Trust No One (25 page)

“You’re not picky, are you?” he said.

She shrugged. “A nap’s a nap.”

“You’re not the one who’ll be sleeping on the bed.”

“Fine.” She huffed and turned the car around. “I’ll find a four-star hotel for your highness.”

“That’s better,” he said, only allowing a hint of laughter to escape before he settled back on the seat.

MJ drove further into the small town until she found a hotel that would suit Ben. Once in the room, he collapsed on the bed, no other term for it, while MJ set up the computer.

She ignored the temptation to watch him sleep and spent the next two hours downloading web pages, feeling at last she was doing something instead of just waiting. And yeah it was better to have some direction, but exactly what good would it do to figure out who these dead guys were? What then? Would they be able to narrow it down, determine the connection and predict Tasha’s next move?

Or was it a time waster so Tasha could make an appearance at her leisure?

MJ sighed. She feared it was a time waster, but at least it felt more productive. She’d been comparing the photos for a half hour before Ben finally woke up.

“You look better,” she said when he sat up in bed.

He stretched, winced slightly at the pain, looked around the room then at her sitting in front of his computer. “How’s progress?”

“Downloaded them all, and now I’m comparing pictures.”

“Any matches?”

“Possibly. I need a second opinion.”

He slid off the bed and walked the few steps over to the table and chairs. Taking a seat in one, he said, “Let me see.” He reviewed her work. “It’s a good start,” he said. “We’ll make notes as we find matches. Got any paper?”

“Only this small notepad here in the room. But it will be dark soon, so if we’re going to get supplies we need to be leaving. I don’t want to find that road in the dark. Unless you want to stay here?”

“And leave my fish?”

She thought of the slimy silver thing. “I’d just as soon forget the fish.”

“You want him to have sacrificed his life for nothing?”

MJ blew out a breath. “Can’t have that. No, of course not.” And yet, as Ben packed up the computer to leave, MJ wondered about if those old men had sacrificed their lives for . . . nothing. No telling until she caught up with Tasha.

* * *

MJ returned to the same small grocery she’d shopped at the day before for Ben to gather supplies for his healthy meal. She decided she better buy extra food for herself in case he really expected her to eat that fish.

She gathered her purchases and headed for the checkout, Ben following behind when she realized she was walking down the feminine products and birth control aisle.

Ben stopped. “Now here’s something useful.” He was standing in front of the condoms.

MJ stopped long enough to cast a glance over her shoulder. When she saw what he was looking at frustration warred with a renewed spike of desire. Frustration won and she said, “Dream on.”

“It’d help pass the time.”

The thought of him rolling on a condom, readying to enter her was an image she didn’t want, no sirree, not at all. Whether she wanted the image or not, there it was and desire made a fast comeback.

Strange how her body reacted with her breasts swelling and an ache between her legs in spite of what she told herself. Her body’s reaction turned her brain into a liar.

She’d been without sex for a long time, she reasoned, trying to justify her response. So what would be the harm of enjoying a handsome, sexy man? Her brain continued the Benedict Arnold role. No, stop, she said to herself. Not a good idea.

“We have dead old men to look at,” she reminded him.

“We can have a little fun when we get tired of the dead old men,” he countered.

Don’t even think about it. “I told you. . .” Bad idea, stop with the distraction already. “Um . . . I told you I bought cards.”

Her war with herself, her slow response gave her away.

“You were thinking about it.” He smiled, radiating confidence.

“I was no– hey, what are you doing?" she asked when he took a box off the shelf, her denial quickly forgotten.

"Sex is a lot more fun than Go Fish, but then again if we start out with strip poker, the evening could be really interesting.” His smug look never wavered.

She refused to react. “I hope you enjoy playing by yourself.”

Chapter 14

Back at the cabin, Ben prepared to cook the fish in the barbecue pit Ed had built behind a brick wall, creating a secure cook out area right off the screened in back porch. Ed never took chances, and MJ learned to view his precautions as practical rather than paranoid.

While Ben cleaned the fish and skewered the vegetables to grill, MJ studied the computer, comparing pictures. Candles lit the room, throwing shadows in the darkness. The computer monitor glowed off the top of her hands as she worked. She thought she found two possible matches.

“Any luck?” Ben asked as he sat the table around the computer.

“Possibly. I’ll want you to verify.”

“Okay.” He went back to the kitchen and rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets. “Want wine with dinner?”

“We didn’t buy wine?”

“Found some here in the cabinet.” He held out a bottle, dark in the dim light.

She didn’t know how he found it in the dark cabinets. “You think it’s wise for you to drink?”

“I was on a little drinking binge,” he said in a tone that bordered on defensive. “I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Whatever.” MJ shrugged and turned back to the pictures on the screen. “You get drunk and Tasha shows up, makes it easier for us to ditch you.”

Without another comment, he put the bottle back in the cabinet and filled two glasses from the tap.

During the dinner of grilled fish and vegetables served over prepackaged flavored rice, they discussed MJ’s findings. Once she thought she found a match she read all about the senator and took notes on their accomplishments in office looking for a common theme among the dead guys.

“The food was really good.” MJ scraped up the last bite and looked at Ben with new respect. “You’re a good cook.”

“Thanks. Now you get clean up duty.”

“What?”

“I cooked, you clean. Only fair.”

