by Sylvie Kurtz
“Yeah.” Cari rolled the thick leather of her watchband over her thin wrist. “I checked my messages in the car. They offered me a job framing.”
“That’s great, Cari.” Liv meant to add more encouragement and ask more questions, but just then the restaurant door opened, blowing in a cold slap of air. Sebastian walked in, and her whole insides seemed to light up.
“Hi! What are you doing here?” Maybe the new drug the doctor had given her was finally kicking in, or maybe it was just the sight of worry slipping out of Sebastian’s eyes, but the tingling in her hand and foot abated and the headache seemed to lift.
He kissed her and slid into the empty chair next to hers. Wanting to hang on to the solid feel of him, she reached for his hand. He squeezed her fingers and didn’t let go. And his dark and endless gaze seemed wide enough to hold only her. “I wanted to be sure you brought home some Ma La Lamb. It’s too spicy for you, so you usually forget.”
Even before. Liv smiled. “Paula thought of it.”
Without looking at Paula, he said, “Thanks. I appreciate it.” And Liv knew he meant more than the Ma La Lamb. Asking Paula to take her to her appointment had seemed to cut the heart right out of him this morning. He’d called three times in the space of an hour. Finally, Paula had grabbed the phone and told him that the hospital personnel were asking her to shut the phone off for the duration of the tests. She’d bet anything Paula had forgotten to turn it back on and that was why Sebastian was here.
“Funny how you can make time for lamb, but not for Liv.” Cari pushed away her plate. Liv wondered at the anger threading through her voice.
“That’s enough, Cari,” Paula said wearily.
Cari scraped her chair back. “I know. My opinion doesn’t count. I’m going to the ladies’ room.” The thick heels of her black boots left scuff marks on the linoleum aisle.
“What’s with her?” Sebastian asked.
“Teenager,” Paula said.
“Long, boring day,” Liv said.
A long day that suddenly seemed to spread longer. There were too many inches separating her from Sebastian, too many people around them, too much noise against the beat of their pulses trying to find each other’s rhythm. Then, as if something was unleashed by their need to touch the other, their words spilled and wound around each other.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“What happened?” she asked at the same time. Then she smiled and pulled him up. “Let’s go home.”
She wanted to draw that bubble bath and share it with him while they exchanged the separate tracks of their day. She wanted to fall asleep wrapped in the glow of their lovemaking and wake up with him spooned around her. She wanted him so desperately it charged her with new energy. With unknown danger hovering at the edge of their lives, squeezing every drop of good out of the present seemed more important than ever. After all, yesterday was nothing but black, and tomorrow was only a gray ghost.
The heat in Sebastian’s eyes and in the spread of his smile seemed to agree. Leaving Paula and Cari to catch up, he paid for their bill and grabbed their take-out order. All the while, he held on fiercely to Liv’s hand, making her feel as if nothing bad could ever touch her again.
WITH THE CHINESE TAKE-OUT getting cold on the conference table in the office, Sebastian, with Liv at his side, went over everything the team had found. Reed and Skyralov would transport Weld in the morning. Kingsley was out trying to locate the missing Mercer.
Sebastian rubbed his eyes as he reached once more for the phone records from the prison, Kershaw’s mother, Greco and Weld. “According to Weld, Greco was in on the escape. Weld was to have a car waiting in Connecticut. And Weld passed the polys. What I don’t see is any communication between Weld, Greco or Kershaw.”
“Third party,” Liv said. Her shoulder rubbed his as she ran a finger down each of the pages. Instinctively, Sebastian wrapped his arm around her shoulder and the frustration stringing him tight loosened its grip.
“I thought of that,” he said. “But the mother had no contact with Weld or with Greco.”
“Unless they used pay phones.”
Sebastian rubbed the nape of his neck. “Jail records show incoming calls and Kershaw had none from Greco or Weld.” He reached for the phone. “There’s one way to shed one ray of light on this.”
It took some wheeling and dealing, but he finally got Weld on the line. “How did you make the arrangements with Greco and Kershaw?”
Thinking singing was going to get him away scot-free, Weld became a canary. “Phone.”
“It doesn’t show in the records.”
“I don’t know who he was. He’d call, pay and I’d deliver. That’s what I do. I fill needs.”
Yeah, a real upstanding guy. “How’d you know he was real? A job like that, he could’ve been setting you up.”
“The code.” Smugness tainted Weld’s voice.
“The code?” Sebastian frowned.
“Yeah, he gave me the code, so I knew it was coming from Bernie.”
“What code?”
The chains around Weld’s wrists rattled. “We had a deal. If one of us needed something, we’d use a code word.”
“So this guy calls you and gives you the code, and you get him a car.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Weld’s relief sounded like a balloon losing air.
“And you have no idea who this guy is?”
“Never saw him. No name. No nothing.”
And that’s how business was done, Sebastian thought as he disconnected. The answer was here, he just couldn’t see it yet.
To keep himself sane, he punched in Kingsley’s number. “Anything on Mercer yet?”
“He bought groceries at Gus’s Market on 101. Looked like he was heading off on a hike.”
