A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense

by EC Sheedy

  “I thought you were with me on that. We talked about it.”

  “It was the only thing we talked about. Ad nauseum. And I was with you at the beginning. But I didn’t think we’d end up selling our souls to the fertility industry.”

  “Then this is about money?”

  He shook a negative. “No. Money’s the least of it. It’s about . . . this drug, that drug, this clinic, that clinic, this test, that procedure. We’ve been on the get-a-baby treadmill since we got married, with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

  “I just need to know—”

  “You do know. But you refuse to accept it. You’ve had four doctors tell you the same thing. The last one, what’s his name? Andrews. Only last week, for God’s sake.”

  She had the insane urge to cover her ears. Dr. Andrews, yet another reproductive endocrinologist, had been the frankest and most direct of all of them. He’d put her chances of conceiving at “around minus zero.”

  “That doctor was—”

  “Right, Camryn. That doctor was right. Confirmed to the letter everything you’d heard before.”

  “There’s still a chance.” She had to say those words, had to, even while hating the sliver of doubt embedded in them.

  Craig shook his head. “You won’t let go. You’ll never let go. You’re obsessed, Cammie.” He paused. “And I’m . . . not.”

  Camryn unclenched her hands, forced herself to calm. He was right. She was determined, and focused. She didn’t know any other way to get what she wanted, what she needed from life. “I see.” Somehow, hearing the utter blandness of her response brought some degree of acceptance to her mind. Craig was leaving. She’d survive.

  Craig shook his head. “You still believe it will happen, don’t you?”

  “Whether I do or I don’t doesn’t matter.” She took a step toward him. “There’s more, isn’t there?” She wanted it out, all of it. It was the only way she could deal with it.

  After a long silence, he said, “Yeah, there’s more, and it shouldn’t matter—me being such a caring, contemporary kind of guy.” He took a breath, then his eyes met hers directly. “It’s the sex. Maybe you don’t remember, but we used to make love. And afterwards we held each other . . . touched each other, laughed with each other. We didn’t have intercourse on the clock and by the book, and we didn’t spend an hour after sex—very tense sex—reviewing the odds of my sperm meeting up with your egg and heading upstream from there.” He hesitated. “Lately? I guess you could say the sex is running ninety-percent procreation and ten-percent masturbation.” He shouldered the sports bag and picked up the suitcases. “I’m done, Camryn. I’m gone.”

  She swallowed, knew his words came from justified frustration, knew they were true. But, still, they cut deep.

  Yet, sadly, not deep enough to bleed.

  “Then there’s nothing more to say.” Her words were stiff and tight, but all she had. She suddenly wanted him gone, wanted the emptiness of the house, an endless silence to paw through her mess of feelings. Dear God, there was actually relief buried in there, a weird warmth that had no place in the chill of a marriage failure.

  When he reached the bedroom door, he looked back at her. “You know, I didn’t figure you’d try too hard to stop me, and it looks as though I was right.” His own words seemed to hurt him. “The truth is I think you stopped thinking of me as anything more than a sperm donor a long time ago.” He dropped his head a moment, then straightened. “I’ll get the rest of my things later.”

  She nodded. “I’ll have them packed for you.”

  “And there’s something else you need to know. There’s no other woman, Camryn. Never has been. I didn’t cheat on you. You’re better than that. I’m better than that.”

  He walked out and silence entered.

  Camryn sat stone-still on the edge of the bed. For a moment, she had the insane wish there had been another woman, some noxious female she could call nasty names and hate. It would be easier to take than losing your husband because you were lousy in bed and your womb was a black hole. A vacuum.

  Nothing grew in a vacuum.

  She covered her mouth, stayed a sick laugh edged with hysteria.

  Craig was right. She was obsessed, deaf to the countless doctors who’d told her she’d never conceive a child of her own. She’d refused to believe them, because hope was all she had, hope and the entrenched notion that if you wanted something badly enough, you didn’t quit. Ever.

