“Please.” He looked flustered. “I’m only taking the spread off because I paid so much for it—not because I’m trying to—”
“I know,” Audrey said quickly. “And I don’t blame you, it’s gorgeous. In fact, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon we move the blankets, too, and sit on the sheets. They’re more comfortable.”
He looked at her for an instant. “No problem.”
After he was done, she sat on the edge of the high bed and swung her legs up, grateful her skirt was full enough to let her sit cross-legged, a nice innocent position that wouldn’t make him so nervous. “So, Rick, do you have any deep dark secrets you haven’t told me?” she asked lightly as she hit the remote and started the movie.
He handed her an apple. “Yes.”
She studied him a long moment. “Well, you can tell me when and if you want to. I’ll take you at face value.”
It was his turn to stare at her. “What if you got involved with me and then found out I’m a raving maniac?”
“I’m a big girl, Piper. I’ll take my chances. Besides, there’s nothing more boring than a really normal person,” she added. “Pour the champagne,” she ordered as the movie’s theme swelled.
They nibbled apples and sipped champagne. About the time Wells got his first kiss, Audrey stretched her legs out in front of her and used a couple pillows to prop herself up against the high headboard. Rick did the same, letting himself move closer to her in the process.
“Is there any champagne left?” she asked a while later.
“Mmm.” He poured the last two glassfuls. “To us,” he said as they clinked glasses. “You really don’t care if I’m a raving maniac?”
“Not in the least.” She moved closer to the center of the bed. He. did, too, until their legs barely touched. It excited her beyond reason. “You look a little loopy, Rick,” she said.
“I’m easy,” he said, draining the glass.
“You’re anything but easy.” She felt tipsy herself.
Quizzically, he looked at her. He took her glass and set it on the nightstand, then took her hand. “This is a great movie.” On the screen, Mary Steenburgen had Malcolm McDowall in a clinch.
“It is,” she agreed. “So, Rick, do you think women should be that aggressive?”
“The right woman . . .” He got off the bed. “Excuse me a moment.” He went into the bathroom, shut the door. She heard water running, then he was back. She smiled when he went to the bedroom door and turned the lock.
He saw her smile and, blushing mumbled something about not wanting Cody to get the wrong idea. She agreed gently.
She waited for him to climb back on the bed, then pointed at Steenburgen on the screen. “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t be that aggressive. You know, to just grab a guy and not let go.”
He didn’t answer except for a coy smile. He took her hand again.
“Rick?”
“Hmmm?”
“You know what I am good at, though?”
“What?”
“I’m really good at wrapping up presents.”
He turned slightly to face her better. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” she said, trying to stay calm and cool, “I have another present for you.”
“Audrey, you shouldn’t give me all these presents.”
“I wouldn’t if I didn’t want to. But this one’s special. It’s a present for me, too. And I really want to give this to you. Really.”
“What is it?” He grinned broadly.
“You’ll have to find it and unwrap it to see.”
Rolling his eyes, he said, “Here we go again. Well, where is it? Are you going to give me a clue?”
“Well, okay. There are a hundred and twenty-two closures on this gift. You have to undo all of them. It’s big, weighs better than a hundred pounds.”
“Good Lord, Audrey, where is it, in your car? You shouldn’t be spending money on me—”
“Hush. Here’s another clue.” She pulled a single bobby pin from her hair. “Now there are a hundred and twenty-one closures left.”
Understanding crossed his features so suddenly and completely that, in the heartbeat that he stared at her, mouth slightly open, she thought: I’ve blown it.
“I just love surprises,” he said as he sat up and stared down at her. He touched her hair, her cheek, bent over her and gently kissed her lips. “And I never get tired of unwrapping things.” His hand stole up to her hair and removed another pin. “A hundred and twenty. This is going to take a while,” he told her. “All night, probably.”
“That was the plan,” she whispered.
“One hundred nineteen.”
36
In the dream, he was making love to Audrey. He lay over her, his head between her breasts. Her skin, milky white but for a light sprinkling of freckles on her arms and legs and across the tops of her breasts where the sun had kissed her, smelled deliciously of female musk.
“Rick,” Audrey moaned as he kissed one breast. “Rick,” she cried again as he trailed his lips across to the other.
She called his name over and over again as he slowly traced his tongue down the slope of her breast. He moved his mouth down her body, losing himself in her salty-warm taste, in the silky smoothness of her skin, in the rich scent that he’d been addicted to since the first time he’d caught it. He swirled his tongue down and down, past her navel, into the patch of soft reddish hair, pausing to listen as she called his name again, wanting to drive her as mad as she drove him. Her body arched against him, her fingernails digging into his flesh. “Rick, now! Rick!”
“Rick!” Her voice in his ear, urgent, needing him, bruising his biceps with her fingers.
He groaned, reaching for her, wanting her.
“Rick! Wake up!”
“Audrey?” His voice cracked, not wanting to work. He was not below her, but facing her, on his side. She was pressed up against him, her mouth near his ear. His erection was pressed against her thigh. Oh God, was I humping her like one of Jade’s poodles? Instantly he went soft.
