Imola (27 page)

About a mile past Father’s cabin, a narrow turnoff goes left, through tall bushes. It’ll open up to a screen of trees. Follow the road around the trees. I’m in the green trailer. Look for a red GTO
.

Jason tossed the note back on the seat. Was it a setup? The writing looked like Agnes’s.

The Volvo slowed as he turned it onto the road to Eddie’s cabin. Why would she need a setup? She’d had him incapacitated—a stationary target within razor’s reach.

And why would she give the information about the car—a red GTO? Probably because she wanted to be found. Jason pushed on the gas pedal again. She wanted to be found by him. Found or rescued? She had won the battle with Lilin at Donnie’s, but had she won the war? What was ahead at the trailer?

And why did he have this single-minded need to be the one to find her? He could have alerted the authorities. He should. He’d be able to see her again back in Imola.

April was right once again. She was one hell of a psychiatrist. Emotion did frequently trump logic.

He picked up the note again. When did Agnes write it? There wasn’t time to drop it off at April’s after leaving Donnie’s apartment. Then how did it get into the Levi’s? They were small, certainly the tight fit Lilin would wear. But not Agnes.

Jason slowed the car. The double-rutted road was up ahead, guarded by high bushes as the note said. He steered the car off the pavement and heard the bushes claw at the Volvo’s side panels. He hadn’t felt the nervousness of uncertainty to this point, and bringing it to his consciousness didn’t ignite the churn in his belly. How could he be so relaxed? Did something happen in the apartment that only registered in his subconscious? Something that let him know everything was all right in Inverness? Something was drawing him here, to Agnes. Or was that part of the trap?

There it was—the churn. And he welcomed it. He needed to be on edge, aware to the precipice of paranoia. Escape systems shouldn’t be designed with a hair trigger, but there had to be times when the threshold was purposely adjusted. This was one of those times.

The churn spun off signs of only one color: yellow, the color of caution. Not red, but yellow. Jason pulled the Volvo to a stop short of the bank of trees and cut the engine. A grand entrance didn’t fit the situation. He climbed from the seat and pushed the door so it latched with a barely audible tick. His path would be through the trees.

The trailer seemed quiet, peaceful, surrounded by dense foliage on three sides. The red GTO stood sentry next to the front door, backed in as if it was watching forthe slightest movement. He mentally slapped his forehead. He should have pulled the Volvo across the road in the narrow arc around the trees. It would have blocked a quick escape. On the other hand, he should have backed the Volvo in, just like the GTO.

He parted the final screen of bushes and walked in a crouch into the opening. His senses porcupined to stand-up alertness. He was ready for anything on a sensory level. On the motor side, his detectors converged to a single output:
run
. His heels hadn’t hit dirt since he’d climbed out of his car.

The trailer was way too quiet. If Agnes had left the note, wouldn’t she be waiting? Watching? He felt like a trick-or-treater about to knock on the door of a darkened house. No treat. Trick?

He duck-walked the final ten feet, staying below the high windows of the door and the adjacent pop-out addition. What was proper etiquette for such a situation? Knock? Walk right in? Make a noise and see who comes to the door?

He eased upright, peered in through a window of the pop out, and jerked his head down. She was there. In the middle of the room. Just standing there.

He peeked again. She was still in the same position, as if in a trance. Trick or treat? Which was it? Was it the full-sized candy bar or the tarnished penny? The stakes were higher here. This was all or none.

The doorknob was cold to the touch, so cold hethought his sweat dampened skin might stick to it. It turned without resistance or noise. The doorway had a refrigerator-like seal around the opening, and it let out a quiet sucking sound when it let loose of the door.

He paused. There was no movement, no sound. He pulled the door open far enough to slip in and eased his left leg through the opening. He slid in his hip, then his shoulder. His head followed. She wasn’t in view yet. His body shook with his pulse. He pulled in his other foot and stood in the entryway, a short corner away from her. And bent into a three-quarters crouch.

He stepped around the corner, ready to hit the floor and roll away at the slightest stimulus. His focus was sharp. Sharp enough to notice that she didn’t even flinch. She just stood there, her only movement a slowly spreading grin.

“Jason. I knew you’d come.”

