Mr. Right Next Door (12 page)

“A diversion? For what?”

“A theft. One of the calls I took at the vet’s office was to tell me that someone on that ship was carrying ten million dollars in diamonds—”

“I didn’t hear anything about ten million dollars in diamonds being stolen.”

“Well, if you’re in the money-laundering business and someone steals your stuff, you don’t exactly call the police and report the theft,” Nick said.

“Oh. Okay. So…why would they have that much in diamonds on board a cruise ship?”

“We’re pretty sure it was a money-laundering operation. That someone got wind of the fact that all those diamonds would be aboard and went after them. Maybe with the pirate attack. Maybe they were supposed to take the diamonds with them as part of their haul from the ship and they never intended on taking hostages and doing who knows what to the people on board. Who knows. We were there. The ship was better prepared to defend itself than they expected. Maybe Eric was there to help them board the ship and when he saw that they weren’t going to be able to, he tried to look like the hero by saving you, to keep anyone from being suspicious of him. Or maybe that was part of the backup plan. That in the confusion after the attack, Eric might be able to get to the diamonds himself or that someone else he was working with on the ship could get the diamonds and, if they did, Eric would have to have a way to get the diamonds off the ship without being discovered. Which is where you came into it.”

“I didn’t help him smuggle ten million dollars in diamonds off the ship,” Kim insisted.

“I don’t think you did. At least, not knowingly,” Nick said, maddeningly calm.

Kim nodded. Great. She was either aiding and abetting terrorists or just plain old diamond thieves.

“So, at best, he’s just a thief,” she said. “The love of my life, a thief.”

“Maybe,” Nick said.

“What do you mean, maybe? You just said you think he stole the diamonds.”

“Yes.”

“So why are you even in this if it’s just a theft? Don’t you have some other super-secret spy stuff to do? Shouldn’t you have packed your bags and left, Mr. Parks Planner?”

He took a breath and let it out slow. “Think about it, Kim. What’s he going to do with ten million dollars in diamonds? Terrorists need money. Lots of money to carry out their operations.”

“Oh, God. We’re back to him being a terrorist and a thief. It sounded so much better, just thinking he was a thief. This is what my life has come to. My boyfriend, under the best possible scenarios, might only be a thief. To think I was hopeful it would only be that. But no, it’s even worse. Boyfriend/terrorist/thief.”

Kim’s brother was going to absolutely flip out. She wouldn’t hear the end of this for years. If she thought he watched out for her now, he’d be smothering her in the future. Her sisters wouldn’t take it much better. It was bad enough being the baby of the family. But being the youngest and showing that you have absolutely no sense in matters of love and deception…

“This is…I can’t even say how awful this is. It’s hard to take it all in. The sheer magnitude of the awfulness of it is stunning.”

“I know. I’m sorry. So sorry he dragged you into this. And I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”

She shook her head, shrugged her shoulders, trying not to care. “It’s your job, right? You probably lie to people all the time. And you’re very, very good at it.”

She looked him right in the eye as she said it and he looked away, tight-lipped once again.

And she’d kissed him. She could have withered up and died right there, just thinking of it. It made her wish she could shrink down to a little ball and then dissolve right before his eyes, never having to face him again.

Yes, she’d kissed him.

More than once.

And really, really liked it.

All the while, supposedly being in love with a terrorist.

Which made her feel even more stupid, if that were possible.

It probably it was.

In love with a terrorist, kissing the secret agent next door.

A double whammy in the striking-out-at-love arena. A real crash-and-burn scenario times two.

“I really hated lying to you, Kim. I swear I did.”

She nodded, not sure she was more the fool for wanting to believe him or for hoping what he said was true. That he had found it difficult to lie to her and that maybe she wasn’t the most gullible person on earth.

“I’ve never really been in love before,” she said softly. “I mean…obviously, I still haven’t. I just meant…I’ve never felt like that before. I’m not one of those women who runs around falling in love every other day with every guy I meet. I’m careful, and I always thought I was sensible, but now…I guess I’m not.”

