Flirting With Disaster (32 page)

What they had together—it was more than sex. She felt grounded around him, soothed and appreciated in a way she wasn’t accustomed to. He was too smart for her, funny and good-looking, so how he managed to make her feel so capable and sexy and complete, she couldn’t begin to fathom. He did, though.
Damn it
, he did.

“But after he goes back to California, you’ll never see him again, huh?” Carly asked.

“That’s the idea.” Her voice came out scratchy.

“I had one of those once. You know how long it took him to call me after I said goodbye to him forever?”

“No. I don’t—”

“Two days. Then he flew in for the weekend to visit, and we said goodbye all over again. We did that for ages before he finally pulled his head out of his ass and asked me to marry him.”

“Which you should really get around to doing, by the way,” Ellen said with a wry smile.

“Yeah, yeah. What’s the rush? I like stringing him along.”

Katie gazed out at the slushy parking lot. She and Sean had never gotten around to having that conversation about parameters. Neither of them had said a word about long-distance. They didn’t want that.

Did they?

The trouble was, she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Not from Sean or her job or life generally. It had seemed so simple before she went to Louisville. The whole best-self thing. The whole idea of seizing the reins of her life and steering it where she wanted it to go.

But if her life was a horse, it was a balky, opinionated one, and she needed a lot more riding lessons before she’d be able to make the stubborn fucker canter in the right direction.

She wished she had Ellen and Caleb’s certainty. Carly and Jamie’s. She wished that when
she looked at herself in this dress in the mirror of this fancy shop, she didn’t want Sean to see her in it. That she didn’t want him to come to Caleb’s house for the Wednesday-night family dinner and meet the whole clan.

She wished he didn’t make her want so many things that she didn’t want to want, or dream about a life she didn’t even recognize.

“I don’t love him,” she said.

Everyone stopped talking and stared at her.

“Uh-oh,” Ellen said.

Carly grinned. “Booyah!”

“I have the perfect dress,” the shop owner said.

“I think you misheard me,” Katie protested. “I said I
don’t
love him.”

“Oh, we heard you,” Carly said. “We get it. You don’t love him. You don’t want to marry him and buy a house with him and have his babies and wake up with him every morning for the rest of your life.”

Ellen shook her head. “Nope. You don’t think his opinion’s more important than everybody else’s, and you don’t think he’s fabulously sexy and clever and wonderful. We get it. It’s just an oil change. A super-hot, meaningless oil change.”

Then she and Carly got on a roll, laughing and teasing her, and Katie had to stand there and take it, because she didn’t have the slightest idea how to get out of her dress.

Her phone rang, rescuing her from their cheerful mockery. It was Sean.

“What’s up?” she asked, stepping carefully to the other side of the store and ignoring Carly and Ellen’s departing jibes.

“I got our guy.”

“Seriously? How? Who is it? Why are you calling me? Call the police!”

Sean chuckled. “Slow down, ssweetheart. I used the p-profile you gave me last night to narrow the search results one more time, and when I put them together with what I dug up on the threats, I was able to figure out where they’ve been c-coming from.”

“Where?”

“It’s a public library c-computer in Pella.”

“Ben?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to find out if the library has logs we c-can look at, but it
seems p-pretty likely, yeah. And it gets worse.”

“What?”

“I found Judah. Those texts he just sent you? The c-closest ssatellite link puts him in central Iowa.”

“He could still be in Iowa City.”

“Not according to the GPS on his phone.”

“Pella?”

“Pella.”

For a moment, she couldn’t speak. Judah was in Iowa, unprotected, and most likely so was whoever had been threatening him.

“C-clark?”

“Yeah?”

“We have to get our asses back to Iowa, fast.”

“Stay. Out.”

Katie braced her arms in the doorway of the hotel bar, glaring at Sean and the three Palmerston bodyguards arrayed behind him.

Sean took a step closer. “I don’t like it. Listen, what if—”

“Back off, or I’ll stomp on your foot,” Katie warned. She was wearing canvas sneakers, so the threat lacked punch, but Sean seemed to register her seriousness.

“I d-don’t like it,” he repeated.

“We already talked about this. You guys can stand guard if you must, but do it from out here. He won’t talk to you, and he might run if he sees you coming.”

