by Linda Grimes
Anger welled up in me, crowding out the helpless feeling threatening to drown me. How could he do this?
He’s a leaver, the insidious voice in my head whispered, the one that had tried to warn me about Billy from the start. The one I’d refused to listen to, because I’d convinced myself it didn’t know what it was talking about. He’s left every girlfriend he ever had—and there’ve been plenty. It was always a matter of time, wasn’t it? And you knew he didn’t want kids. He’s never made a secret of it. Of course he’s leaving. What’d you expect?
“It might not even be yours, you know! It could be Mark’s,” I shouted, surprising myself with the sudden intensity of my need to hurt him, knowing instinctively what would wound him more than anything. “I haven’t had a period since that night.”
He stopped. Turned back to me slowly. I fully expected to see a corresponding anger on his face, and was prepared to deal with whatever he lashed out at me with—I’d give it back as good as I got. What I saw instead floored me: relief.
“That might be best,” he said quietly. And then he was gone.
Chapter 13
Four sticks were lined up on the bathroom vanity, like soldiers in a firing squad, each aiming straight for my gut. One set of parallel lines, two plus signs, and, presumably for those who needed the news to be literally spelled out, the word “pregnant” appearing digitally. They all meant the same thing. And all claimed ninety-nine percent accuracy. What were the odds I’d fall into the one percent for every single one of them?
The first thing I’d done after Billy left was go to four different pharmacies to buy more tests. Because it was always possible the first one had been wrong, no matter what Billy said, and it would look stupid to buy four of them at the same pharmacy, right? And if I only got one more, and it was negative, well then I’d have to go out again to break the tie. Four more would make five in all, and there could be no tie. (Trust me, it had made all kinds of sense at the time.) Besides, driving all over town from one pharmacy to the next beat the heck out of crawling into Dr. Phil’s king-size bed, hiding under the covers, and bawling my eyes out. I had apologized to the agents following me, making up some shit about a specific brand of feminine hygiene product I needed, so they would give me some space. Men tended to be squeamish about tampons.
The second thing I’d done was stop for gas, because yeah, driving all over town.
I dug my own phone out of my luggage, where I kept it stowed so as not to accidentally use it when I was being my client. Not, I told myself, to check for messages from Billy. (There weren’t any.) There were seven voice mails from Mom (mostly requests to call when my job was done, because she had plans to make and needed my input) and one from James. I had a pretty good idea what he wanted to talk about, and I wasn’t up to it yet.
There was also one from Mark, asking me to call when I got the chance. Probably an update about Loughlin. My chest clutched at the idea of talking to him, but I couldn’t not return his call when I was technically working for him. Just because my personal life was falling apart around me didn’t mean I couldn’t concentrate on my job. That’s what being professional was all about, right?
He picked up after the first ring. “Good news, Howdy.” Well, that would be a refreshing change of pace, I thought wryly. “Your client has decided she’s placated her husband long enough, and is insisting on getting back to work.”
“But is that safe? What about Loughlin? What if the Russian wasn’t the only one working with him?”
“Her brother finished his other assignment, and has been given leave to stick close to her. Rudy’s a good agent, and Misha knows it. And we’ll leave a complete security detail, too. Dr. Carson will be well looked after.”
“Great,” I said. “So, when’s the handoff?”
“Later tonight, after the neighborhood is asleep. My guys will bring Phil and Misha straight to the house from the airfield, and take you back. Billy, too, if he’s there with you. His Mooney should be at the same field.”
“Billy’s not here. He was, but he had to leave.” There. I sounded natural. My voice hadn’t even cracked.
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No. He left in kind of a hurry. It might have been one of his side jobs.” Hey, it might have been. Sure, it would have to be the mother of all coincidences for him to suddenly remember something he had to do on one of his side jobs at the precise moment he’d learned I was pregnant, but it was poss—okay, so it wasn’t possible. If God wanted to strike me down for the lie, He was welcome to have at it. It wasn’t like my day could get much worse anyway.
