Sleep of the Innocent

by Medora Sale

  “You’d better turn out the light,” he murmured. The engine noise stopped, and Lucas could hear Annie breathing like an exhausted sprinter. She leaned over and turned out the light. The darkness was almost complete. Lucas slid over to the couch he had been sleeping on and reached under the pillow for his pistol. He walked quietly back and set it down beside the lamp. He could feel, rather than hear, Annie crying beside him.

  “Move over,” he whispered, and sat, one leg stretched out in front of him and the other on the floor, leaning against the sofa back. He put his arm tightly around Annie’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he murmured in her ear. “We’re pretty tightly locked in here.”

  “What are they doing?” she whispered back.

  “Walking around the place. Looking for a way in.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Small town hoods. Or maybe the police. But it doesn’t matter, Annie. They can’t get in.”

  “They might have a key.”

  “Won’t help. The kitchen door is dead-bolted shut.”

  “It’s them,” she said. She began to shake. “I know it’s them.”

  “Sh. If it is, they won’t get anywhere near you. Sweetheart, I’m a cop. I’m armed. I’m even trained. I have to be good for something.”

  A heavy thump interrupted him. “Shit!” said a loud voice. “Locked up tighter ’n a monkey’s ass. Shoulda brought Glen’s welding stuff—we coulda torched the place open.”

  “For chrissake, don’t be a fucking asshole. You wanna start a goddamn forest fire and have the whole fucking system coming down on us—helicopters and everything? Try the window.”

  There was another loud thump. “Jesus. You got any more stupid ideas? Who in hell can get in that window? It’s too fucking small.”

  “Jimmy could.”

  There was a pause. For thought, presumably. “Naw. That’s dumb. You bring Jimmy out here and shove him through that window, the whole town knows in five minutes. That kid don’t know how to shut up.”

  “I thought your ma said someone was living here.”

  “For chrissake, don’t you ever listen? She was over cleaning out the MacDonald place and said she saw someone outside. That’s all. So we can tell her no one’s here. That should be good for twenty-five bucks. That’s all we need. I mean, she’s supposed to keep an eye on things, isn’t she? Now she doesn’t have to come out. Anyways, let’s get the hell out of here. If Ma finds out . . .” The voices drifted off. The engine started again with an ear-pounding roar and began its long journey away from them.

  Rob Lucas realized that he was clutching Annie’s shoulder so hard she must be in pain. He loosened his fingers and gently massaged the offended place.

  “Have they gone?” she whispered.

  “Oh, yes, they’ve gone. I doubt if they’ll come back. And even if they did,” he added, “I think we could buy them off with fifty bucks.”

  “It was just kids.” Her voice was tight and strange. “Just kids. And I was scared, Robin. I wanted a little dark closet to hide in.”

  He shuddered and rubbed her shoulder again.

  “Robin,” she went on, “there’s just one thing—”

  “Mmm?” he murmured vaguely, giving most of his attention to the dying engine sounds.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, what are we doing here? Way out in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us? What are you doing looking after me?”

  He turned to try to see her expression in the darkness and failed.

  “If I’m a witness, why aren’t there other cops around? Don’t you get time off? And whose cottage is this?”

  “Have you been worrying about this since we got here?” he asked. “You should have said something.”

  “No. Actually, it never even occurred to me until today. And then I began to wonder why they would send one cop off to look after a sick witness for a week or so without any relief. Why wasn’t I in the hospital? I mean, you are a cop, aren’t you? Not just one of those guys—”

  “—who likes to lock women up in private hidey-holes? Oh, Jesus, no, Annie. I’m not sure if I’m still a cop, either. And the reason we’re alone is that no one knows where we are—except for a friend of mine who sort of lent us the cottage. It belongs to his wife’s sister.”

  “Then what in hell is going on?”

