Marilyn Pappano - Killer Smile

When Daniel spoke, his voice would seem calm to most people, but she heard the stress, the tight control. “Would you say that again?”

She thought about repeating it verbatim, just to tweak his frustration a little tighter, because she knew he didn’t want a repeat. He wanted an explanation.

Deserved an explanation.

After drawing a deep breath, she exhaled, hoping to blow out some of her own stress, but it didn’t work. “I have a stalker,” she said flatly. “I got him about a year ago, right around Halloween.” That was Stacia’s birthday. Her sister had even joked about how bad her luck was: her birthday, and Natasha got a secret admirer. “Last weekend, he sent me a message that he had enjoyed his visit with Kyle on Saturday. You remember—”

Daniel growled. Of course he remembered her first fiancé.

“I still run into Kyle occasionally, so I called to see what he could tell me about this guy, and... I talked to his mother. He had a bad accident that day. He fell down the stairs at his house. He’s in a coma, and they don’t know whether he’ll survive.” She closed her eyes briefly, and an image of her first fiancé came to mind: boyish, auburn-haired, bearing a strong resemblance to Britain’s Prince Harry. The idea that he might die broke her heart.

“RememberMe said—”

“What?” Daniel interrupted, still looking flummoxed.

“RememberMe. It’s his email address. It’s the only name I have for him.”

“You don’t know who he is?”

“If I knew, I would call him by name.” She mimicked his dry, stating-the-obvious tone almost perfectly. “I have no idea. Stacia and I considered every guy I ever met and came up with nothing.” It was hard, looking critically at people she’d been friends with, had dated, kissed or more, and wondering if they could be dangerous. Could one of them be the one so determined to terrorize her? Was anyone she knew actually capable of that?

Dear God, she hoped not.

“What do you know?”

The memory of her first contact with the man was clearer now than the day it happened. At the time, it had been no big deal, just one more email from a stranger in an inbox that got plenty of those every day. His was friendly, lighthearted. It had made her smile, and she’d needed the smile, and she truly hadn’t found anything intrusive about it. She’d always had the option of deleting the email and, in that case, would likely never hear from him again.

Instead, she’d chosen to answer. What would have happened if she hadn’t?

“He sent me an email, just a short note. It had been a gray and dreary day, and he said it reminded him of the day we’d met. He said, of course, I probably didn’t remember because I had been surrounded by admirers. He said—” She broke off, pulled out her cell and scrolled through her email. She hadn’t known in the beginning why she kept his messages. It certainly wasn’t foreboding, and she hadn’t had any idea that they might be important someday. Maybe she’d just liked the picture attached to the first one, or the cartoon embedded in the second, or the link to a funny video in the third one. But she had kept them. Every one.

She offered the phone to Daniel, and he took it. It was big enough that there was no chance of an accidental touch. His touch had always been simple. No-nonsense. Comforting. It had made her feel safe and protected and loved and aroused and so very lucky. And afraid. She’d wanted to love him and adore him and never, ever hurt him, and she’d done it all—the loving, the adoring and the hurting.

He wouldn’t let her hurt him again. She knew that. He wouldn’t let anything the least bit sweet enter into his thoughts or his actions, because he had to protect himself from her, and that hurt her.

Daniel read the note, then gave the photo a cursory glance, unimpressed by it. It had taken her breath away the first time: sunset that very day over the ocean, the sun’s rays bursting out of dark clouds to form a halo of gold and deep pink and dark blue and luscious purples. She’d thought about having it enlarged, printed and framed to hang on her wall, and Daniel gave it just a look. Huh. A sunset.

He went on to read the second mail, the third, on down the list. After four minutes, according to the bank sign across the street, he looked up. “These aren’t exactly what comes to mind when I think ‘stalker.’”

“I didn’t think of him that way, either. I honestly thought it was someone I knew who was being coy. Seeing how long it would take me to figure out who it was. That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before the number of emails passed five hundred in the first four months. Now it’s around two thousand. Plus he’s sent me nine hundred plus texts, twenty-eight cards, a half dozen flower deliveries and four personal deliveries. The ones you’ve read, he was still being charming and fun and not creepy.”

He stared at her a long time, his dark gaze steady. He could make a person squirm with that gaze, in both good ways and bad. She could easily imagine him in an interrogation room with a suspect across the table, getting a confession without saying a word. That look just compelled a person to talk.

“Did you contact the police?”

“Yes. Apparently, stalkers aren’t a big deal these days. Just about everyone in Los Angeles has one.” Then she sighed. “I talked to a detective, asked for advice. She looked into it and agreed it was probably just someone I knew playing games. He hadn’t actually done anything. She suggested I change my email address and my cell number. I’d already done both a half dozen times. She said moving couldn’t hurt. I’d already done that. She said let her know if he escalated.

“I called again after Kyle’s accident. She looked into it again. He was home alone. He was carrying some boxes down the stairs and apparently misjudged a step. His parents believed it was an accident. His girlfriend believed it. No one had a reason to hurt him.”

Her conversations with the detective had all sounded so logical over the phone in her tightly secured apartment or sitting at the woman’s desk in a building filled with armed people. She was overreacting. Hypersensitive. Reading more into the emails than was there.

But there’d been one small issue that prevented Natasha from taking the detective at her word.

“Who did you talk to?” Daniel asked.

“Felicia Martin.”

His face tightened. He’d gone through the academy with Felicia. They’d called her Flea because she was nearly a foot shorter than most of them, wiry and compact, constantly in motion and tough as hell to get rid of. He and Flea had liked and respected each other. It had seemed only natural to Natasha that, after the way she’d ended their engagement, Flea neither liked nor respected her.

“She’s a good cop.”

Natasha didn’t respond. Cops were also people, and people were influenced by a lot of things. Was Felicia a good cop? Probably. Would she have taken more interest in Natasha’s complaint if they were strangers? Maybe. But that wouldn’t have changed the bottom line: that Natasha was being haunted by a phantom who didn’t leave the slightest trace and Felicia didn’t have the resources to discover who he was.

Daniel set her phone carefully on the table between them. “So, how did you make the leap from Kyle falling down the stairs to thinking that I’m in danger?”

“The same message where he mentioned Kyle. He said he was looking forward to meeting with you, Eric and—” Her mouth froze, and it took her a moment to get it working again. “And Zach. He said he hoped the visits would be as satisfying.”

“Zach.” Daniel’s voice was hollow, his mouth quirking in a sardonic twist, his gaze rolling skyward in a grimace of distaste. “There’s four of us now? Is that all, or did RememberMe miss one?”