He turned off the ignition, then, leaning the back of his head against his door, angled his body so he was facing her. “Did someone beat you?” he asked quietly. “Your husband? Is that why you shrank from me?”
The question threw her momentarily, but she responded, “No, Richard never laid a hand on me.”
“Then who was it?” There might have been a hint of compassion in his voice, but mostly he just sounded curious.
“My father. And he didn’t beat me, well, not often, anyway. Five or six times. He reserved most of the punishment for my sister. He was terrifying when he was in one of his rages, and I guess I’ve never learned how to be in a room with an angry man. I’m...always expecting the worst.”
Nick stared at her, the harsh planes of his face softening slightly as he did. “That must have been tough.”
Her short laugh was without humor. “For Nina, my older sister, it was a lot tougher, believe me. She was the rebel. We were, are, I guess, so different. She was so, I don’t know, aggressive. And flashy—she dyed her hair the first time when she was ten, started smoking at eleven, snuck out at night to see boys. I was the opposite of her—well-behaved, good grades. I always stayed in the background. I felt safer that way.”
“From your father.”
“Yes.” Uncertainty crept up on her, and she felt awkward. “I’m talking a lot. Are...are you sure you want to hear this?”
“I’m sure.”
He seemed truly interested, so she went on. “The beatings only made Nina more rebellious. The house was always filled with yelling and crying, my mother sobbing for my father to stop, Nina challenging him and taunting him, my father roaring like a bull, all red in the face.” Carly shook her head at the memory. What a sad, sorry excuse for a family they’d been.
“Where were you during all this?” Nick asked.
“Under the dining-room table.” She stared out at the neon sign while the scene came back to her, in stark detail. “We had this huge oak table and my mother always kept a tablecloth on it, white, with silver candlesticks in the middle. I don’t know why, no one ever came to dinner. The tablecloth came almost to the floor, and I used to get under there and put my fingers in my ears and close my eyes and pray that they would stop.” She held one hand to her heart as another wave of sadness swept over her. “Once, I remember I came out from underneath and grabbed my father’s arm, begging him to stop hitting Nina. But he just looked at me as though I were a pesky fly, shook me off and went back to beating her. She ran away several times, but he always brought her back. Except for the last time. I haven’t seen her in over fifteen years.”
Nick listened in silence, but all the while his heart was racing. Another son of a bitch he’d like to take care of in an alley. Another one who preyed on the innocent. The injustice of it got to him; it always had and it always would. Carly had had a rotten father and, from what little Nick knew, a loser of a husband. No wonder she had a little trouble being open with men.
Listening to her made him want to do something physical like hit the steering wheel again, but he clenched his fist instead. She didn’t need another display of temper; she’d had a lifetime of them.
“I hate men who hit women,” he said darkly, “but even more, I hate anyone who beats up on kids.”
She glanced over at him, then nodded wistfully. “I always had trouble understanding why he needed to do that. Nina was frustrating, sure, but his reaction seemed so...extreme.” Her thoughts seemed to turn inward again for a moment, then she went on.
“This past year, since my divorce, I’ve been doing a little soul-searching and a lot of reading about dysfunctional families. We could have posed for the cover of one of those books.” She counted off on her fingers. “A violent father, submissive mother, one rebellious daughter and one meek one. Me, of course..When I knew my marriage was over, and that I had chosen badly in the first place, out of fear, I wanted to understand, so I...”
Stopping herself, she covered her mouth with her hand, then lowered it again. She offered him another tentative, shy smile, as though she wasn’t sure if she was appearing foolish. “I really am talking too much.”
“If you start getting boring,” he said with deliberate lightness, “I’ll tell you.”
Maybe he didn’t have the facts he wanted from Carly, but he understood her so much better now. There’d been no one in her corner when she was a kid, and she’d had to invent whatever confidence she had as an adult. He fought the urge to cup her cheek, to smooth some strands of pale hair off her forehead.
Physical contact might be what he needed, but it was not wanted by Carly. “Tell me what you found out,” he told her, keeping his hands to himself. “I want to hear it, all of it.”
She smiled her gratitude, then continued. “I needed to understand about anger. I found out that anger and fear are two sides of the same coin—did you know that? They’re both reactions to chaos.” Her expression was earnest now. “We—people, I mean—we need to control our universe because it’s a scary place. And when we can’t control it—when someone won’t listen to us, or we feel victimized by other people’s behavior, or someone lets us down—it’s threatening. Do you see? I had no control over my father, so I became frightened. I guess my father had no control over Nina, so he lashed out at her. But both reactions—fear and anger—were about not having control.”
Nick never went in much for soul-searching, but what she said struck a chord of recognition. It was true—his temper came out most when he was thrown by a situation. He’d blown up at Carly because he’d been frustrated by her nonanswers, another way of saying he had no control over her.
He nodded. “So, you woke up this morning in a strange bed. You had no control over it and no explanation for how you got there, so you panicked.”
“Yes.” She smiled, obviously pleased he understood.
