Tattooed (21 page)

God
.

“I’ll wait for you,” he said, his voice soft. “I’ll always wait for you.”

Her skin shivered. She glanced around. This was a busy coffee shop. She did not want to provide entertainment for any bored coffee drinkers. But no one was nearby. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“I meant it, Kate.”

“I know. But I don’t think you should.”

His jaw tensed. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“That’s for me to decide.”
Don’t bail on me,
his eyes said.
Don’t put up barriers before we even begin.
“I’m ready to take a risk.” He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Are you?”

She wasn’t ready for this.

It was too unexpected.

And so was her reaction. Part of her wanted to say, “Yes.”

And that scared the hell out of her.

She had promised to spend her life with Ethan. And then had written him out of it a year ago. She had made an uneasy peace with it.

Did she really want to strip all that away and reawaken feelings that had both exhilarated her—and brought her so much pain?

Did she really even have those feelings for Ethan anymore?

“I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting this.” She stood. “Look, I have to go. I need to call the hospital and check on Enid.”

“I’ll call you.”

His words echoed in her ears as she left the coffee shop.

She knew he would call her.

The question was: Would she answer?

24

“J
esus,” he breathed, turning the final page of his sketch pad. McNally sat on the synthetic wall-to-wall carpet of his bedroom, still dressed in his overalls—he had repaired a leaky window for a tenant—and leaned his head back against the door frame to his closet.

Ever since he had opened the box of old sketchbooks, he hadn’t been able to stay away from them. He was good. He was brilliant. He had forgotten how good he was until he had flipped through the sketch pads he had accumulated through his teen years, each of them marked with the date. Believing that at some point he would use them as a retrospective, as a chronicle of his development as a tattooist.

Now, he realized, they were also the chronicle of his bond with Kenzie.

And hers with him.

He leapt to his feet, shoving the box into the closet with his foot. Snatching his jacket from where he had thrown it on the bed, he strode out of his apartment. Within minutes he was on the road, heading downtown.

It was past eight o’clock on a work night, and the traffic was light in the business core—which also was home to some of the city’s most popular bars and pubs. He turned down one of the side streets, cursing when he discovered that it was now a one-way street.

He sped along it, ignoring the startled honks from two cars that had turned onto the street in the opposite—and correct—direction, and swung a left onto Hollis Street.

Every muscle urged him to push his foot on the gas and race down the long, empty stretch, but he was trying to remember on which corner resided the Last Man Standing bar.

There. He recognized the building but not the sign. The bar had undergone a re-do at some point, and called itself Due South. He slowed down in front of the entrance. Stylish university students and twentysomethings drifted in and out of the bar.

In his mind’s eye, he could see the stage.

Despite the threats by city council to shut down the Mardi Gras, a huge crowd turned out at the bar. Dressed in costumes ranging from Star Wars to vampires, the crowd was pumped and drunk.

A perfect audience, McNally thought. He was jazzed, wired, ready to let fly. He grabbed the mic, jumped up and down yelling, “Let’s go!”

His brother Matt sat behind the drum kit. He raised his arms and hit his sticks together to the count of four. Lovett, on bass, started his first chord a half-beat early, which threw Kenzie off. McNally saw her flash Lovett a look, but she fudged a riff, her bow flying across her electric fiddle, and got back on track. Man, she was good. And hot. She wore a tiny miniskirt, barely covering her rear end, fishnet stockings on those long, deadly legs, and a black leather-wannabe corset that pushed up her already full breasts.

Tonight was gonna be amazing.

Kenzie had no idea just how amazing it would be. He had planned a special surprise for her. Something that would show her just how much he loved her. Something that would make her realize that they would be together for the rest of their lives.

A guy dressed as a police officer threw himself backward onto a table while three friends poured booze down his throat. This wasn’t the usual Saturday-night dance crowd. No, Mardi Gras had brought out a different vibe. Disguised in costume, the crowd was letting loose. Everything was frenzied: their movements, their expressions, their laughter. It was nuts.

A trio dressed in bird costumes danced on the table, the occasional feather drifting into the crowd. Directly in front of the stage, girls gyrated and bounced, their sense of rhythm deadened four drinks ago.

Sweat dripped down McNally’s back. The crowd was super-wound up, and their little band was giving it all they had. Lovett, his short stumpy body planted on the stage, frowned in concentration. Matt pounded it out behind them on his drum kit. And in center stage, McNally let loose. He noticed a bunch of girls dancing in front, their movements suggestive. He ran his hand through his hair—freshly cut in an edgy punk style—and checked them out.

Although they didn’t know it, one of them would be joining him and Kenzie tonight.

He smiled at them.

It was then that he saw her. His heart jolted.

Her eyes…large, brown.

Like Imogen’s.

Even the expression was the same: sweet, adoring.

He moved to the edge of the stage and stared straight into those eyes.

