Sunday morning he decided to shave off the beard, but that was a mistake. The shaving cream stuck to the tufts of hair and only made them sticky. His next attempt was to get in the shower and scrub them away. Another mistake. The beard absorbed the water and expanded. Thinking maybe alcohol would loosen it, he applied his aftershave. When he stopped screaming from the pain, he jumped back in the shower to let the water soothe his reddened skin.
Once his hands had stopped shaking, he put on his wig, added the sunglasses, and drove back to Lyra’s house. He sat in his car the rest of the morning and grew impatient when she didn’t come out. Finally, he spotted her and her grandmother carrying shopping bags and walking down the sidewalk toward their house. They’d been gone that entire time! He couldn’t believe he’d missed his chance to get in and out when no one was there. “Stupid,” he said, slapping his own face. Hitting an especially raw spot, he yelped.
Minutes later, Lyra came outside again carrying an overnight bag. She pulled her car out of the garage and left. She hadn’t been carrying books or DVDs. They were still inside the house. He’d score big points with Mr. Merriam if he brought him the books and DVDs, but Milo wanted to follow Lyra and find out where she lived in L.A. He’d come back Monday to get the books and DVDs, and wouldn’t mention the delay to his boss.
It was still light when Lyra pulled into the apartment complex. Milo drove past her and went around the block. He approached the iron gate again and could see her getting her things out of her car. He couldn’t take the chance that she’d see him, so he pulled away. It would be easy for him to get the apartment number tomorrow. If he had the nerve, he might just knock on her door and introduce himself.
Milo glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the clumps of hair stuck to his cheeks and chin. He looked like the Wolfman. Introductions would have to wait.
Five miles away from the apartment complex, Milo spotted one of his favorite drive-through restaurants. He pulled in and ordered two double hamburgers, fries, and a gallon-sized drink. The cup holder was too small for his soda, so he balanced it on his lap and found a parking spot.
After he finished his meal, he decided to drive back over to Lyra’s apartment to make sure her car hadn’t moved. He might even park across the street from the gate and watch for a while. Maybe he would get lucky and she would come outside.
Turning the corner onto her street, Milo had to swerve out of the way of a police car. The stupid cop should have put his siren on if he was in such a hurry, Milo thought. He looked ahead and saw two police cars enter Lyra’s apartment complex. They were followed a minute later by an ambulance. The drivers in the two cars ahead of him had pulled to the curb idling their engines while trying to see what was going on. Milo stopped behind the second car to watch with them. A policeman was guarding the open gate so no one could get inside, and he was telling an old man what had happened. Milo caught most of what he was saying: two men had broken into an apartment, tied up a woman, and torn the place apart.
Charlie and Stack? It had to be those two. Milo was furious. Who else would have done this? Mr. Merriam hadn’t trusted Milo and sent in his new favorite go-to team.
Hold on now. He was jumping to conclusions without concrete facts. It might not be Lyra’s apartment that was broken into. It could have been someone else’s. That thought had only just registered when he saw her, his Bond girl. Standing beside her were two plain-clothes cops with guns. Milo guessed they were questioning her. She looked tired and worried, but was still as beautiful as ever.
The policeman at the gate noticed all the gawkers and motioned everyone to move along. As Milo drove away he turned his head so that the policeman wouldn’t get a good look at him.
All the way home, he fretted about Charlie and Stack. How had they gotten to Lyra’s before him? Had they already found the books and DVDs? He decided he wouldn’t talk to Mr. Merriam for a couple of days. Let him realize the bone crushers weren’t the way to go. Of course that would only work if Charlie and Stack hadn’t found the books and the DVDs. There were so many unanswered questions. Milo needed to clear his head. He’d come up with a plan tomorrow.
He made a detour to a drugstore, enduring the other customers’ stares as he purchased cream that he hoped would soothe his face when he tore off the rest of the beard. He also bought lotion to help dissolve the glue. Unfortunately, the solvent didn’t work. By the time he had finished ripping off the last of the synthetic hair, his face looked as though he had just undergone an industrial-strength chemical peel. At two a.m. he finally fell into bed, and drifted into a fitful sleep, dreaming of giant, hairy beasts gnawing at his face with razor-sharp teeth.
The following morning, Milo slept until nine o’clock. He got dressed, put on the wig, reached for his baseball cap and his surveillance binoculars, and headed over to Lyra’s apartment. Seeing her car still there, he made a U-turn and went to the drive-through for breakfast. When he came back, he parked close to the corner facing the apartment and slumped down in his seat to wait.
He was thinking about going back to the drive-through for a snack when he spotted them in the distance: a man and a woman walking toward the apartment complex. The woman looked like Lyra, but she was too far away to know for sure. He reached for the binoculars on the car seat and raised them to his eyes. It was Lyra. And there was a man with her—a big man, he qualified as they got closer. A good-looking guy with muscles, Milo noticed. Was he her boyfriend? The way he looked at her suggested as much. Then he saw the gun at his side. Ah, a bodyguard. Smart girl. She’d hired a bodyguard. The guy looked hard, and Milo found himself hoping that Charlie Brody and Lou Stack came back. They wouldn’t stand a chance against this dude.
