Unfinished Business (22 page)

“Yeah?” he groaned into the phone. “What do you want?”

Erica watched his face change from annoyance to concern. “You're kidding,” he exclaimed, turning his wrist to reveal the face of his watch. “Oh crap. Okay, okay. I'll be there in…no, uh…I'm not at home. I need at least thirty minutes.” He hung up. “Help me,” he barked in Erica's direction. “It's six fifteen. I'm supposed to be on a plane out to Harpersville—”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” Erica finished for him, remembering the schedule. She sprang off the bed and scrambled through the suite for the rest of his clothes. “Get in the shower.”

He shook his head. Erica noticed that he again looked too pale and he was rubbing at his abdomen as though the stomachache he'd been complaining about was back. She was about to ask him about it when he said, “Can't wear the same clothes. I gotta go home.”

“Home?” Erica glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “How far away is that?”

“Just a couple of minutes.” He sighed and slid off the bed, testing his knee with a grimace of pain. “Crap, crap, crap…” he muttered, hobbling around the room, reacclimating himself to standing upright.

Erica bent, gathering his clothes into a pile. “Boy, are you in the weeds, brother.”

“You can say that again. Bitsi's furious.” He sighed. “It's going to be a tough day.”

“For me too,” Erica agreed. “I have to go shopping for a formal dress.”

Mark's laughter rang through the room. “Right, sure,” he said sarcastically. “Tough.”

Erica shook her head. “Laugh if you want. When it comes to clothing, men definitely have it made. You wear a classic tux, you're fine, great. For a woman…it's a whole other ball game.”

He limped over to her. Erica expected him to grab his clothes from her hands and begin throwing them on, but instead he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I'm sure whatever you pick will be lovely,” he murmured.

It was a moment of intimacy unlike anything Erica had ever experienced in her life. Her heart took a long, slow elevator ride into the pit of her stomach
and she felt her body flooding with a fresh wave of desire. If only he didn't have to go.

“Go,” she told him, managing a smile in spite of the fact that she wanted to grab him and pull him down on top of her to continue the loving that yesterday had begun. “Bitsi's waiting. From everything I've seen, you don't want to be on Bitsi's bad side.”

“Neither do you. You'd better get ready.”

Erica frowned. “What do I have to do with it?”

“Bitsi's not going with me. She's spending the day with you. She's going to help you get around town, find a dress.”

“Me?” Erica shook her head. “Oh no. Keep that crazy bitch away from me, Mark. I'm not kidding. Take her with you or something. Anything. Just keep her the heck away from me.”

He rolled his eyes. “She's not out to get you, Erica. In case you haven't noticed, you haven't got any more of those photos since we got here.”

“How convenient,” Erica countered. “She knows you've got undercover officers stationed here and there. That's why she switched methodologies. Now she's faxing your constituents.”

“Not this again. I told you before: Bitsi would never do that.” He spoke the words in flat, closed denial. “Never.”

“How can you be so sure?” Erica insisted. “How—”

“Because I am.” He leaned against the bed, balancing himself as he stepped into his pants. For a second, Erica forgot her arguments in the lean muscles of his arms and chest, his legs and thighs. “Whoever sent those pictures must still be in Washington.” His head wagged from side to side. “She's not out to get you, Erica.”

“Was she out to get Mary?”

His eyes snapped to her face.

“What do you know about that?” he demanded.

Erica blinked her surprise. “Nothing, really…except what I gleaned from what little Mary said.” She quickly related her trip to the ladies' room with the shy young woman.

Mark listened avidly, and then crossed the room and settled himself back on the edge of the bed with a sigh. “Okay, look. I'm going to tell you this, but you've got to promise me you'll treat this with absolute confidentiality.”

Erica sank down on the bed beside him. “You have my word, Mark. Anything you have to tell me is strictly between us.”

He gave her a quick, grim nod. “All right,” he said as though he were still wrestling mightily with the decision. “All right. It's true there's bad blood between Bitsi and Mary. Very bad blood.”

“But why?”

Mark fixed those crystal blue marbles on her face with the seriousness of the grave. “Because like most women, they're both desperately in love with me.”

