Drop Dead Gorgeous (Blair Mallory #2)

Chapter Twenty-nine

T he weather turned chilly again overnight, and rain had started by morning. Normally I would be going to work early on Saturday, because it was a busy day, but when I talked to Lynn she said that JoAnn was working out great and she suggested offering the job full-time. I agreed, because otherwise these next three weeks would kill me.

Wyatt slept late, sprawled across the bed, and I entertained myself that morning by writing his list of transgressions. Like I would forget something that important? No way. I sat curled in his big chair with a throw over my feet and legs, perfectly content to laze away the morning. The rain seemed to do away with any sense of urgency. I love listening to rain anyway, and seldom get the chance to because I’m usually too busy. I felt safe and happy, cocooned with Wyatt, letting the detectives do the legwork in tracking down my stalker. They were on the right track with the rental cars, I just knew it.

I could talk. To my delight, I could actually talk. My voice was very raspy, but at at least it worked. I never could have been one of those nuns who took vows of silence. Come to think of it, I couldn’t have been a nun, period.

I called Mom and talked to her. She had talked to Sally and was greatly relieved; Sally had already called Jazz and apologized, and they were supposed to meet this morning and talk in person. I wondered if maybe I should wait until tomorrow to take my fabric over, and Mom said yes. I got the picture, having gone through something of a reconciliation with Wyatt.

Then I called Siana and we chatted for a while. After hanging up with her, I took all of my new clothes upstairs and laid them out on the bed in the guest bedroom. I tried on all my new shoes again, walking in them to make certain they didn’t rub my toes. By then Wyatt was up; I heard him go downstairs for a cup of coffee, then he came back upstairs and leaned in the doorway while he drank it, watching me with a sleepy sort of half smile on his face.

My shoes perplexed him, for some reason. I’d bought what I considered the basics: athletic shoes for the gym—three pairs—plus high-heeled boots, plus some clogs, plus some black pumps, a pair of black flats, and, well, the list goes on.

“Just how many pairs of black shoes do you need?” he finally asked, staring at them lined up on the floor.

Okay, shoes aren’t a laughing matter. I gave him a cool stare. “One pair more than I have.”

“Then why didn’t you get them?”

“Because I would still need one pair more than I have .”

He said, “Hmmm,” and wisely let the subject drop.

Over breakfast I told him I thought the Sally/Jazz situation was resolved. He looked a little stunned. “How did you do that? You’ve been evading a stalker and getting burned out of your home. When did you have time?”

“I made time. Desperation is a great motivator.” I was a little stunned myself. He truly had no idea how desperate I’d been.

After breakfast I went back upstairs and puttered with my new clothes, cutting off tags, washing what needed to be washed before I wore it, pressing out stubborn wrinkles, then rearranging Wyatt’s closet and hanging my clothes in there. Except it wasn’t Wyatt’s closet now, it was our closet, which meant three-quarters of it was mine. That was okay for now, with my sparse wardrobe that was just for the fall months, but by the time I bought winter clothes, then spring clothes, then summer clothes—well, there would have to be more rearranging.

The dresser drawers had to be cleaned out and rearranged, too. And the bathroom vanity space. Again he leaned in the doorway and watched me while I emptied all the dresser drawers, piling all the stuff on the bed for now. He kept smiling a little as if the sight of me working my ass off while he just watched was somehow satisfying to him. Why his conscience didn’t kill him, I don’t know.

“What’s so funny?” I finally asked, a little irritably.

“Nothing’s funny. ”

“You’re smiling.”

“Yeah.”

I put my hands on my hips and scowled at him. “So why are you smiling?”

“I’m watching you nest—in my house.” He gave me a heavy-lidded look as he sipped his coffee. “God knows I’ve tried long enough to get you here.”

“Two months,” I said, scoffing. “Big deal.”

“Seventy-four days to be exact, since Nicole Goodwin was shot and I thought it was you. Seventy-four long, frustrating days.”

Now I really scoffed. “There’s no way a man who’s had as much sex as you’ve had could be frustrated.”

“It wasn’t sex. Okay, so part of it was sex. It was still frustrating, for you to be living somewhere else.”

“Well, I’m here now. Enjoy. Life as you knew it is over.”

