Love with the Proper Stranger (22 page)

The phone rang, and Mariah picked up the cordless extension she’d brought downstairs with her, half hoping it was John and half hoping it was not. “Hello?”

“Hey, girl, how’s your back?” It was Laronda, the site coordinator from Foundations for Families.

“It doesn’t hurt at all anymore,” Mariah told her. “And I just got the all clear from the doctor this morning. I’m allowed to go back to work.”

“God is truly watching over me,” Laronda exclaimed melodramatically. “I’m in desperate need of roofers. Tropical storm Otto is heading on almost a direct path to the Washburtons’ house. It wasn’t supposed to rain—at least not hard—until the end of the week, and we gambled and took advantage of a local electrician who had some time off. We had the electrical work done before the roof was finished. But now the weather bureau is saying oops they made a big mistake. We’re gonna get high winds
and
flooding rain. We need to get that baby sealed up tight before old Otto makes some bad voodoo by mixing water with those wires. Can you help? We’re doing a blitz—round the clock from now until we’re done. I’ll take you for as long a shift as you can give me.”

As usual, Mariah wasn’t wearing a watch. “What time is it?”

“Nearly noon. Just say yes and I can have the van pick you up in fifteen minutes. Door-to-door service today.”

“I’ll be ready. But, Laronda—”

“Bless you, girl!”

“I have to be home by seven.”

“We’ll get you there.”

Mariah took one last look at her pictures of John before she turned off the light and went up the basement stairs. She’d be back by seven, all right. And then she was going to get some answers.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

M
ARIAH’S SLIDING GLASS
door was open, the screen unlocked.

“Mariah?” Miller called.

No one answered. Nothing moved.

Miller stepped into the house and closed the screen door behind him.

Without Mariah to brighten the place up with her laughter and life, the room seemed almost shabby. Miller moved quietly to the dining-room table, intending to slip the two photographs he’d borrowed and had copied back into the pile. She’d never even know they were gone.

In theory, it worked, but in theory, Mariah hadn’t checked up on him. In reality, she had. The other pictures of Serena had been separated out from the stack. She knew he’d taken two of them. He set the two in question down on the table with the others.

It didn’t really matter. He’d had every intention of telling her the truth—and he could now. During his short meeting with Pat Blake, this portion of the case had been officially closed. Hanging around here and waiting for Serena to return had been deemed a waste of time and finances. Even at this moment, Daniel was back at the resort, packing up the equipment.

Miller had been helping him, determined to get the
work done and his report filed in time to meet Mariah for dinner at seven. But something Daniel had said during the meeting had started him thinking. Daniel had pointed out that in the past, Serena had always been so careful about having her picture taken. Was it possible that she knew about these pictures?

Miller knew it damn well was possible that she was on to him. She could have found the bugs in her house and correctly identified Miller as FBI. And if that was the case, she might’ve purposely left these pictures behind as part of some kind of weird game she was playing.

But what exactly was that game?

Had she left intending to alter her appearance so thoroughly that leaving photos behind didn’t even matter? Was this possibly some kind of arrogant challenge?

Or had she truly slipped up? Had she found the microphones in her house and run scared? And after she calmed down enough, would she realize that because Mariah was a photographer it was more than likely she had pictures of Serena, taken either intentionally or unintentionally? And if that was the case, would Serena come back? And if she did come back, would Mariah then be in danger?

That thought had made Miller break out in a cold sweat, and he’d called Mariah, but she didn’t pick up the phone. Thinking she might be on the beach enjoying the early-afternoon sunshine, Miller had left Daniel to deal with the equipment as he took the car and drove out to Mariah’s cottage as quickly as he could.

“Mariah?” he said again, moving into the kitchen.

A jar of peanut butter was out and open on the
kitchen counter. She’d told him the first time they’d met that leaving food out in the kitchen was an invitation to disaster. Ants or enormous American cockroaches would come in almost immediately and they were nearly impossible to get rid of.

A plate with bread crumbs sat nearby—as if she’d made herself a sandwich there, then taken it with her as she’d left.

