“But you aren’t going to accept.” He shrugged. “Up to you.”
“Thank you. I mean that.”
He made no response. They stood a few seconds in silence, both of them looking out over the relatively empty parking lot rather than at one another.
“It shouldn’t take this long for them to get a car here.”
He held out his hand. After a moment she dug her cell out again and placed it on his palm. He’d invited her to spend the night, and now it felt as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of her.
Or maybe the man is tired and in pain and, having made his offer to protect you from all those thoughts that have been keeping you from sleep, he’s ready to wash his hands of you.
Jace flipped open the case and began to dial. As he did, she turned to look out on the street once more.
“They’re here,” she said, tracking the cruiser as it approached the emergency entrance.
“About damn time.” Jace closed the phone with a snap, handing it to her. When the squad car pulled up in front of them, he opened its back door, waiting for her to crawl in.
From the driver’s seat, Rick Carlisle watched her slide across to make room for Jace. “Hear you all had some excitement at the ball game tonight. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Lindsey said. “A little smoke damaged.”
“I can smell it. Shannon with you?”
“She didn’t come tonight. I think—” Lindsey stopped, unsure what to say about her friend’s decision. “Hard day at school,” she finished softly.
“I heard about that, too. You just never know.”
“Both our cars are back at the stadium.” Jace interrupted their solitary conversation. “If you could take us there.”
“You got it. Linds, if you’d rather, I can take you home and arrange to pick up your car tomorrow and bring it to you.”
Before she could decide whether or not that was a good idea, Jace answered for her. “The stadium’s fine. I’ll make sure Ms. Sloan gets home safely.”
Rick continued to look at her over the front seat. He seemed to be waiting for a response from her. The moment stretched, long enough to become awkward, as she weighed the two offers. In spite of her exhaustion, she went with her gut.
“That’s okay, Rick. The stadium’s fine. I might need my car earlier than you could get it to me.”
And if I decide to make a run for it in the middle of the night, at least I’ll have some means of transportation.
The deputy’s lips pursed, but he didn’t argue. He turned around instead and put the car in gear. “Stadium it is.”
She stole a glance at Jace, but his face was turned toward the hospital. Obviously the scenery outside his window was highly interesting. At least more interesting than she was.
Of course, with Rick and his partner in the front, it was unlikely Jace would be willing to discuss either the events of tonight or Andrea’s suicide. Or the church fires. Since those were apparently the only things they had in common…
As the car began to roll, she turned, looking out her own window. Whatever she had thought was going on between them the night they’d had dinner, clearly she’d been mistaken. Except…
He had been ready to break in to her house to protect her from an intruder. Fought a fire to rescue her. Invited her to spend the night with him.
She shook her head, denying the idea that might mean something. The invitation had come from his sense of responsibility. Because he’d gotten her involved in all this. Something he’d already confessed. The idea that he gave a rat’s ass about her refusal was only wishful thinking.
And it was way past time she gave that up.
S
he turned into her driveway, Jace’s headlights behind her, and pulled into the attached carport. As she killed the engine, she looked into the rearview mirror to watch Jace’s lights go off. She waited for him to get out of the car, but when he didn’t, she took her keys out of the ignition and climbed out.
Jace’s door still hadn’t opened. Maybe he was going to sit there until she was inside. Even if that was his plan, she should still say goodnight and once more try to express her gratitude for what he’d done. She punched the remote lock on her car and walked back to where he was parked.
As she approached, he lowered his window. In stark contrast to his refusal to make eye contract while they’d been in Rick’s cruiser, he looked up at her, dark eyes unreadable.
“Carlisle a friend of yours?”
“Not particularly.”
“But you know him.”
“He and Shannon dated.”
“Then why was he so interested in your arrangements tonight?”
“He was
interested
because he was worried about me.
Maybe he figured I’d be upset about my student’s suicide,” she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. “Or nervous about having been trapped in a burning building. Or about that snake I found in my house. Or maybe we just do things differently down here.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Nervous.”
The easy lie was on the tip of her tongue. Something about the way Jace was looking at her kept her from offering it. “What do you think?”
“I think if you go into that house, you’ll spend another night exactly like you’ve spent the last three.”
Endlessly recycling every word and every action. Worrying. Sleepless. Guilty.
“If I do—”
“Go in, cut off the outside lights, and then come back out here in the dark.”
She had told him her neighbors would talk. Clearly he had thought that concern was ridiculous—and at this point, so did she—but he was giving her a way around it.
If you go into that house, you’ll spend another night just like you’ve spent the last three.
It was a persuasive argument.
“They gave me a prescription for sleeping pills.”
“You didn’t stop to get it filled.”
“The only place open is out on the interstate. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“And in the meantime?”