She didn’t seem to notice. “Rick! Wake up, please!”
His brain kicked in, discerned the urgency in her voice. “What?”
“Someone’s in here. I heard noises.”
“I locked the door,” he murmured, not wanting to get up.
“I didn’t imagine it.”
That got his attention. “Of course not. I’m sorry—I was sleeping like the dead.”
“I’ll say,” she whispered. “You’re sure you locked the door?”
“Positive.” He rubbed his eyes. That helped a little. “What did you hear?”
“I thought I heard something moving around. It sounded like it was in the dressing room.”
Suddenly goose bumps rose on his arms and neck. “I’ll check it out,” he said, hoping his voice sounded firm and strong. He sat up and swung out of bed and, not bothering with a robe, crossed to the light switch by the door and flipped it on. He tried the knob.
“Still locked,” he said to Audrey, who sat up watching him. Her smile and the locked door made his nervousness go away. “And I’ve got the only keys.”
“Maybe I was dreaming,” she said without conviction.
“Maybe. I know I was.” He smiled, looking at her breasts, thinking about what he was doing in the dream.
She grinned broadly. “You’re a friendly fellow.”
Looking down, he blushed.
“And you have a gorgeous ass,” Audrey snickered. “No wonder Duane wanted you.”
He just stood there, dumb and excited.
“And it looks like you’re up for seconds,” Audrey observed coyly.
Nodding, he took one step toward the bed, then stopped cold.
“Did you hear it?” Audrey’s expression had transformed from desire into worry.
He nodded. “I think there are still some rats living in the passages.” He stepped toward the dressing room.
“That’s probably what I he
ard,” she told him. “A rat. I saw the bait in the cabinet.”
“With the tapes?” He glanced back at her.
“No, the empty one. I forgot to tell you. The wire was on the floor when I came up before. I replaced it.”
“It was off?” Adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said quickly. “The doors weren’t open or anything. I assumed Quint had played with it and pulled it off.”
Snagging up his flashlight, he turned on the dressing room light, crossed to the bathroom, and flicked that light on as well. A little surge of superstitious fear made him check the shower stall, but it was devoid of poodles or other vermin.
Audrey padded into the dressing room as he reentered from the bathroom. “Find anything?”
“Well, the bathroom’s safe.”
“Good. I have to pee.” She held out her finger. “And I brought my traveling toothbrush. Can I use your toothpaste?”
“Be my guest.” It was hard to stay nervous when you were looking at a naked woman. As she passed him, he reached out and let his hand stroke the curve of her buttocks.
“I think yours is cuter,” she called in a deadpan voice as she shut the bathroom door.
Okay. Let’s get it over with, Piper. He squatted and began undoing the wire just as Audrey came out of the bathroom. She knelt beside him.
“Why are your tapes in here when you have that entertainment center in there?” she whispered.
“When the movers brought the furniture in, they left my dresser facing the wall, so I stuffed my clothes in the entertainment center.”
“At least you turned the dresser around.”
He smiled thinly. Carmen had waited a week, then done it herself. “I just want to take a quick peek in here.” Swallowing hard, he opened the cabinet, very aware of Audrey’s chin behind his shoulder.
“There’s a secret passage in there?” she asked.
“Yeah. They’re built so that they stay closed.” He shined the light inside, saw nothing unusual.
“Where’s the door?”
“You have to hold the latch to open it.”
“So let’s see.”
What the hell. He pushed the lever, and the door slid open, revealing velvet blackness.
“Rick, I swear that’s one of the sounds I heard earlier.”
“The door opening?” Shocked, he looked at her.
She nodded. “But it’s such a soft sound, I doubt that you could hear it from the bedroom.”
She nodded. “It was very quiet in there. I really think that’s what I heard.”
“But . . .” He hesitated.
She crawled forward. “Can I see?” She took the light from his hand. He backed up and waited nervously as she slipped her head and torso into the cabinet.
Rick leaned back, enjoying the view until he realized that she was going to find the knife. He’d left it there in the first place because it seemed dirty and horrible and he didn’t want to touch it. God, he wished he’d thrown it out. He waited for her to say something about it.
Instead, she eased her way out of the cabinet and handed him the light. “I don’t think I’d want to go crawling around in there. Yuck.” She stood up. “Do you think Cody came in and explored while we were out?”
“I locked the door.”
“That’s right. Could he have come through the tunnel?”
“I blocked the passage in his room, and he doesn’t know about any others,” he replied as he took the light and quickly examined the interior of the passage.
The knife was gone.
Trembling, he pulled out of the cabinet. “Excuse me,” he said, rummaging in a packing box on the dressing room floor. He pulled out an old tie, looped it through the handles several times, then knotted it three times.
“That’ll do the trick,” Audrey said.
He nodded. “I’ll be right back,” he said, pulling on his robe. “I’m just going to go down the hall and check on Cody.” He tried to sound casual, but inside, he was shaken.
Cody was fast asleep, without a trace of grime on his face. Maybe Carmen’s right about the ghost, he thought, returning to Audrey.
