She was so relaxed and enmeshed in her thoughts that it took her a while to notice the sound. There was a thump and a scratch, as if a cat were slinking the halls. All of a sudden, Sadie desperately wished they owned a cat on which to blame the foreboding sound. “Luke,” she called, but her voice came out as little more than a whisper. “Luke,” she tried, a little louder. “Is that you?” This time the word carried no farther than the edge of the bathtub, and Sadie realized that if it wasn’t Luke, she didn’t want to alert whoever it was to her presence. As the moments ticked, she became more and more convinced that the sound wasn’t a product of her overactive imagination. Worse still, it was drawing closer.
She stepped out of the tub and tied the towel around herself before cracking the door that led into the hallway. She saw nothing, and the sound was fainter. Tiptoeing to the other door, the one that led to Luke’s room, she pressed her ear to the door. The sound was louder. Someone was definitely in Luke’s room.
Please let it be Luke, please let it be Luke,
she silently pled as she slowly cranked the door handle and craned her neck to see into the interior of the room. It was dark.
Drat Luke and his stupid blackout curtains.
The man had never been able to sleep with even the slightest light in a room. Though she couldn’t see into the room, whoever was in the room could no doubt see her clearly because of the bathroom illumination. She closed the door, turned off the light, and opened the door again.
This time she stepped all the way in and pressed her back flat against the reassuring solidity of the heavy oak door. The sound was coming from the closet. Inch by inch, she forced herself away from the door and toward the sound. Not until she reached the closet and put her hand on that door did she realize she had no idea what she was doing.
Why didn’t I get out of the house?
She had just become the person she loathed in every horror movie, the one who rushes headlong into danger for no rational reason. She would leave the house and go to Gideon. He would call one of his cop friends and have them check the house.
She took a step back and ran into a stack of books, knocking them haphazardly to the floor. Sadie’s eyes flew to the closet door in dread. It opened, a man stepped into view, and she screamed as loud as anyone who had ever been in a horror movie.
He put his hands on her. She fought him off. She was just about to bring her knee up for a blow when his voice finally registered.
“Sadie, it’s me, it’s Hal. Calm down.”
“Hal?” she said. She couldn’t see him and her brain was fogged with fear and adrenaline.
“Yes, it’s Hal. Please don’t kill me. That whole ‘physician heal thyself’ thing doesn’t work if I’m dead.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for Luke’s racquetball equipment. He said I could borrow it.”
“Wait, if you’re the real Hal, then you would know that Luke has never played racquetball in his life,” she said.
“Ah, yes, but the real Hal also knows that Luke bought all the equipment to impress a girl in college.”
“Why didn’t you turn on the light?” she asked.
“I couldn’t find it.”
“Oh, I forgot Luke has the overhead worked to his bedside lamp so he won’t have to get out of bed to turn off the light.”
“What is with the total darkness in here? I feel the sudden urge to use echolocation and flap my wings,” Hal said.
Sadie found her way to the bed and turned on the lamp, bathing the room in its soft glow. Hal immediately turned away and shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Uh, Sadie, you’re wearing a towel.”
Sadie looked down to make sure all her parts were covered. They were. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that you’re wearing a towel.”
“You’re a doctor. I thought you guys saw naked women all the time.”
“That’s propaganda they feed to potential doctors at the recruiting seminars. Believe me when I tell you that naked women are still a novelty to me.”
“I’m not naked,” Sadie argued.
“Yeah, well, if you’re not wearing chainmail under that towel, then you’re as close as it comes for me. Could you maybe go put some clothes on?”
“Okay, I’ll just drop this towel right here and step into the bathroom.”
He spun to look at her.
“Gotcha. Men are so easy.”
“And women are so…so…brain fogged at renewed sight of towel. What were we saying?”
“Nothing. I’ll go change. It’s like you and Luke have never been near the female of the species before.” She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. The bed creaked, so she assumed Hal sat on it.
