Читать книгу Flirting with Disaster - Victoria Dahl - Страница 10
ОглавлениеGOD, SHE HATED PEOPLE. Even living in a cabin in the Wyoming wilderness wasn’t far enough away to be rid of them. Here they were, seeping into her house through seams and crevices, like slime. Or sludge. Or a trail of annoying ants.
Isabelle groaned and let her head fall back onto the office chair wedged into the corner of her small living room. Her neck hurt from hunching over the computer for too many hours. It wasn’t a natural fit for her. The only things she used her laptop for were ordering supplies, shopping for books and looking at gorgeous men online.
But she’d spent last night and all of today clicking through link after link looking for a clue, any clue at all. She’d found nothing.
Marshal Tom Duncan was exactly who he said he was. No surprise there. And there were some articles about Judge Chandler and the security issues surrounding the trial of a survivalist who’d killed two state troopers. His brother had been involved in the shoot-out and hadn’t been seen since, but he’d sent a threatening letter just a week ago.
So there was a case in town that involved the marshals. There was a possible reason for Tom Duncan to be here. But she still wasn’t buying it. She knew how these people worked. He’d look into her life just for the fun of it. Just because he was in the neighborhood. And he wouldn’t give a damn about what it would do to her.
She hadn’t worked at all today. She’d stood in front of her current project, the biggest painting of the commission, and she’d done nothing but stare. Her hands had failed her. Her father was in her head again. Him and all the dangerous, lying men he’d brought into her world.
Now she was back at the computer, searching, searching. But there was nothing about her father there. Nothing but ancient newspaper articles and old court filings and everything she already knew. He’d thoroughly disappeared from the world. He hadn’t been seen in fourteen years. If they were after her again, it wasn’t because her father was back in the news.
So...what if Tom Duncan wasn’t lying?
“Right,” she huffed. They were always lying. All of them. She was vulnerable, so they’d play with her like a toy.
But there were such things as coincidences. There was a tiny possibility that a US marshal had shown up on her doorstep, and it had nothing to do with her father being a federal fugitive and Isabelle being an impostor. If that was true, she had to play it cool. Cautious and careful, but cool.
Isabelle stretched hard and pushed up from the chair. She’d found all she could online. Now she was chasing the same phantoms around and around. Tomorrow she’d paint even if she had to force it. But tonight she needed a shower. And a drink.
Forty-five minutes later, she twisted up her damp hair, shrugged on a thick coat and grabbed two bottles of wine. One for her and one for Jill. Tonight, Isabelle wasn’t sharing.
It was almost full dark by the time she set off, but she wasn’t worried. On the off chance that a murderer was actually hanging around, his interest wasn’t in Isabelle. The Stevenson family hated cops and judges, and a solitary woman with no family or connections wouldn’t make very good leverage if he decided to take hostages.
She trudged through the snow toward the bright glow of Jill’s house, not bothering to head for the road. The snow was deep here, but it was a straight shot, and she liked the lost feeling of wandering through the trees. The moon kept her company the whole way.
“I brought dinner,” she called, holding up the bottles as Jill opened the door.
“Oh, and here I bothered making a pork roast.”
“We can have that, too, if you want. It’s up to you.”
“Lush,” Jill said, ushering her in and taking her coat. “I’m just glad there’s someone around for me to eat with or I’d go crazy.”
“I’d say the same about drinking,” Isabelle said. She tugged off her boots with a sigh. “God, I’ve had a crappy day.”
“The painting isn’t going well?”
“I didn’t paint one damn stroke today.”
Jill opened the first bottle and poured two generous glasses. “Does that put you behind?”
“No, I was a little ahead of schedule. It just pisses me off.” She glanced around the kitchen, noticing the loaves of herbed bread cooling on the counter. “Uh-oh. You’re baking bread. A bad day for you, too?”
Jill arched a sour look over the tops of her reading glasses as she collapsed into the couch. Isabelle had never seen a couch in a kitchen before coming here, but Jill lived in this room, and it was big enough for the couch and the eight-person table that sat a few feet away.
She joined Jill and brought the rest of the wine for good measure.
“Well,” Jill sighed, “we’re officially seeing other people.”
Isabelle gasped before she could stop herself. “You did it?”
“I issued the ultimatum, and Marguerite took me up on it, so I’m not sure if I did it or she did.”
“Shit,” Isabelle whispered, taking Jill’s hand to give it a squeeze. “I’m sorry. So it’s over?”
“I told her I needed additional company if I couldn’t see her more than twice a year. I’m not saying it’s over, but... She chose to spend her last week of leave on her own. So I guess I’ll be seeing other women.”
Isabelle gently clinked her glass against Jill’s. “Back in the saddle?”
