Scarlet Nights

  “I’m sure you know better than I do,” she said in a way that let him know he was wrong. She put her hands back on the keyboard.

  Mike turned away. The truth was, he agreed with her. Even though he couldn’t see how the two events were related, he planned to work on it. But he wasn’t going to worry Sara with that now. He went on with his story, and she didn’t interrupt again until he got to his conversation with Ariel.

  “Ariel knew Greg was fornicating with other women but she didn’t tell me?”

  “I thought you were going to disassociate yourself from this.”

  “I’m not angry at Greg. He’s the snake that doesn’t change character no matter how nice you are to him, but Ariel … What in the world can she imagine that I’ve done to her that she’d let me marry a man she knew was that bad?”

  “If she’d told you about him, would you have believed her?”

  “Not a word of it.”

  Mike looked at her in astonishment. “Maybe she knew that and that’s why she didn’t tell you. Would you have told her if she was marrying a philanderer?”

  “Oh, yes!” Sara said with a smile. “I would have run so fast my feet wouldn’t have touched the ground.”

  Mike shook his head at her.

  “And Colin!” Sara said. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me about Greg. Colin and I have always been friends! When we get home I’m going to have a talk with the Fraziers.”

  “That should scare them,” Mike said, deadpan. “You ready to get this done? The faster we send this off, the sooner we’ll be free. You want to return to Edilean and say you didn’t even see the ocean?”

  Sara put her hands back on the keyboard. “Lead on, oh fearless leader, and tell me who else has betrayed me.”

  Smiling, Mike continued. He told what he’d learned, but he also outlined the plan for the next week. For the first time, Sara heard what the police and Federal agents were hoping would happen.

  After they finished the document at noon, Mike started to draw a map of the fairgrounds, but Sara took over.

  “The booths and rides and the game field are in the same place every year, so I know what goes where.”

  “Except for Joce’s fortune-telling tent.”

  “Luke’s putting it right next to where he sells his weeds, which is beside my kissing booth.”

  “Your what?!” Mike said.

  Sara smiled smugly. “Just seeing if you were listening.”

  By one, the maps and reports were done. They printed them out on the new printer—which Sara had set up while Mike dealt with the TV delivery—and put it all in a big envelope.

  Mike turned to look at Sara. In the next second they had their clothes off and were making love on the big white couch.

  Later, Sara lay in his arms and said, “It’s odd but I won’t even be thinking about sex, then I’ll look at you and it’s all I can think of.”

  He kissed her forehead. “My virgin princess. Want to go for a swim?”

  “Love to. I brought a blue bikini.”

  “I bet Henry the counterfeiter will enjoy that! You just might see yourself on a thousand-dollar bill.”

  “When do I get to meet the neighbors?”

  Mike was heading to the bathroom and he didn’t look at her. “We have to leave tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Which is no answer to my question,” Sara said under her breath as she reached for her clothes. Mike hadn’t given even the slightest hint that she’d ever return to Fort Lauderdale, that she’d ever again see this beautiful apartment.

  He looked around the bathroom door. “Showering alone wastes water.”

  “I’m all for green.” Sara ran to the bathroom to join him.

  “It’s been a wonderful day,” Sara said as she snuggled against Mike in bed. It was nearly ten P.M. and they had to get up early, but she wasn’t sleepy.

  “It’s been great,” he said.

  She could tell he was in a mellow mood. “I’ve enjoyed my honeymoon.”

  “Me too. I’m not sure but I think the captain had me return here to keep me from marrying you.”

  She turned to look at him. “That’s good. He was looking out for you, but when he saw that I wasn’t your usual, uh … victim, he let us have time off. He’s a nice man.”

  “You bring out the niceness in people.”

  “What a sweet thing to say.”

  They lay quietly together as Mike slowly ran his fingers up and down her back. She took a deep breath to give herself courage. What she wanted to ask him could cause offense. “What were your parents like?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Kind, loving, fun.”

  She snuggled closer against him, her head on his shoulder. “Do you remember them?”

  “Very well. But Tess doesn’t, so whenever we’re together I tell her stories about them.”

  “I’d like to hear anything you want to tell me about them.”

  Mike took a moment before answering. “My mother was very pretty.”

  “Like Tess.”

  “Yes, but different. Tess is dark like our father, while Mom was blonde, with deep blue eyes. Like you.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “What kind of things did she like to do?”

  “She used to say she was the most unmodern woman in the world because she had no ambition at all. She finished two years of college, then met Dad, and …” He shrugged.

  “Marriage and children. Sounds good to me.”

  “You two would have liked each other. You’re a lot alike. She used to make us lunches with happy faces on the bread. When I got home from school, she always had something homemade for me to eat.”

  “What did your dad do?”

  “He made himself spend forty hours a week managing a big printing company, but in his real life he cared about two things: his family and sports.”

  “You must have loved that,” Sara said.

  “With all my might. My first memory is of being in a seat on the back of my dad’s bike—and we were going up a mountain.”

  “That sounds dangerous. You wouldn’t—” She stopped herself. “Did your mom like sports?”

