by Christa Wick
Pausing, she blushed then licked at her full lips. The gloss created by her tongue reminded me of my plans for our afternoon. Wrapping both hands around her hips, I tugged her onto the bed and kissed along the side of her stomach. "You could skip the run."
"You're incorrigible," she squealed and pushed at my shoulder. "And one of the guests is expecting me to run with her since her husband canceled in favor of an early tee time on the golf course."
Her tongue stuck on "husband." The way the word tangled in her mouth provoked Laurie into poking one tailored fingernail at the flesh of my arm. I saw a flash of light from the diamond engagement ring I had put on her hand less than six months before, my proposal coming at the end of a very romantic New Year's Eve dinner in New York City.
She leaned forward, planted a firm kiss on my lips then bounced up and toward the door of our hotel room. "I'll be gone about ninety minutes because of the shuttle's schedule and the time to drive there and back. We start higher up and run down, or else I would be ruined for the rest of the day."
"I'll be here," I assured her. "Waiting for my angel to fly home."
She blew a kiss in my direction as the door swung shut. I drew the sheet up to cover my face but the gauzy white material didn't stand a chance of blocking the light entering through the room's balcony window. A few minutes passed with me trying and failing to fall back asleep despite the overdose of sunshine and then I kicked the sheet away.
Looking at the clock, I measured off when my ninety minutes of freedom would end before heading into the bathroom for a quick piss. With my bladder drained and a swish of mouthwash making my lips tingle, I returned to the bedroom, reached into my backpack and pulled out my laptop. The log-in popped up and I entered my password. The first thing I checked online was my email.
Three messages from Cam Stevens waited at the top of my inbox. Each contained the word "venue" in their title. Venue 1, Venue 2, Venue 3. The man was consistent, not creative.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand next to me before I could open the first email. I looked at the screen to see I had an incoming text from my mother. With a shake of my head, I ignored the phone and opened the first of Cam's emails -- Venue 1. A very large pair of breasts appeared onscreen. I deleted the email and went to the next one.
Same tits, same sarcastic co-worker.
I hit the delete key again and then again for his final email without even opening it. With my twenty-eighth birthday little more than a week away, I had tasked Cam with securing dinner reservations for a gathering of family and friends. That it was my birthday was a cover for the real reason I wanted everyone together.
Laurie and I were going to set a date for our wedding.
At least that had been my plan when we left Hagersburg for Tucson. The week away from everyone wondering when we were going to tie the knot was intended to solidify our engagement. Not that Laurie had any lingering doubt that she was ready for the big commit.
With the air conditioning unit in the room on at full blast, I had been cold when I turned on the computer. Thinking about marriage made me sweat.
My fingers tapped indecisively along the keyboard without actually pressing a key. Using the touchpad, I moved the cursor to the lower right corner of the screen. The background was black -- so was the icon hiding in plain site. I double clicked and a screen prompted me for a password. I stabbed a string of keys in response.
K/55M3G0N3
Three years worth of files began opening. The secure folder contained everything I knew about Eden Abbey, every last lead I had tried running down until I stopped a little after Halloween and promised myself I would never look again. For six months, I kept my word. I flew Laurie to New York City, got down on one knee, and did everything right on the surface.
My index finger surfed along the touchpad, up to the folder's left corner. I clicked "select all" then hesitated. One more click and I could delete Eden from my life. I could try to be the husband Laurie deserved. I could work on giving my mother the grandchildren she'd been whining for the last two years.
One click and it was over.
Hitting escape, I left the files intact for the moment and opened my web browser. Before I clicked delete on the folder, I would do one last search, the attempt an open question to the universe.
Laurie or Eden? The woman whose heart I held in my hands versus the woman who had broken my heart.
Three and a half years had passed since I had arrived home after an all hands call to find Eden gone. It had taken half an hour to locate her note and five seconds to read it. She left it in the canister with the grocery money, not so much as a penny missing despite my expectations otherwise.
Forget me, even though I will never forget you.
Eden
Sitting on the hotel bed in Tucson, I sucked in a ragged, acid-filled breath and then began typing search term after search term. When words produced no results, I dragged the few photos I had of Eden into the query field just as I had done in the years before Eden's brief return to Hagersburg. Like every search before it, nothing to do with my Eden appeared.
I had my answer. It was time to move forward. Time to forget as she had instructed me to do three and a half years before.
With thirty minutes to spare before Laurie's return, I deleted the secret folder on my computer and cleared my web history twice. I tucked the laptop back into the bag and answered my mother's text as I headed into the bathroom to grab a quick shower.
For weeks, I had kept Laurie in the dark, but my nagging mother knew what the trip to Tucson was meant to accomplish. Now she wanted to know if I was done fence sitting.
I mashed my thumb against the screen, sending a reply.
Re-proposing tonight. We'll announce date at my birthday dinner. Love u.
Yep -- I was about to "make an honest woman" of Laurie Quade.
And a thoroughly dishonest man out of myself.
Chapter Twenty
Eden
Dried blood covered the top half of my uniform in a demented Rorschach pattern. Gore from the woman on my gurney made my gloved fingers slippery as I stopped the IV. A physician had called off resuscitation attempts after intubation and all attempts to restore circulation had failed.
