Low Pressure

Chapter 14

“It’s a dump.”

Dent went into his apartment ahead of Bellamy, switched on the overhead light, then moved immediately to the bed and pulled the bedspread up over the rumpled sheets and pillows.

Two pillows, she noted. Each bearing the imprint of a head.

“I’m going to shower off the blood so we can see what’s what. Make yourself at home.” He grabbed a pair of shorts from a chest of drawers, then went into the bathroom and closed the door.

On the way here, they had stopped at a convenience store. Its stock of first-aid items had been limited, but she’d bought one of everything, not knowing what she would need to tend his wounds.

Now she placed the sack of purchases on the dining table in the kitchen alcove and sat down in one of the two chairs, then took a look around. He hadn’t exaggerated. The apartment was a dump. Being one large room, the areas of it were distinguished only by the flooring. The sleeping area had a different color carpet from the living area. The patch of kitchen was covered in vinyl tiles. Only the bathroom was separated by a door.

Except for the unmade bed, it was basically neat. But the meager furnishings looked like cheap rental pieces with chipped veneers and stringy upholstery. The faucet in the kitchen sink dripped with loud and regular ploinks, and the fabric panels that passed for draperies hung limply on crooked rods. There were no pictures on the walls. No books, or even shelves in which to place books or keepsakes.

It was a sad place, indicative of a solitary life.

Even sadder was that the only difference between this place and her condo in New York was the quality of the furnishings. Hers had been purchased through a decorator and had been costly. They were tasteful and pleasing to the eye.

But they held no memories or sentiment for her. Anyone could have owned them. They didn’t represent a home. They were as lacking in personality as the chair in which she sat here in Dent’s dismal kitchen.

The comparison made her feel even more despondent than she already was.

He came out of the bathroom wearing only the boxers he’d taken in with him. He was drying his wet hair with one towel and pressing another to the small of his back. There were two places on his face where the skin was split. Those cuts had been left to bleed. He’d wrapped a washcloth around his injured hand.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked.

“Two years, give or take. Since I had to sell my house. When I left the airline, I could no longer sustain the lifestyle to which I had become accustomed. Housing market was crap. I took a beating on the sale, but I had no choice.”

“Savings?”

“Everything went into the down payment on my plane.”

With the towel he’d used on his hair, he dabbed at the bleeding gash on his cheekbone just below his right eye. “I hope you don’t faint at the sight of blood. The son of a bitch made me a goddamn sieve.”

“We should have called the police.”

“We’d have made the front page of tomorrow’s Statesman. The witnesses saw me push you to the ground. I’d have probably been arrested, held while questioned, and by the time it was sorted out, we’d be news just because of who we are.”

He was right, of course, which is why she’d let him talk her out of seeking emergency treatment for him. Her father lay dying; Olivia was hanging on to her fortitude by a thread. They didn’t need to open the newspaper tomorrow and read about their daughter’s involvement in an assault-and-battery in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour pancake house.

“Would you know him if you saw him again?” she asked.

“Heavy bastard. Solid. Left arm is covered in a tattoo. A snake with fangs dripping venom. You said the guy in the pickup had a heavily tattooed left arm that was propped in the open window. Putting one and one together…” He left her to do the math.

During the drive here, he had related to her the details of the attack. “Except I’m skipping the dirty parts.”

“Dirty parts?”

“Nasty things he said about you.”

Most alarming, he’d told her what his attacker had threatened to do. Now she said, “He wants to kill us.”

“That’s what the man said.”

“But why? Who could he be?”

“I’m thinking. I’m also still leaking.”

“Oh, sorry.” She motioned him over to the table, where she remained seated. “Turn around.”

He presented her with his back. The shorts were riding low on his hips, revealing an oozing red line like a wide smile across the small of his back.

“Dent, you should go to an emergency room.”

He peered over his shoulder, trying to assess the damage himself. “I doubt they’d believe I cut myself shaving.”

“You could claim it was an accident.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she said throwing up her hands, her voice breaking with frustration.

He turned around to face her and tipped her chin up. “Hey, you reacted with nerves of steel, then drove like Mario Andretti. You’re not going to crack under pressure now, are you?”

She lifted her chin off the perch of his fingertips and, placing her hands on his hip bones, turned him around none too gently. She emptied the contents of the sack onto the table and uncapped an ominous-looking brown glass bottle. “I hope this antiseptic burns like hell.”

It must have because he hissed and cursed as she applied it. To distract him, she passed a cotton ball doused with the liquid up to him. “Dab that on your face and hand. How is it?”

He unwound the washcloth and took a look. “The cuts aren’t deep. Fingers will probably be stiff in the morning, but he could have cut them off.”

