The Wild Side Page 16

  “My name is Amanda.” A deep female voice came through the wood. “I’m a friend of Rose’s.”

  Penny giggled. “Ah! Amanda of No-Last-Name. Close personal friend of Tom-slash-Riley. Enabler of sex lessons for Rose, who of course turned out to be Melissa. How I have longed to meet her!”

  Melissa made a not-very-polite gesture behind her back at Penny, to hide her attack of nerves, and swung the door open. A young, attractive women with a giant mane of red hair stood on the threshold wearing skintight clothes and a worried frown.

  “Sorry to bother you, but I just wondered if you’d seen your neighbor across the hall in the last week or so. Her name is Rose.”

  “No.” Melissa smiled politely, wondering if Riley had told Amanda about her. Wondering if Amanda knew Riley was investigating Rose. Wondering how her life ever got this complicated. “I think she said she was going away.”

  “It’s not like Rose to leave without saying something. No one’s talked to her since she was supposed to meet a friend of mine on a blind date.”

  “Oh?” Melissa swallowed. She bet she knew who that friend was. So Riley hadn’t told Amanda they’d been seeing each other.

  “Tom and I are starting to get really worried.” The woman held out her hands, nails ragged with chipped pink polish. “I’m a manicurist and look what I’ve done to myself. And Tom said he hasn’t given a decent haircut in three days.”

  A loud gasp sounded from behind Melissa, which would have echoed her own, but hers had jammed in her throat. She shook her head to clear it, which merely rattled her brain and made her slightly dizzy. “Haircut?”

  “Yeah. Tom’s a stylist. We work together. But he’s not…you know.” She extended a limp wrist. “Hardly.”

  Melissa stared blankly. Was Riley going undercover as a—

  “I knew it!” Penny’s horrified moan made Melissa wince. “He’s a fake.”

  “What…does Tom…look like?” Melissa enunciated each word carefully. Her entire world was about to explode, and she didn’t want to die mumbling.

  “Oh, he’s a total stud. Not real tall, not real big, but with to-die-for muscles, blue eyes, thick blond hair, the whole package.” She studied Melissa curiously. “Why?”

  Melissa shut her mouth, which had been gaping in horror. Tom wasn’t Riley. Which meant Riley wasn’t Tom. Which meant she had no idea where he had come from or what he wanted from her. “I just…thought I might have seen him…around.”

  “Not likely.” Amanda looked behind her into the corridor, as if she was afraid of being overheard, and leaned closer. “Some thug cornered Tom the night of the date and told him not to come near Rose. Tom was pretty scared and he’s no chicken. He said he was sure the guy was a mobster or something.”

  Another gasp, this one louder. Melissa grabbed the doorjamb to root herself on the rug that was threatening to be pulled out from under her. What had Riley’s sister said? There was usually a logical explanation in his business. Of course, there must be. So Riley wasn’t Tom; that didn’t mean he wasn’t who he said. Well, it did, but not necessarily in a bad way. Right?

  She put her hands to her temples. Riley had warned Tom away that night and come himself so he could investigate Rose, and he got Melissa instead. That still worked. Right? Nothing she had to stretch too far to understand. Nothing inherently menacing. Maybe to Riley’s surprise, he’d been attracted to Melissa and kept seeing her in spite of the mistake. Maybe he was just withholding details until the investigation was over. Client-detective privilege. Or something.

  That could happen. Right?

  “Are you okay?” Amanda put a friendly arm on Melissa’s shoulder.

  “I’m fine. Fine.” Her voice came out shaky, as if she’d been pounding down cappuccino all day long.

  “I asked the cops to come by and meet me here. In case something happened to Rose.” Amanda bit her lip apprehensively. “You haven’t noticed any strange smells in the hall, have you?”

  Melissa recoiled. “No…no—”

  The elevator doors at the end of the hall opened. A large man who looked like he spent his free time exercising his beer-and-fries muscle came striding down the hall. He did not look happy.

