Page 48 of If Looks Could Kill

Emma and Carrie, I was grateful to learn, were still not at home.

Meetings and cleanup at the base must have gone late.

I didn’t dare wait for them, but I scrawled out a hasty letter explaining that they must not sleep there that night, or for the next few nights, under any circumstances, though I couldn’t say why.

Mike waited in the kitchen while I changed into a suit of traveling clothes, found my stash of saved money, and packed my essential belongings into a suitcase, and Pearl’s into hers.

I almost missed it. Tucked inside Pearl’s bureau drawer was the coral bracelet I’d brought her. The one she was going to sell for the poor.

I was glad she’d kept it.

It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the streets were quiet when we stepped out the door.

We each held a suitcase. Mike had tried to carry them both, but I wouldn’t hear of it.

The cold, it seemed, had lessened somewhat, and the air began to smell like snow. Damp and heavy and brimming with weather. Expectant. It felt like Christmas, which fit the terrifying mood of the night about as well as Worcestershire sauce fits a sponge cake.

But perhaps it fit, in some small way, the feeling I got from walking, even on such a night as this, and may God forgive me for it, with Mike.

He kept checking back over his shoulder. Only when we’d left a few city blocks behind us did he seem to relax.

“No sign of trouble,” I observed. “Suppose nobody’s looking for us?”

Mike shook his head. “I just can’t tell,” he said. “The whole thing makes me uneasy.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

I glanced over and saw him looking down at the pavement and smiling.

“What?” I asked him.

He turned to me. “What, what?”

“What are you smiling at?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Can’t a fellow be happy?”

“No,” I told him. “Not when he’s been roped into a dangerous plot involving notorious criminals and… hapless Salvation Army maidens.”

He assumed a lofty expression. “Where, may I ask, Miss Woodward, is your sense of fun?” He swung Pearl’s suitcase high and did a little leap, clicking his heels together. “One person’s night of terror might be another person’s idea of a grand holiday. You never can tell.”

“I didn’t know you were a dancer,” I told him. “Are you having fun, then? I should think you’d be—”

“Yes,” he interrupted. “I’m having fun.” He paused. “Worried we’ll both be shot before sunup,” he added, as if he were quoting the price of eggs, “but setting that aside, having fun.”

I searched for a trace of sarcasm or teasing.

But I saw only puffs of frozen breath and bright pink spots on his cheeks from the cold.

He caught me watching him and winked. I turned away quickly, feeling exposed.

As if my petticoats were showing. As if my fluttery, timid, innermost secret heart was showing, and it was.

It was decorated around the edges with chubby cupids, bearing banners with Mike’s name printed on them in fancy letters.

I don’t need company. I can embarrass myself all alone in an empty room.

“You’re right,” I told him, hoping to save face. “I never can tell.”

He turned to me in perplexity. “Can tell what?”

“I never can tell,” I repeated, “where you’re concerned.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I know this about you.”

Maddening boy!

“Though that’s the lion’s share of what I know about you,” he went on, “since one isn’t granted many opportunities to learn more about Salvation Army maidens. Unless”—here he gestured toward the suitcases, toward us, toward this bizarre night—“all hell breaks loose.”

“You can always come to rallies and prayer meetings,” I pointed out.

He looked faintly nauseated. “Yes,” he said, “though then I learn more about the speakers than the young ladies who waltzed into my uncle’s pub.”

Ladies. Me, and Pearl.

“There’s not much to know,” I said. “My life story can be told in two minutes.”

“Not by you, I’d wager,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Only that you’re a girl with plenty to say,” he said.

“Oh.”

He gave me a puzzled look. “That’s good.”

The sting of embarrassment was already spreading, and I couldn’t be politely appeased. Young ladies should be meek, modest, demure, and retiring. Not talkative.

Mike stopped and turned toward me, partially blocking my path so I had to stop too.

“Miss Woodward,” he said. “I’d like nothing better than to hear your story, and not just the two-minute version of it.”

It was hard to look at him and, because he was Mike, hard not to. There was something about him, the mouth especially, that one just wanted to watch awhile.

“You’re just being nice,” I told him.

“No,” he said pointedly. “I am entirely consulting my own preferences here.”

A little part of me flitted upward in hope at what these words might mean. But I had no experience talking alone with young men. Especially not when they were intimidatingly attractive and charming and worldly-wiser than I, with beautiful teeth to boot.

And this day. Oh, this day. What an exhausting, terrifying, heartbreaking day. And all the things that had happened in it that I could never tell a living soul.

Mike was watching me now with concern.

“I was only joking,” he said earnestly, “about entirely consulting my own preferences.” He paused awkwardly.

“I mean, I was . Consulting my own preferences. That is to say, I am. But it’s not as if…

” He glanced heavenward as if the words he needed might fall from above along with the snow.

“I wouldn’t want you to think I have no regard for your feelings. ”

I did my utmost not to laugh, and put my free hand on his arm. “I know that, Mike. I promise I do.” I mustered a smile. “You have nothing to fear, where I’m concerned.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” he said, “but I’m glad if I haven’t offended you.”

“You couldn’t.” A single snowflake spiraled past my eyes. There’s where I was wrong?

“That’s kind of you to say, Miss Woodward,” he told me. “I certainly wouldn’t want to.”

“You don’t have to call me Miss Woodward,” I told him, “or Miss Tabitha. You can just call me Tabitha.”

He smiled. “I’d like that,” he said. “It makes us friends.” He held out a hand to shake. I set my suitcase down on the pavement and shook it. Both our hands were cold. I liked the feel of his in mine. I didn’t want to let go.

Something hard pressed into my back while a voice spoke in my ear. “You two,” it said. “Don’t scream, see? And come with me.”