“Not like this.” Anita crossed her arms over her chest, the memory of Patrick’s heartbroken and bruised face scarred into her memory.
“He cares a lot about you. And he is definitely not the type to run from his commitments. So give him a little time.” He gestured back toward the main ballroom. “After all, the professional competition doesn’t start until six, right? And that’s only if things run on time, which we know they never do.”
He smiled and then, clearly bored by the exchange, reentered the ballroom.
Anita stayed, arms still crossed protectively over her chest, while she chewed on her bottom lip.
Rodrigo was right. That in itself was a bit of a miracle. Patrick would not run away from a promise. But if that were the case, where was he? Why hadn’t he at least returned her text or John’s call?
She saw a sudden stream of people exiting the ballroom, heard snatches of conversation. Early lunch break.
Her heart clenched. Not all these people, not the hustling and schmoozing. There was only one face she wanted to see.
Patrick would help her if she was in trouble. She owed him the same courtesy.
****
“What?”
Kim had tried kissing him again, tried pressing his mouth open with her tongue, but had found it too dry. Now she was busying herself getting him a new bottle of water and humming to herself.
“Patrick! Don’t be so shy. I know you’ve noticed it. There’s just this—feeling when we’re together.”
Revulsion? Anger? Happy ignorance? He kept his mouth shut. She had the look of a kettle about to boil over.
Kim brought him the water and held the straw to his lips. “I don’t think you ever noticed me back then. I didn’t look like this. I was like thirty pounds heavier.” She pulled one hand through the long blonde ponytail. “Extensions and dye. It’s not really my color, I think, but I know you like it. But even back in Irish History, I knew. I knew that you were the one for me.”
Now he did gag. “Irish History? You went to Villanova?”
She giggled with delight, kissed his cheek, and pulled away the water bottle. “You do remember! I tried joining the ballroom dance club, but I wasn’t very good, and it hurt my back. You were so busy touring with Anita and Gabriella and all of them, you never really noticed me.” Kim looked at him shyly. “Why would you? I had to become what you wanted, I knew that. Gabriella was so pretty, but God, she was so full of herself.”
“Yeah.” Patrick wracked his brain. Gabriella had been his partner for two years while they were at Villanova. She had been an engineering student and a wonderful dancer, better at Standard than Latin, from an Italian family in Rochester, New York. He had broken up with her because he thought she was too paranoid. She kept telling him someone was taking things from her, just little things, but they were noticeable. A hair clip, a shoe brush, the calculator she used for her advanced calculus courses. The showcase gown Anita had worn.
Pieces of a puzzle clicked into place in his brain.Shit.He was going to die here.
“Anyway, I went to all the competitions to cheer you on. And you were so wonderful. So strong and graceful. And kind. I’d never met anyone like you. But it was just so difficult to talk to you!” Right. No one could ever be introduced in a ballroom. Kim had positioned herself over him, her arms close togetherto enhance her cleavage and her hands on his chest. He had an almost uncontainable desire to scream,“Get off!”
“I’m sorry,” he managed. Was he still to be held responsible for how he acted in college? His mother’s voice rang in his ear:never stop being a gentleman.Oops.
“And then I lost track of you for a while.” A shadow crossed her features, and she was gone again, reliving some past Patrick had no desire to know. “You were off doing those international competitions with Eva. I would watch them when they were on TV, but I never had the money for travel.” She turned away from him on the bed. He wondered if she wanted him to soothe her somehow, but then again, his hands were manacled to the bedposts. So, fat chance. “I figured you had moved on, and I had missed my chance.”
“What did you do then?” He heard a phone vibrating somewhere in the room, and his heart leapt. Maybe he could tell her he had to go to the bathroom. Anything to get unshackled. Then maybe he could find his phone or call John or security or—something.
“I was around, odd jobs and such.” The faraway look in her eyes reminded him of a true crime documentary he had seen once, where the sociopathic female protagonist gaslit her competition before beating them to a bloody pulp. “I missed you so much, though.” Her face brightened infinitesimally. “Then I saw you were coming home, to Lewis. You were working with Anita and started your website, which of course I followed from your very first post.” Patrick could barely remember his firstPhillyProudblog post; it had the veil of something unreal and unfinished, like a picture you drew as a child that you later found as an adult. “You had just been to a Phillies game, and you gave the most wonderful account of it!” She clasped her hands together in reverie. “So I knew it was time to come home. Just amatter of time before I’d find my way back to you. I was willing to wait. Of course, Nikita was very easy to convince—”
“Wait, Nikita?” A light dawned in his memory. Good God, he was an idiot. “Chris. You’re Chris, her assistant.”
Kim whirled in delight, whooping, and kissed him again on the lips. Her breath smelled like diet cola and strawberry lip gloss. “You are so wonderful! I knew you would figure it out, even though I changed my hair and I was wearing color contacts at the time. I called it my Clark Kent disguise. I wasn’t sure how to get you to see me. You had retired from dancing. But then I saw your articles in theInquirer.”Her features settled into a self-satisfied expression. “It was so easy to convince Nikita to do an interview with you. She was always such a vain person.”
Patrick could remember the quiet assistant talking with him on the phone, trying to joke with him as she set the interview particulars, standing in the back of the room with her clipboard and phone clutched to her dress.
“I didn’t quite figure how much she would like you,” Kim now said quietly. “I should have. How could she not want you? She kept asking me to call you back, arrange a drinks meeting, book a hotel.” She spat out the last word. “Every word was like a dagger in my heart. Here you were, finally, right in front of me. And Nikita wanted to take you away and keep you for herself.”
Patrick’s stomach tautened, and his arms stilled in the handcuffs. He did not know what to say, because what did someone say to his kidnapper who had chained him to the bed?Uh oh.
“Fuckingbitch!” Her entire face tightened into the scream. “She never cared about anyone else. She never really cared about you. She saw that I liked you, and she wanted to take you from me.” She did not lose the hard mask as she clipped, “She got what she deserved.”
Damn it, he was a grown man, and he was about to wet his pants. Of all the people the ballroom community had debated as potential murderers, no one had really considered Chris. Chris had always seemed an asexual being, a humanoid drone, plain and sinking into the wallpaper. And then she had disappeared, lost to the investigation, forgotten to all who had ostensibly known her. Patrick wracked his brain, tried to remember conversations, events, anything that could link Chris to the woman currently in front of him. Normally he was better at remembering faces.