Wearing his shirt, she waited for him in the doorway.
“That looks better on you than me,” he told her. They went back inside, and he noticed that she locked the door behind them.
“How’s Cody?” she asked, removing the shirt, then climbing back onto the bed.
“Fast asleep. Angelic.” He threw the robe across a chair and joined her. “Maybe I undid it without thinking. Sometimes I don’t think my brain works quite right.”
She took his hand and traced a circle on his palm. “You want to talk about it?”
He nodded. “I was putting off what we did tonight until I did tell you about it, but you said you didn’t care if I was a raving maniac, you still wanted my body . . .”
She looked him in the eye. “I wasn’t kidding, Piper.”
He hesitated. “I lied about something.”
“Your cousin in Scotland?” she asked wryly.
He stared at her in amazement. “Did Dakota tell?”
“Dakota hasn’t told me anything. You told me about the greenjacks, you acted antsy outside, and you started talking about your cousin in Scotland, wondering if he was crazy because he claimed to see them. You wanted information.” She kissed his lips quickly. “Even if I hadn’t caught on then, I would have later, when you refused to talk about it again.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t look at her. “If you already knew, then I guess you really meant it about making love to a madman.”
“Christ, you’re hard on yourself.” She shook her head. “Listen, Rick, I did a lot of research, and it’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that you really are seeing something.”
Hopefully he looked up. “Really?”
“Really.” She smiled at him. “I’ve delivered lectures before, but never naked.”
He chuckled in spite of himself. Audrey certainly had a knack for saying the right thing to relax him. “Believe me, I’ll hear every word and never take my eyes off you.”
“Better not.” She cleared her throat. “There are several possibilities, Rick. You might have an extra set of cones that give you an ability to see colors that other people can’t.”
“But the jacks are green.”
“Because your brain has to put it in a context you can understand. I don’t really think that’s what’s going on, though. Are they only visible at night?”
“Yes. My cat saw them, too.”
“Really?”
Quickly he explained. “Does that knock out your theories?”
“No. It makes sense. Let me tell you another one.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, there’s synchronous retinal firing, but I’ve been looking at your eyes all evening and I think that’s out.”
“Huh?”
“Jiggling of the eyes—it occasionally happens, and I thought it could possibly put your perception in synch with the greenjacks’ frequency. But you don’t jiggle.”
“Thank God. So, Doc, what do you think it is?”
“I think it’s one of a couple things, and, Rick, they can’t be proven, because the only way to know for sure is to dissect the eye.”
“Charming.”
She smiled. “You see them at night—and Quint sees them, too, so what do you have in common with a cat?”
“I once coughed up a hairball.”
She stifled a laugh. “Be serious. Cats see very well in the dark. You might have extremely good low spatial frequency perception. It would let you tell the difference between shadows and substance. Like a cat.” She paused. “Normally humans only have good high-contrast, high spatial frequency—we can see the black letters on the white eye chart, but the same black letters on a dark gray chart would be very difficult. But I don’t think that’s it either. I think it’s more likely to be pigment migration of your rods and cones.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
“It’s not.” She laughed. “It’s common to fish, amphibians, and birds.”
“Primitive creatures,” Rick observed dryly.
“Well, yes, basically. How far back do the stories about greenjacks go in your family?”
“As far back as the family. Grandfather once talked about a Piper in the Crusades who had the sight, but I don’t know . . .”
Audrey shrugged. “Let’s say a thousand years, then. And that means it goes further back. It has to.”
“He said we weren’t the only ones, that you only had to look for places all over the world that are overgrown by vegetation, and you’d find a bloodline that carried the gene.”
“It all fits, Rick,” Audrey said, not bothering to hide her excitement. “Okay, now, listen. You have normal vision in normal light conditions, but at twilight and after dark, pigment migration would come into play. Your cones would retract and the rods move forward.
“Normally cones are useless for night vision, but in pigment migration, you’ve got retro-directional movement of the cones, which changes their normally angular orientation, thereby enhancing the Stiles-Crawford Effect and making them more sensitive than normal.”
“Stiles what?” he asked.
“The Stiles-Crawford Effect says that cones are directionally sensitive to light that hits them head-on, but that their sensitivity falls off rapidly as the light hits them obliquely—like when you look through a paper towel tube. Rods aren’t affected—they respond to any light at all. Follow me?”
“Sort of. You’re saying that if I had this pigment thing, then it might make sense that I could see things other people can’t.”
“Yes. And it could very well be inherited, as well as apply to other creatures who see well at night—like cats. It means your eyes work differently—if I’m correct, then you have more visual abilities than most people—and your average man on the street wouldn’t—couldn’t—comprehend it, and would label you either a charlatan or a madman.”
Rick nodded. “So it’s a sixth sense? Every time I’ve ever seen a psychic on television, I always think that person’s just out for the money or totally nuts.”
“Exactly.” She gave him a crooked smile, and made a gentle tsk-tsk noise. “Of all people, Rick, you should be willing to believe that at least some of the psychics are on the level.” She paused. “But you don’t even believe you’re on the level, do you?”
Bad Things Page 29