  Maybe she’d been wrong . . . Even her mother had told her to let go, to accept her infertility and move on.

  But more than anything else in the world, Camryn wanted a child. When she’d attended Kylie’s delivery, watched that precious new life jerk and cry in the doctor’s hands before being placed in Holly’s arms, her heart had filled with a longing so intense her knees had weakened.

  Call her obsessive, call her fixated, call her plain crazy; none of the tags mattered, because somewhere deep inside, there was a pool of love, a very special love meant for a child. Her child.

  Or so I always thought . . . .

  It wasn’t as if she couldn’t carry on, keep trying. She didn’t need Craig . . . or any man. There were other options. Options that offered a world of waiting, a world of disappointments. The idea of them weighed on her, exhausted her.

  She stood, walked to the window overlooking Lake Washington, and leaned her forehead against the cool glass, hurt and weariness sapping her resources, making her feel lost, outside herself.

  “You had to try, Camryn Bruce, you had to travel that road. You had to take it as far as it would go.” She blinked, then blinked again, feeling no regret, only emptiness. “And now you’ll have to travel another . . .” She lifted her head, stared vacantly at the still autumn waters of the lake, and let the tears flow.

  The trouble was she had no idea what road it would be.

  For the first time in months, Holly Lambert felt free. Free of worry. Free of guilt. Free of her rotten decisions.

  Closing her eyes, she savored the peace that came with visualizing her future without him. Finally and forever, the mess she called a life was cleaned up. Purged. If she were any happier she’d break apart, the pieces of her floating away like butterflies. She almost laughed at her own silliness, but smiled instead. She’d save the laughter . . . for when she could share it, when she’d told him her decision.

  It’s over. Done. At last. Irrevocably done.

  She’d done what she had to do. She had a second chance—or sure as hell hoped she had—and she didn’t intend to mess it up. There’d be no more stupid mistakes. She’d get it right if it killed her.

  Pulling her long auburn hair into a hasty ponytail, she breathed deeply.

  The morning air was autumn sweet, scented with pine and rain-dampened moss. The sun sent shafts of light through the trees to kiss the cool earth. Mist rose lazily from the ground, curled around the trunks of maple and birch, then disappeared. Its time spent.

  She stretched, first one long tanned leg, then another, and rolled her head, circling her strong, straight shoulders. Impatient to get started, she took a drink of water and another lung-expanding breath.

  Shifting her gaze to the path in front of her, she happily anticipated the five miles of running-high and heart-pumping solitude that lay ahead. The narrow lane, dense with brush and trees on either side, was soft-packed earth, bare and inviting—a commercial for Nike or New Balance.

  Before tugging her T-shirt down, she patted the words scrawled in bold blue italics across its front. Life is good. She ran, gained speed and ease with each stride, thinking of all the good things that would flow from her finally having made the right decision for her and Kylie. Now all she had to do was convince Dan.

  Yes! For the first time in years her shapeless old running tee had it right. Life was good. Damn good!

  A mile down the trail, she learned something else.

  Life was short . . .

  “Hi.” Surprise made her stop abruptly. “Wh
at are you do—”

  Falling…

  One last, searing thought. Kylie!

  One last desperate breath.

  One last beat of her healthy heart.

  A person clad in coveralls and wearing a hairnet and rubber gloves stares down at her through eyes shot through with shock and fear.

  The lithe, strong body lay sprawled on a mat of fallen leaves, arms flung outward, one knee bent. Her head, which the bullet had cratered deeply on the left temple, is clotted with hair, filling up with blood and brain fluids; it rests on a bed of stones at the side of the path at an angle only death allows. A stream of red flows from her ear.

  Even in death she’s beautiful. Always so beautiful.

  When the tears start, a blood-spattered gloved hand brushes them away.

  One shot, thank God. Only one shot.

  The incongruity of thanking God for assisting in a murder is lost in the mind static, the after-blur of violence. The first cloud of sorrow.

