Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

The scandal overshadowed their lives and sucked all the happiness from them. Even when they tried to ignore it, it was slowly consuming them.

Finally, when they were only going through the motions of being a couple, he asked her point-blank if she wanted to call off the wedding.

“Do you?” she said.

“You know I don’t. But I don’t want to keep you attached to me if you don’t want to be.”

“I do. But…”

She didn’t share with him whatever that major qualifier was, the reason why she was rethinking their engagement. He supposed he could take his pick. Was it that he was still under suspicion for criminal wrongdoing? Or that she was being publicly humiliated because her fiancé’s name was being bandied about on TV every night? Everyone in Charleston knew that he’d had some kind of sexual congress with Suzi Monroe, which was reason enough to break an engagement even if he was innocent of the other allegations.

Taking her hand, he said, “Hallie, I love you. I want to marry you. My feelings for you haven’t changed. But I don’t want you to remain tethered to me out of a sense of obligation.”

“It’s not like that, Raley. I swear it’s not.” She paused, then said, “We’re both under a lot of stress. In this kind of emotional climate, neither of us can or should make a life-affecting decision. It’s hard to think of marriage when we’re dealing with this. We must get past this before we can take a giant step forward. I think we should give ourselves some time and space to sort things out.” Her expression was one of appeal and earnestness. “Don’t you?”

He leaned forward and cranked up the air conditioner. Resettling in the driver’s seat, he glanced at his passenger, who asked, “Did she return your ring?”

“Not then. And I didn’t ask for it. What I did was agree to her terms.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I guess I was a little generous on the time and space I gave her.”

“What happened?”

“I rented the cabin and started spending days at a time there. Jay seized the opportunity.” He cut another glance at Britt, whose lips parted with surprise. “It wasn’t enough that he had any woman he wanted eating out of his hand, eating him,” he added crudely. “He had to have Hallie, too.

“He had bemoaned the fact that she was the only woman in Charleston he wanted but couldn’t have. She thought he was teasing. Like a sap, so did I. He wasn’t. He took advantage of my distance and her vulnerability, and she…”

Raley had been humiliated by the speed and ease with which Jay had replaced him, in Hallie’s bed, in her heart. Even after all this time, it hurt and infuriated him. “Maybe she’d wanted him all along, too. Anyway, she mailed the engagement ring to my folks. I told them to throw it away, sell it, give it to the next homeless person they saw. I didn’t care.”

For a time, the only sounds in the cab were the swish of the tires against the pavement and the ticking of the analog clock in the dash. He didn’t know if Britt was afraid of saying the wrong thing, of speaking a trigger word that would send him over the edge, or if she was pondering what he’d told her.

Maybe she was working out the time line, wondering if Jay had been romancing her at the same time he’d been sleeping with Hallie. In any case, she didn’t say anything for the next several miles.

Finally he said, “We’re about five minutes from the airstrip. You’d better be thinking of what you’re going to tell the police, but before you say anything to them, you should notify your lawyer.”

She nodded, absently. “Was that why Jay set you up to take a fall? If he did, that is. Was Hallie the reason he made certain you got into bed with Suzi at his party? Did it then go terribly wrong?”

Ruminating out loud, she continued. “Jay didn’t count on Suzi overdosing and dying in his guest room. All he planned was to catch you with your pants down while Hallie was out of town, and then make certain she found out about it so he could make his move on her.”

“Jay wouldn’t go to all that trouble just to get a woman. Even Hallie.”

“But you believe he arranged for you to wake up in bed with Suzi.”

“With dead Suzi.” She looked at him with patent incredulity. He turned his head and nodded. “Yes, Britt. Jay planned it all. He coached Suzi on what to say to me, things like red suspenders being a turn-on, and my occupation being manly. Jay put words in her mouth that he knew would stroke my bruised ego. He knew it was going to take more than big tits and good legs to get me into bed with her.”

“She came on to you with a drugged drink in hand.”

“Provided by Jay. I’m sure of it. Once I was compromised and he had the condoms to prove it, he saw to it that she snorted enough cocaine to kill her.”

“Raley…” She shook her head with disbelief. “You’re accusing your oldest friend of murder.”

“Yes.”

“Why would Jay do that? Why?”

“Because my getting drunk and fucking Suzi Monroe wasn’t catastrophic enough. That would have caused me personal problems, probably cost me my relationship with Hallie, but it wouldn’t have affected other areas of my life.

“But Suzi dying of a cocaine overdose while in bed with me, now that took on the scope of total ruination. An incident like that, indefensible because of a temporary memory loss, could destroy a man’s life. It would shut him down completely. Along with anything he was doing.”

He stopped at the intersection of two country roads and looked at her. After several seconds, he saw understanding crystallize in her eyes. In a low, barely audible voice, she said, “Your arson investigation.”

He said nothing, merely took his foot off the brake and accelerated through the intersection. Just beyond it, he turned onto an unmarked, unpaved road. The next mile and a half was riddled with potholes. The ride was rough.

“I remember this,” Britt said. “Last night I was hanging on for dear life.”

“You were playing possum.” She had feigned sleep while his hand was under her, groping for the seat belt. She probably thought he had copped a free feel or two while fumbling around, but he really couldn’t find the damn latch. It had been stuck between the seats. He considered explaining that now, then thought it was best not to mention it at all. He didn’t want her to know how well he remembered it.

Her car was parked against the rusted, corrugated tin wall of the dilapidated hangar where he’d left it. He pulled up beside it, but neither made a move to get out of the truck. He left the motor running long enough to lower their windows, then turned off the ignition.

It would be dark before she got back to the city. The sun had already set. A few stars had appeared. Not nearly as many as were visible above his cabin. The breathtaking night sky was one of the benefits of living so far from a large city.

That, and the pervasive quiet, and the absolute privacy.

Although the price one paid for absolute privacy was loneliness.

Britt was taking in the scenery through the windshield. “Pretty.”

“About seventy yards that way is the river,” he said, pointing with his chin. “The Edisto,” he said, reading her perplexity. “It forms the eastern edge of the ACE Basin. The Combahee, the western side. The Ashepoo sorta splits the difference.”

“I’ve never really gotten out and explored the area.”

“You should.”

She smiled apologetically over her indifference to the topography. Then, “What happened between Jay and Hallie?”

He looked in the direction of the river. “He broke her heart. She expected faithfulness, which wasn’t in Jay’s character. Not even in his vocabulary. He got what he wanted, which was a hard-won notch on his belt. Maybe two since Hallie was my fiancée. In effect, she and I both got fucked by Jay Burgess.”