Edge of Midnight (9 page)

Liv forced herself to exhale, and slowly inhaled again. “This is not my fault.” The words fell one at a time from her lips, like little rocks.

“Saying ‘it’s not my fault’ will get you nowhere. Just look at yourself!” Her mother gestured at the mirror on the dining room wall.

Liv looked, and wished she hadn’t. She was wild-haired, holloweyed, white-lipped, grimy. A chimney sweep from a Dickens novel, but for her out-of-control bosom. Just one more of the many things that offended Amelia Endicott. She’d tried for years to convince her daughter to get those indecorously bouncy boobs surgically reduced. Ouch. Not.

Her father gave her an uneasy look. “Honey, maybe you should ease off,” he murmured, in a wheedling tone. “It’s been quite a day.”

“All I want is what’s best for her.” Amelia’s voice quivered on the edge of tears. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I know that.” Liv fought off the weariness that rolled over her like a tank whenever she argued with her mother. “The policewoman told me that changing my name and starting over is an option to consider when you’re dealing with a dangerous—”

“Not an option,” Amelia said crisply. “Not for you. Other familes prominent in politics or business make high security part of their lifestyle. They simply adjust their attitude and expectations!”

Liv sighed. “But I—”

“Your father and I are willing to invest in round-the-clock protection so that you can live your normal life as an Endicott!”

Liv tried again. “But I don’t—”

“I don’t want to hear that negative attitude,” her mother warned. “You’ll have to give up this whim of running a bookstore, of course. Far too much exposure. The same goes with library work. I can’t fathom why you ever wanted to do anything so dusty and fusty in the first place, but never mind. Let it go, and move on, honey!”

“But I’m not fit for anything else,” Liv protested. “All my training and education is in literature and library science.”

“You can do what I’ve been trying to persuade you to do since you were in college,” her mother announced triumphantly. “You can go into the advertising department of ECE! Any location you like, darling. Seattle, Olympia, San Francisco, Portland, Spokane. Location is virtual these days. You could work from home, with this new video conferencing technology. You’re so creative and imaginative, Livvy. You were wasted as a librarian, or a shopkeeper, for God’s sake. In fact, this whole thing might just end up being a blessing in disguise.”

Hah. Liv gritted her teeth. “I wouldn’t be any good at—”

“Nonsense. You’d be brilliant. And the best thing about it is that anywhere you worked, you’d be guarded by ECE corporate security! Imagine what a load off our minds, honey! Knowing that every day, you’re as safe as if you’re locked in a bank vault!”

Liv winced. “I’d go bonkers if I worked for ECE.”

“Stop doubting yourself, Livvy! We’ve always believed in you!”

Believed in who? Whoever this person was that Amelia Endicott so ardently believed in was light years away from the daughter she actually had. But there was no point in trying to make her understand.

“We’ll find a high security condo, wherever you decide to settle,” her mother went on. “You’ll have to give up all that hiking and running, but you can work out indoors. There’s always grocery delivery…”

Her mother’s babble faded into a faraway hum in Liv’s ears, as if she were alone beneath a glass bell. She thought of her mother’s collection of antique dolls in the parlor of her Seattle town house. Each stood alone, stiffly poised, a perfect ceramic smile on each painted face.

Pretty. Content with their lot. Happy to please. Compliant.

It was so painful, disappointing her mother for the umpteenth time. Forever rowing against such a powerful current wore her out, but this current was pulling her towards a deadly waterfall.

She thought of the life in store for her. No more wandering on hiking trails, staring at the mountains. No more walking on fog-bound beaches, watching the surf wash away the tracks of the seagulls. No more cuddling at night in her armchair in the ramshackle house in the pines, reading fantasy and sci-fi and romance novels. No more morning jogs, watching the sunrise. No more poring over book catalogs as she decided what to stock. No more ripping opening boxes of shiny books, leafing through crisp pages, making notes of what to read later. No more reading to starry-eyed little kids at Story Hour.

