Daddy's Little Killer (5 page)

His concern was touching, and genuine as far
as I could tell.  I smiled.  "Power shopping was
finished.  All's well that ends well."

"Is this your first trip to D.C.?"

"No, I've been here a couple of times in the
past.  In fact, I had a summer internship at the Smithsonian
between my junior and senior years in high school.  This is my
first trip back recently.  I spent a day roaming through the
museum, walking the mall, visiting the monuments.  It's very
relaxing, being surrounded by all of that history and
architecture.  Have you had time for any sightseeing?"

"Not this trip," he smiled.  "They've
kept us pretty busy at the conference."

"May I ask where it's being held?"

"It's uh … it's at Quantico actually."

Was that hesitation? 

"Isn't that pretty far from here?"

Todd nodded.  "I wanted some place
close to the airport."

"You flew through Reagan?"  I had to
remind myself that I don't live here, at least as far as Todd is
concerned.  Most people visiting the capital fly in through
Dulles International Airport, not Reagan.  Locals know
this.  Visitors do not.

"Yeah, my assistant is the flight booking
Scrooge.  She found a cheaper flight to Reagan, not that I
need to worry about a few bucks, but that's my girl Friday for
you.  She'd have a fit if she knew I upgraded the closet she
booked for me downstairs to a suite.  What can I say?  I
need the space."

It drew a nervous laugh.  "I
noticed.  You're very tall.  NBA tall."

"I have no skills with a basketball," Todd
grinned.  "You're not exactly petite, Diana.  You must be
six feet tall."

"Close.  Not quite."

"It must've been why those guys thought you
were Helen.  I don't imagine there are a lot of women your
height running around the greater Washington area."

Curse the man, but he was right.  I
could do just about anything to disguise my physical appearance,
but my wretched height couldn't be changed. 

"I can't imagine it," he continued despite
the fact that I was only half listening to what he said.  "Two
women in one city as beautiful as you are."

"Hmm."  My head went to the odds of
getting that standby flight to Darkwater Bay that would leave
tomorrow night.  I wondered if extra money might buy my way
onto it.  If I showed up at the airport and offered to pay
someone to take a later flight … paid their expenses for an extra
night in D.C.

He snapped his fingers.  "Hello? 
Where did you go?"

I glanced at him.  "Hmm?"

"You've said that three times now. 
You're not still worried about those guys are you?  I promise,
they're not gonna get near you again."

"They realized they made a mistake." 
Bullshit.  They recognized me and I was terrified that Marcos
would send somebody else.  Maybe even Hunter could be talked
into a job before he left town.  I started wishing I had
called security to verify his story after all.

"I asked if you've ever been married."

"Oh.  Sorry I'm a little
distracted.  No, I've always been single."  I wiggled my
left hand.  "No tan line."

He grinned again.  "Me too."

"Do you have an aversion to marriage?"

"All but the sex part of it, but what I hear
from my married friends, the sex isn't so great after awhile."

Dawning washed over me.  "Are you
hitting on me, Mr. Hunter?"

"Will you toss me out if I say yes?"

I would yes.  In a heartbeat. 
Would Diana?  She smiled on my behalf.  Apparently
neither one of us was blind.  Todd was unlike most men in my
world, a polar opposite of Rick truth be told.  Not that I had
married an ogre of a physical specimen.  Rick was bookish,
more like what people would expect to see as the spouse of a
psychologist.  Upstanding banker man.  Unconcerned with
physical fitness beyond not getting too fat or too thin.  He
wasn't going bald before he died, or even getting a little gray
around the edges.

"I'm not going to sleep with you out of
gratitude, Todd."

"Perhaps you'll decide you like me in spite
of how we met."

Blessedly, the knock at the door prevented
the conversation from deteriorating further.

Chapter 4

We nibbled.  Flirted.  Drank two
bottles of wine.  Somehow I drifted from the safety of my
chair to the end of the sofa.  Eventually, both of us
gravitated toward the center.  Todd liked to talk, and the
more wine he drank, the more he did it.  I learned that his
best friend was a man named Crevan, that his mentor was Tony from,
and I quote, "another life" which no amount of wine could pry out
of him, and Todd spoke of his parents with great reverence.