“If I still remember how to ride. Marguerite’s last visit was eight months ago.”
“You’re probably better off than I am,” Isabelle said drily.
“I don’t want to hear that bullshit. I’m a black lesbian living in Wyoming. You get no sympathy from me.”
Isabelle laughed until she snorted. “Okay, you’ve got me there. Then again, nobody’s forcing you to live in Wyoming.”
“No, but...” Jill waggled her eyebrows. “The flip side of that is I’m the only one around to fill the black-lesbian niche. Time to get back on the circuit.”
“All right. You’ll come out with me and Lauren for this week’s girls’ night out.”
Jill shook her head. “No. I’m too old for that.”
“Bullshit. You’re fifty-five. You’re hardly any older than I am.”
Jill howled. “Are you kidding me? You’re thirty-six. Imagine how much you’ve learned since the age of sixteen, and then double that for wisdom. That’s how close we are in age.”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “It feels a lot closer than that.”
“Well, it’s not. So next time you have a girls’ night in, let me know.”
“Come on,” Isabelle pressed. “How will you meet anyone if you don’t get out?”
“It’s called internet dating. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I’ve spent more years picking up sexy young things at bars than you have. I’m done.”
Isabelle gave in with a grumble. When Jill dug in her heels, that was the end of it. “Well, I’m sorry. I know last time Marguerite was here, you two were trying to work through it.”
Jill waved a hand and got up to peek into the oven. “Enough about that. It’s all I’ve been thinking about for months. And I’ve got the perfect new topic.” She pulled the roast from the oven and smiled at Isabelle past the steam. “That hot US marshal who came by yesterday.”
Isabelle groaned, then immediately wished she could take the sound back. It revealed too much. The man should mean nothing to her. She latched on to her only excuse. “He interrupted my work.”
“Woman. No wonder you can’t get laid. Did you see him?”
Isabelle frowned. Yes, she’d seen him. He’d been tall. Lean. With short, dark hair just turning a bit gray at the temples. And if she thought about it, he’d had a pretty great face. A strong nose and dark eyebrows over intense green eyes. And lips that looked soft to the touch against all that masculinity. “Hmm,” she replied.
“Hmm, indeed. Aren’t you always saying you wish you could get home delivery of someone like him?”
No. Not someone like him. Someone like him but in no way associated with law enforcement. “He was fine. Do you think his story was legit?”
“About the judge? Are you kidding me? It’s been in the local paper all week. That man threatened to blow something up. You know the judge lives on the next road down the hill.”
Isabelle shrugged. “I guess I haven’t been reading the news.”
Jill got plates from the cupboard, but Isabelle didn’t get up to help. She knew from experience that Jill would only wave her away. Jill’s work was her art. There were sauces to be smeared and rosemary sprigs to be placed just so.
“You haven’t met the judge?” Jill asked.
“I don’t think so. You know how I am.”
“Hermit-y?” Jill tossed out.
Isabelle nodded. She wasn’t ashamed of being a hermit. And she had damn good reason to avoid a federal judge.
“Well, his daughter is the one who writes that advice column. Do you know her?”
“Dear Veronica? Really? She seems damn cool, but I’ve never met her. Have—?” Her words were cut off by the doorbell.
Jill disappeared into the front room. For a moment, Isabelle had a hopeful thought that maybe Jill’s girlfriend had dropped everything and flown in to try to make things work. But no. The military wasn’t that big on romantic gestures, even for a lieutenant colonel.
Then the door opened, and Isabelle heard a man’s voice. His voice. She jumped up and stared at the kitchen doorway in alarm. If she stayed hidden, she didn’t have anything to worry about. He couldn’t know she was here. Unless he’d followed her tracks through the snow. But what did he want?
She crept closer to the doorway, carefully keeping behind the wall. There was a living room and a short hallway between her and the front door, but his voice was deep, and she heard it rumbling as he spoke to Jill. Just a follow-up visit, hopefully. If this was really all about the judge, then—
The door closed, and Jill’s footsteps started back toward the kitchen. But she wasn’t alone. There were two sets of footsteps, one heavier than the other. Isabelle froze, her brain taking too long to respond to the change in situation, and she’d only just realized she should sneak back toward the couch when Jill stepped in. And he followed.
Jill’s chin jerked back in shock as she caught sight of Isabelle and did a double take. Tom Duncan’s nice dark eyebrows rose at the way she was huddled against the wall.
Isabelle stared up at him as she realized she’d pressed herself into a corner between the kitchen countertop and the doorway. It looked as if she’d been doing exactly what she had been. Hiding and eavesdropping. Damn it. She glared in defense at the man’s questioning look.