She held his eyes, but he didn’t say anything else. No attempt to coerce her. Just the offer he’d already made. And a way for her to accept it, despite the flimsiness of her excuse for not doing so before. “I’m trying to figure out why you asked me to go home with you.”
“Because whatever’s going on, I got you into it.”
“So…basically your offer boils down to guilt.”
“It’s a powerful motivator.”
One she knew about. If anything happened to her, Jace would feel just as she did about Andrea.
“I’ll be fine,” she lied.
“I’d like the opportunity to make sure of that.”
By protecting her from the person who had put the snake in her hamper and set the fire tonight. Would that be wrong? Jace was a cop. And, as he’d said, he got her into this.
The problem was that, unlike somebody like Rick Carlisle, who might well have made this same offer, she was attracted to Jace. That alone changed the dynamics of the situation.
“I have no ulterior motive,” Jace added. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
She almost laughed, considering the cause of her hesitation. “Believe me, the thought never crossed my mind.”
“Really? I guess I should ask why not.”
She’d left herself wide open for that one. “Because you don’t strike me as that kind of man.”
“You must not know many men.”
Not like him. Something she’d admitted from the first.
The more she was around him, the more she recognized those differences. And the more she was attracted. A very dangerous attraction for her peace of mind.
“I really need to go inside.”
There was no response. Clearly Jace had said all he intended to. The choice was hers. She could let him take care of her, or she could go into her house and spend another sleepless night wondering what would happen next.
Leaning down, she put her hands on the bottom of the window frame. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to say it. Thank you for what you did tonight. For fighting the fire and for getting me out. Not many people would have—”
“You’re right. I don’t want to hear it. Get in the car, Lindsey. Go cut off your floodlights if you want. Then come back out here and get in the goddamn car.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
“And you always get what you want?”
“Very seldom. But in this case, it’s what you want, too. You don’t want to spend the night here. You’ve tried that, and it didn’t work. You told me so yourself. All I’m asking is that you come home with me and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch. I swear to God nothing else is going to happen to you.”
It was the kind of promise her father had made when she was a child and had had a nightmare.
Go back to sleep, Lindsey girl. It’s just a bad dream.
If only this were…
She removed her hands from the frame, at the same time straightening away from the car. She looked out over its top, conscious of the row of houses and the neatly mown lawns of her neighbors stretching to the corner.
Hers were the only lights on the street. That didn’t mean that half a dozen people weren’t looking out their windows to watch her say goodnight to whoever had followed her home.
Let them,
she thought.
And let them think whatever the hell they want to.
Without giving herself a chance to change her mind, she walked around the front of Jace’s car.
Before she reached the passenger side door, it opened. She slid into the seat. When she closed the door, the overhead light went out, providing a sheltering darkness.
“Now I know why you were chosen as the gifted coordinator.”
“That isn’t how it works,” she said with a laugh.
“Well, it damn well should be,” Jace said as he turned the key in the ignition.
She woke with a start, jarred out of the dream by its growing horror. Although she was aware enough to know it had been a dream, she was disoriented by the lingering images of the flames. Not real, she assured herself. None of it was real.
Except it had been, she thought, full consciousness returning in a rush. Real fire. Real danger. Real menace.
She took a breath, only now remembering where she was. And that she wasn’t here alone.
There had been none of the awkwardness she’d expected when they’d reach Jace’s apartment, which was in a complex on the edge of the downtown area. He’d shown her the bedroom and its adjoining bath. He’d opened a drawer and pointed out an unopened package of T-shirts. Then he’d left her alone.
She hadn’t expected to sleep, but she had. Almost as soon as she’d closed her eyes. And now…
She turned her head, searching in the darkness for the clock on the bedside table. The digital display read 4:40 a.m.
More hours of uninterrupted sleep than she’d gotten in the last three days combined. And since it was Saturday, all she needed to do was to turn over and go back for five or six more.
She shut her eyes again, conscious of the deep silence that surrounded her. No sounds of traffic. Not at this time of the morning, despite the location. No noise from the occupants of the other apartments. Almost as if she were—
Alone?
Her eyes opened. Ears straining, she lay in the darkness, trying to evaluate the quality of the stillness.
Jace was asleep. What he’d said about keeping watch had been metaphorical. He’d assured her that anyone who wanted to get to her would have to go through him, but that didn’t mean he was
literally
out there watching.
She took a few soothing breaths, trying to return to that blessed state of oblivion from which the dream had pulled her. Instead, the images she’d fought through those sleepless nights at her house began to parade through her head.
Lifting the lid on her clothes hamper. Andrea standing in her doorway, fingers worrying at the cuff of her long-sleeved top. The reddish glow at the bottom of the door to the ticket booth. Jace’s dark eyes looking up at her through the window of his car, the burn on his cheek obvious despite the darkness.
