A Murder of Consequence

by K. J. Emrick

  Drown me. Going to like Braden. She’s going to drown me. Like Braden drowned Felicia.

  Felicia.

  Weakly, fighting for her life and not even really sure which way was the sky and which way was the cold, cold ground, Darcy felt outward with her mind. This was where Felicia had died. Where she was murdered. Her spirit was tied to this place by the intense emotion of her death. If she was here…

  This time when Darcy tried to dig her heel in her foot slipped and slid. They were out on the ice now. The ice over the raging Oragatchie River.

  “Sorry, Darcy dear,” Sarah told her in a disconcertingly cheerful voice. “This is just how it has to be.

  Out of options, Darcy bit down into Sarah’s forearm hard enough to draw blood.

  With a scream of fury and pain Sarah whipped her arm away, stumbling back from Darcy. Air seared into Darcy’s lungs in a long, shaky gasp that ended in a wracking cough. On her knees in the snow, she felt the world spin around her in slow motion. Her stomach heaved in an effort to throw up whatever was there and keeping it in place cost her the precious little breath she’d been able to hold in. Black stars swam in her vision in time to her racing pulse.

  “You stupid little witch!” Sarah screamed at her, wrapping a hand around her bleeding arm. “You’ll pay for that! I’ll see you sent to Hell before I let you ruin things for me! Braden deserved to die! Do you hear me? He deserved to die!”

  Sarah had stepped out to the very end of the ice where it was thin and the water lapped over its smooth edge. Darcy could see the danger she was in. She just couldn’t get enough breath in to warn her.

  The ice cracked. The echo of it was terrible in the silence of the clearing.

  Then Darcy felt it. A presence. A spirit manifesting itself against the threads of her sixth sense. Swiftly, strongly, a little girl who had been wrongly taken from life returned to the place of her death.

  Sarah felt it. Darcy could tell by the look on her face. Somehow, impossibly, she felt her daughter’s arrival.

  The bond between a mother and a child. It was strong enough to surpass even death.

  Turning where she stood, facing out toward the river, Sarah searched in every direction for the source of what she felt. She reached a hand out, and took a step, and the waters lapped around her boots.

  “Felicia?” she called out, hesitantly. “Is that…is that you?”

  She took another step—

  The bright white light that framed Felicia’s spirit nearly blinded Darcy. She appeared right in front of her mother, arms out, mouth open in warning, pressing close. Sarah stepped back, and back, further and further, until at last her feet were on solid ground. Felicia stood there like that, set in place like she was a frozen statue, rather than a ghost.

  Behind her, the ice cracked again, and then broke apart from the shore to be swept away by the rushing waters.

  A moment longer, and Sarah would have gone with it. Felicia had saved her mother’s life.

  “My little girl…” Sarah’s voice was heavy with the tears that flowed down her cheeks. She reached up, her hands floating through Felicia’s, and then fell to the snow, grasping for the ethereal shape of her lost child.

  Felicia floated into her mother’s arms. They held each other for a long time in an embrace that spanned the vast distance between life and death.

  Darcy managed to get to her feet after a time. Breathing was still painful, and her whole body felt like one enormous bruise. She should run. She should try to make her escape and get help.

  She didn’t leave. She couldn’t leave the sight of a little girl comforting her grieving mother.

  When at last Felicia looked up from Sarah’s shoulder, she gave Darcy a smile that was both sad and peaceful at the same time. Thank you. That was what the smile said.

  Then in the blink of an eye, Felicia was gone.

  Sarah broke down in loud sobs, her hands fisted against her mouth, rocking back and forth. Darcy limped over to her and settled her hands on her friend’s shoulders, talking gently to her, giving her words of comfort that she didn’t really hear. Not smart, maybe, considering her friend had just tried to kill her. Darcy wasn’t worried. Not anymore.

  It was over. It was all over.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning, Darcy woke up in pain.

  “Ow.” She rolled onto her side, and it didn’t help. Her back. No better. Her stomach was just unbearable. “Ow, ow, ow.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jon’s strong voice came to her. “You’ll be staying in bed today. I’m taking care of you. All day.”

  She opened her eyes finally to the soft gray light of a winter morning. The whole room was full of soft color. Beige and white wallpaper. Off white bedspreads. The carpet in their motel room was a light brown, she thought. It had been late when they got to bed last night and she really hadn’t been paying attention to things like the floor. All she wanted was sleep, and to feel Jon’s comforting presence nestled up against her.

  Falling asleep had been easy. Waking up was the hard part. All sorts of little nagging concerns immediately demanded her attention.

  “Did you call Izzy this morning?” she asked Jon.

  “Yes, I did. She said she’s fine to watch your bookstore for as long as you need.”

  “I just want to sleep for a whole week. Would that be bad?”

  “I like that you’re a bad girl.”

  “Funny. I’m serious, though. Shouldn’t we get back for the winter festival?”

  “It doesn’t start until tomorrow,” Jon reminded her. “We have time.”

  He bent over her, kissing her forehead. Well, at least that part of her didn’t hurt. “Mmm. That’s nice. Maybe follow it up with some breakfast?”

