Too much to go over in her head right then.
She put her iTunes on as soon as she got inside, and every light she could think of. The White Album worked for her that night. So did a glass of red wine and a batch of medical files. Johnny could do his thing for McCabe, and she’d attempt to cure some of the town’s ills.
Because her AC only worked on low, the house was warm and muggy. A breeze off the lake helped, but did little more than move the heat around. She changed to white shorts and a dove-gray tank top. Then she went outside to the second-floor porch that wrapped around the entire house, pulled up a chair, and propped her bare feet on the rail.
She wouldn’t think about him. Wouldn’t let herself remember how it had been.
Resting her head on the chairback, she fanned her face with a file and gave in to memories of Los Angeles.
Surgery had been her passion. Not open heart or neurosurgery, but pretty much anything else, particularly emergency procedures.
“You’re good, kid, really good.” Her mentor, Arthur Brady, had called her into his office after a challenging six-hour stint in the OR. “Another ten minutes unattended, and that stabbing victim would have been in the morgue. Excellent repair work.” He’d paused, grinned. “I’m sending you to the medical convention in Atlantic City.”
“Me?” She’d been shocked. “I thought you were going.”
“I was. Now you are. Torches must be passed, Melia. You’ve earned this. Plus, it’s my granddaughter’s sixteenth birthday that weekend. Family first, I’m afraid. Or so my wife insists. Take your husband. Make a mini vacation of it. Johnny likes to cut loose once in a while, doesn’t he?”
“When he’s not busy doing his secret cop thing.”
“I thought he was a federal marshal.”
“Depends on the day.” And his mood, she’d reflected. And, of course, McCabe.
“Who’s his boss?” Dr. Brady had asked.
She’d smiled. “A man of even deeper mystery than Johnny. And that’s not an easy place to get to.”
Dr. Brady hadn’t pushed, and Melia hadn’t elaborated. How could she, when she didn’t have a clue what McCabe’s status was within the government. Something covert, with the occasional detour to the dark side of cop-hood. Or so her inventive mind imagined.
As for Johnny… No, she told herself firmly. She would not go there.
On the other hand, there was something to be said for probing a sore tooth. Maybe she needed to feel the pain again in order to get past it.
As Dr. Brady had suggested, she’d talked Johnny into going to Atlantic City with her. It hadn’t been easy. He’d been withdrawn for some reason—troubled by a problem he’d refused to share.
“Stuff at work,” was all he’d said. Then he’d kissed her and smiled. “Maybe I should go. I might relax while I’m having a beer at the roulette wheel.”
He’d hit the jackpot twice. He’d used her age—twenty-six—and her hair color—red. Same number, same color, two times in two days.
They’d made love more times than she could count. He’d brought her flowers. She’d bought candles, lit them. There’d been wine and lovely scents and the lights of Atlantic City in the background. She could still feel his fingers gliding over her skin, still taste him. Still feel the ripple of muscles beneath her searching hands. When he’d been inside her, she’d felt full and loved and complete. The outside world had faded away. It always did that when she was with Johnny. There were only the two of them—or so she’d thought until the third night, when he’d gone off with McCabe who’d flown in from wherever, as he so often did, to see him.
The warmth and the lights and the romance dimmed in her mind. She’d felt the change even if she hadn’t understood it. But then, McCabe’s presence often had that effect on Johnny. So really, nothing unusual in that. Alone and free of seminars, Melia had opted to try her hand at blackjack.
She didn’t know if she’d won or lost the game. Everything had faded to dark while she’d been in the casino. She and Johnny had been drinking wine up in their room. Anger shimmered inside her at the thought of it. Had he done it deliberately, to start her along the path that he and McCabe had created? Another glass of wine downstairs with one of McCabe’s men, a small amount of drug in the drink, and presto, she’d been open to suggestion. Dizzy and disoriented, she’d absorbed the memory of things happening around her, of visual effects, of Matthew in her room. Sleep would have come easily, and, of course, the morning after residue would have left her open to whatever story Matthew told.
He’d told it very well. So well, in fact, that she’d believed it.
But had it ever felt completely right? The answer was no. Yet how could she have been expected to refute what had seemed so real in her mind? It hadn’t helped that Johnny had been standing next to her shouting. A lamp had shattered. And when she’d looked over, Matthew had been lying in bed beside her.
Finding herself in Johnny’s favored Hotel California would have been a vast improvement.
She’d remained trapped in that Atlantic City hotel room for the next three years. It still haunted her, followed her everywhere she went. There’d been no escape from any of it. She’d learned to beat it down for periods of time, but she hadn’t discovered a way to prevent the grim memory from creeping back in.
“False memory,” she said aloud. “I’m so angry!” She suspected the war inside had only just begun. Yes, Johnny and McCabe were scum for doing what they’d done. But on the other hand, what they’d done had very likely saved her life. If what McCabe said was true, if Johnny had simply found Satyr and killed him, Mockerie would have come down on him—on them—with a vengeance. And God knew what vengeance might entail in Mockerie’s eyes.
With a sound of frustration, she pressed her fists to her temples and told herself to breathe.
Ten minutes passed before the phone rang. Maybe Bette had Johnny in a sexual hammerlock. Now that she’d enjoy.
She answered with her usual, “Dr. Rose speaking.”
“Oh my, aren’t we the professional,” a man’s gravelly voice drawled. “Look at the clock, doc. The one downstairs in your dining room. All those time zones on the face. How do you keep track of where you are? Mixed me up real good while I was pondering it.”
Her insides went cold. “Who is this?”
“Not that I pondered it for long, mind. I kept right on walking and looking. That’s a right pretty house you got there.”
Melia’s mind scrambled. Jesus. Whoever he was, he’d been in her home. Was he still there?
“I like the red Mixmaster in the kitchen,” the man continued. “And the soft white sheets on your bed. They smell like tropical flowers. I coulda hung around and sniffed all night, but I had to skedaddle before you showed up. Left a nice box for you, doc. Maybe you want to find it and look at the great, big bow on top…” The man’s voice hardened. “Before it and you ain’t in that pretty house of yours anymore.”
Chapter Five
Johnny practically had to scrape Melia’s housekeeper off his arm. But she nabbed him yet again when they reached the guesthouse, pulling him up the porch stairs and through the front door into the parlor.
“Come and see my sculptures,” she urged. “I did one of Dr. Rose just last week. My niece says I’ve got the gift.”
Johnny didn’t doubt it, but it was a verbal gift, not an artistic one. Not if the so-called sculptures she showed him were any indication.
Melia’s figure—along with everyone else’s—made him think of voodoo dolls. The wavy red-brown hair gave Melia away. The others were strangers. Unless the big, bulky one was trigger-happy Cas Travers.
“This here’s my niece, Clover,” Gert announced with pride. “And that blond one with the round glasses, that’s Sheriff Travers. He was my ray of sunshine till I met you. You’ve got ten, maybe twenty times more sex appeal than him. I guess we womenfolk just can’t resist a man who wears a badge. You do have a badge, don’t you, Johnny?”