The Crush (22 page)

These were stage props, the police department's clumsy attempts to put one over on Lozada. How absurd of them to think they ever could.

"They're watching you from a house on the street behind yours," he had told Rennie. "You're lying."

"I wish I were, my dear."

"Why would they be watching me?"

"I suppose because of your murdered colleague."

Coldly, she said, "I don't believe you."

But she had. Within seconds of hanging up on him she had left her house at a jog and run around the block straight to the other house. She was inside for several minutes before emerging, visibly upset, with Threadgill on her heels.

Neither of them paid any attention to the SUV parked nearby. There were no records of his ownership of this car. The police didn't know to look for it. They followed his Mercedes, and he tolerated that. But when he didn't want to be followed he drove this SUV.

He had been parked within eavesdropping distance of the conversation during which Rennie told Wick she never wanted to see him again. God, what a sensational sight--his Rennie telling off Wick Threadgill, in terms that even a dimwitted cop like him could understand.

From his observation point Lozada felt the heat waves of anger coming off her. It gave him an erection. If she made love with even a fraction of that heat she was going to be well worth the trouble.

She had returned home. Lozada had wanted nothing more than to join her there and begin phase two of his seduction, but his focus was, of necessity, Threadgill. He had followed him as far as the bar, where he had no doubt gone to drown his sorrows.

Poor Wick, Lozada thought now as he watched him storm away from Wesley. First he'd been put down by Rennie, now by his longtime friend.

The cocky bastard didn't look so cocky anymore.

A sudden knocking on the passenger window of his SUV caused him to react reflexively.

Less than an eye-blink later, the barrel of a small pistol was aimed at Sally Norton's astonished face.

"Jesus, it's just me," she exclaimed through the window glass. "I thought it was you, but I wasn't sure. What're you doing parked out here?"

Lozada wanted to snuff her right then for drawing attention to him. Wesley was still across the street, talking to one of the policemen who patrolled Sundance on bicycle.

"Get lost."

"Can't I join you?" she whined.

Lozada stretched across the console and opened the passenger-side door. He would rather have her inside than yelling at him through the window. She climbed in. "Where's your Mercedes? Not that this isn't cool too." She ran her hand over the glove-soft leather upholstery.

Lozada was watching Wesley. She followed his gaze. "He's gay."

He looked at her. "What?"

"He's a fag."

Wesley was a family man. It was Lozada's business to know these things. Wesley had a wife and two daughters. "What makes you think he's gay?"

"This guy I met in the bar? He bought me a drink, and we were getting along pretty good, when that man there comes along. Mad as hell. Turns out they're partners."

She had been talking to Threadgill? He had bought her a drink? "Was the other guy black too?"

Sally shook her head. "Blond and blue-eyed. A cowboy. Tough-looking, but cute."

Threadgill.

"I'm not into being a fag hag, I don't care how cute the guy is." She reached across the console and stroked his fly. "Say, that gun of yours really turns me on. And so does your pistol." She laughed at her own asinine joke.

"What did you talk about?"

"Me and the cowboy? I told him about my dream to become a dancer. And then I told him about this guy I like, who likes me." She winked.

"Wonder who?"

Lozada forced himself to smile. "It wouldn't be me, would it?"

She squeezed him playfully. "And he said--"

"The cowboy?"

"Yeah, he said that since there weren't any women coming in and out of your place, that I probably didn't have any competition. What do you say?"

Lozada reached across and fingered her nipple through the ridiculous T-shirt. "How did he know there were no women coming in and out of my place? Did he ask?"

"Yeah, but I told him--" Suddenly she stopped, looked at him apprehensively, changed course. "I didn't tell him shit.

You asked me not to talk about you, so I didn't.

I mean, not by name."

"Good girl." He tweaked her, hard enough to make her wince. "You know, you've got me really hot."

"Hmm, I can tell."

"Let's go somewhere more private."

"We can do it here."

"Not what I have in mind we can't."

RENNIE LOOKED AT HER BEDSIDE
clock. It was after 3 A.m. and she was still awake. She was due at the hospital at 5:45. She fluffed her pillow, straightened the sheet that had become twisted around her restless legs, and closed her eyes, determined to clear her mind long enough to fall asleep.

A half hour later she gave up. She went into her kitchen, filled her electric kettle with water, and plugged it in. She assembled the fixings for tea, but her coordination was shot, her motions clumsy. She dropped the lid of the tea canister twice before she was able to replace it properly.

"Damn him!"

But exactly which "him" she was referring to, even she wasn't sure. Wick Threadgill or Lozada. Take your pick. They were tied for first place on her shit list. Detective Wesley was a close second.

She had every intention of making good the threat she had issued. Wesley's superior would be hearing from her attorney. Either he could arrest her or he could leave her alone. But she would not live under a cloud of suspicion for a crime she had neither committed nor knew anything about.

The five dozen roses were the returned

"favor" to which Lozada had referred. Anything else was unthinkable.

He frightened her. He was a criminal. He was creepy. He was persistent and, she feared, patient. He would continue the phone calls until she put a stop to them. The problem was, she didn't know how.

Reporting him to the police would be the normal course of action, but she was reluctant to do that
now. She had waited too long.

Telling Wesley this far after the fact would validate, and could even increase, his suspicion. She would eventually be cleared of any involvement in the crime that had cost Lee his life, but in the meantime ...

It was that "in the meantime" that she must avoid.