She walked to him, arms extended wide for a hug.

Jason did a quick scan: nothing in her hands, no bulges in her pockets. But he couldn’t see her back pockets. He accepted the hug and felt her arms wrap around him in a tight squeeze.

She pressed her face into his cheek. “I need you. Thank you for coming.”

His hands slipped down onto her butt to feel her back pockets. Nothing in them.

She responded with a slow exhalation into his ear.

To him, it seemed like an exhalation of acceptance—or permission. Was this Agnes? The exhalation had a nervous waver. The waver of innocent excitement. Agnes?

He kept his hands on her pockets. She tightened her grip and exhaled again. Her lips brushed his neck. “I need you.”

Her breath was hot, tickling. Every hair on his body seemed to stand straight up. “I’m here.”

His hands flinched, and she responded by pressing herself into him.

He tried to think of any other hiding places. The razor was thin. He ran his hands up to the small of her back and around to her hips. All clear.

She responded with another staccato exhalation, this time accompanied by a quiet moan. He thought he felt her lips pucker against his neck. He pressed his hips forward. She didn’t object; she held the contact.

His breath was stuttering now but not just from arousal. It was more. This wasn’t like Agnes. And it wasn’t like Lilin, whose approach to tenderness ran at the speed of a truck driver fresh out of Preparation H.

He had to break the spell. He leaned his torso back, keeping the contact between them with his lower body.

She pulled back in kind and smiled, her eyelids at half-mast. “I need your help. I’m in trouble.”

His right hand went to her cheek without any detectable message from his brain. It stroked and then cradled her jaw.

She leaned her face into his hand and broadened her smile. “What should I do?”

He looked into her eyes, searching for any hint of her identity. He decided to be blunt, to trigger a reaction. “You have to turn yourself in.”

Nothing. Which was good and bad. Good because Lilin would have reacted in a millisecond. Bad because Agnes would have reacted, too. She would have been in tears by now. He slid his thumb across her cheek. “I’ll go with you.”

Her eyes went wide, and he jumped.

“Can we do it in Mendocino? I want to go home. And I know Detective Bransome will be nice to me.”

Despite the words, which screamed Agnes, he felt his heart rate climb to a thumping gallop.

Jason pulled his hands away from her. “Bransome.” He patted his shirt pocket. The phone was there. “I have to phone him. Tell him what’s—”

“No!”

He jerked back and looked for her hands. He raised his arms around her back to keep her arms up around his shoulders. Who was it, damn it?

She brought a hand to the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to go until tomorrow. I want to be with you tonight.”

Jason dropped his arms around her lower back. “Then let me call him. I want to make sure he’ll be there.” He looked into her eyes. They seemed bright with hope, not anger. “I won’t tell him anything else.”

She released her hug and walked into the kitchen. Jason kept his eyes on her as she rummaged through cabinets, cupboards, and drawers.

He was relieved he didn’t catch Bransome at home. He didn’t want to explain anything. The message he left with Mrs. Bransome was simple: Lilin found me. She’s going to turn herself in. We’ll be in Mendocino tomorrow afternoon. I’ll explain it all then.

She emerged from the kitchen at the same time he clicked his phone closed. Two large, thick candles were tucked under her left arm, and two small votives balanced on her left palm. Her right hand gripped a book of matches.

He scanned her pockets.

She raised her right arm toward the back of the trailer. “There’s no electricity in here. And no heat. We’ll need these for light.”

Her smile looked a little too wicked for Agnes, and the reference to no heat was way too suggestive for her personality. Jason stood still.

She nodded to the west windows and nudged his arm. “Come on. It’ll get cold in here fast. We’ll have to go wrap up.”

He hadn’t noticed the amber tone of the light and the long shadows in the room. It’d be dark in less than an hour. It was the first time he’d felt it: the trailer already carried a significant chill.

She nudged again, and he resisted. This time her eyes were different, but still not Lilin-like. There was no anger in them. He’d seen the look before, but he couldn’t place it. Was it with Eugenia?

Agnes leaned forward, placed her right fist against his chest, and lightly kissed his lips. “I’ll be in the bedroom wrapped in warm blankets. You can stay out here if you want to.” She let her fist fall to his stomach and then swept it away as she turned and sauntered out of the room.

