MELISSA STOOD, still wrapped in a towel, staring at the blinking light on her answering machine. Who had left a message? And how long ago? She’d been in the shower forever, then had watched some late night TV without bothering to dress. Rose again? Her parents? Penny?
She bit her lip, face twisted in an uncomfortable combination of dismay and hope.
…Riley?
She stepped forward carefully, as if someone might have planted land mines under her carpet, and pushed the playback button.
Click. Whir.
Riley’s voice came over the tape, hoarse and barely recognizable. Be careful…
Melissa gasped and stepped back. That was it. He was going to kill her.
Don’t let men in…
She shook her head, tears of terror springing to her eyes. He was warning her. She shouldn’t have let him in, shouldn’t have started something with a stranger. She was dead.
Watson…
Melissa stopped a sob in its tracks and stared at the machine. Watson? What— How did Riley—
Don’t want you…hurt.
Concern in his voice…and pain. Had something awful happened to him? Was he injured? She couldn’t bear to think of him suffering. She couldn’t bear that she might be abandoning him when he needed her. She couldn’t bear that because of Watson she was too afraid to try and find out where Riley was, to see if he needed help.
The machine clicked. Beeped four times to show the message was complete. Clicked again. Silence.
Melissa sprang forward and rewound the tape for a fraction of a second. Don’t want you…hurt.
He was warning her about something, or someone. Watson?
Or himself?
Maybe he hated who he was, hated that he wanted to hurt her. Maybe he was warning her to keep her safe. Penny said some killers wanted to be caught; they hated what they were compelled to do.
Maybe.
Or Watson. She liked that version a lot better. If Watson was the crooked one, then Riley would be warning her against doing exactly what she’d done. Betraying Riley. Betraying Rose.
She closed her eyes and clutched the towel in tight fists against her chest. How was she supposed to know what was true? She found herself wanting to call Bill, to explain this whole horrible situation and get his always rational, detached, emotion-free take, delivered in his trademark monotone. He’d comfort her, chide her gently, give her solid, caring advice. Except he wouldn’t be able to get past the part where she’d wanted to have a no-strings fling. Why would she want to do something so out of character? That didn’t sound like the Melissa he knew. He could have told her there’d be trouble.
Don’t want you…hurt.
Riley. The ache came on hard and strong. Such tenderness in that weak, strained voice. As if he really cared for her underneath it all. She wanted to weep, but the tears came out in frustrated painful drops, not easy rolling relief.
How was she supposed to know what was true?
She dropped the towel and went over to her dresser, pulled out underwear, a bra, a T-shirt and shorts, not really sure what she wanted to do, only knowing her restless body craved action, not sleep.
She dressed, walked to her front door and peered out, still undecided. Rose’s door beckoned across the hall. The riotous red room. The place where everything had started.
Melissa slipped back into her apartment and retrieved the key from her panty hose drawer, went into the hall with quick quiet steps and opened Rose’s door.
Streetlight spilled in from outside, illuminating the garish paint to a dark brick color. Melissa flicked on a floor lamp with a muted red shade. A warm pink light lit up the room, making it look more like a bordello than it already did.
She walked through, touching now-familiar objects, remembering the excitement, the passion. How had her fantasy become such a nightmare?
She patted the tin-can giraffe, its nose, its painted aluminum body. Randstetler had been in the news recently, for chaining himself to the fence of a cosmetic company that tested on animals.
Weird sculpture. Weird guy. Weird world. She moved toward the window and bumped the giraffe’s nose with her elbow. The animal teetered despite her clumsy attempts to right it, and tipped forward with a horrible metallic crash to rest flat on its tinny nose. One can popped out of its rear and rolled toward her in a funny, haphazard way, as if it had a weight inside.
