“A Taurus has really good suspension,” I said, trying to deflect her. See? Somehow my subconscious knew the car was important.
“I don’t give a shit about the suspension!”
Huh. She really should try it out before being so dismissive.
I thought I heard something outside, but I didn’t dare turn my head to look. Besides the obvious points of entry into the house—the front door and the back door and the windows—there was a set of French doors leading onto the patio from the breakfast room. From where I was standing, I could catch a glimpse of the French doors and I thought I saw movement there, but I couldn’t look directly at them or she would know something was up.
Jason, standing to my right, didn’t have the same angle and couldn’t see anything except the stairs. Debra could see out the living room window, but her view was restricted because of the angle of the house and the sheer curtains that were drawn over the windows to let in light but provide a measure of privacy. I was the only one who knew rescue was at hand.
But what if they busted in the way cops do and scared Debra, and she pulled the trigger? I was dead, that was “what if.”
“How did you learn how to use a rifle?” I asked, not because I cared but just to keep her talking, keep her focused on something besides shooting me right now.
“I used to go hunting with my father. I also shoot skeet, so I’m very accurate.” She gave a fleeting glance at the bandage on my upper arm. “If you hadn’t bent down when you did, you’d have seen how accurate I am. No, wait—you wouldn’t. Because you’d be dead.”
“I wish you’d get off this dead stuff,” I said. “It’s boring. Not only that, you won’t get away with it.”
“Sure I will. Jason won’t tell, because he doesn’t like negative publicity.”
“He won’t have to tell. Two cops saw him kidnap me.”
“Kidnap?”
Her eyes rounded.
“He’s been trying to kill me, too,” I said. “So you won’t get caught. See, he does love you, because I wouldn’t do that for anyone.”
She glanced at him. “Is that true?” she asked hesitantly.
“I cut her brake line,” he admitted.
She stood very still for a moment, then tears began to well in her eyes. “You do love me,” she finally said. “You really love me.”
“Of course I do. I’m crazy about you,” he assured her.
Crazy
was a very apt word under the circumstances, don’t you think?
I blew out a relieved breath. “Good, that’s settled,” I said. “Y’all have a nice life. I think I’ll just be going—”
I took a half step back, and several things kind of happened all at once. When I moved, Debra reacted automatically and swung the rifle at me. Behind her came a crashing sound as the French doors were kicked in, and as if in slow motion, I saw her jump, startled. When she swung the rifle at me, my body sort of reacted all on its own, without any command from me. Muscle memory, you know? She swung, I jerked back, and years of training took over. I kept on going, my body bending back, legs tensing for the spring that would take me over, my arms going out for balance. The room turned upside down; then my legs and back muscles took over and provided the thrust and twist.
As a backflip, it was a disaster. Both my legs came up and Debra was way too close: my left foot caught her under the chin and the other knocked the rifle flying. Unfortunately, her finger was on the trigger and the motion pulled it; the sharp crack was deafening. Because she was in the way, my legs couldn’t complete their proper rotation and I fell flat on my back, hard. My kick under her chin sent her stumbling backward, completely off balance, her arms windmilling. She lost the battle to regain her balance and hit on her butt, skidding across the polished hardwood floor.
“Ouch!” I shrieked, grabbing my left big toe. I was wearing sandals, which is not the best choice of footwear for kicking someone in the chin.
“Blair!” The house was suddenly full of cops, pouring in from every opening. Uniformed cops, plainclothes cops—and Wyatt. He was the one who had literally burst through the French doors when he thought she was about to shoot me, and he scooped me up off the floor, holding me so tight to his chest I could barely breathe. “Are you all right? Did she hit you? I don’t see any blood—”
“I’m fine,” I managed to say. “Except you’re squeezing me to death.” The iron band of his arms loosened just a bit, and I added, “I hurt my toe.”
He drew back and stared at me, as if he couldn’t believe I was all in one piece and had come out of this without even a scratch. After the example of this past week, he must have been expecting me to be bleeding from a dozen bullet wounds.
“A hurt toe?” he said. “Good God. This calls for a cookie.”
See? I told you he was a fast learner.
Epilogue
You know who got shot? Jason. Can you think of anyone more deserving? Debra’s wild shot creased his head, since the rifle barrel had been flying upward when she pulled the trigger, and he’d hit the floor as if he’d been poleaxed. Everyone says that, but I don’t really know what a poleax is. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s something to do with cutting timber, but if that was the Final Jeopardy! answer, I wouldn’t bet all of my money on that question.
She didn’t kill him, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig, because heads do that when something tears up the scalp. Both of them started blabbering away, sort of blaming each other but at the same time trying to take the blame on themselves, and none of it made any sense, so I explained everything to MacInnes and Forester, and Wyatt, and even Chief Gray, who for some reason had come along. I think almost the entire police department was there. The SWAT team was, in their cool black fatigues, and when the medics came, my pal Keisha was one of them. We greeted each other like long-lost girlfriends.
Getting things sorted out took a while, so I went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee for everyone. I hobbled a little bit because my toe hurt, but I didn’t think it was broken.
About six o’clock, Wyatt took me home.
