Bonnie held up the Baggie and tried to smile. “Turkey, sweetheart. It’s all we had. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
Bonnie put the Baggie on the table, next to the Triscuits and squirt cheese, and figured it had been a rough evening at the Tasker house. Ever since Kurt died, Charlotte had gone overboard with the health food thing, grabbing onto something she could control in a world that had proven itself unpredictable. Bonnie didn’t blame her. But she also knew that ham and squirt cheese were Charlotte’s drugs of choice and if she had a craving for both, she’d hit rock bottom. This was going to be a long night.
“Want to join me at the grown-up table?”
Charlotte laughed a little, which relieved Bonnie—because she looked like a zombie.
“How long have I known you, Bon?”
“Hmm.” Bonnie draped an arm over the kitchen chair. “Twelve years, I guess.”
“And we’ve never really talked about sex, have we?” Charlotte reached behind her and pulled out the ponytail holder, letting her straight reddish-gold hair fall to her shoulders. She glared at Bonnie in challenge.
“Uh, no. Not much.”
“Do you know why?”
Bonnie let her eyes dart around the room. She was waiting for the punch line. “Noooo. Why?”
“Because I’ve got a whopper of a secret.”
Bonnie jumped to her feet. “How about I make us some tea?”
“I’ll have scotch, neat.”
She stopped in midstride. “You don’t drink.”
“I do tonight, sister.” Charlotte pushed herself up from the floor and passed Bonnie on her way to the dining room sideboard. She came back with a bottle of Glenlivet and two shot glasses. “And so do you, if you know what’s good for you. Come on.”
Bonnie followed her into the rarely used living room, thinking, Charlotte’s going to tell me she’s a lesbian and she wants to do it in the formal living room.
“Don’t worry. I’m not a lesbian.” Charlotte plopped down on the sofa cushions, then poured. “I hope this booze is still good. Somebody brought it to the house after the funeral. Here.”
Bonnie wasn’t sure what toast would be appropriate for the occasion, so she said, “Bottoms up?” then slammed it back.
Charlotte did the same and began thumping her chest, gasping. “That stuff’s poison,” she choked out. “I’m going to have to pace myself.”
Bonnie studied Charlotte as she sank back into the sofa and closed her eyes. She loved this young woman like a daughter. She loved Charlotte’s children, and she’d loved Kurt. And over the years the two women had shared everything—childhood traumas, political beliefs, parenting philosophies, thoughts on organized religion, God, death, and the afterlife.
But Charlotte was right. They’d never really talked about sex.
Bonnie learned early on that it was not a topic Charlotte felt comfortable discussing, and she’d assumed it had to do with the difference in their ages. For Charlotte it would have been like talking about sex with her mother. Besides, how many stories had Charlotte told about growing up the daughter of strict Baptists? Bonnie just figured the subject was taboo.
But here was Charlotte tonight, drinking scotch in her scout leader uniform, asking for ham, and apparently getting ready to let it all hang out, as she and Ned used to say.
“Is this about Kurt, honey?” Bonnie asked as gently as possible. “Did you find out he had an affair?”
Charlotte let her head rock back and forth against the couch, not bothering to open her eyes. “No. Extremely unlikely.”
“Did you have one?”
Charlotte let loose with a bitter laugh and sat up straight, now fully alert.
“Not technically.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
Charlotte poured them each another shot and got herself comfortable. She sipped. “What I’m going to tell you has to stay between just the two of us. I’ve never told anyone—” She impatiently swiped away a tear. “But if I don’t talk to somebody, I’m just going to explode!”
Bonnie grabbed Charlotte’s hand. “I won’t breathe a word to another soul and I’ll help any way I can.” She cupped Charlotte’s frightened face. “Honey, whatever it is, it’s going to be all right.”
Charlotte nodded.
“And you know you can tell me anything.”
Charlotte struggled with a deep breath and set her shoulders straight. “It’s the man next door, Bon. The Chippendales guy—Joseph Mills.”
