Falling

by Rebecca Swartz

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” I said with another smile. I stretched and groaned before turning to face her, adopting the same posture. “Have you been watching me sleep?”

  “Only since I woke up,” she replied, her voice mild.

  “That long, huh?”

  Her amusement was brief, replaced with a pensiveness that made my grin fade. “You’re a beautiful woman, Amy Squires,” she whispered.

  I went very still, not so much at the words, though they were lovely to hear, but at her tone. She sounded almost reverential. I’d never had any woman speak to me in such a way. I kept my eyes on hers, noticing how large her pupils were in the dimness of the room; the morning sunlight was only evident where it crept in around the edges of the curtains. I thought back to the hours we’d just shared, of everything we’d shared, how she had trusted me enough to come to me, to open up to me, and how clear it had been that doing so had not been an easy thing for her. I was amazed that the two of us could have come together at all. I was deeply touched, profoundly affected by her trust. I didn’t know what would happen, but right then, that moment was all that mattered.

  “Thank you,” I said. “So are you, Kael.”

  Her pensive look sharpened into something keen, an almost cold perusal; a moment later, that look fled as she seemed to come to some decision.

  “Harding,” she said, into the silence.

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Harding,” she repeated, and then added helpfully, “It’s my last name.”

  “Oh!” I gave a small laugh, relieved. “My god, I thought you said Hardly, and I didn’t know how to respond to that.”

  She laughed lightly. “No, I have no problem with compliments,” she said, and with sudden cat-like fluidity she shifted, sat up, threw the covers back, and moved to straddle my hips. The heat of her against my pelvis caused an instant wave of desire to crash through me. I raised my hands to her breasts, but she caught them and forced them back down to the pillow, effectively pinning me. She leaned forward, kissed me deeply, then abruptly leaned back.

  “I realized you didn’t know my last name,” she said, “and that seemed…wrong, somehow. After last night I thought, well, you should at least know my last name.”

  She looked so sincere and so contrite; I couldn’t help but say, with mock seriousness, “Especially after last night.”

  She surprised me utterly by giggling. The sound captivated and delighted me; I smiled up at her with the simple pleasure of it. The moments tumbled into themselves; her amusement faded yet again. She caught her lower lip in her teeth, then leaned down to me once more. The way she kissed me replaced the one pleasure with another much more carnal. Between one beat and the next, I went from the warm-bath feeling of contentedness to a fiery lava lake of pure want. The instantaneous change tore my breath from me, and a ragged moan sounded in my throat. She breathed a similar sound into my mouth, and her hands clenched on mine. I gripped back, willing myself to remain as I was.

  When she eventually pulled back, her chest rose and fell visibly. Her eyes were a little wild. I couldn’t pull mine away. “I was wondering,” she said, “if you’d like to take a shower.” She swallowed, then added, “With me, I mean.”

  “Oh.” I tried to control my breathing. “Yes. Sure. That would be wonderful.”

  The wildness in her eyes calmed, along with her own breathing. “And then maybe…breakfast.”

  “Breakfast. Sure. That sounds yummy.” I groaned inwardly at how idiotic I sounded.

  Kael merely cocked her head, her mouth turned up at the corners, as she studied me in the way I was becoming familiar with.

  “You’re yummy,” she said softly and leaned to kiss me one more time, fast and hard.

  She then made another of those quick cat-like moves off me and off the bed, and headed for the bathroom without a backward glance.

  I turned my head to watch her, then looked up at the ceiling with a deep sigh. It was shaky and undisciplined, a complete reflection of how I was feeling, unusual for me, but not unwelcome. I slipped off the bed and followed her.

  * * *

  I stepped out of the bathroom with a towel tucked around me, while Kael finished brushing her teeth. The muscles in my legs, arms and shoulders trembled minutely; it had been a rather long and involved shower. Still, I felt energized, anticipatory. It was a little disconcerting. As I moved between the two beds toward the bedside table where the TV remote rested, I realized I was smiling and feeling a bit giddy.

  Twisting around with the remote in hand, I turned on the TV, a habit of mine to listen to the news in the morning. I was just about to turn away when a picture suddenly flashed on the screen. I froze in place, and stared with widening eyes as my jaw became unhinged.

  The picture was blurry, obviously a screen shot taken from a security camera. A figure in motion, just in the act of turning from the camera, but the headshot was clear enough. I took a step forward to look more closely, with a dreadful feeling of knowing suspicion, and the picture changed, the head shot suddenly enlarged. While still blurry, it was not so indistinct that I couldn’t see who had been caught on camera. I could hear, just barely, the announcer saying, “—odd story out of New Mexico today. Is this woman a serial killer?”

  “Oh, my god,” I said, caught completely off guard.

  “What?” I heard Kael ask from the bathroom. I couldn’t respond, could only turn the volume up and move closer.

  “—the grisly murder of an Albuquerque man shot to death in his apartment. Local police have been unable to identify the woman caught on camera—”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  I jerked my head around. Kael stood just outside the bathroom, clutching one end of a towel to her chest. She stared at the screen with an odd mixture of shock, consternation and despair.

