Wicked Lies (22 page)

“So, are you going back to the ice cream shop?”

“Only if Jenny’s still on duty. More likely I’ll find one of them along the main street and follow after them.”

“But they know what you look like.”

“I’ll have to be careful.”

“If they see you, the jig’ll be up, so to speak.”

“I’ll wear a hat. Big overcoat.” He shrugged. “I’ve got clothes in the back.” He gestured with his thumb to the rear seat, where she had also tossed her own hoodie.

“Let me follow them,” Laura said. “You point them out, and I’ll go.”

He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “No way.”

“They don’t know who I am, and I’m a woman. Less likely for anyone to worry about if I get too close to them.”

“Forget it.”

“Why?”

“It’s . . .” He trailed off, but Laura knew what he’d been about to say.

“Dangerous? More dangerous than calling Justice Turnbull, a psychotic killer, to me?” She almost laughed. “Give me a break!”

“Well, no. I’m just not letting you do it.”

She felt her hackles rise. “I see. You don’t believe I can call Justice, so that doesn’t count. But this . . .”

“I can’t have you be the collateral damage to my story,” he stated flatly.

“I’m choosing to do it,” she informed him coolly.

“No.”

She went on. “If you find one of them, I’ll just meander around after them and see if they lead me anywhere.”

“They’ll meet on the beach,” he said. “In this fog, I’ll be invisible.”

“Not if you need to get close enough to hear them.”

“No eavesdropping,” he declared. “Too risky. All I want is a head count.”

“So, that’s a yes?” she asked and saw him shake his head.

“No.”

She sensed this was going against everything he believed in. Every male fiber of his being. But she wanted to help. Needed to think about something other than Justice Turnbull and his deadly obsession with her and her unborn child. “Listen, you can be a few feet behind me in your disguise.”

“No . . .”

“In this beach-cleaning crowd, in the fog, nobody’s going to be looking at either one of us.”

“You’re a nurse. Not Mata Hari.”

“I’m a young woman in jeans and a hoodie who’s ridding the beach of debris and garbage, so bent on my task that I might just stumble over a group of teenagers by mistake in the fog. I’m just trampling around in a zealous quest to make the world a better place. The worst thing that’ll happen is they’ll glare at me and go quiet until I disappear.”

“Jesus . . .”

She grabbed the aforementioned hoodie from where she’d tossed it into the backseat and put it on. “Now I look like everyone else.”

He reached in the back next and grabbed his coat and a baseball cap, jamming the cap on his head. “I don’t want you to do this.”

He was so serious that Laura found the whole thing strangely funny. “This doesn’t scare me,” she assured him. “This is . . . therapy.”

It was the truth. For the last twenty-four hours she’d lived in gut-shaking fear, and the thought that she could be proactive on something else, something that might actually do good for someone else, made her feel as if she were on a head-spinning high.

He frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“This is child’s play in comparison to calling Justice,” she said soberly.

“Just because these guys are kids doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. They’re thieves, but they’re one bad situation from being something worse. You corner them, they’ll come out fighting.”

“You say they’ll meet on the beach?”

“You’re not listening, Lorelei. There’s no script, but there is danger.”

“Look, if I can do this, I can contact Justice. How’s that? One for the other.” She threw open the door, and he was forced to scramble from his side of the car to keep up with her.

“I’m not bargaining with you!”

“Oh, come on. Seriously, let me help.” She pulled the hoodie over her head and smiled at him.

“Damn it.”

She laughed at the way he looked so helpless, surprising them both. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. “I’m half-hysterical,” she admitted.

“Fully hysterical,” he rejoined.

Laura stepped away from him into the June gloom. She’d taken two steps when she felt him by her side. “If they see you with me, this will all be a big waste of time.”

“So be it,” he muttered, but he didn’t try to stop her, or send her back to the car, and Laura saw that as a win.

They walked down Broadway together, passing people who were coming from the beach, moving toward them like gray ghosts who disappeared into the gloom behind them.
CLEAN UP THE BEACH
!! T-shirts peeked from jackets and overshirts and hoodies like Laura’s own.