Bonnie reared back, staring at her friend, her mouth ajar. “You mean you did the nasty with the new neighbor already—in your scout leader uniform?”
“What? God, no!” Charlotte shot up from the couch and began to pace in front of the fireplace, pulling on hunks of her hair, eyelids squeezed tight.
“Then…?”
“I know him!” Charlotte’s eyes popped open, and they were terror-stricken. “I know this Joseph Mills person!” “Oh. Well, that’s nice—”
“Nice?” Charlotte’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut. “I had head-banging, mind-blowing, totally anonymous sex with that man thirteen years ago! And I’m talking minutes before Kurt proposed to me! Do you hear what I’m saying, Bonnie? He popped my cherry while Kurt was waiting to pop the question!”
“Oh. Oh, dear,” Bonnie managed.
“And Kurt thought I was a virgin when we got married. It was really important to him. But I lied, Bonnie! I had sex with this guy in the weeds! Three times! And he was… oh, my God… nothing has ever been right since!”
Charlotte swayed, her arms hanging at her sides, the scotch spilling onto the carpet. She looked like she might faint. She began to sob.
Bonnie jumped up and grabbed her by the upper arms. “Charlotte. Look at me. Tell me right now—did he hurt you? My God, honey—did he attack you? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Charlotte shook her head and the tears slipped down her cheeks. She looked away briefly, then steeled herself. “Actually, Bon,” she whispered, a look of pleading in her eyes, “I think I may have attacked him.”
Chapter Four
Her name was Charlotte.
Charlotte Mary Nelson Tasker was a thirty-five-year-old registered nurse who ran an errand service. She had two kids. She was a widow.
Joe blinked, skimming the computer file one last time, rereading the obituary for the man who’d been her husband. Kurt Lewis Tasker was a local boy, an All-State lineman who became a popular sports columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, apparently known for his straight talk and good humor. He left work early one Thursday with what he thought was a touch of the flu. He dropped dead a few hours later from a congenital heart defect no one knew he had.
The obit photo showed a robust, friendly-looking guy with wide shoulders and questionable taste in ties. The color picture showed him at work on the sidelines at a Bengals game, curly brown hair, a lopsided grin, and pale, laughing eyes. He looked like a good guy. Joe read again how he was mourned by fellow journalists, coaches, players, and readers.
Joe felt a sad smile creep across his face, recalling the little girl he’d seen at the patio table—Henrietta was her name—realizing that she looked just like this man except for the flaming red hair. The other Tasker kid was named Matthew according to the file, and if memory served him correctly, which it always did, the boy looked more like his mom.
Joe rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. He must have read this stuff ten times since Roger sent it to him—everything he’d ever wanted to know about what had happened to his mystery woman, all in one convenient little 400 kilobyte file.
Her name was Charlotte—Charlotte!—and she would have been just twenty-two that day. All this time he’d thought of her as a Kim or a Jenny or a Terri, but she was a Charlotte. It sounded kind of old-fashioned and stuffy in his opinion, and it made him chuckle to put that name with those memories.
It was Charlotte who pressed her sweet little hips into him when he pinned her against
the car. Charlotte who happily opened her mouth to his kiss. Charlotte who rolled with him in the weeds, tore at his clothes, and whispered, “Hurry, oh please hurry!” when he fumbled with the first condom wrapper.
It was Charlotte who gave herself to him over and over, shuddering on top of his body, tight as a clenched fist around him.
It was Charlotte who said, “I don’t have a name and neither do you, all right?”
It was Charlotte who kissed him good-bye with such hunger that she broke his tooth.
Joe shut down the computer and turned off the light. He wandered into the smaller bedroom and dropped his clothes to the floor, then slipped under the cool, clean sheets in the nude.
He lay there a long time—minutes, hours, he didn’t have a clue—staring at the indistinct patterns in the ceiling of this strange room, sensing her next door, swearing to God that he smelled honeysuckle through the barely open window, and knowing that if he didn’t get out of this house and this town, he’d lose his mind.