  Mike chuckled. “Hated them. She wanted to stay home and watch old movies.”

  “Oh, yes! We would have definitely been friends. I wish I could have known her.” When Mike was quiet, she knew he was thinking about what happened later, with his parents dying so young, and he and Tess being put into their angry grandmother’s custody.

  “I never understood it,” he said softly as he stopped caressing her back. “My mother adored her mother, and Grans practically worshiped Mom. Grans was so good to her. They talked on the phone nearly every day.”

  “How did she treat you and Tess while your parents were alive?”

  “No one existed for Grans except my mother. Grans didn’t pay any attention to Tess or me or her husband. It was all about her daughter.”

  “The accident …”

  “Nearly made her insane,” Mike said. “That horrible day when everything changed, Mom had asked Grans to babysit, something she rarely did, while she and Dad went Christmas shopping for us kids.”

  “Oh, dear,” Sara said.

  “Yeah, exactly. The streets were icy, and their car slid, hit an embankment, and crashed into a concrete wall. They were killed instantly. Grans nearly lost her mind, and she blamed Tess and me for the accident. She said that if we hadn’t been born, her daughter would still be alive.”

  While Mike was telling this—and Sara felt sure he’d never told anyone before—he kept rubbing his throat. Gently, she brushed his hand away and kissed his neck. “Tell me what happened.”

  Mike took a breath. “A couple of weeks after the funeral I asked Grans for three dollars for some school thing. She was sweeping the kitchen floor. She didn’t say anything, but I’ll always remember the look of hatred she gave me. She glanced down at the broom, then in the next second she hit me across the throat with the handle.”

  Sara drew in her breat
h, horrified that someone could do that to a child, but she said nothing, just let him talk.

  Mike told her that when his grandmother hit him in the throat, his grandfather had been away, so Mike wasn’t taken to a doctor. By the time his grandfather returned a week later, Mike’s voice was irreversibly damaged. It never fully recovered.

  After that, Pru began to take all her anger and hostility out on Mike. And he soon learned to make sure that she did. Whenever she so much as looked at Tess, just five years old, as though she might take her wrath out on the little girl, Mike drew her attention onto himself.

  In school, Mike did little but cause trouble. The coach tried to get him to try out for sports, but Mike was too angry to be a team player. Instead, he fought and made enemies of everyone.

  After he finally graduated and went to the East Coast, he sauntered into a boxing gym, and that’s where he met Frank Thiessen, who was twenty-three and thinking of joining the police force. They trained together and became such good friends that Frank waited until Mike turned nineteen so they could enlist together. On the force, they were a good team, both of them athletic, both from bad childhoods, but they had at last found a way to channel the anger in them. On their time off, they trained hard and entered matches that they nearly always won.

  When they took on undercover assignments, they had to separate, and Frank moved to California.

  “I’d like to meet him,” Sara said as she tried her best not to let Mike know of her horror at what he’d just told her. She was ashamed that she’d ever complained about her own family.

  “Hey!” Mike said. “I’ll take anything but pity.”

  “Good thing, because you won’t get any from me. Besides, you’ve always had Tess, who adores you. Why didn’t you ever come to Edilean to visit?”

  “Uh oh. This is turning into a question session. I’ve found out that there’s only one way to stop that.” Rolling over, he began to kiss her neck.

  Sara wasn’t sure what had happened, but it felt as though they’d taken a big step forward. She thought she should be despondent, if not depressed, at what he’d told her, but instead she felt almost good because he’d confided in her. No wonder Tess was so secretive about her life.

  “Are you going to keep thinking or help me out with this?”

  She didn’t laugh. “Mike … I’m sorry about what was done to you.”

  “Thank you,” he said quietly, and she could tell he meant it.

  They didn’t make love. Instead, Mike pulled her to him and held her tightly—and it was the closest she’d ever felt to him.

  “We’d better go to sleep,” he said. “Gym is in the morning.”

  Sara tried to groan but couldn’t do it. The truth was that he was right and she’d rather enjoyed her workout. She’d especially liked spending time in a place where Mike was so well known. In Edilean, she knew everyone, but here it was her husband who knew people.

  Smiling at the word husband she drifted off to sleep.

  The next morning, Mike had to wake Sara, but he didn’t have to ask her to get dressed. “Want to try to make some muscles today?”

  “So I can get arms like yours?”

  He flexed a bicep. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  “You are too vain!”

  “Have to be about something. With this face, no hair, and this voice I need to work on the rest of me.”

  Sara didn’t laugh at what she was sure he’d meant as a joke. “I think your face is beautiful.”

  “That’s not what you said the first time you saw me, but … thanks. Are you ready?”

  “Is Megan waiting for us?”

  “No. Today you’re all mine!” When he leered at her and Sara gave a fake squeal of fear, Mike grimaced. “If we don’t leave now you’ll drag me back into that bed and I’m already worn out from what you’ve done to me these last two days.”

  “Poor you!” Sara said as she scurried to the door. “How about if I drive?”

  “Do two people fit inside that toy car you brought?”

  “No, I meant that I’d drive your car.”

