Angels Fall

  on, we'll get whatever else you need and take it to my place. Go for that drive or whatever."

  "No, I have to go back to work."

  "Joame's not going to fire you, for Christ's sake."

  "I need the work. I need the money. And I owe her an extra hour. I'll do better if I'm busy anyway. Rain check on the drive or whatever?"

  "Fine." He pulled her key out of his pocket, handed it to her. "You're locked up. I'll be at home if… I'll be at home."

  "Okay." Since he made no move, she did, and leaned in to kiss him. "Consider that a small down payment on the painting fee."

  "I thought I was being paid in food."

  "To start."

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  JOANIE ASKED no questions, and had given the stern word that she didn't want to hear any aimed in Reece's direction that didn't have to do with food.

  When the lunch crowd slowed, she watched Reece chop onions and celery. The girl might have had the speed and precision with a knife that a champion barrel racer had with a horse, but her mind wasn't on her work.

  "Your shift's over."Joanie told her.

  "I owe you time. And we're low on potato salad."

  "You owed me ten minutes, already paid."

  Reece shook her head, kept chopping. "I was a good thirty minutes with the sheriff."

  Mortally insulted, Joanie fisted her hands on her hips. "Did I say anything about docking you for that? Christ."

  "I owe you thirty minutes." Reece dumped the onions and celery into the potatoes she'd already boiled, cubed and cooled. "This would have more zing with fresh dill."

  "Well, I'd have more zing with George Clooney and Harrison Ford in a threesome, but neither of us are going to get that wish. I don't hear the customers complaining, and I said your shift is over. I don't pay overtime."

  "I don't want your damn overtime. I want fresh dill, and some goddamn curry and cheese that doesn't look like plastic. And it the customers don't complain, it's because their taste buds are atrophied."

  "That being the case." Joanie said evenly while Pete slunk away from the sink toward the back door, "they don't give a rat's flea-bitten ass about fresh dill."

  "Well, they should." Reece slammed the jar of dressing on the work counter. "You should. Why should everyone just make do? I'm tired of just making do."

  "Then get out of my kitchen."

  "Fine." Reece yanked off her apron. "Fine. I'm out." Fueled with righteous fury, she sailed into Joanie's office, grabbed her purse and headed for the door. She stopped by a booth where a trio of hikers were finishing up their lunch and pretending not to listen. "Cumin." She jabbed a finger toward a bowl of chili."It needs cumin. "And stormed out.

  "Cumin, my ass." Joanie muttered, then rounded on Pete. "Get back to work. I'm not paying you to stand around looking sorrowful."

  "I could go after her."

  "You could be out of a job. too." Cumin, Joanie thought with a sniff, and stalked over to finish the potato salad.

  Reece slammed into her car. What she should do is drive and keep on driving, she told herself. She didn't need this town, these people, this ridiculous job that made a mockery out of real cuisine. She should head out to L.A., that's what she should do. do to L.A. and take over a kitchen in a real restaurant where people understood food was more than something you stuffed into your face.

  She slammed out of the car again in front of the mercantile. She owed Joanie time, but the bitch didn't want it. She owed Brody a meal for painting, and by God, she was paying her debt.

  She shoved through the door, then scowled over at the counter where Mac was ringing up a sale for Debbie Mardson.

  '"I need hazelnuts," she snapped out.

  "Ah, can't say we have any in stock."

  How the hell was she supposed to make her chicken Frangelico without hazelnuts? "Why not?"

  "Don't have much call for them. Sure can order you some though"

  "A lot of good that does me now." She arrowed away to the grocery section to haunt the shelves, the bins, searching for inspiration and ingredients. Ridiculous, absurd, she thought, to try to find inspiration in this backcountry nowhere.

  "Oh, look, a miracle," she muttered. "Sun-dried tomatoes." She tossed them into the basket, picked through the fresh tomatoes. Hothouse, she thought in disgust. Wrapped in cellophane, for God's sake. Tasteless, colorless.

  Making do, that's all. And barely.

  No portobellos, big surprise. No eggplant, no artichokes. No fucking fresh dill.

  "Hey there, Reece."

  Tossing a few obviously substandard peppers in her basket, she frowned up at Lo. "'If your mother sent you down, you can go right back and tell her I'm done."

  "Ma? Haven't been down there yet. Saw your car out front. Here, let me carry that for you."

  "I've got it." She tugged the basket out of reach. "Or maybe you forgot I said I wouldn't sleep with you."