  “Listen to me, Annie. There’s a reason for all of this. Remember when I dropped you off at the motel? Well, I filed a report, saying where you were. Okay? Standard procedure. Next thing I hear, your motel room has been entered forcibly and you are gone. I think I am chasing someone called Jennifer Wilson. I find out where she lives, file my report, and Jennifer Wilson is murdered.”

  “Oh my God.” Annie drew her breath in horror and began to tremble again. “Jennifer? My roommate, Jennifer?”

  Lucas nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Because I used her name? I didn’t mean to involve her. I was so scared that it was the first thing that came into my head.” Her voice died away.

  He put both arms around her and held her. “It wasn’t your fault. If anything, it was the fault of the woman next door. Some man came around asking questions, and she identified a bad description of you as Jennifer. Anyway, I finally found out who you were and the name of your lawyer. He told me you were at the cabin, I filed a report, did a few other things, and then drove up to talk to you. Someone got there before I did. I may be slow, but by this time even I have figured out that I am the connection. Someone is reading my reports and passing on the information to the people who killed Neilson. And they want to get rid of you because you saw them.”

  She shook her head, still muffled in his sweater. “No, I didn’t see them. I was hiding in the apartment. I heard them.”

  “Heard them? Where in hell from? Not the coat closet. You would have had to move the body to get out. And the body wasn’t moved.”

  She shivered. “No, not the coat closet. I was in the linen cupboard in the bathroom. Behind the bath towels. It was a tight fit.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, with admiration. “It didn’t occur to us anyone could get in there. You are a resourceful woman, Miss Hunter.”

  “No, a skinny, terrified woman.”

  “Could you recognize their voices again?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll never forget those voices. And I’ve heard them twice, remember. All that ear training, Sergeant. It comes in handy sometimes.”

  “Well, to get back to my story, I may be a slow thinker, but it finally occurred to me—once I got my hands on you—that letting anyone know where you were might be worse for your health than me looking after you. So here we are. My superior officers are probably livid with rage. I phoned in and said that I was in the Deerton hospital with multiple fractures. They must have figured out by now that I’m not there. I expect I’ve been slung out of the force.”

  “But why? Why have you done this? Why risk—”

  There was silence. “I’m not sure,” he said finally and changed the topic. “Do you want me to raise the shutters?”

  “Oh, please don’t. In case they come back.” She reached over him, brushing her hair across his face, and turned on the small lamp beside him. “There. I hate talking about important things to someone I can’t see. It’s like fighting on the phone. Can’t be done satisfactorily.” Her voice had changed in a subtle way that he couldn’t quite assess.

  Lucas’s first impulse was to turn the light off again and hide his desperate need under cover of darkness. Blood was pounding through his arteries with uncontrollable violence; his face must be scarlet. Every breath was ragged and undisciplined. Annie sat up beside him, pulling her uninjured foot under the other leg, perched like an inquisitive child. “I think I’d better go,” he said hoarsely, “and see if those kids did any d
amage to the place.” He pushed himself up.

  Annie caught him by the arm. “Don’t go,” she said. “They didn’t do anything. We would have heard if they had. Stay here and talk to me.”

  His arm burned under her touch; desire coiled in him like a tightly wound spring. He laced his fingers together and sat straight, his back rigid, concentrating on two thoughts: you kidnapped her, Lucas; she is sick and injured. “Really, I better go out and check the place,” he said again. He tried to move, but the hand on his arm seemed to fasten him to the spot. He could no more shake it off than tear off his own arm.

  He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on something else this time. “Do you ever call yourself Anne?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Never.”

  “Why not?” he said desperately. “It’s a very nice name.”

  “That may be, but my name isn’t Anne, so I don’t. It’d be stupid to call myself that, wouldn’t it? You don’t call yourself Jason, do you? Or Frank?” She pulled her hand away from his arm in irritation.

  That was better. He could deal with his lust when she was feeling combative. “So—what is your name? Or are you really Annie? No, I’ll bet it’s Anna. I’ve known a couple of Annas. But they would have killed anyone who called them Annie.”