Jill cleared her throat. “Look who decided to join us. I told him yesterday that he could stop by for dinner. Tom, you remember Isabelle.”
“Ms. West,” he said.
“I didn’t tell you my name,” she responded. Jill glared at her, but she ignored it.
His surprised eyebrows finally dropped, and he nodded. “It’s my job to find out these sorts of things.”
“Just out of innocent curiosity?” Isabelle countered.
“No, it’s more about protecting the target. What if you were the cousin of the defendant?”
“Hmm.”
“I told him your name,” Jill said. “Regardless, he’s staying for dinner.”
He finally smiled, transforming his face from hard to handsome, but the look was all for Jill. “I really hope your offer was genuine, but I guess I’m here even if it wasn’t.”
“Of course it was genuine! Don’t pay any attention to Isabelle. She’s in the middle of a project. She’d much rather deal with her two-dimensional people.”
Isabelle didn’t deny it. “They’re simple,” she said. “Real people are way more trouble.”
Jill hurried back to her task. “But we’re much more fun, aren’t we?”
“Some of you.”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s no paint here, so you’re not being interrupted. Now,” Jill tossed over her shoulder, “pour Marshal Duncan a glass of wine.”
“I’d better not,” he said. “I’m not on duty right now, but I’m still the supervisor in charge. And it’s just Tom, please. Eating the neighbor’s food isn’t part of my official duties. Speaking of... That Stroganoff was delicious. The whole damn house was jealous. Pardon my language.”
Jill roared with laughter at that. “Please. I expect fouler language than that before this bottle of wine is gone.”
“Okay,” Isabelle volunteered, filling her glass again. “I’ll get to work on that.”
“All right, but bring the wine to the table.”
Isabelle did as she was told, but when she got to the table, she noticed that there were only two settings. She shot a resentful look at Tom, but he’d been invited and Isabelle hadn’t, so she didn’t bare her teeth at him before she grabbed another place setting from the sideboard. She even poured him a glass of water just before Jill brought all the plates to the table, one balanced on her forearm with ease.
“Let’s eat!”
Tom pulled out Jill’s chair, but Isabelle plopped into hers before he could get to her. That was when she noticed the streak of yellow paint down her shirt. Damn it. She didn’t normally care, but she didn’t want to feel at a disadvantage around this man. Plus, her supply of unstained shirts was dwindling. She had to start remembering to wear an apron. Or maybe a smock. Like a kindergartner.
She touched her mouth, hoping she hadn’t accidentally nibbled on a brush earlier when she’d been trying to find the will to paint. She glanced up at Tom and found him watching her fingers. His eyes rose to meet hers before she looked quickly at her plate.
“Wow,” he said a moment later. “This is good. Really good. I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed cabbage before, but...wow.”
“Wait till you try the pork,” Isabelle said while Jill grinned across the table at him.
He popped a piece of meat into his mouth and closed his eyes, giving Isabelle the chance to study him for a quick moment. Shit. He really did have a nice face. And despite her current hatred of all law enforcement, she’d had her attraction to the men in that field hard-wired into her from an early age.
His firm jaw bunched and flexed as he chewed, and when he opened his eyes, they were dark with pleasure. “You know what? Maybe I will have a glass of wine. If there’s any left? This meal deserves a toast.”
“Tom,” Jill said as she leaped up to open the second bottle, “you’re my new favorite person. Why don’t you just move in here and I’ll feed you every day.”
“Don’t tempt me, because I might.”
Isabelle watched them grin at each other as Jill poured him a glass. All right. So, Jill liked him. But Jill liked almost everyone. She was terrible at being a hermit. In the summertime, she sometimes offered lemonade to hikers when they passed by. If any hikers had the nerve to show up at Isabelle’s door, she told them to use the hose for water.
“To new friends,” Tom said, tapping his glass to Jill’s. Isabelle hesitated a moment, but when he reached forward, she tapped his glass before taking a healthy gulp of wine.
“So where are you from, Isabelle?”
The wine soured in her throat as she swallowed hard. It might raise his suspicions if she spewed it all over the table at such a seemingly innocent question. Instead of choking, she cleared her throat. “Washington State,” she said.
“I thought I heard an accent.”
Her heart beat harder, but she shrugged. “My parents were from Cincinnati. I must’ve picked it up from them.” Okay, a Cincinnati accent wasn’t quite the same as Chicago, but her accent was subtle enough at this point. She waited to see if he’d press harder, but he didn’t.
“I lived in Oregon for a time,” he said instead. “I miss the moisture.”
“And the oxygen?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve gotta say, even coming from Cheyenne is a change here. I notice it every time.”
“And how often do you come to Jackson?”
