Trust Me (33 page)

"That's it, then?" Jane said. "You don't want to see me again?"

"I want to be an honorable person. You understand, don't you, Jane?"

She understood. She even admired him for it. She just didn't know how she was going to withstand his rejection.

Her cigarette scorched her fingers, and she finally tossed it away. The burn stung, but it was nothing compared to what she was feeling inside.

The phone beeped. She had another call.

"I'll let you go then," he said.

Jane didn't respond. She checked her caller ID. Oliver was trying to get through.

"Jane?" Noah said.

Again, she didn't answer, didn't mention the other call. She hoped he wouldn't hang up. But he ended the conversation anyway. "I'm sorry," he said, then click.

Numb, Jane stood in the chill wind, watching the butt of her cigarette smolder on the asphalt. Oliver wanted to talk to her. And he was all she had left.

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Chapter
19

The nights were the hardest. And knowing Oliver had been released from the hospital and was probably gaining strength every day only made them worse. Skye imagined she saw him around every corner. As the working day came to a close, she'd stare out her office window, watching the parking lot as if she'd see him hovering in the shadows, waiting to drag her into the bushes the second she stepped outside.

When she left the office, she usually walked out with Sheridan and Jasmine, or, if they had appointments elsewhere, she'd hurry to the Volvo with her hand in her purse, clasping her gun. It was the same if she was leaving the shooting range or one of her classes. As soon as she slipped into her car, she'd lock the doors and keep an eye on her rearview mirror the whole way home. Then she'd barricade herself inside the house until morning. She'd had the window and the telephone fixed, but the company that had installed the bars was no longer in business, and she decided not to bother finding someone else. Since the incident with Bishop, she felt as if they shut her in more than they shut anyone out. And she didn't really have the money to deal with it this month, anyway. She hadn't reconnected the alarm, either. It wasn't worth the added expense if it could be disarmed so easily.

She just had to be careful. But all the caution in the world couldn't make her feel secure. Lorenzo Bishop had managed to get inside her house although she'd been as careful as she could be.

David had put together a file of all the details he'd been able to collect on Bishop--information on his past crimes; his family, who still lived in L.A.

and claimed to have had no contact with him for nearly three years; the places he'd worked; the cities where he'd resided; his chronic drug dependency and trips in and out of rehab. But she didn't know much more about him than she'd known ten days ago, when the shooting had occurred.

At least, she didn't know the one thing that really counted. Had Oliver sent Bishop? Or was it someone else?

She longed to put her doubts to rest. But they were still guessing, despite the fact that David was working around the clock to dig up answers.

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They'd been in touch several times since the fund-raiser. They'd talked about her lunch with the mayor and Senator Denatorre, which had gone even better than she'd hoped. The mayor had agreed to speak with the chief of police, to see if they could improve cooperation between TLS and the department; Denatorre had said he'd fully support it. Other than that, her conversations with David always revolved around Burke or Bishop and were never personal. David rarely had anything hopeful to report, and he sounded more exhausted with each passing day.

"What's wrong?" she asked when she answered his call and he didn't immediately launch into another work-related conversation.

"I can't find any connection between Oliver and Bishop." His voice was filled with frustration. "I've dug through six years of high school yearbooks, interviewed hundreds of people, put the screws to the people closest to Oliver, and... nothing."

"What about his parents?"

"I couldn't get through to them until today. The mother finally picked up and told me she was going to sue the city for harassment if I didn't quit leaving messages on their recorder."

"What did you say?"

"I asked if she'd ever heard the name Lorenzo Bishop."

"How'd she respond?"

"She didn't. She hung up on me."

"And Jane?"

"She broke into tears, saying she doesn't remember the name but that she doesn't know what's up and what's down anymore."

It was only four in the afternoon, but Skye had driven home early because she couldn't face making the trip after dark. She'd needed a reprieve from the gut-gripping fear she felt every night after work, and the bright blue sky and mellow sun of a late-January afternoon had helped.

But now it was growing dark, and the old, clawing fear was stealing up on her again.

"He must not be connected to Oliver," she said.

"He has to be."

"Maybe it's someone else, someone like Kevin Sheppard. He wasn't happy when I had to turn him away as a volunteer."

"It's not Kevin Sheppard."

"How do you know?"

"Because I checked him out after you mentioned him a few days ago.

He moved to Texas and is now living there with his mother. Plus he has no ties to Bishop."

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"What about Tamara Lind's husband?"

"Layne? Tamara went back to him before Bishop broke into your house. I don't think he'd bother with revenge and risk going to jail if he had what he wanted in the first place."

Skye hated that Tamara was once again in an unsafe situation. She'd done everything she could to convince her to stay out of harm's way. But Tamara wouldn't listen.

"He hates me, though."

"He blames you for interfering in his marriage," David said, "but Bishop doesn't show up in his life anywhere, either. And he's a hothead, the type to come after you in the heat of the moment, not the kind of guy who'd hire someone else to do it."

She opened the cupboard where she'd put the pregnancy test she'd bought three days earlier. Every evening she told herself she was finally going to put her anxiety over that incident with David to rest.

And every evening she talked herself out of it. She was too afraid of what the results might be, had no idea what she'd do if the test turned out positive.

Would she tell David?

How could she? She didn't see any point in making him more conflicted than he already was. And she definitely didn't want him to support the child out of obligation. No, if she was pregnant, she'd raise the child on her own.

But that would cause all kinds of changes in her life....

"So who else could there be?" she asked when she realized the conversation had fallen into silence.

"Noah."

"I told you, Noah wouldn't do anything like that."

"I checked anyway."

"And?"

"You're right. No connection to Bishop."

