Flirting with Disaster

Maybe that explained why she found herself watching Tom as he spoke, wondering if those lips would taste as good as they looked. Or if those shoulders were as wide as they seemed.

She shook her head. She needed more wine. Or less. Or she just needed to get laid. But definitely not by a US marshal.

But it didn’t matter tonight. Tonight she was full of wonderful food and less afraid of why he’d shown up on her doorstep. There was more wine, dessert was waiting and nobody was asking anything about her father. She’d be able to paint tomorrow. She could feel it.

As if the universe was offering a reward for her new good mood, Tom unbuttoned the left sleeve of his shirt and began to roll it up as he told Jill a story about a fugitive who’d fallen into an icy creek.

“The thing was, he wouldn’t come out.” His wrist was exposed first. The same tan color as the back of his hand, dark against the white cotton of his shirt. “His lips were turning blue. He couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t even speak anymore. But he refused to come out.”

Now the start of his forearm, slim but much harder than hers, muscles visible even at rest.

“None of us wanted to go in after him. It was probably twenty-five degrees in the sun, and the creek was solid ice around the banks. We just stared at each other across the water, waiting for someone to break. I mean, this guy was going to die, and the office kind of frowns on that.”

Now the thickest part of his forearm, the rolled cuff starting to tighten up around it. He was just as tan here, but the light from the wrought-iron chandelier skimmed his skin and caught on the hair of his arms, glinting golden and bright.

“So what happened?” Jill asked.

He grinned. “I broke. I had to do it. I was the senior officer. And holy shit, it was cold. So cold it felt like fire at first. The numbness set in pretty quickly, but that was only the skin. Deeper, in the muscles and joints, it hurt. And then when I hit a deeper pool of water...” He shook his head and turned the sleeve up one more roll. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jill nodded solemnly. “Can you still have children?”

“I doubt it. Then again, they do freeze sperm, right?”

After she stopped laughing, Jill pointed at Tom. “A hero like you deserves dessert. I hope you like cherry pie. It’s Isabelle’s favorite.”

Isabelle laughed. “You make me sound like a bad ’80s sex joke. But I do love cherry pie. Almost as much as Jill does.”

A faint wash of pink appeared on Tom’s cheeks. Was he blushing? That was cute as hell. Maybe he wasn’t used to women joking about sex. But Isabelle had discovered that freedom was the best thing about getting older.

She’d felt a touch of it when she’d turned thirty. She’d suddenly felt less like a big kid blindly feeling her way through the world and more like an adult. Then at thirty-five she’d realized she was at that age when so many women really started to worry. That they were too old now. That they hadn’t married or had children. That this was their last chance to really live.

Isabelle didn’t feel as though this was her last chance. She felt as though she was finally free. Capable. Happy with herself. Comfortable with her body. And allowed to say anything she wanted to out loud, even if it made a grown man blush. Maybe especially if it did.

She loved it. She couldn’t wait to be forty. She was going to own that shit. And then at fifty, when strangers would stop hinting that it was time to settle down and have some babies, and just start looking at her with pity? That would be glorious.

So she grinned at Tom Duncan and took an extra-large piece of pie and didn’t bother stifling her moan of pleasure at the taste. Tonight she was almost sure she was safe, her mouth was sweet and tart with juicy red cherries, and tomorrow she would paint. She had every reason to moan.

* * *

ISABELLE WEST WASN’T only a mystery. She was also a distraction. First, there was that threadbare shirt, pale blue but marred with paint, and stretched too tight across her breasts whenever she reached for her glass. The shirt looked old enough to be turned into rags, and he’d been very afraid that one of those buttons was going to give way at any moment. So afraid that he’d constantly found himself checking to be sure it was still closed.

Then there was her glare, suspicious and narrow and almost as distracting as the smile she’d finally settled into toward the end of the meal. The cool smile was as interesting as the glare, as if she had a secret to go with every emotion.

Curiosity paced inside his brain like a caged lion. Who was she? Instincts weren’t everything, but Tom had learned to trust his own, and he would’ve bet quite a bit of money that she wasn’t a criminal. But she wasn’t innocent, either. Innocent women didn’t press themselves into a corner to hide and listen the way she’d done at Jill’s house.

