he thought, hoped grimly, but of course it was.
With her hair in a ponytail, khaki shorts and a short-sleeved chambray shirt, she should have looked as casual as hell. She didn’t. She looked beautiful and elegant- there were creases pressed into her shorts, for pity’s sake-and uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Hi.”
He nodded curtly as he mounted the bike.
“I, uh, wondered if we were still on for our ride to the lake today. Natalia said I could, uh, borrow her bike.”
He’d made the suggestion less than forty-eight hours earlier, just before some thug had tried to run them down on the sidewalk. It had seemed a good idea then-a nice place, a picnic lunch, a pretty woman…Now he couldn’t think of much he wanted less than private time with Liz. “Later, okay?”
“Oh. Okay.” She shifted, her sandaled feet coming into view in the grass where he was staring. She sounded part disappointed, part phony. “I can give you a ride wherever you’re going.”
“No, thanks.”
“I don’t mind. We could talk.”
Oh yeah, that sounded like fun. He’d tried talking last night, hadn’t he, and look where it’d gotten him. “Look, I’m not in much of a mood for talking. Maybe later.”
Her cheeks flushed and she took a step back. She tried to smile, but it was shaky. “Okay. Sure. Later.”
She watched as he rode away. He swore he could feel her gaze on him long after distance and Miss Abigail’s house had blocked her view.
It was good weather for riding: sunny, not too hot or too humid, just enough breeze to cool without affecting control of the bike. He hardly noticed it, though. His attention was focused on the upcoming call.
He would tell Josh to stay away from the Mulroneys, from their parents, from him.
He would ask what was between Josh and Liz.
He would ask what she wanted from him.
He would ask why he shouldn’t give her the phone number.
And he would tell his brother, if he bothered to ask, that their parents were fine.
And to be careful.
Assuming, of course, that the number was still good, that he got to talk to Josh at all, that his brother was even alive to talk to.
Hands tight on the grips, Joe waited for a break in traffic, then turned left onto Carolina Avenue. The mall was a half dozen blocks to the east, small, one-story, sitting in the middle of a six-acre parking lot. There were no bike racks, so when he stopped near the main entrance, he climbed off and secured the bike to a light post with the chain and padlock he kept looped around the crossbar.
The air inside was cool, processed, stale. The food court was busy, shoppers moved from store to store, and kids congregated wherever there was room. A good chunk of Copper Lake still believed that Sunday was the Lord’s day and ate dinner with family after church, but the rest of them were shopping or hanging out here.
Holding his helmet by the strap, he headed toward the little-used south entrance, where a small alcove just inside the doors housed two pay phones and an ATM. Turning his back to the shoppers, he dug the number from his pocket, dropped in two quarters and, with hardly a tremble to his hand, he dialed.
At the other end, the phone rang four times before going to voice mail. The recording was to the point: “Leave a message.” It was Josh’s voice, not so flippant, not so smug as usual, but proof that two months ago, at least, he’d been alive.
Before Joe found his voice, the phone disconnected. He fed in two more quarters, dialed again and this time, after the beep, said, “It’s me. Joe. I’m at a pay phone at 706-555-3312. I’ll hang around here for ten minutes. If you don’t call, I’ll try again later.”
When he hung up, his palm was sweaty. He dried it on his jeans, then turned to gaze across the open area of the mall. The nearest store on the left was a clothing boutique that catered to well-dressed toddlers, dressing them like miniature versions of their well-heeled parents. Directly across from it was a sporting goods place, and in the middle stood a jewelry kiosk. Listening to seconds ticking off slowly in his head, he scanned the people sitting on couches just past the kiosk, recognizing a few of his regular customers before movement drew his gaze back to the jewelry. It hadn’t been much-a swing of black curls lassoed into a ponytail-and he was sure there were other women in town with curly black hair even if he couldn’t think of any offhand.
Then the clerk inside the kiosk moved, and Joe’s gaze locked with Liz’s. The look on her face was funny-grim, resigned, guilty-and brought with it a numb realization: She had followed him.