Laughing, he went to get more coffee. The phone rang while he was downstairs and he answered, only to come upstairs a few minutes later to get his badge and weapon. “I have to go in,” he said. That wasn’t unusual, and it didn’t have anything to do with me or he’d have told me. This was more about the police department being understaffed than anything else, which was pretty much a chronic situation. “You know the drill. Don’t let anyone in.”

“How about if I see someone carrying a gas can and sneaking around the foundation?”

“Do you know how to shoot a pistol?” he asked, and he wasn’t kidding.

“Nope.” I was regretful, but I figured that was something I shouldn’t fudge.

“By the time I’m finished with you next week, you will,” he said.

Great. Something else to take up in my spare time, assuming I had any. I should have kept my mouth shut. On the other hand, knowing how to use a pistol would be cool.

He kissed me and was out the door. Absently I listened to the rumbling sound of the garage door as it opened, and a moment later closed again, then I returned to my sorting and arranging.

Some of the stuff that had been in the dresser could clearly go somewhere else, like the baseball glove (?!), the shoeshine kit, a stack of books from the police academy, and a shoe box full of photos. As soon as I opened the shoe box and saw the contents, I forgot about the other stuff and sat cross-legged on the floor by the bed, looking through them.

Men don’t care much for photographs, which is why these were dumped into a box and forgotten about. Some of them, obviously, his mother had given him: school pictures of both him and his sister, Lisa, at various ages. Six-year-old Wyatt made my heart melt. He’d looked so innocent and fresh, nothing at all like the hard-as-nails man I loved, except for those glittering eyes. By the time he’d been sixteen, though, he was already getting that cool, piercing expression. There were pictures of him in his football uniforms, both high school and college, and then other pictures of him as a pro, and the difference was obvious. By then, football hadn’t been a game anymore, it was a job, and a hard one at that.

There was one picture of Wyatt with his dad, who had been dead for quite some time. Wyatt looked about ten, and he still had that innocent look. His dad must have died soon after the picture was taken, because Roberta had told me Wyatt was just ten when it happened. That was when his innocence had begun to go; all of the pictures taken after that showed an awareness that life wasn’t always safe and happy.

Then I found the picture of him and his wife.

I saw the writing first, because the picture was upside down. I picked it up. In a pretty feminine handwriting was the inscription: Wyatt and me, Liam and Kellian Greeson, Sandy Patrick and his latest bimbo.

I turned the picture over, looking at Wyatt’s face. He was laughing into the camera, his arm draped carelessly over the shoulder of a very pretty redhead.

A pang of very natural jealousy shot through me. I didn’t want to see him with any other woman, especially one he’d been married to. Why couldn’t she have been someone either plain or hard-looking, someone obviously unsuited to him, instead of being so pretty and—

—my stalker.

I stared at the photograph, not believing my eyes. The photograph was easily fifteen years old and she looked so young, not much more than a teenager, though I knew she’d been just a couple of years younger than Wyatt. The hair was very different, of course: 1980s big hair, carried forward into the nineties. Too much makeup, not that I was judgmental or anything. And those long, long eyelashes that made her look as if she were wearing artificial ones.

There wasn’t any doubt.

I reached for the bedroom phone.

No dial tone.

I waited, because sometimes it takes a few seconds for a cordless unit to get a dial tone. Nothing happened.

Now, there have been more than a few times when I’ve been unable to get a dial tone and it’s no big deal, but when a homicidal stalker is after me and there’s no dial tone, yeah, I automatically assume the worst. My God, she was here! Somehow she’d cut the phone lines, which can’t be easy.

That’s when I noticed how still and quiet the house was. There was no background hum of the heating unit, electrical lights, refrigerator. Nothing.

I looked at the digital alarm clock. Its face was blank.

The power was off. I hadn’t noticed because the bedroom had enough windows to let in sufficient light to see, even on a rainy day, plus I’d been engrossed in the pictures.

The power had been on when Wyatt left, because I’d heard the garage door. He hadn’t been gone more than fifteen minutes, so it couldn’t have been off long. What did that prove? Anything? That she waited until he was out of the house before she came in? How could she even know where he lived? We’d been very careful, no one had followed us here.

