To Die For (Page 61)

Well, hell, there was no point in being petty, was there? I leaned my head against him and tried not to think about the sickening terror I’d felt this morning. If it was that bad for me, what had it been like for him? I know how I would have felt if I’d been behind him and watched him get killed, which is what I’m sure he thought had happened to me.

"Your poor little face," he murmured, stroking my hair back as he examined me.

I hadn’t been just sitting in the police station all day waiting for my face to swell up and my eyes to turn black. One of the cops had given me a plastic sandwich bag, and I’d filled it with ice and applied it, off and on, to my face, so however bad I looked wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I’d also put an adhesive strip across the cut on the bridge of my nose. I thought I looked like a boxer who’d just finished a fight.

"J. W.," someone said, and we both looked around as a gray-haired man in a gray suit approached. With his hair, I personally thought he should have worn a suit with more color in it, or at least a nice blue shirt, so he wouldn’t have given such a blah impression. I wondered if his wife had no fashion sense. He was short and stocky, and looked like a businessman, except that when he got closer, I could see he had that distinctive sharp gaze.

"Chief," Wyatt said, from which I deduced (duh!) that this was the chief of police, Wyatt’s boss. If I’d ever seen him before, I didn’t remember it; in fact, at that moment, I couldn’t even remember his name.

"Is this the young lady the entire force is talking about?" the chief asked, studying me with great curiosity.

"I’m afraid so," Wyatt said. "Chief, this is my fiancee, Blair Mallory. Blair, this is William Gray, chief of police."

I resisted the urge to kick him-Wyatt, not the chief-and instead shook hands. Well, I would have shaken hands, but instead Chief Gray just sort of gently held my hand as if he were afraid of hurting me. I was afraid I looked a lot worse now than I had the last time I’d checked myself in a mirror, what with Wyatt’s "poor little face" and now the chief treating me like a piece of fragile glass.

"It was a terrible thing that happened this morning," the chief said solemnly. "We don’t have a lot of homicide in this town and we want to keep it that way. We’ll get this solved, Miss Mallory; I promise you."

"Thank you," I said. What else could I say? Hurry up? The detectives knew what they were doing, and I trusted they were good at it-just as I was good at certain things. I said, "Your hair is a really great color. I bet it looks fantastic when you wear a blue shirt, doesn’t it?"

He looked startled, and Wyatt surreptitiously pinched my waist. I ignored him.

"Well, I don’t know about that," Chief Gray said, giving the laugh that men do when they’re both flattered and a little uncomfortable.

"I do," I assured him. "French blue. You probably have ten shirts that color, don’t you, because it looks so good on you?"

"French blue?" he murmured. "I don’t-"

"I know." I laughed. "To a man, blue is blue is blue, and don’t bother you with all those fancy names, right?"

"Right," he agreed. He cleared his throat and took a step back. "J. W., keep me up-to-date on how the investigation is going. The mayor is asking about it."

"Will do," Wyatt said, and hurriedly turned me toward his car while the chief continued on into the building. Wyatt hissed, "Were you actually giving the chief of police fashion advice?"

"Someone needed to," I said in self-defense. "The poor man."

"Wait until news of this gets around," he said under his breath as he opened the passenger door and helped me ease into the seat. I was becoming more stiff and sore by the minute.

"Why’s that?"

He shook his head. "You’re practically all everyone in the department has talked about since last Thursday night. They either think I’m getting my comeuppance, or that I’m the bravest man walking."

Well. I didn’t know what to think about that.

* * *

I closed my eyes when we got to the intersection where the wreck had taken place. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to stop at that stop sign again without reliving everything. Wyatt turned onto the street that led to my condo and said, "You can open your eyes now."

I shook away the memory of screaming tires and opened my eyes. With the intersection behind me, everything looked normal and familiar and safe. My building loomed on the right, and Wyatt pulled under the portico. I looked around, remembering that my fence gate had been unlocked when the officer brought my car home. Had whoever tampered with my brakes-I still thought Dwayne Bailey was the most likely suspect-been lurking around then? Had he seen my car being delivered and figured if he couldn’t get to me in one way, he would in another?

"I think I’m going to move," I said vaguely. "I don’t feel safe here anymore."

Wyatt got out and came around to open the door for me, and helped me out. "That’s a good idea," he said. "While you’re recuperating, we’ll get your stuff packed up and moved out to my house. What do you want to do with your furniture?"

I looked at him as if he were an alien. "What do you mean, what do I want to do with my furniture? I need my furniture for wherever I move to."

"I already have furniture at my house. We don’t need more."

Ah. I was a little slow on the uptake, because I just then realized what he was saying. "I didn’t mean move in with you. I just meant… move. Sell the condo and buy another one. I’m not ready for a house, I don’t think, because I don’t have time to take care of yards and flower beds and things."