Strange. She picked the can up. This one wasn’t neatly painted like the others; color had been smeared on in large sloppy swatches. Very messy. You could even see the label through the yellow. Melissa squinted. B-E-E-F…
Her eyebrows shot up. Beefarini? Randstetler used a can a cow had died for? Not likely. She peered more closely. The top, instead of being neatly welded shut like the others, had been taped and crudely painted over. She shook the can gently, not surprised at the faint thud inside. Had Rose hidden something in there? Drugs? Jewelry? Whatever it was, unless they could get Randstetler to fix it, the future value of the sculpture was—
Melissa’s heart skipped a beat. Riley. Going through Rose’s drawers. Searching the apartment. Was this what he’d been after?
She tore off the tape, gently pried open the lid and withdrew a tiny bundle, carefully wrapped in cotton and gauze. What the hell? Heart pounding, feeling like a kid playing pirate at the beach who’d actually dug up some treasure, she undid the wrapping. And caught her breath.
A stunning miniature portrait, its frame laden with colorful precious stones—diamonds, emeralds and rubies in a fabulous glittering pattern. The familiar, but strangely aged features of Queen Elizabeth I stared sternly, as if chiding Melissa for allowing the monarch of England to be so closely associated with a giraffe’s privates.
Melissa stroked the tiny jewels, gently brushed the glass surface. Exquisite. This must be the Hilliard portrait Penny’s cop brother was—
A noise sounded behind her. A swish. Like air being displaced by a moving object. Like the door to Rose’s apartment being pushed gently open.
Oh God, hadn’t she closed it completely? Melissa’s breath ratcheted up into her chest; the blood began draining from her head. She shoved Queen Elizabeth into her shirt pocket, turned and gave a short, choked scream.
Riley.
Looking like someone had run into him with a truck. Blood stained his upper lip and shirt in an ugly swath, as if it had been pouring out of his nose; his left eye was puffy and bruised, his right cheek purple and swollen. Red rings of raw skin circled his wrists, as if he’d been brutally bound.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” The voice was the same hoarse rasp that haunted her on her answering machine. He came forward clumsily, as if it hurt him to move, squinting in the soft light of the apartment, his good eye concentrating hard on her, but in and out of focus, as if he couldn’t quite control it, as if he weren’t quite himself.
She stood her ground, a seashell rushing noise in her ears, not sure if she was brave or paralyzed by fear, not sure whether to run to him or far away.
“Thank God you’re okay.” He put a hand to his head as if it pained him to speak. “I was afraid they’d come after you.”
Who? Her lips formed the word, but she wasn’t sure sound had actually come out.
“Allston’s men.” He lowered himself into Rose’s burgundy wing chair with a grunt that made Melissa wince. “They were annoyed with me.”
“Oh.” Who was Allston? She didn’t know. And if this was what he did when he was annoyed, she didn’t want to know. All she cared about was that Riley was hurt, and that getting him medical help meant getting him out of here and into a public setting where she could feel safe while she tried to understand what was going on.
“Riley, you should go to the hospital. I’ll call an ambulance.” She moved by him to get to the phone.
“No.” His hand clamped onto her wrist. She cried out and yanked away, holding her hand as if his touch had burned her.
Riley lifted his head. With an obvious effort, he focused on her face.
“My God, Melissa.” His voice sank to an incredulous whisper. “You’re afraid of me.”
She stared back, unable to explain, to confess her horrible fear, to admit what she’d been told and how far she’d gone toward believing it.
“Is it the face? Does this scare you?”
She nodded. That much at least was the truth. The idea that thugs had attacked Riley, that they’d beaten him, that he could have died made her sick with horror. Worse, he appeared to view this shocking violence as all in a day’s work. How could anyone ever get used to that?
He stared at her with a measuring look, as if he were trying to read her mind, to find out how much she knew. “That’s not all. There’s something else. What is it? What’s happened?”
She gripped the arm of Rose’s rocker and reminded herself to breathe, afraid she was going to faint in front of him.
“Watson.” The name came out under a weight of tremendous contempt. “What did he tell you?”
