Talk Me Down (20 page)

“Come in here. Come in here and I’ll show you.”

Ben stepped forward immediately, nodding. “Show me.”

But Brenda didn’t fall for it. The gun jumped in anger. “You first,” she spat at Molly as he shook his head.

“Let her go. If you let her go, I’ll sit with you and you can show me anything. That’s what you want, right? To show me the truth?”

“Yes.”
Brenda began to cry in a strange, wordless growl, and Molly realized it was the sound they’d heard from the doorway. But Brenda wasn’t distracted by her grief. She kept the gun pointed straight at Molly and swiped at her teary eyes. “But she can’t go. Not until you see her for what she is.”

“Okay. All right. Show me, and then she’ll go.”

Hell, yeah,
Molly was smart enough not to say. Slutty pornographer she might be, but she’d be a
live
pornographer. She was getting more scared now, even though she knew that Ben wouldn’t let anything happen to her and Brenda wouldn’t hurt Ben.

So when the gun waved her forward, Molly walked. The closer she came to the dining room, the more words seemed to appear on the walls. Words like writhing snakes that danced and jerked, and Molly couldn’t read a thing.

Until Brenda hit the light switch. The little desk lamp hadn’t revealed much, but the dining room chandelier sure did. Words like
wet
and
tremble
and
tongue
leapt from the wall.
Fingers
and
thighs
and
cock
written so hard that she’d gouged out the drywall in crumbly dust.

“Oh, shit,” Molly muttered. There was no doubt what the words meant. Her laptop was open and glowing on the desk, and she recognized most of the phrases.

“This is her,” Brenda said. “This is what she is.”

Ben was shaking his head when Molly looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

“She writes this, this…this
smut.
”

Ben still looked only confused.

“She writes this!” Brenda shouted, gesturing a wide circle with the marker. Then she stalked over to the armoire. The doors lay broken beside it, and stacks of books were displayed inside. Brenda grabbed one and tossed it at Ben.

Molly watched him turn it over in his hands for a moment before she looked back to the black scratches on the wall.

“Holly Summers.” Brenda’s voice made the name sound like a sin. “That’s her. Holly Summers. She writes these books, these disgusting stories.”

Molly walked closer to one of the walls, wrinkling her nose. “You know this really isn’t my best work. And it’s not fair to take it out of context. ‘His tongue touched the pink peak,’ is never gonna sound good if you just blurt it out like that. You’ve got to build tension and characterization and…”

Blinking from the hypnosis of self-critique, Molly turned to find them both frowning at her. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “It’s true, Ben. I write erotic romance. That’s it. End of story.”

Brenda rolled her eyes. “Oh, you wish. That’s just the start of it.”

Patting the flat of the book against his palm, Ben offered the woman a careful smile. “You’ve solved the mystery. Good job. I had no idea.”

“Don’t humor me! I’m not stupid. You think I don’t know how you see me? I’ve worked for you for five years! I’ve made your coffee and brought you lunch and noticed when you’re tired. I’ve been there for you and I know you, Ben Lawson. I may not be cute or sexy. I may not wear short skirts and high heels. I’m not the type of woman that men notice, but I
know
you. I take care of you.”

“You do,” Ben agreed in a soft voice.

Brenda nodded. “But I misunderstood. My mother always says that even good men fall for the showy girls, the sluts who put out. Like
her.
” She glared at Molly.

Despite the nasty words, Molly was starting to feel bad for the woman. It wasn’t Brenda’s fault that she looked exactly like her mother. And Molly would have spent a lot more time looking stern and dour if she’d been stuck in a little house with a harpy like Brenda’s mom. If she would just wear some tailored clothing and pluck those brows, maybe she’d change her life a little. Molly was opening her mouth to suggest a makeover when Brenda stabbed the gun in her direction.

“She may be skinny and easy and enticing, but she doesn’t care about you.”

“Brenda, let’s just—”

“She must know how much you value your privacy. She knows about your father. And still she—”

“Oh, no,” Molly groaned as Ben waved her back and took a step toward Brenda.

“She doesn’t just write smut, Ben! She wrote smut about
you!
”

His hands were up again, a sign of good will. “None of this matters, Brenda.”

“Of course it matters! She’s using you, feeding her sick muse to write more sex stories about you. The whole time you were in her bed she was recording it, writing it down. She’s going to ruin you, but not before I ruin her.”

Her arm tensed, and Molly let out a little squeak of terror as she scrambled away to hide behind Ben. She wasn’t thinking about defending her work anymore, that was for sure. Trying to make herself smaller, she curled her arms tight to her belly and crouched just a foot behind Ben. His hand drifted behind his back, pinky finger trembling a little as he flattened his palm, signing her to stay still.

Like she was going anywhere.

“She wrote about me?” he asked in a near-whisper.

Brenda cried out, “Yes!” as if he’d just sprouted wings of glory. “Yes. Do you see? She wrote about you, some ridiculous story of having sex with you in that apartment above the feed store. And the new one’s even worse…”

Molly cringed, telling herself not to care about that right now. Ben took a step forward, and she wanted to follow, but he showed her his palm again and she obeyed like a loyal hound.

“Tell me,” Ben urged, moving farther away from Molly.

“You wouldn’t believe it. Disgusting stuff with ropes and whips. Horrible. As if she were trying to bring you as low as possible. Ruin you. Everyone’s going to be laughing at you, Ben.”

“But not you.”

“No,” she sobbed, the tears finally returning. “No, I knew from the start that she was bad news. I knew.”

Ben bowed his head, shaking it slowly from side to side. “You did. You tried to tell me.”

“I’d never—”

His arm moved faster than light, faster than anything Molly had ever seen. One minute he was gesturing at Brenda, fingers relaxed, friendly. And the next the gun was tumbling through the air, Brenda squealing her pain and denial.