  “Police, Captain Watson. Which of you is Amanda?” He held up a badge and glanced from Amanda to Melissa. His eyes were a peculiar pale shade of blue that put Melissa further on edge. But at least she could be blissfully sure he was on the right side of the law.

  “I’m her.” Amanda patted her considerable chest. “I need you to break down my friend Rose’s door and see if she’s lying there dead. No one’s heard from her in over a week.”

  The policeman grew slowly red in the face; a thick vein stood out in his forehead. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and came up with a roll of antacids, which he waved toward Melissa. “You live here?” Melissa nodded.

  “You haven’t seen her, either?” He popped three tablets into his mouth.

  Melissa shook her head. “Last we spoke, last week, she said she was leaving town for a while.”

  “What?” The policeman nearly choked on his medicine. He recovered with an effort and a chilling look spread over his face, as if he was itching to get his huge hands on a certain neck. “Any of you seen a guy hanging around? Tall, dark hair, brown eyes, solid build? Good-looking guy, about thirty-five.”

  Melissa’s eyes widened; she swallowed convulsively. The cop’s pale eyes darted to her. “You’ve seen him.”

  “I…well, I—”

  “Yes.” Penny came up behind her. “She’s seen him. A bunch of times. Is he dangerous?”

  “Penny, for heaven’s sake.” Melissa elbowed her friend in the stomach. The last thing she needed was for Penny’s love of melodrama to get Riley in trouble.

  The cop’s face grew redder and more murderous. “But no sign of Rose? He hasn’t been meeting Rose at her place?”

  “No.” Penny nudged Melissa’s rib cage. “Tell him.”

  “I…” Melissa’s throat closed around the words. The policeman pinned her with an unpleasant stare. She had the feeling that along with his beer and fries he devoured small children. “Well, he’s been seeing…me.”

  Air exploded out of the cop’s mouth in an angry rush, followed by an impressive string of curses that scented the hall with peppermint antacids. The women stared at him in surprise. He suddenly appeared to notice and brought himself under control.

  “Listen to me.” He put a heavy hand on Melissa’s shoulder. “This guy is extremely dangerous. We’ve been after him for some time.”

  “Oh my God. Melissa!” Penny squeaked.

  Melissa gaped at the policeman, seeing various unconnected images of Riley. Mysterious. Powerful. Intense. But dangerous?

  “I want you to sit down right now, all of you, and tell me everything he told you, everything he’s done. Everything you know about this Rose person and where she might have gone.” The cop pointed a beefy finger into Melissa’s face. “And if he shows himself again around here, I want you to call me immediately, you understand? Don’t let him in. Don’t let him near you. Get to the phone and call me. Rose, too. I want to know anything you can find out about her, about where she is.”

  “Oh!” Penny clapped her hands to her face. “I knew they were bad news, both of them. I knew it. I should have stopped you.”

  “What has Riley done?” The words came from Melissa’s throat in a pleading rush. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that bad. Maybe he’d skipped the fine print on a couple of laws in pursuit of hardened criminals? Gotten a few too many parking tickets? Jaywalked?

  “I don’t want to scare you, ma’am. The best thing you can do is tell me everything.”

  “I need to know.” She gripped the soft flesh of the policeman’s forearm, barely aware of what she was doing, and looked up into his face. “I need to know what he did.”

  The policeman wiped a hand through his thinning hair and sighed, as if he were about to perform the most unpleasant of duties. “He’s a soci
opath.”

  Penny stifled a scream. Amanda gasped. Melissa jerked her hands back from the policeman’s arm and stared, feeling the blood drain from her face, while her mind tried to float off somewhere calm and safe where his words couldn’t reach her.

  “He makes nice to women, gets them into bed, gets what he wants for a while.” The huge man leaned forward, his puffy face lined with concern and regret. “And then he kills them.”

  12

  ROSE STRETCHED OUT on the ledge, blissfully enjoying the astonishing spread of stars overhead. The warmth of the blanket she’d brought down competed pleasantly with the chill night air for control of her body temperature. The water made luscious lapping sounds down on the rocky shore. Bats darted overhead, blanking out tiny patches of stars with their dark shapes. Could any more perfect day exist?

