Crimson Eve (14 page)
So here I am, living two lives. Especially when I’m with Scott. I tell Scott I love him, like always. And the thing is, I
do
love him. Really. It’s just so hard to explain, caring for two totally different people at the same time. I don’t even understand it myself.
And then I go to work, and nobody would guess the words and the kisses that fly between Bryson and me the minute his office door is shut. True, that doesn’t happen very often. But it’s only because we have to be so careful. Bryson would have me in there all day if we had the chance.
I feel like I’ve been with Bryson forever. I want to stay with him forever. He’s all I think about. Anything else just gets crowded out of my mind. Including Scott. Including all the bad things that could happen.
Problem is, Bryson has this wife and career. We talk about him being elected a US senator. How he wants to be president one day. That’s always what he’s wanted. I believe he’ll get there.
I just wonder where I’ll fit in.
He promises me I will. We can stay together; we just have to keep it a secret, he says. Yeah, no kidding. Almost as much for me now as for him. This town would hate me if they knew what I was doing. Mrs. My-Husband is very popular. She volunteers at schools and hospitals, and is always talking about “leading the cause for innocent and underprivileged children.” Meantime, who am I? One of those underprivileged children she’s talking about. Some high school girl who lives in a shack with no father and a mother who smokes too much. I’d get all the blame for sure.
And Mrs. My-Husband would kill me.
Off the lobby of a downtown Seattle hotel, Tanya hunched at a pay phone, counting the rings at Java Joint. Voices filtered from around the corner, one woman’s laugh raucous and unnerving. Smells of garlic and onions and grilled meat drifted from the busy restaurant catering to the business lunch crowd. Any other day Tanya may have been one of them. Now amid all the people she felt isolated, alone. Yet watched, as if the hallway were made of eyes.
The phone rang again.
Come on, come on
.
Tanya had done everything she could to lose someone who might be tailing her. She’d left her car in the garage. Walked to one hotel, watching over her shoulder the whole time, slipped out a back way, through an alley and into the side door of another. Still, she couldn’t be sure. She was an amateur, up against people so much more powerful than she.
The sixth ring. A voice message clicked on for the third time in a row.
Tanya clattered down the receiver.
For a moment she hovered there, head tilted toward the floor, afraid to turn and face the world. Afraid that when she did, despite all her precautions, she would look into the same pair of eyes that had glared at her from the red SUV. Already, she knew, she had crossed the line.
With one word I can make you disappear . . .
Tanya stared at her shoes, brown against red carpet — and bloody memories from that day long ago screamed in her head.
Her eyes squeezed shut.
She pulled in long breaths until the emotions passed, then felt strangely empty for the lack of them.
Tanya put a hand to her forehead. She had to do something. She couldn’t just return to her office, wait another day. Pretend that six hours’ drive away, nothing was wrong in the little town of Kanner Lake, Idaho. Carla was still missing from her office;
no
one
knew where she was. Now a coffee shop she frequented, one usually open all day, wasn’t answering its phone.
Resisting the urge to check over her shoulder, Tanya dug into her purse and pulled out a small yellow sticky note containing a name and number she’d written down last night while on the computer. Using her calling card, she punched in the digits —and held her breath as she waited for the first ring.
Carla’s tires popped against gravel as she pulled off the road. The trooper’s car rolled up behind her like a monster toying with its prey. She watched, heart kicking up her throat, as the man opened his car door and stepped out. Every move so casual and slow, as if he enjoyed making her sweat.
For a crazy moment Carla considered flooring it.
She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry.
The trooper reached her back bumper. She hit the button to roll down her window.
He was tall. He pulled even with the driver’s seat, bent down to look at her, the equipment on his uniform squeaking. The blue shine of his sunglasses hid his eyes, reflecting her own scared face. Carla saw lines around his mouth, parallel frown furrows above his nose. Hollowed cheeks, pocked with black stubble. A cold cynicism coiled around him, as if his job had long ago lost any satisfaction.
He stared at her. “License and registration, please.” His voice was smoker’s rough.
