Now or Never (34 page)

“It’s good,” he said. “In fact, it’s more than good. It’s terrific. Best thing I’ve eaten in days.”

“Well, I guess almost anything is better than Ruby’s,” she said, but he could tell she was pleased.

He moved the food around his plate, and she watched him uneasily. He wasn’t eating. She wondered what was wrong. What had he meant when he said he needed her? She had thought he meant he cared about her, wanted her. She had even had the tiniest thought that maybe he’d meant he loved her.

“It’s no good, Mal,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “I’m not exactly here under false pretenses, but I am here for reasons other than just wanting to be with you.”

Her heart sank like a stone. She wondered if he had
been pretending to care about her all the time and now he was going to get to the truth. And somehow she knew what that truth was.

She got up and cleared the plates busily from the table, avoiding his eyes. She could feel them boring into her back as she went into the sitting room. She sank into a chair, her legs curled under her.

He followed her and sat opposite, in the same place where he had eaten the jolly Matisse sandwich just the other night.

It wasn’t so long ago, she told herself protectively. They had only known each other a few weeks. And they obviously did not know each other as well as she had thought, or else why would he have been able to fool her like this?

“Mal,” he said, reading her mind, “it’s not what you think.”

She adjusted her point of vision to somewhere over his head. “Really?” she said coolly.

“What happened between us, what we feel about each other, that’s the same, Mal. Nothing has changed.”

She shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, and we’re just back where we started.”

“I’m here because I wanted to see you,” he insisted. “But I’m also here on business.”

She had known it. She got up and began pacing the room. She said angrily, “You made love to me because you want to use me. That’s it, isn’t it, Detective Harry? Well, I suppose it’s not the first time it’s happened to a woman. And I guess I’m equally to blame. It takes two to make love, after all.”

Harry shook his head. “That’s not the way it was, I swear it.”

“You mean you enjoyed it? Well, I confess, so did I. Why don’t we just leave it at that, Harry. You go your
way, and I’ll go mine.” She turned and glared at him. “I don’t
need
you.”

He got to his feet and grabbed her arm. “Goddammit, but I
need
you. What’s wrong with you, going off half-cocked when you haven’t even heard what I have to say? Why must you always assume the worst?” She tugged her arm away, and he let go of her abruptly. “I guess that last question is irrelevant, since I already know the answer. You’re so locked into your own insecurities that you can’t grow up.”

“What do you mean?” Her blue eyes blazed at him.

“Tell me, Mal, what does it matter that the photo-fit brought us together? I met you because of it, and I’m grateful for that.”

“You are?” She threw back her head and laughed. “And now I know why.”

Harry gritted his teeth. He took a deep breath, then said coldly, “Okay, so it’s over between us. But since I’m here, I might as well tell you the other reason I needed you.” She glared suspiciously at him, and he said impatiently, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mal, sit down, why don’t you. You look like an Afghan hound with a bad haircut, about to take a bite out of me.”

“Ohhhh!” She subsided into the sofa, punching the pillows furiously with both fists.

“Be quiet, and just listen for once,” he barked. “I have another life besides this one of ease and luxury that I lead with you.”

“Lead with me? Huh! A couple of parties, a weekend—you call that
a life?”

He grinned suddenly. “You have to admit it was luxurious.”

She picked up a rose-chintz pillow and held it in front of her face. “You’re a prick, Harry Jordan,” she muttered from behind it. “Why don’t you just leave.”

“Oh, no, you’re not going to get rid of me that
quickly. You’re going to hear what I have to say, Ms. Malone. And when I’ve finished, think carefully before you reply. Ask yourself if you can live with the consequences. Because I’m telling you, I cannot.”

She took the pillow from her face. “What can you possibly have to say that’s so important?”

“Did you by any chance see the news today?” She looked blankly at him. “I guess not. Then I’d better begin at the beginning. Okay, Malone, when I left you Sunday night I went to work.”

She said warily, “I remember, the graveyard shift.”

“That’s just what it turned out to be. For someone I knew.”

“Someone you knew? You mean someone
died!”