  “Absolutely. Eggs and bacon?”

  “Yes please. And a bagel?”

  “Wow, you’re hungry. Want some coffee with it, too?”

  “Ugh. No. No, thank you.” The last thing she wanted right now was coffee. Maybe not again for the rest of her life.

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” Jon sat on the second bed, the one they didn’t have any use for. Other than putting her suitcase on it. “You probably want to put everything about this behind you.”

  “I do, and I don’t. Sarah was my friend. I feel sorry for her, even knowing what she did.”

  That earned her another kiss on the forehead. “That’s why I love you. Maybe next time you’ll wait for me, though?”

  “I promise.” She crossed her heart, and even that little motion hurt.

  “I think you’ve made that promise before,” Jon grumped, “but I’ll trust you this time. I’ll be right back with breakfast.”

  There had been no way Darcy was going to stay in Sarah’s house after the events of yesterday. Ellen or Connor, either. After talking it over Ellen had decided to go back to Misty Hollow with her son right away. Back to hiding, was how Ellen had put it. Darcy and Jon had decided to stay another day to see how things wrapped up.

  Just not in that house.

  Shai Larson had been there with Jon when Darcy and Sarah made it back to the trailhead. Jon had been about to rush in and find her, and she got the impression that he would have uprooted every tree in the forest to find her if it came to that. Thank God she had someone like him in her life.

  Sarah had confessed to everything right then and there. Trying to frame Hampton and Terry. Slowly poisoning Braden for a few weeks. The affair with Terry, Felicia’s death, everything. When she was done, Shai had barely been able to keep from breaking down and crying herself. Darcy had seen it in her face when she’d put the handcuffs on Sarah, and then again when she came over to apologize for not listening before.

  Darcy told her it didn’t matter, because it didn’t. Not anymore.

  “So, um,” she said now, trying to get the devastated look on Sarah’s face out of her mind, “bring me a tea? Something with cinnamon.”

  “Of course. Stay here. Rest. We’ll head home later today. I think we’ve done eve
rything we can here. Everything and then some.”

  “Why does trouble have to find me everywhere I go? Can’t it take vacations like everyone else?”

  He laughed, kissed her again, and didn’t make it two steps before his cell phone rang.

  Darcy listened to his side of the conversation but found herself dozing off. Her body was comfy in her warm pajamas under the heavy comforter. If this was going to be a day off for her, then she wanted to spend it sleeping.

  Was it five minutes later when Jon woke her? No. It couldn’t be. He had containers of takeout with him that smelled so good her stomach growled. “Did you leave and come back already?” she asked. “I didn’t hear you leave.”

  “I doubt you could hear anything the way you were snoring,” he teased.

  “Hey! I do not snore.”

  “Yes, you do. In a very feminine and adorable way.”

  “Nice save,” she said, pushing herself up into a sitting position, wincing the whole time. “So who was on the phone?”

  “That,” he answered as he set the food down on the small table in the room, “was a friend of mine. He works in county government as the veteran’s affairs liaison.”

  “Oh, right. I’ve heard you talk about him. Charles? Chuck?”

  “Chauncey,” he corrected. “Chauncey Anders. I reached out to him yesterday after I heard you and Shai talking about Hampton. You were right. He shouldn’t be left to rot. He served his country, and he deserves to get the help he needs.”

  Darcy was amazed. “You did that? For me?”

  “Well, technically I did it for Hampton, but yes.” Adding a bagel from a paper bag to Darcy’s breakfast he brought the container over to her and set a plastic iced tea bottle down on the bedside table. Cinnamon mango flavor, she noticed.

  “Did Chauncey say they could help him?”

  “He promised to send someone to do an interview with him. They’ll find out what services he needs, and set them up for him. The rest is up to him.”

  She took several bites of the fluffy eggs, feeling like some good was going to come out of everything, after all. “Mister Tinker, I think you are just about the most perfect man who ever lived.”

  Lifting his bottle of orange juice, he said, “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Come over here,” she told him, setting the food aside, “and we can do more than just drink to it. Just go easy on me. I’m injured.”

  “How long are you going to milk that, I wonder?”

  “For as long as I can.”

  He was already climbing into bed with her, showing her just how gentle he could be. Good thing, too, because she really was in pain. It would go away in a few days, she hoped, but for now every move she made reminded her of those scary moments on the ice and the vision of a little girl saving her mother from herself.

  Her bruises and sprains would heal. In the meantime she had Jon to take care of her.

  “Jon,” she said as he gently helped her undress. A question had been tucked away at the back of her mind for days now, and this seemed like a really good time to bring it up. “Tell me again. What do you think about us having children?”

  —The End—

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  About the Author

  Strongly influenced by authors like James Patterson, Dick Francis, and Nora Roberts, Kathrine Emrick is an up and coming talent in the writing world. She is a new Kindle author/publisher and brings a variety of experiences and observations to her writing.

  Based in Australia, Kathrine has wanted to be an author for the majority of her life and can always be found jotting down daily notes in a journal. Like many authors, she loves to be surrounded by books and is a voracious reader.

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