To Trust a Stranger (9 page)

“Thank you,” she said. “You were right: Tonight I really needed a friend.”

“No problem.”

She gave him one last smile, turned her back, and walked away. Even before she rounded the corner of the garage, she could hear the grating of iron on metal. He was doing his part by breaking in. Now all she had to do was go to bed, wait, and lie through her teeth when Sid started screaming. Mac watched her go, and realized that he felt like the biggest criminal left
unhanged
. She was sweet, unbelievably sweet considering who she was married to, and more vulnerable than she knew. It had become obvious to him over the course of the last hour or so that, when it came to Sid, she didn't have a clue. But even if he told her, even if he shared all he knew with her, she almost certainly wouldn't believe him. Besides, whether she did or not, knowing so much might put her in a bad situation. He wasn't one hundred percent sure Sid was dangerous, at least as far as she was concerned, but he strongly suspected that he could be. The best course of action was probably just to keep his mouth shut and let the situation play itself out. Hang loose and wait to see what developed. As long as she stayed clueless, she was probably perfectly safe. She could get her divorce and get off the stage before anything bad happened to anyone. Thus there was really no reason at all for him to feel like he was crouched on a deer stand waiting to take potshots at Bambi. But, Mac realized as he wedged the end of the crowbar beneath the metal door and gave a mighty heave, telling himself that wasn't much help. He could rationalize all he wanted. He still felt guilty as hell.

6

BASTA HAD JUST REACHED the foot of the wide, curving front staircase when he heard the unmistakable sounds of someone entering the house. He froze, his senses on high alert, then clicked off his small Maglite and slipped silently into the nearest room: the den. Earlier he'd prowled through it, just like he'd gone through the rest of the house. Getting the lay of the land, so to speak, so tonight wouldn't be a dead loss. Just in case his quarry didn't return before he had to leave. But, it seemed, she had. Who else could this be? Waiting just inside the den's doorway, careful to stand to the side so, should someone decide to flip on the chandelier in the cavernous entry hall, he wouldn't be caught in its light, he kept his eyes trained on the darkness beyond the door and listened intently. Soft footsteps were heading his way, barely audible at first as they came through the kitchen but a little louder as they reached the cool black and white marble of the hall. Whoever it was in a hurry, and feeling secretive, too-so far, no light had been turned on anywhere in the house. Basta inhaled, then smiled. After so many years in this business his senses were nearly as acute as a dog's. And what he smelled was-the soft, sweet scent of a woman. It was Julie Carlson all right.

A moment later she stepped into view. Moonlight from the glass sidelights on either side of the front door bathed the hall in twin shafts of soft silvery light. They glinted on the shiny pink thing she was almost wearing: nice, was his verdict. She passed out of his line of vision, and he moved to keep her in view, visually catching up with her again as she began to climb the stairs. She was moving quickly, and her long, slim legs flashing in the moonlight were even nicer than her outfit. Watching her, he smiled. They were all alone, the house was dark and quiet, and she was his for the taking. There wasn't much time left-it had been nearly three when he'd started down the steps-but then he didn't need much. Five minutes, if that was all he had, would be enough. Although it seemed a shame to rush, he was professional enough to do it if circumstances dictated. And right now it seemed they did. Silently he stepped out of the den and began to follow her up the stairs, keeping a tight grip on his bag. She wouldn't have time to make a phone call and there was no gun anywhere in the house, so it didn't matter if she heard him. Might even add to the fun if they had to play chase, although he couldn't toy with her for long because they were out of time. He didn't want to cut it too close. It was his nature to be careful. She didn't hear him. He was certain of that. She reached the top of the stairs and disappeared into the enveloping blackness of the upstairs hall. Heading for her bedroom, no doubt: a big, fancy affair with a marble Jacuzzi in each of the two adjoining bathrooms and a leopard print throw on the enormous bed. His hand tightened on the cool wrought-iron railing as he regretted that he was not going to have time to do everything he wanted to her on that bed. In just a minute or so he would have her bound and helpless. Then he would strip her naked and do her fast and squeeze the life out of her. Tomorrow he would collect what was still owing on his fee and get back to his regular life. For starters, there was a fishing boat out there with his name on it. As he neared the top of the stairs, he fancied he could hear her getting into bed: a soft rustle of bedclothes and a creak as she settled down, and over all the surprisingly hurried in and out of her breathing. He smiled. He'd soon have her breathing faster yet. Behind him, his sharpened senses picked up something less pleasing: sounds coming from the garage. He frowned, pausing with one foot on the top step as he listened. Yes, he could definitely hear something he wished he could not. The husband must be home. Some five, ten minutes early.