“They were unusual circumstances,” Nick said. “You were in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on a cruise ship. A gorgeous spot. And you were on vacation. Tons of people think they’ve fallen in love on vacation. And then you were in the middle of a really dangerous event. Two people thrown together in the middle of a dangerous event. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people fall for each other at times like that. Danger heightens all the senses. Everything seems more intense, every feeling you have. And you thought he’d saved your life. Another out-of-the-ordinary thing that tends to make people feel a lot of things that they don’t normally feel. And like I said, the guy’s a professional. Fooling people, manipulating them, that’s his business.”

She nodded, tears falling again. “And he looked at me and said, ‘I’ll get that one. She looks like she’d be easy to convince that—’”

“He looked at you and thought you were one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen and he wanted you.”

Kim wiped away tears with the back of her hand and tried to smile. “I don’t think so. I think he decided he could talk me into anything and he did. I fell for his act completely.”

She sniffled, told herself she was pathetic to be wanting another man who’d also lied to her and whom she’d believed completely, that she wasn’t such a fool for believing everything the first one said.

She got to her feet. The dogs scrambled up, as well, giving her worried looks, Romeo growling a bit in Nick’s direction.

“It’s okay,” she told the dog. “We’re going to my place. We’ll go drown our sorrows in ice cream and doggie treats. It’ll be great. And I’ve heard the grocery store is carrying an ice cream doggie treat, right there in the freezer section by the regular ice cream. Maybe we’ll go get some of that, too, because you guys are just the best.”

She faced Nick, as dry-eyed as she could manage, and felt her cheeks flame with the heat of utter embarrassment and humiliation. “I’m sorry I…did whatever I did to help him, that I made this an even bigger mess than it already was.”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” he said.

“No, it was.”

“Kim, we all make mistakes. I mean…I shot a cat, for God’s sake. I’m never going to live that one down.”

She nodded. “I’m going to go.”

But when she brushed past him as she headed for the door, he caught her with a hand on her arm, his worried eyes staring down into hers. “Are you going to be okay?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I mean…people get their hearts broken all the time. They do stupid things and get over them and get on with their lives. Could have been worse, right? It’s not like he really hurt me.”

“He did hurt you. I know he did. I could take him apart with my bare hands for that alone.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, telling herself not to do anything else that was stupid.

Like think it meant something, the way he was looking at her now, those deep, brown eyes full of concern and kindness and maybe something else.

What did she know after all?

She’d fallen for a terrorist.

She was a woman who was clearly not mentally equipped to make valid judgments about any man or any relationship she might have with a man. There must be something lacking somewhere inside her brain, the little gene that handled decisions about men. Hers had obviously mutated into some poor semblance of what it was supposed to be.

Kim could imagine, years from now, some scientist, after spending years locked up in a lab—where she couldn’t make any stupid mistakes about men—discovering the genetic mutation responsible for the I-can’t-make-good-decisions-about-men disease. There would be gene therapy for it, support groups, telethons and maybe a smidgeon of understanding from all the women whose men-decision genes weren’t messed up, and she and other women like her wouldn’t feel so lousy about themselves.

But until then…what was there to do?

Stay away from men, Kim decided.

Including the one at her side right now.

The one who seemed both alike and very different from the man she’d thought she’d known. Tougher, stronger, more determined, more capable, altogether more interesting.

“I’m going to lock myself in my bedroom with the dogs,” she said.

It seemed like the only place she’d feel safe.

“Okay,” Nick said.

“You’ll…There’s…It’s okay? I mean…I’ll be okay over there? If Eric shows up, you’ll catch him?”

“We’ll catch him,” Nick promised.

“Okay,” she said. “And…well, I’ll help you. Any way I can.”

“You will?”

She nodded. It was the least she could do.

“I don’t want him here. Everyone who’s important to me in the world is here. Everyone I love. And I can’t just sit back and let him come here and do…whatever he’s going to do. You have to stop him and I’m going to help you, before he hurts anyone else.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Just…tell me what to do. Or figure out what I can do and I’ll do it.”

“Did he give you anything on the ship? Any little gift?”

“No,” she said.

“Ask you to hang on to anything for him?”

“No. Nothing.”