Shutting the cupboard with a decisive snap, she moved back into the living room to make sure she'd lowered all the blinds. After Burke and then Bishop, she always felt as if she was being watched. "That doesn't surprise me. What about Jane?"

"She doesn't have the money it'd take to hire someone."

Skye thought of Jasmine's dream and the uncanny and possibly coincidental mention of someone named Kate. Although it was a long shot that Jane would conspire to have her murdered, anger and depression sometimes did strange things to people. "But Bishop was a drug addict.

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Sometimes those people will do a lot for very little."

"That's true. I did a cursory check and found nothing, but I'll look deeper."

"Thanks."

Their business was over, but neither one said goodbye. Skye closed her eyes, feeling a poignant longing for the kind of intimacy that would add a new dimension to her life.

When David finally spoke, she understood why he hadn't ended the call. "Skye, about what happened the night of the fund-raiser..."

She tightened her grip on the phone. "I told you, it was nothing. Don't worry about it."

"I am worried. I need to know if you're pregnant."

"No," she said quickly and hoped to heaven it was true.

"You know for sure?"

The relief in his voice told her what her answer had to be. "Yes."

"I'm sorry. I never should've put you in that position, especially with everything you're going through."

She went back to the kitchen to stare at the cupboard with the pregnancy test. "It's fine. I've already forgotten about it."

"You have?"

"Of course."

"That makes exactly one of us," he said and hung up.

She let her breath go in a long exhalation as she returned the handset to its cradle. She wasn't pregnant, she told herself. She couldn't be. They'd had sex once. No big deal. Sure, they hadn't used protection, but other people got away with it all the time.

She argued with herself for another fifteen minutes but, in the end, she forced herself to retrieve that test and take it into the bathroom. There, she carefully followed the instructions and held her breath as she waited for the results.

It'll be okay...it'll be okay...it'll be okay, she chanted to herself. But when the indicator turned pink, she knew it wouldn't be okay at all.

Careful not to tear the thin newspaper clipping he'd been saving for more than a week, Oliver turned it over and gently pressed a glue stick along the outside edges, then pasted it into his binder as meticulously as all the other pictures he'd collected.

Afterward, he sat back and gazed at Skye in Detective Willis's arms.

That photograph proved he'd been right from the first. Willis wanted Skye. It was obvious from how closely he was holding her, the expression on his face. And, apparently, there was nothing standing in the way. Willis 212

didn't have a wife anymore, just as Oliver had thought. Oliver had checked the county records this morning and confirmed that Willis was divorced.

Oliver studied Skye, wondering if she returned the detective's interest.

It was possible. Willis had a good build, was an attractive man. Oliver liked to imagine them sleeping together, but not as much as he liked the idea of making David watch him. There were drugs that rendered a person helpless, unable to move a muscle. With enough money, Oliver could get some of those drugs. He had a lead on some roofies already. The Internet was so amazing.

Picturing David slumped in a chair, unable to get his body to respond to the commands of his brain while he watched Skye being raped made Oliver rock-hard. More ready than he'd been since he'd come home from the hospital.

"Oliver? You in there?"

It was Jane at the door.

"What perfect timing," he muttered to himself. Then he closed the binder, slid it between the headboard and the wall, stripped off his pants and positioned himself sideways in the chair to make the most of what he had to offer.

"Come in."

She opened the door rather timidly. He'd snapped at her the last time she'd bothered him. But he hadn't meant it. He'd always been good to her in the past. He was just having trouble adjusting.

Her eyes immediately dropped to what he'd exposed, but she didn't smile or move closer as he might've expected after three years. He tried to ignore that.

"Where's Kate?" he asked.

She blinked several times before answering, and when she spoke it took her a moment to find her voice. "Her friend--" she cleared her throat "--

her friend Valerie invited her to stay the night."

"So we have some time alone." He gave her his most boyish smile.

"Are you sure you're...feeling strong enough? I--I wouldn't want to..

.hurt anything."

That was why she was so reluctant. Now he understood. "What do you mean? I've been biking for the past three days," he said. "It won't hurt me. Come here."

When she hesitated, he nearly lost his erection and felt the anger that simmered so close to the surface these days overwhelm him. Didn't she realize how difficult this was for him? That he couldn't even get hard without imagining she was Skye?

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Of course not. Jane was too stupid. He used to love being the smart one, seeing that adoration in her eyes when he said something beyond her intelligence or used a word she wasn't familiar with. But it didn't seem so endearing anymore. The moment she came home, he left the house and rode up and down the bike trail on his new bike, just to retain his sanity. At least when he was on the trail he could relive the moment he'd first spotted Meredith, and Amber and Patty. He'd also ridden, several times, past the point where he'd first seen Skye sitting in a lawn chair outside her apartment, remembering how he'd waved and she'd smiled in response....

"You want to make love?" Jane asked.

"Don't you?"

She nodded. "Of course." But when they got into bed and started kissing, he went flaccid and nothing she did made any difference.

"Maybe it'd help if you let me tie you up," he suggested.

"What?"

She sounded appalled, which made him want to scream at her. This wasn't his fault. If she hadn't let herself get so flabby and unappealing, maybe he'd be able to do it. "You know, it might be fun if we tried something a little different," he said.

She leaned up on one elbow to peer into his face. "But we haven't made love in the, ah, traditional way for more than three years, what with the trial and everything. You can't be bored with it already."

"So you're as unadventurous now as you were before." He didn't hide his disappointment.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "I'm not unadventurous."

"Then what are you willing to do?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I told you. Let me tie you up."

Propping herself against the headboard, she hugged her bent legs to her chest. "With what?"

"Sheets. That's not too threatening, is it?"

"No-o-o," she said slowly.

He hurried to raid the linen closet. But when he came back, she seemed even less sure about what he had planned.