Heart of Ice (18 page)

As the day moved toward evening, Elizabeth drove past Ian’s house. Through the window she caught a quick glimpse of a dark-haired woman standing in his living room, a small figure by her side. The very sight of them left Elizabeth shaking. She had only spent the night at Ian’s house twice. But now, unless Joey did something, these freeloaders would probably stay there for weeks and weeks. Ian would hurry home to them. They would eat together, talk about their day, laugh. They would be like a little family.

And Elizabeth would be left on the outside, looking in. The way she had been so many times before.

She drove aimlessly until she finally realized what she needed. A pick-me-up. Someone who would look at her with adoration—and
mean
it. Someone who would not believe his luck. Someone who had no ties, no entanglements. No eyes for anyone but her.

She pulled over and parked to redo her makeup. Elizabeth tilted her head, regarding her image in the mirror critically, trying on a variety of expressions. She widened her eyes slightly. There. That was better. She tucked her lower lip in so that just the edge of her white teeth showed. Blew out a stream of air between her pursed lips. And when Elizabeth thought of how Sara now had everything
she
should, she was able to make her eyes sparkle with tears.

M
a’am, I can help you,” the woman checker at New Seasons called out. “There’s no one in line over here.”

“That’s okay,” Elizabeth answered. “I’d rather stay in this line.”

At the sound of her voice, Clark looked up. She gave him one of the smiles she had practiced, and he returned it. His mouth was a disgusting jumble of teeth.

When it was finally her turn, he said, “Hello, Korena.”

“You remembered!”

“You would be a hard woman to forget.” Putting his hand over his name badge, he said, “Do you remember my name?” He looked surprised by his own daring.

“It’s Clark,” she said. “Do you ever go into phone booths and spin around?”

“I’m not sure what Clark Kent does now that everyone has cell phones, but no, I don’t.” His expression darkened. “I’m always just me.”

One of the things she had put on the black rubber conveyor belt was a six-dollar bar of sandalwood soap. Now she picked it up and sighed. “Do you think someone could put this back for me?”

“Did you want a different bar?”

“No.” She looked down, bit her lower lip again. Knowing it emphasized how plump her lips were, like pillows. “It’s just that right now it’s a bit too expensive for me. After the day I had today, I was just wanting a little treat. But once I got up here, I realized I shouldn’t have picked it up.”

Clark set it next to the register and continued to ring up her items, bagging them as he went. Then he told her the total. Elizabeth wrote the check—another from the checks she had taken from Korena— and handed it over.

As he took it, his other hand slipped the bar of soap into one of her bags. “Let me give this to you. As a present.”

She smiled, but only inside. Outside, she let her mouth twist. “I really couldn’t.”

“No,” he insisted grandly. “My treat. To help make your day better.”

“Well, if you insist . . .”

“I do. Now, can I help you out with your bags?”

They ended up spending fifteen minutes next to her car, talking. Clark told her about how he had graduated from high school the year before. The night, which cloaked his features, seemed to inspire a new confidence in him. He wanted to be an artist. His blue-collar parents worked in a factory in eastern Oregon and hunted whatever was in season. They didn’t understand him. They had refused to help him pay for school unless he majored in something that might actually provide him with a paying job, so he was taking a year off and working at New Seasons to make some money.

It was easy to figure out what to say in return. Elizabeth carefully watched his reaction to every sentence she said and adjusted the next accordingly. And with every word of Clark’s, every glance, every change of expression, she accumulated a small hoard of facts about who he was and what he longed for.

Then it was simple enough to become the woman he wanted.

When Clark said for the third time that he had to go back inside, Elizabeth kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you again. Talking to you has completely turned my day around.”

He raised his hand to his face, looking dazed. “Would it be possible—I mean—could I talk to you again?” He looked down at his shoes. “I mean, not at work?”

She grinned. “What time does your shift end?”

T
hey ended up at his place, the most dreary apartment imaginable. Worse even than the tacky motel where she had been forced to kill that stupid girl. She had told Clark it wasn’t a good idea to go back to her place, that her ex might be watching her house. The minute he got her inside the door, he started kissing her. It was a relief to close her eyes so she didn’t have to see the threadbare couch, the scarred coffee table, the tiny rooms that hadn’t been painted in this century.