She’d tried to make it a friendly question, but she could tell by the way his eyebrow twitched up that she’d gone too far toward flirtation. The wine had blurred her boundary between politeness and leering, apparently. Oh, well. If there was a chance he didn’t know who she was, she had to be less hostile. She went all in and smiled.
“It depends on the court schedule,” he finally said. “Most of us are based out of Cheyenne, since places like Jackson and Mammoth don’t need a full-time marshal. Sometimes I’m out here once a month. Sometimes once a quarter. But this time I’m getting my fill.”
He sounded sincere. Believable. He had good reason to be here, and he wasn’t even new to town. So maybe everything he’d said had been the truth from the start. A rush of near painful relief rolled over her at the mere chance that he wasn’t here for her.
Isabelle sat back in her chair and watched as he and Jill talked. He had a nice smile and a deep, rough laugh that made her feel bad she’d been rude to him for no reason. It was a bit of guilt, yes, and maybe a little affection for his looks, but mostly she regretted drawing attention by being suspiciously hostile. That had been dumb. But she’d been caught by surprise, and it wasn’t as if she’d been trained by the witness protection program in how to avoid discovery.
She’d tried her best to erase her identity, yes. But they’d been basic choices. She’d gone to Seattle first, smart enough to use cash and not credit cards only because she’d been exposed to cop talk at the dinner table. But everything else had been one terrifying blind choice after another. She’d never even lived on her own before. She’d never had to choose an apartment or buy a car, much less make contacts to buy a new name and social security number.
First there’d been Seattle, then a smaller town a year later. And finally she’d moved to Jackson.
That had been it. No one asked questions. No one even noticed her. She was average in almost every way. Average height, average build, average brown hair color, mildly average face. Aside from that, the only noticeable things about her were her size D breasts and odd career. She’d found it fairly easy to keep those under wraps.
She’d made friends with Jill right away. It had been impossible not to. Not only was Jill irresistibly friendly, but she also always brought food. Isabelle had been hanging out at her place within days.
Aside from a few brief affairs and a few more one-night stands, meals with Jill had been the extent of Isabelle’s social life for years. She had a PO box in town, so the mail carrier never bothered her. She couldn’t get pizza delivered, so there were no wild pizza-boy scenarios acted out. And the only other neighbors were separated from her and Jill by the deep, shadowed forests of ponderosa pines and aspen.
She liked it that way. She reveled in it. She felt almost safe. But things had changed last year. After dozens of trips to the library over the years to pick up interlibrary loans of rare, specialized anatomy books, one of the librarians had started a conversation. An interesting conversation. And Isabelle’s bubble of isolation had finally popped.
Lauren Foster was a good friend now. And Sophie Heyer, another librarian. Those two women had pulled Isabelle further out of her comfort zone by insisting on girls’ nights out every other Sunday.
But there hadn’t been much room for men. Not enough room. Her lies wouldn’t accommodate a long-term relationship, and neither would her heart. So she’d had a man for a week or a month at a time here and there, but never more than that.
Maybe that explained why she found herself watching Tom as he spoke, wondering if those lips would taste as good as they looked. Or if those shoulders were as wide as they seemed.
She shook her head. She needed more wine. Or less. Or she just needed to get laid. But definitely not by a US marshal.
But it didn’t matter tonight. Tonight she was full of wonderful food and less afraid of why he’d shown up on her doorstep. There was more wine, dessert was waiting and nobody was asking anything about her father. She’d be able to paint tomorrow. She could feel it.
As if the universe was offering a reward for her new good mood, Tom unbuttoned the left sleeve of his shirt and began to roll it up as he told Jill a story about a fugitive who’d fallen into an icy creek.
“The thing was, he wouldn’t come out.” His wrist was exposed first. The same tan color as the back of his hand, dark against the white cotton of his shirt. “His lips were turning blue. He couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t even speak anymore. But he refused to come out.”
Now the start of his forearm, slim but much harder than hers, muscles visible even at rest.
“None of us wanted to go in after him. It was probably twenty-five degrees in the sun, and the creek was solid ice around the banks. We just stared at each other across the water, waiting for someone to break. I mean, this guy was going to die, and the office kind of frowns on that.”
Now the thickest part of his forearm, the rolled cuff starting to tighten up around it. He was just as tan here, but the light from the wrought-iron chandelier skimmed his skin and caught on the hair of his arms, glinting golden and bright.
“So what happened?” Jill asked.
He grinned. “I broke. I had to do it. I was the senior officer. And holy shit, it was cold. So cold it felt like fire at first. The numbness set in pretty quickly, but that was only the skin. Deeper, in the muscles and joints, it hurt. And then when I hit a deeper pool of water...” He shook his head and turned the sleeve up one more roll. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Jill nodded solemnly. “Can you still have children?”