Carla’s tongue wouldn’t work. Shaking, she withdrew the envelope with registration and insurance papers from her glove box and handed it to him. Her purse sat on the red suitcase in her passenger seat. She pulled out her wallet. The trooper watched her, unmoving, as she jerked out her driver’s license and gave it to him.
He straightened and backed up one step, taking his time with the documents. Carla couldn’t see his face. She watched his thick fingers encircle the driver’s license, pull the registration and insurance papers from the envelope. He seemed to read every line, turning the papers over to see their blank backs.
He’s stalling.
Carla flashed on the image of the trooper talking into a cell phone a second time — and she knew.
She pressed back against the headrest, sudden, surprising anger washing through her. How
dare
he use his law enforcement job to do this to her. She drummed her fingertips hard against the steering wheel. “So what’s the problem? I wasn’t speeding. You were behind me for
miles
.”
The fingers stopped moving. For a second the trooper froze, as if stunned she would dare speak. Then, slowly, radiating heat, the man bent down to look at her through his sunglasses. Carla had the wild thought that the eyes behind those lenses were demon red.
He raised an index finger and pointed it at her. “Sit here while I run your information.”
He straightened and walked away, shoes crunching over pebbles. Carla watched him return to his car, reach in through the open window for his radio. She saw his mouth move but heard no words. Was it all faked?
Carla’s mind went numb, the anger draining from her body as swiftly as it had come. Why bother being mad? No point in denying the truth — her time had run out. When Thornby showed up, she’d have nowhere to run.
Long minutes passed before the trooper returned. He thrust the license and envelope into her hand without bothering to lean down. She could see no higher than his chin.
“Drive safely.”
He turned and walked away.
She stared. That was it? He was letting her
go
?
Carla checked the road behind her. No Thornby.
She jammed her license back into the wallet, threw the envelope in the glove box, and shoved the Toyota into drive. Put on her blinker, checked for traffic, and pulled out onto the highway, forcing herself not to scratch off.
The trooper made a U-turn and receded in her rearview mirror.
Carla almost dared to breathe.
A minute later she checked the rearview mirror again — and saw it. A car on the horizon, gaining fast. It didn’t take long for Carla to recognize it. A black Durango.
Things haven’t changed since I wrote two days ago. I knew I was late for a period then. Had known for awhile. I just didn’t want to face it.
I can’t deny the truth anymore.
Of course I know to the day. The birth control pills made me totally regular. About a day and a half after I took the last pill for a month, a period would come. Now — nothing.
How in the world could they work so well in stopping cramps, but not stop me from getting pregnant?
When the day came to start taking the next batch of pills — I didn’t. Once I do, I for sure won’t have a period. And I’d have to wait a whole other month to see if one starts on time.
I’ve been worrying so much, sometimes I think my head’s going to burst. And I can’t tell
anybody
. It hasn’t helped that Bryson’s been out of town a lot. He’s traveling around the state, shaking hands and meeting people. I watch him on the news every night, and a knife goes through my heart. He’s so charming and smooth. He talks about the things he’ll do for the country as a US senator. How he’s wanted to serve his country since he was a boy, and how his parents encouraged him. He talks about what a “team” he and Catherine are. How much she’s behind him. I watched him give a speech about the importance of education and parenting and the “family unit.”
Does he think of me here at home? Does he
ever think how his speeches make me feel? Like dirt, that’s how. Bryson is
so
far above me. I was lucky enough just to work for him. Bryson Hanley is “everybody’s man,” like Jilke says. Everybody loves Bryson.
Well, I love him too. But I’m left out of the picture.
Meanwhile I’m stuck in the office with Jilke, who gives me hard looks all the time, like he
knows
. Sometimes I wonder if Bryson has told him about us. I know he wouldn’t, but . . . Maybe we haven’t been as great at keeping the truth off our faces as I thought.
But if that’s true, who else might know?
Scott doesn’t, at least. I’ve made sure of that. We park in the forest almost every night now — and I give him all the sex he wants. Not that I feel much of anything while we’re doing it, but it keeps his mind off how down I’ve been lately.