There was a pause, maybe half a beat too long. Mark’s spook antennae going up, no doubt, but he didn’t pursue it. “All right. My guys can take you to D.C., or back to New York, if you’d rather. Laura tells me your mother is anxious to get everyone settled close to the nest for the holidays.”
Ack. No way could I see Mom yet. Even thinking about it made my belly flip. Hell, she’d probably sniff out another grandbaby like a bloodhound, and I could not deal with that now. “D.C. would be perfect. I need to get some stuff done there before I dive into the crazy.”
Mark chuckled. He’d spent many a Christmas holiday with the Halligan clan, and knew exactly what kind of insanity I was talking about. “All right, Howdy. But don’t let your guard down.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I said. Not for a minute, I thought, one hand automatically moving to my belly.
Chapter 14
The roses on the hall stand weren’t dead, but they were seriously drooping. Probably something symbolic there, but I didn’t want to examine it too closely.
I left my bag in the hall and took the roses to the kitchen, trying on the way to decide if they could be saved or if I should go ahead and toss them. In the end, I left them on the counter and went upstairs, unable to tend to them without crying—which I refused to do—but equally unable to throw them out. When in doubt, put it off.
Seeing my bed didn’t help my mood any. Stray rose petals, dried and crushed, littered the sheets. (The way broken dreams littered my soul … I, um, might have thought if, you know, it hadn’t been so nauseatingly trite.) I yanked the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into the hamper, petals and all. I’d shake them off before I washed them. In the meantime, I didn’t need the reminder of how giddily happy I’d been to see Billy here in my bed.
Getting fresh sheets out of the linen closet and making the bed seemed like too much trouble, so I went across the hall to the guest room. But then I remembered the night not long ago I’d spent there with Billy, and couldn’t bring myself to crawl into that bed either.
Get a fucking grip, Ciel. What are you going to do, go to a hotel?
Hmm. Not a bad idea …
The more I thought about it, the less crazy it seemed. I might actually be able to sleep in a hotel, someplace impersonal, someplace I’d never been with Billy. My bank account was, for once, healthy enough. Mark had made sure I received a hefty bonus for tacking those extra days on to the NASA job, so I might as well make use of the windfall.
I called a taxi, repacked my bag with a clean change of clothes, and got the hell out of Dodge.
* * *
The pounding on my hotel room door was my first clue upon waking that something was amiss. I looked at the bedside clock. Jesus, I’d been asleep for, what, twelve hours?
Thomas’s voice was even louder than his incessant pounding. “Ciel! Sis, are you all right? Open the door!” Honest to God, with a voice like his, he could fill in for Metatron.
“One second!” I hollered. He’d obviously escaped Mom’s grip up in New York. I wondered if Laura had been lucky enough to get away with him.
My mouth gaped into a yawn. Why was I naked? Oh, yeah. Forgot to pack pj’s. I grabbed a terrycloth hotel robe, belting it tightly as I tried to clear my head. What the hell was Thomas doing here? I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.
The pounding kept up a steady rhythm until I fi
nally opened the door. Thomas pushed his way in and pulled me into a bear hug. When he let go, I saw Laura was behind him, looking much less perturbed. Guess she’d managed to elude Mom, too. I waved at her, and smiled at both of them. Laura waved and smiled back, giving me an apologetic shrug.
“What’s up, guys?” I said, trying to sound a lot more chipper than I felt.
“Damn it, Ciel, you can’t just disappear. You have to tell somebody where you are,” Thomas said.
“My cell phone is charged. You could have called.”
Thomas made what I think of fondly as his “apoplectic eyes.” Laura patted his arm (or else she was trying to keep him from throttling me with it, one or the other) and said, “Well, sugar, that only works if you answer your phone.”
I peeked behind me at the nightstand. Saw the light on my phone indicating a missed call. Checked the log. Okay, fourteen missed calls (none of them Billy, not that I was searching for his name), seven of which were from either Thomas or Laura.
