False Security (5 page)

Her taste buds jumped at the
thought of fried rice and sesame chicken, and the world was back to right once
more. “That sounds good.” She leaned over and picked up her bag. “I’ll be out
soon.” Her lips pecked his cheek, and she headed for the bathroom.

Rachel
disappeared into the bathroom, and Mark’s smile faded. As he held her, she
erected another wall between them. The way she tensed against him, and then
relaxed as if nothing was wrong. But something
was
wrong. His conviction
of that grew stronger every day.

Still standing in the hallway by
the front door where Rachel left him, Mark caught sight of her purse sitting on
the hall table. The officer’s words came back to him about her driver’s license
having the wrong address. He peered down the hall and listened to the faint
sound of the shower. Rachel would be occupied for at least another ten to
fifteen minutes.

Mark stood over her purse, his
hands ready to rifle through it to get out her driver’s license. As far as he
knew, she had always lived in this house since she came to Wichita. He couldn’t
fathom the reason why her driver’s license would have a different address.

Mark left the foyer without
sneaking a look at her license, and admonished his suspicious thoughts. He
couldn’t spy into Rachel’s personal items, not without asking about the
discrepancy. She might have lived at a different address before she moved to
this house. He must have misunderstood that she always lived in this house, as
the wrong address had no other explanation. Yet it seemed his misunderstandings
were piling up over time.

He stepped into the living room
and glanced around for some kind of clue as to what mysteries controlled
Rachel’s life. He partly blamed his suspicions on the house. Aside from the
feeling he had stepped back into the days of peace signs and orange Volkswagen
vans, the house brought about no emotions, heightened no senses.

Cold and dead, the house lacked
in the feeling of being a home. No pictures on the walls, no plants or flowers,
none of the small touches to make him think Rachel and Danielle lived here.
There was the candle on the coffee table, but he had been in the living room
with Rachel when Danielle brought in the candle and set it there.

Mark’s house at least had the
sense of home. The pictures of Greg and Anna on his fireplace mantel. The
mesmerizing Salvador Dali print hanging in his dining room. Two bookshelves
full of broken spines in the living room. Rachel’s house had none of those
little things.

Mark couldn’t be sure, but he
had a hunch not one item in their house belonged to either girl, as if Rachel
and Danielle had come to Wichita with nothing more than their clothes. Even the
books on the short oak bookshelf in the back of the living room were ones Mark
recognized as coming from his store, ones he had sold to Rachel. Their house
felt more like a hotel, rather than a home in which they planned on staying.

He moved into the kitchen to get
the menu and order dinner from their favorite Chinese restaurant. He stopped
halfway across the linoleum floor, and his eyes fell on her backdoor. He
counted the locks. One on the doorknob, two deadbolts, a chain, and a hinge
lock. The hair stood up on his arms. First she added the security alarm last
month, and now a new hinge lock. It seemed Rachel wanted to keep someone out.

A memory flooded his mind.
Rachel had blamed their landlord for putting the excessive locks on the front
door. Danielle later said they had the locks added because of a break-in at
their old home. Now, a security alarm and a hinge lock had been added. Not for
the first time in the past two months, Mark realized there were too many
contradictions in the things Rachel told him.

Mark looked away from the door.
He had suspected Rachel of dishonesty several times, but her motives eluded
him. Locks seemed such a trivial thing to lie about, unless Rachel had
something to hide, something she didn’t want to share with him. Maybe Rachel
wanted to keep more than burglars out of her life.

Mark swallowed hard. He didn’t
need to think those things. He wanted to keep her as part of his life, and
doubting her would only drive her away. He went to the telephone and opened the
drawer underneath it. He dug through a stack of menus until he found the one he
wanted.

Rachel came up behind him right
after he finished ordering their dinner. She slid her arms around his waist and
laid her head down on his back, hair still moist from the shower.

Mark didn’t mind the dampness
penetrating the back of his shirt. The gesture kicked his heart into gear, and
he took her hands, entwining his fingers with hers. Her smile warmed his back,
and he closed his eyes, forgetting his earlier concerns. He had exaggerated the
situation. Nothing was out of the ordinary with Rachel except his imagination.