  “What a sense of humor you have.” He opened the passenger door for her.

  They argued all the way to the gym, but Sara didn’t make a dent in his refusal to let her drive his car.

  At the gym, he spent thirty minutes with her, showing her the perfect form for doing a few rudimentary lifts. She thought it was a bore, but she loved his hands on her elbows and shoulders.

  Afterward, she went swimming, and as she put her arms on the side of the pool, her legs lazily kicking, she watched him do his intense forty-six minute workout. He was a mass of sweat that made his pumped-up muscles gleam. By the time he was ready to leave, she could have torn his clothes off on the gym floor.

  He looked at her, made no comment, but when they were in the car, he said, “Think you can wait until we get home?”

  “Can you?”

  Instantly, he pulled the car into the parking lot of a store that was still closed, opened his door, and got out.

  “What in the world …?” Sara watched him open the rear door. He got in the backseat and began to unbutton his shirt.

  Sara leaped between the front seats, her arms going around his neck and her mouth on his. She was glad his car windows were so dark that no one could see inside. He never did finish removing his shirt.

  They spent the morning driving around Fort Lauderdale, where Mike showed her the sights, especially all the magnificent yachts and waterways, which gave the city the nickname “the Venice of America.” Sara could hardly listen because she knew that this afternoon they’d start the journey back to Edilean—and she dreaded it. She’d be in Joce’s car and Mike in his, so they wouldn’t even be together.

  Worse, when they got back, all the horror would begin. Greg would be released from wherever they were holding him and at last he’d find out that his fiancée had married Tess’s brother. Sara would love to tell him that she knew about his mother, his wife, and how he wanted her, Sara, because … No one had yet been able to figure that out.

  But she’d been told she couldn’t tell him that until Greg’s mother was found. The hope was that Greg would be so angry about Sara’s marriage that he’d make mistakes. Since his mother was the brains in the family, they all hoped Stefan/Greg’s rage at Sara would make him run to Mitzi—and he would be followed.

  All this was why Mike planned to compete in the games and draw attention to himself. “You want to become a target, don’t you?” Sara’d said when he told her. “You will be standing in the way of whatever Greg wants.”

  “It’s either you or me, baby, and I think I’m more used to being a target than you are.”

  Sara didn’t say anything to that because she’d seen the scars on his body. She’d seen enough TV and movies to know bullet wounds when she saw them.

  As the last day wore on, she got more nervous. She was worried about Mike. As her husband, he might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on his forehead.

  “I forgot to tell you that an agent will be driving Joce’s Mini back to Edilean,” Mike said.

  “Then I’ll be riding with you?”

  “Of course. Did you think you were going to have to drive back alone?”

  “No,” she said. “I thought I was going to drive your fancy car and you could ride in the trunk.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. I think we should leave about one. That way we’ll get there around midnight. We’ll get a few hours sleep and be ready for the fair tomorrow.”

  “It doesn’t start until noon.”

  Mike smiled at her. “You aren’t getting cold feet, are you?”

  When she looked at him, there was fear in her eyes. “Mike, this is serious. If you’re out there in public in those games someone could hide somewhere and shoot you.”

  “Hazards of—” Her look cut him off. He sat down on the couch by her and pulled her into his arms. “I’ve done this kind of thing a hundred times and I h
aven’t lost yet.”

  “It only takes once, and I think it’s time you stopped!” she said fiercely. “You’re thirty-six years old, you’re about to retire, you own property now, and I think you should stop risking your life every day.”

  “Keeping my wife’s desires satisfied is more likely to kill me.”

  She glared at him.

  “All right,” he said. “I promise that once this case is done I’ll think about taking a desk job. Does that make you feel better?”

  “I want you to stay away from the fair. You need to stay in a locked room with three armed guards who are so big they make the Fraziers look small. You should—”

  Mike kissed her. “How about we walk down to the beach? Maybe we’ll see some big turtle laying eggs.”

  When she just looked at him, he kissed her again. “I’ll be as careful as I can be. I promise. Come on. We need to go outside. Want me to carry you down to the beach?”

  “No, I don’t—” When Mike picked her up and slung her across his shoulder, she couldn’t help laughing, and for a while she forgot about her fears.

  At one-thirty they were in Mike’s car, heading north on I-95, and going faster than the speed limit.

  “Are you going to sulk all the way back?” he asked.

  “I’m not sulking, I’m worried.”

  “That’s my job. You’re the victim, remember? You people innocently get yourselves in trouble and we rescue you.”

  “If you’re still alive, that is.”

  “You sound like Tess.”

  “Smart woman!”

  “How about some music?” he asked. “Will that cheer you up?”

  “Am I supposed to think about what they’ll play at your funeral?”

  Mike reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “You need to distract yourself. Tell me about what you did in high school. Did you get good grades? What did you study in college? William and Mary, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sure you know every course I took and all my grades. Why don’t you tell me what made your grandmother leave Edilean and why she hated the McDowells so much?” She said it as a joke and never for a moment thought he’d tell her. It was the Big Secret among the Oldies in Edilean.

  “She claimed she was raped by Alexander McDowell.”