Next to Die (8 page)

His hot glare raked her from head to toe. “If you tell a soul about last night,” he warned, articulating each word, “then you can kiss your career good-bye. Is that clear enough?”

Puzzled, Penny sought the reason for his threat. What on earth was he afraid of? That she would accuse him of indecent behavior? Did he even remember kissing her? “Crystal, sir,” she said, searching his locked features for an answer. “Perhaps you’ll tone it down next time, so that I’m less privy to your business,” she suggested, indignant that he would think her capable of such low behavior.

A dull blush highlighted his cheekbones, and she felt a little better for it.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing,” he added, revealing his confusion, “but whatever it is, you’re wasting your time.”

“I don’t play games,” she told him, dropping the ‘sir’ from her statement.

Her answer made him hesitate. She could see him struggling to understand her.

“You cleaned my rug,” he said, his tone still accusing.

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

Did he really want an honest answer? “Because I thought you’d already dealt with enough.”

His frown became ferocious. He took a step forward, and Penny took a cautionary step back. “Leave me alone,” he said through his teeth. “I don’t need a nosy neighbor prying into my business.”

Penny was too hurt by the word “prying” to make a quick reply. Uncertainty chased across his face in the wake of his anger, before he pivoted, stalking toward the door. It closed quietly behind him.

Five seconds elapsed before the silence was broken by the sound of running feet. “Oh, my God!” Ophelia cried, bursting into the kitchen, her face a reflection of outrage. “Was that your SEAL?” she asked, seizing Penny’s arms. “Who does he think he was, talking to you like that?”

Penny blinked away her numbness. Consternation rose in its place as she realized that Ophelia had just overheard every word Commander Montgomery had said. “Don’t worry about it,” she answered firmly. “He wasn’t threatening me; he was protecting his privacy.”

“What do you mean he wasn’t threatening you?” Lia cried. “I heard what he said. He implied that he was going to ruin your career. And for what? All you did was patch up his cuts and clean his carpet.” Penny’d had to explain why she slept until ten this morning.

“I said forget it,” Penny repeated. “He’s been through enough, okay? He didn’t mean to threaten me. If he really knew me, he wouldn’t have bothered.”

“Oh, come on!” Ophelia propped her hands on her jeans-clad hips. “There’s no excuse for him talking to you that way! He’s the one who got drunk last night.”

“You need to forget about that, too,” Penny cautioned.

“What?”

“Stories like that can damage a man’s career. He’s hurting inside. Try to be sensitive to that and forget the rest, okay?”

Her sister eyed her with the same incredulity as the commander had moments before. “I can’t believe you’re just going to let that pass,” she marveled.

“Well, I am,” said Penny calmly. “He’s grieving,” she added, wondering if perhaps he’d watched his man die and even tried to save him. He’d been hit by shrapnel, he’d said, implying that there’d been an explosion.

Ophelia’s eyes flew suddenly wide. “You’re crazy about him,” she exclaimed. “You have to be. Otherwise you’d never let him talk to you that way.”

Penny tried to deny the truth, but she’d never been good at lying. “I admire him for his commitment to this country,” she answered unconvincingly. “Now leave it alone, Ophelia. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Thoughts glimmered in Lia’s jewel-like eyes. “Whatever,” she said airily.

That wasn’t the reassurance Penny was looking for. “I mean it, sis. Don’t even look at him if you see him again.”

“Okay,” said Ophelia, throwing up her hands.

With a sigh of mistrust, Penny moved past her, en route to fetch her purse. “I’m going to the store to pick up pumpkins,” she said, expecting her sister to tag along. Ophelia had developed a habit of shadowing her lately. “Are you coming?”

“No, I don’t want to miss
Oprah
,” she said.

With a sound of disgust, Penny headed to the door. “Why don’t you work on your résumé?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Which was all she’d ever done with her journalism degree. “I’ll be back in an hour,” Penny added. As she shut the door behind her, she scanned the street, as was her habit, to make sure that Eric wasn’t stalking them.

According to the FBI agent, Hannah Lindstrom, the FBI was scrutinizing all previous investigations. Penny had faxed them a copy of her father’s death certificate, which made reference to a hit-and-run. If the FBI could show that Danny Price was murdered, Eric might be arrested, and his freaky prank phone calls would come to an end.

The sooner the better, Penny thought, slipping into her powder blue Toyota Matrix. As she backed out of the driveway, she sneaked a peek at her neighbor’s house.

He’d closed the blinds in all of his windows. Now he was blocking the world out, hiding in his lair.

What secret was he guarding? she wondered. She couldn’t just dismiss the question, any more than she could stop Joe Montgomery from commandeering her thoughts.

Chapter Five

Lia waited for Penny’s car to disappear before she stalked out of the house and across the adjoining lawns to the neighbor’s front door. Undeterred by all the closed blinds, she pounded on the oak veneer, tugged her sweater over her glittering belly ring, and waited.

This Montgomery fellow didn’t realize it yet, but he was the first man Penny had shown an interest in since Brad, the fiancé who’d dumped her. And since half the reason Brad left was Penny’s devotion at the time to Lia’s rehabilitation, Lia figured it was her duty to set the SEAL straight.

It took forever for him to answer. When the door yawned open, she wavered at the unfriendly look on his face. “I’m Penny’s sister,” she announced. Her training in journalism kept her voice strong and steady. “And I’m here to give you a reality check.”

His bandaged eyebrow quirked, but he didn’t try to stop her.

“Number one, Penny is the most selfless, hard-working, nurturing person you will ever have the privilege of knowing in your entire life.”

His eyes narrowed, but she was just warming up.

