Out of Control (38 page)

“Mag Callahan?”

Her chin jerked up from where it had been resting on her chest. Her neck ached from drooping forward. She'd fallen asleep.

She rubbed her eyes and focused on a tall, impeccably dressed black man. He held a cup of coffee. “Are you Mag Callahan?”

She nodded. Nothing to add. No curiosity, no fear, no hope. She gazed at him with dull eyes.

“I'm Detective Sam Garrett, of the San Cataldo Police Department,” he said. “We spoke yesterday afternoon. Remember?”

“Vaguely,” she said. “You'll have to excuse me. I'm kind of out of it.”

“So I can imagine.” He held out the coffee. “Sugar and cream OK?”

She took it. The hot cup nearly burned her hand. She welcomed the pain. It was a rope to cling to, a sensory anchor.

“Ms. Callahan, you promised me that if you lived through the night, you'd tell me what this is all about,” Garrett said.

“Oh,” she said. “So I did. I'm still alive, aren't I? Sort of.” She tried to focus her eyes on his face, but he kept blurring and losing his shape.

“Do you feel up to making a statement?”

She thought about it. “Am I being arrested?” she asked, without much curiosity.

Garrett sat down next to her. “Not at the moment.”

“Ah.” She ruminated for a moment. Hmm. Making a statement. It would be something to do. A starting point.

She blinked, shook herself to clear her head, and took a gulp of the coffee. It hit her unprepared throat and made her sputter and cough. When she got herself under control, she nodded.

“Sure, I guess,” she said dully. “Why not?”

I
t was Davy's fourth pass around the block. He was getting self-conscious about acting like a lovesick teenager. Or worse, an obsessed nutcase. Truth to tell, he was just plain chickenshit.

He parked up the block and stared at the Victorian house. He'd pried Margot's contact number out of Sam Garrett, and some mucking around in public databases with Seth's laptop had yielded up her friend Pia's address. But he still wasn't exactly sure why he was here.

Mikey sat in the passenger's seat, panting cheerful gusts of hot dog breath Davy's way. Mikey was his excuse for hunting Margot down.

He hated needing an excuse, but she knew where he'd been for the past eight days, trapped in a hospital bed. She knew his cell number. If she wanted him, she could have him. Anytime, anywhere.

Evidently, she didn't. Maybe she wanted to forget everything that had happened, himself included. Maybe it had left a bad taste in her mouth. He could hardly blame her. His behavior certainly hadn't been exemplary. He'd been a dickhead with her most of the time, when he thought about it, which he tried hard not to do. It made him squirm.

And he could rationalize and justify hour after hour, and nothing made the hurt go away. She'd told him that she loved him, but that was before the shit hit the fan. How long was a statute of limitations on a declaration of love? Particularly one that had been first rejected by an ignorant, cowardly asshole, and swiftly followed by a bloody massacre.

Fuck it. He just had to see her. It didn't matter under what circumstances, on what terms, or according to what rules. He would do anything. He had no dignity, no pride left.

He'd been so sure in Marcus's lair that if they could just get through that nightmare intact, they would love each other forever, but after days of silence from her, doubts had dug in. Lots of people fell in love with people who didn't love them back. Or with people who then fell completely out of love with them, leaving them high and dry.

It was a common enough tragedy. Look at poor Miles.

He took a deep breath, and got out of the car. Mikey sensed his misery when Davy took him out, wriggling his body up over Davy's chest to lick at his jaw. He panted, blowing the heavy stink of canned dog food into Davy's face. Disgusting, but it still made him smile.

Ironic, that an aging dog was more talented than he was when it came to emotional communication. Mikey just let it all hang out.

He would just have to try to do the same.

 

Margot stared at the real estate listings on the computer screen, but she kept spacing out. She couldn't keep focused long enough even to finish a sandwich, or drink a glass of iced tea.

Davy had been scheduled to get out of the hospital yesterday. She wondered where he was. How he felt. She wanted to see him so badly. She'd been fighting the compulsion for days.

But he'd done so much for her already. It didn't seem fair to fling herself at him and beg him to love her, too. He'd made it abundantly clear, several times, that he wasn't interested in doing so. All she had to offer was a weepy, clingy wreck of a woman who was sloppy in love with him. If he pushed her away for the umpteenth time, she would implode.