She wasn’t sure why that particular image had been seared into her brain like the rest, but it was. At least it was far more palatable than the others.
She threw the covers off and crawled out of bed. She’d slept in her underwear and one of Jace’s new T-shirts, but she wasn’t going to go traipsing around his apartment looking for him like this. She grabbed her jeans off the chair she’d draped them across last night and slipped them on.
She hesitated when she reached the bedroom door. She had the urge to knock, although she was coming out of a room rather than going into one. Finally, she turned the handle and eased the door open.
There was a dim glow from the next room, the apartment’s second bedroom, which Jace had told her he used as his office. Although the door was open, she was hesitant to walk in.
“Jace?”
“In here.”
Emboldened by his response, she took the few steps that would take her to the doorway. His back to her, Jace was seated at a desk in front of a computer monitor. Apparently he
had
meant that “keeping watch” literally.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. There’s coffee in the kitchen. I drink mine black, so I’m short on amenities like cream. It’s fresh, though, and I can vouch for its potency.”
“It smells wonderful,” she admitted, thinking caffeine might chase the remaining cobwebs—and the dregs of the nightmare—from her head.
Jace swiveled the chair around so he was facing her. The five o’clock shadow she’d noticed last night was darker, emphasized by the black T-shirt he still wore. If he’d been sitting here all night—
“I’ll get you a cup while you take a look at that.” He jerked his head toward the machine behind him.
“What is it?”
“You tell me,” he said, pushing up out of the chair.
She had never liked guessing games. Her father said that was because she was afraid of being wrong. She’d always thought it had more to do with a fear of the unknown. Right now that’s what the computer screen represented.
Jace walked past her and out of the room. An expanse of maybe twelve feet lay between her and whatever he had wanted her to see.
You tell me.
She crossed her arms over her stomach, fighting a rush of nausea. There had already been enough this week. More than enough. Whatever this was…
Disgusted with her cowardice, she crossed the room until she was close enough to make out the central image on the monitor. She swallowed to control the nausea that climbed into the back of her throat. Then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply a few times to keep it at bay.
Jace wouldn’t have asked her to look at this if it weren’t important. That would take a cruelty he wasn’t capable of.
She opened her eyes, deliberately focusing them on the screen. As she took the final steps to the desk, she reached out with one hand to drag the chair Jace had vacated with her. She sat down in it, steeling herself for the emotional response she knew this site would evoke.
Surrounded by text and smaller pictures, a photograph of Andrea Moore centered the page. An Andrea Lindsey had never seen before. Her hair and makeup looked as if they’d been professionally done. Both the clothes she wore and the pose itself seemed deliberately provocative. Sexual in a way she had never associated with the girl.
Unconsciously, Lindsey shook her head, trying to reconcile the shy student she’d taught with this. Andrea looked as if she were trying to titillate the viewer. Or entice.
The thought was enough to make Lindsey’s eyes go to the text at the bottom of the picture. It seemed innocuous enough. Name, age, the name of the school, favorite activities. Nothing more than the usual yearbook stuff.
Relieved by that normality, she continued to examine the page. On the right was a guest log, each entry accompanied by a photograph or icon or a slogan. Those had obviously been chosen by the individual posters, many of whom had left comments.
The column on the left of the photograph appeared to be a blog, the last entry dated two days ago. Twenty-four hours before Andrea had committed suicide.
Obviously this was what Jace had wanted her to read. Maybe he thought she could explain something Andrea had written. Something about her motives?
Why would you do that, Andrea? Why would you tell the whole world and then come to stand in my door and not tell me?
Somehow, despite the thick carpeting, she was aware Jace had reentered the room. She didn’t turn, unwilling to reveal that she hadn’t read what he’d wanted her to and was this upset.
He set a steaming cup of coffee down on the coaster beside the mouse. She picked it up, using the excuse to regroup. She took a sip, allowing the liquid to soothe her still-raw throat.
Only when she had taken two long swallows did she turn her head and look up at him. “Thanks.”
“So what do you think?” He nodded toward the screen.
“I’m not sure I can do this. The last entry was written the day before she died. It’s too soon.”
“I can’t ask her mother to read it, Lindsey. I don’t know anyone who knew her better than you.”
“That’s just it. That’s what you don’t get. I
didn’t
know her.
Obviously,
” she said, remembering Shannon’s comment, “I didn’t know her at all.”
“Better than I did. All I’m asking is you read those pages and tell me what you think. It might be better to start a few days back. And look at the comments from that same timeframe.”
“It seems…I don’t know. An invasion of her privacy.”
“She posted this on the Web. She
wanted
it read.”
“
Before
she died.
Before
she made the decision to take her own life. Now…Now it seems as if we’re ghouls, picking over her corpse.” Exactly what Shannon had said yesterday.