Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

Rhonda.
    “Where’s Martyn?” I whispered. “Are we playing cards or what?”
    “It’s nearly dawn, Rachel. Martyn’s the only one here with any sense. He left shortly after you did. He said he was still jet-lagged and had to get some sleep. I’m going to do the same thing.”
    I felt a flutter of panic over Martyn, but if everyone else was here asleep, he’d be perfectly safe. I looked at my bed. Then at the chair. Then I looked at Chip. What if that weren’t so? What if by separating, the men weren’t safe? Wasn’t the whole point of this to keep them together?
    I grabbed Chip’s shirt. “You can’t leave me here like this.” Joan Crawford, minus the shoulder pads.
    He looked at me as if I were talking some foreign language he hadn’t gotten around to learning. I thought I better try again.
    “I thought maybe I could sleep in your room,” I whispered, even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to wake the others had I begun demolishing the room with a jackhammer. “It’s a little crowded in here.”
    I watched him trying to figure out what it was I really wanted. Finally, he thought he had.
    “Okay, Rachel, sure. Betty and I will stay here, and you can—”
    “No. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. It’s bad enough we spent all these hours breathing smoke. Neither of us should—”
    “You weren’t merely breathing it, Kaminsky. As I recall, you were smoking.”
    “Don’t get technical.” It was a favorite line of my mother’s when she’d been backed into a corner of her own making.
    “So what is it you want, Rachel?”
    Smooth, I thought. It’s a good thing this guy was back with his Mrs., because God knows how he’d function as a single man. Maybe, unlike the rest of this motley crew, he was out of practice. One way or another, I had to get through to him, because if I couldn’t protect them all, he was the one I couldn’t afford to lose. It didn’t matter that I was saving him for another woman, as long as I was saving him. I decided to do whatever it would take to not let Chip out of my sight. And then I knew exactly what it was I had to do. But I couldn’t do it where we were.
    “Come on,” I said. I took his hand and pulled him with me toward the door. Out in the hall, the dogs began to run back and forth, Dash chasing Betty, then Betty chasing Dashiell. I held out my hand for Chip’s key.
    Inside his room, I put my hands on his shoulders. “Sit down.” I backed him up to the bed and pushed him onto it.
    “This is so sudden,” he said. He pulled me onto him and was reaching for my face. Even before I became a detective, I knew where a move like that was going.
    I shoved his hand away. “I need you to listen to me, very carefully. You can’t do that with me lying on top of you. And I won’t be able to speak if you’re kissing me. I have to speak to you right now. And you have to listen.”
    “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?” he said. “Come on.” He rolled me off him, and we both sat up.
    The dogs were nowhere in sight. Apparently they had gone into the bathroom to see if there was any food left in Betty’s dish. A moment later Dashiell emerged from the bathroom backward. As soon as he was back in the bedroom, the growling stopped, and I could hear Betty’s tags hitting rhythmically against the feed pan.
    Chip got up and walked over to the nightstand to turn on the light. I noticed that there wasn’t a picture of Ellen and the children there. Nor was there one on the dresser.
    “Don’t,” I said.
    I heard Betty’s tags hit the tile floor. I couldn’t see Dashiell, but I could hear him snoring.
    “You want to talk in the dark?”
    “It might be easier.”
    “Anything to please you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. Or was he just hoarse from hanging out in a smoke-filled room for most of the night? My throat was sore, too, and I couldn’t stand the smell of the stale cigar smoke coming from my hair and clothes.
    “May I use your shower?” I asked.
    “That’s the urgent thing you had to say?”
    “No—I had too much to drink, and I can’t stand the smell of smoke on myself. I’d like to take a shower and wake myself up, and then I have something important to say to you. Okay?”
    Chip nodded. Without saying a word, he walked over to his dresser, opened the second drawer, took out a clean shirt, and handed it to me. “You might feel fresher in this. I’m going to stretch out my back and