Lisa Jackson - Malice

Frantically, she was unlocking the door.

Dropping his luggage beside the Impala’s bumper, Bentz lunged and stripped the keys from her hand. “Not a chance.” Breathing hard, he stared at her through sweat beading between his brows.

Who was this woman, this younger version of his ex-wife? Flesh and blood; no unearthly wraith.

She tried to get by him, but he blocked her exit by filling the space between her car and the minivan parked next to it. “Who the hell are you?” The smell of her perfume, gardenias, permeated the air and messed with his mind, but he refused to be seduced by the past. He was putting an end to this game, here and now.

She turned her beautiful face toward him and his insides turned to jelly. She looked so much like his ex-wife, she could have been Jennifer’s identical twin. Except that she was too young.

“I need my keys back,” she said firmly, without fear.

“Not yet, lady.” He grabbed her arm and held on tight, wanting to shake the truth from her.

“What’s your problem?” she asked.

“You are.”

“Me?” Her eyes narrowed in a scowl as she deliberately pulled her arm from his grasp.

For a millisecond he wondered if he’d made a mistake, if she really had no idea that she resembled Jennifer so closely. Except that she was in the same damned car he’d spotted in San Juan Capistrano and on the freeway. This woman had been dogging him.

“Give me back my keys,” she demanded as a man walking toward his car, jacket tossed over one shoulder, eyed them suspiciously.

Realizing that he might appear to be assaulting her, Bentz released her arm but stood his ground. “You’re not going anywhere.” He pushed her keys into his pants pocket.

“Do I have to call the police?” she said, and the man in the distance slowed down to watch.

“Great idea.” He pulled out his badge, flipped it open. “I am the police.”

That seemed to satisfy the man, who slung his jacket under one arm and kept walking. “But then you know that, don’t you?” Bentz pressed her.

Her glossy lips turned into a pouty frown.

“Hey, if this badge isn’t good enough, then we’ll talk to someone from L.A. Fine with me. We’ve all been looking for you.”

“Then you already know who I am?” she asked, one eyebrow lifting over the frames of her sunglasses.

“I know that you’re trying to play some sick mind game with me.”

“Is that so?”

“You’ve been taunting me, trying to make me think you’re my dead ex-wife.”

“You sound like a lunatic. Give me back my keys.”

“Not on your life.”

He flipped up her sunglasses and found himself staring into eyes as green and vibrant as Jennifer’s. And yet something was off, something not quite right.

His heart was pounding in his eardrums, a million questions sizzling through his mind. Who was she? Why was she doing this? Where had she come from? “Two women are dead because of you.”

Something flickered in her eyes and she pulled back slightly. “What? Dead? No.”

“Shana McIntyre, killed in her pool. You heard about it, right?”

She seemed genuinely shocked. “You think that I…? Oh, God, no. I had nothing to do with that.”

“And Lorraine Newell. You remember her?”

The look she gave him was blank, as if she’d never heard of the woman.

“She’s dead, too. Took a bullet to the head last night. Just after she called me about you. She spotted you last night, right before you killed her.”

She seemed slightly unnerved. “I don’t know anything about that.”

The faint trembling of her lower lip was convincing. But then he’d had a taste of her acting ability. “You and I, we need to go downtown.”

“What?”

“There are some people you need to talk to. Detectives who have some questions for you.”

She closed her eyes a second. “Listen RJ, I-”

“Why do you call me that?”

Her smile faded, and for a second she became Jennifer again. “Because it’s what I always called you. Don’t you remember?”

He almost bought her act. Almost. But he couldn’t believe her gall. “Are you really still trying to make me think you’re her?” he asked, dumbfounded that she would try to keep up the ruse. “Why the hell are you doing this? Why are you haunting me? What do you want? Why did you show up at my house?” Although Bentz was usually taciturn, preferring to let a suspect ramble on and on while he sat quietly, he couldn’t keep the questions that had been plaguing him from tumbling out of his mouth.

“At your house?”

“You remember-the cottage outside New Orleans?”

“What?”

“And the hospital…You were there, too. In the doorway. When I was waking up from the coma. And then again on the pier in Santa Monica. Oh, and yeah, at the old inn in San Juan Capistrano.”

She remained silent as a flock of pigeons scuttled to a landing on the pavement beyond her car. In his peripheral vision Bentz noticed them pecking at the street, then scattering as a car cruised by.

When she didn’t respond, he felt his fists clench in frustration. “You’ve been calling me, harassing my wife, and you’re a person of interest in two murder investigations. So that’s it. We’re taking a ride down to police headquarters.” He reached into his pocket for the Impala’s keys. “Get in. I’ll drive.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Not comfortable with that, Jennifer? ”

“I, uh-” She looked away, across the tops of the vehicles, their windshields reflecting the bright glare as travelers scuttled in and out of the terminal.

Could he trust her? No way! But there were so many questions…

“All right. We do need to talk.”

“No shit.” He held the keys fast in his hand. His heart pounded like a drum and his thoughts spun in wild circles, nerve synapses jangling. Jesus, she looked like Jennifer. So much. She smelled like her and walked like her and teased like her. “So talk.”

A jet thundered overhead, its roar receding as it cut upward through the blue sky.

“Not here.”

“Here’s fine. Or, better yet, at the station.”

“I was thinking somewhere a little more…private.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“How about Point Fermin?” she asked, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a way that cut straight to his heart.

As it always had.

“Why there?” he asked, but he knew the answer. He and Jennifer used to take road trips past the old lighthouse. There’d been so many lazy afternoons strolling the acres of shaded lawns, finding secluded spots beyond the colorful gardens.

“Because, RJ, it’s special for us, isn’t it?” she said, her grin widening. “You must remember all the times we drove there, working our way down the coast. The picnics. The sunshine. The lovemaking.”

It was true…but how did she know? How could she recount the most intimate details of his life?

He squeezed her car keys so hard, the jagged metal edges cut into his palm. Now that he’d met this woman Bentz had more questions than answers.

But that was going to change. Starting now.

“So Bentz is gettin’ out of Dodge,” Bledsoe said, catching up with Hayes in the stairwell of the stationhouse. “I don’t like it.”

“You didn’t like it when he was in town, either. Face it, Bledsoe, nothing makes you happy.”

“The guy’s a prick and I wish he’d never shown up. But that was before he was connected to all these homicides. Now, I think he should stick around.” They reached the ground level of the station house and Hayes pushed open the door, the warmth of the afternoon a change from the air-conditioned interior of Parker Center. Outside, Bledsoe adjusted the waistband of his pants, hiking them up. Then he shook out a cigarette and offered the pack to Hayes, who declined.