Lovers and Madmen(Sasha McCandless 4.5)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  “Love to, but can’t,” Sasha grunted. “It’s my culinary debut. I’m going to surprise Connelly with dinner, remember?”

  Daniel twisted his mouth into a knot, “I know, but ...”

  “But what?”

  He was silent for a moment, then he said, “I’ve tasted your cooking. Dessert and drinks might be a good backup plan for you. Seventy.”

  She skipped the retort that sprang to mind, opting instead to conserve her energy. As thrilled as she was for Daniel and Christopher, she wasn’t interested in spending a romantic evening with them and Daniel’s parents.

  Her arms began to shake and burn, so she focused solely on forcing herself up, down, up.

  Thirty repetitions later, she finally heard Daniel intone ‘one hundred.’

  Then, resisting the nearly overwhelming desire to collapse on the floor and whimper, she jumped to her feet and managed a smile.

  “Well, that was fun.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Connelly poked his head into Sasha’s office at exactly six p.m. In the distance, the bells of a church on Fifth Avenue chimed the hour.

  “Hey, are you ready to go?” he asked.

  She hurried to close the window that contained her shopping list for the next night’s dinner and shut down her laptop.

  “Just about,” she said. She swept a pile of folders and correspondence off her desk and into her briefcase. Her tired arms felt like overcooked noodles.

  “Naya already left?” he asked, as she finished packing up her computer and her papers.

  She nodded. Her friend and legal assistant had rushed out of the office about thirty minutes earlier, shouting a goodbye as she passed Sasha’s door.

  “I think she had plans with Carl,” she told Connelly.

  “Is it getting serious between those two?” he asked.

  Sasha shrugged. “Not sure. Naya’s been quiet lately.”

  Quiet and distracted—ever since they’d returned to work after the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. Sasha had her own distractions, so when Naya had brushed off her inquiries, she decided to let well enough alone.

  “How’s lasagna and a bottle of red sound for dinner?” he asked.

  “Heavenly.”

  She smiled up at him and then slung the laptop bag over her shoulder, her arm screaming in protest. She closed the briefcase and lifted that, too, cursing Daniel silently.

  “Good, because I already assembled it.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “What?”

  “How’d I get so lucky? My own personal chef.”

  Connelly had always handled the cooking in their relationship. He enjoyed the process of putting together a meal; she viewed food mainly as fuel. That dichotomy was one reason she wanted to make him a fantastic meal. She knew the effort would demonstrate something that she could never adequately express with words.

  She joined him at the door and flicked the switch to turn off the overhead lights. He dipped his head to cover her lips with his.

  She kissed him back, hard, enjoying the pressure of his warm mouth.

  He pulled back and looked down at her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He stared at her, his face quizzical, then ran his tip of his tongue over his lips.

  “You taste like … garlic and dark chocolate?” he said in a puzzled tone.

  “Eww,” she laughed. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth after the cooking class.

  He followed her through the door, wondering aloud what she’d had for lunch.

  They waved goodbye to the girl behind the counter at the coffee shop on their way out the door and then circled around the building to the small parking area in the back. Jake—who owned both the building and the coffee shop that bore his name—had included a parking spot in Sasha’s lease. It was a perk she rarely used because she preferred to walk to her office. But given the scarcity of street parking in Shadyside, it was priceless to have the spot when she did drive or when Connelly picked her up.

  They skirted the dumpster and the blue recycling receptacle that sat to the left of the door and headed for Connelly’s Lexus SUV in the gloom. Clouds covered the weak moon, and the security light above the back door flickered.

  A chill crept along Sasha’s spine. She wasn’t sure if it was from the wind or the setting. She made a note to tell Jake to fix his light. Just then something brushed her ankle in a blur of fur, and she gasped and stumbled, turning an ankle in her stiletto heels.

  Connelly grabbed her elbow to keep her upright.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded but before she could speak a high, inhuman cry pierced the night.

  “What the—?” Connelly asked.