She shivered. “That’s the least of it. But why give you warning? In the time he took to issue those threats, he could have killed you.”

“Disappointed?”

“I’m serious,” she said, speaking up to him when he looked down at her from over his shoulder.

“Maybe he was afraid that somebody was watching from inside the restaurant. Or he’s more bluff than bite. Or he’s a psycho who’s lost his powers of reason. It’s anybody’s guess until we know who he is and why he has it in for us.” He checked her progress. “About finished?”

“It’s not bleeding as much.”

“Because you damn near cauterized it with that stuff.”

She unrolled a length of gauze and gently tapped it into place over the wound. “Turn,” she said. He made three revolutions while she wound the gauze around his middle, then placed vertical strips of adhesive tape at intervals to secure it.

“You’re getting hair caught in that tape.”

“I’m trying not to, but I can’t see what I’m doing if you don’t move your hands.” He did, and she pressed a final strip inches away from the silky stripe of hair that bisected his abdomen and disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. With affected detachment, she said briskly, “There. Done.”

But when she tipped her head back and looked into his face, the intensity with which he was looking down at her stopped her breath. In a voice that was low and husky and suggestive, he said, “As long as you’re in that neighborhood, anything else you want to do…”

Moving slowly, he reached out and traced the shape of her lower lip with the pad of his thumb, then brushed aside her hair and gently rubbed her earlobe between his fingers. Desire blossomed in her lower body and brought a whimper to her throat that she was powerless to contain.

While working on his back, she’d tried to remain indifferent to the shape of his buttocks beneath the thin cloth of his shorts, but now the temptation to put her arms around him and test the firmness of those taut muscles against her palms was almost too powerful to withstand.

She wanted to say To hell with everything and lean forward, nuzzle that enticing ribbon of hair, then follow it with her lips down to his sex that was so seductively close it made her weak with yearning. To take Dent into her mouth, to taste him…

Another sound issued from her, but when she moved, it wasn’t to put her hands on him, or to kiss the skin that smelled of soap and man, of Dent. Instead she pushed his caressing hand aside, stood up, and edged round him.

“Don’t be cute, Dent. This is hardly the time—”

Whatever else she was going to say—and later she couldn’t remember—was left unspoken. He reached for her as she made to go past him, pulled her to him, and closed his hand around her jaw to tilt her face up. “You grew up to be a hell of a woman, Bellamy. The way you worked that gear shift was a major turn-on.”

If last night’s kiss had been a flirtatious invitation to misbehave, this one was a lesson in mastery. It was possessive, carnal, and dominating to a degree that alarmed her. Not that she feared him. She feared her susceptibility to him, feared the forbidden wish that he would do to her at least some of what his kisses portended.

But she resisted being completely drawn in, and, sensing that, he raised his head and released his hold on her face, but only in order to slide his hand down over her breast. He plumped it and tugged gently on her nipple with his fingertips as he nudged the vee of her thighs with his erection.

“Let yourself think about something else for a little while,” he coaxed, whisking his lips across hers. “Relax and have some fun for a change.”

Then he captured her mouth again. Relax? Impossible. Not when her body was urging her to draw him in, to partner with his tongue. She wanted to drive her fingers up into his hair and hold his head steady while she lost herself in his intoxicating kiss.

Instead, she forced herself to do nothing, to respond with neither ardor nor aversion. She willed herself to go perfectly still and react to nothing.

Quick to realize that he was the only one engaged, he angled his head back and searched her face.

“Daddy said you would try to get the last laugh on us by sleeping with me.”

He let go of her immediately. “Oh, that’s what Daddy said. That explains the deep-freeze treatment.”

The gashes on his face had reopened and were bleeding, making him appear even more dangerously angry when he stalked to the closet and reached inside to yank a pair of jeans off a hanger. He pulled them on with abrupt, jerky motions, but when he tried to button them, he helplessly raised his hands to his sides. “This could take a while.”

Bellamy flushed hotly, but not from embarrassment. She gestured toward the rumpled bed. “Did you really expect me to get into bed with you when you haven’t even changed the sheets from the last one?”

He plowed his fingers through his damp hair. “Look, I left her here the morning I flew you to Houston. I hadn’t thought about her till we came through the door and I saw the bed. I don’t even know her name.”

“You didn’t care to ask?”

“No.”

“Just like you didn’t care that Susan had others while she was dating you?”

“Why should I have cared?”

“You didn’t love her? Even a little?”

“Love her?” He laughed. “Hell, no. I was a horny teenager, and she put out.”

“And that’s all my sister mattered to you?”

