The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [100]
He sighed heavily in his sleep. Then he rolled over on his right side, away from her.
She sat beside him. She inhaled the faint, soapy scent of his cologne. A year later she still didn’t know its name and she wondered why she’d never asked him. Back when they’d tried dating, she would return home with that scent still lingering in her nostrils. She’d fall asleep smelling Quincy, and burrow deeper into the covers like a contented cat. When she woke up the next morning, alone, fragrance gone, she’d always felt a stab of disappointment.
She reached out now and lightly touched his shoulder. His cotton shirt was soft beneath her fingers, his arm warm. He didn’t jerk away.
Rainie lay down at his side. She kept waiting for something. Fear. Discomfort. Yellow-flowered fields. Smooth-flowing streams. The places she’d learned to escape to in her mind. Mostly she was aware of the heat of Quincy’s body, pressed against her side. And she remembered now what she’d felt that final evening with him. Desire. Real, honest to goodness desire. She hadn’t known she was capable of such a thing.
Quincy would never hurt you, Kimberly had said. Rainie knew that. She probably even truly knew that. Maybe it was herself she still didn’t understand.
People could hurt you. They could beat you with their fists and they could do worse; they could die and leave you all alone with no hope of ever making things right. And people could attack you. They could inflict great physical and emotional harm. And you could attack back. You could even kill them, inflicting its own kind of great physical and emotional harm.
And you could punish yourself then, because your mother was dead and someone had to play the role of the abuser. So you could punish yourself day after day, creating the very lifestyle that got you into this mess because you didn’t know any other way to live.
You could do all that, or maybe you could try to change. You could give up drinking. You could stop sleeping around. You could try treating yourself better, even respecting yourself. Except sooner or later, you also had to try believing in yourself, and maybe she still wasn’t so good at that. She’d always figured it was better to be hostile and belligerent first, then no one could ever accuse her of hiding her true colors. Truth in advertising, that was her policy.
Dying in the desert. Struggling to survive, desperate to belong, but still not figuring out how to live.
She rolled over on the bed. She pressed her cheek against the curve of Quincy’s back. She could hear his heartbeat here, too. It sounded slow, and steady, and strong. She wrapped her arm around his lean waist. He murmured in his sleep. And then his hand came up and clasped hers.
She waited for the fear to strike. Images of yellow-flowered fields and smooth-running streams. Nothing.
She inhaled his cologne. She felt the warmth of his hand. And she thought. . . . She thought this spooning business felt very nice.
Rainie closed her eyes. She held Quincy and finally fell asleep.
27
Quincy’s House, Virginia
“Where have you been?”
A little after six-thirty Saturday morning, Glenda Rodman stood blurry-eyed in Quincy’s foyer, watching Special Agent Albert Montgomery finally walk through the front door. It had been forty-eight hours since she’d last seen her fellow agent. Her gray suit was hopelessly rumpled from sleeping fitfully in Quincy’s desk chair. Her face looked like death warmed over. Multiple days of listening to threatening phone call after threatening phone call did take its toll on a person.
Now, the gifts had started. Yesterday morning, a disemboweled puppy in Quincy’s mailbox. Yesterday afternoon, four rattlesnakes released outside the gate. Two had made it onto Quincy’s property. Two had gone to the neighbors, where they had garnered the attention of a pet cat and two-year-old boy. Fortunately, the child’s mother had snatched him away and called animal control before anyone got hurt. Last night, Glenda had gotten to listen to a voice cackle with glee on the answering