Linda Howard - To Die For

“I am. I’m pretty beat, myself. You redecorated, huh? What was wrong with the way things looked before?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you’re so interested in interior decorating. Go home. Leave. But make sure you have someone bring my car to me first thing in the morning, okay? I can’t be stuck here without it.”

“I’ll take care of it.” He reached out and cupped my face, his thumb lightly tracing my lips. I drew back, glaring at him, and he laughed. “I wasn’t going to kiss you. Not yet, anyway. There might not be anyone around to see at this time of night-or morning, rather-but since your clothes tend to come off when I kiss you, we’d better wait until we’re more private and have both had some sleep.”

He made it sound as if I started stripping whenever he touched me. I gave him a poisonously sweet smile. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you cram-”

“Uh-uh,” he cautioned, putting a finger over my lips. “You don’t want to let that sassy mouth get you in trouble. Just go inside, lock the door behind you, and go to bed. I’ll see you later.”

Never let it be said that I don’t recognize good advice when I hear it. I always recognize it; actually following it is a different category. In this instance, however, I did the wise thing and slipped inside, and locked the door just as he’d directed. Yeah, he might think I was actually following his orders, but it just so happened his orders coincided with my survival instinct.

I turned on my kitchen light and stood at the door waiting until his car pulled away before I turned off the outside lights. Then I stood in the middle of my familiar, cozy kitchen and let everything that had happened that night crash in on me.

There was a sense of unreality to everything, as if I had disconnected from the universe. My surroundings were my own, yet they seemed somehow alien, as if they belonged to someone else. I was both exhausted and jittery, which is not a good combination.

First thing, I turned on all the lights on the ground floor and checked all the windows, which were securely locked. Likewise with the doors. The dining alcove had double French doors leading onto my covered patio, where I keep strands of little white lights outlining the posts and roof edge, and entwined through the young Bradford pear trees. I turn the lights on almost every night that I’m home, because I love how they look, but tonight I felt vulnerable with all that glass and I pulled the heavy curtains closed over the French doors.

After setting the security system, I did what I had been wanting to do for hours. I called Mom.

Dad answered, of course. The telephone was on his side of the bed because Mom didn’t like answering it. “Hello.” His voice was a sleepy mumble.

“Dad, it’s Blair. There was a murder at the gym tonight, and I wanted to let you know I’m all right.”

“A- what ? Did you say murder?” He sounded much more awake now.

“One of the members was killed in the back parking lot”-I heard Mom in the background saying fiercely, “Give me the phone!” and I knew his possession of the phone was numbered in seconds-“a little after nine, and I- Hi, Mom.”

“Blair. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I wouldn’t have called, but I was afraid someone else would, and I wanted you to know that I’m okay.”

“Thank God you did,” she said, and we both shuddered at what she might have done if she’d thought any of her children had been hurt. “Who was killed?”

“Nicole Goodwin.”

“The copycat?”

“That’s her.” I might have complained about Nicole a time or two to my family. “She was parked in the back parking lot, waiting for me-we had a slight altercation this afternoon-”

“Do the police think you did it?”

“No, no,” I soothed, though for a while I had definitely been Suspect Number One. Mom didn’t need to know that, though. “I had just stepped outside tonight and locked up when this man shot her, and he didn’t see me. He left in a dark sedan.”

“Oh, my God, you’re a witness ?”

“Not really,” I said ruefully. “It was dark and raining, and there’s no way I could ever identify him. I called nine-one-one, the cops came, and that’s all I know. They have just brought me home.”

“What took them so long?”

“The crime scene. It took forever for them to go over everything.” Not to mention I probably would have been home a couple of hours earlier if it hadn’t been for a certain lieutenant.

“Um… they brought you home? Why didn’t you drive?”

“Because my car is inside the area they have taped off, so they wouldn’t let me go back there. An officer is supposed to bring it to me in the morning.” Morning meant some time after daylight, because technically it was already morning. I expected to see my car between eight and ten, and I would be so lucky if an officer and not Wyatt delivered it. “Great Bods will have to be closed for a couple of days, too, maybe longer. I think I’ll go to the beach.”

“That’s a great idea,” she said firmly. “Get out of Dodge.”

It’s scary sometimes how my mom and I think alike.

I reassured her again that I was okay, that I was going to bed because I was exhausted, and hung up feeling much better. She hadn’t made any there-there noises, which is so not my mom, but I had headed off any well-meaning gossips who would have upset her.

I thought about calling Siana, but I was too tired to remember my list of grievances off the top of my head. After I’d had some sleep, I’d write them all down again. Siana would get a kick out of my run-in with Lieutenant Bloodsworth, because she knew about our past connection.

There was nothing I wanted more than sleep, so I turned off all the lights except for the dim sconces that lit the stairs; then I climbed up to my bedroom, where I pulled off my clothes and collapsed naked in my cloud of a bed. I groaned aloud with relief as I stretched out-then I ruined the moment of bliss by imagining Wyatt naked and stretching out on top of me.

The damn man was a menace. Before my wayward imagination went any further, I made myself recall and go over every detail of our last date, when he had acted like such a horse’s ass.

There. That worked.

Feeling peaceful, I rolled over and went to sleep. Lights Out, Blair.

He’d remembered that I drank Diet Coke. That was the first thought on my mind when I woke at eight-thirty. Lying there in bed blinking sleepily at the slowly whirling ceiling fan, I tried to decide whether the Diet Coke was significant. The romantic in me wanted to believe he remembered every little detail about me, but levelheaded me said he probably just had a very good memory, period. A cop had to have a good memory, right? It was part of the job description, reciting Miranda and all of that.

So the Diet Coke thing wasn’t important. For all I knew, he just assumed a woman would drink a diet soft drink, which was a really sexist thing to assume, never mind that he’d be right most of the time.

I’d fallen into bed instead of packing, so there went my planned early start for the beach. Not that it mattered, because I didn’t have a car. But someone-namely Wyatt-could show up with my car at any time, so I jumped out of bed and into the shower. The shower was a fast one, because I was so hungry I thought I’d be sick. Somehow I hadn’t gotten around to eating anything the night before.

Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t complain about being hungry when poor Nicole will never eat again. Tough. Nicole was dead and I wasn’t, and I didn’t like her any more now that she was dead than I did while she was alive.