  The sound was coming from beneath his SUV. She dropped her bags then crouched and peered under the vehicle. Two luminous almond-shaped eyes peered back at her, shining in the dark.

  Another mewl filled the air.

  “I think it’s a cat,” she said.

  She stretched out, laying on the cold damp pavement, and pushed herself under the vehicle with trembling arms.

  A small kitten sat hunched beside the right rear wheel of the SUV. Its thin frame shook.

  “Hey, kitty,” she said in a soft, low voice.

  The kitten let out another strangled mew.

  “Is it hurt?” Connelly asked, crouching beside her and resting his forearms on his thighs.

  “I can’t tell. I’m going to see if I can grab it. Will you unlock the doors?”

  He stood and depressed the key fob. When the vehicle beeped, the kitten jumped, and Sasha caught it around its middle. The kitten didn’t struggle. Instead it froze and allowed Sasha to pull it out from under the SUV.

  She stood and cradled the kitten against her chest. Its heartbeat raced, and it cried again.

  Connelly opened the passenger door, and they examined the animal under the interior light.

  Sasha saw no wounds or cuts on the kitten’s soft gray and white fur.

  “I don’t think it’s hurt—just scared,” she told Connelly.

  She stroked the cat’s head, and her hand came away wet. She turned her palm up toward the light and her heart pounded. Her hand was covered with blood.

  “Connelly …” she began. She held her hand out for him to see.

  He ran his own hands through the cat’s fur, parting it in careful sections to look for an injury Sasha had missed.

  “It’s not bleeding,” he said.

  The kitten howled again and flailed. It wriggled free from Sasha’s arms and darted out of the SUV. It landed gracefully on the ground and stared up at Sasha and Connelly, crying loudly.

  It turned and started across the lot. After a few steps, it stopped and yelled again. Then the animal took off toward the door at the back of the building, howling with increased urgency and volume.

  When it reached the building’s back wall, it disappeared behind the dumpster.

  They followed the sound of its cries across the lot.

  When they reached the building, Sasha turned sideways to shimmy between the dumpster and the brick wall. A flash of pale skin caught her eye.

  “Connelly, there’s someone back here!” she said around the lump in her throat.

  Please, please don’t be a dead body.

  She stepped forward, but Connelly snaked out an arm and caught her around the waist.

  “Wait,” he said in a low whisper. He pulled her back.

  He reached into his coat pocket. For a wild moment, she expected him to pull out his gun. Instead he removed his iPhone and activated the flashlight app. He leaned to the side and shined it toward the arm that was partially visible on the ground behind the dumpster.

  The cat leapt back out, its enormous eyes catching the light, and charged at Sasha. It rubbed its head insistently against her leg.

  “Hello,” Connelly called in a loud, strong voice.

  There was no reply.

  “Hello?” Sasha tried.

&n
bsp; They held their breath and listened. The kitten whimpered and head butted Sasha’s shin.

  Finally, a faint, female moan rose from the ground.

  Connelly met Sasha’s eyes and nodded. She could fit behind the trash receptacle, but he couldn’t. She pressed herself against the rough brick wall and inched toward the hand.

  A slight woman—more a girl, really—was slumped against the building. Her head hung down toward ground, and a curtain of hair fell forward, covering her face. Connelly aimed his light on the shape, and Sasha saw a streak of purple in the light brown hair.

  “Kathryn?”

  The Pitt student who worked the counter at Jake’s was about the right size, and she had an affinity for streaking her hair with colors not found in nature.

  Another moan. Then a sniffle.

  The cat sprung past Sasha and ran to the girl. It licked the girl’s slack hand roughly and purred loudly.

  The girl raised her head and looked straight at Sasha.

  Sasha sucked in her breath sharply. It was Kathryn, but she was barely recognizable. She’d been brutally beaten. Her face was a mishmash of swelling and angry bruising. Blood ran down from an open cut on her forehead. Her lower lip was split and coated in more blood.

