DEFENGING THE EYEWITNESS (9 page)

She giggled again, and gave herself up to the experience.

“Although,” he added almost ruefully, “I might have gotten carried away with tonight’s dinner and we may have a lot of leftovers.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Cooking for my family did not teach me how to cook for two.”

Another little laugh escaped her.

“I hope you don’t mind me taking over the kitchen,” he said.

“I thought kitchen privileges were part of the deal. I just didn’t expect to enjoy the fruits.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to go to all this trouble just for me. In fact, if you want to invite some of your friends over sometime, just let me know and I’ll put out a spread.”

“Is that part of your culture?”

“It was how I was raised. If you get a group of us together, it’s an excuse for a party, and everyone brings something. Potluck. Anyway, none of this is terribly difficult or I wouldn’t be doing it. I have limits.” He glanced at her again. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”

All of a sudden she felt uncertain. Guarded. “If I can.”

“I need to work out. Walking and a few calisthenics aren’t doing it for me. I feel like rust is creeping into my joints.”

“What a description. We don’t have a commercial gym. Do you need some special kind of equipment?”

“Not really. Gage said he’d get me the key to one of the school gyms if I wanted to get in when they were closed. I mostly need space to practice my martial arts, limber up and all. It’d be great if I could find a sparring partner, too.”

She hesitated a few moments. She was sure there were plenty of people around town who knew something about the martial arts, most of them former Special Ops, and they were probably rusty, too. A lot rustier than Austin, maybe. But for some reason those creepy notes wafted up to the front of her mind, and on impulse she said, “I can spar with you. I haven’t really kept up with it for the last few years, though, so I might not be good enough. I mean, I took it as a high school gym class.”

“Really? That would be great. I wasn’t especially practicing when I was in Mexico. I got in some, but not enough, so the rust is probably burrowing deep by now.”

What in the world was she thinking? Butterflies settled into Corey’s stomach as she realized what she’d just offered to do. Spar with a strange man? Spar with
any
man? She looked at her hand and realized it was trembling. She tried to find words to say she’d changed her mind, but something prevented them from emerging.

He wasn’t really a stranger anymore, she told herself. He’d been open about his family, more open than she had been. Whatever problems he had from all that time undercover, she couldn’t see them.

Those notes. She kept flip-flopping about them, sometimes dismissing them as an ugly joke, sometimes getting frightened, wondering if someone who knew her past was stalking her for some reason. But it didn’t make any sense. After all this time?

She looked at Austin, who was humming almost under his breath as he wrapped dough and sausage in corn husks. He made her want new things. He made her aware that the life she had created for herself was missing important elements, no matter how hard she tried to tell herself it was a perfect life, exactly what she had planned.

So she sat there, her mouth a little dry, anxiety filling her, and faced the fact that in some ways she was a total failure. She’d built a life all right. Half a life.

That didn’t make her feel exactly proud. So, okay, maybe it was time to take a step out of her cocoon. Austin provided a way, a relatively harmless way. Gage knew who he was. Sparring with him at one of the gyms should be safe enough. It wasn’t as if they’d be the only people there. Surely other students would be there if they went early enough in the day.

“What kind of martial arts did you study?” Austin asked, rolling yet another husk around some dough.

“Well, not exactly martial arts,” she said. “I might not be a very good sparring partner for you. I tried dribs and drabs of things, but I was mostly interested in self-defense.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “That’s cool. I didn’t exactly go black belt in anything myself. For my job I needed to be good at things like street fighting. Some martial arts went into that, some self-defense... Anyway, the important thing for me is that I need to work some kinks out and get my reflexes back in the zone.”

“Have you been home that long?”

He paused, then wiped his hands on a paper towel and turned to face her. “I told you I was beaten. I spent some time recovering from broken bones. Ribs, my arm. Everything’s okay now, but I was moving more gingerly than a hundred-year-old for a while, thanks to the ribs. It even hurt to breathe.”

She winced in sympathy. “I’ve heard that’s terrible.”

“It’s certainly not comfortable. I had what they call flail chest. I had three broken ribs and had trouble breathing. There was also some organ damage. So I spent time in the hospital, went through a bout of pneumonia because I wasn’t breathing right, and when they finally let me go I was breathing but hurting.” He shook his head and gave an almost puckish smile. “Some way to end a storied career.”