But he wasn’t done, not yet. “All right, I’ll buy that. But later, after we talked and decided to take some steps to—okay. let’s use your word—take some control of the universe, go after some answers...after that, why did you run away? Without saying a word to me? Can you tell me that?”
In an instant, Carly felt all the energy leech out of her body. They’d been having this nice, reasonable conversation. She and Nick had been talking like two grown-ups-friends, even. He’d listened to her story and he’d heard her. She’d even managed to forget, for the moment, that she had to keep her distance from Nick, that she’d had a blackout, that Pete Demeter had been murdered.
But Nick hadn’t forgotten he was a cop. He’d steered the conversation back to the questions, and if she felt manipulated, she also felt guilty. Again. Oh how she hated this subterfuge, hated her automatic reaction to anger, hated the miserable, god-awful mess she was in.
“I would tell you,” she said, “honestly I would, if you were a lawyer, a doctor, a plumber, a used-car salesman, I would tell you. But you’re a cop.”
He frowned. “And that’s why? Isn’t that a little distorted? Didn’t anyone ever tell you when you’re in trouble you go to the police, not run from them?”
“Yes. Someone told me that,” she said dully. “My father.”
“And because he was a sick bastard, does that mean everything he told you is automatically wrong?”
When she didn’t reply, his jaw tightened. He turned his head so that his profile was to her again; his hands gripped the steering wheel. “So, you’re one of those cop haters. The kind that call us pigs and slap lawsuits on us every time we try to do our job, but when they get in trouble scream bloody murder when we don’t get there fast enough. Is that it?”
She let that one sit there. She could have told him her father’s profession, and he might have understood. But maybe it was better this way. Let him think the worst of her, she told herself wearily. Let him believe anything he wanted to, as long as he stopped asking questions.
“That’s all I can say,” she said. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
“No
t good enough, Carly.”
She shrugged. “It’s the best I can do.”
She sensed his temper flaring, saw him struggling with the urge to erupt at her again and steeled herself to face it. But this time he threw open his door, got out and slammed it shut.
They were back to square one.
Thoroughly miserable, Carly watched Nick through the window as he walked down the side of the building toward a chain-link fence that separated the convenience store from a house. Obviously frustrated, he kicked at something, then stumbled and caught himself on the side of the large rectangular trash container.
Like a shot, she was out of the car and rushing up to him. Nick was bent over double, wincing as though in pain. Resting a hand on his arm, she said, “Are you okay?”
Damn knee, Nick thought. Damn temper. Damn woman. Damn himself for being a one-hundred-percent sucker when it came to her. She sent his emotions, reactions ping-ponging all over the place—it had never been like this with any other woman he’d known.
Wrenching his arm away from her, he muttered, “I’m fine. Just fine.”
He stood up straight, shook his leg a few times, winced, then gritted his teeth. He would not give in to it. He walked away from her and stared through the window of the store while the pain settled down. Two kids were playing a computer game; people were in line to pay for hot dogs, sodas; a mother wheeling a stroller was examining a box of diapers.
Here he was, he thought bitterly, staring at humanity. People came and went, spoke to each other and then went away. Every person who scurried in and out of the doors had a story, a history, people to love, axes to grind. Here he was, just one man, and his story was about a woman who opened up, but only to a point. A woman who begged him to let her go, but he couldn’t. Because, even with all her evasions, she’d gotten under his skin, bad. He wasn’t willing to say goodbye to her.
Talk about not having control. He was irritated with her, frustrated by her. Also attracted to her, dammit—the memory of last night hadn’t left him all day. More ping-ponging. And worried about her. Her fear was real, he was sure of that. But she refused to tell him its source. In her way, Carly was as stubborn as he was.
“All right.” He kept his back to her. “Get back in the car. I promised one more night and that’s what you’ll get. And I’ll stop asking questions.”
He heard her huge sigh behind him; it was filled with such a relief, such a letting down of tension, that he almost whipped around to, one more time, ask her, Why?
But he didn’t.
“Thank you,” she said. “From the bottom of my heart.”
So, he thought, he’d blown his chance to let her leave. Now they played it on her terms. No more questions, no more frenzied reactions. That, at least, ought to mean the upcoming night would be more peaceful.
But his gut told him he was wrong. It wasn’t peace that was ahead; it was a gathering storm.
A light fog clouded the windshield as they rode through the night along Washington Boulevard. “When’s the last time you ate?” Nick asked as they neared the turnoff to the marina.
“I don’t remember.”
He pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop. “Let’s do it, then.”
She laid a hand on his arm. Her touch was tentative. “Let me cook dinner for you,” she said. “It’s one way I can pay you back. I’m a terrific cook, even if I do say so myself.”
“Not necessary,” he said gruffly.
“But I want to.”
And he wanted answers, but he’d stopped asking for them. “I’m a meat-and-potatoes guy.”
“Then meat and potatoes it will be.”
They went to the neighborhood supermarket and bought the food. He noticed Carly glancing behind her from time to time. Had the incident at the airport really happened? he wondered. Did she really think someone had been following her all day? Or had she made that up, to keep him distracted? He wanted to believe her, but she sure made it difficult.