  She wiggled her head into a more comfortable position on the hard rock. Only one thing could have made the day more perfect. If she’d been able to wake up with Slate this morning. Or if he was here right now, under the blanket making love to her instead of up at the house making late-night phone calls to his business contacts abroad.

  Since the day she’d come clean with him about her past, their time together had been amazing. So easy, so calm, so right. Rose felt she could look far into her future and see him there at every turn, every twist of whatever her fate might be. She couldn’t imagine a time when she wouldn’t like him, wouldn’t respect him, wouldn’t trust him with her life. Even in the moments he would drive her crazy, as was inevitable with any couple, those three ingredients would last.

  Put quite simply, she was in love, and the fact amazed her. Whoever would have thought little Alice Rose Katzenbaum would grow up to be someone like Rose, and that Rose would grow up and blossom back into Alice Rose Katzenbaum? Whoever would have thought, after her long and checkered history, that a man would be the one to bring her back? A man with an easy grin and tough determination to win her trust, to make it safe for her true self to come out of hiding.

  Whoever would have thought someone like her would ever be lying here, contemplating her very own happily ever after?

  A streak of brilliant light crossed a portion of the sky—a shooting star. She gasped with pleasure and wished Slate had been there to share it, then to make her gasp with even more pleasure. Why the hell wasn’t he? Everything between them was so right, except this strange absence of passion. She was on fire all day long just watching him. When he touched her she nearly combusted. But Slate?

  Sometimes she’d look up and catch him staring, see the hunger in his eyes for the brief second before he masked it. Sometimes she’d feel his body aroused when he kissed her. But in spite of her not very subtle efforts to make him lose control, he’d put her firmly away and mumble something about a time and a place for everything.

  As her friend Amanda would say, “What was up with that?” Rose was ready to swim out to a passing boat and beg a lobsterman to service her.

  She grinned and waved away a mosquito whining close to her ear. As if. Amazingly, instinctively, she knew she couldn’t desire anyone else. Maybe never would. Not this way. Not in a way that energized her and gave her peace at the same time. Not when there was a guy who’d glance up from his breakfast and grin, with a shine of butter and a sprinkle of crumbs on his mouth, and make her wild for him. Even in the little everyday things he enchanted her, obsessed her, made her crazy with a longing that went much deeper than the physical. So what was up with that?

  The shrill beep of Slate’s cell phone carried down to the shore through the woods. Rose grimaced. Nothing like spending all this time away from civilization to make you aware of how often, and with what ugliness, it intruded.

  The strengthening breeze blew a thin wisp of clouds over her nighttime entertainment and made her shiver. Must be rain on the way. She hauled herself up and shone her flashlight beam on her watch. After midnight. All work and no play were making Slate dull and Rose lonely. She stood and stepped carefully on the rocks, up toward the path to the house, where Slate’s tall form was silhouetted in the yellow glow of the gaslight in the kitchen. He stood with his back to her, phone pressed to his ear.

  Rose grinned wickedly. It was just too tempting. She’d creep up behind him, press herself against him, slide her hands around to the front of his jeans and try to make him lose his cool on the phone. Just to prove she could.

  Childish maybe, but the man made her downright giddy.

  She turned off her light, moved soundlessly on the carpet of dead leaves and stepped carefully on the non-creaking side of the porch steps, repressing a silly giggle over the fun of launching a surprise attack.

  “I don’t know how long I can keep her here, Riley. After two weeks she’s going to want to go back to her own life and we’re going to have some trouble.”

  Rose froze, every muscle like rock in an instant. Her mouth opened. Closed. She stopped breathing.

  Then instinct took over and she moved slowly, carefully back down the step, slid under the high porch floor and crouched among the stacks of cut wood, feeling like her body had been turned to ice.

  “I don’t think she knows anything, but I…wait a sec.”

  She heard the creak of his footsteps over her head as he came out onto the porch. Slow-motion, haunted-house creaking, too loud in the peace of the woods. She started to shake.