After I had failed...
I looked at the mess in front of me, doubting she had been conscious through any of the ordeal. Her nose was caved inward, most likely after she hit the ground following a sideswipe by a mini-van. Running near the cliff's edge on the trail, the hit had propelled her onto a sharp outcropping of rock, breaking several ribs. It would be for the medical examiner to confirm, but all signs pointed to one of the fragments piercing her heart. She had been gurgling her last breath when we arrived, her pulse barely detectible by our instruments and not at all by touch.
Hair spilled off the gurney, it's color indiscernible from all the blood. Her left hand flopped lifelessly over the edge. I placed it back in position along her hip. A diamond solitaire with no second band glittered dully on her ring finger.
"She was going to get married," I told Felix.
"Don't," he warned. "You are Miss Fierce. If anyone could have saved her, it was you. Don't go thinking about who she was or might have become. It's not your fault."
I wanted to tell him that didn't matter. All that mattered was that I hadn't saved her. But a day or a week or a month from now, he would be the one in the back with a corpse and I would be offering the same platitudes, so I kept my mouth shut.
"You know I'm right," he continued. "You fight all the way to the end, chica."
"They need to shut that fucking trail down," I growled, redirecting blame toward the county. "Next time it's going to be a kid on a bicycle we're scraping off the road."
An image of that future scenario sucked all the oxygen from the ambulance. I pitch forward but caught myself before I came into contact with the dead jogger.
Felix had been too busy heading off my guilt trip to kill the sirens and lights and I reminded him to do so.
He hit the switch and we covered the last five blocks to the hospital in silence. He helped me unload the body then planted a hand against my chest before I could wheel her toward the sliding doors.
"You're a mess, chica." He shoved a sealed plastic bag containing a spare uniform into my hands. "I'll get the paperwork started while you clean yourself up and change."
"Thanks." I disappeared through a side entrance. Twenty minutes later, I returned to the ambulance to find Felix absent. I squawked at him over our handsets to find out where he had disappeared.
"Getting you a fresh coffee and a bagel sandwich," he squawked back. "I'll meet you at intake in about six minutes. Line is out the door down here."
"You're the best," I answered, my voice choking up at his thoughtfulness. I would and had done the same for him. Unlike some of the other crews, ours was a genuine partnership. We looked after one another on the clock and off, and I thanked whatever power had brought Felix into my life at the end of each shift.
Reaching the intake desk, I motioned one of the nursing staff to the side.
"Did you make an ID on the patient we brought in?"
Given the location of the accident, I didn't doubt the woman had been a tourist. If she had been carrying a fanny pack or other bag, it hadn't been anywhere near the body. The responding police unit that arrived a few minutes us had been too busy rendering first aid to the dead woman to search. And none of the onlookers gathered at the edge of the scene acted like they knew her.
I imagined a hotel room somewhere in the city. Maybe she had come to Tucson with a bunch of girlfriends for a bachelorette party or with her mom and dad for one last family trip as an unmarried woman. Maybe the loved one waiting at the hotel was the man with whom she intended to spend the rest of her life.
"We found a hotel keycard," the nurse confirmed. "A patrol unit is bringing the fiancé over. Based on the hotel registration, her name is Laurie--"
"You!"
A voice I never expected to hear again sliced through the cooled air surrounding the intake desk.
"You did this. She died because of you."
My mouth dropped open, shock rendering me incapable of speech. The nurse at my side had no intention of letting me respond. Spotting Felix, she gripped my arm and hustled me toward my partner.
"Because of you." The harsh accusation faded to a mumble as he repeated himself.
"Crap," the nurse said under her breath as she handed me off to Felix. "Another one ready to sue before the corpse is even cold. Get your asses back to base and make sure your paperwork is perfect."
Felix nodded, his confused gaze darting in my direction as he lead me to our vehicle.
"Who's hot to sue," he asked, strapping me into my seat.
I shook my head. This wasn't about liability and lawyers and malpractice. At least I didn't think it was.
"The fiancé," I answered, the rest of the explanation stuck in my throat.
"Dumb ass is out of luck if they weren't already married. And you did everything by the book, chica. Don't let this asshole worry you."
I couldn't stop shaking my head. As we stopped for the first traffic light, I placed my hand on Felix's arm. "You don't get it. The fiancé--"
He turned and looked at me, his long fingers tapping nervously at the steering wheel.
"The fiancé is Dare O'Donnell."
*******************
The rest of our shift passed at home base, half of it in our supervisor's office with one of the city attorneys asking Felix and me questions over the speakerphone. We spent the other half of the shift in the break room filling out endless reams of incident reports.
Most days, especially when the sky was clear of clouds and the temperature had dropped below ninety as evening approached, I took a bus home. The day of Laurie Quade's death, Felix insisted on driving me back to my apartment and walking me all the way to the front door of my second floor corner unit.
I begged off letting him inside with the excuse I wanted time alone to decompress. I told him I adored him more than ever for all the support he had shown and then I sent him off after a long good-bye hug that comforted me more than he could possibly understand.