“Do me a favor,” he said during the drive. “For the rest of our lives together, don’t put me through another week that’s anything like this past one, okay?”
“None of this was my fault,” I said indignantly. “And I’m the one who’s had the worst of it, you know. I’ve been shot and bruised and battered, and if you hadn’t kept my mind off how much I hurt, I probably would have cried a lot.”
He reached over and caught my hand, held it tight. “God, I love you. The guys are going to be talking about that karate kick you gave her for the rest of their lives. Even the SWAT guys were impressed, and they try to be real hard-asses. Where did you take lessons?”
“I provide all sorts of lessons at Great Bods,” I said demurely. What, you thought I was going to tell him I sort of automatically did a backflip and didn’t intend to do what I did? Not in this lifetime.
This proves beyond a doubt, however, that you never know when you’ll need to do a backflip.
We called all the family and told them the crisis was over, which involved lots of explaining, but Wyatt and I didn’t want any company. My latest close shave had been a hair too close, because there’s something more immediate about a rifle in your face than a car accident, even though the accident had been horrific enough and that was what I dreamed about. I didn’t dream about the rifle at all, maybe because Jason was the one who got shot, so that made it a good outcome, right? But we spent that evening cuddling and kissing and making plans for the future, sort of giddy with relief. Plans weren’t all we made, of course. I’m talking about Wyatt, the horniest guy in the county. If he was happy, he wanted sex. If he was mad, he wanted sex. He celebrated everything with sex.
I foresaw a very happy and contented life with him.
The next day he took me car shopping. His sister, Lisa, delivered his Chevy Avalanche to him, thanked him for the loan of it, and asked me a million questions. Thank goodness I liked her immediately, but she was a lot like his mother, so there was no reason why I wouldn’t have. I also liked his truck, and that’s what we drove to the Mercedes dealership.
Of course I wanted another Mercedes. You don’t think I’d let Jason and his nitwit wife stop me from buying my favorite car, do you? Picture me in a black convertible. Black is a statement of power, remember. The insurance company hadn’t come through with the check yet and since it was Sunday, my bank wasn’t open, but the salesman promised to hold my car until Monday evening. I was a happy camper when we arrived at Mom and Dad’s house.
Dad answered the door, and held his finger up to his lips. “Shhh,” he cautioned. “We’ve had another computer disaster and Tina has gone quiet.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, pulling Wyatt inside. “What happened?”
“She finally got her computer straightened out, she thinks, and this morning her monitor went blank. I just got back from the computer store with a new monitor, and she’s in her office hooking it up.”
Jenni came into the family room, and gave me a big hug. “I can’t believe that stupid Jason,” she said.
“I can. When you came by Mom’s office, could you hear anything?”
“Not a word,” Jenni said, looking worried. When Mom’s mad, she mutters to herself. When she’s beyond mad, she gets very, very quiet.
We heard Mom coming down the hall, and we all sat silently as she marched past without saying a word, or even glancing in our direction. She was carrying a large roll of plastic, which she took out into the garage. She came back in empty-handed, and again marched past us without saying anything.
“What’s up with the plastic?” Wyatt asked, and we all shrugged in the classic “Who knows?” gesture.
There was a heavy thump, then a strange sliding noise. Mom came back down the hall, her expression grim and set. She had a thick cord clutched in her hands, and she was dragging the offending monitor behind her. We watched in silence as she dragged it to the garage door, down the two steps with more heavy thumps, and into the middle of the plastic she had spread on the garage floor.
She went to where Dad had his tools, attached to a big pegboard on one wall of the garage. She selected a hammer, weighed it in her hand, then returned it to its spot. She moved to what looked like a small sledgehammer or a mallet of some sort. I don’t know tools, so I can’t say for certain what it was. She took it down from the wall, considered it, and evidently decided it would meet her requirements. Then she returned to where the monitor was sitting on the plastic, and beat it to smithereens. She hammered it until it was nothing more than a pile of pieces. Glass flew; plastic splintered. She beat it almost out of existence. Then she very calmly returned the sledgehammer to its place, dusted her hands, and walked back into the house with a smile on her face.
Wyatt had the weirdest expression in his eyes, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or run for the hills. Dad clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a smart man,” he said encouragingly. “Just keep a regular check on your list of transgressions so you’ll know if there are any major problems you need to handle, and you’ll be okay.”
“You promise?” Wyatt asked drily.
Dad laughed. “Hell, no. I have all I can handle; if you get in trouble, you’re on your own.”
Wyatt turned and winked at me. No, he wasn’t on his own; we were in this together.
Also by Linda Howard
A LADY OF THE WEST
ANGEL CREEK
THE TOUCH OF FIRE
HEART OF FIRE
DREAM MAN
AFTER THE NIGHT
SHADES OF TWILIGHT
SON OF THE MORNING
KILL AND TELL
NOW YOU SEE HER
ALL THE QUEEN’S MEN
MR. PERFECT
OPEN SEASON
DYING TO PLEASE
CRY NO MORE
KISS ME WHILE I SLEEP
To Die For
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2005 by Linda Howington
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-48085-9
v3.0