Stephen Cannell - At First Sight

"You don't know how dangerous icy roads can be:" I told her, struggling to contain my anger.

"I live in North Carolina, Chick. I drive icy roads all winter. Let's get this stuff into the car. I want to leave."

She picked up a box and I had to block her from walking out the door with it.

"Leave it:' I said. "You're not going."

"An order?" Her eyes turned instantly hard. She stepped back, still holding the box, but turned sideways and spread her feet like she was settling into some kind of corny Bruce Lee fighting stance.

After more years of Evelyn's bullshit than I care to remember, you'd think I would have developed a few calluses for this kind of horseshit-an attitude shield. But I obviously hadn't, because right then all I wanted to do was smack her in the mouth.

Here's the deal. I invite a girl up to the mountains. I treat her to a beautiful Christmas card setting. I light a fire, turn on music, make every damn effort to be charming. I even pour three fucking bottles of expensive wine, which, believe me, shouldn't get uncorked unless I do. And what do I get? I get a lot of nutty shit about wanting to go home. She was standing in my kitchen, her mouth pulled down, looking way-the-hell-too-much like Evelyn.

Suddenly, blind, white anger flashed through me. But it passed quickly. I looked at her carefully over the rim of the wineglass, calmed myself down, and smiled.

"Let me lay out a few ground rules, just so we'll both know what's going on."

"Before you do that, Chick, here."

Paige handed me the box she'd been holding, then without warning, turned and sprinted into the living room, heading toward the telephone.

I dropped the box and took off after her, but she was quick, and by the time I got into the main room she already had the handset to her ear and was trying to get a dial tone. There wasn't one. I already knew that. It didn't matter if the phone company had fixed the lines because the first thing I did when we got here, while she sat in the car refusing to get out, was disconnect the phone at the junction box.

"What's going on, Chick? Am I a hostage?"

"Bad choice of words. You're a houseguest who I will not permit to make a dangerous trip down the mountain on icy roads at night. I have your safety to protect."

"The phone is dead."

"Lines are down again because of the storm."

"Then how did you call the lodge? Were you faking that call?"

"I don't take well to being quizzed, Paige. I'm not some country club pussy like Chandler. I'm a man who is used to being in charge-used to controlling his space:'

Of course, the minute I said that, I knew it was wrong but this wasn't turning out the way I envisioned it.

Her teeth were bared, her feet spread. In that moment, she looked like she was getting ready to kick my ass.

I had another rush of anger. I was beginning to hate her guts.

ANGER COLORED CHICK'S FACE AS I STOOD THERE WITH the dead phone in my hand. Apparently, I wasn't cooperating with his twisted fantasy. I watched as he made a huge effort to compose himself, taking half a dozen deep breaths.

"I need to tell you something," he finally said. "I've been waiting for just the right moment, and now that we're alone with no distractions, I think you need to understand a few things. It's important because it affects everything between us."

"There is no `us: Chick."

"When I first saw you in Hawaii almost a year ago, I had never seen anyone so breathtakingly beautiful… "

"Please, Chick… "

"Stop arguing and interrupting! Listen to me, for chrissake!" He took several more breaths, then calmed himself again and continued.

"Y'see, Paige, I've never been a man with a big emotional component. I don't know why that is. Maybe it was my dad dying so early in my adolescence. Maybe it was because my mother and grandmother were such hovering crones. I don't know what caused it. But then, in Hawaii last January, I saw you. You were my definition of human perfection. Right then a floodgate of emotion just opened. All these feelings I'd never felt before, they just swamped me."

"Chick, please! Don't do this. You don't have a clue who I am."

He cocked his head like an animal scoping prey. The look was chilling.

"But I was married, so it was one of those impossible things," he continued, as if he hadn't heard me. "You had Chandler. I had Evelyn. So you went home; I went home. That should have been the end of it. But Paige, I couldn't get you out of my mind-couldn't erase the memory of you from my thoughts. Little things, adorable things about you haunted my every waking moment. The birthmark on your calf, I love that birthmark. The way you like to sit with your legs tucked under you, the giggly laugh you have. The little hairs on your arms, so fine, so perfect?'

Jesus Christ, I thought. This guy is out of his fucking mind. "Chick, you've had quite a bit of wine, so let's stop this right now, before either of us says something we don't mean."

"I've been planning to tell you this for months, Paige. I've thought about nothing else for almost a year. From the second I first sawyou getting out of the pool at the Four Seasons, it was love at first sight."

He took another sip of the Bordeaux and set down the glass. "I have plans for us. Dreams."

I thought, I've had enough. This asshole murdered my husband. If I'm going down, then it might as well be swinging. So I shouted my next words right in his smug face.

"Plans for us? I'm not interested in you, you silly son-of-a-bitch. I still love Chandler!"

"Chandler is dead!" he shouted back. "He's gone. Evelyn's gone. It's just us now."

I could see where this was headed. He would convince himself that I wanted him, despite my protests. First rape, then maybe even murder.

Suddenly, Chick lunged toward me and grabbed my purse. "What've you got in there?" I was clutching the bag so tightly he must have sensed I had something inside. He jerked the bag open and pulled out the broken wineglass stem, waving it between us. "What's this for?"

I didn't answer.

His eyes fell on Bob Butler's letter and the drawing. He reached into the purse and plucked them out. He opened the letter first, took one step back, and scanned it quickly. Then he glanced at the picture.

The truth of Bob's accusation was immediately all over his face.

He dropped the letter to the floor. His eyes went dead, like the flickering glass eyes on the wall-hung animals.

He whispered something. At first I didn't understand him, but then he said it louder. "You complete me."

The insanity of that remark rocked me.

"You killed them both, didn't you? First Chandler, then Evelyn. All of it because of this twisted fantasy that you and I would one day be together?'

I had to get out of here now or die trying. "Give me the keys to the car, Chick."

"I can't let you leave, Paige."

"You gonna kill me, too?"

He stepped forward. Both his hands were extended toward me, a strange look of frustration clouding his face.

It was time to make my move, so right then, when he wasn't expecting it, I gave him a kin-geri, which is a polite Japanese term for a kick to the balls. My foot strike caught him squarely, in the bulge of those tight, Roberto Cavalli stretchies. He grabbed his crotch, doubled over, and then dropped to his knees in pain.

I exploded through the house and out the front door into the night. The fresh snow was almost a foot high on the porch. I ran down the steps, slipping once and going down, but I rolled immediately up to my feet and sprinted toward the gold Mercedes, running my fingers under the front bumper, looking for the hide-a-key. Nothing.

"Paige, come back here! Don't make me do this!"

I turned and saw Chick standing on the front porch holding a scoped deer rifle. I spun and ran as fast as I could, into the trees at the side of the drive. I had carelessly left my sweater inside and the cold, wind-whipped snow swirled around me. Then I heard a rifle's report, heard a limb snap nearby. I kept running, heading up the steep bank into the forest by the side of his driveway, my short choppy sprinter's stride churning in the deep drifting snow.