Page 87 of Dead Girl Running

ARMY RECRUITERS:

ONE MALE, ONE FEMALE, PLEASANT AND BRISK, SKEPTICAL WHEN LOOKING ME OVER, DISCOURAGING ABOUT MY CONDITION AND ABILITY TO PASS THE STRINGENT PHYSICAL. PRODUCE STERN WARNINGS ABOUT DRUG USE. IMPRESSED BY KELLEN’S DEGREES, SATISFIED BY PHOTO ID.

The male recruiter, Sergeant Barnes, said, “With these credentials, we’ll send you to Officer Candidate School.”

“If you pass the physical,” Sergeant Rehberger snapped. She was more realistic, less hopeful of Cecilia’s chances.

Cecilia nodded at her. “I’m good with numbers, data structure, patterns.” As she spoke, her mind was collecting more information about the recruiters, this station, how to turn the details of this situation to her advantage. She could give answers that they wanted to hear, because by their body language and by logic, she could anticipate their needs.

She had never had this gift before, but she knew how to use it now.

They put the paperwork in front of her. She filled it all in without hesitation, using Kellen’s New York address, Kellen’s birthday, Kellen’s degrees. She was, she realized, being Kellen Rae Adams in every way. She got ready to sign and date the forms. “What day is this?” she asked.

Sergeant Barnes said, “May twelfth.”

Then she scrawled Kellen’s signature and passed over the paperwork.

The recruiter ran through it all, asked a few questions, got to the end and laughed, scratched out the date and passed it back. “I know—I still get the year wrong, too. Initial the change, then we’re on to the next stage.”

That was when she discovered she’d lost more than a year of her life.

Lost it, apparently, forever.

Someone knocked on her front door.

She clutched the arms of her chair. She knew who was there.

Another knock. The bell rang.

“Bastard.” She stood and clattered down the spiral stairs. She looked through the peephole, then flung open the door. “What a surprise,” she said in a voice heavily laden with irony.

Nils Brooks stood on the porch. “May I come in?” Like a vampire who had to be invited to cross the threshold.

“If you must.” She backed away.

He dusted a few flakes of snow off his shoulders. There, in the porch light, his disguise was stripped away. He looked like a dangerous man, strong, wiry, with a determined jaw and a fake pair of eyeglasses in his pocket. He came in, flung off his Burberry coat and hung it on the rack. “The weathercasters got it wrong again. The main thrust of the storm went south to Oregon.”

She didn’t answer, and she didn’t turn up her lights.

His conversational tone changed. “What do you know?” He demanded information as if he was in charge.

“Lloyd Magnuson is dead.”

He dismissed the information with a wave of the hand. “We already had that figured out. What else do you know?”

“You don’t give a damn, do you?” She looked at him in the dim light and saw a man driven by ambition. “Someone trapped Lloyd Magnuson by using his own weakness and now he’s dead.”

He seated himself in the easy chair beside her front door. “Gossip at the resort says he used heroin.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why was he trapped? He was simply weak.” Nils couldn’t have sounded more indifferent.

“I don’t like you.” She had never meant anything so much. “Do you have no weaknesses?”

“Yes.” He came to his feet, caught her shoulders and kissed her.

She didn’t punch him in the ribs or use the serrated edge of her flashlight on his face. She let him kiss her, mouth to mouth, breath to breath, and as the moment stretched out, she relaxed, accepted the sensation, lived in the moment…and when he lifted his mouth from hers, she said, “I’d give it a B plus.”