I got Mary Kay to drive me to Seattle yesterday, supposedly to hang out. I went into a drugstore and bought a home pregnancy test kit and a bunch of makeup. Hid the kit at the bottom of the bag. That was less risky than buying one in town, where some cashier is bound to know me. Now the thing’s stuffed under clothes in my dresser. I’m too afraid to take it. What if it’s positive? What would I do? For now at least I have hope.
I don’t want to lose hope.
“Jared, sure you don’t want something?” Twenty-one-year-old Leslie Brymes pushed away from her desk in the cluttered
Kan-ner
Lake Times
office and reached for her purse. Her crystal-studded watch read twelve-thirty — which meant one thing: it was past time for her second biggie latte of the day.
“No, thanks.” Jared Moore, owner of the newspaper, waved a hand at her, eyes not rising from his computer. “Got to finish this story, then be going home for lunch soon anyway.”
“Okay, your loss.”
Leslie hustled across the dusty wood floor toward the front door, her mind flitting over various news items. Steel structures for the new hotel by the city beach two blocks away now jutted into the sky. Late that afternoon Leslie had an appointment with the developer for updates on the hotel’s completion schedule. Some said next spring, some next fall. Leslie wanted the inside scoop. Completion in spring could make a lot of difference in next summer’s tourism. Then in a couple weeks the suspect from the Kanner Lake murders last March was headed to trial — in Boise, thanks to a change of venue. Unfortunately Leslie would not be covering the trial. She’d be a
part
of it, called to the stand as one of the first prosecution witnesses. Of all the hard luck. Jared would get the byline on every article.
Yeah, well, don’t be forgetting all you’ve learned. People dead,
and you’re thinking of a byline.
She pulled open the door and stepped out to a sunny afternoon, unusually warm for September. Once Labor Day passed, the Kanner Lake weather could turn on a dime. Warm one day, doggone frigid the next. She may have grown up in Idaho, but Leslie never could get used to the cold. She turned down Main Street, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Drat
. Her sunglasses still sat on her desk.
She turned back to fetch them. “Forgot something,” she mumbled to Jared as she entered. He barely looked up.
As she neared her desk the phone rang. She picked up her sunglasses with one hand and the receiver in the other, noting the Seattle area code on the ID. “
Kanner Lake Times
, Leslie Brymes.”
“Hello, I . . . I’m . . .” A woman’s voice. Sounding downright scared. Just like Ali Frederick’s voice last March. And that phone call had led to
terrible
things . . .
Immediate memories rushed Leslie. Her mouth ran dry.
A crazy part of her wanted to bang down the phone. Whatever this was, she didn’t need any more drama. Nobody in town did. But the reporter in her pushed her arm to grab a pen, sank her body into the desk chair. “Hi.” She infused warmth into her voice. “How can I help you?”
“I . . . need to talk to you about Carla Radling.” The words now rushed. “I can’t get hold of her, and the woman at Java Joint wouldn’t give me her number, and that was hours ago, and now they’re not even answering their phone. I must find Carla. I must talk to her —
soon
.”
Leslie tried to make sense of the run-on. “Who am I speaking with, please?”
“Tanya Evans. That’s my real name — so Carla will recognize it. I told the woman at Java Joint it was Ellie.”
“Oh.” Leslie frowned. “Why?”
“Because I was afraid. People are watching me. But now I’m afraid I’m running out of time.” She drew a quick breath. “Have you seen Carla?”
“Not today.” She’d never shown up at Java Joint. Leslie got an earful from Wilbur when she bought her latte that morning. “Have you tried her office?”
“She’s not there.
Nobody
knows where she is.”
Leslie stared at the worn wood on her desk.
Nobody
knew where Carla was?
“Please. You have to help me find her. I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Someone broke into my home last night — to warn me not to talk about things of the past. Things that involve Carla.”
Whoa
. “What things?”
“I can’t tell you. But I have a lot to tell her. Things she doesn’t even know. I
have
to tell her in case . . . in case I don’t make it.”