How did he know? She opened her mouth and emitted a strangled croak. How could she tell him? What could she say? What would he do if she told him?
“Melissa.”
God help her.
“He said you’re a sociopath.” The words came out in a flat, lifeless stream, as if she were responding to a question with her name, rank and serial number. “That you seduce women and kill them.”
His face crumpled into incredulity. “And you believed him?”
A tear rolled down Melissa’s cheek. This hurt. All of it. Everything she thought, everything she said, how he looked, how he looked at her… She was a mass of raw, overstimulated nerve endings. He deserved an answer, an explanation, but she couldn’t say a thing that wouldn’t hurt them both more. So she stood there and waited.
He shook his head. “You want me to deny it, don’t you. Reassure you. Tell you ‘Don’t worry, Melissa honey, I’m not a serial killer.’”
She bit back a sob. “That would be nice.”
“What’s the point?” He gestured wearily, but managed to keep his gaze steady. “Aren’t sociopaths supposed to be consummate liars? You think you’d know whether I was telling the truth? No way, Melissa. We serial killers are pros. You’ll never know until you wake up one morning with my hands around your throat. Right? Isn’t that the way you see it?”
“Riley…” Her voice shook, like a little girl getting a scolding.
“Go ahead and make the call if you want.” He gestured disgustedly at the phone. “But not an ambulance, just a cab. At worst I cracked a rib, probably have a concussion.”
“Riley…”
“Call, Melissa. Or use my phone. I’m hurting.”
Melissa went to Rose’s phone while he dragged himself into the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink. Every instinct had been screaming at her not to trust Watson, not to believe what he told her. She hadn’t listened. Hadn’t listened to her own heart, her own feelings. Her world, her values, her expectations had been turned inside out and become practically unrecognizable.
She fumbled over the keypad and stuttered to the taxi dispatcher, exhausted, overwhelmed, wanting only to crawl into bed and make everything go away. Sleep for a day or two and try to regain some perspective.
Except she wasn’t sure even that would work.
Riley emerged from Rose’s bathroom. Melissa replaced the receiver carefully, as if everything she touched was as close to breaking as she was.
“They said ten minutes.”
Riley nodded, sat back in the chair and leaned against the lace antimacassar, eyes closed. Even with the blood and dirt gone, he looked like a beaten warrior who’d popped in for a brief out-of-place visit to civilization. It came home to her suddenly and finally that for all their former intimacy, he was a stranger. He’d always be a stranger.
She sank onto the edge of the rocker opposite and watched him, too heavy with despair to stay on her feet, not realizing until that second how she’d still held out hope some miracle could make things possible for them.
But they couldn’t leave it like this. Something had to be said. At the very least she needed to hear his side.
“Why were you investigating Rose?”
“Watson asked me to.” Riley didn’t open his eyes, spoke without emotion. “He suspected she had valuable evidence the Feds need to link a Massachusetts VIP with Allston. Evidence that started this case as a gift from crime boss to politician with major strings attached, in the form of political favors.”
The portrait. “Why didn’t Watson get his own detectives to find the evidence?”
“Because there was a leak to Allston in the force.” Riley’s good eye opened. Even coming out of that wreck of a face, his gaze was compelling, drew her numb heart to him. “Guess who that leak turned out to be?”
“Watson.” She knew before Riley even finished his sentence. She’d probably always known.
“His word against mine, Melissa. That’s all I’ll give you.”
She nodded dumbly, tears coursing down her cheeks. She’d been fighting so long and so hard against this man. Because acknowledging that he wasn’t a super-hero, or James Bond, or a fabulously horrifying deviant, acknowledging that he was an ordinary guy with a job to do, meant she had to stop living in a made-for-TV drama and face the truth: she was in love with a man who didn’t fit into her life any more than she fit into his.
The tears came harder.
Riley cursed and lifted himself off the chair, knelt at her feet as he had that first night when he thought she was Rose, and slid his hands along her thighs to her waist in a familiar strong grip.