“I’d better get going,” she said drowsily from the couch. She was curled up with the last of the wine and didn’t look as if she wanted to leave. “I’ll be painting for hours tomorrow.”

“At least it’s not summer,” Jill said. “You can sleep until eight and still get the morning light.”

“So true. And I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight. A drunk baby.”

Tom stood. “All right, drunk baby, come on. I’ll walk you home.”

Her languidness vanished in an instant. “I don’t need you to walk me home,” she snapped. “I’ve walked home a hundred times in the dark.”

“I’m sure you have. But this time, there might be an armed fugitive hiding in the woods. And I’m leaving anyway. I can either walk you or I can follow behind you. Your choice.”

“Walk her home,” Jill cut in. “Isabelle, put your prickliness away and be nice. Maybe you’ll like the feeling.”

“I doubt it,” Isabelle answered, but she shrugged. “And he already asked to walk me home. Apparently, he likes his girls mean and feral.”

“All the more reason to walk home with him, then.”

Isabelle huffed out a laugh at that then winked in his direction, completely confusing him. His mental state wasn’t helped when she reached to shrug on her coat and her blouse threatened to split in two and reveal the pink bra peeking out underneath.

He spun and walked toward the entryway where he’d left his own coat, but there was no relief there. Isabelle followed close behind to tug on her tall snow boots, leaning over so that her shirt gaped to show the generous rise of her breasts. Tom just shook his head and made himself look elsewhere until she’d finished her task. He, in fact, didn’t like his girls mean and feral. She was not the girl for him.

Then again, he still wasn’t sure he had a read on Isabelle West yet. He wouldn’t say she was mean, exactly. But as for feral...well, there was something a little wild about her. Something unfiltered. She said what she meant and wasn’t coy about her moods.

Jill, waving away Tom’s praise for her food, sent them out the door with warnings about ice on the steps. The woman was truly an amazing cook, not to mention a damn good pastry chef. He’d have to find one of her cookbooks and have Jill sign it for his sister. Wendy adored cooking. And she was terrible at it. But Tom liked to make her happy, so he went to her place once a month for a pleasant, polite evening with Mom and Dad and Wendy’s husband and kids, and he ate her awful dinners without complaint. Cookbooks hadn’t helped in the past, but maybe Jill’s would be the right fit.

“You’ve got Jill wrapped around your finger,” Isabelle said, the words warm instead of accusing.

“You have that turned around. I’d die for that woman.”

Isabelle’s laugh rang loud and pure into the night as they walked down the driveway to the road. “She’s easy to love.”

“But she likes living alone?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe nobody is worthy of her. Or maybe love isn’t all that great.”

He shot her a look, but she was staring straight ahead, her small smile lit by the snow. “And which one is it for you?” he asked.

“Oh, me? I love living alone. And love definitely isn’t all that great.”

He’d heard that kind of sentiment before, but never with such good cheer. “I’d say that’s cynical, but you sound happy about it.”

She finally looked at him. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring. Do you live alone?”

“Yes.”

“No wife or kids? Are you depressed about it? Are you pining away?”

His lips twitched at the idea of sitting in the window of his apartment, staring yearningly into the night, like a sappy scene from a bad movie. “No. But I travel quite a bit.”

“A woman in every port?”

“Not quite,” he said with a grin. “But you make Mammoth and Casper and Cheyenne sound more promising than they are.”

“Exotic locales. Exciting adventures. Femme fatales.”

“I see you’ve been spying on me.”

She nodded, still more reserved with him than she was with Jill. “Well, I don’t travel, but I’m not lonely. I have my work, my friends and my home. And internet porn. Life is good.”

Tom tripped over a snowdrift and nearly fell flat on his face. Isabelle laughed as he dusted snow off his knee.

So much for her reserve. “If you said that to shock me, it worked,” he said.

“I said it because it’s true.” She grinned over her shoulder as she kept moving. “Try to keep up.”