But she knew where he worked. Knowing that, all she had to do was wait there and follow him home, probably even before she started following me. Following him would have led her to me.

Silently I got to my feet and retrieved my cell phone from where I’d tossed it on the bed. I’d taken it upstairs with me because so many people call my cell if they want to reach me. The lack of electricity wouldn’t affect my cell phone, unless it was an area-wide problem that took out the cell towers, too, but if it was an area-wide problem then I didn’t have anything to worry about. It was the localized-to-this-house scenario that scared the crap out of me.

I was shaking as I punched in Wyatt’s cell number, my hair lifting from my scalp. No doubt about it, I was spooked. As quietly as I could, I crept into the bathroom and closed the door, to muffle the sound of my voice.

“What’s up?” he said in my ear.

“It’s Megan,” I blurted. “It’s Megan. I was looking through your old pictures, and…it’s her.”

“Megan?” he repeated, sounding astounded. “That doesn’t make—”

“I don’t care what it doesn’t make!” I whispered frantically. “It’s her! She’s the stalker! And the power has gone out. What if she’s here, what if she’s in the house—”

“I’m coming back,” he said after the merest hesitation. “And I’m calling in for the nearest patrol car. If you think she’s in the house then you get out of it, any way you can. You got that? You’ve been right too many times, and you’ve had too many close calls. If you have to go out a window again, do it.”

“Okay,” I said, but he’d hung up and there was only dead air.

He was coming back. He’d been gone about fifteen minutes, so it should take him about that to get back here, unless he drove like a bat out of Hell. There might be a patrol car that was closer.

Oddly, his assurance that he trusted my instincts calmed me down. Maybe it was because I didn’t feel so alone, because help was on the way.

I set my cell phone on silent mode, and slipped it in my pocket. At least this time I wasn’t caught wearing flimsy pajamas and no shoes. A long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of cargo sweatpants offered much more protection. Well, I still didn’t have on shoes, but at least I was wearing socks—and even if I’d had on shoes I would have pulled them off, in the interest of silence.

I was probably letting my nerves get to me, I thought, but the last time I’d reassured myself of something like this, she’d burned down my home. I seemed to have some sixth sense for her that let me know when she was near, and I intended to trust it.

At least I no longer had to wonder why, what I’d done that someone would try to kill me. I knew now. It was Wyatt. Wyatt loved me, and we were getting married. She couldn’t stand that.

Roberta had told me how, when Megan filed for divorce, Wyatt had simply walked away. He hadn’t cared enough to try to make their marriage work, or enough to rethink his decision to become a cop. She hadn’t been important enough to him. How that must have eaten at her through the years, that she hadn’t been enough for the man she loved. I knew something of how she’d felt, not that I was sympathetic toward her or anything stupid like that. Please. The psycho bitch had tried to kill me.

She’d gotten remarried within the year, Roberta had said. The second marriage must not have worked out either, because how could it, when she was in love with Wyatt? But she’d held on, because Wyatt hadn’t married anyone else, and she could cling to the thought that deep down he still loved her and maybe one day they’d get back together—until I came along. Our engagement announcement had been in the newspaper. Had she made a habit of going online and reading the local newspaper, or Googling his name every so often? Maybe someone local knew her, and had told her. How she’d found out didn’t matter, but her reaction to the news very much mattered.

I tried to think of any weapons that were available. Knives, of course, down in the kitchen. I’d felt safe going down for a knife while I was in my condo, with the alarm system to tell me if anyone broke in, but Wyatt didn’t have an alarm system. He had locks, dead-bolt locks, and triple-pane windows that only someone very determined could get through. Unfortunately, she was very determined.

I had nothing up here to protect myself with, except the big, heavy flashlight on Wyatt’s bedside table. I slowly eased out of the bathroom, fully expecting to come face-to-face with an ax-wielding lunatic, but the bedroom was silent and empty. I got the flashlight, gripping it in my right hand. Maybe I’d have the chance to conk her on the head. One good concussion deserved another.

Cautiously I moved into the hallway. It, too, was empty. I stood for a moment listening, but there was no sound within the house. Outside, I heard a car’s tires on the wet pavement as it passed by, the sound mundane and comforting, but not as comforting as it would have been if the car had slowed and turned in. Wyatt hadn’t had time to get here yet, but a patrol car would be welcome, too.