In an uneasy partnership Harrison pointed out the ice cream shop, which Laura gazed at with interest. She started to cross the street toward it, then felt his hand clasp down hard on her shoulder, stopping her forward progress. Leaning into her ear, he whispered through his teeth, “Okay, look. There are rules. Don’t get too close. Don’t do anything. Just recon. You got that?”

She nodded.

“That’s Lana standing in front. The first girl I talked to. Jenny’s not behind the counter, but—” He cut himself off, then swore softly. “There she is. Coming from around the back. She must be just getting off work. What time is it?”

Laura pulled back her sleeve and checked her watch. “Four thirty.”

“Okay. C’mere.” He swiveled her toward him beneath a hard grip until her gaze was leveled on the three-day stubble of his chin, which was apparently part of his look. “I’m going to kiss you,” he said. “Try to be into it.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but his lips crashed suddenly on hers. Warm. Supple. Moving gently. A slight wintergreen taste lingering from his earlier breath mint. Her knees, stupidly, wanted to buckle. She tried to speak, but he held her a little tighter, and she slid him a look from the corner of her eyes and saw that while he kissed her, his eyes were open and staring across at the ice cream shop.

The kiss went on, but once she knew he was detached, that this was all a damned act, she felt both relieved and a little deflated. And embarrassed. Still, it gave her a long moment to assess her situation, and she felt a shiver of anticipation mixed with fear. She was pregnant. She was kissing a man she found attractive. She was running from a man who wanted to kill her. She—

Sisssterrr . . . ! With your filthy incubus growing inside you . . .

Laura jerked in shock, causing Harrison to break the kiss and gaze down at her with a frown. She slammed the door in her brain shut with finality.

“What is it?” Harrison asked.

“Nothing. Nerves.” Her teeth were chattering.

“They’re on the move,” he said, glancing across the street. “In this fog I can follow them without them recognizing me.”

“No. I want to do it.” She pulled herself from his embrace, immediately regretting the loss of heat.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Then I’ll follow after you in thirty seconds. I’ll be at the end of the turnaround. Don’t approach them. Just hang around, if you can.”

She held up a hand in goodbye and headed toward the beach, in the direction the two girls had gone.

CHAPTER 18

H
arrison tried counting to twenty but stopped at nine. It was all he could stand before he moved in the same direction. West. Where a watery sun could be barely discerned through the layers of smoky gray.

He sensed he was making a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes. He sensed there was something going on here with Lorelei that was more than just pumping a source for information. Something even more than roping in an accomplice, something he almost never did, yet here he was, doing it.

What the hell are you doing?
he asked himself.

Getting a story.

He made a sound of disgust directed solely at himself. Oh, sure. That was all this was. Immediately, he sought to interview himself. A trick he used to make certain he wasn’t fooling himself about anything.

She’s pretty,
his mind pointed out.

Yes.

She’s serious but has a sense of humor.

Yes, again.

She’s adventurous, even though she believes she isn’t.

Right-tee-o.

You like her way more than you should. You have bad luck in relationships. You should keep this on a professional level, or else someone gets hurt. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

“Bingo,” he said quietly.

And she can kiss with a passion that sets your mind reeling and your damned cock to start rising to attention.

Oh, hell. He pushed the unexpected, runaway thoughts aside.

For now.

He couldn’t see more than six feet in front of him, though he could hear the surf, a buzzing roar with the occasional crash of a wave breaking on the rocks. People’s voices sounded like dull mews in the soft, fuzzy light. The whole world was surreal.

Be careful,
he thought with a strange twist of his heart.

Laura stopped to grab a black garbage bag from a table where two middle-aged women in
CLEAN UP THE BEACH
!! baseball caps and oversized sweatshirts collected donations and passed out information. She nodded to the women, then followed a safe distance behind the girls, who walked ever closer to each other as they neared the sand. Harrison had been right; they went straight to the beach.

She found her thoughts divided between the task at hand and the kiss that still lingered on her lips. Justice was locked into another room in her mind entirely, and she was happy to leave him there for now. More than happy. She wanted to live in the moment.