“Sorry. I guess I was really tired. Um, do I want to listen to any of your voice mails?”
Laura glanced at Thomas and suppressed a smile. “Well, the first few are perfectly polite. Then I’m afraid they get”—she glanced at her husband, holding back a smile—“repetitive.”
Thomas quelled her with a look. “Sis, why are you staying in a hotel when we live in town? When Mark called looking for you after your condo was broken into, I was terrified you’d been taken. And if you think I ever want to explain to Mom and Dad—”
“Wait … what? Broken into? When?” I said. Shit. What was going on? I needed coffee. Which, I belatedly remembered, I wasn’t going to get.
“Last night.” He looked at me closely, no doubt noting my shock with his super-lawyer observational skills. “After you left, I presume.”
“How did Mark know?” I said, defaulting to the trivial because it was easier than dealing with the fact that my condo had fucking been broken into. “Did he have someone watching me?”
“After what he told me happened in Houston? Of course he did. The problem was, the guy he had watching you took ill—violently—and there was a space of time before his replacement was there. It must have happened then. And, yes, that makes the whole thing even more suspicious—Mark thinks his guy might’ve been poisoned somehow.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Is he going to be all right?”
“He won’t be running any races for a while, but he’ll recover.”
Thank God. “So, if the guy didn’t tell him, how did Mark find out?”
“The security system routes directly to the Agency. And before you get all huffy about being monitored, it’s been that way since Mark was my roommate there. I’m the one who asked him to keep it when you moved in.”
“It’s the same at our house,” Laura added quickly, in case I thought I was being singled out.
“But how did you find me here? I haven’t been microchipped, have I?” I said, only half joking.
“Tempting,” Thomas said under his breath.
Laura shrugged. “I tracked your last credit card transaction—here, at this hotel, strangely enough. Oh, and your phone. GPS is a wonderful thing. Don’t be mad, hon. I had to do it to calm your brother down.”
I glared at Thomas. It had no effect. “Fine. You found me. Now you can take me to my condo so I can see if anything is missing.”
Thomas and Laura looked at each other, doing that annoying nonverbal communication thing couples do.
“What?” I said.
Thomas sighed. He’s not normally a big sigher. “Not a good idea right now, sis.”
“Why not? Look, I get it. You’re trying to shield me from the trauma. But my place has been broken into before—I know what to expect.”
“Ciel, hon, they torched it after they broke in,” Laura said gently. “There’s not a lot left to go through.”
I froze. Stared at her for a second, then looked to Thomas for confirmation. He nodded, a grim look on his face. “You can see why we were concerned when we couldn’t reach you.”
I nodded numbly. There had to be questions I should be asking, but I couldn’t think of them. “I don’t have any pets,” was all I could think to say. “That’s good, right? It’s the only thing that really matters. I mean, I’ve thought about getting a dog, or maybe a cat would be better—I love animals—but it wouldn’t really be fair, would it? Since I’m gone”—damn, why couldn’t I stop babbling? The clinical part of my brain knew it was the shock, but I still couldn’t shut up—“so much for work and all. Of course, I could always get a turtle. They probably don’t care much if you’re not there all the time. But they’re not good cuddlers, and I think if I had a pet I’d really like one I could cuddle…”
Laura put an arm around my shoulder and gently herded me toward the bathroom. “Come on, sugar, let’s get you dressed. Tom, why don’t you wait in the lobby? We’ll be down in a bit.”
“Yeah. Right. I’ll give Mark a call and let him know Ciel is okay. Sis, do you want me to call Billy?”
“No!” I said, stopping. God, not Billy. I couldn’t deal with him right now. I pulled myself up straight, shrugging off Laura’s arm. “He’s, um, busy with something … one of his … he can’t be reached. I’ll take care of it later. Laura, go on down with Tom. I’ll throw some clothes on and meet you in the lobby. And then I’m going straight to my condo.”
“Can’t. Mark wants you kept out of sight for now,” Thomas said.
“What the hell? Why?”