“But your career isn’t over, is it?”

His face turned hard, almost flat. “That part of it is.” Then he turned back to cooking.

Whoops. She guessed she had put her foot in it. “I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it’s okay.” But he didn’t look at her. He just kept wrapping methodically until he had a baking dish full of tamales. “I apologize if it sounded like I was snapping. I guess I have some issues. It’ll pass.”

Hers hadn’t passed very well. She hoped his did.

Regardless, when he was done rolling the tamales, he returned to the easygoing guy she was getting to know. The smoothness of the switch made her nervous. Who was the real Austin Mendez?

“So everyone is excited about the quilting project?” he asked.

She recognized deflection when she heard it. After all, she did it often herself. “Very,” she said. “We even got started cutting the pieces. I think I’ll go change.”

She didn’t say she’d be right back because she wasn’t sure she would. Or could. She needed to think about what he’d told her, but mostly she needed to think about that sudden change in him.

She had thought she was getting to know him. Now she wondered if anyone could truly know this man.

Chapter 6

S
everal days later, the man sat at his computer again, looking over the list of possible notes he could send to Corey. Evidently the first two hadn’t even rippled the surface of her life. She hadn’t changed one thing. She still walked to work, stayed late, walked home, all by herself.

At least she didn’t have a lover living with her. He’d thought that last college student might have been, they spent so much time together, but now she was gone and there was a man living there.

Well, she rented out her upstairs. That didn’t mean a thing, not against the number of women who had lived there. Fast and loose was the way he had evaluated her. Always girlfriends.

No, the guy didn’t count. He was a friend of the sheriff’s according to word around town, just looking to stay a few months. Between jobs, they said. A lot of people were “between jobs” these days.

So the guy had no connection with Corey at all. They didn’t go anywhere together, didn’t do anything together. That meant he wasn’t wrong about her.

Because it was very important to be right. He couldn’t preserve decency and condemn sin unless he was right. There were rules, ways to keep himself pure so he didn’t become a sinner himself. A lot of people didn’t understand that, but he did. Unless he remained pure, he couldn’t sit in judgment.

He reached for the one beer he allowed himself each day. Some thought alcohol was sinful, but he’d read about it right there in the Good Book. The important thing was moderation, so he moderated.

Unfortunately, he might have been too moderate in his first few notes. Part of the punishment for iniquity was to understand your sin. To be faced with it and know you were about to pay for it.

It did no good to claim the penalty from someone who didn’t understand why it was being meted out. Her mother had understood. He was sure of that. She’d gone running to Denver to escape her punishment.

At first he’d felt sorry the child had to see the mother’s punishment, but later he’d come to understand why it had happened that way despite his plan. It was so Corey would be steered to the path of righteousness.

But that hadn’t happened.

Like mother, like daughter.

Those words seemed to glow brighter than others on the screen. He wondered if she would get it then.

There was still a chance she could change, see the error of her ways. It was always possible. Maybe if she saw that, she’d change her life, save herself.

But he didn’t believe she would. Her mother hadn’t changed, she’d just run. With a child. A misbegotten child from a loveless or unnatural coupling. He wasn’t sure which, but it didn’t matter. Corey’s mother had been selfish enough to want a child despite her perversion.

Perhaps that was an even greater sin, having the child. But whether or not it was, it had brought yet another perversion into the world, one that had to be erased.

He had watched long enough to be sure he was dealing with the same thing. He had waited patiently, hoping the child would grow up decently. It wasn’t as if she had come from a tainted family. Not until her mother.

But she evidently hadn’t escaped the snare. She was discreet, but so had her mother been. In fact, it had actually been harder to figure out her mother, but the child...well, these times were so much more brazen.

But Corey might not know about her mother. Might not have any idea what she had been.

Still, the words that glowed brightest on the screen arrested him. They appeared to be the next step. Vaguely threatening, but nothing overt. Not enough to call the police. Or if she did, not enough to alarm them. But he hoped they’d be enough to alarm her.

He settled on them, highlighted them and started the printer. It was old and sluggish, but the message was short. He reached for his beer, taking only a small sip because he had to make it last.

He needed to remain a fit instrument of judgment.