The incident in Dalton would be resurrected and-The kettle screamed. She quickly unplugged it and poured the boiling water over the tea bag.

Carrying the steeping cup into her living room, she switched on the television set and sat down in a corner of her sofa, tucking her legs beneath her.

She channel surfed, trying to find any programming that would take her mind off her troubles with Lozada and keep her from thinking about Wick.

She had lied about not being mad. She was mad.

Furious, in fact. But she also had been hurt by him, and that was the most unsettling part of this whole thing--knowing that she still could be hurt. She had believed herself immune to caring that much. Obviously she'd been wrong.

She had discouraged him at every turn, but her rejection hadn't deterred him. She had begun to admire his tenacity, and she was flattered by his obstinate pursuit. In all honesty, she had been glad he turned out to be the driver of the racing pickup. When he pushed back his hat and drawled "You are no good for my ego, Dr.

Newton," she'd felt an unmistakable flutter of excitement.

But he wasn't a dogged suitor at all, only a detective hot on the trail of a suspect.

His betrayal had been a wake-up call.

Time had eclipsed hurtful memories. Years had dulled the pain of deep emotional wounds.

Resolves had begun to diminish in importance.

Wick's double-cross had been a cruel reminder of why she had made those resolutions.

She was back on track now, more resolute than before. She should thank him for that, she supposed.

But she wasn't grateful for his making her experience feelings and sensations she had long denied herself. She hated him for making her miss them, for making her yearn to explore them. With him.

She set her half-finished tea on the coffee table and settled more deeply into the cushions. When she closed her eyes, she relived how grand it had felt yesterday afternoon being astride Beade. The sun and wind hot against her skin. The exhilaration of speed. The feeling that she could outrun anything. Freedom.

Had she known then that Wick was driving the pickup, she probably would have felt even happier. He made her smile, laugh even.

That crooked front tooth-The telephone awakened her.

Chapter 15

Wick got away from Oren with no time to spare.

He climbed into his pickup--it seemed to take an hour for the parking-lot attendant to tally his charge--and drove to the edge of downtown. He parked on a deserted side street and then, for the next few minutes, tried to convince himself that he wasn't about to die.

Repeatedly he popped the rubber band against his wrist, hard, but it didn't stop the false signals of imminent death from whizzing toward his brain. He'd never had much faith that a rubber band could work that kind of miracle. It would be like using a bull whip to halt a runaway freight train.

But the doctor had recommended it, so Wick had humored him and started wearing it.

His fingers and toes tingled. Numbness crept up his legs and through his hands into his arms. The first time he experienced that temporary paralysis, he took it as proof positive that he had a brain tumor. He had learned that it was symptomatic of nothing except a shortage of oxygenated blood in his extremities due to hyperventilation.

He opened his glove box and took out the brown-paper lunch sack he carried with him. Within seconds of breathing into it, the tingling abated, the numbness receded, and feeling returned.

But his heart was pumping as though he had come nose-to-nose with a cobra poised and ready to strike. He was drenched with sweat. Although he knew he wasn't dying, it sure as hell felt like he was. For five hellish minutes his reason and his body went to war. His reason told him he was suffering a panic attack. His body told him he was dying. Of the two, his body was the more convincing.

He had been having dinner out with friends when he was seized by his first. Midway through the meal it had slammed into him. He hadn't seen it coming. There was no warning. He didn't just begin to feel bad and then gradually get worse.

One second he was fine, and the next a wave of heat surged through him and left him trembling.

Immediately he was dizzy and nauseated. He excused himself from the table, rushed into the men's room, and was stricken with violent diarrhea. He shook like he had a palsy, and his scalp felt like it was crawling off his head. His heart was beating like a son of a bitch, and though he was gasping, he couldn't suck in enough breath.

He had believed wholeheartedly that whatever the hell had made him suddenly sick was going to kill him. There and then. He was going to die on the floor of that public rest room. He had been convinced of that as he'd never been convinced of anything in his life.

Twenty minutes later he was strong enough to stand, to wash his face with cold water, to excuse himself from the group of friends. He felt lucky to be leaving the restaurant alive--as wrung out as a dishcloth, but alive. He'd gone home and slept for twelve hours. The next day he was weak but otherwise fine. He figured he'd been gripped by a vicious strain of flu, or maybe the marinara sauce he'd been eating was toxic.

Forty-eight hours later it had happened again.

He woke up in his own bed. No nightmare.

Nothing. He'd been sleeping soundly when he abruptly awoke, in abject terror of dying.

His heart was hammering. Sweat poured from him. He was gasping for air. Again he'd had the tingling in his extremities, the crawling scalp, and the absolute conviction that his time on earth was ending.

This had taken place shortly after all the shit with Lozada had gone down. The assassin was thumbing his nose at the department in general and at Wick in particular. And now he'd been stricken with a terminal disease. That was his take on the situation when he made an appointment with an internist.

"You mean I'm just crazy?"

After putting him through a battery of tests-neurological, gastrointestinal, cardiological, you name it--the doctor's diagnosis was that he suffered from acute anxiety disorder.

The doctor was quick to tell him he wasn't crazy and to explain the nature of the syndrome.

Wick was relieved to learn that his illness wasn't fatal, but the cause was imprecise and that bothered him. He wanted a quick fix and was disheartened to learn that it usually didn't work that way.

"You may never experience another one," the doctor told him. "Or you may have them periodically for the rest of your life."