  A leaf, bright copper under a solitary ray of sunlight, adheres to the spittle and blood oozing from the corner of Holly’s mouth. Her eyes, shocked open by sudden death, stare upward, then inward to . . .

  My soul! She sees my sick soul. A miserable, frightened soul repulsed by what its body has done.

  The body’s heart pounds, threatens to burst with its pounding.

  Had to do it, had to do it . . . No choice.

  As a last act of kindness, the soul within yearns to close those damning eyes, but the body is repelled, immobile, unable to touch the blood and death it rendered.

  There was love in life, laughter and shared history, but in the sin of killing, there is only cold fear and the void of death.

  It’s done, finally, irrevocably done. I can never go back.

  The end of Holly’s untroubled, privileged life brought a new beginning and a last chance to make things right.

  The soul wants to weep and beg forgiveness; the body puts the gun in a pocket, steps into the trees flanking the running trail, and disappears, more silently than it had come.

  Chapter 3

  Dan Lambert heard the phone while he was in the bathroom shaving. He ignored it, lifted his chin, and removed the last of his beard, going with the grain, taking his time.

  When he was done, he slapped on aftershave and grimaced against the burn. But he liked the scent, kind of a citrus-and-musk thing that Kylie had given him for his last birthday. “Picked it myself, Daddy. Isn’t it pretty?”

  He grinned. The scent wasn’t exactly “pretty,” thank God, but it did remind him of home, and it went a long way in negating the lingering smell of oil-field smut, a vaporous stew of mud, grease, sweat, and sludge that took three showers to get rid of.

  It had been a long three months.

  Tonight, a steak as big as Idaho, and a beer as cold as the country he was in. And tomorrow the company plane and home.

  Home. The thought of it took the frost out of the cold-beer idea.

  He had no idea what to expect when he got there. During his and Holly’s last uncomfortable conversation—at least four days ago now—before she’d put Kylie on the phone, they had, as usual, avoided talking about their wreck of a marriage—until she’d blurted out that she’d “been thinking” while she was in Boston and had made a decision. One she hoped he’d be okay with, and be able to handle.

  She’d sounded nervous and shaky, and they’d left things right there, which was fine with him. To his way of thinking, any discussion of their fractured relationship required a face-to-face, even if he did feel lukewarm going into it. The good thing was, she’d made a decision. One way or another, they’d take it from there.

  He stepped out of the bathroom, wiped the last of the moisture from his jaw, and headed for the clean shirt he’d tossed on the bed. The phone rang again. He’d let it ring, let the desk take a message.

  It had to be Plitski, wanting him to stay another few days and work up a preliminary security report on Burgeen Oil’s new site. Not going to happen. He’d gone as far north and as deep into Alberta’s Athabaska oil sands as he was going to on this trip, and the security was solid: surveillance was in place, the computer control center was operational, and every last man and his dog working the site had security clearance.

  He shrugged into his shirt, grateful to be leaving and even more grateful he wouldn’t have to come back for one final security sweep until early February. The sites would be going flat-out then, the ground frozen hard enough to take the heavy equipment required to carry 400 tons of tar sands at a go. Fifty-below time, when the north wind peeled back your skin and freeze-dried your eyeballs. No way around it. That 300 billion barrels of oil, with another trillion soaking in sand and shale, wouldn’t be ignored and was always at risk, which made good business for Hoyle and Lambert, his security company.

  He started on his shirt buttons. Yeah, February was his last trip. From that point on, he was staying close to home.

  His hands stilled. For all his grand words about getting past it with Holly, doing what had to be done to make things work between them, her cheating on him bubbled in his gut like dirty crude.

  If it weren’t for Kylie . . .

  Damn phone kept on yelling at him. He finished buttoning his shirt and picked up the black phone’s receiver. “Yeah.”

  “Dan? Dan Lambert?”

  Not Plitski, thank God. “You got him.”

  “I have some . . . news.”

  When the voice registered, his eyebrows shot up. “Paul?” What the hell?

  “Yes.”