Nick swore softly, shaking his head. “What about the things you brought back? Have you unpacked everything? Looked through it completely?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“And there’s nothing that looks different or unusual? Nothing you don’t recognize?”

“No.”

“What about gifts you brought back for your family and friends. You did that, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Perfume for my sisters, a book for my brother, some little trinkets for the kids I teach.”

“Nothing he could have put something inside and hidden there?”

She thought about it, running through the list of things she’d brought back. “No.”

“Okay. Then I don’t know what he’s looking for, but I’ll figure it out. I swear I will.”

Kim nodded.

She was counting on him to do just that, to keep the people she loved safe from the criminal she’d led into their midst.

I
hate this job!
Nick told himself as he watched her walk away.
I hate this friggin’ job!

He looked around the room in disgust, broken glass on the floor, little bloody paw prints everywhere, a brokenhearted woman beating herself up, now on the way from his room to hers.

He walked over to the window, put both palms against the sill and leaned over it, his head hanging low, hating himself and his job and people like that scum Eric Weyzinski.

He hated hurting nice, pretty, innocent women and making them cry. He wouldn’t mind putting his fist through the window right now, but he was already bloody from the fight with the cat and his room already looked like someone had committed a mass murder here. He’d already fired his weapon and scared people once in the past twelve hours. More shattered glass, the potential for more blood and the need for more explanations were not good ideas.

Still, he’d really like to smash that glass.

He lifted his head, saw Kim and the dogs make their way across the side yard from Mrs. Baker’s backyard to Kim’s and then inside. Watched a dark, shadowy image of her entering her apartment and locking the door behind her, then he looked away. He’d already seen too much through these windows.

He was trying to figure out how to clean up the room, so that maybe it didn’t look like a mass-murder scene, when his phone rang.

“Yeah,” he said, disgusted with himself and the whole world, then Harry answered.

Harry was laughing. “You shot a cat?”

Nick told him to go screw himself, in less polite language, and hung up on him.

Two seconds later his phone rang again and he remembered that he had to warn Harry and everyone else about Kim.

“Okay, just listen, asshole. Don’t say anything and don’t you dare laugh, because if you do, I will find you and beat the crap out of you right now. Do you understand?”

Harry hesitated, clearly puzzled by the order not to say anything, and then the question that followed, but finally said, “Okay.”

“She knows.”

“How?” Harry asked.

“Because I told her. I told her everything,” Nick growled.

“Everything?”

“Yeah, everything. I shot the damned cat, so I didn’t have much choice.”

If Harry wondered exactly how the cat-shooting did that, he didn’t ask. “Okay,” he said. “How’d she take it?”

“Much better than I expected. She hates herself, not me. Not us,” Nick added quickly, realizing what he’d just given away. That he was concerned about her hating him.

“So…what’s she going to do?”

“Get this. She wants to help us catch the guy.”

“No way!” Harry said.

“Yeah, she does. She told me so, right after I told her the whole story.”

“No way,” Harry said again.

“I’m telling you, that’s what she said. She’s not even really mad at me for lying to her all this time.”

“No way!”

“Harry—”

“No, really. There’s no friggin’ way she could not be mad at you.”

“She said she wasn’t.”

“Well, women say all sorts of things they don’t mean. You know that,” Harry said.

“I’m the one who’s been saying stuff I didn’t mean. I’ve been lying to her.”

“No. She may not be mad at you at the moment, but she will be. Trust me on this. Let all this stuff sink in and she’ll figure it out. She’ll be furious with you.”

Nick thought about it and decided that was likely true. That he’d feel better if she was mad at him. Okay, maybe not better, but he felt like he deserved to have her mad at him. Furious at him, actually.

If he hadn’t kissed her, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, so worthy of anger, but he had kissed her, more than once, while lying to her about everything, and women did not take that well. He didn’t think they should. It made him a lot like Eric, and every woman should be mad at Eric, so Kim should be mad at Nick, too. It all made perfect sense to him.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Harry asked.

“She’s at her apartment, beating herself up for being involved with this jerk. I’m going to let her do that for a while because…well, because I think she needs to deal with the whole thing. And then I’ll go talk to her again and figure out where we go from here.”