Charlotte.
He’d found her.
Joe clenched and loosened his fists as they lay at his sides, wondering for maybe the thousandth time in his life whether he’d taken her virginity that day. It had always bugged him. Not because she’d been hesitant or unsure of herself or afraid, but because she’d been so incredibly snug. And at one point, after making her come with his hand, he’d seen bright red blood streaked down the length of his fingers.
But here’s what had forever baffled him—what would a virgin be doing acting like a wild thang? Why would a spectacularly beautiful woman who’d held out to the age of twenty-two suddenly decide to give it up to a stranger on the side of the road? It made no sense, and he’d never been able to figure it out.
Joe rubbed his entire face and sighed. If, in fact, he’d been her first, it was something he needed to know. Because that would mean she’d given him the most precious gift imaginable. And his mama had taught him to always say thank you.
Besides, if he was Charlotte’s first, that would mean she would always remember him—right? It would make him special to her, if solely for that one reason… right? So if he walked over to that cute yellow house and knocked on the door with the wreath on it, she’d answer, smile at him, and know exactly who he was.
Wouldn’t she?
The only person he’d ever told about Charlotte had been Steve Simmons, his partner and the best friend he’d ever had. Joe grinned in the dark, remembering how Steve had helped him in his attempts to find her, the mystery girl in the 1992 Mariner Blue Mazda Miata with Maryland tags.
One hundred and two. That’s how many people they called, wrote, or visited looking for her. Nobody fit her description and no one said they had loaned their car to a young redhead that day.
Joe chuckled softly to himself, recalling the night an exasperated Steve observed, “Damn, Bellacera. I have never seen you do the chasing before.”
And wasn’t that the truth?
But, with Steve’s help, chase he did, with nothing to show for it. She was out there somewhere, though. He knew she’d been driving one of the 102 cars. He hadn’t imagined her. She’d been real. She’d been hot and sweet and funny, and right before Christmas he’d been sitting in the dentist’s chair about to let Dr. Lavin of the Quantico Dental Clinic put a cap on that tooth.
But he just couldn’t go through with it.
Joe had gotten used to the little chip at the juncture of his two incisors. He’d become attached to the only proof that she’d ever been his. And if he fixed it, it would feel final, like he’d given up on ever finding her.
Joe laughed again to himself in the dark, then heard the sound of his laughter die away. He flipped over onto his stomach and turned a cheek into the pillow.
Life had swept him away that winter. He and Steve got their first assignments with the Administration. They went to El Paso together, four years of gritty border cases. Then there was Houston and Mexico City and it became clear that he’d picked the kind of work that would forever leave him drained and needing his space. The women he’d managed to hook up with all had the same complaint—his job left no room for a relationship. And they were damn right. No wonder DEA agents had a divorce rate of about 75 percent.
Somehow, Steve had managed it better. Maybe he was just a more laid-back guy, or maybe Reba was such a wonderful woman that it made it worth the effort. But Steve found a way to balance a wife and kid with his job, a way to mix his work with a real life.
For a while, anyway. Until his work got them all killed.
Joe flipped over again, sending the sheet flying off his body. He felt hot. Enraged. He felt that familiar black hole in his gut, and knew he’d never find a way to fill it.
It had been the assignment of a lifetime. Their job was to infiltrate Guzman’s Albuquerque cell and get enough evidence to take down the entire organization. The cartel was suspected of smuggling huge quantities of cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamines into the country and distributing it all over the western United States. He and Steve soon learned the group had expanded its reach by subcontracting to deliver Colombian heroin as well.
It took them ten months to worm their way into the good graces of Guzman’s men, making several small buys of cocaine and heroin. Their money was clean. Their word was good. They earned the dealers’ trust. And the team did a meticulous job of documenting every encounter, every meeting, every word exchanged. The result was that even if they never caught Guzman himself in the act, the U.S. attorneys had enough evidence to nail the elusive drug lord.
