It was there again, that secret she kept, the one that forced her into silence.
But, with her eyes closed, she instinctively tilted her chin up and he couldn’t resist. Just being this close to her caused his blood to fire, his heart to pound. Desire made him hard. Hot and wanting, he kissed her with a passion that fired his blood and consumed him.
She responded. Moaned into his open mouth, her hands scraping away his clothes, her fingers running down his arms.
“I love you,” he said again and was met with silence once more. Though her body was trembling, her skin hot, her lips wet, she didn’t speak.
Beneath her passion he felt something more, something intense and longing but so distant. She was a million miles away.
He was losing her.
Somehow, despite their lovemaking, she was sliding way.
The smell of her filled his nostrils. He ran his tongue along her neck and lower still, tasting perfume and the salt of her body.
He kissed every inch of her, feeling her response, noticing her quiver. Inside he was burning, his cock already hard, so damned hard.
He told himself to take it slow, to pleasure her, but she was as frantic as he, her lips full and warm, her fingers insistent as she kneaded his muscles.
Skimming his thumbs over her ribs, he kissed the tips of her breasts, and then drank in a full view of her. She finally opened her eyes, the gold irises nearly invisible, her pupils black and round as they dilated.
He breathed across her abdomen, his head sliding down her body to the red lace of her panties-a tiny thong that barely covered any of her.
Her muscles had tightened. “You really can be a bastard,” she whispered and her voice was off…not quite right, even though she’d finally spoken. He caught the whiff of gardenias, the faintest scent in the air.
“Just for you,” he replied, his breath hot over her panties-that little bit of naughty lace. She writhed beneath him as he took the scrap of lace in his teeth and pulled it off.
“Really?” And her skin turned cold. “Seriously. Just for me?”
“Who else?” he asked, sliding up her body as her fingers dug deep into his head, adding a pinch of pain to the pleasure. God, he wanted her and she was quivering with her own desire, moving beneath him.
“Livvie,” he whispered and parted her legs with his knees.
In a breathless moment he thrust deep into her and lost himself, body and soul, in the magic of his wife. His blood was thundering in his ears and he breathed in short, fast gasps. Faster and faster he moved, but she was no longer responding and the flesh he’d felt cooling was now stone cold.
When he looked down at her, she’d changed, her features having morphed into Jennifer. White skin, dark hair, the scrap of a red thong now a tattered bloody dress.
“I love you,” Jennifer said, but her mouth didn’t move. She smelled of brackish water and death. Her glassy eyes shifted to zero in on him.
His skin goose-pimpled and his blood ran cold as the sea. He tried to roll off her, but her hands came up and held him tight. Held him in place like a vise.
“It’s your fault, RJ,” she said with lips that didn’t move. “Yours!”
Bentz bucked, trying to break her hold as his eyes flew open.
He was in the bed at the motel.
Alone.
No Olivia. No Jennifer.
Just his guilt. His damned guilt.
Letting out a long breath, he realized he was saturated in cold sweat. The dream had been so real. So evocative and terrifying. He wanted to call Olivia but glanced at the clock. 12:47. Nearly 3 A.M. in Louisiana. He would wait.
Climbing out of bed, he walked to the window and opened the blinds to look at the night-washed parking lot.
It was empty aside from the usual vehicles.
Quiet.
Still unnerved, he went into the bathroom and threw water over his face. Telling himself he’d been through a lot worse in his life than bad dreams, he popped a couple of ibuprofen for the pain in his leg before returning to bed. He clicked on the television and searched for any inane show to occupy his mind. But he didn’t believe for an instant that some late-night talk show host would dispel the dream.
He figured nothing would.
He’d just have to live with it.
The next morning, after a fitful night, Bentz found a place where he could replace his cell phone on his current plan. He was the first customer to enter the strip mall for the day and he looked like hell. But he ended up with a new phone.
Two doors down there was a casual-wear store, so he picked up a new pair of khakis and a cheap sports jacket.
He’d have to wait on shoes.
He returned to the motel, showered, shaved, called and left a message for Olivia, then spent the next few hours spinning his wheels, thinking, and reentering numbers into the new cell. He pieced together the events of the last few days and wondered how the woman-“Jennifer”-had known where he would be. As far as he could tell, his room wasn’t bugged. He didn’t find any listening devices tucked into hidden niches. Not that it mattered. To his recollection he hadn’t mentioned his plans while talking on the phone here. He did a second peripheral check of the rental car and couldn’t find any tracking device in the undercarriage or wheel wells.
But somehow, “Jennifer” had known where he was going, where he had been.
How?
And why was she doing this?
In the motel room with the television tuned to an all-news channel, the blinds open so that he didn’t feel completely cut off from the world, he sipped his tepid coffee, his mind turning back to the night before. What the hell had happened on the pier? She’d been there. He’d seen her, but Hayes had said that the cops had questioned the people on the pier, the old man who’d been smoking a cigar and the kids who had been so into each other. When Hayes had asked about the runner, he hadn’t been found and no one remembered him.
Bentz made a note of it, though most likely the missing jogger wasn’t any big deal.
Great.
Using his laptop computer he Googled images of the Santa Monica pier and found the webcam, a camera that photographed the entrance to the pier every four seconds. Maybe he could get photos of the pier from last night, as well as from traffic cams. Though he was no longer a cop in L.A., he still had a badge and some pull. He was certain he could talk his way into getting the information.
By eleven he’d talked to the security company that ran the camera on the pier and been promised that they would review the images from the night before. Afterward Bentz had made his way through a pot of coffee while searching the Internet for a hospital or clinic that might have issued the outdated parking pass he’d noticed on the gray Chevy. Then he used his new phone to leave messages with Fortuna Esperanzo and Tally White, two of Jennifer’s close friends who hadn’t bothered calling him back.
Tally was a schoolteacher and Fortuna still worked in an art gallery in Venice. Neither woman was a fan of his.
A motorcycle backfired on the street. Through the thin motel walls Benz heard Spike get off a round of quick, sharp barks before he was shushed by his owner. Bentz stretched, felt his spine pop, then stood and tested his leg.
Picking up his keys, Bentz wondered how long the old guy next door was staying. He grabbed his damp wallet and slipped his sidearm into its shoulder holster beneath the cover of his new jacket. Then, because his leg was still aching, he snagged his cane from its spot by the door.
Outside, he felt the heat of the day though it was barely noon. He eyed the dusty parking lot, recognizing four cars other than his own that seemed to be regulars. Besides his rental and the older guy in the driving cap’s Pontiac, there was a bronze Buick parked at the far end of the lot. A white MINI Cooper was often gone all day, but returned every night. The older navy blue Jeep Cherokee never budged. The rest of the vehicles came and went, but these four always returned. Just like the damned swallows of San Juan Capistrano, he thought, remembering the legend and his own trip to the mission town. He’d already made note of the license plates and talked to Montoya about them. Since the woman impersonating Jennifer seemed to know his whereabouts, he wondered if she’d been following him from here each day. He was going to make certain that these cars were legit.