Marilyn Pappano - Killer Smile

He was here. Maybe in one of the groups of gawkers, maybe down the block or in one of the nearby buildings. Maybe he’d driven away after starting the fire, but he wouldn’t have gone far. He could be parked on a side street, watching his handiwork. Watching her.

She didn’t glance around. It was too damn hard to look at strangers’ faces and wonder, Is it him? Is it that man wearing the suit that looks like a lawyer? Is it the mechanic-looking guy with the grease rag hanging out from his back pocket? Could it be that firefighter in all that gear? Is one of them capable of doing this? Are all of them capable?

Was it even a man? She had assumed, and Stacia and Felicia Martin, but none of the communications made that certain.

Hey, RememberMe? How about a new name? I’m thinking ScrewYou.

Yeah, she liked the sound of that. It made her sound brave and bold, even though she was quaking inside.

She saw two figures approaching in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t make herself look their way. Strange that, even after five years, she needed to see no more than that dark blur to know the shorter of the two was Daniel. She needed no more than to remember the way he’d left last night to know his expression was going to be as dark as the smoke, that he was going to be wound as tight as she was and more ready to explode.

He stopped directly in front of her, too close, invading her space. She wanted to step back, but her feet wouldn’t move, so she slowed her breathing and dragged her gaze slowly to his face.

Dark. Angry. Hostile. Very tightly controlled.

“Are you all right?”

The question startled her, making her blink slowly. The unexpectedness of it struck her at the same time the ridiculousness of it did. She was standing there unharmed, wasn’t she? The firefighters weren’t offering her medical care, were they? Of course she was all right. Though how the hell could she possibly be all right when her stalker had just set her damn car on fire?

She wanted to laugh and to cry, but instead clenched her jaw tightly and nodded.

“Do you know what happened?”

Before she could remind herself to maintain her control, an answer slipped out. “Well, it didn’t spontaneously combust. I’m guessing he did it.”

“Who?” That came from the second man, a few feet behind and to the side of Daniel. He’d been at the desk beyond Daniel’s yesterday afternoon when she returned to the police station, and seeing him now confirmed her first impressions: he was big, dark and gave off a calm, solid sense that nothing ever got past him.

How much did he know? Had Daniel told him anything? Everything?

Squeezing her eyes shut, Natasha wished herself someplace else. It didn’t work, of course. When she opened them again, the big man was waiting for an answer. Daniel was looking hard at the people who watched the firefighters working.

“Someone’s been harassing me,” she said stiffly.

He politely reworded it for her. “Someone’s stalking you.”

She nodded.

“And you think he followed you here from California?”

Yes, Daniel had told him something. She couldn’t tell by the man’s impassive expression how much he’d confided, how much of his hostility he’d passed on.

Wishing for a deep breath that would erase the tension contracting every muscle in her body, she nodded. “He sent me an email saying that he would find me. After all, Cedar Creek isn’t very big.”

The other detective’s expression didn’t change. “When did you get here?”

“Yesterday, around noon.”

“Who knew you were coming?”

“My sister.” She hesitated, glancing at Daniel, still intensely observing the bystanders as if she and his friend didn’t exist, then added, “Daniel’s parents.”

“Who would they tell?”

“Nobody.” Stacia was scared to death for her and viewed anyone who even casually mentioned Natasha with suspicion and wariness. Archer and Jeffrey didn’t know about the stalker, but she’d asked them not to tell anyone about her visit. They hadn’t even told Daniel, so they certainly wouldn’t have confided in anyone else.

Abruptly, Daniel turned back to her. “You should get inside.”

“The fire department evacuated the hotel. Besides, the chief said the fire marshal would want to speak to me. He told me to wait here.”

“I’ll go find Jamey and tell him she’ll be at the station.” The other detective walked away before either Natasha or Daniel could protest.

Though the flames were apparently out, the firefighters continued to spray the wreckage. As if the clouds had decided to help, the scattered raindrops multiplied into a deluge. Water running over her scalp and pouring down her neck, Natasha gave her car one last woeful look then turned toward the police station. She didn’t want to go there, but where else could she go?

Daniel walked beside her, turning several times to study the people scurrying behind them, before he spoke. “So you weren’t wrong.”

The last thing in the world she expected was a smile, but a wry one pulled at her mouth. “Some people might say I was actually right.” God help her, she wished she hadn’t been.

His only response was a grunt.

They passed the gazebo, pretty and invitingly dry underneath its roof, then approached the steps to the police station. Still hugging her purse, she was thinking of her ruined plans for the day—heading out of town—and wondering if RememberMe was Karma’s way of repaying her for her fickleness in love and dreading having to replace the car, which she’d just paid off six months ago, when a short, sharp curse from Daniel drew her out of her gloom.

She’d gone a few strides past him and turned back to see him lifting one foot from a puddle at the base of the steps. His pants leg was drenched to the calf, and water streamed from his boot.

“That’s a word Archer would say,” she commented mildly. How had he not seen the puddle? This was only her third visit here, and she’d noticed it.

“Where do you think I learned it?” Grimacing, he shook his foot to dislodge the excess wet then looked back toward the courthouse. “You don’t need to mention that to Ben. Forgetting it’s there three times in two days isn’t a very detective-ly thing to do.”

Her smile came back, this time without the wryness. “So that’s why you were barefoot yesterday.”

He shrugged before climbing the rest of the steps, holding open one of the tall doors, then following her inside. This time, instead of stopping at the counter, she walked behind him around the end, down a hall and into a conference room. Silently he extended one hand, and she slipped out of her jacket and gave it to him, then he left again.

After going to the far end of the table, she sat in the single chair there to survey her surroundings. The room was about as dull as any she’d ever seen. It looked like the place office furniture went to die: a table that had clearly seen better years, file cabinets with broken drawers, mismatched desk chairs—not wooden ones that got better with age but the cheap kind with five wheels and ugly vinyl or fabric seats—and lamps of varying sizes and styles.

Ironically, the bones of the room were beautiful. The walls needed something more imaginative than drab white paint that looked as if it had come out of the can already dirty, and the ceiling could definitely benefit from a new coat of paint as well, but the vintage black-and-white floor tile and the elaborate trims around the doors and windows were lovely, and the eighteen-inch-wide crown molding was incredible. She should take a picture to send her brother, Nick, a finish carpenter, who complained he’d been born in the wrong century to do really beautiful work.