He had to. He had a job to do, which meant, he had to take her up on her generous offer to help them with their investigation. Which he didn’t want her to do, because he didn’t want her to have anything to do with this jerk anymore or to be anywhere near him. But this, too, was Nick’s job, and he would do it.

Which meant, he had to go talk to her, probably explain some more things to her that she really didn’t want to know and watch her cry a little more and feel awful and blame herself. He could feel even more like crap for taking part in making her feel this way.

Perfect.

“She just went into her apartment and she’s going to stay there for a while. You have people on the house?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Harry said.

“Nobody goes in if we don’t know who they are, okay? I don’t care what kind of excuses you have to make or what you have to do. Nobody goes into that house.”

“Okay,” Harry said.

“I’m going to be in my room for a while. I’ve got a mess to clean up here.” A jewel of an understatement there.

“Okay.”

“Hey, Harry, you know how to get blood out of stuff?”

“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”

“Clothes, sheets…that kind of stuff?” The agency had crews whose sole duty was to make it look like nobody had ever died in certain places, after really messy deaths, but he couldn’t very well bring a clean-up crew in here, not without doing some more explaining that he didn’t think he could do with Mrs. Baker.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, then laughed. “Do cats bleed that much?”

Nick swore. “Shut up, Harry.”

“Hey, Nickie. Wait…I just have one question.”

“Yeah?”

Harry laughed again, laughed hilariously. “Why did you shoot the cat?”

Kim drowned her sorrows in ice cream and let the dogs gorge themselves on anything in her cabinets remotely resembling a dog treat, then sat down on her couch, Petunia in her lap, Romeo curled up against her side. She just sat there and felt sorry for herself for a while.

Maybe she’d just do this for a week or two.

A month maybe.

Whatever it took.

The phone rang a while later and she didn’t want to, but she answered it, afraid she already knew what was coming.

Her family.

Had to be.

They’d heard some weird gossipy version of what had gone on at Mrs. Baker’s house last night and wanted to make sure she was okay.

She sighed heavily, feeling very, very sorry for herself, then picked up the phone.

At the very last moment before she said anything, she started to wonder if it might be Eric. If he might have finally called, and what she would have done if he had, how she would have handled it.

She was just starting to get really, really scared when she heard her sister Kathie’s voice saying, “Kim? Are you there?”

“Hi,” she said hurriedly. “Sorry. I almost dropped the phone.” She banged the receiver against the side of the sofa for good measure. Too late, but she did it. “Sorry. I did drop it.”

“Are you okay?” her sister asked.

“Sure. Why?”

“Because Kate said that Jax said that Mrs. Baker called 911 last night. Something about a break-in—”

“No, there was no break-in. I talked to Mrs. Baker myself.” True on the most technical of levels. Kim had talked to her. She’d told her to get rid of the 911 operator.

“So, what was it?”

“A mistake, that’s all. She thought she heard something.” Again, true. “And called 911.” Because Kim told her to, but still…technically true. “But it was nothing.”

The secret agent next door just shot a cat. That was all.

Kim wanted to cry again and she wondered how poor Cleo was doing. She’d have to call Mrs. Baker later and check on her, make sure she was okay.

She felt a little bad about the thousand-dollar vet bill, but not that bad. Someone had to pay, and Nick had an expense account. Served him right to have to explain to his supervisors that he shot an innocent cat for no reason. Or…for not much of a reason, Kim decided.

“You’re sure nothing happened?” Kathie asked.

Kim’s family had a radar about these things. She might be able to put them off for a while, but eventually, they’d find out everything. She knew from experience. With her family, there was no place to hide for long.

“I’m sure. I’m fine. Mrs. Baker’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”

“Okay,” Kathie said. “But…is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No,” Kim said, sure of that.

“Have you heard from Eric?”

“Kind of,’ Kim said. Apparently, he’d broken into her apartment and searched it. Or someone he worked with had searched her apartment. That was kind of like hearing from him, Kim reasoned.

“It’s just…we’re worried about you, you know?”

“I know.” Perpetually worried. Poor baby Kim. Poor stupid Kim.

“And you should know Jax is not happy.”

