Chasing Venus (44 page)

She pushed him
away.
 
“Wait a minute.
 
Isn't it Monday?
 
Aren’t they expecting you at work
today?”

“I can get away without
being there for one day.”
 
He went
for her throat this time, forcing her head backward.
 
She stilled briefly, then spoke again.

“No, I mean it.”
 
She straightened.
 
“Won’t it be suspicious to Simpson if
you don’t show up at work?
 
Since
the rental car was found near the studio over the weekend and they know I was
in LA?”

A lot had happened
since then she didn’t know about.
 
There was no fighting it.
 
She wouldn’t be satisfied until she heard the entire story.

So he led her back to
the couch and told it.
 
He told her
about the Brandy alibi he’d concocted when Simpson showed up at his home.
 
About the frantic call from Sheila
relaying what Rajiv had seen at the cabin.
 
About how Reid had evaded his tail.

She was frowning when
he finished.
 
“So now Simpson knows
for sure that you’re hiding something.
 
He’s got to know you’re hiding me.”

There was no disputing
that assessment.
 
She went on, with
the same frown on her face but now a serious question in her eyes.
 
“Are you sure you want to do this, Reid?
 
You are in way deep.
 
You’ve lied for me, you’ve evaded
surveillance, you’re probably at risk of criminal charges.
 
Who knows what could happen to
Crimewatch
after all this.
 
You’re putting a huge amount on the
line.”
 
She paused, then, “For me.”

Her unspoken
why
hung in the air.
 
He hadn’t answered that question in days
now.
 
He’d been on a sort of
automatic pilot, still helping her because he’d started helping her, because
he’d gotten drawn in by the day-to-day, because of his “save the victim”
mentality and his growing certainty that she was a victim.

But she was no longer a
cause for him.
 
She was a
woman.
 
And not just any woman
now.
 
Annie.

Reid's lips came close
to forming words he hadn't spoken for years.
 
Words he'd never spoken to a woman other
than Donna.
 
Yet, as Annie watched
him, in the end those were words he couldn't bring himself to speak.
 
All he could do was mouth a reassurance
she'd heard before.
 
“Annie, you’re
in the right here.
 
I am, too.
 
We’re going to prove that.
 
Soon.
 
And when we do, we’ll be in the clear.
 
No one will be able to accuse either one
of us of anything.”

He led her to bed
then.
 
She didn’t protest, whether
out of exhaustion or desire or some deep need for comfort after what she’d
suffered.
 
He unwrapped the towel
from her body as if he were unveiling a precious thing, and in fact he was.

This time, when he made
love to her, it was a slow fire, a gentle fire, the kind that took longer to
build and also longer to extinguish.
 
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so tender; part of him wondered
if he ever had.

Traitorous thought, but
lost in Annie he didn’t care.
 
He
just didn’t care.

Annie awoke alone and
naked in bed, late afternoon sunshine painting a golden stripe on the shambled
bedclothes.
 
It took her a few moments
to remember where she was, and why.
 
When memory returned, in all its wretched clarity, she jolted upright
and shouted Reid’s name.
 
He
appeared in seconds, the .38 in his jeans’ waistband, and pulled her into his
arms.

“What time is it?” she
asked when she recovered.
 
Her head
nuzzled against his chest.

“A little after five.”

“How long did I sleep?”

“About six hours.”

She pulled back, took
stock of how she felt.
 
Still
tired.
 
Very hungry.
 
More than a little achy from her getaway
the night before.
 
Deeply comforted
by the bulwark of Reid mere inches away, and the recollection of their
lovemaking.
 
She looked into his
eyes, their ocean-blue depths calm and reassuring.
 
“What do we do now?”

She recognized the
irony of her question.
 
It was she,
after all, who had dragged him into this morass.
 
It was because of her that his work, his
reputation, his life were all in jeopardy.
 
Yet for the last six hours he had let her succumb to slumber while he
forced himself, she knew, to do the heavy lifting of plotting their next move.

“I’ve had a few
thoughts about what to do next,” he said, and was about to expound on them when
she lay a quieting finger on his lips.

“When is the last time
I told you how grateful I am?”

He looked away as if he
were casting his mind back, a smile creasing his lips.
 
“Oh, a day or two.”

“That’s way too
long.
 
I should be thanking you on
an hourly basis.”

She’d done quite the
opposite, she realized, mentally replaying the events of the prior day, when
she’d awakened in this very bed with Reid beside her only to berate him for
failing to give her something he in no way owed.

“I want to apologize
for how I acted yesterday,” she told him.
 
“For getting so mad at you when you said you didn’t want to get
serious.”

He shook his head as if
to forestall her but she pushed on.

“The fact is that you
were never anything but upfront about that.
 
If I didn’t like what I was hearing, I
should have held myself back.
 
I
shouldn’t have jumped into bed with you.
 
I especially shouldn’t have used sleeping with you to try to make you
feel some sort of obligation.”

“Annie …”
 
He sighed.
 
“You didn’t do anything wrong.
 
It was me who pursued you, from the
beginning, and given where I am I had no business doing that.”

That wasn’t what she’d
hoped to hear, but she forced herself to listen.

He rose and walked
across the small bedroom.
 
Annie was
assailed with melancholy, imagining the inevitable day when the distance
between them was much greater than the few yards that separated them now.
 
He propped his elbow on a bureau bearing
a wide assortment of Banerjee family photos.
 