Mark drove the short distance between Dickson's Inn and his house with the windows down, drinking in the cool predawn air, savoring the memory of being with Erica Johnson. He could still smell her perfume on his body, feel the pressure of her touch and the sound of her laughter in his ears…

Because laugh is what she did when he told her about Bitsi and Mary. And not in a good way. Powerless to stop it, he'd watched her face harden as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Of course they are,” she said, her voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. “
All
women are hopelessly in love with you. I should have expected that.” And then she laughed that laugh that set Mark's jaw on edge. “Really, Mark, you got me that time.” And even worse than the sound of that hardnosed laugh was the fact that she moved her sweet-smelling self off the bed away from him.

“I'm serious, Erica,” he insisted.

“Oh, I know,” she said lightly, and then to his dismay, she covered her curvaceous brown body with a robe and went about the process of selecting the
day's T-shirt from the stack in her suitcase. “Believe me, I know.”

“I'm not being arrogant.”

“Arrogant? No, not you!” she exclaimed, and there was no mistaking the derision in her voice.

If he'd had a grain of sense, he realized now, he'd have kept his mouth shut. But instead, he dug his hole a little deeper by insisting, “I can't help it if it's true.”

“Well.” She whirled toward him, clutching a little cosmetics case to her chest. “I guess I'm just another link in your chain then, right?”

Crap
.

Too late, he understood that he'd said it all wrong and now she thought…she thought…well, he wasn't exactly sure what she was thinking. Only that it was something she shouldn't be.

“Erica,” he began. “C'mon. I didn't mean it like that. I just meant—”

“I know what you meant, Mark,” she said in a calm, chilly voice that shut him out as thoroughly as if she'd slammed a door in his face. “You'd better get moving. I'm going to get a shower.” Then she really did slam a door in his face, disappearing into the bathroom without another word.

 

I'm an idiot
,
Katharine
, Mark confided as he climbed into Old Red and maneuvered through the dark streets. Something about being back in Billingham always brought her near to him. Sometimes when things were quiet and still, like they were now, he could almost feel her presence again.

I'm an idiot with a whole lot of explaining to do. I'm an idiot who's got a lot of changing to do…if I'm going to keep this woman near me.

He could almost imagine his wife in the car beside
him. He could almost smell her perfume wafting through the open windows to tickle his nose.

Every woman's in love with you, Mark.
He could hear her voice, teasing him in his mind.
But what about you? Who do you love? And if you love her, did you remember to tell her?

Crap. I knew I was forgetting something.

He heard her laughter in his head: musical, loving and light. In that instant he made his decision.

He'd finish the business in the only way he knew how. When the time was right, he'd make her know how he felt. He'd make her know that he was serious and there wasn't a man or woman alive who'd stop him.

 

He drove through the quiet suburbs of Billingham to the leafy Victorian he and Katharine had called home. In the driveway, Mark sat for a minute, staring at the house.

For the first time in years seeing the place didn't feel like a punch in the stomach. The garden was as well-tended as when Katharine was alive, thanks to the ministrations of the lawn service he hired. With wisteria climbing up the porch trellis, the porch swing squeaking back and forth in the gentle dawn breeze and light shining from somewhere deep in the house, the place almost looked lived in. But Mark knew better. Inside he'd find weeks of mail stacked up by the housekeeper, and everything perfectly in its place in the way that only an unlived-in home could be. And the silence.

Mark sighed. He opened the door and slid out of the truck, reaching back inside to grab his cane off the gun rack. He fingered his pocket for the key and limped up the curving sidewalk as quickly as he could. The three steps of the front porch felt a little
like high hurdles, but he reminded himself of the hot shower to come, gritted his teeth and climbed them. He had opened the screened door and bent toward the lock when he felt it.

The odd but unmistakable feeling of being watched by unseen eyes.

Mark looked around, immediately on his guard. He pressed the lever on the hook of his cane and heard the blade slide into readiness.

The neighborhood was quiet as it should have been at this hour of the morning. Across the street, a sprinkler system swished water on an already green lawn. Mark considered the block, but there was nothing really unusual: homes quiet and still, cars sitting in driveways like they were resting, not a soul moving anywhere on the street.

But the feeling was still with him, and he couldn't stop himself from calling out, “Who's there?”

