Page 52 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

I grabbed the notebook and wrote,Technically, no. I was still IN my bedroom when I remembered the shoes, and I went to the closet to get them.Then I slammed the pen down, gathered up my new clothing and paraphernalia, and took everything upstairs. And not to the master bedroom, either.

Safely locked in the bathroom I’d used before, I mentally blessed Jenni for remembering the smaller items. I brushed my teeth, moisturized—my skin badly needed it, after being exposed to all that heat and soot, then being scrubbed with dish detergent—and dried my hair. By the time I was dressed, I felt human again. Very tired, but human.

Wyatt was still waiting for me when I returned downstairs, not that I had truly expected him to leave without me. His expression lingered on the grim side, but he gave me a searching look and abruptly said, “You need to eat something.”

My stomach agreed. My throat said no way. I shook my head, pointing to my throat.

“Milk, then. You can drink some milk.” He always had milk on hand, for cereal. “Or oatmeal. Sit down and I’ll nuke us some oatmeal.”

He was determined, and he was probably right; we both needed to eat, after the night we’d put in. It seemeddaysago that he’d taken my answering machine to the police department for analyzing, when it was really fewer than twelve hours. Time flies when you’re jumping from the second story of a burning building, climbing fences, looking for psycho bitches to gut, and getting locked in a stinky squad car for hours while she makes faces at you.

He took off his suit jacket and efficiently nuked two bowls of instant oatmeal, adding enough sugar and milk to mine to make it a little soupy. Cautiously I took a bite; it was nice and hot, and soft enough that I managed to swallow it even though it made me cough. Coughing wasn’t fun. I kept at it until I’d managed to eat half of the oatmeal, but the coughing that followed each bite was too rough on my throat, which already felt sand-blasted, so I gave it up after that. Maybe I should live on milk shakes, yogurt, and Jell-O for a few days.

We cleared the table together, not that there was a lot of work to it: two bowls, two spoons, two coffee cups. When everything was stowed in the dishwasher, I got my tote—yes, he’d removed my knife—then looked at him and pantomimed turning a key in the ignition.

“They’re still in the car,” he said, meaning my Mercedes. He’d be driving his city-issued cop car, the Crown Vic. I hated what had happened to his Avalanche. I’d seen one of the front tires flame up, so even though the fire department had immediately sprayed it with water I knew the damage was beyond repair. That close, the heat scorched the paint off, melted the headlights and top of the engine, did all sorts of nasty things. He was calm about losing the truck, but I guess he’d known from the beginning, having been to a lot of fire scenes, that it couldn’t be salvaged.

Forget about the truck,he’d said.Are you sure you’re all right?

Damn it. It wasn’t easy, staying angry at a man who loved you as much as you loved him.

And then the sneak further undermined me by pulling me close for a long, hungry kiss. When he lifted his head he looked at my face, sort of half smiled, and kissed me again. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “The wedding’s still on.”

Chapter

Twenty-two

Wyatt stayed behind me all the way to the police department, not that there was much chance I’d be followed anywhere from his house. No one had followed us there after we’d left the fire scene and he wasn’t listed in the telephone directory, so locating him wouldn’t be as easy as locating me had been. I’ve never had an unlisted number, never tried to hide from anyone. Of course, if someone knows where you work, he or she always knows where and when to find you.

Which made me wonder if all of this was somehow connected to Great Bods. The woman I’d seen in the crowd was someone I’d seen before. She wasn’t a total stranger; she had a connection to me. I just couldn’t place her face, couldn’t put a name to her. I don’t personally know all the members of Great Bods but I do recognize their faces, which, when I thought about it, eliminated Great Bods as the connection. When you see someone who looks familiar but you don’t know where you know them from, it’s because they aren’t in their accustomed place. When I put that face at Great Bods, there still wasn’t any ah-ha moment of recognition, which meant that wherever I’d seen her, it wasn’t at work.

Which meant she likely worked at one of my other regular points of contact: the grocery store, the mall, the post office, the bank, maybe even UPS or FedEx. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t place her.

When we exited the elevators into the busy, noisy squad room, heads turned our way and wide grins bloomed on most of the faces. Well, the people who were handcuffed to the chairs didn’t grin, and neither did the people who were there filing complaints and whatnot, but the cops grinned.

I was a little hurt. What was so funny about my condo being toast?

I glanced up at Wyatt, to see if he’d noticed all the grins. His gaze was focused on his office door, which bore a sign. He didn’t pause until we got close enough to read it:WYATT IS A JACKASS AND THE WEDDING ISOFF! It wasn’t one of my notes, but it definitely incorporated elements from two of them.

Wheeling, I glared at the room at large. Some of the cops were almost choking as they tried to stifle their laughter. They were making fun of my notes. “Notoneof you,” I announced loudly, “let me out of that car,either.” Or rather, I tried to announce it, because I’d forgotten I couldn’t talk. Not a single sound came out of my mouth. Standing there with my mouth open was humiliating.

But I intended to make up a shit list, and put all of them on it.

Wyatt reached out and calmly removed the sign. “The wedding is back on,” he said, and there was a smattering of applause because, being mostly men, they assumed he’d sexed me out of my temper. I glared up at him, but he just smiled as he opened the door and ushered me through it.

“I need that scene tape,” he said over his shoulder before closing the door.

His office wasn’t very big, and was cluttered with filing cabinets and paperwork. The sight of that paperwork perked me up a little. If he’d just leave me alone in here, I could catch up on my clandestine reading.

Sulkily I took one of his visitor’s chairs while he settled in the big leather chair behind his desk. “Amazing,” he said, a quirk to his lips as if he wanted to grin.

I raised both hands in an impatient “what is?” gesture.

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, tossing the sign on his desk. “We have a lot of work to do right now.”

He wasn’t kidding about that. First I had to give a statement about what had happened last night, or rather, early this morning. Wyatt didn’t take the statement, Detective Forester did, and to be accurate I didn’tgivethe statement, of course, I wrote it out.

The detective had been busy, but the fire marshal had immediately ruled the fire an arson; evidently there hadn’t been any attempt to disguise it. The fire dog had alerted him to gasoline all around the front and right side of my condo. When the fire had been ignited, the flames had immediately blocked my exit from both of those doors. There were still the double French doors in the dining alcove, but by throwing the gasoline bomb through the living room window and spreading the fire all over the living room, my route from upstairs had been blocked. As further insurance, the fence gate had been blocked. If by chance I’d made it out to the backyard, the arsonist had intended for me to be trapped there. As rapidly as the fire had spread to the Bradford pear trees in the tiny yard, if I hadn’t been able to climb the fence I’d have died there.

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