* * *

Corey looked at the envelope with horror and growing fear. She recognized it now: plain, white, no return address, computer printed with her address. There was no question there’d be some kind of message in it, and she didn’t want to know. Her hand shook as she held the envelope, then she dropped it quickly on the hall table.

At this rate, she thought bitterly, she was going to let the mail pile up outside the door and never look at it again.

Why would anyone want to do this to her?

That bothered her more than the messages. Someone wanted to scare her and unnerve her, and she couldn’t imagine why. Out there in this friendly, familiar town was a sick mind. No longer could she think it just a teenage prank. She’d reacted in no way to these letters, and surely any “fun” wouldn’t have gone out of it by now.

Yet another one had arrived. She stood at the counter, trying to collect herself, trying to think this through in some way that would make sense. Some way that would make her feel less threatened. Because she
was
feeling threatened. Stalked. The object of some kind of awful intention.

Part of her wanted to run back to her shop, the only place she felt safe, truly safe. After all these years, only being surrounded by people, women, could make her feel safe. But the shop was closed now, the sewing circle had finished early, and it was after six. How would she find safety there?

Just because it wasn’t here, where the letters kept arriving? That was stupid. If he knew where she lived, he knew where she worked. Everyone in town did.

Regardless, she hurried around the lower floor, making sure all the curtains were tightly closed, even though she seldom opened them. They’d been the first change she had made after her grandmother’s death. Heavy, light-blocking curtains over the downstairs windows. Because once she was alone, she feared the idea that someone could look in. She’d turned the lower part of her house into a cave. Even recognizing what she was doing, she couldn’t stop herself.

Finally she managed to sit at the table and give her wobbly knees a break. She tried to tell herself she was overreacting, but that didn’t work. Someone was trying to make her miserable. Maybe even trying to scare her.

It was all too much. She felt drawn as tight as a bowstring, and she didn’t think it was just the letters. It was having Austin in her life, a man who had been inserted into her carefully constructed world. He was nice, he was fun, he’d gone out of his way to make her comfortable with him, but his presence caused tension. It broke the smooth surface of her life with thoughts of a different life, with awareness of how much of an emotional mess she was. He reminded her of her failures and her weaknesses...and her desires.

He alone was enough. But the letters, too?

Then she heard Austin’s key in the lock. For the first time, the sound filled her with relief. Huge relief. He was home and she didn’t need to be alone with all this anxiety. She didn’t even question her reaction. He might be a source of tension, but he was also something else at this instant: protection. A friend. Someone to break the solitude that offered her no comfort at all.

He entered and headed for the stairs. She called out, stopping him. “Austin?”

He backtracked and came to the kitchen doorway, smiling. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting. Then his face changed. “Corey? You’re pale as a ghost. What’s wrong?”

“Another letter.”

He swore. At least she thought he did, but it sounded like Spanish. It also sounded like cussing. Before she realized what he was going to do, he closed the distance between them and dropped to his knees beside her chair.

“Don’t panic,” he said.

An instant later, his powerful arms wrapped around her and hugged her tightly. She stiffened instinctively, ready to pull away. She
never
let a man get this close. But all of that vanished swiftly as she realized something else: it had been a long time since anyone had hugged her and she missed the feeling, the warmth. What’s more, she actually
liked
the strength of his arms surrounding her like a bulwark.

Oh, God, was she making a terrible mistake? But the emotions overwhelmed her, the need overwhelmed her, driving the stiffness from her body until she surrendered to his embrace.

He just held her. He did nothing to frighten her, nothing to make her uneasy. It was as chaste as any hug her aunt or grandmother had given her. She closed her eyes, accepting the comfort he offered, and discovering it wasn’t so very difficult to do. In fact, it was easy.

She should have been disturbed by that, but she had other things to be disturbed by. It was just a hug. A simple hug. The kind people gave each other all the time.

She drew a long, shuddery breath, then expelled it, and with it a very old tension. It would probably return, but for now it evaporated in the warmth of his arms, and she was reaching a point where she desperately needed someone.

Going it alone all the time, even with a circle of friends, wasn’t easy. She needed someone to share this new circle of hell with her, to walk with her through it. Yes, that was selfish, but who else could she turn to? Her friends were all married. They wouldn’t have the time or even understanding of what she was going through now. After all, murder hadn’t visited their lives.