Too much data flooded his brain, and a familiar pattern refused to emerge. There was no doubt about where his urges wanted to lead him. It was just all the damn yellow signs. They kept appearing around him, larger with each passing minute. And what about April? How could he hold Agnes in his arms so soon after April’s murder? How could he let the hands that so recently slit April’s throat caress him now?

He reached in his pocket but pulled out his hand, empty. She deserved more than a coin flip. He wanted to trust her. In fact, he needed to trust her.

But it was more than that. Something stirred in him that pushed all of the past aside. Pushed April aside. He should have seen it coming as soon as he’d opened up to April, as soon as he’d relegated Eugenia’s memory to a unit of measure.

It had to be Agnes. He wanted it to be so badly he was willing to ignore all the yellow signs. He wanted it to be so badly he walked to the bedroom in the back of the trailer.

Jason paused in the bedroom doorway and stared. The shape of her body showed through the tightly wrapped blankets. The bed was a small, the kind that forced intimacy between two people.

He savored her outline. She laid on the right side of the bed, next to a makeshift table—a modified construction crate. One of the large candles sat on the crate, dwarfing an adjacent votive. Her curves pulsated with the flicker of the pale, orange light. Another crate and mismatched pair of candles bracketed the bed on the other side. The candle arrangement was the twin of the one on the right, but it strained to cast a symmetrical glow.

Twins. Jason was ready to curl up with her under the covers until the word came to mind. Now he wasn’t so sure. She looked innocent beneath the blankets, a welcoming smile anchoring a look of expectation. But what else could be beneath the blankets? He’d decidedto trust her just a few seconds ago, but now those yellow signs were around him again, posted at the foot of the bed. He couldn’t keep going back and forth like this. It would drive him crazy.

But he still moved forward into the flickering candlelight. Despite the possibility that it could be Lilin, despite the loss of April to the very hands in the bed before him, he stepped toward her. Why? Why didn’t he call the police? Why didn’t he run from her?

His hand went to his mouth, covering a deep inhalation. He felt his eyes watering, threatening to release onto his cheeks. And he nodded. It was her all along. It wasn’t April who opened his heart to the possibility of loving again—it was Agnes. April was the proof, but Agnes was the motivation, the goal. Agnes’s embrace in the other room had introduced the epiphany. Her welcoming presence in the bed confirmed it.

A smile spread on his face. She turned a little in his direction as his knee brushed the side of the bed. His smile faded. On the floor beside the bed, within arm’s reach, was her purse. It was open wide. Just sitting there, wide open. She didn’t need anything beneath the covers; she had her purse so close by. His hesitation was brief as he brushed the imaginary yellow caution signs aside.

Trust. He had to trust that it was Agnes—a new Agnes. Better yet, the old Agnes with a new attitude. The Agnes he was meant to be with. He stepped around to the empty side of the bed and sat.

She turned farther in his direction and the stretched blankets pulled from her bare shoulders. She rested her head on an uncased pillow and widened her smile.

He rotated his feet onto the bed and lay next to her, outside the covers.

“You won’t get warm like that.” Her voice was cozy, but with a hint of sass.

He sat back up and leaned over the edge of the bed to untie his shoes, then straightened back up and turned. She hadn’t moved. A tentative giggle escaped her lips.

He pushed the heel of his left shoe down with the toe of his right and flipped it to the floor, then repeated the maneuver with the other shoe. He could face her for the rest.

He peeled to an undershirt and boxers and slipped under the blankets. Skin touched skin.

She didn’t move away. Her face was inches from his, and the glow of the candles made her dimples dance. Her soft eyes laser-locked to his. They weren’t Lilin’s eyes. Or April’s eyes. Or even Eugenia’s.

A new challenge swamped his brain, emanating from somewhere within his boxers. He felt her bare skin with his knees, his shins, and his feet. But how much of her was unclothed? His entire torso was covered, as was his nether region. He didn’t want to grab her. That would be too forward. But he needed to know. He hoped she was naked, but he didn’t want to assume it. He struggled to control the physical manifestation of his building need for her. In such a small bed, it could be embarrassing if she only wanted to cuddle.