  “—with the FBI’s involvement,” the announcer went on, and I turned my attention back to the television, “the search for this woman’s identity has now extended nationwide, and officials are seeking the public’s help. The brutal murder of this man bears a resemblance to several other murders currently being investigated by various law enforcement agencies across the country. The victims, all male, share one commonality: each man was a suspected perpetrator in one or more alleged sex crimes involving underage girls. The FBI has tagged these murders as a vicious form of vigilantism, and is seeking the public’s help to identify the woman you see on your screen.”

  The screen shot suddenly changed again, to show both photos side by side. Beneath them, the ticker tape ran a 1-899 number, presumably for the FBI.

  “If you have any information, please call the number you see on your screen. Next up, our financial experts will—”

  I stabbed at the mute button, and turned to Kael. She seemed as frozen in place as I had been, and she wore a look of intense concentration, her brow furrowed, and her eyes were narrow and shiny with a fierce light. I opened my mouth to speak, though what I was going to say I had no idea. And suddenly, she was moving.

  “Fuck,” she said, under her breath, as she went past me. And then again, louder and more vehemently, “Fuck.”

  She snatched her knapsack up, threw it onto the nearest bed, dropped her towel, and opened the pack. She moved swiftly, pulled out articles of clothing, grabbed up those that were on the floor from the night before, dressed hurriedly. I watched with a sense of mild alarm as she covered the body I had so recently loved. Finally, I found some words.

  “That’s what you were talking about.” It was a wholly inadequate statement.

  “Yes. That’s what I was talking about.” Her words were clipped, hard and sharp. She roughly folded the rest of her clothes and shoved them into the knapsack. “I told you.”

  “I know, I just—” I couldn’t think of what to say. “I didn’t—”

  “What?” She stopped and looked up, eyes blazing. “You didn’t believe me? You think I would make that shit up?”

  “No!
” I recoiled at her fury. Lowering my voice, I said, “No. I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.”

  Either my words, or my tone, or both, struck a chord in her. She stood stock-still, searching my eyes almost desperately, and then all the fight went out of her. The fire in her eyes died, she exhaled heavily, and her tension fled as swiftly as a wisp of smoke. She dropped the T-shirt she was holding and crossed the floor to me. We wrapped our arms around each other as naturally as if we’d been doing so for years.

  She laid her head on my shoulder. “You don’t care, huh? Some cop you are.”

  “Ex-cop,” I said into her still damp hair.

  She looked up at me. “Once a cop, always a cop, no?” she asked, but there was no heat behind her words.

  “No.”

  She studied me closely, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “Oh my god, Amy,” she whispered, her voice unsteady with her emotion, “I could love you.”

  My belly tumbled and my breath caught in my throat. Her tears almost undid me. Her sincerity was clear in her eyes, her voice. I couldn’t respond, words failed me. So instead I kissed her, and I put everything I couldn’t say into that kiss.

  When we parted, we looked at each other for the longest time; her tears had stopped, but her cheeks bore the trails of those that had fallen. She nodded, as if in answer to what I hadn’t spoken aloud.

  “I could love you,” she said again, her voice soft, yet firm. “But not here. Not like this. Not now.”

  I returned her look steadily, forcing myself to listen, to not react.

  “I have to go. You know that, right? I can’t stay. And please, don’t ask any questions.” Her pale gaze implored me.

  I shook my head. I no longer trusted myself to say anything, afraid of saying the wrong thing, of pushing her away, even though she’d already decided to leave. Again. At the thought, pain lanced through me, and before I’d even realized I was going to, I opened my mouth and said, all in a breath, “Please don’t go, Kael.”

  Kael stared at me, looking as surprised as I felt. Her eyes filled with tears once more, and my heart ached with a longing that practically unnerved me.

  “Oh, Amy,” she whispered, and raised her hands to my face, and brought her mouth to mine.

  When the kiss ended, she gently pulled away, wiped at her eyes, then turned and went back to the knapsack. She finished shoving in whatever clothing remained, headed to the bathroom with hurried steps, and came back with her toothbrush. She tossed it into the pack, stepped across to grab her hiking boots, and pulled them on in two fast, efficient jerks. She reached up for her rain poncho, rolled it in a loose bundle, and slammed it into the knapsack. A quick zip, and then she turned once more to look at me where I still stood mutely, clad in my towel.

  “Stay beautiful,” she said.

  And with that she spun, hoisting the knapsack to her shoulder. She pulled the door open and let in a blinding shaft of morning sunlight that briefly silhouetted her in the doorway. One step, two, and she was outside. She pulled the door closed behind her without looking back.

  I stood where I was, hollowed out, shocked, and senseless. Her silhouette was burned into my retinas as surely as the sense of her was burned onto my body, onto my very soul. For several long, unthinking moments I stood like that. And then slowly, I set about getting dressed.

  Chapter Twenty

  When she is eighteen, she leaves home for the first time. And for the first time, tells a blatant lie, that she is going on a short road trip to try out her new car, a 2005 RAV4, a gift from her aunt Kate. She could have bought it herself; with her eighteenth birthday she has come into the sizeable trust fund her father had put aside for her. Kate, however, will have none of it. Her wish to do this for her niece is not up for discussion; it is a graduation gift, on many levels. Deeply touched, she accepts the gift with no further argument.