He put his hands on his hips. “How much do you think I mattered to her?”

“You mattered enough to make her furious when you showed up at the barbecue late. I think she would rather you not have come at all than to—”

All the blood seemed suddenly to drain from her head. She fell back on a wave of dizziness, but the image in her mind’s eye was crystal clear: Dent, astride his motorcycle, gesturing angrily at Susan, who was splendidly, gorgeously in a rage that matched his.

The memory had popped open like a three-dimensional greeting card, gaudy and stark in detail. Bellamy’s breathing became as rapid and choppy as her heartbeat. “You were there. At the boathouse. With Susan. Before the tornado.”

He swore and took a step toward her. “Bellamy—”

“No!” She stuck both hands in front of her, palms out, then clasped them to the sides of her head as she put words to the tumbling recollections. “Susan didn’t come back from the boathouse with the beer-drinking group. I got worried, thinking she might be sick from drinking too much. It was such a hot, muggy day, and I thought…”

“Listen. Let me explain.”

“I went to look for her, didn’t I?”

He said nothing.

“You know I did. Because… because you saw me watching the two of you, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“Bellamy—”

“All this time,” she cried, “you could have told me! Why didn’t you tell me that I was remembering wrong? Why didn’t you—” The answer became obvious in a lightning bolt of clarity. “You weren’t flying with Gall. You didn’t have an alibi. You were in the state park, and you were fighting with Susan.”

For several moments, neither moved, then she lunged for the door and pulled it open.

“Fuck! Bellamy!”

She bolted through the doorway with such impetus that the only thing to break her fall from the second-story breezeway was the metal guardrail. She landed against it hard, banging her pelvic bone painfully. She gave a cry of pain, then another of fear as Dent’s hands closed around her upper arms.

Her sharp cry caused the two men on the parking lot below to look up. They’d been lounging against the hood of a car, but Rocky Van Durbin came instantly to life. He shouted, “There!” and pointed her out to his photographer, who was at the ready. The flash on his camera exploded in bursts of blinding light.

Dent wrenched Bellamy’s gripping hands off the guardrail and hauled her back into the apartment, then kicked the door shut.

He vented his frustration on the door, beating his fist against it to emphasize each eruptive, foul word. His impulse was to tear down the stairs and make Van Durbin sorry he had ever heard of Denton Carter, then go to work on the photographer and destroy his camera.

But when he’d suffered similar ambushes following Susan’s death, and again during the NTSB’s investigation into the near crash, Gall had been there like a flea in his ear, warning him against impetuous reprisals. “Reporters thrive on angry reactions. You want to beat ’em at their game? Ignore ’em.”

The gash on his cheekbone was throbbing like a son of a bitch, and when he wiped his face the back of his hand, already bleeding from the cuts on his knuckles, came away streaked with brighter, fresher blood. He figured the cut on his back had reopened as well.

When he turned into the room, Bellamy flinched, which made him all the madder. “If you’re more scared of me than you are of them, you know the way out.”

He left the path to the door clear for her as he retrieved his blood-soaked jeans from the bathroom floor and fished his cell phone from a pocket. He then strode into the kitchen and consulted the telephone number for the complex manager, which a previous tenant had penciled onto the faded wallpaper.

Viciously he punched in the number, and the call was answered almost immediately. “Yeah, that notice you put in everyone’s mailbox last week? About the guy who exposed himself to a woman in the North Unit? Uh-huh. Well there are two guys in the parking lot of South. They’re taking pictures through people’s windows with a telephoto lens. I’m almost sure it’s the same two I saw talking to some little girls on the playground this afternoon. You’d better call the police. Okay. Bye.”

He disconnected and looked over at Bellamy, who hadn’t moved or taken her wide gaze off him. “That ought to keep Van Durbin and his sidekick busy for a while.” He buttoned up his jeans and ripped off a length of gauze, which he folded and used to stanch the bleeding on his cheek. “I’m going to have a beer. Want one?”

She didn’t respond.

He took a can of beer from the refrigerator, opened it and sucked up the suds that spilled over the top, then took a deep swallow. He sprawled in the only easy chair in the apartment and calmly sipped at his beer, while Bellamy stared at him as though he was an exotic and potentially dangerous animal that should be caged.

The rings around her eyes were so dark they looked like they’d been put there by punching fists. Her face had been leached of color, but that might have been caused by the glare of his unforgiving overhead light. She looked completely done in, but his ire was such that he didn’t go easy on her.

“Well?” he said.

“What?” Her voice sounded rusty from disuse.

“You’re not going to ask?”

“Wouldn’t you just deny it?”

