The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (8 page)

Then suddenly he was wide awake, his expression surprised, as if he’d expected to find another woman in his arms. His wife, perhaps? He didn’t wear a ring, but for all she knew, he was married. He jerked, coming upright and scooting back in the same shocked motion.

“I fell asleep,” he said, scowling with accusation.

Roxanne nodded warily.

Santo cursed and swung his legs off the side of the bed, facing away with his forearms resting on his spread thighs. He rubbed the bristle on his cheeks and shook his head. Tension rippled through the muscles in his shoulders and back and curled his fingers into fists. She didn’t know if that hostility was directed at her or himself. It didn’t really matter when he was straining like a wild animal at the end of a leash.

From the start, he’d been this way. Hot, cold, tender, cruel. She didn’t know how to deal with the mercurial swings of his moods—or the strange, unsettling feeling that
he
didn’t either. He seemed perpetually disconcerted by the spectrum of his emotions—like a man who’d been in a deep freeze and who’d thawed to find
everything intact when he’d expected fractured joints and missing pieces.

“Are you married?” she asked him.

“No,” he said in a thick voice. “Not anymore.”

He turned to face her and something flickered in the black depths of his eyes. It was gone in an instant, leaving her feeling oddly cheated.

He caught a strand of her hair between his fingers and his thumb and rubbed it with a look of absorption that echoed through her body. Then his hand was on her throat, then her jaw, cupping her head as he pulled her in.

There were a thousand reasons she should resist him, a million why she should scramble off the bed and put as much distance between them as possible. But before his lashes lowered, she’d seen something raw and aching in his eyes. Something that reflected the loneliness inside of
her
. A part of her had given up on intimacy long ago, resigning herself to a life where everyone thought her sweet and happy while inside she withered. She scared most men for reasons she didn’t understand and thus couldn’t change. Something they sensed in her, about her, that sent them on their way before they ever got close.

But Santo seemed immune to whatever it was that frightened the others. More than that, he seemed captivated by it.

He searched her face, giving her time to back out.
Common sense urged her to take it, but his touch had lit a fuse that hissed and sparked. It took forever for him to close the distance between their lips. Forever, while her heart thumped excitedly and her breath caught with anticipation.

Then his mouth touched hers. His kiss felt like fire in the middle of the darkest winter. Hot and welcoming, it burned in her blood and flared with her pulse. She couldn’t get close enough, and it seemed that neither could he. The blankets had tangled around her hips, and they both tried to free her without breaking the kiss, fumbling. Clumsy. So desperate that each failed attempt added to the spice. The taste of him set off a chain of reactions she’d never known. It made her ravenous for more. She wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting to shed clothes and press her skin to his, but as she twisted closer, she tore at her still-healing wound and a cry burst from her lips.

Santo jumped back. “I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine—”

Something moved just at the edge of her vision. Roxanne saw red . . . blue. . . . She turned quickly as a figure she recognized began to form.

Manny sat in the corner. Manny, who she’d seen shot, bleeding on the kitchen floor. He perched on the chair with his head down and shoulders hunched. Though he was in his early thirties, Manny dressed like a kid. He wore his favorite red Iron Man T-shirt
and blue jeans rolled up at the cuffs because they were too long. Feeling her gaze, he glanced up and smiled sweetly.

A strangled noise burst from her lips as she pushed Santo away and slid off the bed. But by the time she reached the chair, Manny was gone.

“What’s wrong?” Santo asked, coming to stand behind her. His hands went to her shoulders, moving gently over the muscle and bone.

“I thought I saw . . . Manny. The dishwasher who was shot.” She let out a shaky laugh. “I thought he was here.”

She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see disbelief and withdrawal in Santo’s expression. Expecting him to take a step back and turn away. Instead, he shifted his gaze from the chair to her face, his expression thoughtful.

“Has it happened before?” he asked.

“What? Seeing Manny?”

“Seeing anyone that shouldn’t be there.”

She shook her head. “I’m not crazy. I don’t see things.”

But she just had and he’d seemed so real. Right there, in the corner.