“Okay.” She’d been warned.

And Kim knew all 911 calls were taped, thanks to a certain incident in her teenage years, at a party she’d attended where some trouble had broken out, when she’d tried not telling the whole truth to her brother about it. So he was probably pulling the 911 tapes from last night right now, listening to the call from Mrs. Baker’s house before he came and asked Kim about it, so he could trip her up on any little stories she might be planning to tell him. He was like that, hard to tell little lies to and get away with it.

“Well, okay,” Kathie said, obviously not convinced things were okay. “Hey, how’s the art project coming?”

“Great,” Kim said. “We’re ready to start smashing different colored glass into little pieces.”

She had mallets, safety goggles and cloth bags. She had a plan. Put the glass inside the bag and smash it. She thought it would be highly therapeutic right now and highly satisfying. She might do it all herself, just because, not even let the kids help with this part.

Being the teacher had to have some perks.

She needed to do things like smash glass.

“Okay,” her sister said. “I guess, that’s it. I mean, if you’re sure there’s nothing else?”

Kim sighed, feeling guilty and annoyed at the same time. They loved her. She knew that. And she loved them. And they’d spent their whole lives looking after her, the baby of the family. When you lost your father to a robber’s bullet when you were only two and your mother to cancer when you were still in college, your family tended to be a little overprotective. She got that. She loved them for it.

But sometimes she just wanted them all to go away.

It was even worse since she was in trouble and she’d done something stupid and she probably needed someone to look out for her right now. That just made it all that much harder to take.

“I’m fine. I swear,” Kim said, then glanced up and out her living room window, and happened to see…Nick?

She walked over to the window.

Yeah, that was Nick, moving about his room.

She’d never noticed before, but with her shades tilted up to catch the sun and let it in, his room was at a perfect angle for her to look right in. She’d never even thought of the room he was in or that…

Wait a minute.

If she could look right into his window this way, that meant he’d have an even better angle to look down into hers.

He could probably see everything she did in here!

“Kim?” her sister said. “What happened?”

“Gotta go,” Kim said, furious. “I’ll call you later.”

She didn’t even wait for a response, just hung up and took off for Nick’s.

When he said he’d been watching her the whole time…

He meant, he’d really been watching her!

Watching her drop her jeans and peel off her T-shirt on the way into her bedroom, maybe? Or on the short trip from her bedroom to her bathroom?

She tried to remember the last time she’d done that? Taken a short trip around her apartment only half-dressed.

It was her apartment, after all. She had the shades tilted up, and unless someone was at the perfect angle above her and it was nighttime and her lights were on and someone was in the room where Nick was staying, she didn’t think anyone could see much of anything.

But he was at the perfect angle and he’d been there at nighttime and she’d been here with her lights on and without much on her body, innocently heading into her bathroom to take a bath.

And now she was going to kill him!

Nick stripped the bed of the bloody sheets and the quilt, then went through his clothes. The damned cat had gotten to his favorite shirt, his favorite pair of pants, even his socks, dammit. He had practically nothing left to wear.

He dumped it all into a pile, awaiting Harry’s instructions on how he might get all of that clean.

If not, he’d have to go shopping.

The quilt would be the only real problem. It looked real and very old. As in handmade.

He’d just have to make up a story about it.

Nick frowned. Or maybe he could just tell the truth, kind of. After the cat did whatever Nick had claim it did to hurt itself, the cat jumped up on the bed and ruined the quilt.

Okay, he could say that.

He’d feel bad about it, but he could say it. He’d buy Mrs. Baker a new quilt.

Could you just buy something like a homemade quilt? Nick had no idea. He’d ask Harry to find out.

That done, it was time to think about cleaning himself up.

He was a mess.

Nick winced as he looked into the mirror. There was a smear of blood along his cheek. No idea how he got that. He washed it off and didn’t see a cut or scrape underneath. He had a bruise on the side of his face. No idea about that one, either. Maybe when he’d practically fallen out of bed after he’d shot the cat and was trying to get to the light so he could see what he’d hit. He’d banged his face on the side of the bed, he thought. It had not been one of his finer moments.

The first cut he uncovered was the one on his forearm.