“Yes. But think what a great plot twist this would make for Low Pressure: The Sequel. You could shock your readers right out of their socks. The boyfriend was the killer after all. He, a sexual deviant if ever there was one, got away with murder.

“Flash forward eighteen years. He puts the moves on the baby sister, who’s all grown up now. Filled out real good. Makes his mouth water. She kisses like a bad girl till he acts on the invitation, then she shuts down like a maiden missionary. When she says ‘No!’ to him, he wigs out, takes her sweet body, and…” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Grisly stuff. A page-turner for sure.”

She gave him a withering look, then went to the window, where colored lights were flashing on the slats of the uneven blinds. “The police are here. Three squad cars.”

“Why don’t you race down there and tell them that you’ve finally nabbed your sister’s killer?”

“Because I don’t believe you are. You are, however, a jerk.”

He scoffed. “You’re a writer and that’s the worst insult you can come up with? Baby sister also has the vocabulary of a maiden missionary. If you want me to, I can help you with some bad words.”

“I won’t buy into this asinine conversation, Dent.”

He finished his beer and set the empty can on the wobbly coffee table.

After a time, she said, “Van Durbin will tell them it’s a false charge.”

“Of course he will. But he’ll have to explain what he was doing down there with a photographer, which will amount to him admitting that he’s stalking you. He’ll have to do some fancy footwork.”

“They’ll trace the call to your phone.”

“They can’t. It’s a burner. The number doesn’t show up on caller ID. Eventually they’ll realize it was a hoax and let them go, but in the meantime that bloodsucker will be in the hot seat. If there’s a god, he’ll attract a boyfriend in lockup.”

She turned away from the window. “You’re clever. You respond quickly to a crisis situation.”

“A skill that makes me a good pilot.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I guess it would also make me a good murderer, wouldn’t it?”

She sat down on the matching love seat facing his chair, perching on the edge of the cushion as though she might have to make a quick getaway. “Why did you lie to the police?”

“I don’t think it would have gone too well for me if I’d told them that I’d intercepted Susan at the boathouse and that we’d had a lovers’ quarrel. And don’t read anything into the word ‘lovers.’ I don’t mean it literally.”

“How did you know she would be at the boathouse?”

“I was driving up that lane—you know the one, that led to the pavilion?” She nodded. “Susan flagged me down. She was alone.”

“What was she doing?”

“Primping.”

“Primping?”

“She was looking at herself in the mirror of a compact, putting on lipstick, fluffing her hair. Things girls do.”

“I described to you how pretty she looked when she returned to the pavilion.”

“Oh, so now you think I’m making that up so that it fits with your recollection?”

Wearily, she said, “Go on.”

“I said something to the effect of ‘Here I am, better late than never.’ But she didn’t think so. She told me that she’d made other plans that didn’t include me. At first I tried to placate her. I apologized for choosing a ride in an airplane over her. I promised to make it up to her, promised it wouldn’t happen again. Bullshit stuff that guys say when they—”

“Don’t really mean them.”

He shrugged. “She was having none of it. I could see that what was left of my Memorial Day was rapidly turning to crap, so I got mad, told her…” He stopped, and when Bellamy raised her eyebrows, he said, “More bullshit stuff that guys say when a sure thing is no longer sure. Unlike you, I have an… earthy… vocabulary. I called her some rather descriptive and ugly names.”

She stared into space for a moment and when she refocused on him, she said, “In my mind’s eye, I can see the two of you quarreling. But I don’t remember anything after that.”

“I rode off into the sunset.”

“There was no sunset. The sky was stormy.”

“Another figure of speech.”

A thoughtful frown creased her forehead as she sank back into the cushions of the love seat, which made him embarrassed over the god-awful thing. It was a piece of junk, just like everything else in the place. When he’d sold his house, with its swimming pool and heavily wooded backyard on a bluff that overlooked downtown, he’d assumed a necessary indifference to his living conditions.

He’d rented this place because it was all he could afford. He slept here. Sometimes screwed here. Showered and kept his clothes here. He ate carry-out and hadn’t used the cookstove more than once or twice. The fridge was virtually empty.

He hadn’t given any thought to his lifestyle until he looked at his shabby habitat through Bellamy’s eyes. And now he realized that what he did within these walls you couldn’t call living.

Which was exactly what he’d said of his dad.

The similarity jolted Dent, and he angrily rejected it.

He was glad Bellamy diverted him by asking another question. “After you left the park, where did you go?”

“Everywhere. Nowhere. Gall had locked up the hangar and left when I did, so there was no point in going back to it. I didn’t want to go home and watch my dad watch TV. So I just drove around, blowing off steam, and looking for fun in some other place.”