For a moment Basta hesitated, irresolute. Julie Carlson lay tantalizingly defenceless maybe thirty feet from where he stood. He could hear her breathing, smell her scent, practically taste her. She was his. He vibrated with longing to do what he'd come here to do. He would do it, he promised himself. But not tonight. His lips pursed as he faced the inevitability of that. With the sounds from the garage, the window of opportunity had just slammed shut. He had to get out of the house.

Turning, he ran silently down the stairs, then with long swift strides headed for the door he had entered by.

Julie Carlson didn't know how lucky she was, he reflected as he let himself out the door, then slipped away through the shadows. She got to live for one more day.

7

SID WAS CHEATING ON HER. Julie knew it as well as she knew her own name, and the knowledge hurt more than she had ever imagined it would. It felt like a boa constrictor curled around her chest, crushing it so that she could hardly breathe.

Last night he had come running up the stairs at seventeen minutes past three, according to the bedside clock. The mere fact that he was coming upstairs at all at such an hour-to say nothing of the hurry he'd been in at the time-told her that he'd missed the Jaguar as soon as he had arrived home, just as she had known he would. She'd pretended to be asleep, although it was hard to keep her breathing slow and rhythmic when her heart was racing like a NASCAR winner's engine. She'd been curled on her side, the covers pulled high over her shoulders, her eyes shut, when he'd reached the bedroom door. For a moment he'd loomed there, both hands resting on opposite sides of the jamb, breathing hard and just staring at her as she lay in bed. He was wearing a dark suit-Sid always wore a dark suit, even in the dead of summer, because he didn't believe in relaxing standards even in the heat-and his wire-rimmed glasses had been askew, which they never were, because Sid was nothing if not meticulous. He was a hair shy of six feet tall and thin-Sid watched his diet religiously-but even so he had looked almost. . . menacing standing there. Which was ridiculous. Sid was many things-Julie could think of more than a few choice epithets now that she turned her mind to it but menacing wasn't one of them.

At least, it never had been.

She'd held her breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion, waiting for Sid to totally lose it like he did more and more often when he was mad, until she remembered that she was supposed to be asleep. Breathe, baby, breathe. So she breathed, in and out, real rhythmic-and after a minute or two Sid had exhaled slowly through his teeth and gone away. Just like that.

Without uttering a word about her missing car. In fact, he'd said nothing whatsoever to her until this morning, shortly before nine A.M., the time when he usually left for work and she was usually just getting back from her morning run, which she had skipped this morning because she didn't want to be the one to notice the car was gone. He'd “discovered” the Jaguar was missing when he started to leave for work. He came roaring into the house and dragged her downstairs to view the broken door and empty garage bay and stomped and cursed and carried on just like she'd known he would-only about four hours too late.

Give the man an Oscar, she thought with a cynicism that was new to her. And give her one, too. Because she pretended to be surprised and bewildered and absolutely without a clue as to what could have become of her car. In fact, she'd been so disingenuous about it she'd reminded herself of the Home Alone kid clapping his hands to the sides of his face. My car's been stolen, oh, my! And all the while she had professed ignorance and tried to calm Sid down she had been dealing with the fact that her marriage was dead. Because if his little midnight excursion had been innocent, he would have had his hissy fit the minute he got home at seventeen after three.