“A young woman was murdered. She was a nurse working in the emergency unit at Massachusetts General. I didn’t know her well, I just used to see her whenever I went there on business. We would say hello, pass the time of day. She was a pretty girl, with gorgeous red hair. Rossetti was forever trying to get a date with her. She turned him down every time.

“Sunday night we were called to the cottage where she lived. She had been stabbed repeatedly, her throat cut, her face slashed. She was kneeling facedown in a pool of her own blood. Her little black cat was sitting next to the body.”

Mal pressed her face back into the pillow. She could see the scene all too vividly. “Don’t,” she cried, horrified. “Please don’t. I don’t want to hear this.”

“She had been dead for almost thirty-six hours,” Harry continued remorselessly. “She died while you and I were dancing at my mother’s birthday party.”

“No!” She clapped her hands over her ears.

He stood over her and pulled her hands away. “The same guy killed her, Mal. The one in the photo-fit.”

She leaned back against the cushions. Her frightened
eyes were fixed on his, and he felt a pang of tenderness. He had an urge to put his arms around her, to forget all this. But this time he could not.

“That’s
four
young women he’s killed, Mal.
Four lives
taken. Four families devastated by their loss. They were all somebody’s daughters. Somebody’s friends. Somebody’s lovers, maybe. Anyhow, they were precious to those who loved them. And they meant nothing but a perverse moment’s satisfaction to the evil man who killed them.”

She hung her head, staring at his feet, saying nothing. Her long eyelashes curled so sweetly at the tips. It was ridiculous, he knew it, to be so moved by such a small detail.

Mal thought of Summer Young and pretty Suzie. “What do you want from me?” she whispered.

“I want you to tell me what you know about the man on the photo-fit.”

Her head shot up. “I already told you. I don’t know him. That’s the truth, I swear it.”

“Then what was it about him?”

She turned her head away. “I can’t tell you.”

Harry groaned. He rolled his eyes heavenward in frustration. He grabbed her by the shoulders, hauled her to her feet, and thrust his face into hers. “Goddammit,
why
can’t you tell me, Malone?” he roared. “How can it be more important than what happened to Suzie Walker? You’re
alive
, for God’s sake.”

She was staring at him, numb with horror. Harry let go of her and backed away, “It’s okay, Mal, it’s all right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you. You have a right to your privacy. Just forget it.”

He turned and walked into the hall and picked up his jacket from the chair where he had thrown it when he came in, aeons ago.

“I apologize,” he said sincerely, “for taking out my frustration, my own inadequacies, on you. I let those
women down. I should have had the killer before he even got to Summer Young. Before he killed Suzie.”

“Is that what you meant when you said you needed me?” She knew her voice had a tremor in it, and she swallowed hard, trying to smooth it out.

“I wasn’t thinking about your influential show,” he said, his eyes linking with hers. “I meant I needed you the way a man
needs
a woman sometimes. As a comfort, a friend, a lover. And that’s the other reason I came here tonight, Mal.”

The lump in her throat just wouldn’t go away. Her long silky blue skirt rustled as she walked toward him. “It was the eyes that shocked me. … I knew someone with eyes like that once.”

It was the eyes she remembered most about him, though they had been hidden behind heavy glasses. The lenses had magnified them. They were dark, hypnotic, drilling into her very soul.

“Was it the same guy?”

She shook her head. “The man I knew wore glasses. He—he frightened me. That’s all it was.”

“So badly you couldn’t cope with showing our picture on your show? A killer with the same eyes?”

“It was foolish, I know. But that’s the truth.”

He could see she was upset. “You want to tell me about it?”

“There’s really nothing more to tell.” She reached up, touched his face lightly. “I’m sorry, Harry. About Suzie. And I’m sorry for what I said.” She took a deep shuddering breath. She had made her decision. “It’s my duty to feature the photo-fit on the program. I see that now.”

He still didn’t know what else about the man disturbed her, but he guessed she would never tell him. It was one secret that was too private to be shared with anyone. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure. We’ll start working on it tomorrow. We tape Thursday. That doesn’t leave us much time.”

