“You need a slicker.”
“I’ve got rain gear downstairs.” Sitting, he laced on his boots. “Flashlight in the drawer there, and candles, a lantern downstairs if the power goes.”
“Be careful, Chief. It really is bad out there.”
“If I only had my sword.” He stood, grabbed her, kissed her. “Pizza and ice cream in the freezer. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
So, she thought as she stood in the empty room, this is what happens when you start sleeping with a cop.
He hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t really bitched. He’d just thrown on his clothes and walked out into the storm.
She went to his closet, found herself amused he used about a quarter—if that—of the available space. She checked the bathroom. Apparently the scarred, rangy cop didn’t own a robe. She went back to his closet, borrowed one of his shirts.
She texted CiCi, simply tapping in she’d ride out the storm at Reed’s.
Two minutes later, CiCi replied with: Woo-hoo!
She considered pizza, but decided she’d wait awhile first. Maybe he’d be quick. She thought about TV, decided against. Books. He had some stacked in the bedroom, and she’d seen some downstairs.
Catch-22, some thrillers. Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.
She enjoyed that particular book, but decided it wouldn’t be the best choice on a dark and stormy night alone in a still unfamiliar house.
If only she’d brought her sketch pad …
On the chance he had a notebook or pad, she opened the nightstand drawers. The flashlight, as advertised, and an iPad that she discovered could operate the TV, a music system, the fireplace.
So the chief liked technology. Something new to add in the getting-to-know-him file.
Home office, she remembered. Bound to have a pad and a pencil in a home office. She wandered out, stopped to smile at the retro bathroom. Maybe she’d paint him a sexy mermaid. She was no CiCi Lennon with brush and paint, but she could manage a fun, sexy mermaid.
She’d while away the time until he got back sketching mermaids—and a few of The Protector.
A study from the side—the right side because she wanted the scars—mostly back and butt, his head turned toward the right, sword lifted with both hands, caught in the downswing.
She had to ask him not to get a haircut for a bit. She wanted it a little long and shaggy.
Lightning flashed again as she opened the office door, and she thought of him out in it because someone needed help. She’d come for the sex, she admitted—primarily for the sex. But she stayed, she waited, because of who she’d begun to discover he was.
She switched on the lights, thought he hadn’t lied about the mess. Piles of files on a boxy old desk—and a teddy bear with a gun and badge. Folding chairs against the wall, an open trash can loaded with bottles and cans. Maps pinned right to the unfinished walls.
But, hello, a stack of legal pads—they’d do in a pinch—in the closet that had no door.
She walked in, took one, turned to the desk to hunt down pencils.
And saw the boards, saw what was crowded on the two big boards.
“God. Oh God.” She had to grip the back of his desk chair, breathe in, breathe out.
She knew the faces, so many of the faces. She’d formed some of them already with her hands.
There, the boy she’d thought she loved. There, her best friend. There, Reed’s Angie.
He had photos—not just the faces, but of bodies, blood, broken glass, guns. One of those guns, she realized, had killed Tish, had shot Mi.
She looked at the faces of the killers—boys, just boys. Hobart, Whitehall, Paulson.
And on the second board, Patricia Hobart—her photo and a sketch. She looked different in the sketch, but Simone saw her.
And that face, she realized, had been the one Reed had seen when she’d tried to kill him.
Other faces, other names, other bodies. Times and dates, cities and towns.
He looked at this every day, she realized. He looked, studied, and tried to find the answers.
“My face,” she murmured, touching the photos of the girl she’d been, the woman she’d become. “My face on his board. His face and mine. He doesn’t look away. He never has.”
So she sat at his desk and didn’t look away.
*
When Reed got home, soaked, at just before two a.m., he found Simone wearing one of his shirts, sitting by the fire, drinking a Coke, and reading Bradbury.
“Hey. You didn’t have to wait up.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She rose. “You’re soaked.”
“Yeah. I think it’s starting to ease off some, but it’ll probably blow another couple hours.” He dragged off a black slicker with POLICE in reflective letters across the back and front. “Laundry room,” he said with a gesture, disappearing inside.
When he came out, feet bare, she stood at his fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs.
“It’s too late for pizza.”
“It’s never too late for pizza,” he countered. “Didn’t you eat?”
“Not yet. I can scramble eggs, too. What happened? How bad was it?”
“Do you know the Wagmans?”
“Priscilla—goes by Prissy—and Rick. They live out by the school.”
“They had a fight. Apparently they’ve been having some marital troubles.”
“He had—and likely still is having—an affair with a woman who worked at Benson’s Lobster Shack last summer. From Westbrook. Double divorcée.”
“So, you know the background. Want a latte?”
“It’s too late for lattes.”
“You’re drinking a Coke.”
“Makes no sense, does it? I’ll have a latte. Off topic for one moment,” she said as she put a pad of butter in a skillet to melt, began breaking eggs in a bowl. “You could use some herbs and spices that aren’t salt and pepper and red pepper flakes.”
“Write them down, and I’ll get them.”
“What happened with Prissy and Rick?”
“Big fight, apparently, because, yeah, he’s still seeing the woman from Westbrook. Prissy chose tonight, during the storm, to tell Rick—a drunk Rick—she was getting a lawyer and filing for divorce.”
“You can’t blame her.”
“No, you can’t,” he agreed. “She found a receipt from some lingerie shop in Westbrook in his pocket—which proves he’s a cheater and a dumbass. This when they’ve been having some money issues, and he swore he’d ended things with the recipient of the sexy lingerie. Prissy started dragging his clothes out of the closet, threatened to light them on fire, busted his MVP trophy from high school softball. He claims she threw it at him. She says she threw it against the wall. I’m going with her because I don’t think she’d have missed, and he was too drunk to duck.
“Anyway.” He set her latte on the breakfast bar while she scrambled the eggs. “He stormed out in the storm, drunk and pissed. Lost control, hit a tree. Most of the tree fell on Curt Seabold’s truck. Seabold runs out, a little bit drunk himself, and he and Wagman get into it, bust each other up, with Seabold having the advantage of only being a little drunk and not already bloodied up from running into a damn tree. Seabold’s wife, Alice, runs out, sees Wagman on the ground and her husband staggering around with blood pouring out of his nose, and calls nine-one-one.”
“At least somebody acted sensibly.”
“Yeah, well. I had to arrest them both, haul their sorry asses to the emergency clinic. Seabold’s back home—I figured house arrest until we sort through it all. Wagman’s in the clinic with a cracked rib—and I know that’s no fun—a mild concussion, busted lip, banged-up knee, and so on. Prissy, who has no sympathy, suggested I tell him to call his slut, which I declined to do.”
“Wise.” She toasted some of the bread he’d picked up at the market, and set a plate down for him, then one for herself. “This will keep the island entertained for weeks. I hope she doesn’t take him back.”
“She seems pretty hardened there.”
“She took him back at least once before that I know of—another summer worker. They’ve only been married three or four years. He’s never going to be faithful to her, or the slut. He hit on me just last week.”
“Did he?”