His throwaway cell phone rang. Mr. Merriam was the only one who knew the number. Milo debated answering, but curiosity got the better of him.
“Yes?”
“You got those DVDs yet?” Merriam asked.
His spirits lifted. Charlie and Stack hadn’t found them in Lyra’s apartment.
“No, but I’m getting close,” he promised.
“I’m sweating bullets, here, Milo, bullets. Find that disk.”
Milo heard the desperation in his voice. In the past, he would have been sympathetic. Not now, though. Not since Charlie and Stack had been elevated above him.
He tucked the phone back in his pocket and slouched lower. The couple was getting closer, and he could see Lyra looking up at the man and smiling. Then suddenly, a block away, they changed course. Instead of continuing on to the apartment, they turned the corner and headed in a different direction.
Milo wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t care so much about the disk in her apartment now. He wanted to know if Lyra was involved with the bodyguard. He felt a surge of jealousy over the possibility. She was his Bond girl, not anyone else’s.
An hour later, he was chasing his rental car down the street.
FIFTEEN
SAM AND LYRA LEFT THE APARTMENT AND DROVE TOWARD her new home away from home. Once Sam was certain they weren’t being followed, he stopped at a grocery store to get supplies. Lyra went in with him and immediately headed for the candy aisle. She carried a basket and filled it with chocolate-covered nuts, chocolate candy bars, and chocolate mints.
“Are you planning to eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?” he asked.
“Pretty much.”
She handed him the basket, grabbed another one and filled it with milk, juice, apples, and healthy cereal. She couldn’t resist adding a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts.
When she got to the checkout counter, she saw he’d added bottled water and soft drinks.
She placed the milk, juice, and apples on the counter for the clerk to scan, and then turned to Sam. “Happy now?” she asked.
“I’m always happy,” he said with his sexy accent.
He grabbed their grocery bags with one hand and put his other hand on her back, gently nudging her forward. His hand lingered for only the barest of seconds, but sh
e felt a shiver down her spine.
“How far away is this safe house?” she asked as they crossed the parking lot.
“Not far,” he answered.
A half hour later, Lyra was completely disoriented. He seemed to be driving around in circles. She was surprised when he finally turned into a new housing development. Identical duplexes lined both sides of the street for as far as the eye could see. He pulled into the drive of one of them, dug through the glove compartment until he found a garage door opener, and pushed the button.
Lyra looked around and said, “They’re all exactly the same. How can anyone find his own home?”
“Maybe they count garages,” he suggested. “Or I suppose … just maybe … they could look at the address.”
“Very funny,” she countered.
The duplex was two stories and furnished. Everything—the walls, the carpet, the furniture—was beige.
While Sam took their luggage upstairs, Lyra carried the bags of groceries to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and was surprised to see someone had already stocked it. The cupboards were also filled with cans of soup, pasta, and all sorts of staples. She added their groceries, then went to explore the rest of the house. There were two bedrooms upstairs, one on either side of a short hallway. Sam had put her things in the master bedroom, which had a lovely king-sized bed.
Lyra was testing the mattress when Sam appeared in the doorway. “This okay for you?”
“It’s wonderful. I can actually walk from the bed to the bathroom without stubbing my toes. But I think you should sleep here.”
He leaned against the door frame. “Yeah? You think?”
It wasn’t what he said or how he said it that affected her. It was the way he was looking at her, as though he was noticing her for the first time.
“Yes, I do.”
He smiled. “With or without you in the bed?” Her startled expression made him laugh. “How can any woman blush that quickly? Your face is bright red.”
“So we’re flirting now?”
With a wry grin, he shrugged.
“You are the most confusing man,” she said.
“Good to know,” he laughed.
“I invited you to sleep in this bed … without me,” she clarified, “because I was being thoughtful. You’re much bigger than I am, and you need more room. I’ll sleep in the other bed.”
“My bedroom is identical to this one.”
“So you have a king-sized bed?”
“Yes, but thanks for the offer.”
He went downstairs. She followed. “The refrigerator is packed, and so are the cupboards.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You didn’t need to stop at the store?”
“No.”
“Then why did you?”
“Chocolate.”
“How did you know I like chocolate?”
“It’s in your file.”
“No,” she said incredulously.
“Actually, Sidney mentioned it,” he confessed.
He had placed his laptop on the dining room table and sat down to work. Without looking up, he asked, “Have you thought of any ideas for that children’s film Mahler wants you to do?”
“A few,” she answered. “I also …” She stopped mid-sentence. “Oh gosh, I forgot. I should have changed the card.”
“What card?” he asked.
“The camera I have at the park. I’m trying to get a sequence of photos of a little garden at the park, and I haven’t changed the memory card in the camera for several days.”
“I thought you were going to do the children’s film.”
“I can work on more than one project,” she said. “Tomorrow I have to go there, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed.
Sam turned back to his computer screen, so Lyra went up to her bedroom. She sat on the bed with her back against the headboard, balanced her laptop on her knees, and started working out ideas for the children’s film. She really got into the process, and it was after eight o’clock when she finished two possible outlines.