“When’s dinner coming?” she
mumbled.

“Thirty minutes. Did you have a
good shower?”

“Of course.”

He turned around and she
adjusted her hold on him. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Is Danielle getting
off work soon?”

“Not until ten. Why?”

“I want to know how much time I
have you to myself. It’s bad enough I already had to share you with the
police.”

Rachel frowned. “I don’t like
the way the policewoman looked at me.”

Mark chuckled. “Why? Did you
knock over a liquor store on your way home?”

All humor from his statement was
lost on Rachel, who didn’t crack even a small smile. “I don’t know why, but she
was looking at me funny.”

“Maybe she was jealous. It’s not
every day people get to see someone as beautiful as you.”

Rachel laughed and moved around
him. She closed the menu for the restaurant and put it away in the drawer with
the rest of the menus. “You are so full of it.”

He put his hands on her
shoulders and gave them a light squeeze. “I’m telling the truth, Rach. You’re
an angel.”

A sharp intake of breath, tense
muscles, and cords rising up from her neck. A second later, she was back to
normal, and Mark questioned whether the momentary change had occurred, but he
knew better. Another wall had gone up.

He turned her around and took
her hands in his.

Rachel shied away from his gaze
and bit down on her lip. “What did you order us for dinner?”

He smiled, knowing her real
question. “Don’t worry, I asked for extra fortune cookies for you. What was it
about the way she looked at you?”

“I don’t know. Creepy, I guess.”

Mark recalled the woman to his
mind, along with the expression on her face when she looked at Rachel. She
seemed curious at first, but Mark remembered seeing something beneath the
officer’s eyes. More than just a normal glance, the officer studied Rachel, as
if memorizing her features.

Definitely creepy.

Officer Shelly
Duncan stopped pacing her kitchen tiles and ran her hands through her hair. She
collapsed into a chair and rested her elbows on the small kitchen table, tired
of wrestling with her conscience. Her good angel always lost anyway, having
been weakened over time. It was all Frank’s fault. If he hadn’t taken up heroin
as his drug of choice, she never would have been in this position.

Her mother warned her many years
ago about her problem with men. They were Shelly’s Achilles heel, her mother
had said every chance she got. Her mother had been right. Frank was the perfect
example. He couldn’t be described as handsome by any means, but he was charming
and great in bed. Shelly taught herself to look past the loud snoring, the
tobacco he chewed, and the marijuana he smoked every so often, and married him.
She wasn’t the only cop on the force with a troubled homestead, and Frank’s
issues weren’t too awful.

As time went on, her home life
spiraled out of control. While she could ignore Frank smoking the occasional
joint, the pills were a little harder to disregard. Then the pills morphed into
cocaine, and later into heroin. It seemed no drug was off limits for Frank. Yet
she loved him, and she convinced herself love was enough reason to stay.

Maybe it wasn’t entirely Frank’s
fault, Shelly thought. She accepted some of the blame for not saying anything
to him, for not giving him an ultimatum to stop.

She fished a cigarette out of
the crumpled pack on the kitchen table. She struck a match and held it to the
end of the cigarette until the tobacco glowed orange, then shook the match to
extinguish the flame. Tendrils of sulfur from the blown-out match drifted into
her nostrils. She took a long pull off the cigarette and shut her eyes. The
thick smoke curled into her lungs and comforted her.

Damn Frank. She always knew his
heroin addiction would haunt her if he didn’t stop using. It almost killed her
five years ago when she woke in the middle of the night to a stranger pointing
a gun at her head. She had buried Frank two days earlier. Her bastard of a
husband died in a car accident, and not from the heroin she always assumed
would be his demise.

The stranger standing over her
bed with a gun explained Frank owed money to Graham Wilkes. Since Frank was
dead, his debt of a little over twenty thousand dollars belonged to her.

Thinking about it now, Shelly
muttered a curse. Of all the people Frank could have owed, it was Graham
Wilkes. Frank’s hospital and funeral bills had wiped out his measly life
insurance policy before she received it. She didn’t even have enough money left
to buy a new car, since he had totaled their only vehicle on his way out of
this world. How could she pay off Wilkes to the tune of twenty thousand
dollars?