“Fine.” His eyes narrowed as he struggled with something. Then he dropped his head and kissed her, a brief press of his lips charged with urgency. “D-don’t get hurt.”

“By Judah? Not likely. If there’s anything for you to be afraid of, it’s that I’ll get drunk.”

She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood and loosen his shoulders, but no luck there. Sean was a lead balloon.

Her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and winced. Caleb again. He was going to keep calling until she picked up and listened to his tirade, because she’d broken every single rule she’d agreed to follow on this case.

Run everything by me. Don’t put yourself in danger. Sean’s in charge
. Instead, she’d found out Judah was in trouble and headed directly for it, and along the way, she’d made Sean promise to let her lead.

But this wasn’t about some random threatening fan mail; this was about Judah and whatever was going on in that odd head of his. Katie was the one he confided in, and something told her she was the only person who could find out what he was doing in Iowa unprotected.

She pressed the screen to pick up the call and shoved the phone into Sean’s hand. “Talk to Caleb. I’ll see you later.”

Before he could answer, she’d spun around and walked away. She heard Sean say, “Yeah?” from behind her as she scanned the large, dim space.

Judah sat at the far end of the empty bar. With Ginny.

Katie had never guessed Ginny would be here, but then she hadn’t guessed a lot of things. Such as the fact that Sean had his own company plane, which he kept at the airstrip in Mount Pleasant. Sean’s pilot had flown them to Pella as Katie and Sean talked strategy, drinking Sean’s mineral water and eating Sean’s bags of chips and cookies and mixed nuts.

How had this never come up before, this airplane-ownership business? She’d flown to Iowa and back with him, and he’d completely failed to mention it.

Hey, Sean, don’t you agree that commercial airline travel kind of sucks?

Why yes, Katie, I do. That’s why I own my own plane
.

And now Ginny and Judah, cozy together at the bar of the Plains Rest Inn.

Ginny, who still had a place on Katie’s list of Judah Stalker Suspects.

Not that it was much of a list, or that Ginny was much of a suspect. She looked like Bambi sitting over there, young and sweet and smitten.

But being from Pella, she had a link to Iowa, and Katie would do well not to forget it. What if Ginny had realized after Judah’s last stint in rehab that he was never going to fall in love with her? What if she’d become disillusioned and angry, and she’d decided to take her revenge?

By sending him poison pen letters from a computer at the Pella Public Library.

Yeah, no. Totally cockamamie
. Katie and Sean had talked about it on the plane, and Sean thought Ben was the strongest possibility. Katie resisted that conclusion, but she had no better theory to offer. A disgruntled Paul, Ben’s sister Melissa, some random angry Iowan—she didn’t have a clue, or any motive to work with.

But Judah would give her the motive if she could get him to talk.

Katie slid onto the open bar stool beside him. “Hey, sailor. Buy a lady a drink?”

He swiveled her way. The smile he gave her was huge and loose and very far from lucid. “Well if it isn’t the prettiest girl in the world.”

Ginny shot her a look laced with disbelief and arsenic. “What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to talk to Judah. How about you?”

“I thought he needed a friend.”

Judah rubbed Ginny’s shoulder in a brotherly way. “I did, honey, thanks. But do you think I could talk to Katie alone for a while?”

Ginny looked from Katie to Judah, then back again. “Sure.” She hopped down from her
perch and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Listen, are you …” She ducked her head, then raised her eyes and looked at Judah with naked longing. “Is she …”

“No.” He chucked his fingers under her chin. “It’s like I told you. No girls. Katie and I are just friends.”

She managed a small smile. “All right. I’ll see you around, I guess.”

“You will. Thanks for listening.”

“Any time.”

Katie waited for Ginny to clear the door before she asked, “What was that all about?”

“I apologized. You should be proud. I’m getting good at it.”

“Are you, now?”

“I am. First I apologized to you at the hotel. That one was a little ugly, but I was still getting warmed up. Then I found Paul and apologized to him for being such a hopeless bastard, and also for what I was about to do.”

“Which was?”

“Duck security, sneak back to Iowa, and have a reckoning. Though I didn’t tell Paul that.”

“And you brought Ginny along for your reckoning?”

