“Jason. Get a clue. You’ve been trying to kill me. We have to get this settled or I’m telling Wyatt you made a pass at me, and he’ll take you apart all the way down to your molecules.”
“I know,” he groaned. “Let’s go to my house so we can talk, come up with a plan.”
“Is Debra there?”
“No, she’s watching your folks’ house, figuring you’ll turn up there sooner or later.”
She was stalking my parents? I’d scalp the bitch for that. Hot fury zipped through me, but I controlled it, because I needed to keep my head. I had talked Jason around, but I knew Jason and I wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. Evidently his wife was crazy as a loon though, and I didn’t know what we could do about her.
I drove to Jason’s house, which of course is the one we’d bought together, and which I’d given him in the divorce. It hadn’t changed much in five years; the landscaping was more mature, but that was about it. The house was red brick, two-story, with white shutters and trim. The style was modern, with interesting architectural details, but there was nothing about it to make it stand out from the rest of the neighborhood. I think developers have at the most five house plans and styles that they use, so subdivisions have a cookie-cutter look to them. The garage doors were down, so Debra wasn’t at home.
When I pulled into the driveway, I said thoughtfully, “You know, it might have been smart to move rather than expect Debra to live here.”
“Why’s that?”
Like I said: clueless. “Because this is where we lived when we were married,” I said patiently. “She probably feels like this is my house instead of hers. She needs her own house.” Weird, but for the first time I felt a gleam of sympathy for her.
“There’s nothing wrong with this house,” he protested. “It’s a good house, nice and modern.”
“Jason. Buy the woman her own house!” I yelled. Sometimes that’s the only way to get his attention.
“All right, all right. You don’t have to yell,” he said sulkily.
If I’d had a wall right there, I’d have beat my head against it.
We went inside, and I rolled my eyes when I saw he still had the same furniture. The man was dense beyond saving. He was the one Debra should kill.
Now, I knew the cavalry was on the way; the first place Wyatt and the guys would check would be Jason’s house, right? They knew Jason wasn’t the one who had shot me, but Wyatt would also see my notes and put two and two together the way I had. The person who was jealous of me was my ex-husband’s new wife, only she wasn’t so new, since they’d been married four years. How much more obvious could it be? Jason hadn’t shot at me, but he’d left that worried message the next morning-after five years of no contact at all. Wyatt might not catch on immediately that Jason was the one who had cut my brake lines, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I could probably expect the first patrol car to come rolling up within five minutes.
“So,” Jason said, looking at me as if I had all the answers, “what can we do about Debra?”
“What do you mean, what can you do about me?”
The shriek made me jump about a foot straight up, not only because I hadn’t been expecting it, but because it obviously meant Debra was home, after all. On the list of things that were not good, that was at the top.
Jason jumped, too, and dropped the pistol, which didn’t go off-thank you, Jesus-because my heart probably would have stopped. It came close to stopping anyway when I turned around and faced the former Debra Schmale, now Mrs. Jason Carson, who appeared to be dead serious about her status. She was holding a rifle, and she had the stock up to her shoulder and her cheek against the stock as if she knew what she was doing.
I swallowed and put my tongue in gear, though my brain was still stuck in park. “He meant how could we convince you that you don’t have any reason to be jealous of me. This is the first time I’ve talked to Jason since our divorce, so he was just trying to get back at you for trying to make him jealous, by throwing me in your face to make you jealous, and really you should shoot him instead of me because I think that was a really shitty thing for him to do, don’t you?”
Under the circumstances I think that was a masterpiece of a speech, if I do say so myself, but she didn’t even blink. She kept that rifle aimed right at my chest. “I hate your guts,” she said in a low, vicious tone. “That’s all I hear-’Blair, Blair, Blair.’ Blair this and Blair that until I want to throw up.”
“Which, I’d like to point out, isn’t my fault. I had no idea he was doing that. I’m telling you, shoot him instead of me.”
For the first time Jason seemed to realize what I was saying. “Hey!” he said indignantly.
“Don’t ‘hey’ me,” I snapped. “You’re the one who caused this. You should get down on your knees and apologize to both of us. You’ve driven this poor woman almost crazy, and you’ve caused me to almost get killed. This is all your fault.”
“I’m not a poor woman,” Debra snapped. “I’m pretty and I’m smart, and he should appreciate me, but instead he’s still so in love with you he can’t think straight.”
“No, I’m not,” Jason said instantly, taking a step toward her. “I love you. I haven’t loved Blair in years, since way before we got divorced.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Has he ever told you he was cheating on me? Doesn’t sound to me as if he loved me, does it to you?”
“He loves you,” she repeated. Obviously she wasn’t about to listen to reason. “He insisted we live in this house-”
“Told you,” I said in an aside to Jason.
“Stop talking to him. I don’t want you to ever speak to him again. I don’t want you to ever breathe again.” Furiously she stepped closer, so close the rifle barrel was almost jabbing me in the nose. I drew back a little, because the bruises from the air bag were fading and I didn’t want a fresh set. “You got everything,” she breathed on a sob. “Oh, I know he kept the house, but he can’t bear to change it, so you might as well still have it. You got the Mercedes. You drive around town with the top down like you’re hot shit, and I have to drive a Taurus because he says it’s good for his image that we drive American cars.”
“A Taurus has really good suspension,” I said, trying to deflect her. See? Somehow my subconscious knew the car was important.
“I don’t give a shit about the suspension!”
Huh. She really should try it out before being so dismissive.
I thought I heard something outside, but I didn’t dare turn my head to look. Besides the obvious points of entry into the house-the front door and the back door and the windows-there was a set of French doors leading onto the patio from the breakfast room. From where I was standing, I could catch a glimpse of the French doors and I thought I saw movement there, but I couldn’t look directly at them or she would know something was up.