All of the doors in the hallway were closed, except for the door to the master bedroom, behind me. I couldn’t remember if I’d closed the door when I’d come out of the guest room where I’d been trying on shoes. That just isn’t something you normally remember. But no one jerked any of those doors open and leaped into the hallway to charge me with an ax, so I eased forward, toward the stairs.

I know, I know. In every horror movie, at least once the dumb-ass blonde goes down the stairs after hearing a noise, or down into the dark basement. Something. Well, you know what? If you’re upstairs, you’re usually trapped. Not many houses have dual staircases, one on each end of the house. At least if you’re on the ground floor there’s more than one way out. I’d just been caught on the second floor in a fire, and I didn’t want to repeat the experience. I wanted to be on that ground floor.

I took another step. I could see part of the den now, and the doorway to the kitchen. No maniac. One more step. A flash of blue at the bottom of the stairs caught my eye. The blue whatever wasn’t moving, it was just there. And there hadn’t been anything blue down there when I came up these stairs.

It looked familiar, though. Whatever it was, I’d seen it before. But, I swear, it looked like two blue pipes sticking up, with odd designs—

My boots. My blue boots, the ones that hadn’t been delivered before my condo was burned.

She’d gotten them. She had picked up my package. And now she was really here, in this house, it wasn’t my imagination any longer.

No way in Hell was I going down those stairs. I was going to take Wyatt’s advice and bail out the window—

She stepped out of the kitchen, a pistol held in a steady, two-handed grip, aimed right at me. She was wearing soft-soled shoes that wouldn’t make any more noise than my socks. Without letting the aim waver, she tilted her head at the boots. “What were you thinking? That you’d join the rodeo, or something?”

“Hello, Megan,” I said.

Surprise flared in her eyes. She hadn’t expected that. She’d expected to kill me and walk right out, because who would ever suspect her? She didn’t live here, hadn’t been here in years and years, hadn’t contacted anyone she knew here. No one should ever have been able to connect her to this.

“I’ve already told Wyatt,” I said.

A derisive look crossed her face. “Yeah, right. The power’s off. None of these cordless phones will work.”

“No, but the cell phone in my pocket does.” I indicated the bulge. “There’s a shoe box full of pictures up here. I was going through them, and came across this snapshot of you and Wyatt and two other couples. Some guy named Sandy and his latest bimbo.” I added that so she’d know I wasn’t making it up. Getting away with murder was a big part of her plan, I suspected. Knowing that she wouldn’t, no matter what, might make her rethink this whole killing-me thing.

I saw the pain flicker in her expression as she recalled the photograph. “He kept that?”

“I don’t know that he kept it so much as he never got around to throwing it away. As soon as I recognized you, I called him.” I shrugged. “They were already working the rental car angle anyway. He’d have spotted your name.”

“I doubt he even knows my last name,” she said bitterly.

“Well, look, that isn’t my fault,” I pointed out.

“I don’t care what is or isn’t your fault. This isn’t about you. It’s about him. It’s about him finding out what it’s like to love someone so much you hurt, and not be able to have them. It’s about living with pain for the rest of your life, a pain you can’t walk away from.”

“Huh. Sounds like you should put yourself out of your misery.” I just hate whiny people, don’t you? Bad things happen to everyone. A busted relationship isn’t the same as someone dying, so get over it.

“Shut up!” She moved closer to the foot of the stairs, that two-handed grip still as steady as ever. “You don’t know what it’s like. When we got married I knew he didn’t love me as much as I loved him, but at least I had a chance, I thought. But I never got to build on it. A pro athlete is gone a lot. I had to share him with the team, both before and after the season. I had to share him with his family, because he came down here every chance we got. I even had to share him with Sandy Patrick and his bimbos, because he was Wyatt’s best friend. Do you have any idea how many meals we ate where it was just us?”

I shrugged. “Two? That’s just a guess. I don’t know how long you were married. He doesn’t talk about you.” No, I didn’t like her, didn’t feel sorry for her, didn’t give a damn about her other than I wanted to keep her talking long enough for Wyatt to get back.