“Who could corroborate that?”

“Not a damn soul. But that’s what I did. The weather turned really bad, really fast. The lightning was fierce. When it started hailing, I took cover under an overpass. The sky turned that greenish-black color. I was several miles from the funnel, but I saw it when it dipped down out of the clouds and realized that it was right on top of the state park, so I got on my bike and went back.” He spread his hands. “You know the rest.”

Bellamy lapsed into another thoughtful silence.

Dent left his chair, went to the window, and peered through the blinds. The parking lot below was clear of all activity; the only vehicles in it were those belonging to residents. He smiled at the thought of Van Durbin being at the mercy of cops who thought they’d captured a pervert.

But his smile faded when a twinge of pain reminded him of the man who’d attacked him. He wanted to retch whenever he thought of the man’s tongue sliding down his cheek and the crude references to Bellamy. Before Dent even realized his hands were forming fists, they were drumming the outside of his thighs.

“One thing puzzles me.”

He turned back to her. “Just one?”

“It’s a big one. I could have corroborated that you’d left the park. I watched you ride away. Why didn’t you tell Moody that I’d seen you leave the park while Susan was still alive and well?”

“It wouldn’t have done any good. You’d lost your memory.”

“You didn’t know that until yesterday, and it came as a surprise to you.”

Too late, Dent realized he’d trapped himself.

Bellamy sat forward. “Instead of lying to Moody and inventing an alibi with Gall, why didn’t you simply tell Moody that I could vouch for you?” When he still didn’t say anything, she pressed him for an answer. “Dent? Why?”

“I figured it was better that Moody didn’t know I’d been there at all.” Suddenly he got up from his chair, went over to the bed, and began stripping it.

She followed him. “There’s more to it than that. I know there is.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because you won’t look me in the eye.”

Abruptly he turned. “Okay, now I am.”

“What am I missing?”

He shook his head. “I’m not going to talk about it any more tonight. My brain needs a break and so does yours.” He went back to pulling the sheets off the mattress.

“I need to know.”

“Not tonight, you don’t.”

“Yes. Tonight.”

“Why tonight?”

“Because my dad might die at any time.”

“And you’d be unable to fulfill his dying wish.”

“Yes.”

“Too bad. I’m not talking about it any more tonight.”

He rolled the sheets into a ball, which he crammed into a wicker hamper in the bathroom, then moved to the closet and began rummaging through the items jammed onto the shelves above the rod. “There are some clean sheets around here somewhere.”

“Why won’t you fill in this one gap for me?”

He stepped around her carrying a set of sheets to the bed.

“What don’t you want me to remember?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Grab that corner, will you?”

Absently she fit the contour sheet over the corner of the mattress, then straightened and looked down at the bed. “What are you doing?”

“Changing the sheets so you won’t be offended when you come to bed.”

She watched him tug the top sheet into place. He held a pillow with his chin and pulled the case over it. “You think that fresh sheets will change my mind about us sleeping together?”

“I don’t know what you have in mind, A.k.a., but all I plan to do is sleep. I’m exhausted and, honestly, no longer in the mood.” He gave her a critical once-over. “Besides, you look like something out of the Thriller video. No offense.”

He patted the button fly of his jeans. “It stays done up for the rest of the night, so don’t even think about trying to cop a feel while my eyes are closed. In fact, thanks to the shithead with the snake tattoo, I’ll probably have to sleep on my stomach.” He motioned toward the far wall. “Catch the lights.”

He lay down on his stomach and socked the pillow until he got it the way he wanted it, then laid his head on it and closed his eyes.

Feeling helpless to do anything else, Bellamy walked over to the wall switch and killed the overhead light, then felt her way back to the bed. She toed off her shoes but lay down on her back fully clothed and tense, aware of him next to her, and mistrustful of his pledge to sleep and nothing more.

After several minutes, he mumbled, “You can relax. I’m not going to choke you with your panties while you sleep.”

“If you’d wanted to kill me, you would have done so by now.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

She’d caught only a glimmer of the memory, but it had been an important one. Dent was withholding the rest of it from her, and she needed to know why. She longed to free all of it from her subconscious, to watch the scene at the boathouse in its entirety, to hear the argument between him and Susan to its conclusion.

She sensed that the quarrel between them was pivotal to the events that had come afterward, and that if she could remember it, she would remember much more.

Speaking quietly into the darkness, she said, “If it was insignificant, you would tell me what I saw or overheard.”

He lay silently.

“Which means that my memory is blocking something important.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You didn’t love Susan.”

Silence.

“Did you even like her?”

“Bellamy?”

“Yes?”

“Go to sleep.”