“All I’m asking is five minutes.”

She shook her head. “I’ll postpone the show we had scheduled. I want to build the whole program around the case.”

“Oh, Mal.” He shook his head ruefully.

“I know, I know. Why couldn’t I have said this at the beginning and saved the agony trip?” She looked appealingly at him. “I never learn, do I, Harry?”

“You will,” he said, drawing her comfortingly into his arms and holding on to her as though he never wanted to let go.

M
AL WOKE BEFORE
H
ARRY DID
the next morning. It was very early, just five o’clock and still dark. He lay sprawled on his back, one arm outflung, the other wrapped around her as she curved into him, anchoring him with her leg. In the faint glow from the window, she could make out the lines of his lean muscular body and his sleeping face. His mouth was slightly open; his breath came softly, and his firmly closed eyes gave him an innocent boyish look.

She stretched herself along the length of his body and ran her fingers lightly over his chest and along his flat belly. His dark hair was crisp in her fingers. A tremor rippled through him, and she smiled, letting her hand rest there, feeling him harden. She ran her tongue over his lips, then kissed his open mouth, lightly at first, then hungrily as he slid his arms around her, locked her against him.

After a minute she lifted her head; his eyes were still shut. She slithered out of his grasp, all the way down.

His fingers were tangled in her hair as she tasted him, made love to him. He groaned. “Wait, Mal, wait baby, please….”

He rolled away from her before it was too late, then sat up and drew her to him. He held her face between his hands, looking deep into her eyes.

“I need to make love to you,” he whispered. He drew her onto his lap, then he bent to kiss her breasts, circling
the nipples with his tongue until she shivered with pleasure. He banded his arms around her as though he would never let her go, and then he made slow and beautiful love to her.

Afterward she could feel his heart thudding against her own, feel their mingled sweat cooling on their hot bodies. The scent of their lovemaking was in her nostrils, and the taste of him still in her mouth. She felt as though she had absorbed him through her very pores and now she was floating in a silvery space that belonged to the two of them alone.

Harry ran his hands down her smooth back, feeling the little bumps in her spine, marveling at the delicacy of her body, the delicious curves and hollows, the sweet scent of her.

“Tell me, are we in heaven, Malone?” he whispered, nibbling at her earlobe.

She hooked her arm around his neck, holding him. She wanted to keep him there forever. “It’s the closest I’ve ever been to it, detective,” she murmured happily, still in that space where the very air seemed charged with little electric currents.

The room was just coming into focus, the dawn light filtering through the cream silk curtains, and Harry murmured wonderingly, “Has the world turned to silver while we slept?”

She opened her eyes, glanced around, then smiled. “And I thought it was just you,” she murmured, returning her head to the crook of his neck. “Do you realize that we slept together?” she added. “Properly. In a real bed, and not just on cushions on the floor.”

“I realize about the bed, but I don’t remember much sleeping.”

He lay back, and she shifted in his embrace, still entwined with him. She was silk and velvet and perfume, and all woman. He glanced at his watch. The green digital
display glowed with the fateful numbers that told him he had to get moving if he was going to catch the early shuttle. He looked down at her, curled against him.

“I know, I know.” She sighed. “You have to go.” She rolled away and dangled her long legs over the edge of the bed. “I remembered the bagels.”

“How did you know I’d stay?”

“Call it intuition.” She slid from the bed, stretching her arms over her head in a smooth feline movement that made him want her all over again.

He watched her walk, naked, to the closet, graceful as a dancer—until she turned to look at him and stubbed her toe on the chair. She clutched her foot, hopping around and yelling, and he laughed.

“I don’t know about you, Malone. Maybe you’re just accident prone.” He got up from the bed and strode toward her, kissed the top of her head, ruffled her hair, then continued to the bathroom.

She glared after him. “Callous bastard,” she called, then she began to laugh. She heard the shower running, and she pulled on a pair of white boxers and a gray sweatshirt and made her way into the kitchen.

Last night’s meal was still on the table—except for the bread and butter, which they had eaten between bouts of lovemaking, and the wine, which had fueled them through the night.