  Sasha rushed toward her, and the bricks snagged at her clothes, slowing her momentum.

  Over her shoulder, she yelled to Connelly. “It’s Kathryn. She’s hurt.”

  The girl’s shoulders shook and she began to cry.

  “Shh, shh,” Sasha crooned, as she crouched beside her. “Can you stand up?”

  “No,” she moaned.

  “Listen, I’m going to get you up on the count of three.” She slipped her hands under the girl’s arms and clasped her shaking shoulders.

  “Okay.”

  “One, two, three.” Sasha straightened her legs and lifted Kathryn to her feet as gently as she could, grateful that the girl was one of the few people who was roughly her own size.

  Kathryn leaned her head against Sasha’s shoulder. Slowly, Sasha inched her way out from behind the dumpster with Kathryn clinging to her.

  Connelly—who had seen more gruesome scenes that anyone Sasha knew—paled at the sight of Kathryn’s battered face.

  “Who did this to you?” he said in a thick voice.

  Kathryn looked from Sasha to Connelly with dull, red eyes. Then she said, “No one.”

  Connelly opened his mouth but Sasha cut him off.

  “We can talk about it later. We’re taking you to see a doctor.”

  “No! I’m fine.” Her eyes darting from side to side like a trapped animal.

  “Kathryn, you’re not fine,” Sasha said, as gently as she could.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please, just take me home. Before he comes back.”

  “Before who comes back?” Connelly asked.

  She clamped her mouth shut in a grim line and shook her head at her own mistake.

  Sasha raised a brow at Connelly, and he understood instantly. He nodded.

  “That’s it, you’re coming home with us,” he said.

  He scooped the girl up under her knees. She leaned against his chest and flopped her arms around his neck. She was either too scared or too tired to argue further.

  She raised her head and met Sasha’s eyes. “Can I bring the kitten?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Kathryn curled herself into a tight ball in the corner of Sasha’s couch and hugged the gray and white kitten to her chest. She stared blankly at the wall and showed no reaction while Sasha gently cleansed her face with warm water. The washcloth and the bowl of water were both pink when she finished. Sasha’s stomach roiled.

  She rinsed the cloth and filled the bowl with fresh water at the kitchen sink.

  “How is she?” Connelly asked, his voice low.

  Sasha turned from the sink and left the water running to cover their conversation.

  “Her injuries look bad, but they aren’t serious.”

  Kathryn had been mute since asking for her cat. Her eyes were vacant and distant, and she seemed to have shut down emotionally.

  Sasha turned off the water and returned to the couch.

  “Kathryn,” she said in a gently voice, “I’m going to clean the blood off your cat now.”

  The girl snapped her eyes up to meet Sasha’s and then down to the kitten’s fur. Its ruff stuck out stiffly, coated with dried blood. She recoiled and handed the cat to Sasha.

  Sasha rubbed the cat’s chin with one hand while she wet the washcloth and worked on loosening the sticky blood from its fur.

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” Sasha said, hoping to draw Kathryn into a conversation.

  “Um, I don’t know?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Kathryn’s eyes filled with tears. “I just found it yesterday. Its mother was hit by a car near campus. I found this little thing crying right by the curb. I couldn’t keep it at the dorm, so Ocean let me stay at her place last night. I was going to take it to the vet today and then see if I could find someone to take it, but I had to get my check first so I could pay for the appointment. I don’t know its sex, and I didn’t name it because I can’t keep it.”

  “That’s what you were doing at Jake’s—picking up your paycheck?” Connelly asked, joining them in the living room.

  The cat purred, its throat vibrating as Sasha stroked it.

  “Yeah. I knew Ocean and Reba were working, and I thought if I brought the kitten in, maybe Reba would want it? So, I came in through the back door to show her the cat.”

  “Did you leave through the back door, too, then?” Connelly asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  She reached for the cat, and Sasha handed it back to her.