  “No.” There was a pause. “No one calls me by my real name. Well, my mother used to. My dad never liked it, though. He was the one who called me Annie.”

  “So what is it? You have me intrigued. Very intrigued. All sorts of interesting possibilities are running through my brain: Augusta? Hermione? Cleopatra. How about Delilah?” His subconscious mind was beginning to do odd things to him.

  “Not that interesting. Although it is an odd name around here, I suppose. It’s Irish—quite common, really. Grainne. Rhymes with Sonia, spelled G-r-a-i-n-n-e, but no one can remember how to spell it or pronounce it, so it’s a drag sometimes.”

  “Grainne,” he said softly. “It’s beautiful. Grainne,” he repeated, drawing the syllables out.

  “Grainne Mary Dermot Hunter. That’s me. My mother was Irish.”

  “That seems evident,” he said. She smiled and placed her hand on his arm again, poised as if to say something. His stomach lurched, and his precariously gained self-control fled. “I really must go out and check,” he muttered, and pulled himself free of her. He swung his left leg off the couch and set his foot on the floor beside the other one.

  “Robin, what’s the matter with you?” she asked, whether in malice or innocence he couldn’t tell. “Are you angry?”

  “No. I am not angry. Far from it. Or not at you. At myself, maybe.” He gripped the arm of the couch until his knuckles whitened. “For chrissake, Annie, just let me get out of here.”

  Suddenly her eyes filled with tears again. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I keep forgetting. You’re stuck here because of me, and you must be going stir-crazy.” She tried to laugh. “It’d be different if I was a gorgeous blonde, wouldn’t it? Not just some—” Her voice died away and she turned her head.

  “Oh, my God,” he said, twisting his torso around to face her. “Annie—Grainne—whoever you are, do you have any idea what you’re up to? Do you enjoy teasing the hell out of me? Or are you just being incredibly stupid?” He grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him. “What color is your damned hair, anyway?”

  “My hair? It’s nothing special. Not this color.” She blinked the tears out of her eyes, blushing with embarrassment. “And I don’t know what I’m up to. All I know is that sometimes you’re absolutely wonderful, as if you like me, and then suddenly you treat me like a piece of dirt. I’m confused, Robin. I’m not very good at figuring men out. I’ve never had much to do with them, except as friends, you know. I always worked too hard—we all did—for going out and things like that, and anyway, lots of the guys I know are gay and so—”

  Lucas’s bitter laughter cut her off. “Oh, Annie—” He turned his back to her again. “It’s not confusing at all. I am an ordinary heterosexual male who has fallen in love with you, and I can hardly keep my hands off you, and I’m suffering hideous pangs of conscience and a sense of violated ethics.” Her face turned scarlet. “Dammit, don’t you see? If you could simply call a cab and waltz out of here, it would be different. I’d be plying you with champagne and soft music and chasing you all around the furniture, no doubt. But you can’t chase a woman who can’t run. You can’t. And so—I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  “Wait,” she said, breathlessly. “Don’t I have a say in this? What if I didn’t want to run? Wouldn’t that make a difference?”

  “You did want to—I could tell. I can always tell.”

  “Only because you looked at me like—”

  “Sh.” He turned back to look at her again. “That was temporary insanity on my part. Occasioned, I fear, by jealousy. Jealousy I had no right to.” He began to stand up.

  Grainne Hunter caught the back of the couch to balance herself and stretched out her left arm in its awkward cast. “Wait,” she cried again. There was desperation in her voice. “Robin, look at me. You can’t do this. You can’t say things like that and then just walk out. It isn’t fair.” He turned slowly back and found himself staring into her eyes. Suddenly they filled with tears. “It’s just an excuse, isn’t it? I’ve got it backward. You don’t want me,” she said flatly. “I’m too covered in filth. Because of—” Her voice shook with contempt and loathing for herself, and her cheeks burned once more. “Damn it,” she said, and let herself fall onto the pillow.

