Sandra Brown - Ricochet

“Positive.”

“Go play the piano for a while.”

“I don’t play the piano.”

“Right.” She grinned.

He forced one in return, but it felt like an unnatural stretching of his lips.

“Try and get some rest. See you in the morning.”

He scowled. “Not too early.” With that, he opened the door and got out.

The gutter had turned into a rushing creek. He stepped over the swift current and onto the sidewalk. Then he climbed the steps to his front door and unlocked it. He turned to wave good-bye to DeeDee. She tooted her horn as she drove away through the rain.

Inside, Duncan switched on a table lamp and, out of habit, walked toward the kitchen. When he got there, he couldn’t think of a single thing that sounded appetizing. He wasn’t hungry. He wanted nothing more to drink even though Smitty’s whiskey hadn’t had the desired mind-numbing effect. His head was all too clear.

Heedless of the rainwater he was dripping onto the rugs and hardwood floors, he made his way back into the living room, then stood in the center of it like a stranger, looking about for something familiar with which to make an emotional connection. For the first time ever in his life that he could remember, he felt utterly alone.

He could call his parents, who had always been there whenever he needed them, ready with an embrace, with a prayer and words of encouragement, with unqualified love. But he couldn’t talk to them about this. Not yet.

DeeDee would come back in a heartbeat. She’d even offered to stay with him tonight. But he couldn’t drag her down with him into this morass of guilt and self-loathing. Besides, he hadn’t been completely honest with her.

He had confessed making love to Elise.

He hadn’t confessed falling in love.

He glanced at the piano with complete indifference, but the piano bench was a painful reminder of the morning Elise had sat on it, looking up at him with imploring eyes that entranced and ensnared as facilely as they lied.

Irresistibly drawn to it, he sat down where she had sat. He was haunted by the possibility that nothing she had said or done had been true. Nothing. And worse, he feared that she’d been coached by Savich, that she had operated strictly under instructions from him. That when she was moving against Duncan on that shabby sofa, every touch, every expression, every sigh had been calculated.

Actually, it was treachery worthy of Savich. If Savich had shot him execution-style as he had Freddy Morris, it would have been too obvious, and Savich might have been easily captured.

Besides that, a bullet to the head wouldn’t have been poetic. How much more satisfying to Savich to place Elise in his path, then sit back and watch with glee as Duncan came under the spell of her allure, compromising every ethical code to which he adhered, sacrificing his integrity, his career, his self-respect, everything that was valuable to him, slowly but inexorably bringing about his own downfall.

A brilliant plan.

He bowed his head lower and tried to compose a prayer of contrition, but the only sounds that issued from his raw throat were harsh, dry sobs. He longed to cry, but what would he be crying over? His squandered morality? Or Elise? What right did he have to cry over losing something that was never his to lose? Elise was lost to him forever.

He was simply lost.

He sat there a long time, but he never touched the keyboard. Eventually he got up, switched off the lamp, and started upstairs, feeling his way in the dark. The rain-streaked skylight cast a watery shadow on the wall of the staircase that made it appear to be weeping. He paused on the landing to watch the mournful trickles reflected on the wallpaper, then entered his bedroom, switching on the light as he passed through the door.

She was backed into the corner between his bed and the window.

He cried out in disbelief, shock, outrage. And joy. She was alive!

Acting instinctively, he whipped his pistol from its holster and crouched, aiming the barrel directly at her. “Drop the coat and face the wall, hands above your head.”

“ Duncan -”

“Fucking do it!” he shouted. “Do it or so help me God, I’ll shoot you.”

Elise dropped the rain slicker that she’d been holding folded over her arm and turned toward the wall, hands raised.

It took a conscious effort to close his mouth and control his rapid breathing. There was nothing he could do to slow down his racing heart. “Do you have the twenty-two?”

“The what?”

Keeping his pistol aimed at her, he came up behind her and hastily patted her down, running his hand down both her sides from armpit to ankle, up the inseam of her jeans and around the waistband. Satisfied that she wasn’t armed, he sidestepped across the floor and picked up the telephone on the nightstand. She turned around as he fumbled with the rubberized digits on the phone.

She held up a hand, palm out. “Don’t call anyone. Not until I’ve had a chance to explain.”

“You’ll explain, all right.”

“ Duncan -”

“Don’t call me that! I’m not Duncan to you. I’m not anything to you except the cop that’s gonna haul your ass to jail.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.”

“You don’t have to hold a gun on me.”

“I’m sure you said that to Trotter and Napoli, and look what happened to them. How’d you get in here?”

“I heard you downstairs. Were you crying?”

“How did you get in?” he repeated, enunciating the words.

“A back window on the ground level wasn’t locked. I guess you forgot to set your alarm. Why were you crying?”

Again, he dodged that question. “Armies of men and women all over the Southeast have been busting their butts looking for you. There’s been much ado over your disappearance off that bridge. You enjoyed all that attention, I’m sure.”

She spread her arms at her sides. “Do I look like I enjoyed it?”

She had a point. She looked like hell. “What happened to your hair?”

“When you fake your suicide, the first thing you do is change your appearance.”

Her hair looked like it had been sawed off with a dull butcher knife. It was short and spiky and stuck up in random spots like a punk rocker’s. And it had been dyed a dark brown.

She wasn’t dressed in the quality stuff she usually wore. The jeans and shirt were too large and looked like rejects of a yard sale. On her feet were plain canvas sneakers. No turquoise stones on these shoes. They were also wet and muddy.

Her face was gaunt, the thinness emphasized by the extreme haircut. Her eyes were outlined in dark makeup that had been applied with a heavy hand. When she saw that he noticed it, she said, “To cover up a black eye, compliments of Meyer Napoli.”

“Who put up the fight? Him or you?”

She extended her arm and pushed up the long sleeve of her shirt. From wrist to elbow her arm was mottled with bruises in a range of colors. “I don’t think he expected me to fight back.”

The cordless telephone felt heavy in Duncan ’s hand. So did the pistol, but he didn’t lower either of them. “He was waiting for you in your car?” She gave him an odd look, and he said, “That much we figured out. Napoli took a taxi to where you’d left your car.”

“While I was with you.”

“While you were favoring me with the motherlode of fucks.”

She lowered her gaze but only for a moment. When she looked at him again, her eyes were bright with anger. “Don’t you get it yet?”

“Apparently not.”

“I was desperate,” she cried out. “I would have done anything to enlist your help.”

“But you didn’t do anything. You did that.”

“Because I knew…” Again her gaze faltered, but only for a moment before it locked with his. “Because I knew that’s what you wanted.”