on her back. “Did she come to tell you that you shouldn’t have fired her? Did you argue? And strike out? Not meaning to, I know,” he said reassuringly, betrayal lurking in the darkness of his voice.

  For a long time Molly stood, head down, watching the bloodstains grow dimmer in the increasing rain while John Harlan’s voice drummed against her.

  “What happened?” Endless patience now in the way he never moved, endless understanding in his low voice.

  And none of it real.

  “Did you come out here, Ms. Harris? Did you see Camina Milar standing here in the rain last night?” He pointed to the dock. “You could have seen her from upstairs in your house. From your living room. From any room with a view of the bayou.” He shrugged. “She was outside here…for a long time.” He pointed to a pile of lipstick-marked cigarette butts. “Think about her, all alone out here in the rain, waiting, hour after hour. What happened, Ms. Harris?”

  She would tell him everything. She opened her mouth.

  Something flickered in the grass at the edge of her vision, a motion of the tall grass as though a creature stole through it. Distracted, Molly was released from the spell of Harlan’s voice, and she lifted her head and looked at him.

  “Nothing!” Moving very carefully—she had no wish to stir the power hiding inside him—she pulled his hands away from her waist and turned toward her house. Over
her shoulder she threw back at him, “Aren’t you supposed to Mirandize me or something if I’m a suspect? Read me my rights?”

  She was freezing—shock setting in. Too much had happened. She had to go inside. She would be safe there. Later, she would think about the vision he’d created of Camina standing outside, cupping her hands around her lit cigarette and smoking steadily while the rain fell around her in the dark.

  And then she had died.

  Stabbed.

  That was how it had been.

  Must have been.

  Screams building inside her, Molly ran to the house, across the gallery and into her kitchen. Huddling in the corner, she sank once more to the floor and jammed her fist into her mouth to stop the screams.

  If she started, she might not stop.

  Ever again.

  Harlan watched the slim, fragile figure of Molly Harris vanish into rain as silvery gray as her wide, innocent eyes. He’d seen eyes that innocent before, eyes that stared at him with all the innocence anyone could ever ask for. But those innocent eyes had been lying, lying all the way to the electric chair. Years ago that had been, but he’d never forgotten his brother’s innocent eyes pleading with him, his brother lying with his last breath.

  And why should he forget? After all, his brother had been arrested with a gun in his hand, his bloodstained shirt casually tossed into the back seat of his convertible. A lovers’ quarrel. People lied all the time and looked back at you with shiny-eyed innocence.

  Molly’s eyes had been circled with exhaustion. He’d known she was lying about having slept through the night. She hadn’t slept well for a long time, and the strain showed in the fine lines around her eyes, in the faint tremble of her soft mouth, in the constant quivers he’d felt every time he touched her. Nothing sexual in those shivers. Something else.