“I’m not sure you’re that good of a cook,” MJ grumbled, gathering up the dirty dishes.

While she heated water to wash the dishes, Ben took over her job at the computer. He found another match and they had enough information in the notes to start looking at possible links between the men.

“All three at one point or another served on the Foreign Relations committee,” Ben noted.

“That’s a good connection. But I’m not sure if that’s enough to get them a death sentence?”

“True,” Ben agreed. “Not even sure what the foreign relations committee does.”

MJ finished the dishes and sat at the table beside Ben, helping him scroll through the pictures. After an hour of squinting in the dark, she stretched. “It feels like I’ve been looking at dead men all day.”

“It’s been a good half day anyway,” Ben said.

“Or a bad one. I need a break.”

“Ready to play strip poker?” The light from the computer monitor reflected the gleam in Ben’s eye.

With a shake of her head and an exaggerated sigh, MJ said, “Not in this lifetime.”

Just then a spider crawled toward his hand. “Don’t move,” she ordered.

“What?” He caught sight of the spider, but before he could say something she thumped it off the table.

“Thanks. Though I would have preferred if you killed it.”

“Wasn’t hurting anything. You afraid of spiders?”

“Not scared. I just have . . . an aversion. Seems like I’m often sent someplace crawling with them. And scorpions.”

“So what are you afraid of?”

“Nothing really. I’m not fond of snakes or mice.”

“More aversions?”

“Yeah.”

“What sort of . . . intangible aversions do you have?”

“Meaning?”

The boy was being particularly obtuse. So she’d spell it out for him. “Why’d you start drinking?” She couldn’t believe she was asking such a personal question of someone she barely knew. But she sensed, on some deep level, another soul as wounded as her own.

His face remained blank. “Perhaps I lied and it wasn’t a binge. Maybe I’ve been a closet alcoholic for a long time.”

“How long have you been with Vista?”

Caution entered his eyes. “A few years.”

“Long enough that you would’ve been kicked out of Vista before now. You must’ve been a good agent for Jeff to give you another chance.

He played with the mouse pad on the computer and said without venom, “Got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what set you off. A job gone bad?”

“That would be a logical assumption.”

“And understandable.”

“Yes, you’d know about that wouldn’t you?”

MJ pinched her lips together and considered. Of course it would be logical for him to turn the conversation back to her.

Before she could decide whether the pursue what appeared to be a useless attempt at getting to know him, and what did she want to know him for anyway, she’d never see him again, he asked her something just as personal.

“What kept you from going on a binge after your job went bad?”

She was considering how to answer when he added, “Too perfect to give in?”

Ouch. Whatever set him off wasn’t healed yet for him to lash out like that. She supposed she deserved it for being nosy. “I did my own fair share of drinking. Finding Angelina saved me from myself.”

“Good for you,” he said in a choppy staccato tone. “I don’t need saving.”

“Says you.”

“Aren’t I the one who counts?”

“It would help to talk.”

“Talking’s overrated. Did it do you any good?”

“Didn’t hurt.” She laid her hand on top of his, remembered the times Niko held her and listened while she talked.

Ben stared at her hand, before he pulled free. He put the computer in sleep mode and turned to her, only the candlelight illuminating his face. Creating a halo effect around his head. She harrumphed at the thought.

“What?”

Oh, damn, had she done that out loud? Oh, well. “The way the light is glowing, you look like you have a . . . um halo.”

A hint of a smile crossed his face before a sober look replaced it. “No angel here.”

His words were innocuous enough, but the tone sent a chill through her. Maybe she didn’t want to know. After all, it never paid to be too curious. “Don’t think I’m forcing–”

“Oh, no,” he snapped, cutting her off, “you wanted to play coffee table shrink, then you can damn well hear my story.”

“Dining table shrink.”

“What?”

“We’re at the dining table, not coffee . . .” her words became irrelevant at his look, any attempt at levity to use as a cover for the obvious pain, forgotten. “Oh, never mind.”

He took a deep breath, held it, exhaled. MJ waited, anxious to hear, not wanting to hear.

“I killed my wife and son,” he said without preamble.

She gasped before she could stop herself. Horrible images went through her mind at the same time her senses went on alert.

Would he be another man who tried to kill her? Should she sleep with one eye open? MJ shook away her alarmist thoughts. Jeff wouldn’t send someone dangerous to her. Yeah, and then there was Keith. Jeff had paired her with him, too.

No, there was no comparison, time and distance allowed her to see Keith for the narcissist he’d been. Just the little she knew, she recognized Ben didn’t share those traits. He was simply putting a deliberately bad spin on his statement. If it had really been as horrific as his tone indicated, if he’d killed them in cold-blooded murder, he would have never admitted it, and more likely would be rotting in jail.

Yet Ben left the statement hanging without embellishment. Knowing there was more to the story, MJ probed. “You going to make a statement like that with no explanation?”

“What’s to explain?”

One tough nut all right. She’d need an impact wrench to get his tongue loose. But she’d give it a try. “First off, how’d you kill them? Put a gun to their heads to pull the trigger? Take a knife to their throats while they were sleeping? Poison their food? Lock them in a garage with a running car? Or–”

“Bomb.” Ben met and held her gaze.

She tried not to flinch at the image. The violence, force of a bomb, body parts flying . . . “Yes, of course, that was my next guess.”