Still Lake - Anne Stuart [55]
She let it ring. Her eyes were just beginning to get used to the darkness, and she could tell that Smith’s body was once again blocking her escape route. Why did he have to be so damned big? So damned there? So damned naked? It was a cool night—he should be sleeping in pajamas like any sensible man, not in skimpy little cutoffs….
“Yeah? What is it?” Marty’s sleepy voice finally answered the phone.
“Grace has disappeared. I’ve been looking everywhere for her—would you check her room and see if by any chance she’s come back in? I’d hate to call the police for nothing.”
“All right.” She sounded martyred, as always, and Sophie clutched the phone tightly as she listened to Marty’s footsteps shuffle away.
It seemed to take her forever. When she finally got back on the phone she’d gone beyond begrudging to outright annoyed. “She’s sound asleep in her bed, Sophie.”
“Are you sure? I heard the door close and…”
“I’m sure. You must have been dreaming. Where the hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m at the Whitten place. I thought she might have come back here….”
“The Whitten place? O-kay.” There was no doubt Marty knew exactly who she was with. “Don’t wake me up when you get back home.”
“It’ll only take a couple of minutes. You’ll still be awake.”
Marty’s laugh was far from comforting. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. Have fun, sis. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Marty…” But Marty had already hung up the phone—leaving Sophie with no choice but to hang up the other end and somehow figure out a way to get by her unwilling host without him touching her again.
He wasn’t there. He’d disappeared while she was talking to Marty, obviously having lost interest in her. Again one of those moments of regret-tinged relief. At least he wouldn’t interfere with her leaving.
She headed straight for the door, bumping into two more objects and almost knocking down a table in her haste. “Thanks for letting me use the phone,” she called out into the darkness as she pushed open the screen door.
“Anytime,” he said from the porch. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you really came here.”
12
She should have known she couldn’t escape that easily, Sophie thought. Not the way her luck had been running. He was standing on the porch, leaning against the railing, and the moon had come out again, sending a silvery light over the landscape, a shimmering trail on the mirror-still lake. He was even better-looking in the moonlight, she thought irritably. Why couldn’t life ever be simple?
She pushed open the screen door, letting it slam behind her as she stepped out onto the porch. Into the night. “I told you why I came here,” she said patiently. “I was looking for my mother.”
“Who was sound asleep in bed.”
“It was a logical assumption. She was here the other night,” Sophie protested. “I thought I heard the outside door closing, and when I went down to check on her, her room was empty.”
“Did you think to check the bathroom?”
“No,” she muttered. “That was probably where she was. She gets up several times during the night.”
“Too much information,” he drawled. “So why the panic tonight? It would have taken only a moment to see if your mother had wandered off, and presumably no one could have gotten in without jimmying the door. You do lock the doors, don’t you?”
“Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?” she demanded huffily.
Wrong question. “Yes. What kind of lock do you have?”
“Whatever came with the house.”
“Jesus Christ, woman, don’t you have any sense at all?” he exploded. “The first thing you should have done was have the locks upgraded on the place. Three women alone out here at the end of the lake, with no one around…”
“You’re around,” she pointed out.
“I just got here. And you trust me about as far as you’d trust Jack the Ripper. Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?” He sounded really annoyed with her.
“The crime rate around Colby is very low,” she said in a haughty voice.
“This year, maybe,” he muttered. “Get new locks for the