Austin, at least, seemed to understand. He was no stranger to dark places. Her friends would either laugh the notes off or tell her to go to the sheriff. But she so far had nothing to take to the sheriff, and she couldn’t laugh this off. She was long past that now with a third note sitting on her hall table.

Then Austin spoke again, and she heard his voice rumble in his chest against her ear. “You’re not alone,” he said.

Had he read her mind? Or maybe he just got it. Before she could figure it out, though, he loosened his hold on her and began to pull away. She wanted to stop him, but didn’t have the temerity. Losing the protection of his arms made her ache, made her feel empty. Oh, man, she could get into trouble here.

She blinked rapidly, reaching for her self-control as he stood.

“Coffee?” he asked. “Or something else.”

“Coffee,” she decided. “I’m not going to sleep tonight, anyway.”

He paused halfway to the pot. “What did it say?”

“I haven’t opened it. I recognized the envelope and then started to fall apart. Sorry. It’s just that it’s the third one. I can’t tell myself it’s meaningless any longer.”

“No, of course not. And don’t be sorry. You weren’t exactly hysterical, but if you had been, I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“Why not?” she asked, wondering why she all of a sudden felt angry. “You’ve faced far worse things without getting hysterical, I’m sure.”

“I get hysterical quietly, deep inside. I’ve also never been stalked like this. Getting angry? Good. You should.”

She should? But there it was, fury flowing hotly into the places so recently filled by fear and a sense of failure. Like white fire, it felt as if it would melt her from the inside out. “What good is anger?”

“It’s a helluva lot better than hopelessness or fear. It’s quite a powerful fuel, actually. As long as you use it right.”

Her hands clenched. Her mouth felt dry, her insides wanted to push a primal scream past her lips. Angry? Oh, hell, yeah, she was angry. She wanted to shred something with her bare hands.

Austin readied the coffeepot, then came to sit at the table. “Have you ever gotten angry about anything before?”

“Well, of course.”

“No, I mean really angry. Killing angry. When your mother died? I doubt it. What about your aunt and grandmother? Did you ever want to tear the heavens apart?”

“No,” she admitted, closing her eyes.

“I figured. Well, go ahead and rage. God knows, you have plenty of reason. If it gets to be too much, let me know. Gage gave me the key to the gym at the college. I hear they’ve got a few punching bags.”

She took a moment to process that as her nails dug into her palms. “Gage? Key? Why?”

“I mentioned that you and I wanted to try a little sparring, but with your work schedule I figured Sunday morning would be about your only free time. Next thing I know, he gives me a key.”

“Oh.”

“Nice guy, your sheriff. When did you eat last?”

Food? She couldn’t even think about it. The worm of anger was gnawing at her insides, consuming her. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t say another word, just left her to deal with the rage that had filled her. She didn’t deserve this, she thought. After all she’d lost, she didn’t deserve to be hounded like this by some sick twist who probably thought it was amusing.

As soon as she had the thought, her anger started to die. “Deserve?” she said aloud. “Why don’t I deserve this? Things happen to people all the time that they don’t deserve.”

“True,” he said, popping some leftovers in the microwave and pushing the buttons. The beeps sounded loud. “But that doesn’t keep us from feeling that way. Nor does it help to short-circuit our feelings by telling ourselves someone has it worse. Of course they do. The world is full of people who have it worse. If they ever find the guy who has it worst of all, I want to meet him.”

Amazingly, that made sense to her. It was as if he could enter her mental conversation and finish it. Damn, he was something else. “You’re good at reading my mind.”

“I just hear what you say.”

Soon he’d filled two plates with leftover pulled pork and yellow rice. He had found a bag of prepared salad mix and dumped that into a bowl, placing it along with two bottles of dressing on the table. He added small plates for the salad and mugs of coffee.

“Eat,” he said gently as he sat. “You’re going to need it.”

“For what?”

“Getting through this. No time to go on a diet.”

She wasn’t hungry but she forced herself to eat, anyway. At least she was emerging from the emotional storm that had beset her since she saw that letter. She’d visited nearly the entire emotional map, she realized. As she settled into a calmer frame of mind, her appetite returned and she ate a healthy portion of everything.

“You’re a great chef,” she said. “That was as delicious tonight as it was the first time.”

“I enjoy cooking.”