Left to go where? Her bike was leaning up against the side of the house. He’d seen it when he’d arrived. There was no sign of her in the yard or out on the beach.

Wherever she’d gone, she’d left in a hurry.

Miller made a complete circuit of the house. There were signs in the bathroom that Mariah had taken a quick shower—a wet towel had been tossed onto the floor along with the robe she’d been wearing this morning. A tube of toothpaste was open and left out on the sink. In her bedroom, the bed was unmade, the sheets still rumpled from their lovemaking.

Miller sat down on the edge of the bed, letting himself lie back among the sheets. He closed his eyes, breathing in the sweet scent of Mariah’s perfume. Where had she gone in such a blessed hurry?

Even with his eyes closed, he could picture the house and all its telltale signs of a hasty exit. He was known for his ability to take the clues he’d been given and hypothesize the most likely scenario. Only this time, he didn’t much care for the scenario he’d almost instantly come up with.

He had one Mariah Robinson living under an assumed name, telling him specifically that he could not have those pictures of Serena. He had Mariah go
through the photos after he’d left, pulling out the shots of Serena and discovering that he had, in fact, taken two of those pictures with him. He had Mariah quickly take a shower, quickly make a sandwich and then leave the house in such a hurry that she didn’t even lock the back door.

Going where? To meet Serena? To warn her that Miller had those pictures?

Miller could place Mariah—or Marie Carver, her real name—in Phoenix, Arizona, three years ago, during the time Serena had been there, too, preparing to off husband number five. The possibility that the two women had met at that time opened the door to all kinds of nasty questions, such as: Had Mariah/Marie come here to Garden Isle to act as some kind of accomplice or assistant? Was Mariah/Marie some kind of Black Widow killer-in-training?

Miller sat up. Dammit! He’d obviously been working for the FBI for too long. How could he possibly think such things about Mariah? Sweet, gentle Mariah…

He hadn’t checked the basement because it was dark, but now he went down there anyway, hoping to find something that would tell him where Mariah had gone.

He’d never been inside her darkroom, and he turned on the light as he pushed open the door. It was a small room, with built-in counters lining the walls. It had a sink and shelves for chemicals and other supplies—even a small refrigerator for storing film. Different kinds of equipment were set up on the counters, including something big that looked like an enlarger.

Miller knew with just one glance that this room—combined with the beachfront property and the incredible view of the ocean—was the reason Mariah had
rented this particular cottage. Dozens of places were more lavishly furnished or nicely decorated, but Mariah cared more about having a place with a darkroom.

There were photos hanging from some kind of clothesline assembly, curling slightly around the edges as they dried. Miller looked closer. The pictures were of him.

They were black-and-white photographs, but they still managed to capture the beauty of the sunrise. He and Princess were just silhouettes in many of them, but in several, Mariah had used her zoom lens, and he could clearly see his face, etched with relentless fatigue. The pictures echoed his pain.

But there, right in the middle of these pictures of his bleakly grim face, was a close-up. It was one of the pictures Mariah had taken just that morning. He was smiling at her, smiling into the camera.

Miller stared at the picture. It was him. He knew it was him. He remembered her taking the picture. He remembered smiling. But he’d never seen himself looking quite like that before. His eyes were reflecting the morning light coming in through the window and they seemed to sparkle with warmth and life. His smile was wide and sincere.

He looked nothing like a man who had been dubbed “The Robot.”

And he wasn’t, Miller realized. When he was with Mariah, he
wasn’t
a robot. He was a real, live, flesh-and-blood man, capable of feeling—and releasing—deep emotions.

He closed his eyes, remembering the way she had held him as he’d given in and cried for Tony for the first time in two years. He remembered the strength of
the emotion he’d felt as he’d held her in his arms after making love.

That man, that flesh-and-blood man would never have entertained such doubts about Mariah. It was only “The Robot” who could think that way—mistrusting everyone.

God, he wanted Mariah to come back. He wanted her to transform him once again into that real man. He despised himself for being this way, for having all these doubts about her.