Molly should have left. Ben was yelling for her to run, but she felt entranced by the slow somersault of the dull black weapon as if arched toward the floor.
That woman could have killed me.

Knowing she’d feel more frightened later, Molly was damned grateful for the strange shock that had settled over her. The scene between Ben and Brenda was a movie playing out for her as the gun finally banged to the floor and he pushed Brenda down and onto her stomach so he could click handcuffs into place.

“Don’t do this,” Brenda was sobbing. “Don’t do this. I love you.”

Ben muttered a pained curse under his breath, then patted her down. He didn’t find any other weapons it seemed, because he lunged to his feet to pull Molly into his arms.

“I win,” she said into his chest. “Don’t lose that hat, Chief.”

“Good God, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I think your hands are shaking.”

“No shit.” One of his arms made strange movements near her side and then she heard the click of his radio. He spoke in code, or else Molly was in more serious shock than she realized. The man on the other end seemed to understand the garbled message if the shocked reply was any indication.

Molly eased out from his distracted hold and looked toward Brenda. She was watching them, ruddy cheek pressed to the geometric rug Molly had bought three months before. Her forest-green Henley shirt clashed horribly with the red and slate-blue rectangles, and Molly felt a terrible need to get out of that room. She began to back away, Brenda’s eyes following every step.

“He won’t love you now,” she growled. “He might not love me, but he won’t love you, either.”

“I know,” Molly whispered.

Ben’s radio finally ceased to squawk and he eased his arm around her to pull her into the front room. Sirens twittered faintly somewhere, growing louder as each heartbeat passed.

“You’re pale as hell,” he complained. “In shock.”

“No shit. But I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

Guiding her over to a big chair, Ben grabbed a throw from the love seat and wrapped it around her. “I’ve got to keep an eye on Brenda. Will you be all right here? It should only be a—”

“I’m fine.”

“Andrew will be here in just a moment.”

“I hear that.”

He didn’t seem comforted by her flip attitude. His eyes lingered on her as he moved toward the dining room, but he had a criminal to watch, after all. He couldn’t babysit a shockey girlfriend.

The desperate protests from Brenda continued, but Ben didn’t utter a word. He was probably too busy thumbing through the print copies of Molly’s books. She hugged the blanket tighter and hunkered down in the chair, trying to fend off the invading feeling that this was not going to end well. The increasing racket of the siren wasn’t helping her tension. She pulled a corner of the blanket over her head.

When Andrew finally arrived, another officer in tow, slow chaos ensued around Molly’s cocoon. There were questions and curses and barked orders. Ben checked on her for a moment, then someone began snapping pictures of the nasty black words that had destroyed her walls, and he was busy again.

She was just starting to be lulled by the buzz around her, when it blinked to a brief stop.

“Call Jake for her. She’ll need a lawyer,” Ben was saying as he and Andrew walked Brenda out of the dining room between them. She seemed more subdued, but when her eyes landed on Molly, she puffed up long enough to snap, “Whore!” as they whisked her past.

Ben jerked her along to the front door and opened it to guide her through, but they were all blinded by an explosion of flashbulbs. Molly jumped up and ran to the front window, but it was actually only one flashbulb. Miles stood there snapping picture after picture as Brenda tried to turn away. Then she seemed to reconsider and turned to look full at him.

“She’s Holly Summers,” she yelled. “She won’t be able to hide the truth anymore. She’s Holly Summers, you hear me, Miles?”

“Got it!” he called cheerfully back, and Molly’s stomach dropped through the floor.

Right. This had been the ax hanging over her head as she’d sat numbly on the couch. Why she’d been so quick to agree with Brenda’s assertion that Ben wouldn’t love her. Even if Miles hadn’t been out there waiting like a buzzard, an arrest and trial were public record.

Ben knowing about her books was one thing. She’d meant to tell him in a few days anyway. But Ben knowing that everyone else knew? Not so fucking great.

Maybe she could run Miles off the road over by Killer Curve and nip this problem in the bud. Hmm. How to lure him the five miles out of town?

Molly forced her weak legs to carry her back to the couch where she collapsed in her blanket like a fuzzy red burrito. Actually, setting Miles up would be easy. She could just offer to show him something that would incriminate Ben in a huge scandal. Hell, he’d probably drive off the curve himself for that.

“Molly?”

She squeezed her eyes tighter shut, imagining a bright, sunny morning in a place where no one knew her secrets.

“Molly?”

The urgent note in Ben’s voice snapped her awake and she sat up so fast she cracked his jaw with the crown of her head. “Ow.”

“You okay?”

“I think I fell asleep.”

“We’re finished up here.”

“Then I definitely fell asleep.”

Ben nodded, his eyes more distracted than they should have been, in her opinion. “I really hate to do this to you, but I need to interview Brenda tonight. As soon as possible. I’m sorry. Can I call Lori or…?”

She shouldn’t have felt hurt by that. He was the chief of police, of course he had to go. But it was more than just his leaving her alone tonight. She didn’t want to give him any time to think, wanted to make an attempt to hold this sand castle together right now, and the tide was coming in, and everything was crumbling. If he left now…it would disappear.

And there was nothing she could do.

So Molly pasted a smile on her face and did what she’d always done. “Hey, I’ve been waiting for you to leave so I could call Lori over for our weekly pillow fight.”

“Moll.” That word spoke volumes of hurt and worry, but she blew it off with a laugh.

“I don’t need Lori to come over. I’m fine. The threat has been eliminated. Go do what you need to do.”

He shook his head, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them. He looked tired and lost and very lovable, damn him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Let me call Lori.”

“Ben, I’m a big girl. I’ll see you in a few hours. Go.”