“No, she kind of followed me. But that’s okay, we needed a reckoning, too. I told her I’m gay, she cried a little, and then we moved on to a discussion of my many faults and how she wants a raise. I think it’s going to be fine.”

Katie tried to absorb that while Judah caught the bartender’s eye and ordered himself another rum and Coke. “What can I get you?” he asked. “I’m buying.”

“Just water, thanks.”

“Make it two rum and Cokes,” he told the woman. “And a water.”

“So I guess Paul and Ginny didn’t confess to sending you threatening messages?”

“No, I’m thinking Ben,” he said. “You?”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I’m having breakfast at his place.”

“You really think that’s wise?”

“No. And you’re going to realize just how unwise in about twenty minutes, when I get drunk enough to tell you the whole story.”

“I’m not getting drunk with you.”

“Indulge me. I’m doing the Memory Lane thing tonight, and this was my drink of choice when I was too young to know better.”

“And where did you drink the illicit rum and Cokes of your youth?” she asked. “Not here, surely.”

“Over at Ben’s. His mom worked swing shift at the window plant, so there was never anybody around to keep Ben and me out of trouble.”

The bartender set down their drinks, and Judah flashed her a smile straight off a magazine cover. “Thanks, Patty.”

The woman gave him a kiss-my-grits sort of smirk and said, “Don’t mention it.”

“Wow,” Katie said after she’d gone. “The charm doesn’t work on Patty.”

Judah laughed. “The charm doesn’t work in Pella. Pella is unimpressed with Judah Pratt. Always has been.”

“I want to hear more about your glory days. Who was the instigator in all this trouble you got up to, you or Ben?”

“Me. Definitely me. Ben was a straight shooter. I told you he was going to go to West Point, right? Had the grades for it, the crew cut and everything. I was wilder. Stupider. I didn’t know anything, but I thought I knew everything.” Judah picked up his drink and knocked down two-thirds of it in several deep swallows.

“I can picture that.” Ben had that air of discipline, the set expression of a man who liked things to be done a certain way and no other. “You must have tempted him off the path of virtue.”

“Poor Ben,” Judah said with a sigh. “I was the worst thing that could’ve happened to him. At first, I just liked making him laugh. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he has such a great laugh. But then we got to be friends, and I wanted more, and I made him want it, too. I talked him into moving to Louisville that summer to live with me. Melissa had a place there, and I’d heard about the High Hat and wanted to play it. I sent them a demo tape, and after they invited me out, I spent two weeks talking Ben into it.”

“You dragged him along on your adventure.”

Katie’s fingers found her thumb as she thought of Levi. How his hand gestures used to get big and expansive whenever he spoke of Alaska. The way he’d spun out his dreams and
made them hers. It hadn’t even taken much convincing. She’d wanted to go with him, because she’d been so infatuated with his confidence. She’d wanted to be married to him, too, even though she’d always known she took the whole thing more seriously than he did. She’d bought the silver wedding bands at the mall and worn hers on her thumb, as if three fingers’ distance could turn it into an ironic gesture.

“He loved you, I bet,” she said. Judah would have been easy to love once.

He wiped his hand over his mouth and looked pointedly at her glass. “Drink up.”

She took a sip and made a face. “Rum, ugh. I’ve had some memorable nights with rum.”

A faint smile. “You know, I had good intentions taking Ben to Louisville,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was mostly about me, but he missed his sister. She’d just gone to Louisville a year earlier, and they were close. We were all close, that summer.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, flipping it open and handing it to her so she could see the photograph where his license ought to have been.

Three teenagers clumped together, all of them young and beautiful. Judah in the middle, his smile as large as ever in a face she remembered from the checkout-aisle magazines of her early adolescence. His arms around Ben and Melissa Abrams, one on each side. Ben looking at the camera with that crooked half-smile. Melissa looking at Judah and putting devil horns behind his head.

He kept talking as she studied the evidence of his lost happiness.

“I’d had this idea for the tour, that we’d buy a van and go play all these places, and we’d go through Iowa City. His dad lived there. He and Ben were practically strangers. I’d met him once, after graduation. He was this very straitlaced military guy, and the way I understood it, Ben wanted his approval more than anything, and that was why he was dead set on West Point. So I thought if we went to Iowa City, I could bring them together. Mend all their broken fences and whatnot.