Nope. She’d be a lonesome rat in a cage in an antiseptic condo. Running on a treadmill in a basement room. Crammed into hose, heels, and a power suit. Ferried back and forth in a car service to a job that bored her silly. Locked in a bank vault. She shuddered with inner cold.

“…have the courtesy to concentrate on what I’m saying, Livvy! Didn’t you hear me at all?”

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m kind of wiped out.”

“Concentrate,” her mother snapped. “Your father and I have decided that you and Blair should announce your engagement.”

That snapped her right to attention. She stared at them wildly. “What engagement? What on earth are you talking about?”

“I hate to rush you, Liv.” Blair’s voice was earnest. “I know you want to wait until you’re sure, and I respect that. But we don’t have to get married right away. It’s just theater.” He grabbed her hand and dropped a gallant kiss on the back of it. “For now,” he added coyly.

“You have to move fast, now that McCloud is showing his hand,” her mother said. “We’ll work out the details later.”

She blinked “What hand? What does Sean have to do with this?”

Blair and her mother exchanged glances. “You mean the possibility hasn’t even crossed your mind?” Her mother’s voice was pitying. “That we’ve identified your stalker? Liv. Honey. Wake up.”

Liv was so startled, she let out a burst of laughter, which turned quickly into a phlegmy coughing fit. “You think that Sean is the stalker?” she gasped out finally. “But that’s totally ridiculous!”

Blair’s face hardened into that pompous, judgmental mask that had always stopped her short whenever she’d been in danger of sliding down the slippery slope into being his fiancée. “There are precedents,” he said stiffly. “His father was severely mentally ill. He’s trained in the use of explosives. He’s worked as a mercenary. His twin committed suicide. He’s unstable. I went to school with him, Liv. I know what he’s capable of. He set off a bomb in the teachers’ bathroom in the sixth grade. He had no concept of civilized behavior. He was constantly fighting, constantly mouthing off. The teachers were desperate.”

“Uh, Blair? Small detail. He was twelve.” She couldn’t keep the irony out of her voice, even though she knew she would pay for it.

Right on cue, her mother let out a distressed huffing sound. “Here we go again. Defending him again, just like old times. You never learn.”

“Reality check, people,” Liv announced, looking around at each of them in turn. “Sean McCloud saved my life today. Yours, too, Blair.”

Her father leaned over, groaning, and clutched his chest. Amelia leaped to his side in an instant, making anxious, solicitous sounds.

Liv had seen the melodrama before, so she turned back to Blair. “I cannot believe that Sean would ever do that to me.”

“Of course not,” Blair said. “You think the best of people. That’s very well and good, in normal life, but this is not normal life. Sean McCloud is strange. His family is strange. What’s happening to you is strange. Don’t you feel how the strangeness matches up, like a puzzle?”

Nope. Sure didn’t. She shook her head. “I don’t get your reasoning, Blair. Why did he stop us from getting into the car?”

“Because he wanted to impress you. He wanted the glory of saving you. He wanted you to be grateful to him. He staged the whole thing to make you feel vulnerable. Don’t you see? It’s so obvious.”

There was no point in telling the truth to Blair when he had that look on his face. Sean McCloud did not have to throw himself in front of a bomb to impress her. All he had to do was crook his finger and smile.

Barely that. He could just be his own charismatic self. Watch the women drop like flies. Herself being the first to hit the pavement.

Whoever T-Rex was, he had an rotting dead spot inside him. In her recent crash course on arsonists, assassins, serial killers and rapists, she’d learned that they were usually loners, failures. Men with no interpersonal skills, no talent at relating with women.

Sean McCloud had no problems relating to women. He had to beat them away from himself to breathe. As for his interpersonal skills, well. The man was capable of talking her into multiple orgasms on the phone. Weird though he might be, there was nothing dead about him.

And since none of these reflections could be profitably shared with the present company, she changed the subject. “Why didn’t anybody tell me about Kev McCloud committing suicide?” she asked.