And it wasn’t because she wanted to talk about last night. Oh, she was talking, all right, to whoever was on the cell phone. He was too far away to hear any of her conversation, but he had a sick feeling in his gut that it was about him.
His chest was tight, his skin cold. He’d never had premonitions, but at that moment, he felt the way he had when the stranger in Armani had approached him, when he’d turned and seen the gun and known he was going to die. Liz wasn’t going to kill him-not in public when she’d had plenty of time alone with him-but he suspected it was going to hurt like hell just the same.
She ended her call and started toward him. The pay phone rang when she was twenty feet away. He looked at it, looked back at her, then picked it up on the third ring. His hand was unsteady. So was his voice. “Yeah, this is Joe.”
“It really is you,” Josh said. “What’s up? Is it Mom? Dad? Is something wrong-”
“They’re okay.” Joe watched Liz, stopped in her tracks.
“Thank God.”
An odd phrase coming from Josh. He never worried about anyone but himself.
“I figure I’m the last person you’d want to talk to about anything concerning yourself, so what’s up?”
Joe’s reasons for calling now seemed pointless. To warn Josh? His brother knew people wanted him dead. To ask about Liz? To find out if he was nothing more to her than a substitute for his brother?
To find out. Why she had come to Copper Lake. Why she had followed him today. Anything. Everything.
Grimly he turned his back to her. In the reflective glass that encircled the alcove, he could see her, not hesitant, not uncertain, but simply waiting. Watching.
“Tell me what you know about Liz Dalton.”
There was a moment of silence, then Josh blew out his breath. “Jeez, I should have known she wouldn’t give up, not when I left her handcuffed to the bed. Has she been bugging you? Is she bothering Mom and Dad, too?”
“Not that I know of. She said-” Joe’s brain caught up with his brother’s words. “You left your girlfriend handcuffed to a bed?”
Josh laughed, but there was more scorn to it than humor. “I know we put on a pretty good act, but
The rushing in Joe’s ears gave Josh’s next words a distant, hollow quality. “And by the way, her name isn’t Dalton. It’s Dillon. Marshal Dillon. From the old TV show. Get it?”
Joe got it.
All of it.
Chapter 10
Liz had just been outed. She could tell by the way Joe went stiff, could feel it in the chill radiating across the distance that separated them. He knew she was a fed. Knew that every single thing she’d said or done since the moment they’d met had been a lie.
Her muscles were knotted, holding her in place. She couldn’t move closer as she should, couldn’t grab the phone and demand that Josh turn himself in-for it had to be Josh. Who else would Joe call only from a pay phone?
She couldn’t do a damn thing but stand there and regret.
She’d known it was going to be a tough day. She should have stayed in bed.
Hell, she should have stayed in Dallas.
His call was short, less than five minutes. He returned the receiver to the cradle, leaving his hand on it for a moment, before stepping away, then walking out the door.
Finally she could move. She jogged to the door and outside, and caught up with him fifty feet away before matching her pace to his. “Joe, we should talk.”
He acted as if he didn’t hear her.
“Joe.” She laid her hand on his arm, and he jerked away as if her touch had seared him. He came to a stop so abruptly that she had to backtrack a few steps to face him.
“Talk?” he repeated softly. “What do you want to talk about, Marshal Dillon?”
She winced at the venom he put into her title and name. “I know you’re angry-”
“Why should I be angry?” The emotion came off him in waves, heavy, relentless, suffocating. “You lied to me about your name, about your job, about your connection to Josh. You came to this town, you lied to Miss Abigail and Natalia and everyone else. You spied on me. You slept with me. And you think I might be
He wasn’t yelling or gesturing or doing anything that might make a passerby think he was upset. He stood, loose-limbed, his expression blank, and his voice was pitched low and smooth. By all appearances, he was a normal man on a normal day having a normal conversation.
“I won’t apologize for the lies,” she said flatly, though someplace inside she was aching to do just that. “I was assigned to Josh’s protection team undercover. The U.S. Attorney didn’t want the Mulroneys to figure out the identity of the witness against them. I had no choice, for Josh’s safety.”
A muscle twitched in Joe’s jaw, and his skin paled a shade. “So you kept Josh safe. You just let me get shot.”