“I’m sure he has a good reason, sugar,” Laura said. “And I’m sure he’ll tell us what it is when we see him later,” she added when I was about to protest again. I recognized the spook stubbornness in her eyes and dropped it. For the moment.
* * *
It didn’t look too bad from the outside, only some broken windows and water-streaked soot stains. And, of course, the crime scene tape. Because arson. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that somebody had intentionally set my home on fire.
The fire had apparently been contained by strong firewalls, so my neighbors’ homes had suffered only minor damage, thank God. At least I didn’t have to add guilt to the host of emotions I was feeling.
I had convinced Thomas and Laura I’d never be able to relax until I’d seen it for myself. I was wearing the aura of one of my old high school teachers—Mrs. Denton, a young first-year teacher I’d had when I was a senior, who now lived overseas—so technically “I” was out of sight.
Thomas returned to where Laura and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of the building. At one time it had been a huge single-family home—a mansion, really—but some enterprising owner along the way had converted it into four two-story units, the front right of which was owned by Thomas and rented by me. (He was planning to buy up the other units as they became available—Thomas collects real estate the way I collect Spiderman comic books.)
“I spoke with someone from the firehouse. There’s fire damage both up- and downstairs, and all up the stairwell, but the floor joists seem to be sound. There’s a lot of smoke and water damage throughout. Once we get clearance from a structural engineer, I’ll have the place gutted and redone. Sis, you can stay with us in the meantime.”
And watch you two brimming over with joy as Laura’s belly grows? Yeah, no thanks.
“Are the stairs still there?” I asked.
“I assume so. Why?”
“Good. I’ll be back in a minute.” I took off, slipping under the crime scene tape and through the door that was no longer capable of closing all the way.
“Ciel, wait—we can’t go in!” Thomas came after me, but not until after he admonished Laura to stay where she was, so I got a pretty good head start.
It was the smell more than anything. Smoke, acrid and biting, mixed with the chemical fumes from burnt paint and synthetic carpet, overlaid with a dank, wet smell that made me want to gag. That, or the fact that if I hadn’t been running away from my memories
of Billy I would be dead right now, as charred as all my belongings. Somebody wanted me dead, and I didn’t even know why. The very randomness of the act made me feel more vulnerable.
Holding one hand over my nose and mouth, I hurried up the stairs and into my room.
“Hey!” Thomas hollered from the front hall.
“Up here!” I ignored the scorched, sodden mess that was my bed and went straight for my burnt-up dresser. Yanked open the top drawer—the front of it splintered in my hands—and started riffling through wet underwear and bras.
Thomas came to a halt at the door to my room. “Sis, don’t be ridiculous. We’ll go shopping, get you some new clothes. You can’t save those.”
My hand finally hit wet velvet. I squeezed the small jewel box tightly, sending up a wordless prayer before I opened it. I held back a sob of relief when I saw it there, unharmed.
The pin, made of white gold and diamonds and shaped like an open parachute, had been a gift from Billy after my first terrifying ride on his airplane. It was his way of telling me he’d always be there, providing security for me as I faced my fears and tried new things. Shutting the case and enclosing it in both hands, I held it to my waist, as if it could magically shelter the new life growing there.
I felt Thomas’s hands on my shoulders. “Stupid risk, sis, sentiment or not. He could have always gotten you another one.”
Somehow I didn’t think so. “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I said.
* * *
“This is the surveillance footage from the gas station three blocks from Ciel’s condo,” Mark said.
We were at my office, on the third floor of the building that housed my brother’s law firm (he owned it, of course), staring intently at my laptop screen. Thomas and Laura were with us. Thomas had tried to assure me his security system would have alerted him if anything were amiss, but I’d insisted on going there to see for myself it was okay. It wasn’t until I was seated behind my antique wooden desk that I stopped shaking on the inside. I drew comfort from its solidness, its age, its aura of permanence. Not everything had been ripped away from me. Something of mine was left, a small cave I could crawl into, where I could lick my wounds.