  His mouth opened, then closed and he cleared his throat. "No, that sticks in my mind. Listen, I just came in when I saw your car because I figured you might be upset."

  "Why would I be upset? Red-skinned potatoes, another miracle."

  "I heard about the woman they found up near Moose Ponds. News like that doesn't stay under the lid," he added when she only stared at him. "Has to be rough on you."

  "A lot rougher on her, I'd say." She headed over to pick through the packaged chicken breasts.

  "I guess that's true. Can't be easy for you though. Seeing her again, even a picture of her. Having to go back in your head to the day you saw her when you were on the trail."" He shifted his feet when she made no response. "But at least you know they found her."

  "I don't know if it was the same woman I saw."

  "Sure it was. Had to be."

  "Why?"

  "Just makes sense it was."" He trailed her over to the counter. "Everybody's saying so."

  "Everybody doesn't know jack, and I can't say the woman they found is the woman I saw just to make everyone happy."

  "Well, Jesus, Reece, that's not what I—"

  "Funny how it takes some kids finding a dead body to make people around here decide I wasn't making the whole thing up after all. Gee, maybe Reece isn't completely crazy, after all."

  With more care than usual, Mac boxed her purchases. "Nobody thinks you're crazy, Reece."

  "Sure they do. Once a nutcase, always a nutcase. That's how it goes."' She pulled out her wallet and noted with resignation that with the total on the cash register, she was going to be down to her last ten dollars and change. Again.

  "You shouldn't talk like that." Mac took her money, gave her back thirty-six cents. "It's insulting to yourself and the rest of us."

  "Maybe. It's insulting to walk down the street, or into a room, and have people point me out as that poor woman from back East, or look at me out of the sides of their eyes as if I might start gibbering any second. Try being on the receiving end of that for a while," she suggested as she hefted the box. "See if it doesn't start pissing you off. And you can tell your mother," she said to Lo, "that she owes me for twenty-eight hours."

  Reece started for the door. "Tell her I'll be in to pick up my check tomorrow."

  THE SOUND OF the front door slamming shot Brody out of a tense scene between his central character and the man she has no choice but to trust.

  He cursed, reached for his coffee only to discover he'd already finished the oversized mug of it. His first thought was to go down for a refill, but he heard further slamming—cupboard doors?—and decided he'd rather stay out of the war zone and do without the caffeine.

  He rubbed the stiffness out of the back of his neck, which he attributed to craning it in order to paint the bathroom celling. Then he closed his eyes, pushed himself back into the scene.

  At some point he thought he heard either the front or hack door open, but he was in the zone and continued to write until it closed on him.

  Satisfied, he pushed away from his keyboard. He and Maddy
had taken a hell of a ride that day, and while she still had a ways to go, right now he deserved a cold beer and a hot shower.

  But the beer came first. As he headed down to get one, he rubbed a hand over his face and heard the rasp. Should probably shave, he thought idly. Letting that little bit of business go two or three days running was fine and good for a man on his own. When a woman came into the equation, it was time for regular sessions with the damn razor.

  He'd shave in the shower.

  Better, he'd talk Reece into the shower with him. Shave, shower, sex—then a cold beer and a hot meal.

  It was, he decided, a most excellent plan.

  The fact that nothing was simmering on the stove was a bit of a shock. He'd gotten used to strolling into the kitchen and finding something cooking. It was another shock to realize it irritated him.

  Nothing cooking, no colorful arrangement of plates and candles on the table, and the back door wide open. He forgot about shaving and stepped over to the door.

  Reece was sitting on the squat back porch with a bottle of wine. From the level in the bottle, he deduced she'd been sitting there for some time.

  He stepped out, sat down beside her. "Having a party?"'

  "Sure." She lifted her glass. "Big party. You can buy yourself a very decent bottle of wine around here, but you just try to get a goddamn sprig of fresh dill or some lousy hazelnuts."

  "I complained to the mayor about that just last week."

  "You wouldn't know fresh dill if I shoved it up your nose." She-gulped wine, gestured sloppily toward him with the glass. "And you're from Chicago. You oughta have some standards."

  "I'm so ashamed." And she was so drunk.

  "I was gonna make chicken Frangelico, but hazelnuts are not to be had. So I figured I'd do polio arrosto. Tomatoes are crap, and the idea of finding Parmesan that's not dried powder in a can is a laugh."

  "That's a tragedy."