He had a feeling she didn’t mean walking, but he hurried to catch up all the same. Silence fell over them as Tom tried to come up with a question that wasn’t “So what kind of porn do you like?” but his brain was stuck on the topic, so he kept his mouth shut.

Still, the silence was nice on a night like this. Their boots crunched in the dry snow, and there was the occasional thump of snow falling off tree branches, but other than that, it was only the black sky and white stars and their breath turning the air pale around them. And this very odd woman smiling at her own thoughts.

When they reached her driveway, her smile disappeared, and she shot him an arch look.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said in answer to her irritation.

She shook her head but didn’t argue when he started up the driveway with her.

“This is a gorgeous place,” he said. “I keep thinking I’d love to live outside town, but I’m not sure I want to deal with commuting in winter.”

“We get snowed in a few times a year, so I’m lucky I never have to be anywhere. And Jill always has food. I have had to strap on snowshoes on occasion to make it to her place, but it’s worth the trouble.”

“Clearly. She should open a restaurant.”

“I think she likes the solitude more than she lets on. She sold her last restaurant for a bundle, and her cookbooks sell nicely. People still love cookbooks, apparently, even in this age of ebooks and internet recipes. It’s the pictures, I think.”

“And you? You must be a pretty great artist. Jackson is hardly a cheap place to live.”

“I do all right.” She didn’t elaborate. She was clearly more comfortable telling him about Jill than speaking about herself.

“I read some stories about the judge,” she said as they trudged up the steepest part of her drive. “Do you really think he’s in danger?”

“Obviously, we take any threats seriously, but these guys associate with some groups that have strong feelings about the federal government. And they already killed two troopers.”

“I know.”

“Better safe than sorry. And the judge is isolated out here. You should be careful. I mean it.”

She nodded and stopped at the foot of her steps. “Okay. I guess I should thank you for walking me home, then.”

“You should, but I’m not sure you will.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say something gracious like ‘Just doing my job, ma’am’?”

“I would, but you didn’t actually thank me yet,” he reminded her.

“I guess I didn’t.” She smiled before she jogged up the porch steps. “Have a nice walk home, Marshal.”

Tom rolled his eyes when she opened her door. “You didn’t lock the door?”

“Oh.” She paused halfway in and winced. “I meant to, but I’m not in the habit.”

Tom shook his head. “Listen, I don’t want to piss you off, but could I take a quick look around before I leave?”

“Is this a ploy to come in for a nightcap?”

“No.”

“Peek at my etchings?”

He kept his mouth flat.

“Find out more about that internet porn?”

“Now you’re definitely doing it on purpose.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Are you complaining?”

He hadn’t been complaining, exactly. It wasn’t that he minded her talking about sex. He just wanted to be prepared for it so he could act like a seasoned and stoic officer of the law instead of a blushing teenager.

“I’m not letting you in my house,” she finally said. She was haloed by the entryway light, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Please?” he tried.

“I might have left my laptop open,” she said drily.

Okay. So she didn’t want to be alone in her house at night with a strange man. He could certainly understand that. “You could wait here. Watch from the doorway.”

Her head tilted as if she were confused by the suggestion. “Oh,” she finally said. Her forehead creased. “Look—”

Whatever she’d been about to say, it was cut off by a loud thud from somewhere behind her. Her eyes went wide, and Tom put his hand on the gun at his hip. “Step outside, please, Ms. West.”

She actually did as he’d asked, her hostility forgotten in the fear of the moment.

“There’s no one else staying here?”

“No,” she whispered.

Tom drew his gun and stepped slowly in, switching off the light to make himself less visible from the dark rooms deeper inside the house. “Stay out of the doorway,” he said to Isabelle, relieved when her shadow disappeared and left a clean rectangle of moonlight on the wall.

He was reaching for his cell to call for backup when something shot from the darkness and moved toward him. Before he could aim, it was past his feet and still moving.

Isabelle shrieked when the shadow flew out the doorway. He spun and ran toward her.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “It was just Bear.”

“A bear?” He scanned the porch and driveway.

“My cat, Bear.”

Tension fell from his shoulders like a weight tumbling off. “Your cat.”

“You scared him. He doesn’t like people.”