“That you could speak to her in the way you did, after what she did for you, staying up half the night to scrub your carpet, makes you the most selfish, self-righteous jerk I have ever laid eyes on. If you knew what Penny gave up for me when our father died, you’d be licking the soles of her feet.”

She could feel the incredulity building in him, but she refused to back down. “Don’t even think about saying another word to her that is less than humbly apologetic. Who do you think has been raking your leaves and feeding your cat, for God’s sake? You need to wake up and get a life!”

With that, she whirled away, chin angled into the air as she cut through his mulch bed to hike it back to Penny’s.

Her pricked ears caught the words he finally growled. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

She was dying to look back but worried that the smirk on her face might push him over the edge. He’d looked a little unpredictable there toward the end, and it wasn’t her intent to incite him to violence, just to open his eyes to Penny’s virtues.

Dazed, Joe shut the door against the cold.

He stood in his chilled foyer, processing the awful fact that a third person had witnessed the exchange between him and Florence Nightingale. He cringed to consider that she’d probably heard every nasty word he’d said.

Her scolding words returned to him.
If you knew what Penny gave up for me when our father died, you’d be licking the soles of her feet
.
Who do you think has been raking your leaves and feeding your cat, for God’s sake?

Okay, so Lieutenant Price had tended his yard and fed his cat while he was gone. Go figure. Apparently, in addition to being nosy, she was quite the do-gooder. He applauded her selflessness, but he’d never asked for her help.

He limped back to his leather sofa and eased painfully onto one end while checking the score to see what he’d missed. On the widescreen TV, his alma mater, USC, was getting the snot beat out of them.

His gaze flickered to the carpet. If Penny Price hadn’t scrubbed it last night, he’d have cleaning professionals crawling all over the room.

With a mutter of annoyance, Joe snatched up his beer bottle. “So that makes me a selfish, self-righteous jerk?” he asked his cat, taking a swig.

Felix sat at his feet, glowering, and Joe realized that he’d forgotten to feed him. With a groan, he pushed to his feet.

Okay, so maybe he was a little self-absorbed, enough to keep him from seeing what his neighbor was up to. Honestly, he’d never given her much thought, except to notice that she was in the Navy, just like him.

She wasn’t the type of woman he tended to notice. She had a trim but unremarkable figure, did nothing with her hair, wore very little makeup.

He dumped the contents of the can into Felix’s bowl and slowly straightened. Her face was pleasant but not striking. In fact, only her Caribbean blue eyes could truly be called beautiful.

They seemed to see right through him, which he found totally disconcerting.

She’d looked at him like that last night, when he’d been sitting ignominiously on the toilet seat. His breath caught as snatches of their conversation returned to him.

Where’d you go this morning?

Funeral.

Who died?

One of my men.

I’m sorry. That must have been awful for you.

Shit. He’d prided himself on being circumspect about SEAL business. The Inquisition could not have gotten him to confess the tiniest detail of any given mission. But with two short questions, Penny Price had him telling all and blubbering like a baby.

He’d actually cried in front of her!

With a gagging sound, Joe tossed the can in the trash. How humiliating!

His memory fast-forwarded, and he froze at the vision of her lying in his arms, her eyes glimmering like aquamarines in the semidarkness. He could still feel the texture of her lips under his. She’d tasted so sweet, almost familiar.

“Oh, no!” Joe breathed, as the possibility that he’d slept with her had every hair on his body prickling in alarm.

He couldn’t have.

He wouldn’t have. Or would he?

He dragged his fingers through his hair. God forbid that she accuse him of sexual misconduct. Wouldn’t that be the nail in his coffin?

He swiveled and hobbled to his bedroom. Thrusting his door open, he approached the rumpled bed, seeking evidence that might suggest what he’d done.

His beige sheets appeared pristine, hardly used at all.

He stripped them, all the same, and carried them to his laundry room to run a load of wash. As the washer hummed and swished, Joe took a long, sobering shower, then shaved the bristles off his face.

What does she want from me?
he wondered, so distracted that he nearly cut himself with his razor.

For the most part, he liked women. They were entertaining, mysterious, with physical attributes that drove him crazy. But in his experience, they were also ambitious, conniving, and calculating. Women wanted Joe for what he could give them. Some were after his money. Others got off on the fact that he was an officer, with plenty of prestige. Some just wanted to be with him so they could screw around when he was overseas. The way he figured, Penelope Price wasn’t any different.

She would bear watching, he decided. If she turned out to be as selfless as her little sister insisted, he’d apologize. On the other hand, if she became a thorn in his side, she’d soon regret it. He valued his privacy above all things.

Vinny DeInnocentis pounded on the apartment door in a tidy but aging complex two blocks from the oceanfront. A peek through the window revealed a lavishly furnished, whimsically decorated apartment. It looked exactly like the kind of place where the flame-haired beauty who’d crashed into his car would live. He nearly had her now.

“Can I help you?” demanded a voice from across a breezeway.

Vinny found a middle-aged woman glaring at him. She wore curlers and a housecoat, her feet stuffed into pink slippers. “Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for the young lady who lives here, Ophelia Price?” He’d passed her license plate number to a friend in law enforcement, who, in turn, gave him her name and mailing address. “Do you know when she’ll be back?” he asked respectfully.

The woman took quick inventory of his battle-dress uniform. “
Nein,
she von’t be back. She mooft out last veek,” she said, revealing German origins.

“But her furniture’s still inside,” he pointed out.

“She rents the place to friends of hers,” the frau replied, tightening her robe against the cold.

“Well, do you know where she went to?” Vinny asked, doubting the woman’s story. Perhaps she was Ophelia’s self-appointed watchdog.