“We’ll follow in the morning. I don’t need to go rescue two of you.”
“Give me a little credit here, Falconer. I grew up in these mountains. I know my way around.”
“Safety first.”
“Always.”
Even though the case was technically closed. Even though the team was technically not a team anymore. Even though Mercer was pursuing his own lead on his own time, he was doing Sebastian a favor, and that made Sebastian responsible for his well-being. Always, officer survival came first. Where the hell was he, and what was he up to? Sebastian hoped Mercer wasn’t leading Kingsley into more trouble. Eagle Scout or not, these mountains demanded respect.
“What happened?” Liv spooned Ma La lamb onto a plate.
Sebastian raked a hand through his hair, ignoring the food she pressed on him. “Damned if I know.”
“Not to Mercer.” She pushed the plate toward him. “To you. Why are you so afraid for the people around you?”
He dragged a hand over his face. “I’m not. The house is full. I’m fine.”
“But it puts you on edge.”
Ankles crossed in front of her, she rocked the executive chair from side to side with one heel. She reached out a hand and the tips of her fingers connected with the back of his hand. He didn’t want to melt under that soft warmth. Now more than ever, he needed to stay strong. Against his will, his hand turned and his palm accepted the link she offered.
“Murder puts me on edge,” he said. “Scum who refuse to take responsibility for their actions put me on edge. Fugitives who put innocent people in danger put me on edge.”
She cocked her head. “Why do you feel responsible, though?”
He leaned back in his chair and shook his head against the bloody memories creeping in. “It’s my job.”
“It’s more than that.” She rolled her chair until their knees touched, then leaned forward. “Olivia knew.”
He studied her as if, for the first time, he was seeing how all the pieces of her fit together. He did not recognize Olivia’s patience in the face so eagerly awaiting answers. He did not meet Olivia’s quiet in the blue eyes seeking to understand. He did not feel Olivia’s restraint in the soft steel o
f her fingers. Olivia was gone, and in her place was a stranger who took up too much room in his heart. He loved her as much as he’d ever loved Olivia. He didn’t want to dwell on the weakness of character that could have him switch his allegiance so easily.
“Olivia knew,” he admitted.
“Tell me. I need to know, too.”
He spun the chair toward the bank of electronics, skimming over the data they offered. Mercer, where are you? What are you doing? What have you found? The digital readouts blurred.
Grabbing one of the arms of his chair, Liv wheeled him back to face her. For a moment, Sebastian could almost read all the thoughts jumbling in her mind, and it scared him. He didn’t want to revisit the past and see it play in her eyes. Then she sat on the floor next to him and put her head on his lap, offering the reassurance of closeness without the hardship of eye-to-eye contact.
“Tell me,” she said, “please.”
Tension wound his muscles into aching bundles. Silently, he stroked his fingers through the silk of her hair and tried to find his voice.
“My parents were professors at Keene State College,” he said and cleared his throat. “My father’s world was made up of mathematical equations.” A short sharp laugh rumbled through him as dinnertime conversations played through his mind. Watching the heat spark through his parents’ eyes, their smiles grow wider, as they volleyed banter back and forth had often made him feel he was at a tennis match. Once he’d even worn a whistle at the table and had them exploding with laughter when he’d called one of their shots out-of-bounds. “It’s not that there wasn’t any room for anything else. It’s just that you could tell numbers were his passion.”
“And your mother?”
“Her passion was poetry. Words were like colors are to you. She painted pictures with them. She plucked out feelings with them. She created whole new universes.”
His heart grew heavy as he saw them again in his mind, alive and radiating with energy. “They were good for each other.” Like we are. If this situation ever ends, things are going to be different. I promise. “He kept her grounded. She taught him to fly.”
“And you? How did you fit in?”
The softness of her hair, her warmth draped over his knees both relaxed him. “I was their pivot point.”
“That couldn’t have been an easy role for a child.”
He shrugged. “They were good parents.”
“What happened?”
How could he explain insanity and make sense out of it? After all these years, he still did not understand how such good people found such a violent end.
“They got distracted easily.” He half wished he could blank out the pictures of the past from his memory as Olivia’s accident had done for her. “Once, when I was eleven, my dad left the backdoor wide open after he took out the garbage. They went up to bed never noticing, and a deer came in.” Sebastian could feel Liv’s smile against his knee.
“A deer? In the house?”
“A deer in the house. The commotion in the kitchen woke us up. Dad came into my room, looking for my baseball bat. He ordered Mom and me to stay in our rooms, but of course, we didn’t. Mom and Dad were inseparable. Wherever he went, so did she and vice versa. If he was going to get mugged by an intruder, she was going to be right there with him.”
He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. Liv kissed his palm and her touch eased the black tide rushing at him. He tried to hold on to the sound of their laughter and not the screams he’d imagined as their last breaths, the imagined screams that had haunted his dreams for years.
“I don’t know who was more surprised when he got to the kitchen, him or the doe,” Sebastian said. “But she couldn’t find the backdoor again and ended up sprinting through the living room. Dad tried to calculate possible paths, and Mom raved about her beauty. Neither was helping much with the situation. It took us an hour to lead her out again.”
