The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [10]
First she’d taken the train, and the train had taken her through New England fields of waving grass and industrial sectors of twisted metal. Then she’d caught a plane, flying over everything as if that would help her forget and covering so many miles, she left behind fall and returned to summer.
Landing in Phoenix was like arriving in a moon crater: Everything was red, dusty, and bordered by distant blue mountains. She’d never seen palms; here roads were lined with them. She’d never seen cactus; here they covered the land like an encroaching army.
The bus had only moved her farther into alien terrain. The red hills had disappeared, the sun had gained fury. Signs for cities had been replaced by signs reading
STATE PRISON IN AREA.
DO NOT STOP FOR HITCHHIKERS.
The reds and browns had seeped away until the bus rolled through sun-baked amber and bleached-out greens. The mountains no longer followed like kindly grandfathers. In this strange, harsh land of southern Arizona, even the hills were tormented, flayed alive methodically by mining trucks and bulldozers.
It was the kind of land where you really did expect to turn and see the OK corral. The kind of land where lizards were beautiful and coyotes cute. The kind of land where the hothouse rose died and the prickly cactus lived.
It was perfect.
Tess climbed out of bed. She moved slowly. Her right leg was stiff and achy, the jagged scar twitching with ghost pains. Her left wrist throbbed, ringed by a harsh circle of purple bruises. She could tell it wasn’t anything serious—her father had taught her a lot about broken bones. As things went in her life these days, a bruised wrist was the least of her concerns.
She turned her attention to the bed.
She made it without thinking, tucking the corners tightly and smoothing the covers with military precision.
I want to be able to bounce a quarter off that bed, Theresa. Youth is no excuse for sloppiness. You must always seek to improve.
She caught herself folding back the edge of the sheet over the light blanket and dug her fingertips into her palms. In a deliberate motion she ripped off the blanket and dumped it on the floor.
“I will not make the bed this morning,” she stated to the empty room. “I choose not to make the bed.”
She wouldn’t clean anymore either, or wash dishes or scrub floors. She remembered too well the scent of ammonia as she rubbed down the windows, the doorknobs, the banisters. She’d found the pungent odor friendly, a deep-clean sort of scent.
This is my house, and not only does it look clean, but it smells clean.
Once, when she’d taken the initiative to rub down the window casings with ammonia, Jim had even complimented her. She’d beamed at him, married one year, already eight months pregnant and as eager as a lapdog for his sparing praise.
Later, Lieutenant Difford had explained to her how ammonia was one of the few substances that rid surfaces of fingerprints.
Now she couldn’t smell ammonia without feeling ill.
Her gaze was drawn back to the bed, the rumpled sheets, the covers tossed and wilted on the floor. For a moment the impulse, the sheer need to make that bed—and make it right because she had to seek to improve herself, you should always seek to improve—nearly overwhelmed her. Sweat beaded her upper lip. She fisted her hands to keep them from picking up the blankets.
“Don’t give in. He messed with your mind, Tess, but that’s done now. You belong to yourself and you are tough. You won, dammit. You won.”
The words didn’t soothe her. She crossed to the bureau to retrieve her gun from her purse. Only at the last minute did she remember that the .22 had fallen on the patio.
J. T. Dillon had it now.
She froze. She had to have her gun. She ate with her gun, slept with her gun, walked with her gun. She couldn’t be weaponless. Defenseless, vulnerable, weak.
Oh, God. Her breathing accelerated, her stomach plummeted, and her head began to spin. She walked the edge of the anxiety attack, feeling the shakes and knowing that she either