“I doubt it. Then again, they do freeze sperm, right?”
After she stopped laughing, Jill pointed at Tom. “A hero like you deserves dessert. I hope you like cherry pie. It’s Isabelle’s favorite.”
Isabelle laughed. “You make me sound like a bad ’80s sex joke. But I do love cherry pie. Almost as much as Jill does.”
A faint wash of pink appeared on Tom’s cheeks. Was he blushing? That was cute as hell. Maybe he wasn’t used to women joking about sex. But Isabelle had discovered that freedom was the best thing about getting older.
She’d felt a touch of it when she’d turned thirty. She’d suddenly felt less like a big kid blindly feeling her way through the world and more like an adult. Then at thirty-five she’d realized she was at that age when so many women really started to worry. That they were too old now. That they hadn’t married or had children. That this was their last chance to really live.
Isabelle didn’t feel as though this was her last chance. She felt as though she was finally free. Capable. Happy with herself. Comfortable with her body. And allowed to say anything she wanted to out loud, even if it made a grown man blush. Maybe especially if it did.
She loved it. She couldn’t wait to be forty. She was going to own that shit. And then at fifty, when strangers would stop hinting that it was time to settle down and have some babies, and just start looking at her with pity? That would be glorious.
So she grinned at Tom Duncan and took an extra-large piece of pie and didn’t bother stifling her moan of pleasure at the taste. Tonight she was almost sure she was safe, her mouth was sweet and tart with juicy red cherries, and tomorrow she would paint. She had every reason to moan.
* * *
ISABELLE WEST WASN’T only a mystery. She was also a distraction. First, there was that threadbare shirt, pale blue but marred with paint, and stretched too tight across her breasts whenever she reached for her glass. The shirt looked old enough to be turned into rags, and he’d been very afraid that one of those buttons was going to give way at any moment. So afraid that he’d constantly found himself checking to be sure it was still closed.
Then there was her glare, suspicious and narrow and almost as distracting as the smile she’d finally settled into toward the end of the meal. The cool smile was as interesting as the glare, as if she had a secret to go with every emotion.
Curiosity paced inside his brain like a caged lion. Who was she? Instincts weren’t everything, but Tom had learned to trust his own, and he would’ve bet quite a bit of money that she wasn’t a criminal. But she wasn’t innocent, either. Innocent women didn’t press themselves into a corner to hide and listen the way she’d done at Jill’s house.
“I’d better get going,” she said drowsily from the couch. She was curled up with the last of the wine and didn’t look as if she wanted to leave. “I’ll be painting for hours tomorrow.”
“At least it’s not summer,” Jill said. “You can sleep until eight and still get the morning light.”
“So true. And I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight. A drunk baby.”
Tom stood. “All right, drunk baby, come on. I’ll walk you home.”
Her languidness vanished in an instant. “I don’t need you to walk me home,” she snapped. “I’ve walked home a hundred times in the dark.”
“I’m sure you have. But this time, there might be an armed fugitive hiding in the woods. And I’m leaving anyway. I can either walk you or I can follow behind you. Your choice.”
“Walk her home,” Jill cut in. “Isabelle, put your prickliness away and be nice. Maybe you’ll like the feeling.”
“I doubt it,” Isabelle answered, but she shrugged. “And he already asked to walk me home. Apparently, he likes his girls mean and feral.”
“All the more reason to walk home with him, then.”
Isabelle huffed out a laugh at that then winked in his direction, completely confusing him. His mental state wasn’t helped when she reached to shrug on her coat and her blouse threatened to split in two and reveal the pink bra peeking out underneath.
He spun and walked toward the entryway where he’d left his own coat, but there was no relief there. Isabelle followed close behind to tug on her tall snow boots, leaning over so that her shirt gaped to show the generous rise of her breasts. Tom just shook his head and made himself look elsewhere until she’d finished her task. He, in fact, didn’t like his girls mean and feral. She was not the girl for him.
Then again, he still wasn’t sure he had a read on Isabelle West yet. He wouldn’t say she was mean, exactly. But as for feral...well, there was something a little wild about her. Something unfiltered. She said what she meant and wasn’t coy about her moods.
Jill, waving away Tom’s praise for her food, sent them out the door with warnings about ice on the steps. The woman was truly an amazing cook, not to mention a damn good pastry chef. He’d have to find one of her cookbooks and have Jill sign it for his sister. Wendy adored cooking. And she was terrible at it. But Tom liked to make her happy, so he went to her place once a month for a pleasant, polite evening with Mom and Dad and Wendy’s husband and kids, and he ate her awful dinners without complaint. Cookbooks hadn’t helped in the past, but maybe Jill’s would be the right fit.