“How would you feel, sharing him with the whole world,” she began hotly.

“See, that’s the difference between us,” I said, leaning on the newel post. “I think the whole concept of sharing is overrated. It’s unnatural. I don’t like to share. I don’t share. I will not share.” Unspoken were the words, You worm. Do you think I’d have put up with being ignored for a single minute?

She looked a little rattled, as if she’d expected me to be hysterical by now, crying and begging. Rattled wasn’t good. Rattled did stupid things, like pull the trigger. To get her mind off my unnatural behavior, I asked, “How did you get in here, anyway?”

“I’ve been watching this house. I’ve watched the two of you back out of the garage a dozen times. Neither of you ever waits to make certain the door is completely down. In fact, you’re around the house and out of sight before the door is halfway down. When he left, I just rolled a ball into the garage. The automatic sensor stopped the door and raised it back up. I walked in. How hard was that?”

So she’d been in the house since Wyatt had left. She could have caught me unawares, killed me, and already left, but she’d wanted to play her little game with the boots. She’d wanted me terrified.

I said, “Not very, I guess,” and shrugged. If I lived through this, a security system was going in immediately —the kind that beeps whenever a door is opened. “I guess you threw the master breaker switch, too.”

She nodded. “The box is in the garage. Why not?”

“And you were playing musical chairs with the rental cars, right? And wearing wigs? Except for that horrible dye job you had at the hospital.”

“I didn’t plan as well as I could have. I hadn’t even thought about security cameras in the mall parking lot. Thanks for telling me. I thought about the wigs after it took a stylist hours to get that shit out of my hair.”

“You could have saved yourself the trouble. The tapes were worn out. Wyatt couldn’t get any useful details from them.”

Now she looked annoyed, because I’m sure she went to a lot of trouble, swapping cars. And she was right: stripping artificial color out of your hair is a long, messy job. I’d have been pissed about that, too.

“You missed with the car in the parking lot, but I can’t see that as a very effective way to kill someone.”

She shrugged. “Spur of the moment decision. I’d been following you around and all of a sudden there you were, strutting across the parking lot as if you owned it. You were a…target of opportunity.”

“Strutting? Excuse me. I don’t strut .” Indignant, I straightened from the newel post.

“Prancing, then. I hated you on sight. I’d have smothered you in the hospital if you’d been alone.”

“Boy, you aren’t good at this killing shit at all, are you?”

“It’s my first time. I’m learning as I go. I should have been more straightforward. Walk up to you, put a bullet in you, walk away.”

Except she still hadn’t learned that lesson.

Fifteen minutes hadn’t gone by yet; I was certain of that. I hadn’t heard any cars drive up. Would Wyatt drive up? Or would he park down the road and sneak up on the house?

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than he half stepped out of the kitchen door behind her, keeping part of his body behind cover. His automatic was in his right hand and aimed at her head. “Megan—”

Startled, she whirled. She might have been a good shot, in fact we found out later that she really was, she regularly shot at a target range, but she’d never practiced a real-life situation. She was already pulling the trigger as she whirled, the shots going wild.

Wyatt’s didn’t.

And neither did her last one.

My heart literally stopped, for a couple of agonizing seconds. I don’t remember moving, but I was down those stairs, leaping over her as she lay there moaning. If she hadn’t already been lying down, I’d have plowed over her getting to him.

Until the day I die I’ll see the expression on his face, see the way the bullet jerked him back, see the red spray of blood from his chest, arcing almost in slow motion. He staggered back, then went down on one knee. He struggled to get up, to get on his feet again, then sort of sprawled sideways. And still he kept trying to get up.

I was screaming his name. I know that. I screamed his name over and over. I slipped in his blood, there was already a pool of blood on the floor, and went down beside him.

He was breathing in shallow, jerky movements. “Shit,” he muttered thickly. “This hurts like hell.”

“Wyatt, you jackass!” I shrieked, sliding my arm under his head to cradle it. “‘Take a bullet for me’ is just an expression. An expression ! You aren’t supposed to really do it!”

“Now you tell me,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I’m ashamed of what I did. Almost. I guess I should be ashamed.

I ran over to that bitch and kicked her.