She turned away from it, shaken. What did it mean, that the beloved young man had appeared that way? Was he dead? Was she seeing ghosts?

Why not? According to Santo, she’d seen demons, too.

An image flashed on the muted TV, pulling her attention. “They’re showing Love’s,” she said in an urgent tone.

Santo reached for the remote to turn up the volume as the camera zoomed in on the street outside Love’s. At least seven police cruisers were parked in front of it with an ambulance nearby, their flashing lights chasing back the dark. A fresh-faced Korean reporter standing in front of them recounted what Santo had told her before she’d fallen asleep. There’d been a robbery and a shooting. Bugs they’d now identified as locusts had unseasonably and inexplicably swarmed the street during the attack. Police suspected up to five victims, but no bodies had been found.

She knew where
her
body was, but where had they taken Reece and the others? She glanced uneasily at the chair in the corner where Manny had sat.

“They haven’t mentioned you yet,” Santo said broodingly.

But they would. No way would the media let a sensational opportunity to explore the Love twins pass by.

“What time is it?” Roxanne asked.

Santo glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Three thirty.”

The reporter continued, speaking to anyone awake enough to listen. “Love’s is a privately owned restaurant and bar that opened in the late sixties and is run by the four Love siblings.”

Roxanne braced herself. She knew what was coming. It
always
followed any mention of their name. As if on cue, the reporter began to recite the mysterious deaths and resurrections of Roxanne and Reece Love. Each came with its own canned footage. Pictures of gurneys wheeled from the shores of Canyon Lake. Then years later, an ambulance pulling away from the twisted wreckage of Reece’s car. Fortunately their birth had not been filmed, or no doubt that would have been featured for the viewing audience’s entertainment as well. Nothing like a couple of freaks to boost ratings, after all.

“You’d think they’d get tired of showing the same old footage,” she muttered.

Beside her, Santo said, “Why do you let it bother you?”

“I don’t,” she answered too quickly, feeling her face redden. “It just gets old, being
unique
. How can I ever have a normal life if they keep showing that over and over and over?”

“And is that what you want? A normal life?”

More than anything in the world. To be just like everyone else. A wife, maybe. A mother, like the one she’d never known. Someone who worried about running out of peanut butter, not how she would face people and explain, yet again, that she didn’t know why she lived when others irrevocably died.

“The idea of being ordinary has its appeal,” she said with a dispassion she was far from feeling.

“You are many things, Roxanne. But ordinary will never be one of them.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me.”

He smiled that sexy,
I know a lot more than you think
smile. The reporter was still going on about Roxanne’s history, exposing the most personal elements of her existence to a faceless, cruel world. It would all start up again. The reporters camping out in front of her house, harassing her and her family. The zealots stalking them, cursing them . . .

“I just don’t understand why they feel it’s necessary to rehash the same old stories every single time—”

She stopped abruptly, but he heard what she didn’t say.
Every single time I die.

“It could be worse, Roxanne,” he replied in that husky voice that danced over sensitive nerves. “Would you rather they were airing your funeral procession?”

The dry question startled a surprised laugh from her. “No. I guess not.”

His lips twitched in the barest hint of a smile. It was there and gone so fast she thought she’d imagined it. His gaze moved over her face, and she felt the heated questions in it. A few minutes ago, she’d been ready to strip down to bare skin with him. What was she willing to do now?

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked away. She wasn’t prepared to answer him.

He made a sound of disappointment and said, “I need to take a shower, then we’ll get going. Let me know if they say anything else about what happened.”

She nodded, watching him pull some clean clothes from his duffel and disappear into the bathroom. The water came on and all she could think of was Santo, stripped beneath the spray. Her imagination didn’t have to work at painting a picture of muscles gleaming and flexing as he soaped up all of that bare skin.

The water shut off just as the newscaster’s voice drew her attention once more.

“Just in. Fox News has uncovered exclusive footage following last night’s robbery at a local Tempe bar.”