The stranger had the answer to
wipe away her debt, and Shelly became an unwilling and unpaid addition to
Wilkes’s ranks. A mostly decent cop turned informant with no hope of ever
getting out. At first, it had been easier than she thought. A small task here
and there. Nothing too bad and nothing to destroy the last of her morals.

Until today.

Shelly stubbed out the
half-smoked cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and dug her cellphone out of her
pocket. She dialed the number written on the card in front of her. A second
stranger had given the card to her a couple years ago when he confronted her in
the parking lot behind her favorite bowling alley. As she listened to the
fourth ring now, she wondered if the number was still good.

The phone clicked on the other
end, as if someone answered, but no one spoke. “Hello?” Shelly asked.

“What do you want?” an angry
male voice asked.

The cellphone shook against her
ear, and she stammered out the words. “Are you still looking for someone?”

Silence.

She took a deep breath. She must
have the wrong number. It was a long shot, anyway. So much time had passed
since she saw the picture of the girl Wilkes wanted. This Rachel Thomas
probably only resembled her. But this afternoon, Shelly had been positive it
was the same girl.

“Do you know where she is?” the
voice asked.

Shelly’s eyes widened. Maybe she
had been right after all about Rachel Thomas being the missing girl. This could
be the bartering tool she needed to get Wilkes off her back for good.

The thought made Shelly smile
for the first time since leaving the girl’s home earlier. “Yes,” she said. “I
know where you can find her.”

Rachel reminded
Mark of a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She stood in the
doorway, her hair in a loose ponytail with rebel strands falling to the sides
of her face. Hands clasped behind her back, she chewed her bottom lip. Her
fidgeting bare feet stuck out below jeans rolled up to her calves.

Mark grinned at her expression,
and she stepped aside to let him in. “I got here as soon as I could,” he said.
“What’s so important?”

She motioned with her finger for
him to follow her. He trailed behind her into the living room. The sight of the
kitchen table and chairs positioned in front of the couch sparked his
curiosity. He matched her steps around the furniture and stopped in front of
the kitchen.

Rachel turned to him and said,
“I think I broke the dishwasher.”

Mark’s eyes widened. He laughed
and surveyed the damage. Soapsuds covered the floor like fog and vines of suds
climbed the cabinets.

“I wanted to help Danielle in
the kitchen for once,” she said. Suds clung to her feet and gathered around her
ankles as she walked toward the dishwasher. “I didn’t think a dishwasher could
be so complicated.”

Mark stayed in the living room.
“I’m sure she’d appreciate the effort, but I have a feeling you called me
because you don’t want her to know about this.”

Rachel’s sheepish grin answered
his question.

“How much soap did you use in
the dishwasher?”

“I filled up both wells and
closed the door on the first well. It’s the same thing Danielle always does. I
turned on the dishwasher and went into my bedroom to read for a bit. When I
came out to check on the dishes, I found this mess.” She pursed her lips. “I
don’t get it. This never happens when she does the dishes.”

“That’s odd,” Mark said. A
thought occurred to him. “What kind of soap did you use?”

“I used dishwasher soap.” She
waded through the suds and opened the cabinet door under the sink. “We ran out
of the other stuff, so I used this one,” she said. She held up a bottle of
Dawn.

Mark’s eyes widened. “Rach,
that’s not dishwasher soap.”

Her brow creased and her eyes
traveled across the label. “It’s not? But it says right here it’s for dishes.”

Mark dropped down on the living
room carpet and pulled off his tennis shoes and socks. “It’s used for washing
dishes by hand. Put it in the dishwasher and you get this.” He gestured at the
suds on the floor.

Her shoulders dropped in defeat.
“Great.”

“I understand why Danielle
doesn’t let you near the kitchen,” Mark said. He rolled up the bottom of his
jeans and stood up. “What did you do before you met her?”

“I ate out or used paper
plates,” she said, a despondent expression crossing her face. “I’m such an
idiot when it comes to the kitchen.”