At last, a topic I understood and shared his
pain of separation.  My reasons were different of
course.  Todd's parents died almost two decades ago. 

"Cancer," he said softly.  "My mom died
from pancreatic cancer.  They tell me it's one of the worst
kinds a person could get.  I don't know much about it other
than that it took my mom faster than any of us were prepared
for."  He sipped his wine.  "Dad took it harder than I
would've imagined.  I know I joked about marriage before, but
if my parents were the standard, I guess that's why I've never
taken the plunge."

"I don't understand."

"It's hard to find someone I could feel that
connected to, you know?  I mean, when Mom died, I have no
doubt that the biggest part of Dad died the same day.  He was
never the same afterward.  I don't think he knew how to live
without her."

My experience with Marie and Wendell was
quite different.  To my knowledge, Dad was alive and well in
upstate New York.  Losing the woman who tried to murder him
hadn't killed him.  Two years on Riker's Island and seventeen
years in state prison hadn't done it either.  Not even the
state of New York had been able to kill Wendell Eriksson.

"So what happened to your dad?"  I let
my fingers dance along the back of his hand.  Warm skin, sinew
beneath leapt a little at the light touch.

"He went up into the mountains and
died."

"Suicide?"  Such a dire question
deserved soft and reverent utterance.

"Not actively.  He wasn't found for a
long time."

"I'm so sorry, Todd."

"Yeah," he said.  "I was really close
to my father.  More than Mom, I think.  Don't get me
wrong.  I loved her dearly and worshipped the ground she
walked on.  But there's something about fathers and sons."

"Fathers and daughters too," I spoke
softly.  Missing Wendell had been on my mind almost every
second of every day for the past two years.  I felt him inside
me, a living, breathing entity that spoke his words of wisdom to
guide me through life's deepest pain.  By the average person's
standard, my father was the embodiment of pure evil.  To me,
he was the father who loved me, who brushed away my tears and
kissed scraped knees.  He imparted the wisdom of a lifetime,
even if his moral code was twisted when compared to the norm of
society. 

His fingers threaded through mine. 
"You were close to him?"

I nodded.  "Sometimes I miss him so
much I feel like I would do anything to be with him again."

"You mean …"

"No, I'm not suicidal."  And it would
literally be suicide to show up at Attica for a face-to-face with
my father.  "I only wish that things had been different."

"What about your mother?"

I shrugged.  "We weren't close. 
Not like I was with Dad.  My mother was very religious." 
A contradiction that bordered on obscene if I thought about it too
much.  Off robbing armored cars by night, typing up the church
newsletter by day. 

"And your dad?"

"He loved science."  Insert forensic
natural.  My dad could cover his tracks from the best of the
best.  "And he put his foot down with my mom when it came to
exposing me to all of her superstitious stuff."

"You don't believe in God?"

"I find religion and spirituality a
practical irrelevancy in my day to day life."

Todd lifted my fingers to his lips and
kissed them.  "How long have they been gone?"

"They died about … nineteen years ago, I
guess."  I reached for my wine glass, but Todd pried it out of
my fingers before I could sip.  "Are you cutting me off?"

"I think we should get some air."

"Todd …"

"You'll be perfectly safe with me, I
promise."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Some place quiet.  Historic."

I laughed softly.  "All the monuments
and museums are closed."

"You can't walk the mall at night?"

"I wouldn't advise it."

Todd bent over and retrieved my sandals from
the floor.  He dangled the straps from his fingertips. 
"Then we'll sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and count the
stars over the Reflecting Pool and you can tell me what I'd see if
we were inside the Smithsonian."

"I could tell you that from the relative
safety of this sofa."

One of his eyebrows arched high. 
"Relative?"

His eyebrows had a natural arch upward on
the outer borders.  Lifted, the expression would've been
comical had his eyes not been so serious.

"Diana, you don't think I'd do something to
hurt you, do you?"

My face felt warm, probably from too much
wine, not to mention the scotch I drank before the wine.  "I
never said I thought it would be painful."