When I heard a knock at my door less than three minutes after Felix's departure, I patted the pockets of the uniform I still wore and glanced at the small entry table upon which I had placed my keys and cell phone. Keys and phone on the table, wallet in my side pocket -- everything I could think of was with me.
"What did I forget?" I asked, naively opening door.
Immediately, I realized my mistake. The swaying body in front of me wasn't Felix. It was Dare O'Donnell and, judging by the unsteady legs and glaze to his blue eyes, he had spent the remaining hours of my shift getting drunk.
He lurched forward, his arms reaching for and missing the door frame.
I should have let him fall flat on his face. Instead, I caught him, tried to get him upright. He was too big, too clumsy from the alcohol. His hands pawed at my shoulders as he tried to separate from me.
"Get away," he said, the words sloshing against my ear. "You killed her. Killed my Angel. Sweet Laurie."
"We did our best," I answered. I fisted the fabric of his t-shirt so I wouldn't drop him.
"Your best sucks." His arms and torso moved like someone had poured itching powder down his collar and onto the skin. He didn't want me touching him and I couldn't blame him.
"Yeah," I agreed.
"Was going to marry her." He tried to remove my hands from his clothing, but he couldn't manage to capture them.
The alcohol through his vision off and he overshot his target each time. I would have laughed at the vague grasping motions if I hadn't felt like I was dying inside.
"She loved me," he continued.
My back started to ache under his weight. The shake in my arms meant I had a few seconds to get him on the ground or a piece of furniture. Then he twisted. We fell while he kept mumbling about how good she was -- unlike me -- and how she never gave him a bit of trouble -- unlike me.
Shifting the momentum of our fall, I propelled Dare into a side chair a few feet from the threshold.
"Yeah," I said, suppressing an eye roll. "She seemed sweet when I met her."
His gaze suddenly sharpened, the blue eyes surprisingly sober for a few hard blinks. "You never met her. She would have told me."
Was he saying Miss Perfect had a secret or two?
I turned the possibility over in my mind. Having a patient die on me had felt like a ton of bricks landing on my shoulders before I ever learned her identity. The weight of self-doubt and guilt tripled when I learned it was Laurie. That she had withheld from Dare that she was the second to last person to see me on the day I disappeared from his life -- and that his mother had ushered me out the door -- eased a little of the burden I carried.
I offered a non-committal shrug. "She showed up at the house with your mom when you were on the all hands call."
His face turned red. "I came here to talk things out. I can't do that if you're going to lie to me."
My own cheeks began to heat. He had come to my home, tried to place Laurie's death at my feet and now he wanted to brand me a liar? Seriously?
"You really think you were talking to me?" I spit out. "Is that what it was? Laurie good, Eden bad. Laurie loved me, Eden--"
I bit at my bottom lip, my nose crinkling with disgust over how weak I felt in Dare's presence.
His gaze dropped to his lap. His nails picked at the surface of his jeans.
"I'm calling a cab to take you back to the hotel." I strode past him to the entry table, scooped the cell phone off the charger and scrolled through my contacts to find the taxi company I occasionally used.
He lumbered to his feet. The fine hairs on the back of my neck lifted and my body braced against the possibility of an attack.
This is Dare. Drunk or not, he won't hurt you.
Not physically...
I turned with an order on my lips for him to sit his
drunk ass down. With an unexpected agility, he plucked the phone from my grasp and tossed it onto the table.
"Not going," he challenged with a slur. "Guess you'll have to run away like you always do."
He swayed forward. My first instinct was to save him again before he smashed his perfect nose into a wall or my living room floor. For once, I looked out for my own interests and sidestepped his lunging body. Grabbing the back of the chair he had occupied a moment before, Dare narrowly missed falling on his face.
"The fuck I am," I shot back. "I finally have a place to call my own, real friends..."
Seeing him advance toward me, his feet still unsteady, I tried another sidestep. Somehow, he anticipated the move. Grabbing the sides of my face, he jerked me to him. His mouth landed on mine, his lips tender but his breath reeking of beer and chasers of whiskey.
The kiss extended, deepened, the heat produced between our bodies hot enough to curl my hair. Pushing me away, he fell back into the chair.
"There," he said. "Now you have to go. You can't stay if I kissed you."
He wagged a finger in my general direction. "Your rules, not mine."
I shook my head, suddenly sad because, for one stupid second, I thought he wanted the kiss to mean something more, something other than a measure of how much he despised me and wanted me gone. Looking in his drunken gaze, all I saw was loathing.
"She would have been the best wife a man could ask for," he said, the hate evaporating as he looked forlornly around the room.
"I guess that's why you put a ring on it." Done arguing, I returned to the door and reclaimed my phone. I grabbed my keys at the same time then jerked on the handle. As I stepped onto the walkway, Dare let loose a final barb.
"It should have been you."
I could understand him wanting me dead instead of Laurie, but it hurt like hell to have him voice the thought. I staggered away, down the steps. I turned right at the nearest breezeway and pressed my back to the cold concrete wall. A few deep breaths later and I managed to scroll through my contacts. As belligerent as Dare was being, I didn't trust his care to a cabbie. He would wind up in jail before the night was through.
