Page 85 of Tempting as Sin
“You need to go running,” she said.
An exhalation of breath, and she could hear the patience he was forcing. “Lily.”
“All right,” she said, and headed upstairs to change. “You’re right. I’ll wait for you.”
When Rafe pulled to the curb beside the trailer and parked, everything looked the same to Lily. Same rust-spattered Pontiac baking in the sun. Same sagging, broken latticework apron around the trailer’s lower edges. Same stairs, dusted with tiny fir cones and needles like nobody had swept them in years.
The photographer had followed them and was shooting now. She didn’t care. She led the way up the steps and knocked, but she could already tell there was nobody home. No TV. She tried the door. Locked.
“Back door,” she told Rafe.
“Are we breaking in?” he asked, but he followed her around the trailer. “Seems extreme. Especially on camera.”
“No,” she said. “We’re walking in.” The back door was unlocked. She lifted the little paper bag she held. “So I can leave a jar of jam on the kitchen counter. Fine old country tradition.”
The air in the trailer held the same smoky staleness as it had before, and that sense of stillness that spoke of no human presence. The oxygen tank was gone, a yellow blanket and a pillow lay crumpled, half-on, half-off the couch, and the ashtray was full of butts. As if Ruby had gone out for a minute. There was a pack of Camels on the table next to the ashtray, though, and it was only half full. A smoker like that never left without her cigarettes, in Lily’s experience.
Rafe said, “That’s it, then. Nobody home.”
“Hang on,” Lily said. “I want to check Bailey’s room.”
She walked through the kitchen, peered through a half-open door, and saw a double bed with a shiny, puffy gold spread, dull with age, thrown back over a green blanket and flowered sheets. A gilt dresser missing one of its handles, and framed pictures above it. Not Bailey’s room.
“Other one,” she told Rafe, and took the few steps through the kitchen and past the couch. The door on that side was closed. She opened it to find a tiny room filled with slightly stale air that spoke of not enough laundry and not enough cleaning, even though the window was open. A single bed with no blanket, just some white sheets turned nearly gray with lack of laundering, and a pillow without a case. A closet, one of its doors off the runners, held nothing except a few wire hangers, a dresser, and a few pairs of discarded underwear and socks in a pathetic pile. Lily opened a drawer and found tangled shirts and a single pair of jeans, plus a couple more pairs of underwear. She closed it again and said, “She left.”
Rafe, who’d been leaning against the doorframe, said, “Uh…” and scratched his cheek.
“Yes, but it’s not just her backpack that’s gone,” Lily explained. “Her new clothes aren’t here, either. And surely she’d own a coat. It’s Montana. That’s odd.” Her chest was tight again. If Bailey’s grandma had taken off with her, why was the car still here? On the other hand, did the car even run? What if a friend had driven them?
Or a boyfriend after all,a voice inside whispered. Women tended to make the same mistakes over and over, and she’d bet that was one Ruby had made plenty. The way Bailey had stiffened when she’d thought Rafe would touch her…
No.
“Come on,” she told Rafe, who was watching. Waiting. “Let’s find out if anybody saw them.”
Outside the trailer, though, she looked him over. Mountaineers hat, sunglasses, collared plaid Western-yoked shirt. “Would you mind,” she asked him, “being yourself? In case it helps?”
His head came up, but all he said was, “No worries. My cover’s well and truly blown anyway.” He went over to the car and took off the hat and the glasses, then unsnapped the shirt and tossed everything into the back seat before reaching into the glove compartment for a little white case and carefully stowing the contacts.
When he turned around again, he’d changed. Clothes. Posture. Face. Everything. White T-shirt, Wranglers, and boots. Silver-blue eyes, all that arm and chest muscle on view, and everything about him tougher and harder. He reached a hand up and ruffled his hair so it spiked and said, “Ready.” The photographer behind them snapped away like a fiend, and Rafe never looked at him.
At the trailer to the right, a more up-to-date and much neater doublewide, nobody was home, or if they were, they weren’t answering.
The trailer to the left, then. This one was blue to Ruby’s red-trimmed white, but it wasn’t in much better shape. A bed of sharp white rocks served in lieu of a front lawn, and the latticework around the foundation wasn’t broken. When Lily headed up the steps, a dog started barking. It didn’t sound friendly.
Rafe said, “Hang on. Let me go first.” He reached around her and rang the doorbell, and the barking escalated to fever pitch before athunkagainst the glass to the left of the door heralded the crashing arrival of a brindled dog with small eyes and cropped ears. On the couch, presumably, with its paws on the back, and barking its blocky head off.
A woman’s voice, then, a sharp tone to it. Yelling at the dog. Rafe rang the bell again, and the woman might as well have saved her efforts, because the barking got even more hysterical.
“Whatever you’re selling,” the woman said through the door when the noise had died down a little, “I don’t want it.”
“It’s Rafe Blackstone,” Rafe said. “The actor.”
A face at the window, then, above the dog’s. Thirtyish, thin, and blonde. Rafe lifted his hand to her and gave a little wave, and her expression changed. Some crashing, some swearing, and twenty seconds later, she opened the door to the accompaniment of slightly muffled frenzied barking and said, “What the hell? Really?” She looked beyond him to see the photographer. “Oh, wow. Wow. Is this some publicity stunt or what?”
“No stunt,” Rafe said, “just a visit. Mind if we come in?” He inclined his head at Lily. She was glad now that she’d changed her clothes. She’d gone for the peacock-blue dress with the shirring at the waist, and heels, too, in case it helped. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but it looked Hollywood-glamorous, especially with her diva-sized dark glasses.
The woman barely looked at her. She was too busy looking at Rafe. “Uh…sure,” she said, stepping back and letting them inside. She picked up a pile of clothes that had been on the couch and tossed them to the floor. “Sorry about the mess. I was just, uh, cleaning. Sit down. Do you want coffee or anything?”