  “I thought I heard her coming back.” He laughed humorlessly. “That would be all I needed. I’m just getting her to trust me. I might be able to get something out of her now, if there is anything. But she’s smart. I’ll have to be damn careful not to— What…? Do you know them…? Yeah, go ahead, see what they want. Be careful.”

  Rose pressed her hand to her mouth, stomach churning with sick shock, terrified she would give herself away by throwing up right underneath him. Half her mind was screaming denial, the other half was laughing at her. What the hell did she think? That Prince Charming would materialize at the train station at exactly the right moment with exactly the hideout she needed? Whisk her away and make sure he became everything she didn’t know was missing from her life?

  Her body convulsed in a silent sob. Of course. He worked with Gel Man and Broken Nose. They threatened her, he rode in for the rescue on his fabulous white stallion.

  Lord. She’d stood there and eaten it up. Devoured it, in fact, in huge hunks like a starving dog. How stupid could she be? How could she have let Slate get past every sensible years-in-the-making defense she’d erected? That was all she had left, and the bastard had ripped it away.

  All she had left.

  “Riley?” Slate’s voice rose to a panicked shout. “Riley!”

  She heard him punch off the phone and dial again, mumbling obscenities that shocked her. He paced nervously over her head, his breathing shallow and rapid. “Barker, it’s Michael Slater. Riley’s being worked over. Two, three guys, he didn’t know them. I don’t know where he is—check his house first. Yeah, okay. Call me as soon as you hear.”

  He swore again, slumped to the porch directly over Rose’s head, in an agony of tension over his friend.

  She looked up, stared at the dark outline of his body through the cracks between the pine boards. Tried to feel something. Sympathy. Rage. Anything.

  But all she felt was a huge black void inside her. As if her emotions had finally learned their lesson and locked themselves away. No joy. No love. No happiness. But at least no pain.

  And thank God no chance of ever being betrayed again.

  MELISSA LAY IN HER BED, wondering how long she could amuse herself counting cracks in the ceiling before she’d have to come to grips with the Awful Truth. Penny had already called several times with fun facts about sociopaths from her research on the Internet, dwelling especially on how impossible it was even for perceptive, intelligent people to tell they were about to become corpses.

  So thoughtful of her.

  Melissa moved restlessly. Sleep was out of the question. Riley hadn’t called, but she knew
every fiber of her body would stay tense until he did. Then she’d get tenser. She imagined her muscles contracting to such a violent extent that she’d rip through her clothes like the Incredible Hulk.

  What the hell could she say to him when she was still such a mass of conflict and uncertainty? She rolled her eyes. Not that it should make much difference. She’d always been a mass of conflict and uncertainty around him. So what else was new? Just because roughly three minutes after she finally admitted she was in love with him she found out he might want to kill her, why should she let that stress her any more?

  The thing that really troubled her was that in spite of Penny’s well-meant and chilling advice, Melissa was crazy about Riley and thought Captain Watson had all the charm of a horned lizard.

  Great. She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. Now she was doing super well. Now she was using her hormones instead of her brain. A wise choice, Melissa. Way to go.

  The phone rang. She started, then kept her face in the pillow, not even trying to breathe, since she was pretty damn sure she couldn’t, even with the benefit of available oxygen.

  It was happening. He was calling. She’d have to chat, talk to the man she loved who might or might not be planning to waste her, and then she’d have to call Captain Lizard Watson and betray him. Because if Riley was a violent psycho, it wasn’t a very good idea to ask him for his side of the story.

  Forget it. She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t up to this. Even pickpockets terrified her. How could she make nice with someone who might kill for the heck of it?

  The phone rang again. She swallowed. What if she didn’t answer and he got worried and came over to check on her?

  She gave a choked yell of panic, flung back the covers and lunged for the phone. “Hello?”

  “Melissa, thank God you’re home. It’s Rose.”

  Not Riley. Melissa’s legs buckled; she sank onto the floor and leaned back against the bed, holding the phone to her ear with hands that shook with relief. “Rose.”