Liv craned her neck and smiled up at him. “What solution did you come up with?”
Sebastian laughed. “A clear path and potato peelings.”
He became silent, and she didn’t press him.
“After that,” he said, “I always made sure the doors were locked.”
“That was too much responsibility for a child.”
“I chose it.” He’d known even then his parents needed a keeper.
“Still.”
He’d failed them. Closing his eyes, he let the memory of that day inch forward. “It was my best friend’s birthday. We turned thirteen within weeks of each other. We always watched a marathon of movies at each other’s houses on our birthdays. Tradition. We were big on that. Cam was into slapstick comedies, and we must’ve watched six in a row before we fell asleep.” Sebastian swallowed hard. “And sometime while we were splitting our sides laughing, someone came into my parents’ home.”
Liv’s arm stretched up and tucked itself around his waist. Suddenly, he needed her close, so he reached for her, lifted her into his lap, wrapped his arms around her as if she would fly away. Or maybe he was afraid he would—right back into the bloody mess he’d walked into that long-ago morning. He leaned his head against hers. Her scent and her warmth calmed the wild beating of his heart.
“They were sleeping. Someone woke them up and asked for their money. All they had between them was seventy-six dollars.”
Liv’s hand cupped his cheek. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I want to.” Sebastian closed his eyes. “He killed them. Stabbed them with a knife from their own kitchen.”
“If you’d been there, you would have died, too.”
He’d tried to believe that, but no matter how much he wanted to absolve himself, the conclusion he came to was always the same. “If I’d been there, the door would’ve been locked, and he couldn’t have gotten in.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “Sebastian, no. You were a child.”
A child who’d understood that his parents didn’t quite belong in this world. “I know.”
“Sebastian…”
He kissed her bruised temple, reminding himself what happened to the people he cared for. “He was a fugitive.”
“So you became a hunter.”
“Yes.” Something inside him gave. She understood.
“And then?”
He frowned. “Then what?”
Liv tilted her head as if she saw into the dark folds of his soul. “Well, you have whole teams of people to work with. That should make you feel secure. The power of the many to catch the few. What happened to make you turn away from them, too?”
He stared into the clear sky of her eyes. “You were always too observant.”
Her grin was mischievous. “So I haven’t lost all of myself.”
No, the best parts were still there. The loyalty. The courage. The grounding earnestness. And he wanted to find that settled feeling again.
He kissed her softly, deeply. As her hands wound around his neck, he pushed away all thoughts of evil and violence. As good as that fuzzy teal sweater looked on her, it had to go. His hands slid up her back, taking the sweater with them. He kissed the hollow behind her ear and reveled in her gasp. He kissed the curve of her shoulder and gloried in the catch in her breath and the widening of her pupils. He unhitched the clasp of her bra, slipped the silky straps down her arms and filled his hands with her breasts. His reward—the peaking of her nipples and his own rock-hard readiness.
“I was a rookie cop,” he whispered into her ear. Why was he going there when he could plunge into her and forget all about the past?
She knuckled his cheek gently and tucked her head into the cradle of his shoulder. “Tell me.”
He fished for her sweater and draped it around her shoulders. His fingers continued the slow exploration of the bumpy curve of her spine as the past slinked back to the present. “Nothing ever happens in a small town. Drunk drivers. Domestic disturbances. The occasional bank robbery.”
Failure m
ade him itch, and he tried to push Liv away. She looked at him with those sure blue eyes and shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He swallowed around the lump in his throat and hooked his fingers in the belt loops of her jeans, holding her close. “One night, we got a call of a domestic disturbance. By the time we got there, it had turned into a murder-suicide. We were securing the scene when we heard a noise upstairs. Mike was lead. I was watching his back. A six-year-old kid was standing there with a gun. Shot Mike right between the eyes before I had time to even react.”
She stroked a hand through his hair. “How were you supposed to know a six-year-old was going to shoot?”
“It was in his eyes.”
“He was a child. Probably terrified.”
That didn’t alter the end result. He was supposed to protect Mike. And failed. “Mike died.”
Liv rubbed her cheek against his. “That’s why you let Olivia go.”
Silence. It bumped to the rhythm of their pulses.
“Pushing people away just because something might happen to them isn’t going to stop bad things from happening,” Liv said.
“I know.”
“People aren’t meant to live as islands.”
“I know.”
“Sebastian…”
“Mmm.”
“What happened to Olivia wasn’t your fault.”
He didn’t say anything, but his guilt made itself tangible in the stiffening of his muscles.
“I won’t let you push me away because you’re afraid.”
His arms tightened around her waist. “I’m not sure I could let you go.”
And the confession seemed like an admission of weakness. He could not give her up anymore than he could stop breathing. She anchored him. She reminded him that the whole world wasn’t the cesspool where he worked. She made him believe there was still a scrap of good inside him. He wanted her. Always.
The sweater slipped from her shoulders. He slid his hands up her bare back. She bent her head to meet his kiss and took his breath away with her fervor.
She was unfastening the buttons of his shirt and he was reaching for her zipper when the phone rang.