“I’m not going to make your decision for you,” he whispered. “But I can’t sit here and watch you cry. I’m not going to hurt you, now or ever. When they were working me over, when I came to after they left, all I could think of was you, how I could get to you, how I could protect you, keep you from—”
“Riley.” Oh God, he cared for her. She touched the strong lines of his jaw with a shaking hand, not believing it was possible to feel any worse until hopelessness cheated her out of the euphoria of the discovery.
She took his hand, brought the portrait out of her pocket and pressed it into his palm. At least she could show him her trust. “I think you’ll know what to do with this.”
He inhaled sharply, closed his fingers over it, and turned his face away. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, Riley. This is all so…strange to me. But I know you’ll do the right thing by the portrait. Why I know that, I haven’t a clue.”
He lifted his head and smiled into her eyes until her heart almost cracked. “How long have you had this?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Where was it?”
“In the giraffe’s…butt.”
He blinked, then a slow grin spread across his handsome, battered face. Melissa broke into a slightly hysterical giggle.
“Do I need to ask what you were doing rooting around a giraffe’s butt?”
She gave in to more crazy, painful laughter. “It was an accident. I knocked the statue over.”
“Rose will be devastated.”
Rose. Melissa’s giggles died. She put a hand to her churning stomach. “Oh, Riley. Rose called me. She said someone kidnapped her. She gave me directions—she wasn’t sure they were right. I didn’t know what to do…so I called Watson.”
Riley swore softly. “When was this?”
“A few hours ago.” Melissa slumped in the rocker. How many lives could she screw up in one evening?
“Did you happen to tell Watson she wasn’t sure of the directions?”
Melissa nodded.
“Good.” Riley fumbled for the phone in his pocket and dialed, his fingers swollen and clumsy over the tiny buttons. He had a brief conversation with someone named Ted Barker, signaled for paper and scrawled wobbly notes on the pink pad Melissa moved to the table next to him.
“Okay.” He punched his unit off and put a hand to his temple, his complexion going a shade grayer. “Go to your place and call Watson back. Tell him Rose just phoned with new directions. Give him these. I have to get downstairs for that cab.”
Melissa clutched the pink paper and nodded. She should go with him. Make sure he was okay. She couldn’t let him leave like this, knowing they wouldn’t be together again. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.” He struggled to his feet. “They’ll put me to bed and watch me. Nothing you can do. Stay here. Call Watson. Get some sleep. You can come see me in the morning.”
She stared at him miserably. He moved toward her, slid his arms around her and held her gingerly against his injured body. She could barely breathe, barely think. She didn’t belong in these arms anymore. She had no right to be in them when she didn’t intend to stay there.
He pulled back, took her chin in his hand. “This means it’s over, Melissa. My part in this investigation. We’ll get Rose back, the Feds will get Allston, it’s all over. Now you and I can start.”
She bit her lip, looked down at her bare feet. How the hell could you reject a man who’d been through such hell?
“Melissa.” He backed up against the doorjamb and rested his forehead on his hands, as if holding up his head was suddenly too much effort. “Something tells me I’m about to get hit harder than anything those guys could throw.”
“You should go get your cab, Riley. We can talk about this when you’re feeling—”
“No.” His voice rose and he winced. “Tell me now.”
“Riley, for God’s sake, look at you. You’re a wreck, you need a doctor. Who knows when you slept last, what horrible places you’ve been. You’ve had criminals pummeling you all evening. This is not the time to—”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” He lifted his head, his normal eye dark with frustration. “It’s my job. I saw it in your face at the hospital when I told you what I do.”
Melissa shook her head, letting her eyes plead with him. Please, Riley, not now.
“You still can’t give up on that suffocating ideal you’ve programmed yourself to want.” His voice came out hoarse and strained. “Can’t give up on your dreary deskbound Prince Charming.”
