"The Next Accident" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Lisa)

3

South Street, Philadelphia

Elizabeth Ann Quincy had aged well.

She'd been raised being told that a woman should always take care of herself. Plucked brows, coiffed hair, moisturized face. Then there was flossing, twice a day. Nothing aged you as fast as bacteria trapped in the gums.

Elizabeth had done as she was told. She plucked and coiffed and moisturized. She put on a dress to run errands. Off the tennis court, she never wore tennis shoes.

Elizabeth prided herself on playing by the rules. She'd grown up in an affluent family outside of Pittsburgh, riding English-style every weekend and practicing her jumps. By the age of eighteen, she could dance SwanLake and crochet a tea cozy. She also knew how to use beer to set her dark brown hair in curlers and how to use a flatiron to straighten it out again. Girls today considered her generation frivolous. Let them stick their heads on ironing boards first thing every morning, and see if they still thought the same.

She had a tough streak. It had taken her to college when her mother had disapproved. While there, it had drawn her to a man quite outside of her family's experience – enigmatic Pierce Quincy. He was from New England originally. Her mother had liked that. (Mayflower maybe? Does he still have ties to the motherland? He didn't. His father ran a farm in Rhode Island, owning hundreds of acres of land, and apparently few words or sentiments.) Quincy was pursuing a doctorate in psychology. Her mother had liked that, too. (An academic then, nothing wrong with that. Dr. Quincy, yes very good. He'll settle down, open a private practice. There's a lot of money to be had in troubled minds, you know.)

Quincy had been drawn to troubled minds. In fact, it was his years on the Chicago police force that had convinced him to pursue dual degrees in criminology and psychology. Apparently, even more than the guns and testosterone inherent in police work, he was fascinated by the criminal mind. What made a deviant personality? When would the person first kill? How could he be stopped?

She and Pierce had had long talks on the subject. Elizabeth had been mesmerized by the clarity of his thoughts, the passion in his voice. He was a quiet, well-educated man and positively shocking in his ability to step into the shoes of a killer and assume his path.

The darkness of his work gave her a secret thrill. Watching his hands as he talked of psychopaths and sadists, picturing his fingers holding a gun… He was a thinker, but he was also a doer, and she had genuinely loved that.

In the beginning, when she had still thought they'd marry, settle down, and lead a normal life. In the beginning, before she'd realized that for a man like Pierce, there was no such thing as normal. He needed his work, he breathed his work, and she and their two little girls were the ones who became out of place in his world.

Elizabeth was the only member of her family to get a divorce, be a single mom. Her mother had not liked it, had told her to stick it out, but Elizabeth had found her tough streak again. She had Amanda and Kimberly to think about, and her daughters needed stability, some sort of sane suburban life where their father was not buzzed away from soccer games to look at corpses. Amanda, in particular, had had difficulties with her father's career. She never did understand why she only saw her dad when the homicidal maniacs were through for the day.

Elizabeth had done right by her children. She told herself that often these days. She'd done right by her children.

Even when she'd pulled the plug?

At the age of forty-seven, Elizabeth Ann Quincy was a beautiful woman. Cultured, sophisticated, and lonely.

This Monday evening she walked down South Street in Philadelphia, ignoring the laughing throngs of people who were enjoying the quirky mix of high-end boutiques and sex-toy shops. She bypassed three heavily tattooed teens, then sidestepped a long black limo. The horse-drawn carriages were out in full force tonight, adding the strong scent of horse manure to South Street 's already distinct odor of human sweat and deep-fried food.

Bethie resolutely ignored the smell, while simultaneously refusing to make eye contact with any of her fellow Philadelphians. She just wanted to get back to her Society Hill town house, where she could retreat into a comforting shell of ecru-colored walls and silk-covered sofas. Another night alone with cable TV. Trying not to watch the phone. Trying not to wish too badly for it to ring.

She jostled against the man unexpectedly. He was walking out of the gourmet grocery store just as she was passing and knocked her square in the shoulder. One moment she was striding forward. The next she was falling sideways.

He grabbed her arm just before she hit the manure-splattered street.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Clumsy, clumsy me. Here you go. Up again. Right as rain. You are okay, aren't you? I would hate to think I'd knocked the stuffing out of you."

Elizabeth shook her head in a daze. She started the obligatory I'm okay, then actually saw the man who'd collided with her, and felt the words die in her throat. His face… Strong European features with merry blue eyes, while a generous dollop of silver capped the dark hair at his temples. Older, forties or fifties, she would guess. Well-to-do. The fine linen shirt, unbuttoned enough to reveal the distinctive column of his throat and a light smattering of graying chest hairs. The well-tailored tan slacks, belted by Gucci and finished with Armani loafers. He looked… He was gorgeous.

She was suddenly much more aware of his hand still on her arm. She started to babble. "I wasn't looking… lost in my own little world… ran right into you. Not your fault, no apology necessary."

" Elizabeth! Elizabeth Quincy."

"What?" She peered up at him again, feeling even more flustered and not at all like herself. He was tall, very tall, broad shoulders, handsome. And an absolute stranger. She was sure of it.

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "Here I go again, making a mess of things. I know you, but you don't me."

"I don't know you," Bethie told him honestly. Her gaze fell to his hand, still on her arm. He belatedly released her, and to her surprise, he blushed.

"This is awkward now," he stammered, obviously disconcerted and somehow all the more charming for it. "I don't know quite what to say. Maybe I should never have mentioned your name, never brought it up. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I've seen you before, you see. Had you pointed out to me. Last month. In Virginia. At the hospital."

It took Elizabeth a moment to put those facts together. When she did, her whole body stilled. Her face paled. Her arms wrapped around her waist defensively. If he'd been at the hospital, had her pointed out… She thought she knew where this was going now, and something inside her felt ice cold. She closed her eyes. She swallowed thickly. She said, "Maybe, maybe you'd better tell me your name."

"Tristan. Tristan Shandling."

"And how do you know me, Mr. Shandling?"

His answer was as she feared. He didn't say a word. He simply pulled his finely woven shirt from the waistband of his slacks, and bared his right side to her.

The scar wasn't too big, just a few inches. It was still a raw, angry red, fresh out of surgery. Give it another month or two, however, and it would fade, the swelling would go down. It would become a fine white line on a broad, tanned torso.

She reached out a trembling hand without ever realizing what she was doing, and touched the incision.

A sharp gasp brought her back to reality. She blinked her eyes, then realized her hand was on a stranger's stomach and he was still holding up his shirt for her and now people were stopping to stare.

And she was crying. She hadn't realized it, but there were tears on her cheeks.

"Your daughter saved my life," Tristan Shandling said quietly.

Elizabeth Quincy broke down. She wrapped her arms around his waist; she pressed herself against the man who carried Mandys kidney. And she held him as tight as she'd ever held her daughter, held him as if finding him would bring Mandy back to her. A mother should never have to bury her own child. She had pulled the plug. Oh God, she had given permission and they had taken her baby from her…

Tristan Shandling's arms went around her. In the middle of bustling South Street, he patted her shoulders awkwardly, then with more assurance. He let her cry against his chest and he said, "Shhhh, it's all right. I'm here now, Bethie, and I'll take care of you. I promise."