“Sweets, imagine if you will our college apartment filled with two scientists, duplicate sets of every
Star Trek
and
Star Wars
movie ever made, and you will solve the perplexing riddle.”
“But, Hal, nerds are very in vogue right now.”
“Oh, yeah, Bill Gates beats the supermodels off with a stick. Stephen Hawking, too. Guy’s a babe magnet.”
“Hal, you are adorable. Don’t tell me you don’t do pretty well for yourself.” He had a perpetually boyish look with strawberry blond hair, big brown eyes, and freckles on his nose. And he was charming. Sadie didn’t buy his self-deprecating humor for a minute. Maybe he didn’t have much time to date right now, but she had no doubts that when the time came, Hal really would have to beat the women away with a stick. She finished dressing and opened the door. He was stretched out sideways on Luke’s bed. He patted the spot beside him, and she hopped up, mimicking his pose.
“Today a woman threw up in a bedpan I was holding, and that’s as close to a date as I’ve had since I started med school.”
“Um, hello, you had a date with me a few weeks ago.”
“That didn’t count.”
“Ouch. Ouch for me.”
“C’mon, Sadie. You know the score. Nothing between us counts so long as Luke’s standing in the middle.”
“Luke has a girlfriend.”
“Luke’s a putz, but he’s still my closest friend, and it doesn’t mean his presence isn’t loud and clear between us. And even if it weren’t, could you really ever see a guy like me and a girl like you together?”
“A guy like you? Do you have extra toes or something? Because they have surgical solutions for that sort of thing now,” Sadie said.
“I did some snooping when you came to town. I know who your ex-husband is. Compare millionaire football star to aspiring med school pauper, and guys like me come up rather short.”
“When it comes to a comparison between you and my ex-husband, you’re off the charts and he doesn’t even rank.”
“Okay, excluding him, I’d say your usual type is wealthy, brawny, power players.”
“True. And usually self-important, shallow, stupid cheaters. I want, no, I
have
to do better next time. My new top three requirements for a man are kindness, intelligence, and depth. And, frankly, those qualities are now so important to me that I don’t care if he does have extra toes.”
“So if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that all that stands between us and eternal devotion is Luke.”
“Pretty much,” Sadie agreed with a smile. She liked Hal. She had fun with him; he was safe. He had definite potential in the boyfriend department, and she could be attracted to him if she let herself. But she wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t cross the invisible line between them because of Luke. She would never hurt Luke that way again. Even if he didn’t realize it, he would be hurt if she and Hal dated.
Hal put up his hand between them. “Yes, the force field is firmly in place and impenetrable. Tell me something: if I do away with Luke and someone hires you to investigate his death, would you look the other way to maintain my innocence?”
She pressed her palm to his. “I’m afraid not. An overdeveloped sense of justice is just one of the many character traits I inherited from my father.”
He clasped her hand and laid it to rest on the bed between them. “Your dad—now there’s a whole other can of worms. After a few hours with him in the hospital, I wanted to give you hugs and kisses for the many childhood wounds you must have suffered at his hands.”
“He wasn’t always this way,” Sadie said. “When I was a kid, we were really close. He only said nice things to me, edifying things. And he taught me a lot. He used to say I could tie a fly better than any man he knew, and site a target, too. We were buddies, and Dad made me feel like the smartest, most capable girl on the planet. Then puberty came along and messed everything up.”
“It has a way of doing that,” Hal agreed.
“What did it do to you?”
“It turned me from a cute kid to some pimple-faced, coke-bottle wearing, voice cracking goofball.”
“You sound like Luke,” Sadie said. “He was such a goober. We both were for a bit.”
“I’ve seen the pictures. He was one bell away from being Quasimodo,” Hal said, and followed the comment with a jaw-popping yawn.
“We should go downstairs. I can make supper.”
“You always cook for me. I can cook for you sometime. Do you like Ramen noodles? I don’t want to brag, but I just bought a twenty pack.”
“You must be rich.”
“I do all right for myself,” he said and yawned again.
Sadie caught his yawn and followed suit. “Stop that.”