With one last look back at Mariah’s photographs, Miller turned off the darkroom light and went upstairs. As he locked the back door, he heard the crunch of tires in the gravel driveway and turned to look out the front window, hoping it was Mariah.

It wasn’t.

It was
Serena’s
car pulling into the driveway. It was Serena. My God, she’d come back. Miller’s heart nearly stopped. Then it kicked back in, beating double time with a vengeance.

As he watched, she parked next to his car and got out. She didn’t seem perturbed by the fact that his car was there—she knew he and Mariah were friends. And Miller knew from the time he’d spent with her that Serena had complete confidence in her sexual allure. Miller had no doubt that Serena didn’t view Maria as any kind of a rival.

He moved to the front door, intending to step outside when Serena rang the bell. But she didn’t ring, she just opened the screen and came in.

“Mariah’s not here,” he told her. “I stopped by to see how she was doing. The back door was unlocked, and—”

Serena kissed him. It was a kiss meant to curl his hair, to thoroughly numb him, to drop him—dizzy with passion and desire—to his knees.

Instead, Miller had to fight to hide his revulsion. She’d caught him off guard, that much was true. He kept close track of her hands, suddenly keenly aware that this woman might very well have killed at least seven times by forcing a knife blade into her husbands’ hearts. It was true that he was not her husband, but it was possible she knew he was FBI. Although if she
did
know that, this was one hell of a dangerous game she was playing by returning to Garden Isle.

“Did you miss me?” she murmured.

“Absolutely,” he lied.

As quickly as she’d started kissing him, she broke away, making a quick circuit around the room, stopping to look at the photos on the dining-room table. She picked up one of the pictures of herself.

“Oh, good,” she said. “Mariah must’ve set these aside to give to me. I’d asked her about them last week. She’s a remarkable photographer, isn’t she? I mean, for an amateur.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s pretty good.”

“For an amateur,” Serena repeated.

As Miller watched, she slipped all four of the pictures into her purse.

“So where did our little Mariah—or should I say
big
Mariah—go off to?” Serena mused. “Her tool belt’s not by the door. I’ll wager she’s off trying to save the world, one family at a time.”

Miller couldn’t believe it. For all his highly touted skills as one of the FBI’s top agents, he hadn’t thought
to check and see if Mariah’s tool belt was missing. Sure enough. Her belt and her backpack were both gone.

“I’ve never been down this hall past the loo,” Serena said, disappearing down the hallway that led to Mariah’s bedroom. “What’s down here? Her bedroom probably.”

Miller followed her. “Serena, don’t go back there.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re invading Mariah’s privacy.”

“She left the door unlocked, didn’t she?” Serena said almost gaily, sitting down on Mariah’s unmade bed, surveying the small bedroom. “I don’t know why she lives in a little dumpy place like this. She has plenty of money, you know.”

Miller stood in the doorway. “We should leave.”

He would’ve had to be a fool not to catch the meaning of the glint in her eyes. She was coming on to him. She was attempting to seduce him right there in Mariah’s room, on Mariah’s bed.

“I suppose we could go to your place.” Serena leaned back on both elbows as she gazed up at him. “But I confess I like it here. Think of the excitement from knowing that Mariah could come home any moment and find us here together.”

God, the thought made him sick, but he couldn’t deny that this was what he’d wanted for so long. He’d wanted an opportunity to be in a position where it would seem natural for him to propose marriage to this woman.

But he hadn’t wanted to do it like this.

Not here in this room where he’d discovered such pleasures with Mariah.

But he couldn’t take Serena back to his room at the
resort where Daniel was packing up crates of electronic equipment. They’d brought the gear into the resort in inconspicuous suitcases, but there had been no need to leave with it that way, so most of it was clearly labeled with its destination, Quantico—FBI headquarters—in big black, official-looking letters.

“Why don’t we take a walk on the beach?” Miller suggested.

“In these shoes?” Serena reached for his hand, tugging him down so that he was sitting next to her on the bed.

Mariah’s bed.

It took everything Miller had in him not to stand up, not to pull away. Apprehending Serena was his job. Catching a killer was never fun. He didn’t have to like it, he just had to do it.