“Don’t say that. The kitchen may
not be your forte, but you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.” He paused,
and noticed her downcast eyes. “It’s okay, Rach. We’ll get it cleaned up before
Danielle gets home. She’ll be none the wiser.”

Rachel pointed at the
dishwasher. “What about that thing? It didn’t finish running yet.”

He squished his way through the
soap bubbles and flipped the latch on the dishwasher. Suds spewed out like
froth from a rabid dog’s mouth. Mark laughed, and he pushed the latch in the
opposite direction, quieting the machine. “I guess we should clean out the soap
before letting the dishwasher run its course. Otherwise, we might be here for
days cleaning the floor.”

Thirty minutes later, his soaked
jeans adhered to his skin. The floor now showing in some areas, Mark dipped
suds off the floor with a large pitcher while Rachel worked on the dishwasher
itself, using a sponge to wipe out soap and suds.

Mark filled the pitcher again
and rose on his knees so he could rinse it out in the sink. His eyes fell on
Rachel, and he stopped to watch her work. Rachel’s beauty ran deeper than the
bronzed, smooth skin that required no makeup to hide flaws or imperfections. Her
beauty flowed through her veins, rushing through her body and escaping through
her fingertips when she touched him. It radiated from eyes an unusual shade of
green and seized Mark’s heart.

She turned her head and caught
Mark staring at her. A playful smile teased her lips. “What?”

A small cluster of suds clung to
her cheek. He smiled and walked toward her on his knees. “You have some suds on
your face,” he said when he reached her. He lifted a hand and wiped them away.

She looked down and bit her
bottom lip, as if embarrassed by his touch. He continued caressing her cheek,
hypnotized by the feel of her skin. She moistened her lips and stared into his
eyes. Her actions struck Mark in the chest with a sharp thrill and stimulated
his heart. Every time he touched her, she captured his heart a little more.

He dropped the pitcher to the
floor beside him. He lifted her chin and touched his lips to hers. One of his
hands settled on her lower back, while the other found the back of her head and
tangled itself in her hair. Slow and sensual, his mouth moved in tandem with
hers. Mark never wanted the kiss to end.

Though their physical
relationship always stopped with a kiss, Mark never pushed the boundaries.
Rachel had an innocence about her that he wanted to preserve, even if his body
disagreed.

Her fingers curled into his
sides and clenched his shirt. She made a soft sound, and pressed her lips
tighter against his. Her hands ran down to his hips and halted. She hinged her
thumbs on the waistband of his jeans and slowed the kiss. Mark wondered if she
faced the same conflicts as he.

His wet jeans reminded him of
the task at hand. He broke the kiss, but lingered close to her, his nose
touching hers, her soft breaths warming his skin. “You really are an angel,
Rachel,” he whispered.

She recoiled, and her eyes flew
up to meet his. An almost painful shadow flashed across her face, followed by a
gratuitous, content look. It wasn’t the first time he had seen this happen in
the past two months, and it bothered him almost more than the walls she kept
putting up between them.

Five days had passed since
Rachel’s alarm summoned the police. Since then, Mark watched her and searched
for signs of things she did to make him wary.

What he found only added to his
unease. Distant eyes, as if she were in another place and time. Quick
recoveries when he asked if she was okay. Impeccable, scripted answers to
questions, as if she was placating him, telling him what she thought he wanted
to hear instead of the whole truth.

He had been good at dismissing
it in the past. Today, however, apprehension clawed at him. “I didn’t mean to
upset you,” he said.

Her expression remained the
same. “You didn’t upset me,” she said, and leaned in for another kiss.

Mark reciprocated, and the
corroding doubts vanished from his mind, as they usually did when she kissed
him. It wasn’t fair to Rachel to continue to distrust her when he had no solid
reason for his suspicions.

Shelving his concerns once
again, he pulled away from her and said, “We better finish this up before
Danielle comes home and finds out what happened.”

“You’re right. Thanks for
helping me,” Rachel said. After a quick kiss, she rested her forehead against
his shoulder.

Mark circled his arms around
her, ignoring the wet denim plastered to his knees. A little water and suds
couldn’t keep him from this moment with her.