Sam was still typing on his computer when she came downstairs.
“I’ll fix dinner,” she offered. She went into the kitchen to survey their provisions and decided on red sauce and meatballs and a salad. After dinner, she offered him a candy bar for dessert, which he declined.
Sam insisted on cleaning the kitchen, so Lyra went back upstairs to turn in for the night. After a long, relaxing shower, she wrapped a towel around her and opened her suitcase on her bed. She took out a pair of long cotton pajamas her grandmother had given her. The top had a row of buttons to the neck, and the pants were long and loose. She laid them on the left side of the bed, then took out a pink nightgown that her grandmother would thoroughly disapprove of. It was silky and had spaghetti straps. She laid it on the right side of the bed. One assured nothing was going to happen; the other offered possibility. A couple of fantasies popped into her head. If Sam saw her in the cotton pajamas he’d think she was on the fast track to spinsterhood. But what would he think if he saw her in the silky nightgown? Would he be tempted? She let her mind enter her fantasy world for a second.
“I vote for the one on the right.”
Lyra quickly grabbed the towel so it wouldn’t slip and spun around, expecting to see Sam standing in the open doorway. He wasn’t there. His door was already closing.
“Good night,” he said.
Lyra dropped down on the bed. Did he know what she’d been thinking?
She slipped into the silky nightgown, then turned on the television and got into bed. The eleven o’clock news had just begun, and the big story was an explosion in an exclusive neighborhood. A newscaster was standing in front of the rubble describing what was quite apparent behind him. A picture of the house before it was destroyed flashed on the screen next. Lyra threw the covers off and sat up. “Is that …?”
Then the pictures of the owners flashed onscreen.
“Sam!”
The door to his bedroom flew open, and he came running. “What is it?” he asked, eyes darting in every direction.
She pointed at the TV. “The yard sale.”
SIXTEEN
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” SAM STARED UNCOMPREHENDINGLY at the television. “The yard sale,” she repeated. “You know. People put out stuff they don’t want any longer, and other people buy it at a reduced price. Sit down and watch this, please.”
Sam pushed aside a pillow and sat on the bed facing the TV.
Lyra got up on her knees and leaned forward to reach the remote so she could turn up the volume.
Ah, man. She had the sexiest backside he’d ever seen. No way in hell could he look away.
“I was there, Sam.”
“What?”
“There,” she said, pointing to the television. The photo of the Rooneys stayed on the screen. “That’s the woman who was throwing out all those wonderful books. Some were first editions,” she added with a nod as she sat back. “Actually, she was throwing everything out, and she wouldn’t take money for any of it.”
Lyra turned from the television to look at him. He was watching her with a puzzled expression.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head and turned to the screen. The newscaster continued with his report about the murder/suicide, then cut to a police detective who explained that the explosion and subsequent fire were being investigated as arson. The report ended with eye witness accounts. There didn’t seem to be any lack of witnesses wanting to tell their stories on television. The newscaster introduced a woman who had seen the murder.
“I saw her do it, all right. I went back inside the house to get another lamp, and when I was crossing the yard to put it in the car, the woman’s husband pulled into the drive and started screaming. Of course, he didn’t know she was hiding a gun …”
“Were you there when she killed her husband?” Sam asked Lyra.
She didn’t answer immediately. She’d realized that Sam w
as sitting on her short robe. Her nightgown wasn’t obscene, but it did have a rather low neckline. Better cover up, she decided. She tugged on the hem of the robe until he moved. She tried to act nonchalant as she put it on.
“Lyra?”
“Yes?”
“Did you see her kill him?” he asked again.
“No, I must have just left. Now that I think about it, I guess I knew she was unbalanced. She had a wild look in her eyes. At the time, I thought she was just angry with her husband. I tried to explain that some of the books were valuable, but she didn’t care. She said she was going to burn what I didn’t take. I’ll tell you this, I wouldn’t have argued with her if I’d known she had a gun in her pocket.”
Lyra pulled her hair back and let it fall around her shoulders. Propping a pillow next to him, she leaned against it, stretching her legs out and crossing one ankle over the other.
She was killing him. “Ah, come on,” Sam practically groaned. Unbelievably long, gorgeous legs, perfectly shaped …
Lyra misunderstood. “I know. Can you believe it? First, she gets rid of everything her husband owns, then she waits for him to come home and see what she’s done. That’s one vindictive wife,” she added. “But she’s not done with her diabolical plan. She whips out the gun, shoots him, then, according to witnesses, calmly walks into the house and shoots herself. I’d say that was a crazy woman.”
A commercial interrupted the newscast. Lyra looked at Sam. She was sitting so close to him it was difficult to think. Staring into his beautiful eyes while she asked a coherent question was impossible, and so she turned back to the television and feigned extreme interest in a dancing cereal commercial until she remembered what it was she wanted to ask.
“The house …” she began.
“Yes?”
“Who would blow it up? Why would they blow it up? You heard the newscaster. The Rooneys didn’t have any children and no relatives to speak of. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”