  “Oh, Annie,” he murmured helplessly and sat down again. “What in hell am I supposed to do?” He lifted her gently by the shoulders and pulled her toward him; she turned her unhappy face in his direction. Without pausing to think, he kissed her eyes, letting the salt of her tears linger for a moment on his tongue, and then brushed her lips tentatively with his own. He felt a tremendous shudder run through her; her lips swelled and softened in response, and her body pressed against him, melting into his. He released himself gently for a moment. “I’ve never wanted anyone or anything more desperately in my entire life,” he said, his voice uncertain. He looked up at some invisible censor hovering above him. “Dammit, I tried. You can’t say I didn’t try.” Giving up at last, he pushed her nightgown up, running his hands over her with ferocious hunger. She raised her right arm and ducked out of the voluminous garment, sliding it awkwardly over the cast. He lowered her gently back down and regarded her for a moment. It was the first time he had allowed himself to see her as anything but a collection of hurt places and surfaces that needed to be kept clean and dry. In that gentle side light, casting its shadows across the planes of her body, she was awesomely beautiful. He ran an exploratory finger lightly between her breasts and down across her concave belly before standing up abruptly.

  She lay back, watching him with solemn eyes as he pulled off his boots and heavy sweater and struggled impatiently with shirt buttons and belt buckle.

  As much as he wanted to prolong gentle preliminaries, to prove to her, somehow, that his affection would wait for months if need be, his gallantry was a dismal failure. He tossed his clothes on the floor and slipped down beside her quietly, suddenly afraid of her pallor and fragility and determined again to hold back. It was a foolish notion. At his first tentative touch, she turned to him, energized with a fierceness he could not hope to withstand. She pulled him to her; he abandoned thought, consideration, technique. They clung to each other like drowning swimmers for a few brief minutes until her low-pitched sobbing cry and final spasm carried him along with her, and it was over. Then, guiltily, he tried to ease his weight away, but she fastened her lips on his and wrapped her arms more tightly around him. He fell to the side, carrying her with him, and she slowly released her grip. It occurred to him, looking over at her as he searched with one hand and his feet for the eiderdown to pull over her, that he had probably never made love with le
ss finesse and skill in his life, or with more passion.

  She lay curled against his side, her plaster cast lying across his chest like a bandolier, and her head on his shoulder. “I was right. You really are beautiful,” she said. “Especially with your clothes off. Much too elegant-looking for me, I’m afraid,” she added, with a small noise that he finally identified as a giggle.

  “Well,” he said, “handsome is as handsome does, as someone said. And you can’t have been that impressed. Next time, I won’t be so anxious.”

  “Impressed?” She paused for a moment and hid her face in his shoulder. “This is the only time in my life someone has made love to me because I wanted him to.” Her voice was almost too soft to hear. “It was . . . it was a . . . a revelation. I really didn’t know what it could be like.”

  “Are you serious, Grainne?” he said, raising himself up on his elbow to look at her.

  She nodded.

  “Well, I wasn’t just doing you a favour. I wanted you so desperately, I couldn’t think. And since I pride myself on my sophistication and technique, that’s a very embarrassing confession to make. Next time will be better—we’ll have all the time in the world to think about each other.”

  “But all I wanted was you,” she said. Then, with a sly sideways look, she added, “And how does it feel to be a sex object, Sergeant? Loved for your beautiful body and golden hair?”

  He half sat and looked down at her. “You’re not bad-looking yourself,” he said, and found his voice beginning to do odd things on him again. “A little scrawny, maybe, and a trifle beat-up looking, but otherwise, the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life.”

  “Except for my hair.”

  “Except for your hair. I hate that color. How long is it going to take you to grow it out?”

  “It might look better when I wash it—maybe. You want to try? Oh, Robin, can we? You’ll have to help me, or I’ll get my bandages wet. It’d be easy if we had a flexible shower head.”