She was the one.

He knew it.

And, from the expression of surprised delight in her gaze, she knew it, too.

He ended the set on a rousing yell. The crowd erupted.

Kenzie strode over to him—eyes glittering within her ghoulish witch makeup—and slid her arm around his waist. “I’ve got a bottle of vodka in my bag,” she said.

Electricity sparked through his veins at her touch, at the thought of what would come later tonight. He glanced at the girl. She watched him, a drunken invitation in those large velvety eyes, but her expression was unsure. She had seen Kenzie’s possessive body language.

He murmured in Kenzie’s ear, “Let’s get drunk and then play our favorite game.” He threw an inviting smile at the girl. “We’ll bring her with us.”

Kenzie stiffened. He liked that she was jealous. She’d been distant for the past month or so, accusing him of being too possessive, too angry, and it was making him crazy. “Why?”

“Because.”

He gave her a look.

Something shifted in her gaze.

She understood what he meant.

Her gaze flicked to the girl, eyeing her witch’s getup with contempt—McNally knew Kenzie was thinking that her own was so much better—and the wig that sat slightly askew. Her gaze lingered on the girl’s eyes.

Kenzie’s body pressed against him. He tightened his arm around her waist.

“I’ve got a plan,” he said. He grabbed the Darth Vader mask he had left by a speaker, and wrapped his cloak around his jacket. “Meet me by the side entrance in fifteen minutes.”

Kenzie grinned.

McNally clenched his teeth. He had planned it all out for her.

And she had left him.

Not this time.

Not. This. Fucking. Time.

He slammed the truck into Drive. A shaggy guy smoking outside the bar entrance shot McNally a look.

McNally gunned the truck, shooting into the narrow one-way street, just avoiding shearing off the side mirror of a parked car.

* * *

Well, of course
. Kate stared at the number displayed on her phone screen.

Of course Randall would call her the same night that she had gone for coffee with Ethan.

The phone rang again.

“Kate.”

The sound of his voice both warmed and angered her. The latter emotion wasn’t rational. But anger rarely was. It was the situation that frustrated her. If he hadn’t left… “Hi, Randall.”

“How are you?” His tone was low, intimate. “I’ve been thinking about you all day. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She pushed her coffee with Ethan out of her head. It was just one coffee. And she had told him that she wasn’t ready for anything. But that didn’t stop the guilt from nibbling away at her.

“Did you get any media coverage?”

“Uh…yes.”

“Kate, is everything okay?”

“Sorry. It’s been a long day.” She filled him in on the interview she’d given with Frances Sloane on television, and the newspaper features on the Body Butcher anniversary. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her former client Marian MacAdam’s quote in the paper about the murder of her granddaughter.

“You’ve been busy. I’m sorry I’m missing so much. My mother asked you to pass on her regards to the Richardson ladies.”

“Randall, Enid was admitted to hospital today with heart failure. I should have remembered that your mother would want to know.”

“Oh, no. Will she be okay?”

Kate thought of Enid’s birdlike body. The normally bright eyes dulled with pain, sunken in her face. “I don’t know.” There was the faintest tremor in her voice.

“Can I help at all?”

Not when you are six hundred miles away.
“It’s all under control here. Finn and I worked out an arrangement to look after Muriel in the evenings.”

“Well, the good news is that I should be home soon,” Randall said. “The negotiations went well last night, and I think we are on our final round. We could be home by early July.”

Kate stared out the window. She could see nothing but her face, pale and indistinct. “That’s wonderful! It will be so great to see you all.”

“It will be so great to see you, Kate.”

“You, too.” She turned away from her reflection.
“It’s not that far away. And I’m happy to report that your garden is holding up.”

“Good.”

There was an awkward silence. Then they both spoke at once.

“I should be going—” Kate said.

“I miss you—” Randall murmured.

“Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.”

“You know you are always in my thoughts.”

“You, too,” she said, her voice so soft she wasn’t sure he heard her. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Do it, Kate. Tell him about your coffee with Ethan.
“By the way—” Kate said quickly. But Randall had already disconnected.

Kate jumped to her feet, giving herself a shake.

For nine months she had waited in limbo while Randall reassembled the broken landscape of his life. Part of her understood his need to leave, having been through trauma herself. Part of her resented his absence. And another part was scared that she was letting her life tick away waiting for a man who might decide that she was not part of his newly drawn landscape.

What she hadn’t realized, until this moment, was that she had slowly been erasing him from her own.

* * *

The streetlights shone through the still-bare trees. Kate Lange’s house was older. Unless she had put in new windows and doors, it would be easy to break into.

But not tonight.

The lights were off. Given it was after midnight on a week night, McNally guessed she was in bed.

He thought of her, hair spread out on the sheets, her neck exposed… .

He grinned to himself and hurried over to her car.

It took only a second to slip the envelope under the windshield wipers.