She buried her face in her hands and reminded herself that she wasn't always going to feel this fragile. It had to get better sometime.

The doorbell rang, and she bounced about a foot out of her chair. She sank back down, heart thudding, irritated at herself. There were no monsters on her tail anymore. Probably it was the FedEx guy, delivering samples for Pia, her friend the fashion designer. She padded barefoot to the door and peeked through the peephole.

Her breath turned as solid as stone in her chest.

Open the door, you idiot. Do it. Now.
She opened the door.

He was thinner. The hollows beneath his cheekbones were deeper. His bruises had turned yellowish green. He was so beautiful, it broke her heart. Mikey yipped in welcome, struggling in Davy's arms.

“Hey, Margot,” he said quietly. “Or should I call you Margaret?”

“My friends used to call me Mag, but it's funny. I've gotten so that I like Margot better now,” she said.
Since that was what you called me
.

A luminous smile flashed across his face. “Good,” he said. “I like the name. It was hard to think of you as anything else.”

An awkward silence fell. He handed Mikey to her. She gathered the writhing dog into her arms, and Mikey flopped and whimpered in passionate welcome. “You look much better than you did,” she said.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

She blushed, and looked down at herself. She had on a pair of Pia's cutoff jeans and a brief white halter top. If she'd known Davy was coming, she would've raided Pia's fabulous wardrobe more aggressively.

As it was, she wasn't even wearing makeup, and her hair was all over the place. “Um, hardly,” she murmured. “But thanks.”

The somber intensity in his eyes was almost too much to bear.

“Thanks for bringing Mikey.” She set the dog down on the floor, where he rolled onto his back and waved his legs joyfully in the air. “I thought he'd be so mad at me. The unpredictable twerp.”

“I think he had a great time with Miles,” he said. “They bonded, evidently. Two lonely males, deprived of their hearts' desire.”

The silence after his words seemed fraught with importance.

Don't you dare project your wishful fantasies onto him
, she scolded herself. She'd fallen into that trap before, and suffered for it.

“Are you going to let me in?” he asked.

She shoved open the screen door, flustered. “Of course. Sorry. I didn't mean to seem—”

“Don't worry about it.” He walked in. They stared at each other as Mikey perched against her thigh on his hind legs. “You doing OK?”

She gave him a wan smile. “More or less. I've been trying to figure out how to put my life back together. But it's hard to work up any momentum. So much time has passed. I feel lost.”

“I know what you mean.” Davy touched her cheek with his fingertip. She jerked as if his finger had burned her. He let his hand drop. Damn. She wanted to grab his hand and put it right back.

She controlled herself, with difficulty. “Um, how about you?”

His mouth twisted wryly. “That thing with Marcus was good publicity for our new business, if nothing else. Calix wants to hire us. Priscilla Worthington was impressed with our teamwork. Go figure.”

“So she should be,” Margot said. “No problems with the police?”

Davy shook his head. “Seth's button recorded everything Marcus said. My ass is covered. They fixed it with the Seattle police, too, so Gomez is off my case, thank God. Garrett said we might even be hearing from the SCPD for some consulting work. We're the flavor of the week.”

“Wow. That's great,” she said. “And…your wound?”

“Fine. Healing. They let me out yesterday.”

“I know,” she said. “Garrett's been keeping me informed.”

“Oh yeah?” Davy frowned. “He didn't tell me that.”

“Probably because I asked him not to,” she admitted.

“Why?”

The edge in his voice made her eyes slide away from his. Her reasoning seemed so cowardly, now that he was here in front of her.

“I'd already caused so much damage,” she said. “People had died. You almost died. I felt like the kiss of death. This needy, crazy, freaked-out woman who caused chaos everywhere she went—”

“Margot. I've told you. It wasn't your fault,” he growled.

She pushed on. “And in the end, I figured…I know you've got this thing about rescuing girls in trouble, and you'd already been so heroic, saving my life. It wasn't right to glom onto you and—”

“You've got it all backwards.”

She lost her place in her monologue, and floundered. “Huh?”