Gotcha, she thought, gazing steadily at Sid, but the knowledge gave her no satisfaction. She didn't want to get Sid. She wanted to live happily ever after with him, just like they'd been doing for the past eight years. Only apparently he hadn't been so happy. And neither, she realized, had she. All the while he ranted and raved, she watched him as objectively as she might have a strange animal in a zoo. Who was this man, with his thinning dark hair, his cold gray eyes, his narrow, clever face? Julie realized that she didn't know him anymore.

Maybe she never had. Maybe, with her infinite capacity for mentally spinning straw into gold, she'd made him into the man she wanted him to be, and he'd never really been that man at all. To add insult to injury, he threw temper tantrums like a thwarted two-year-old. A grown man beating walls with his fists and stomping his Italian-shod feet on the kitchen floor was not a pretty sight.

Her reaction to his histrionics must not have been all he'd hoped for, because he turned on her as they waited in the kitchen for the police to arrive.

“You seem pretty damned unconcerned about the whole thing,” he snarled at her as she sliced a banana into the blender to complete the healthy shake he liked for a pick-me-up. He was dressed in a fresh dark suit, and she wets wrapped in a robe. “It's only a car, Sid.” Icy calm, she pressed the blender button and looked at him. As he digested her reply, his face, she noticed with the detached interest that seemed to be the only emotion she could summon at the moment, turned almost the color of the trio of bright red tomatoes ripening on the windowsill behind him.

“Only a car! Only a car! It's a fucking Jaguar, you stupid...! Of course you don't appreciate it. You don't appreciate any damned thing I've done for you. You don't appreciate your fifty-thousand-dollar car, or your million-dollar house, or this whole lifestyle I've given you that is light-years beyond anything you ever had in your life, you with your trailer-trash family!”

Two police officers arrived just then, which was probably a good thing because she was on the verge of abandoning her icy calm in favor of braining him with the blender. The good news was, she was so furious by that time that lying to the cop was much easier than she had anticipated-no, officer, I didn't hear anything-because she was thinking about how much she wanted to kill Sid all the while. The bad news was, she no longer even much wanted to try to save her marriage. On second thought, maybe that was good news, too. Sid and the cops ended up leaving at the same time, which meant that she'd been left home alone with a whole bellyful of nasty things to say and no one to say them to.

Which was probably just as well. Before she took a baseball bat to Sid's head, as she badly wanted to do, she needed to take a deep breath and think, she told herself sternly. There was still a chance, no matter how remote, that she was wrong about what Sid had been up to the night before. So he'd lied about cruising his houses. Maybe he was doing something totally innocent that he didn't want her to know anything about. Like planning a marvelous surprise for her thirtieth birthday? Gee, that wasn't until November. Volunteering to work the twelve-to-three shift in a homeless shelter? She'd had no idea Sid was so altruistic. Screwing some babe whose husband worked the night shift? Bingo! Give the lady a cigar. In any case, she told herself, breathing deeply again, there was a right and a wrong way to end a marriage, or a smart and a dumb way, however you wanted to look at it. If hers had to end, she was going to do it the right, smart way.

Which meant no going off the deep end. She ordered herself to chill, then got dressed and headed out for the shop. If her life was disintegrating around her she was going to have to deal with it later. She had an appointment with a client at ten-thirty, which meant she was pushing it, time-wise. And she still had to deal with the fallout of having her purse stolen: cancelling her credit cards, replacing her driver's license .... It was only as she reached the garage that Julie remembered about her missing Jaguar. Her life was going to hell on a greased slide, and she didn't even have a car. Gritting her teeth, she turned on her elegant stacked heel, marched back into the house, and called a cab. It was just like Sid not to remember, or care, that she would need a ride to work. Sid was all about Sid. He always had been, but she hadn't realized it until just recently because for a long time she'd been all about Sid, too. No more. Julie was important, too.

Whatever happened, she was going to face it with dignity. She was going to hold her head up and smile. Evidently her smile was less than a success, though, because when she pushed through the glass-and-steel front door of her shop and stepped into the pristine white showroom, Meredith Haney, one of her two assistants, turned from the rack of competition gowns she was straightening to greet her and broke off in mid-hello.