He got no answer but the rustling leaves and the dancing shadows on his lawn.

Mark took a halting step back to the stairs, craning his neck toward the shadows. He thought of Buddy, the old reliable hound who'd lived with him in this house until it became obvious that Mark's travels would take him too far from home to care for the animal. The dog had the best nose in three counties, there wasn't a lick of doubt about it. If there were someone lurking around the house, Buddy would have known it.

But there was no Buddy to rely upon, just Mark and his own instincts, once honed sharp by military training, but now, in the long years since, he couldn't be sure.

He limped slowly down the porch steps, his cane out in front of him like a bayonet.

“I know you're there,” he called into the darkness
in his sternest, most commanding voice. “Show yourself.”

The breeze whistled through the leaves of the sycamore tree, but there was no other response.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, inquiring into the darkness and getting no reply, but when the minutes ticked into the double digits and there was no other sound but the gentle wind, he slowly relaxed his guard, hoisted himself back up the porch stairs and limped into the house.

He knew instantly that the danger hadn't passed.

First of all, there was a brightness at the back of the house that there shouldn't have been, as though all the lights were on at the rear of the house.

And then there was the sound: a low hum of machinery that Mark didn't recognize. It sounded like it was coming from the little room to the left of the kitchen that he and Katharine had converted to an office years ago.

Mark stopped in the foyer, catching the screened door before it could slam behind him, his mind racing through the possibilities. There was a revolver in a metal box in a kitchen cabinet, and his hunting rifle was in an upstairs closet. But neither weapon was easily accessible. Getting either would take time, make noise.

And he didn't want to make noise. He wanted to find out who was in his house and why.

Fifteen years ago, before the injury, he knew he could have taken an intruder with his bare hands, silent as death itself. But these days it would be harder, especially if the person was armed and expecting him. Especially with his knee still tender from the exertion in the pizzeria and the stress of the campaign trail. But he knew he'd have to take his chances. He offered up a prayer to God, and then moved through
the foyer toward the bright lights of the kitchen as soundlessly as possible.

He could see nothing but the outline of fluorescent light through the closed swinging door that separated him from the kitchen. He listened hard, but all he could hear was that mechanical sound, buzzing and whining softly and insistently. Mark pushed at the swinging door and stepped into the kitchen, his cane out in front of him like a sword.

There was no one there.

The room was bright with light and completely empty. The back door swung open to the night, sending the gentle aromas of the garden and little else into the room, and the sense of the house being occupied left Mark's consciousness. Someone had been here: that was patently obvious. But that someone was now gone, leaving nothing but the lights on and the door wide open to mark their presence.

And that sound.

Mark moved quickly through the kitchen, following the noise to his office.

He didn't need to turn on any lights here either. The sound was coming from a copy machine: The tiny desktop model he'd bought for this space years ago was working overtime, its little motor squealing with the effort of producing copy after copy. The small machine's output tray was full to overflowing and the floor was littered with the excess. Mark stumped over to the desk and grabbed a copy from the top, the paper still warm from the machine.

It was a copy of a picture.

Or rather, a copy of a copy of a picture, gray and grainy, hard to distinguish at first if you didn't know what you were looking at.

But Mark knew exactly what he was looking at, and a sudden flame of embarrassment lit his cheeks.

Because he was holding in his hands a very blurry, very grainy photograph of himself in the most compromising of positions with a very lovely and very naked Erica Johnson.

Cursing, Mark jammed it deep into his pocket and stumped out of the house, not even bothering to lock the door behind him. As he headed toward Old Red, he heard the sound of a car engine springing to life on his otherwise silent street, saw the headlights as it sped up the street away from him.

He thought he recognized both car and driver: a nondescript rental driven by a man in sunglasses and a baseball cap.

He hopped into Old Red as fast as his damaged body would allow, throwing the cane down onto the seat beside him. He gunned the engine, sending the tires squealing down the driveway as the old truck roared into the street and into the night.

He'd gone about a mile when he realized the guy had too much of a lead. The only way he'd catch up would be to break every traffic law known to man.

Reluctantly, Mark turned the truck around and headed back home, his fury rising with his certainty. He'd lost the guy, but for the first time, he thought he understood exactly what was going on, and he knew exactly what to do about it.