The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 1-5 - Catherine Coulter [476]
She blinked this time, rapidly, at least half a dozen times. She didn’t burst into laughter, but she did giggle. I’d made her laugh. It felt good. Evidently, she found me amusing.
I’d come here ready to play a role, to get the truth out of this woman, to charm her, whatever. Instead, I wanted to scoop her up and take her to Tahiti. I hated this.
“Do you have plans for dinner?” At her pause, I added, “As I said, I’m new here in town and don’t know a soul. I realize you could be worried that I’m another Jack the Ripper from London, so maybe we could just stay around here. That way I couldn’t kidnap you or mug you or do anything else to you that you might not think appropriate. You know, fun stuff that isn’t supposed to happen when you’ve only known someone an hour. How about the Amadeus Café I saw on the lower level?”
She looked over at the large institutional clock on the wall just above all the medieval reference books. She smiled up at me and nodded. “I know a great place just down the street. Not the Amadeus—I eat there everyday.”
An hour later, after a solitary tour of the Salem Public Library, we walked down Liberty Street to the Mai Thai, which turned out to be an excellent restaurant even though it was so dark and dusty I was afraid to order any meat dish off the menu.
She’d taken her hair down before we’d left the library. I wanted my face and my hands in her hair. She was leaning toward me, her long hair falling over her left shoulder. Laura Scott hadn’t shown me a single shy, withdrawn bone. She was open, responding to me with laughter and jokes, making me feel like I had to be the most fascinating guy in the known universe. She’d just turned twenty-eight in March, she said. She was single, lived in a condo right on the river, played tennis and racquetball, and loved to horseback ride. Her favorite stable was just five miles out of town.
She was at ease with me. I didn’t want that to stop.
For myself, I made up a wonderful academic life, replete with stories that friends and siblings had told me of their college experiences over the years. She was down to the last few bites of her chicken satay when I knew the party was over. I was here for a reason, not to flirt and start a relationship with this fascinating woman. I said easily, watching her as closely as a snake watches a mongoose, “I have relatives down in Edgerton, a little town on the coast of Oregon, just an hour from here.”
She kept chewing her chicken, but I saw the change in her, instantly. Shit, I thought. Her eyes, to this point rather vague and soft, were sharp, attentive behind her glasses. But she didn’t say anything.
“My cousin—Rob Morrison—is a cop. He says everyone calls the town The Edge. He’s got a little house very close to the cliffs. You look out the window and think you’re on a boat. If you keep staring at the water, pretty soon it feels like you’re really on a boat rocking back and forth. Have you ever heard of the place? Do you know anyone from there?”
Would she lie?
“Yes,” she said, “I have, and yes, I do.”
I nearly fell out of the booth I was so surprised she’d admit it, to me, a perfect stranger. Well, maybe that was why she’d admitted it—I was a perfect stranger. There was no reason to distrust me.
I said, “Do you know my cousin?”
“Rob Morrison? No, I don’t believe I’ve ever met him.”
“You wouldn’t forget him if you had—he’s a triathlete, a hunk.”
She sighed deeply, her hands over her breast, and rolled her eyes. No one in the known universe could ever believe her to be nondescript. She sparkled. “No, sorry. I know the Bartletts—Jilly and Paul Bartlett.”
“Small world,” I said, wondering if my voice was shaking. “I know them as well.” I took a bite of coconut soup and said, “You’re a bit younger than Jilly, so you didn’t go to school