  It pains her to have to deceive those she has come to trust and love, but she has a theory, and she cannot test that theory from the safety or proximity of her home. She fabricates a story of “testing her new car” on a road trip to the city of Charlotte. It is also a chance for her to get away for a day or two, something she has never done. Kate and Jillian go along with the idea, as she knew they would. She packs an overnight bag, grabs her laptop and her cell phone, and is out the door before she can start feeling guilty.

  With her plan fresh in her mind, she chafes during the two-hour drive to Charlotte. Her belly is taut with anxiety, her brain awhirl with possibilities. When she arrives, she immediately checks into the hotel she has chosen, a Holiday Inn Express. She goes straight to her room, for the moment not even caring that there is a pool, or a hot tub, or even that she is staying in a hotel all by herself for the first time in her life. She only cares that for once she has complete and utter privacy. Ever since she had first stumbled upon the website which she is keeping secret, she has doubted that her plan could actually work. But now, with subdued excitement, she reaches for her laptop and turns it on. She navigates quickly to the website she has never bookmarked and never will.

  The site is The Watchdog, discovered one day while researching that very thing at the library. Her own dog, Kyle, is an attentive but laid-back companion, and she has never been certain he has what it takes to be a proper watchdog. The site that came up, amongst many others, had the secondary heading of National Sex Offender Registry. She was so startled she closed the page down immediately, only to furtively reopen it a few minutes later. She didn’t even need to navigate the site to discover its purpose; it was very clear about that. She just stared at the home page for a while, and the search feature at the top left. Her brow creased as she considered that search feature box, without being clear on how to utilize it. She closed the site down and logged off the computer. She didn’t have admin status for the library’s computers, and so couldn’t erase her history, but she wasn’t too worried about that. She could easily explain away the discovery. She could not easily explain away her sudden gripping interest in it. Even so, she has not looked at it again. Until now.

  She enters the address of the hotel into the search box of the site, and a search radius of ten miles. What comes up amazes her. Even though the heading specifically states National Sex Offender Registry, she is still astonished to see photos, addresses and information on convictions. She chooses randomly, scribbles down the address, Google Maps the directions, and leaves her room and the hotel.

  When she arrives at the individual’s home, she is just in time to see him pull into his driveway, leave his car and head for the house. He is a perfect match for the offender’s photo on the website.

  She quickly drives off, her mind working furiously. Once back at the hotel, she grabs her swimsuit and heads down to the pool where she swims several laps before retiring to the hot tub. Reclining in the vigorous water, she leans her head against the lip of the tub. And begins to plan.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I had wanted to be a cop for as long as I could remember. The first time I recall thinking about such career aspirations is very clear in my mind, but not perhaps for the reasons one might think.

  I was five years old. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my baby sister, Anna, who was three. We were eating soup, Campbell’s tomato soup, which I had never liked, and after that day, would never touch again. My sister did like it, but only if there were lots of crackers crumbled into it. So that’s what I was doing, crumbling crackers for her while she watched, spoon clutched in her little fist, her gaze intent and unwavering.

  I don’t recall my mother being in the room, but then the next moment she was, in a rush, followed immediately by my father. I was surprised and happy at the sight; he was supposed to be at work. Anna was happy, too.

  “Daddy!” she cried out.

  But he ignored her, ignored both of us.

  “Who is he?” he shouted at my mother. “Who is he?”

  I remember the words, remember my confusion, because no one else was in the room, and I
didn’t know who he was talking about. I remember the paralyzing shock that washed over me as he reached out and shoved my mother hard into the counter, her elbow sending the rack full of drying dishes into the sink.

  My parents had fought before; there were other memories, albeit fragmentary, of raised voices or angry silences when my sister and I knew to tread quietly and carefully, and not intrude. But my father had never touched my mother with anything other than kindness and gentleness.

  The dishes crashed into the sink, I jumped, and Anna dropped her spoon with a clatter and screamed, “Mommy!”

  I was still clutching a handful of crackers; I remember the feel of their sharp corners painfully poking into my palm.

  After that incident, I don’t remember that either of my parents comforted us, or paid us any attention at all. My next memory is of a very large policeman standing in our living room. Another officer, not as large-seeming, stood in the doorway several feet away. My sister was screaming, I was holding onto her, terrified. My parents seemed to be in some sort of standoff on the other side of the room; my mother crying, my father glaring.

  I did something then that is still unfathomable to me to this day: I let go of my baby sister, who screamed even louder, and I ran to the nearest police officer. Flinging myself against his legs, I grabbed hold for dear life.

  The next thing I knew he lifted me into the air, comforted me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, this perfect stranger, as he bent and also gathered up my sister. He spoke gently to us, though I have no recollection of his words. He then turned and said something to the other officer. The door was opened; the two of them traded places. More words were spoken, none that I remember. I do, however, recall what my father said. Just before we stepped outside, I looked back at him. He was breathing hard, though I couldn’t understand why, and staring at my mother. His words scared me badly.

  “Take her away,” he said. “Before I kill her.”

  They took him away instead.