His blue eyes brightened.  "Oh." 
My sandals hit the floor with a soft thud.  Todd's arms wound
around me and pulled me closer.  His mouth descended. 
And a cell phone chirped loudly.

"Son of a …" the embrace aborted.  He
tore the phone from the back pocket of his jeans. 
"What?"  Snarled.  Irritated, he looked a little more
Norse deity than human.  The blond hair, the golden skin, the
dark smattering of stubble on his jaw, bulging muscles that seemed
independently sentient.  Yeah, he could be Thor
reincarnated.

"Right now?"  His voice dipped lower
than I'd heard all evening.  Goose bumps rose on my
arms.  Immediately, I imagined that tone in my ear, naked
bodies, sweat slicked and sliding together on a –

"Fine.  But this is a damned
inconvenient time to –"

Uh oh.  The best laid plans wouldn't be
getting any tonight.

I felt his eyes on me,
looked up and met the frustration brimming.  I chewed the
corner of my lower lip.  Lucky stars indeed.  Dad's
advice thrummed into my frontal lobe. 
Beware of strangers.  Keep your distance.  Never
tell a story that can come back to bite you,
Sprout
.  My out came in the form of
business Todd couldn't ignore.

"I'll call when it's finished.  And
thanks for fucking up a perfectly great night."

I felt and shared his urge to throw the
phone across the room.  "Duty calls?"

"Dammit."

"Hey, it's work.  It can't be
helped."

Todd nodded, looked utterly chagrined. 
"This thing is probably gonna take all night.  I'll be lucky
to get a nap before the conference starts in the morning."

"Well I won't keep you."  Brave
smile.  "This evening was lovely, Todd.  I feel ten times
better now than I did after what happened earlier."

"I really don't want to leave."

"I understand," I said.  "Been there
myself in the past.  It's your job.  You can't help
it.  And unless everything you told me earlier was a lie,
you're not here on vacation like I am.  Right?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe we could have dinner tomorrow night,"
I suggested.  Fingers trailed down his chest in a light
touch.  "I'd like to see you again, Todd."

"Really?"

I nodded.  For some unknown reason, I
meant it too.  Or rather, Diana meant it.  The line
between the role and reality blurred by too much wine and decimated
emotional walls.  If Diana felt vulnerable, Helen was wrecked
completely.  "Call my room when you get back from your
conference tomorrow.  We'll do something special."

"Promise?"

I made an X over my heart and walked him to
the door.  "I won't even stray out until you get back, just to
be safe."

He smiled and relaxed a little bit. 
"So long as you know that I'd rather be here than working on some
nowhere task."

"Somehow, when you put it that way, it's
hard to doubt you."

"Seriously," he muttered.  "I'm off
chasing down some obscure … ah, never mind.  It's not
important.  I'll call the second I get back tomorrow
night."  Todd leaned in and kissed my neck, just below my
ear.  "And that's a promise, beautiful Diana."

Daylight brought sobriety and common
sense.  If I took a flight that left Dulles at three, I would
be in Darkwater Bay by midnight.  I booked a rental car
online, and a hotel room in the city proper, as Hardy called
it.  There was no debate about leaving a message for
Todd.  Diana Farber would cease to exist the second I boarded
the flight for Darkwater Bay.

They were expecting Helen Eriksson. 
Sully Marcos wouldn't be fooled by any disguise that didn't involve
amputating my legs from the knees down, one of the few lengths I
wasn't willing to endure to escape his clutches.  The FBI was
a non-issue by comparison. 

I wondered why good old Sully wanted to see
me.  Surely he couldn't be devastated over Rick's death. 
It was a freebie, a hit he didn't have to contract or pay. 
The old guy probably sweated bullets for two years wondering if
Rick would turn against him.

Still, Todd's words haunted me all
day.  My lies knotted in the pit of my stomach.  He was a
nice man who did a good deed for a complete stranger.  It was
better to walk away letting him believe the pretty picture I
conjured in the form of Diana than to let him learn the truth by
becoming enmeshed with someone like me.