The kiss had been knee-weak spectacular, and Harrison Frost hadn’t been affected in the least. This would have sent her into paroxysms of self-flagellation if she hadn’t been able to keep her own cool, at least in front of him. As it was, she found herself in a kind of mild shock, wondering at herself.

The girls reached the beach and slogged through the softer sand near the road, turning right rather than toward the packed beach and dull, roaring surf. They were trudging purposely northward, avoiding the crowd closer to the water. Laura drifted along behind them, sometimes closing the gap when the fog swallowed them up, sometimes shifting to the right or left to give the illusion that though they were traveling in the same direction, they weren’t going to the same place. They met other beachcombers, parents with toddlers, dog walkers, and cleanup people along the way, but no one stopped to talk.

The girls were in their own world. They never looked at Laura. About a half mile from the turnaround they started slowing down and looking around. They were arguing with each other, and Laura had to pull closer, bending down to pick up an imaginary something in the sand, to hear them.

“We went too far!” Lana complained.

Jenny snapped, “No, we didn’t. They’re around here. Noah!” she called. “
Noah!
”

“Shut up,” Lana responded. “Jesus. You want to just call the cops while you’re at it?”

Jenny stomped forward, and a figure materialized from the fog. A male. He grabbed Jenny’s arm and pulled her down toward the sand and farther away from Laura. Lana followed with a snort of disgust. “Well, geez, leave me out, why don’t you?”

“Shut the fuck up.” The disembodied male voice filtered toward Laura, who had stopped short and stood still and quiet in a cocoon of gray. She couldn’t see anything, but she was close enough to hear. She bent down again, this time actually finding an old soda bottle, which she tossed into the garbage bag, but her ears were trained on the ongoing conversation.

“Noah,” a female voice said.

“It’s Envy,” he hissed back.

Another male voice hacked out a short laugh, which caused Noah/Envy to snarl, “Stupid fucks. Pay attention. We’re going back for seconds.”

“What do you mean?” the unidentified female voice asked.

“I’m gonna change your name from Pride to Dumbass,” he barked. “Anybody else got a stupid question?”

“We’re going to hit one of the places we already did?” Jenny guessed.

“Yeah, baby. Lana’s favorite.”

“Lust!” Lana hissed. “My name is Lust. You called Ellie Pride, so call me Lust!”

“Give it a rest,” Ellie/Pride said. “Ian doesn’t even like his name,” she added tauntingly.

“Who gives a shit?” Noah demanded. “Did you hear what I said? Don’t you want to know
who?
”

“I’m losing weight!” another male voice protested. “Jesus! I don’t want any stupid name!”

“Ummm . . . ? My favorite?” Lana questioned. “I don’t know what you mean, Noah . . . Envy.”

He snapped back, “Both names start with a
B
, moron. Know who now?”

“Oh . . . you mean . . . Britt . . . Berman?” she asked, unsure, and there was a flurry of scuffling as Noah/Envy must have clapped his hand over her mouth and gotten them all to go quiet. Laura was afraid to move yet worried maybe Noah/Envy might materialize in front of her. Time to leave.

Carefully she took a step backward, heart pounding, then a second step, then a third toward the surf. She wanted to run but she forced herself to move slowly, though her ears were practically buzzing with fear.

“Hey!” Noah/Envy’s voice was suddenly right in front of her. “You. What are you doing?”

Laura couldn’t see through the fog, and then an angular boy of about seventeen materialized. He wore a dark scowl and his mouth was a snarl. He looked dangerous and determined and deadly, and she couldn’t help the zip of a chill that ran through her. “What?” she asked. “Are you talking to me?” She looked around.

“Yeah, bitch. I’m talking to you. What are you doing here?”

“Cleaning up the beach!” she said, holding up her bag and ignoring a tiny niggle of fear in her brain. “And my name isn’t bitch. You got that?”

He stepped closer, menacingly. “You listening in on something you shouldn’t?” he demanded.

She forced herself not to back up. “I said I was cleaning up the beach, the
public
beach, with my family,” she lied, hoping he’d think she was with a group. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”