Sheila figured prominently, Annie saw,
and she wondered, not for the first time, if she and Sheila Banerjee were two
in a line of women who’d tried to slay Reid’s demons, and failed.
 
It seemed an object lesson.

“I’m really torn
because I feel so close to you, Annie.
 
Closer than I’ve felt to any woman since Donna.”

If only there weren’t a
caveat coming.

“But I’m worried I
can’t give you what you deserve.
 
I
feel terrible because I started something I may not be able to finish.
 
As much as I want to.”

A part of her had
expected to hear exactly this, even though, hours before, she had been sure
that he was close to telling her he loved her.
 
Maybe he had been.
 
But close wasn’t good enough.
 
Not for the Annie she wanted to be, the
Annie she used to be, before she squandered the best part of herself to marry a
man who didn’t give her his whole heart.
 
Reid might have a laudable reason for holding himself back, but that was
a compromise Annie would not make again.

“I understand better
than I used to,” she heard herself say.
 
“You have to do what you have to do.”

He seemed surprised she
was letting him off the hook.
 
He
came back to the bed to sit beside her.
 
“I want to be with you, Annie.
 
That’s really come home to me the last few days when I haven’t known
where you were.”
 
He stopped.

When I was afraid the killer got you
.
 
The words Reid wouldn’t say reverberated
in Annie’s head.

“I want to be with you,
too.”
 
It was an admission she was
startled to hear herself speak.
 
“But I can’t if you’re, as you say, torn.
 
I don’t want a man who’s torn about
being with me, Reid.”

He nodded, said nothing
more.

Sadness came and
perched beside Annie, and she knew it would be her companion for some
time.
 
There was nothing for it then
but to plunge ahead with what she had to do to make her life worth saving.

“All right.
 
What’s our first order of business?
 
I’m starving so I hope it’s dinner.”

That lightened the
mood.

He chuckled.
 
“I’m thinking the same thing.
 
And since the cupboards are almost bare,
I say we grab good old-fashioned fast food.
 
It’s a risk driving around in the truck
but we’ve got to eat.
 
And if we’re
both wearing sunglasses and baseball caps, I bet we can go through the
drive-thru lane and not be recognized.”
 
He headed out of the room.
 
“Let me get your clothes.
 
They’re washed.”

Ten minutes later they
were in Reid’s pickup headed for the nearest burger joint, fifteen miles of
two-lane country road away.
 
“I
don’t think we should get into a bunch of personal stuff again,” he said, “but
there is something I have to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s with the
diamond ring back at the cabin?”

She’d forgotten all
about it.
 
“So the killer didn’t
take it.”

“That’s not what he was
after.”

Only too true.
 
“Let me tell you about Kevin
Zeering
,” Annie began, and described the behavior of the
lovesick writing student whom Reid had glimpsed on TV at the rally her mom and
stepdad had organized.
 
“He’s not
the killer, though,” she concluded.
 
“For a while I thought he might be but he’s not the man who came after
me yesterday.
 
I’m positive about
that.”

Reid was less ready to
cross Kevin
Zeering
off the suspect list but was
forced to quiet down when it came time to place their drive-thru order.
 
Annie did the talking to avoid the
possibility of Reid’s voice being recognized.
 
He traded cash for food at the pick-up
window and merged back into light early evening traffic.

“I cannot believe how
hungry I am.”
 
Annie dove into the
French fries and pushed one into Reid’s mouth.

“
I’ll
kill you if you finish that before we get back to the cabin.”

She ate one more fry
then forced herself to set the bags in the
footwell
.
 
A new thought occurred to her.
 
“We can’t stay at the cabin.”

“I know.”

“He found me there
once.
 
He might think he can find me
there again.”
 
And he’d be right.

“Don’t worry.
 
We’ll be gone in a matter of hours.
 
And if he comes for you during that
time, I’ll be ready.”
 
The .38
hadn’t relocated from Reid’s waistband.

“Where to, then?
 
Because every time I think about it, I
come up with only one possibility.”

“Some sort of no tell
motel.”

“Where we can pay with
cash and check in without having to answer a lot of questions.”
 
She thought for a moment as an idea took
root in her brain.
 
“Is there any
reason not to move closer to Santa Barbara?”

“Not that I can think
of.”

“Because I stayed at a
little motel just outside of town when I went to Maggie Boswell’s signing
party.
 
I didn’t want to spend a lot
of money and I found this place on-line.
 
I bet it would do the trick.”
 
There was also a certain comfort to returning to a place with which she
had some familiarity.

“They might recognize
you, though.
 
That was just a few
weeks ago.”

“The clerk was really
distracted when he checked me in.
 
He was on his cell fighting with his girlfriend or somebody.
 
I seriously doubt he’d remember me.
 
Anyway, you’d check us in, and he
wouldn’t recognize you any more than anybody else does.
 
By the way, you’re fairly incognito with
the cap and sunglasses.”

“Unfortunately, in
another hour it’ll be too late to wear the glasses.”

Already the sun was
drooping toward the horizon.
 
The
oaks and eucalyptus lining the road were casting long shadows.

They drifted into
silence for the remainder of the drive.
 
Reid conducted a reconnaissance of the cabin before they reentered,
keeping Annie close at hand and his revolver drawn.
 
When all was as they had left it, they
settled at the small rustic dining table to devour their meal.