“Big surprise. But we don’t know that he made that noise. Wait here.”

She didn’t object. The strange man you knew was better than the one you didn’t, apparently, so she let him move past her back into the house.

Enough light came through the front window to let him navigate the living room. It didn’t take him long to discover a framed photograph lying facedown on the carpet. It appeared to have fallen from an end table that held a small plate with half a sandwich on it. He picked up the metal frame. It was heavy enough to have made the sound they’d heard.

Tom switched on the light and saw that some of the meat had been pulled from under the bread. He put the gun away. “I think I discovered the crime. You didn’t finish your lunch, and your cat was cleaning up for you.”

She poked her head around the door frame. “Oh. Sounds about right.”

She switched on the overhead light, revealing the rest of the room. It was simpler than he’d expected for an artist. A couch and chairs and a flat-screen TV along with a bookshelf stuffed full of paperbacks. And the laptop sitting dark and seemingly harmless on a desk that was crammed into a corner.

He looked at the photo in his hand, hoping for a little more insight into this woman. It was a picture of her with two other women, their arms around each other. Sisters or friends, maybe.

He glanced around for more photos, but only found two paintings on the walls.

One was a man, turned away, his eyes focused somewhere distant. His hair curled over his ear, and wind blew his shirt tight to his back. Pine trees rose up in front of him.

If not for the signature across the bottom corner, Tom would’ve thought it was a photograph at first glance; it was that stark and crisp.

The other painting was a completely different style. It was a watercolor of a golden field with shadows of mountains rising far away and storm clouds rolling closer.

“Is one of them yours?”

“Yes, the portrait. I suck at landscapes. And watercolor.”

“The portrait is striking. Really spectacular.”

“Thank you,” she said simply, not offering any protest. She knew she was good, and he liked that. He was about to ask who the man was, but Isabelle’s mouth tightened as if she was waiting for just that question—and resenting that he’d ask it—so Tom tipped his head toward the dark doorway on the other side of the room. “May I please check the rest of the house? Just to be sure?”

Her eyes narrowed. She watched him for a long moment then looked around the room, as if trying to see what he was seeing. “If you really think it’s necessary. Watch out for the laundry when you get to my bedroom. I haven’t quite kept up with it this...week.”

“Got it.” He flipped on the hallway light and moved to the right toward two open doors. The first was a small bedroom with no piles of laundry and no intruder. He checked the closet and moved on.

The second door was clearly her bedroom. A king-size bed was piled high with silver-and-blue pillows on top of a rumpled gray comforter. Despite the massive size of the thing, it looked as though she used the whole big mattress. There wasn’t a smooth spot of blanket on it. Or she’d had a guest sometime recently. He couldn’t rule that out.

Other than that, the bedroom was fairly unremarkable aside from the pile of laundry at the foot of her bed. There were also a few clean clothes stacked neatly on top of a dresser as if she’d gotten distracted before putting them away.

Tom moved toward a door in the far wall and found a large bathroom, empty aside from a can of turpentine on the counter and a smaller pile of laundry. He checked the closet, surprised there were still clean clothes remaining in there, then shut off the lights and headed for the other side of the house.

It was quick work. There was one more bedroom that seemed to be used for storage, and past it, a laundry room with a door that creaked in protest at being opened after so long. The last door led to the garage, which was empty aside from an SUV and a few very large canvases wrapped in plastic.

He found Isabelle in the kitchen, pouring a glass of water and not the least bit concerned about the security of her home. He shook his head. “I guess I should’ve asked you to wait in the living room until I’d cleared this area.”

She shrugged. “I would’ve yelled if I found someone.”

“Is that the last room?” he asked, tipping his chin toward the double doors.

“Yep, it’s my studio.”

He hesitated a moment. He’d never been in the home of a real working artist before. “I won’t be invading your privacy if I look inside?”

“You’re invading it right now, but I think I’ll survive.”