“Can’t.”
“We should get up.”
“Definitely. On the count of ten, we’re going to get up and go downstairs. One, two, three, three and a half…” He fell asleep mid-word.
Sadie chuckled at his narcolepsy, and that was her last coherent thought before she, too, fell asleep.
Luke came home a while later and stopped short in his bathroom. “Sadie,” he muttered. Her scent was everywhere, the tub was still full, and a towel lay slack on the floor. He was tired and cranky with a hunger-induced headache. Finding Sadie’s presence in his bathroom was more than he had the energy for at the moment. It was bad enough that he was stuffed in the same house with her, why did she have to invade his personal space, too? Did she have no idea the effect she had on him? Was she trying to drive him crazy?
By the time he entered his bedroom, he had worked up a full head of steam. He was going to have a talk with Sadie. He was going to tell her to stay out of his bathroom. Maybe he would tell her to start wearing that burqa she had joked about. He jerked open the door and stopped short at the side of Sadie and Hal curled toward each other on his bed, their hands clasped between them. The sight was cozy, intimate, and cut like a knife. His anger drained away and left him weak and a little light headed. Although the sight of Sadie sleeping by herself often had the same effect. Every time he saw her curled up with her lips slightly puckered and the I’m-up-to-something expression off her face, he was transported back in time twenty years to camping trips and sleepovers where the sight of her sleeping face first thing in the morning had been his steadfast comfort.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Hey, studious one,” she whispered. “Hungry?”
He nodded. She slipped off the bed and into the bathroom where she drained the tub and hung her towel without apology or explanation. She hooked her arm with his as they walked through the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen. “How was the library?”
“Quiet. Musty. Peaceful.”
She glanced at his profile. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Nothing rational,
he amended. Unmerited jealousy wasn’t something he wanted to fess up to.
“You have hunger-induced crankiness. Did you skip lunch?”
“I had a package of peanuts I found in my bag,” he said.
She wrinkled her nose. “That hardly counts. Let me see what I can scrounge.”
He sat at the table and watched while she rooted in the freezer. “Aha! I thought I froze an extra lasagna last month. Excellent. Although this will take about an hour to cook. Can you make it that long? Do you want me to make you a snack?” She bit her lip and turned to survey him.
“I can make it an hour,” he said. “Come sit down and stop fussing over me.” Until they became housemates, he had no idea she was so maternal and caring. He thought he knew every facet of Sadie, but she took him by surprise more often than not. She was always worrying over him and Abby, making sure they were eating properly, bringing them tea or coffee in the evenings. She was spoiling him, and yet he couldn’t find it in himself to object.
She put the lasagna in the oven and sat beside him. Her curls were mashed on the left side and she had blanket lines on her face. He itched to touch her, and so he did, pressing his palm over the lines on her face. “You’re not usually a napper,” he noted.
“The bath made me sleepy.”
Now was the time to tell her not to use his bath anymore, but he couldn’t do it. She gave so much of herself around the house. Who cared if she occasionally used his bathtub?
“You know what I was thinking as I watched you sleep?” he asked.
“How fun it is to stalk people when they’re unconscious?” she guessed.
“I was thinking of that first time we went camping with our dads when we were five. When I woke up that next morning, I realized I’d had an accident.”
“Seeing me sleep reminds you of wetting the bed?” she clarified.
“You woke up because I was crying, and you dumped a bucket of water on both our bags so no one would know. Even at five you were sneaky and a quick thinker.”
“I try to use my powers for good instead of evil,” she said.
“You do. You’ve always taken care of me, and you’re still taking care of me. So when I tell you to be safe and I worry about you, that’s my way of taking care of you, but you won’t let me.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of,” she said.
“Liar. Everyone needs to be taken care of, even the incomparable Sadie Cooper.”
“You make incomparable sound like a bad thing.”
“It is if it puts your life at stake,” he said. His fingers were deep in her curls now, his thumb gently brushing her cheek. “Sadie, please, try not to rush into stuff. For once just stop and think things through.”