“You’ve got Jill wrapped around your finger,” Isabelle said, the words warm instead of accusing.
“You have that turned around. I’d die for that woman.”
Isabelle’s laugh rang loud and pure into the night as they walked down the driveway to the road. “She’s easy to love.”
“But she likes living alone?”
Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe nobody is worthy of her. Or maybe love isn’t all that great.”
He shot her a look, but she was staring straight ahead, her small smile lit by the snow. “And which one is it for you?” he asked.
“Oh, me? I love living alone. And love definitely isn’t all that great.”
He’d heard that kind of sentiment before, but never with such good cheer. “I’d say that’s cynical, but you sound happy about it.”
She finally looked at him. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring. Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“No wife or kids? Are you depressed about it? Are you pining away?”
His lips twitched at the idea of sitting in the window of his apartment, staring yearningly into the night, like a sappy scene from a bad movie. “No. But I travel quite a bit.”
“A woman in every port?”
“Not quite,” he said with a grin. “But you make Mammoth and Casper and Cheyenne sound more promising than they are.”
“Exotic locales. Exciting adventures. Femme fatales.”
“I see you’ve been spying on me.”
She nodded, still more reserved with him than she was with Jill. “Well, I don’t travel, but I’m not lonely. I have my work, my friends and my home. And internet porn. Life is good.”
Tom tripped over a snowdrift and nearly fell flat on his face. Isabelle laughed as he dusted snow off his knee.
So much for her reserve. “If you said that to shock me, it worked,” he said.
“I said it because it’s true.” She grinned over her shoulder as she kept moving. “Try to keep up.”
He had a feeling she didn’t mean walking, but he hurried to catch up all the same. Silence fell over them as Tom tried to come up with a question that wasn’t “So what kind of porn do you like?” but his brain was stuck on the topic, so he kept his mouth shut.
Still, the silence was nice on a night like this. Their boots crunched in the dry snow, and there was the occasional thump of snow falling off tree branches, but other than that, it was only the black sky and white stars and their breath turning the air pale around them. And this very odd woman smiling at her own thoughts.
When they reached her driveway, her smile disappeared, and she shot him an arch look.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said in answer to her irritation.
She shook her head but didn’t argue when he started up the driveway with her.
“This is a gorgeous place,” he said. “I keep thinking I’d love to live outside town, but I’m not sure I want to deal with commuting in winter.”
“We get snowed in a few times a year, so I’m lucky I never have to be anywhere. And Jill always has food. I have had to strap on snowshoes on occasion to make it to her place, but it’s worth the trouble.”
“Clearly. She should open a restaurant.”
“I think she likes the solitude more than she lets on. She sold her last restaurant for a bundle, and her cookbooks sell nicely. People still love cookbooks, apparently, even in this age of ebooks and internet recipes. It’s the pictures, I think.”
“And you? You must be a pretty great artist. Jackson is hardly a cheap place to live.”
“I do all right.” She didn’t elaborate. She was clearly more comfortable telling him about Jill than speaking about herself.
“I read some stories about the judge,” she said as they trudged up the steepest part of her drive. “Do you really think he’s in danger?”
“Obviously, we take any threats seriously, but these guys associate with some groups that have strong feelings about the federal government. And they already killed two troopers.”
“I know.”
“Better safe than sorry. And the judge is isolated out here. You should be careful. I mean it.”
She nodded and stopped at the foot of her steps. “Okay. I guess I should thank you for walking me home, then.”
“You should, but I’m not sure you will.”
“Aren’t you supposed to say something gracious like ‘Just doing my job, ma’am’?”
“I would, but you didn’t actually thank me yet,” he reminded her.
“I guess I didn’t.” She smiled before she jogged up the porch steps. “Have a nice walk home, Marshal.”
Tom rolled his eyes when she opened her door. “You didn’t lock the door?”
“Oh.” She paused halfway in and winced. “I meant to, but I’m not in the habit.”
Tom shook his head. “Listen, I don’t want to piss you off, but could I take a quick look around before I leave?”
“Is this a ploy to come in for a nightcap?”
“No.”
“Peek at my etchings?”
He kept his mouth flat.
“Find out more about that internet porn?”
“Now you’re definitely doing it on purpose.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Are you complaining?”
He hadn’t been complaining, exactly. It wasn’t that he minded her talking about sex. He just wanted to be prepared for it so he could act like a seasoned and stoic officer of the law instead of a blushing teenager.
“I’m not letting you in my house,” she finally said. She was haloed by the entryway light, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Please?” he tried.
“I might have left my laptop open,” she said drily.
Okay. So she didn’t want to be alone in her house at night with a strange man. He could certainly understand that. “You could wait here. Watch from the doorway.”