Nick continued to keep an eye out anyway, in case her story was for real, but no one approached them or even looked remotely suspicious. Back at his place, they unpacked the groceries—steaks, potatoes, salad fixings, wine. Then she told him to rest while she made dinner. He offered to make the salad but she shooed him out of the kitchen, assuring him she worked better alone. There were still shadows under her eyes, but at least she seemed more lively.
He almost smiled then, at the way she took charge when she was on her turf. There hadn’t been much evidence of this side of her nature since they’d met. He liked it, a lot. “Well, if you’re sure you don’t need me?”
“I don’t,” she replied.
“Then I guess I’ll check out the ball scores.”
After Nick left the kitchen, Carly emitted an enormous sigh of relief. Without him there to distract her, to remind her, she might be able to park her troubles for a while. She would concentrate on the task in front of her—the creation of a meal. Maybe both she and Nick could unwind...just a little.
After searching through his cabinets and drawers, she found a corkscrew and opened the bottle of red wine they’d bought. As she pulled out the cork, the sound made her hand stop in midair. She stood very still.
Wine.
She stared at the cork. Something about the wine.
“More wine?” the waiter is saying to Richard
Carly set down the bottle and clutched the edge of the kitchen counter; she was having another flashback.
Richard. Talking and talking, trying to be casual. But she can see through him to the anxiety right beneath the surface. “Carly, please, I’m begging you. All you have to do is spend one night with this guy-that’s all, one night. No rough stuff, you have my word. I wouldn’t ask you but I’m in deep trouble. They’re going to kill me, Carly, I swear it, if you don’t do this. ”
She can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You want me to go to bed with some...some stranger, to get you out of debt?”
“Yeah. One night, that’s all. Hell, you can close your eyes, pretend it’s Robert Redford, like the movie. Please, Carly, I’ll never ask you to do anything else. ”
She stares at him a moment longer, then throws down her napkin, grabs her purse and storms out of the restaurant. In the parking lot, he catches up with her, grabs her by the shoulders and whips her around so she’s facing him
“I’m sorry,” he says, his fingers digging into her arm. “Really sorry. ”
“You’re sorry? Why, you son of a—”
A wave of dizziness comes over her.
Then blackness.
Chapter 5
Nick was stretched out on the couch, alternating between dozing and watching ESPN, when he heard a small cry from the kitchen. Instantly alert, he leaped to his feet, his hand drawn to his nonexistent holster. He was in the doorway in the time it took to exhale one breath.
Carly, her stance rigid, was near the sink, staring at a cork she held in her hand. An open wine bottle stood on the counter next to her.
Registering the fact that she was physically unhurt, he halted in the doorway instead of going to her. So fierce was her concentration on the cork, he didn’t want to shock her.
“What happened?” he asked.
Without looking up at him, she answered, “I remembered the dinner with Richard. I remember more details, I mean.” Then she did shift her gaze to him. It wasn’t fear he saw on her face, which was what he’d expected; no, it was indignation. Her eyes were filled with it.
“He, Richard, asked me to go to bed with someone,” she said slowly, as if she was having a hard time believing it. “To pay off a gambling debt. Just like the movie, he said, the one with Demi Moore. He actually asked me to do him a favor, to just close my eyes and pretend the man, whoever it was, was Robert Redford.”
The rage that rose in Nick’s gut was so strong he had to squeeze his hand into a fist before he slammed it against the door frame. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Carly nodded in agr
eement. “I think that’s what I called him, actually.” She stared down at the cork again, as though looking for answers there. “I remember walking out of the restaurant. And then—” Frowning, she left the sentence unfinished.
Nick walked over to her and removed the cork from her hand. “And then what?” he prompted, setting the cork on the counter and facing her.
She gazed up at him with wide amber-colored eyes, but he could tell she wasn’t really focused on him. “Nothing. Blackness.” She stared through him for a long time, lost in thought. Then her eyes darkened with realization. “Of course. That’s why I was given the drug. Richard knew I’d say no when he asked me.”
She bit her bottom lip, then went on, the flow of words pouring out of her picking up speed as she did. “He knew me too well. I was too straight, he always said, too law-abiding. I had to learn to play by street rules, he always said, not be so nice.”
“Carly.” Nick placed his hands on her shoulders. She was quivering.
“That’s why we divorced,” she went on, her agitation obvious. “It was a lot of things, but mostly I hated his morals, or lack of them. He lied so easily, refused to take responsibility for the messes he got into. He’s one of those people who always blames someone else for whatever goes wrong. I couldn’t respect him.” Nick gripped her arms tightly as her voice rose in pitch. “You should respect the man you’re married to, shouldn’t you?”
“Carly, it’s okay. Calm down. I’m here.”
At his words, she stopped speaking, shooting a startled look at him. Then she shook her head as though to clear it. “Anyhow, I remembered. That part, at least. I suppose that means I was...oh, God, someone’s toy for a while.”
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