Sex didn’t mean anything to Elizabeth. It was a tool, just like a smile or a compliment or a lie or a threat. Each had its place.

“Can I draw you?” Clark said afterward.

It was such an odd request that she laughed a little, then stopped cold when she saw the hurt in his eyes. This boy was like a puppy.

“Sure.” She pushed herself up on one elbow. “Sheet on or off?”

“Off?” he said, making it sound more like a question. He got up and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled on the pair of boxer shorts he had discarded so eagerly only a few minutes before. From a small table, he took a pencil and sketch pad.

She enjoyed watching his eyes trace her curves as he sketched in her long legs with sure strokes, then slowed a bit as he came to the middle.

When he set down his pencil, she asked, “Can I come look?”

He reflexively clutched the sketchbook to his chest. “Sure. But I’m not very good.”

Elizabeth got to her feet and came around behind him as he slowly lowered the sketch. Her breasts, she thought critically, were too small. Maybe she should rethink implants? But the rest of her looked good— taut belly, strong but slender legs.

“Do you like it?” He looked up at her and bit his lip.

Right. He meant the drawing. Well, everything looked in proportion. Only a few lines suggested her hands and feet, which Elizabeth had heard were hard to draw, but at least he hadn’t bungled them. And her face was even fairly recognizable.

“It’s beautiful. Can I have it?” There. That should make him feel better.

But instead of handing it over, he put it close to his chest again. “Can I hold on to it for a while? Because I’m sure that when I come home from work tomorrow, this will feel like the most amazing dream. I’ll need proof.”

“Proof?” Her tone was playful.

“Yeah. Something I can see and touch.”

She pulled the sketch pad out of his fingers and gave him a sly smile. “How about this?”

W
hat’s this?” Clark asked later, tracing a bruise on the inside of her upper arm.

She had bumped into the corner of the pec fly machine.

She gave him the sad little smile that she had practiced for moments such as these. “I don’t really want to say.”

“You can tell me.” He puffed up his scrawny chest. “You can tell me anything.”

“I had a little argument with my ex-husband. That’s why I was having such a bad day.”

His eyes widened. “He
hurt
you?”

“It’s not like you think. He doesn’t usually leave bruises.” She looked away, like she was lying. Well, she was, but not in the way Clark would think.

He pushed himself up on one elbow. “
He doesn’t usually leave bruises?
Can you hear what you’re saying? You need someone who can take care of you and make sure nobody hurts you.”

Elizabeth made herself relax as he covered her face with his eager, slobbery kisses.

She had only been with Clark for a few hours, but she could tell that he would be willing to do anything she wanted. He already appeared to believe that she was the one true love of his life.

There was always a use for people like that.

At two in the morning she told him she had to go, that she couldn’t risk enraging her ex if he drove by her house and saw that her car was still gone. Elizabeth just wanted to get back to her house, to her own things, to her 600-thread-count cotton sheets, not the scratchy polyester blend on Clark’s bed, even if they had been, thankfully, clean. It took another thousand kisses before he would let her go. Fifteen minutes later, she was showering his smell from her skin.

When her alarm rang at five, Elizabeth turned it off with a groan. Her head ached. She wanted to lie in bed and luxuriate in her memories of last night. How easy it had been to make Clark fall in love with her.

And now that he had, what would be the next stage of The Game? What would Clark give her willingly? And then what would she take? Elizabeth knew in her bones that he was going to be useful. And for more than a six-dollar bar of sandalwood soap. She just didn’t know for what. Not yet.

Her hand reached for the phone to call in sick to work. But then she remembered. Boot camp. Boot camp and her new best friend, Cassidy Shaw. Cassidy Shaw, who could also give Elizabeth so much.

Unless those stupid friends of Cassidy’s interfered.

CHAPTER 32

Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse

Y
ou can’t hide your head in the sand anymore,” Nic said to Zoe Barrett. They had called Colton Foley’s fiancée in for a meeting in Allison’s office, without telling her what it was for.