Blair and her parents exchanged uneasy glances.

“It didn’t seem relevant, dear,” her mother said.

Liv stared at her. “He was my friend,” she said quietly.

“Friend, my foot,” Amelia said tartly. “He was deranged, and probably dangerous. It’s tragic that he didn’t get the help he needed in time, and I’m very sorry for his family, but you were my first concern, honey, not him. You needed to make a clean break, and telling you hard-luck stories about those unfortunate McCloud boys would have just made things more difficult and confusing for you.”

Liv twined her fingers together. Her hands were cold and clammy, white beneath the grime. Her eyes stung with tears. Maybe her mother was right, but that didn’t make it easier to swallow.

The last time she’d seen Kev McCloud, he’d been sweat-soaked, wild-eyed, raving about people who were trying to kill him. She’d had no idea at the time that he was mentally ill. He’d scared her out of her wits when he scribbled down that coded note, shoved his sketchbook into her hand, and told her to take it to Sean and run, or they’d kill her, too.

She’d run, all right. He’d been pretty damned convincing.

Poor Kevin. He’d been so sweet. Funny and brilliant. Sean had been immensely proud of his brother’s genius, his accomplishments.

It broke her heart. And speaking of heartbreak, that had been the same day as that horrible five minute conversation with Sean at the jail. The five minutes that had ended her innocence and split her life in half.

She stared down at her hands, realizing how badly she stank of smoke. She got up, knees wobbling. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Excellent idea,” Amelia said. “You just relax. We’ll take care of all the details. Shall I have Pamela bring you up a sandwich?”

Her stomach clenched unpleasantly at the thought of food.

“Nothing,” she said. “Thanks. ’Night.”

She hauled herself up the stairs, and made her way to the bedroom. She stumbled, but her exhaustion had a jittery, excited edge.

Because Sean had flirted with her? Please. He flirted with every woman he saw. He was programmed that way. It was nothing personal.

Even so, thinking about Sean was so much more fizzy and fun than thinking about the tar pit of her family life, or the ruins of her bookstore. Or T-Rex, out in the dark somewhere, thinking about her.

She shuddered. T-Rex’s attention felt like a foul lake of toxic waste, lapping up against her consciousness. The only thing that helped was the foolish fancy that Sean McCloud was thinking about her, too.

That evened out the score. Just enough so that she could breathe.

It was just a mind game, of course. Sean didn’t care about her, she knew that. But who cared? If the trick worked, she would use it.

She stumbled in the dark room, tripping over her suitcase, but hesitated before flipping on the bedside light. She had no desire to announce to any malevolent presence outside that someone was in the bedroom. She flipped on the light in the internal connecting bathroom and left the door a few inches open. A fine sliver of light was enough.

She perched on the bed, and doubled over, pressing her face against those ugly, baggy pajama pants. How pathetically lame, that she hadn’t grown out of this lingering obsession. After thousands of dollars’ worth of head shrinkage, she and her therapist had concluded that she badly needed to transgress against her family’s control. Well and good. She still needed to transgress, evidently.

What better way to distract herself from all this crap than to drag out her fantasy man, with his gorgeous body, his warm lips, his clever hands? Watch Liv forget the past, her pride, her own goddamn name.

It was ironic. Their affair had lasted one month. They’d never even had sex. He’d just worked her into a hot, sweaty fever on the phone, telling her how it would be when they finally did the deed. What he would do with his hands, his tongue. And all the rest of his manly stuff.

Her on her bed, beet red and speechless with longing. Him, slouched in the phone booth, slipping in quarter after quarter so he could keep on stroking her, touching her. Torturing her with words.

In the hindsight of sexual experience, she knew how improbable his promises were. They’d done nothing but spoil her for the real thing.

She’d been almost eighteen that summer. She hadn’t known anyone her own age in town, after being shuffled from one elite private school to another. She was shy, withdrawn. The only constant in her life were books. They had been her refuge—until she met Sean.