“That’s who I am.” She tried to speak gently and firmly, but the words came out cracked and shaky.
“Oh, really? What about the Melissa that wants to go around the world? Dress in black leather and explore physical pleasure for the hell of it?”
“She was just a tiny part of me. An experiment, an adventure.” She gestured helplessly. “I’m not happy in her skin.”
Riley pressed his temples as if he were afraid his head would burst. “Same house, same job, same routine day after day with Business School Bob until you can’t tell whether you’re living this year or last year, and your whole life just slips away. Is that what you want?”
Melissa gritted her teeth. “Maybe it sounds dull to you, Jonny Quest, but at least I won’t have to wait up every night for the knock on the door so I can see whether it’s you or the mob or the police. Whether you’re in handcuffs or in the hospital or in the morgue. At least Business School Bob can come home after a tough day and talk honestly about what he’s doing.”
She paced back and forth in short, jerky laps. “What the hell do I know about the world you operate in? I don’t want to know about that world. I want to be surrounded by honesty. I want trust. I want optimism and touches of idealism. I want normal people being decent to each other. Maybe you think I’m living in a happy-mouse theme park. Maybe I am. But so are most people, and we like it here. Just because there’s ugliness in the world doesn’t mean I want to invite it into my house. You and I are from different planets, we want different things. It just wouldn’t work.”
He let her finish, then stood watching her until she started to fidget. However hard she told herself to stand still and take it, the power from his gaze was too strong, made her feel as if he’d caught her in a lie when she knew she was finally in direct contact with the truth.
He moved away from the door, walked to her and took her wrists, pinned them behind her and brought her close, kissed her slowly and thoroughly, the way he had in her apartment two nights ago. His mouth was warm, sure and achingly familiar; he smelled like himself and, somewhat absurdly, like Rose’s pink floral soap.
Melissa turned her head away. “Don’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not fair.”
“Not fair?” He moved her closer, until their bodies came together, then planted a line of soft kisses across her forehead. “Why, because it reminds you that you have feelings for me?”
“Lust doesn’t count.”
He kissed her again, a sweet gentle kiss that made a volcano of emotion erupt through her body. “Does that feel like lust? Was it lust that kept you wanting me on top of you, inside you, the old-fashioned way you were so scornful of?”
“Riley…”
“Let me make love to you, Melissa. Not tonight—I can barely stay conscious right now. But let me at least do that. Then you can decide.”
“No.” She said the word through a longing so fierce she could barely stand it. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
Rose’s buzzer sounded, a harsh noise intruding on their tense whispers, making Melissa jump.
Riley didn’t flinch, still gripped her with his hands and with his stare. “Why?”
“Because…” She shook her head as if it needed clearing, as if she was still confused, rattled, uncertain. He’d kissed her, that’s all. Kisses couldn’t change the facts. Kisses couldn’t build a life. They were only kisses.
The buzzer sounded again, impatiently, twice. She glanced over at the panel by Rose’s door. “Your taxi. You should get to the hospital.”
“Okay.” He sighed, released her and stepped back unsteadily. “I’m going. But not for good, Melissa. You need time? Take it. But I’m not giving you up until we at least get the chance to try.”
Melissa stepped with him into the hall and watched his beautiful damaged figure stumble toward the elevator, her heart as bloody and bruised as he was. She’d done the right thing. It would hurt like hell for a while, but sooner or later she’d be free of regrets, happy she hadn’t allowed herself to get more entangled in a relationship that couldn’t make her truly at peace, either with him or with herself.
The elevator doors began closing over Riley’s stony, swollen face. Melissa turned away, unable to handle the devastation of watching him disappear so completely. She clutched the paper he’d given her and walked back into her apartment, promising herself to call the hospital every hour to check on his progress.
In the meantime, she had two jobs to do. Number one, practice calling Captain Watson and lying through her teeth. And number two, quell the nagging fear that tonight she might have gotten all the practice she needed—lying to herself.