  Paul Grantman was Holly’s father, and given he’d never approved of Holly marrying Dan, his call was singular, a real snowstorm in the Sahara kind of event. Dan’s gut balled. He and Paul had only two things in common, Holly and Kylie. And trouble with either was the only reason Paul would call. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s about Holly.”

  Dan’s hand tightened on the phone, something in him icing up, something in him willing the silence coming down the line to stretch out, never end. Although if there was one thing Dan knew, all the wishing in the world wouldn’t stop bad news. He’d learned that from Holly.

  “She’s dead.” Paul’s words were flat, clipped, and bound in control. “Killed, as the police put it, by an unknown assailant.”

  “Jesus!” Dan’s muscles jellied, and he sat like spent rubber on the edge of the bed. He shoved a hand through his still shower-damp hair, while his mind took him to their last good-bye, her forced smile when he’d left for this job, the sour ache in his gut when he’d looked out from the backseat of the cab taking him to the airport, her waving at him from the porch. He’d waved back but quickly turned away, unable to look at her. What she’d told him about her . . . infidelity too recent, and his promise to think things over feeling like a tumor on the brain.

  “Dan? Are you there?”

  “How? When?” He forced himself back to the phone call, his brain still not processing, not accepting, the information.

  “Yesterday. It took me a while to find you.” Paul paused. “She was running. God, I begged her to stop going out like that, running alone—”

  “Where? Where did it happen? And for God’s sake, what happened?” Right now Dan wanted details, not regrets and recriminations. There’d be plenty of time for those.

  Dan heard Paul’s heavy breathing, then the slosh of liquid courage in what he knew would be a fine crystal glass. “On the running track in the park behind us. Less than a mile from the house. She was found by another runner—a doctor, as it turns out. He said she was still . . . warm, so it couldn’t have happened very long before he found her. I talked to him, and he said she’d died quickly.” A pause. “She looks bad . . . really bad.”

  Dan’s mind played a sick and violent movie. “Jesus,” he said again, while trying to fill his lungs with air and block the images boiling in his head.

  “The detective I spoke to said she was shot with a small-caliber gun at close range. That’s it.
They think it’s probably a random killing. Said some bad types have been seen in the park lately, but they’re questioning everyone. They don’t seem to know anything, and if they do, they’re not talking. They just keep saying they’re looking into it. Like goddamn robots!” His voice rose.

  “Where is she now?” Dan said, keeping his tone even.

  “The morgue. They’ll release her in a couple of days.”

  He saw her. In one of those stainless-steel drawers, with a tag on her toe, a white sheet covering her naked body. He closed his eyes, remembered her plans to redo the kitchen. “Everything stainless steel, Dan. Fridge, stove, counters . . . everything. It’ll be cool.” As cool as it gets.

  “Who in hell would want to kill her?” Paul said, his voice quiet and tremulous.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No.” Dan rubbed his forehead. Making sense of things wasn’t possible right now. Sense didn’t thrive in a brain fog as dense as pitch. “Kylie,” he said. “Who’s got Kylie?”

  “Erin and I. She’s all right. Too young to understand, of course, which is a blessing.” Paul stopped. “Although this morning she asked where her mama was . . .” He coughed as if to clear his throat before adding, “We’re keeping her busy.”

  “Good.” Dan nodded to the empty room, glanced at the clock. Needing to move, to do something, anything, he stood and took the two steps away from the bed the twisted phone cord allowed. “With luck and decent connections, I’ll be in Boston by morning.” Christ, his voice was cracking. He leveled himself off, ignored the sharp stones in his chest. “And, Paul, I’m sorry. I know how much she meant to you.”

  “I loved her, Lambert. She was my only child.” His voice was a bit steadier, and Dan knew he’d reached for this final store of strength. “I’m sure you’ll miss her, too.” The last words were added in the cool tone more characteristic of their strained relationship. “Call us when you arrive. There will be arrangements to make. And, as her husband, it’s necessary you be part of them.” A thought that obviously didn’t please him.