“The freaked-out, crazy, needy person was me. Not you.”

She stopped breathing. “Davy…”

“You shouldn't have disappeared on me like that,” he said. “Not when I was shot up, in the hospital. That was cruel.”

Cruel?
“But—but I never thought of you as needing anything from me,” she stammered. “I just didn't think I should lean on you anymore. God knows, I'd almost destroyed you already.”

“So who the hell was I supposed to lean on?”

The question made the world spin into a new, confusing shape. She shook her head, tears prickling her eyes. “I didn't know you felt that way,” she whispered.

“Well, I'm telling you now.”

His cool tone sparked her anger. After all the evasive head games he'd played, the guy had the nerve to guilt trip her. “Exactly what are you telling me?” she demanded. “That you have needs? I know all about your famous needs. That's the one thing you've been willing to concede to me from the very beginning of our depraved affair.”

“I'm not talking about sex.” The words were ground out one by one from behind his gritted teeth.

Baiting him wasn't fair or smart, but it was such an ingrained habit, she couldn't help herself. “You're not? What a shame. So you're not going to make me another indecent proposal?”

“Would you accept it if I did?” he demanded.

The question caught her off guard, and the truth popped right out, no thought of pride or playing it safe. “God, yes,” she blurted. “I would do anything for an indecent proposal from you.”

A long, breathless silence stretched out. His eyes dropped. “How would you feel about…” He swallowed, and went on, his voice hesitant. “How would you feel about a decent one?”

She was utterly lost. “A decent what?”

“Proposal,” he said. “As in, of marriage.”

She didn't even have the presence of mind to close her mouth. “Marriage?” Her whisper was barely audible.

A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I don't know if you still feel, uh, you know. The way you did when you said that you, uh…”

“That I loved you?” she supplied, when his voice trailed off.

He nodded. “I know a lot of crazy stuff has come down since then. Maybe you need some time to—”

“No,” she said.

His face tightened. “I'm just asking you to think about it.”

“No, what I mean is, I don't need any time,” she said. “Not so much as a second.”

He made a furiously impatient gesture with his hand. “So? What, then? For Christ's sake, Margot, haven't I suffered enough?”

She was dizzy. She put her hand against his heart. It throbbed, quick and hard. “Where can I grab you? I don't want to hurt you.”

His arms encircled her, and he stroked the bare skin of her back. “My left shoulder is sore. Grab anything else you feel like grabbing. So? Are you putting me out of my misery, or are you stringing me along?”

“You're the one who's doing things backwards, now,” she said.

He tilted her face up, frowning. “Don't be cryptic. I've been lying in a hospital bed feeling pathetic for eight days. Be nice to me.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Most guys don't propose marriage to a woman before they express their feelings for her.”

Davy stroked the hair away from her cheekbones. “I figured all that gooey emotional stuff was automatically implied in a formal proposal of marriage.” His voice was low and cautious.

She rubbed her cheek against his hand. “You could indulge me anyhow,” she said. “That gooey emotional stuff wouldn't kill you.”

He scowled and jerked her closer, his fingers twining into her hair. “Oh, for Christ's sake, Margot. What do I have to do to convince you? Chasing you all over hell and gone, duelling with maniac assassins, catching bullets, is that not dramatic enough for you? You know damn good and well that I'm crazy about you!”

She caught her breath. “You, uh…you could've done all that stuff for me just because you're a righteous, heroic sort of guy.”

“Hah.” His laughter was derisive. “Yes or no, Margot. Out with it.”

He was in such distress, she couldn't bear to torture him any longer. “Yes,” she said. “I love you, Davy. Always have. From the start.”

His eyes closed. He let out an explosive sigh, wrapped his arms around her and hid his face against her neck. His shoulders shook.

They swayed, locked together, vibrating in perfect tune. She could have stayed there forever, if she hadn't been forced to fish some Kleenex out of her cutoffs and blow her nose. Niagara Falls was flooding down.

It turned into a two-Kleenex operation. She finished mopping her eyes and nose just as he pulled a small box out of his pocket and gave it to her. “I spent the whole morning in jewelry shops, but once I got here, I was so jacked up, I forgot about it,” he said.