He opened the doors to cool air and a strong smell of paint. Even before he reached for the light he could make out easels highlighted by the moonlight that streamed through tall windows. Their shadows stretched across the wood floor, the long shapes making his neck prickle with alarm. Anyone could be standing there. He’d unbuttoned his gun strap, but he hadn’t drawn it. The likelihood that anyone was actually here was minuscule, but he still put his hand on the butt of his gun as he swept the wall with his fingers.

They finally found the switch, and the darkest shadows vanished in the sudden onslaught of light.

Her studio was a large room, and the scattered canvases blocked a lot of the view, but Tom could see practically every corner when he dropped down to peer past the forest of easel legs. It looked clear. He blew out a sigh, but his relief lasted for only the two seconds it took him to stand and refocus his eyes on the nearest canvas.

This time his breath left him on a rush, and he stepped back in alarm.

What the hell?

His gaze skipped off that painting and moved to the next one, trying to escape the sight or just make sense of it, but the second one was no better. Just a mess of blood and sinew and flayed skin and glistening muscles.

Narrowing his eyes, he forced himself to step closer to the first easel, but that only made it worse. Her painting was of a human abdomen, except that this person’s skin had been peeled off to reveal the connective tissue beneath it. It was so incredibly detailed that he could make out the smallest capillaries on the underside of the peeled skin.

Even worse than the paintings were the photos taped to the sides of the canvas frames. These were actual pictures of bodies stripped of their skin and humanity. They were corpses. And she was re-creating them.

“You don’t like them?” she asked from only a few feet away. Tom jumped, spinning toward her, his hand tightening on his gun. He didn’t draw it, though. He had that much sense left.

“What the hell kind of art is this?” Was she a provocateur or just some sort of sicko?

She grinned at him, and he changed “sicko” to “serial killer” in his mind. Clearly, she was sociopathic. “I’m an anatomical painter.”

“Yeah, I damn well see that.”

Now she was actually laughing. “You should see your face.” She wiped a tear from her eye. She was laughing so hard she was crying.

“What is this?” he barked.

“Just what I said it is. I work on commission for textbooks and medical art companies.”

He blinked and forced his tension down a notch, but it wasn’t easy. He hated seeing dead bodies. Really hated it. “Textbooks?” he managed to ask more calmly.

“Yes. Biology. Anatomy. Some surgical instruction. Photos don’t really work well. There’s not enough definition and contrast, usually. And digital art sucks. Don’t tell anyone I said that. Ninety percent of work is digital now. 3-D rendering has its uses, I suppose. But my niche is oil. Not very common these days. It’s specialty work.”

He looked at the nearest painting again then turned back to her. He could feel the horrified confusion etched into his face, and he could see it in the laughter that still swam in her eyes.

“I also do posters for doctors’ offices. You know, the ‘This is your knee joint’ kind of thing.”

“This is—” he shook his head “—awful.”

“Really?” She shrugged, as if she couldn’t fathom his reaction. “You probably don’t want to see the comparison ones, then. A small child winding up for a softball pitch on one side, and the same small child as a skeleton in the next. They’re a little morbid, but the kids love them.”

“The kids?” he gasped, looking over his shoulder again. His eyes focused on the next easel and a photo taped there. It was a thigh, half the flesh removed, the other half still intact, a tattoo of a dragon livid against the pale skin. He felt the blood leaving his head and took a deep breath to try to steady himself. “Jesus, Isabelle. How can you do this?”

Her smile finally faded. “What do you mean? It’s my job. Medical students need to learn about the body. So do high school kids. Would you rather schoolkids had to work with cadavers?”

The word cadaver was almost too much for him. The memory of his brother’s pale, stiff body flashed into his head, but he forced it back. He could control it. It was the same every time he had to deal with death, and death was part of his job. But this...

“This is your home,” he said. “Where you sleep at night.”

“I work here, too. It’s no big deal.”

No big deal. Right. Here he’d been warming to her, and the woman was a freak. A freak who looked at pictures of dead people all day. In her secluded cabin. In the dark woods. “Well,” he managed to say, “the house is all clear. You’re safe.”

“Thank you. Want to sit down and stay awhile?” she teased.

“No, thanks,” he muttered as he brushed by her. Her laughter followed him to the front door. “Have a good night,” he called over his shoulder. “And lock the door.”