The reporter who’d given such an earnest account of the incident earlier leveled a serious look from the studio before his face segued into a bird’s-eye view of Mill Avenue. His voice became background to the footage that had been taken from the security camera positioned at the ATM next door. The lens was just wide enough to show the front of Love’s.

Roxanne watched in horror as a brown swarm invaded, remembering how they’d sounded as they’d pelted the window. A few strays found their way onto the camera. Locusts. Seeing them sent a full-bodied shudder through her.

She was so repulsed that she almost missed what happened next. The front door of Love’s burst open and
Santo charged out with Roxanne clutched in his arms. He was only in the frame for a matter of seconds, but he’d managed to look up, and the camera had captured a crystal-clear print of his face.

The reporter’s voice overlaid the picture, and Roxanne listened as disbelief and dread built inside her.

“. . . officials have named this man as a person of interest in the disappearance of Roxanne Love and the alleged shooting of Reece Love, Manny Gormin, Sal Espinoza, and Jim Little. All alleged victims have been missing since approximately eleven last night.”

A picture of Santo appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. Young—perhaps midtwenties—he wore a pressed uniform and a proud, if stern, expression. “The man caught fleeing Love’s has been identified as Santo Castillo, a Flagstaff police detective currently on suspension. Castillo was reprimanded three months ago under a hailstorm of controversy concerning alleged police brutality in the arrest of accused drug dealer Marshall Ralston.”

Roxanne was aware that the bathroom door had opened. A moist breath of soap-scented steam drifted out. But she couldn’t look away from the newscast.

“Castillo was cleared of all charges by an internal investigation that determined he did not use excessive force in the arrest. However, unofficial sources tell us that Castillo has been unstable since the murder of his
wife two years ago in a retaliation shooting by a local gang, and his return to duty is pending a psychiatric evaluation.”

A new image appeared, Santo again, only this time he wore a smile that revealed dimples she’d only glimpsed. His eyes glittered with laughter. A woman stood behind him, arms wrapped around his shoulders, cheek pressed to his. She had the same toffee skin and dark gaze that Santo did, but her features were softer, feminine, where his were starkly masculine. Roxanne could see love in every detail, from their laughter, to the way she leaned in, the way his big hand rested over hers where they lay clasped against his breastbone, the tenderness of a shared moment immortalized on film. Something weighted and yearning shifted inside Roxanne as she stared at the happy couple.

Santo made an angry sound as he stormed across the room, grabbed the remote, and clicked off the TV. She stared with shock at the sight of him, furious, wearing only a towel around his hips. His wet hair stood in tufts, and his eyes blazed as he hurled the remote across the room. It smacked into the wall with a bang that made Roxanne jump and sent batteries scattering into the corner. Anger radiated from him as he strode to the window and cracked the curtains to peer out.

Mouth open, she watched him. Drops of water clung to his broad shoulders and trickled down the long, supple slope of his spine. He turned, still glaring,
and some numb, dazed part of her hiccupped at the view. A light sprinkle of hair covered his chest and traveled faintly between the ridged muscles of his abdomen before disappearing beneath the towel.

“It’s time to go,” he snapped, stalking back into the bathroom. He didn’t close the door, and she heard the towel drop and the rustle of clothes. A minute later he was back, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt gripped in his hands.

“Is that true, what they said?” Roxanne asked.

Santo glared at her, and in the pitch depths of his eyes, she saw pain and fury, knotted so tight that one could hardly be discerned from the other.

“Which part? Beating the shit out of a drug dealer or getting my balls busted for it?”

“The part about your wife,” she said softly.

For a moment, the question seemed to steal the oxygen from the room. He stood, shaking his head, lips parted in a silent plea for her to take it back. He’d wanted a fight. He’d wanted to lash out. She could see that, read it clearly.

But now his shoulders slumped. He tossed his T-shirt on the chair and ran a weary hand over his face. With a labored breath that seemed to pain him, he crossed to the bed where she sat. Sinking to the edge of the mattress, he fell back across the foot of it. If she stretched out her legs, she could touch his bare torso. He stared at the ceiling with haunted eyes.