Her head tilted as if she were confused by the suggestion. “Oh,” she finally said. Her forehead creased. “Look—”
Whatever she’d been about to say, it was cut off by a loud thud from somewhere behind her. Her eyes went wide, and Tom put his hand on the gun at his hip. “Step outside, please, Ms. West.”
She actually did as he’d asked, her hostility forgotten in the fear of the moment.
“There’s no one else staying here?”
“No,” she whispered.
Tom drew his gun and stepped slowly in, switching off the light to make himself less visible from the dark rooms deeper inside the house. “Stay out of the doorway,” he said to Isabelle, relieved when her shadow disappeared and left a clean rectangle of moonlight on the wall.
He was reaching for his cell to call for backup when something shot from the darkness and moved toward him. Before he could aim, it was past his feet and still moving.
Isabelle shrieked when the shadow flew out the doorway. He spun and ran toward her.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “It was just Bear.”
“A bear?” He scanned the porch and driveway.
“My cat, Bear.”
Tension fell from his shoulders like a weight tumbling off. “Your cat.”
“You scared him. He doesn’t like people.”
“Big surprise. But we don’t know that he made that noise. Wait here.”
She didn’t object. The strange man you knew was better than the one you didn’t, apparently, so she let him move past her back into the house.
Enough light came through the front window to let him navigate the living room. It didn’t take him long to discover a framed photograph lying facedown on the carpet. It appeared to have fallen from an end table that held a small plate with half a sandwich on it. He picked up the metal frame. It was heavy enough to have made the sound they’d heard.
Tom switched on the light and saw that some of the meat had been pulled from under the bread. He put the gun away. “I think I discovered the crime. You didn’t finish your lunch, and your cat was cleaning up for you.”
She poked her head around the door frame. “Oh. Sounds about right.”
She switched on the overhead light, revealing the rest of the room. It was simpler than he’d expected for an artist. A couch and chairs and a flat-screen TV along with a bookshelf stuffed full of paperbacks. And the laptop sitting dark and seemingly harmless on a desk that was crammed into a corner.
He looked at the photo in his hand, hoping for a little more insight into this woman. It was a picture of her with two other women, their arms around each other. Sisters or friends, maybe.
He glanced around for more photos, but only found two paintings on the walls.
One was a man, turned away, his eyes focused somewhere distant. His hair curled over his ear, and wind blew his shirt tight to his back. Pine trees rose up in front of him.
If not for the signature across the bottom corner, Tom would’ve thought it was a photograph at first glance; it was that stark and crisp.
The other painting was a completely different style. It was a watercolor of a golden field with shadows of mountains rising far away and storm clouds rolling closer.
“Is one of them yours?”
“Yes, the portrait. I suck at landscapes. And watercolor.”
“The portrait is striking. Really spectacular.”
“Thank you,” she said simply, not offering any protest. She knew she was good, and he liked that. He was about to ask who the man was, but Isabelle’s mouth tightened as if she was waiting for just that question—and resenting that he’d ask it—so Tom tipped his head toward the dark doorway on the other side of the room. “May I please check the rest of the house? Just to be sure?”
Her eyes narrowed. She watched him for a long moment then looked around the room, as if trying to see what he was seeing. “If you really think it’s necessary. Watch out for the laundry when you get to my bedroom. I haven’t quite kept up with it this...week.”
“Got it.” He flipped on the hallway light and moved to the right toward two open doors. The first was a small bedroom with no piles of laundry and no intruder. He checked the closet and moved on.
The second door was clearly her bedroom. A king-size bed was piled high with silver-and-blue pillows on top of a rumpled gray comforter. Despite the massive size of the thing, it looked as though she used the whole big mattress. There wasn’t a smooth spot of blanket on it. Or she’d had a guest sometime recently. He couldn’t rule that out.
Other than that, the bedroom was fairly unremarkable aside from the pile of laundry at the foot of her bed. There were also a few clean clothes stacked neatly on top of a dresser as if she’d gotten distracted before putting them away.
Tom moved toward a door in the far wall and found a large bathroom, empty aside from a can of turpentine on the counter and a smaller pile of laundry. He checked the closet, surprised there were still clean clothes remaining in there, then shut off the lights and headed for the other side of the house.
It was quick work. There was one more bedroom that seemed to be used for storage, and past it, a laundry room with a door that creaked in protest at being opened after so long. The last door led to the garage, which was empty aside from an SUV and a few very large canvases wrapped in plastic.
He found Isabelle in the kitchen, pouring a glass of water and not the least bit concerned about the security of her home. He shook his head. “I guess I should’ve asked you to wait in the living room until I’d cleared this area.”
She shrugged. “I would’ve yelled if I found someone.”