Joe had never met Guzman during his two-year assignment in Mexico City but knew all about him. He was in his early fifties, a man who’d been born in the fetid slums of Ciudad Juárez on the U.S. border and had worked his way up in the ranks of organized crime.
He earned a reputation for killing anyone who looked at him funny. He had a large and loyal following of men who knew that if they made one misstep, their families would die. It’s how any tyrant won respect—with fear. Absolute fear.
Joe laced his fingers together behind his head and let the memory of Steve’s murder flood his brain.
They’d been hanging with Guzman’s men that evening, putting the finishing touches on the deal that was supposed to go down the next morning. Guzman was already in town to supervise the transaction—fifty kilos of cocaine for $5 million. In hours, they’d catch him orchestrating the sale, on videotape.
Joe and Steve left in separate cars about 2:00 a.m. and met up at the Denny’s on Alameda Boulevard, like they sometimes did. They had no idea that just moments before some two-bit informant they’d dealt with in another case had blown their cover. They had no idea they’d been followed, that Guzman’s men sat outside like the patient predators they were. Steve reached the door first. It was sheer dumb luck that Joe was two steps behind, still paying the bill.
The henchmen got to Reba and Daniel before agents could. They’d been executed in their sleep. It was Guzman’s way of making his point quite clear: Special Agent Joe Bellacera—and anyone close to him—would never be safe.
Guzman was snagged by agents later that night at an airstrip forty miles out on the mesa. It wasn’t the Hollywood ending, but agents impounded the cocaine intended for distribution, arrested twenty-seven Mexican nationals, and took the big man into custody.
It was no comfort to Joe that Guzman now sat in maximum security at the federal prison in Beaumont, Texas. Because he still had his followers. And he’d promised a million dollars to whoever brought him Joe’s head.
A million dollars was highly motivating.
That’s why Joe had to hide. Why he had to live in Ohio. And if all that weren’t enough, he was faced with the ultimate irony: He’d finally found his mystery woman and couldn’t go to her.
Joe took a deep breath and smelled the honeysuckle again. The mind could play tricks on a man, he was well aware, but another sniff assured him this was no illusion. He made a mental note to find wherever that tangle o
f weed existed on this property and hack it to pieces.
Burn it if he had to.
Because he saw Reba and little Daniel Simmons in his mind and knew he could never go to Charlotte Tasker, tell her he’d searched for her, that he’d never forgotten her, that he’d missed her every damn day for thirteen years. He couldn’t risk getting close to anyone.
Not ever again.
Not fifteen minutes had passed since Bonnie went home, and the poems were coming fast and furious. Maybe because of the Glenlivet but more likely because he was here. He was real.
Charlotte could feel a crackle in the air around her. She felt like a live wire, her skin raw, her mouth dry. And all she could think of was his face, now thirteen years older and framed in a villain’s goatee and longer hair. But it was the same face. It was his face. There was no doubt.
At first, when she’d hauled herself off the floor and retrieved the binoculars, she told herself no—it couldn’t be him. It was just a man who looked like him. A man who happened to move like he’d moved and smile like he’d smiled. Besides, the man she’d known so briefly was clean-shaven and wore a crew cut. The Chippendales guy’s face was harsher. Much more intense, even when he smiled. So, no. It wasn’t him.
But there was no mistaking those piercing black eyes, that sensuous, wide mouth, those big but graceful hands. The man’s entire body seemed to glide through space, like a sleek jaguar, just like her fantasy man.
She couldn’t stop writing.
Glide
Tongue on tongue
Slide on me
Teeth to flesh
Consume me
Move inside
Fill the void
Feel the glide
Deliver me
Charlotte closed her eyes tight and allowed herself the luxury of the ultimate fantasy. Here’s what would happen: She’d walk over and knock on his door. He would smile and wrap her up in his arms and he’d say, why, of course he remembered her! And yes, he happened to be single yet adored children, and he was sane, employed, and free of all communicable diseases! And of course he’d love to pick up where they left off thirteen years ago and fuck her brains out on a regular basis!