“Zoe, what we have to tell you is difficult,” Allison added, naturally falling into the good cop role. “But we got a search warrant for your fiancé’s student locker. And this is what we found.”

Nic slid the photographs out from a manila envelope and began to put them down one at a time, as if she were dealing a deck of cards.

The first photo was of the hollowed-out textbook. Zoe glanced at it and then back up at Nic, her face blank. The next was a fan of money.

These weren’t crisp notes from a bank, but wrinkled bills rifled from victims’ purses. Zoe’s expression didn’t change. Nic slapped down the next photo, which showed a bundle of plastic restraints. The same kind that had been found in their condo. The kind that had supposedly been Zoe’s idea. Her face still showed nothing. A credit card. The girl’s expression was still blank, but then Nic tapped on the photo. Slowly, Zoe leaned closer, and Nic could hear her suck in her breath when she read the name on the card. It was the name of one of the victims. The next photo showed six pairs of panties, one torn at the side. Zoe’s eyes widened. And then Nic slapped down the trump card. A gun. Zoe put her fingers to her lips.

“Ballistics says this is the gun that killed those three women.”

Zoe pushed back from the table. Her face was clammy and pale. “Someone could have put that stuff in his locker. It must be a mistake.”

“I know this is hard,” Allison said, “but think it through. The only one who could have all these things is the man who committed these crimes. And the evidence shows that it’s Colton.”

Zoe took a shaky breath and squeezed her hands together in her lap. “It can’t be true. This is not the man I know. It’s just—not. It can’t be.”

Nic said nothing. Allison patted the back of Zoe’s hand. After a moment, the young woman took a shaky breath.

“Did you know he had a gun?” Nic said.

“No.” Her head hung down so that now she spoke to her hands, twisting on her lap.

“Those plastic restraints. Do you know who brought those into your apartment?”

Nothing but silence.

“Who brought those into your apartment?” Nic repeated, her voice so soft it was nearly a whisper.

The girl was broken now. No point in playing bad cop.

“Colton did. He said it would be fun.” She raised her wet, splotchy face. “And it was. And now I have to think of what that meant. What he did to those women. Did he want to do it to me?”

Nic and Allison were silent.

“All I know is that I loved what I saw of Colton. This man—the man who had these things—is not the same man. Now you’re saying he had another side, one that I never saw.” Zoe’s voice wobbled. “But what I don’t know is which version is true.”

“Maybe they’re both true,” Nic said into the silence. “Some people have two sides. And one they keep hidden.”

B
y the time Zoe left, she had agreed to help them. But Nic knew that that could change. Colton Foley had his hooks in the girl. Give him a few minutes on the other end of a telephone and he could probably convince Zoe that black was white, up was down, and that there was a perfectly good explanation for how those items had ended up in his medical school locker. It all depended on what you chose to believe.

Look at Makayla. For years she had been deathly afraid of the water, and Nic had aided and abetted in that belief, babying her, letting her daughter make excuses for not even dipping her toes into a pool. But then she had brought her to Elizabeth at Cassidy’s gym.

Instead of acting like she expected Makayla to be frightened, Elizabeth had taken a hands-off approach, not asking if she was okay, not checking in with her over and over. Instead, she had simply expected Makayla to do what she said. Nic had watched part of the first lesson, but then Elizabeth said it would work better if it were just the two of them.

Driving home after the lesson, Makayla had chattered about how she had even ducked her head under the water. Before, getting her to put her head under water would have been like dunking a cat. In a way, it made sense. Without Nic observing, without Nic reaffirming her fear, Makayla could let go of being the kid who was scared of water.

After Zoe left, Allison went to the bathroom and Nic grabbed her coffee cup and went into the kitchen. She was trying to cut back on coffee—she had read on the Internet conflicting reports about its relationship with lumpy breasts—but she figured a half cup wouldn’t hurt her. Too late, she saw that Leif was there before her. At the FBI field office she could wear her armor and keep her distance. Here at the courthouse, seeing him unexpectedly, her defenses were down. She hoped her expression was neutral.