Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets (16 page)

Dodge sees Siobhan sprawled on the floor, but doesn’t have time to see if she’s okay.

Dressler is bigger than him, and stronger, but he’s in shock, slow
moving, even as he lunges toward Dodge with the sword. 

Dodge is no fighter, no athlete, but
some lucky
grace allows him to just deflect Dressl
er’s blow without any effort, and
take control of Dressler’s
arms and hands -
and
with them the sword -
and drive it back toward him,
send
ing
him stumbling backw
ards.

And
once he’s falling, Dodge just follows his descent with a quick sword stroke right into his neck.  He’s not thinking, just acting.  And nearly cuts Dressler’s head right off.

The blow severs
the jugular, and neck muscles, and tendons
- but not the spinal cord -
enough to kill him right away
, to leave his head dangling like an afterthought off his body on the floor, his hair mopping up the blood as he twitches
around in it.   N
ot enough to
stop all of the blood, though – not enough
to
keep it from pooling around him, and flowing down the slightly s
loped floor of the crooked old c
olonial house.

Or from m
ixing with Siobhan’s blood, also flowing in th
e same directio
n, joining to form a crescent-shaped river of blood
,
taunting Dodge like a
cruel
red
smile
before continuing to just flow away from him
.

Jaime sees Mr.
Chuck
when she slips into the building, but she doesn’t want to be seen.  What he’s doing here on a Saturday afternoon is a mystery to her, but she can tell he’s more strung out than she is, wearing a stupid I Love Amsterdam T-shirt that’s at least a size too small, hustling toward the shelter of his mail
room.  Jaime makes sure he doesn’t know she’s there.

Dropping into Siobhan’s chair,
sh
e flushes with guilt even as she relishe
s the
feel of being in this
seat
.  She fantasizes about what
it
would be like to be Siobhan, to have her money, her power, her husband.  B
ut this isn’t the way she wants
to take what’s Siob
han’s.

So it’s not only guilt, but confusion -
and
shock -
that make Jaime sick
. 

Siobhan is dead.

Dodge’s call was incoherent; she doesn’t know what happened exactly, but she knows enough. 

She knows she kind of set this in motion. 

But she knows too this is beyond her.  She didn’t send Dodge there to kill Siobhan, or Dressler, for that matter.  It was a prank.  Maybe
more malicious than a prank.  Okay, so maybe n
ot
just
a prank.  A scheme.  Worse.  She was conniving.
  From heaven, or hell, she suspects Siobhan is already plotting to haunt her, planning her demise, determining ho
w to torture the conniving bitch
who threw herself a
t Siobhan’s husband, teased him
at every opportunity, until she
had his head spinning with confusion and desire
.  Filled his head with adulterous lies, and se
t
his horny, jealous ass up to catch his wife doing something she wasn’t really doing.

Jai
me knows she mess
ed up, that she didn’t think things through.  She knows how men get around her, she knows what she does to them, and a lot of the time, she uses this to get things she wants. 

That’s true. 

But she do
esn’t want people dead.  That’s
not her.

She’s not going to take the bullet this.  This is bigger than her.

Something went wrong.

Dodge should have seen Siobhan at Dressler’s; it should have broken his heart.  He should have come crawling to Jaime
.  She would have
consoled
him.  She would
have mad
e thi
s work to her advantage
. 
A reasonable enough plan.  Nobody thinks that far ahead, or through crazy possibilities like this.

Now she has to save Dodge.

Now she’s an accomplice to murder.

So, yeah, she feels guilty.  And ashamed.  And shocked.  And sad.  And dirty.

She’s done the wrong thing.

She can’t make it rig
ht, but she can do something.

Help Dodge.

She types on the computer, slowly at first, because she doesn’t know what she’s looking
for
, she doesn’t k
now what to do. 
She’s
resourceful,
knows
that if she looks, answers
will
present themselves.  That, despite the cliché, if there’s a will
,
there’s a way.  She believes this, it is a mantra to her, especially in times like this.  The problem is, she can’t seduce a computer.  It might be the only thing on this planet that
she can’t get to do whatever she wants
. 
The good news is, being desirable
isn’t the only thing she’s got going for her.

She starts with Siobhan’s
email, but it’s all work.  Jaime
thanks
God that she didn’t send any emails to stage the rendezvous.  Finding nothing is a relief as much as a disappointment, knowing there’s no way to take them back
, and she could easily implicate herself.  Especially if she deletes anything.  Police will know she’s trying to cover something up.

Next stop - Siobhan’s
credit card statement.  Siobhan’s credit card bill is Dodge’s credit card bill, too, of course.
  This can do a lot of things.  Show patterns of activity.  Though she’s not hopeful,
it could
provide an alibi that at least introduces a reasonable doubt.  Anything.
   She’s not a private detective, but like every other
TV-
overdosed American, she’s
a competent
sleuth by proxy.

Hiding crimes can’t be much different than solving crimes.

And there it is.

Bingo.

According to MasterCard, one of them has been in Amsterdam for two days.

And booked a last minute flight out of there last night.

Which isn’t true, of course.

But she does know
who was in Amsterdam.

*****

This is not the new
Chuck
- skulking and hiding from Jaime.  What the hell is she doing here on a Saturday morning anyway?  Hell, even the old
Chuck
would follow Jaime around, lurk aroun
d corners, peek through windows - so this sneaking and ducking around frustrates him even more.

But he has bigger problems than figuring out why he doesn’t have the balls to chase Jaime around.

Two dead chicks, a stolen passport and credit card, a late night flight from Amsterdam - these are not the makings of a new man.

He’s hiding from Jaime because he has to figure out how to deal with this mess if it catches back up to him.
   At least, that’s part of the reason.
  Of course, he was there using Dodge’s identity - so maybe it can’t come back to him.  But he has to get rid of the passport and the credit card - or better, get them back to Dodge.  If Dodge doesn’t have them, he can report them stolen
.  And
Chuck
was at Dodge’s house.  It’s all traceable. 
He has to get this stuff back in Dodge’s house pronto.  But
that’s easier said than done - he can’t just walk in there with Dodge or Siobhan around - the last time was a total fluke - he’s not even sure how he got away with it - except that Dodge seemed a little preoccupied with Jaime in the pool
house.

He sits down at his desk to think.  He feels safest here - at work, amo
ngst the mail.  It’s
more private
than at home, with his mother. 
But he can’t think about passports and credit cards, all he can think about are the two girls - and not what he should be thinking about - how he left them dead
in a cheap hotel in the red light district in Amsterdam.  No, he’s
thinking about their bodies – against him -
even a
s they were writhing to death
- and how incredible
he felt. 

And how he wants to feel that
again.

Even as
he leans back in his chair
, thinking about the girls, the door suddenly slams open, causing him to lurch back upright in his chair, pul
ling himself closer to the
desk
.

Jaime bursts in -
to his surprise, and delight, despite
his
trepidation. 
She looks so beautiful,
even when she’s mad
- maybe e
specially because she’s angry.