“Is that the last room?” he asked, tipping his chin toward the double doors.
“Yep, it’s my studio.”
He hesitated a moment. He’d never been in the home of a real working artist before. “I won’t be invading your privacy if I look inside?”
“You’re invading it right now, but I think I’ll survive.”
He opened the doors to cool air and a strong smell of paint. Even before he reached for the light he could make out easels highlighted by the moonlight that streamed through tall windows. Their shadows stretched across the wood floor, the long shapes making his neck prickle with alarm. Anyone could be standing there. He’d unbuttoned his gun strap, but he hadn’t drawn it. The likelihood that anyone was actually here was minuscule, but he still put his hand on the butt of his gun as he swept the wall with his fingers.
They finally found the switch, and the darkest shadows vanished in the sudden onslaught of light.
Her studio was a large room, and the scattered canvases blocked a lot of the view, but Tom could see practically every corner when he dropped down to peer past the forest of easel legs. It looked clear. He blew out a sigh, but his relief lasted for only the two seconds it took him to stand and refocus his eyes on the nearest canvas.
This time his breath left him on a rush, and he stepped back in alarm.
What the hell?
His gaze skipped off that painting and moved to the next one, trying to escape the sight or just make sense of it, but the second one was no better. Just a mess of blood and sinew and flayed skin and glistening muscles.
Narrowing his eyes, he forced himself to step closer to the first easel, but that only made it worse. Her painting was of a human abdomen, except that this person’s skin had been peeled off to reveal the connective tissue beneath it. It was so incredibly detailed that he could make out the smallest capillaries on the underside of the peeled skin.
Even worse than the paintings were the photos taped to the sides of the canvas frames. These were actual pictures of bodies stripped of their skin and humanity. They were corpses. And she was re-creating them.
“You don’t like them?” she asked from only a few feet away. Tom jumped, spinning toward her, his hand tightening on his gun. He didn’t draw it, though. He had that much sense left.
“What the hell kind of art is this?” Was she a provocateur or just some sort of sicko?
She grinned at him, and he changed “sicko” to “serial killer” in his mind. Clearly, she was sociopathic. “I’m an anatomical painter.”
“Yeah, I damn well see that.”
Now she was actually laughing. “You should see your face.” She wiped a tear from her eye. She was laughing so hard she was crying.
“What is this?” he barked.
“Just what I said it is. I work on commission for textbooks and medical art companies.”
He blinked and forced his tension down a notch, but it wasn’t easy. He hated seeing dead bodies. Really hated it. “Textbooks?” he managed to ask more calmly.
“Yes. Biology. Anatomy. Some surgical instruction. Photos don’t really work well. There’s not enough definition and contrast, usually. And digital art sucks. Don’t tell anyone I said that. Ninety percent of work is digital now. 3-D rendering has its uses, I suppose. But my niche is oil. Not very common these days. It’s specialty work.”
He looked at the nearest painting again then turned back to her. He could feel the horrified confusion etched into his face, and he could see it in the laughter that still swam in her eyes.
“I also do posters for doctors’ offices. You know, the ‘This is your knee joint’ kind of thing.”
“This is—” he shook his head “—awful.”
“Really?” She shrugged, as if she couldn’t fathom his reaction. “You probably don’t want to see the comparison ones, then. A small child winding up for a softball pitch on one side, and the same small child as a skeleton in the next. They’re a little morbid, but the kids love them.”
“The kids?” he gasped, looking over his shoulder again. His eyes focused on the next easel and a photo taped there. It was a thigh, half the flesh removed, the other half still intact, a tattoo of a dragon livid against the pale skin. He felt the blood leaving his head and took a deep breath to try to steady himself. “Jesus, Isabelle. How can you do this?”
Her smile finally faded. “What do you mean? It’s my job. Medical students need to learn about the body. So do high school kids. Would you rather schoolkids had to work with cadavers?”
The word cadaver was almost too much for him. The memory of his brother’s pale, stiff body flashed into his head, but he forced it back. He could control it. It was the same every time he had to deal with death, and death was part of his job. But this...
“This is your home,” he said. “Where you sleep at night.”
“I work here, too. It’s no big deal.”
No big deal. Right. Here he’d been warming to her, and the woman was a freak. A freak who looked at pictures of dead people all day. In her secluded cabin. In the dark woods. “Well,” he managed to say, “the house is all clear. You’re safe.”
“Thank you. Want to sit down and stay awhile?” she teased.
“No, thanks,” he muttered as he brushed by her. Her laughter followed him to the front door. “Have a good night,” he called over his shoulder. “And lock the door.”
Or bar it. From the outside.
Maybe this woman’s secret was more dangerous than he’d suspected.