  She took the blood-streaked cloth and the water to the kitchen and returned with a hand towel to dry the cat and two ibuprofen for Kathryn.

  “Take these,” Sasha said, handing her the pills and a bottle of water.

  Kathryn swallowed the pills while Sasha rubbed the cat with the towel. It swatted a paw at Sasha’s moving hand, and Kathryn giggled.

  Sasha lowered herself to the couch and took advantage of Kathryn’s lightened mood.

  “Tell us what happened,” she said.

  Kathryn’s brief burst of laughter evaporated.

  She was silent for so long that Sasha thought she wasn’t going to answer.

  But she took a swig of water and said in a halting voice, “He was waiting for me by my car. He was really upset because I hadn’t returned any of his calls or texts for a couple days. I was just busy, you know? I had, like, a big project due? But he was so angry—” her voice broke and she stopped abruptly.

  “Who, Kathryn?” Sasha said.

  “My boyfriend,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands.

  “Name, Kathryn. We’re looking for a name,” Leo said, a hint of steel in his voice.

  She looked up blankly. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. Nick.”

  “Nick?” Sasha repeated.

  “You know—Nick. Nick Costopolous.”

  Sasha sat back. She was so startled she felt as if she’d been slapped.

  “You’ve been dating Nick Costopolous?”

  Kathryn nodded miserably. She hooked her hands behind her knees and rocked herself in a gentle back and forward motion, like she was trying to soothe an infant.

  “I knew you’d be mad. So, I made Ocean promise not to tell you.”

  She was mad—no, she was furious. What was Kathryn thinking, dating a man nearly twenty years older than her, let alone one who’d been accused of bludgeoning his pregnant wife to death with a hammer?

  Sasha had known the girls in the coffee shop thought her client was handsome in a swarthy, mysterious way, but she’d been very clear with them that they should stay away from him. She would have taken that position even if she hadn’t believed he murdered his wife; but since was certain he had, she’d been insistent.

  She bit back her first response, and her second.

>   Once she was sure she could keep her tone nonjudgmental, she asked, “How long have you been seeing him?”

  “Um, since November, I guess. I ran into him out one night, and he recognized me from Jake’s.”

  Sasha arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

  “He beat you up because you didn’t return a few phone calls?” Connelly said, incredulous.

  “Yeah. He’s very protective and passionate.”

  Sasha lost her slippery grasp on her temper.

  “He’s not passionate and protective. He’s abusive. You’re lucky to be alive!”

  Kathryn’s lip started to wobble, and tears began to flow again.

  Connelly put a warning hand on Sasha’s arm.

  “Why don’t you preheat the oven and uncork the wine so it can breathe?” he suggested in a mild voice.

  Sasha shot them both a glare and then stalked toward the kitchen. Kathryn’s unnamed kitten jumped off the couch and followed her, its tail twitching.

  “I don’t have anything to feed you, kitty,” she muttered. “Hope you like lasagna.”

  She banged around in the kitchen while Connelly talked to Kathryn in a low, urgent voice. Sasha imagined he was trying to get through to her that there was nothing romantic about Nick’s behavior.

  She took the corkscrew from the drawer near the sink and banged the drawer shut in frustration.

  Kathryn jumped, and Connelly threw Sasha a look.

  “Oops,” she said brightly. “Connelly, while the oven’s heating, maybe you could run out and pick up a litter box and some food for the cat?”

  She stabbed the corkscrew into the cork and twisted it violently.

  “Sure. I was just talking to Kathryn about calling the police.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Sasha said in the same false, bright tone.

  “She doesn’t want to. Maybe you could talk to her about getting a restraining order, what’s it called, a PFA?” he suggested. He rubbed the girl’s shoulder in a reassuring way and stood.

  “A protection from abuse order. Sure, you can get one, Kathryn. It’ll make some judge feel like he’s doing something. And maybe it’ll give you a false sense of security. But that’s about it.”

  Connelly cocked his head and looked at Sasha as if she had sprouted a second head.