  "It matters."

  "Apparently. Come on. Slim, you're toasted. Let's go on up so you can sleep it off."

  "I'm not finished being toasted."

  "Your choice, your hangover." He considered it a kindness to pick up the bottle, take a slug straight from it, and save her system from dealing with at least that much of it.

  "She wants to make potato salad with bottled dressing and no dill, let her. I quit."

  And around to Joanie, Brody deduced. "That'll teach her."

  "Go along, make do, don't make waves, just so nobody notices. No attention here, please, go about your business."

  She waved her hands a little wildly, so he laid his own on the bowl of her glass to keep wine from sloshing onto him.

  "I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it all. Take a job I'm so overqualified for I could do it blindfolded and one-handed, live in a dinky apartment over a diner. Wasting my time, that's all, just wasting it."

  He considered, took another slug of wine. Not just toasted, he thought. Wallowing. "You plan on bitching and moaning much longer? Because if that's all that's on the slate, I can leave you to it and get a couple more hours of work in."

  "Typical. Typical man. If it's not about you, it's not worth listening to. What the hell am I doing with you, anyway?"

  "Right now? You're getting drunk on my back porch, wallowing in it and annoying me."

  Her eyes might have been glassy, but they still had punch when they aimed at him. "You're selfish, self-absorbed and rude. The only thing you'll miss about me when I go is having a hot meal put in front of you So, screw you, Brody. Just screw you sideways. I'll go wallow elsewhere."

  She got to her feet, swaying a little as the wine sloshed in her head as unsteadily as it did in her glass. "I should've kept driving right through this excuse for a town. I should've told you to go to hell the first time you made a move on me. I should've told Mardson that was the woman I saw. I should've just said it was and forgotten about it. So that's just what I'm going to do."

  She took a few unsteady steps back toward the kitchen. "But not in that order. You first. Go to hell."

  She made it into the kitchen, reached for her purse. But he was quicker. "Hey." She made a grab for it. "That's mine."

  "You can have it back. Except for these." He took out her keys from the inside zipper, exactly where she d said she kept them. Mad, sick or otherwise, he noted, she kept her tidy ways.

  He pulled the car key off the ring, dropped the ring with the apartment keys on the table, then stuck the car key in his pocket. "Go wherever the hell you want, but you're not driving. You're going to have to walk."

  "Fine. I'll walk to Sheriff Does-His-Job Mardson, tell him what he wants to hear, then wash my hands of it. And you, and this place."

  She was halfway to the door when her stomach twisted like a wet rag between two opposing fists. Clutching it, she dashed to the bathroom.

  He went in behind her. He wasn't surprised she was dog-sick. In fact he thought it was for the best, the body's way of defending itself against the overindulgent idiocy of its owner.

  So he held her head, then shoved a wet cloth into her hand when it was over.

  "Ready to sleep it off now?"

  She stayed where she was, the cloth pressed to her face. "Could you just leave me alone?"

  "Nothing I'd like better. I'll get to that in a minute." For now, he pulled her up. She managed a weak groan when he lifted her. "If you're going to puke again, tell me."

  She shook her head, closed her eyes so that her dark, damp lashes lay against her sheet-white skin. He carried her upstairs to put her on the bed. He tossed a blanket over her and, as a precaution, moved the bedroom wastebasket to the side of the bed.

  "Go to sleep"" was all he said before he walked out.

  Alone, she curled on her side and, shivering, pulled the blanket up to her chin. She'd just wait until she was warm and steady, she promised herself, then she'd go.

  But the bottom dropped out, and she fell through it into sleep.

  She dreamed of riding a Ferris wheel. Color and movement, and that quick, gut-dropping circle. At first, her screams were of laughter and delight.

  Whee!

  But it spun faster, faster, with the music blaring louder, louder. Delight became unease.

  Slow down. Please? Can you slow it down?

  Faster still, faster until the screams she heard were sharp with terror. As the wheel rocked madly side to side, panic gripped her throat.

  It's not sale. I want to get off. Stop the wheel! Stop it and let me off!

  But the speed only picked up to a blur, and the music crashed around her. Then the wheel flew off, plunging her out of the lights and into the dark.

  HER EYES flashed open. Her fingers dug into the sheets and her own breathless screams echoed in her bead.

  She wasn't flying through the air, she assured herself. She wasn't spinning toward certain death, just a dream, just a panic dream. Regulating her breathing, she lay very still and tried to