by Cari Hunter
“You’re going to get cold.” Still gravelly with sleep, Alex’s voice rose out of the darkness.
“I’m fine. Stay put.”
“Bad dream?”
Sarah used her finger to track the passage of a raindrop down the pane. “Is there any other sort?” She rolled her eyes, annoyed by her own self-pity, but she hated constantly feeling either hunted or trapped. She didn’t know which was worse: the nightmares where she tried to flee, or the memories of what had happened to her after she was caught. When Alex got out of bed and wrapped the blanket around Sarah’s shoulders, Sarah used it to hide her face away.
“You want to tell me about it?” Alex asked, perching back on the bed. She never pushed, but little by little, over the past six weeks she had learned just about everything that had happened to Sarah after Tobin took her from the jail. The doctors had urged Sarah to speak to a therapist, unaware that most of her “therapy” was taking place in the witching hours while the rest of the hospital slept.
“Woke myself up trying to get out of bed again,” she said. “I was running; I never remember the cast. If I feel any pain, I just think it’s from the bullet.”
She saw Alex’s throat work as she swallowed. Knowing that Alex had watched the entire scene play out on the recording added another layer of horror. Some nights, the sound of Alex crying woke Sarah before the nightmares could take hold.
Alex dropped down from the bed, collected a pile of clothing, and came to kneel at the side of the chair. “Want to get some fresh air?”
Sarah tapped the window, drawing Alex’s attention to the grim weather. “It’s pouring down.”
“So we’ll get wet. Here, stick your foot in your sneaker.”
“We’re in our pajamas.”
“So we’ll get wet pajamas.” Alex held out Sarah’s jacket. “It’ll be good for you. Come on.”
“The Storm Troopers will not be impressed,” Sarah said, wrestling into her jacket. The protective detail camped in the corridor were duty-bound to accompany them if they left the room.
“They won’t mind. They’re used to us keeping some pretty odd hours.” From behind the chair, Alex leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s go wake them up.”
Outside, the rain had softened into a fine drizzle, the temperature mild beneath it. Sarah turned her face toward the sky and let the mist bathe her skin, sluicing away the clammy residue she could still feel clinging to her. The roads they walked beside were quiet, with few cars passing them as they approached Van Horn Park.
“Is it the weekend?” she asked. She found it hard to keep track of the days when there was little in the hospital to distinguish them.
“You really don’t know what day it is?” Alex chuckled. “It’s Sunday. Hang on while I get you over this bump.” She tilted the chair, easing it down onto the rough path that curved toward the park’s two ponds. The rain tapered off before stopping completely, and hazy fingers of sunlight broke through the clouds as she steered the chair toward a bench at the side of the water.
“You’ll get your bum wet if you sit on that,” Sarah said, and then laughed as Alex produced two plastic bags from the carryall strapped to the back of the chair. “Think of everything, don’t you?”
“Come and sit with me.” Alex held her arms out.
Sarah carefully transferred herself across to the bench, tucked her face into Alex’s neck, and kissed the damp skin there.
“Happy birthday.” Alex spoke so softly that Sarah thought she had misheard. The gift that Alex pulled out of the carryall quickly disabused her of that notion.
“Oh.” She pushed away a little. “Really? Today?”
“Definitely, today. I thought about baking you a cake, but…well, baking just wouldn’t be as much fun without you there,” Alex said. She smirked and dodged Sarah’s attempt to smack her on the arm. “Ash sent about three tons of Cadbury’s chocolate to the hospital for you, and this is from me.” She set the gift in Sarah’s hands.
When Sarah pulled at the ribbon, the wrappings fell away to reveal a hardback book. Its bold red cover was edged with beautiful gold filigree, the letters JA inscribed in the center in a flowing script. That gave her a good clue, but it was only when she turned to the spine that she found the title: Pride and Prejudice.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d gotten a chance to read it properly,” Alex said as Sarah ran her fingers over the embossed lettering. “And I wasn’t sure if you’d even like it, or whether it’d bring back bad—”
“I love it,” Sarah assured her. “And no, I never got to read it properly.” She pushed as close to Alex as she could and kissed her.
“Tell me what I can do to help,” Alex said. “What do you want to do?”
“Now?”
“No, after you get out of the hospital, after the trial, after all this…” She floundered, clearly searching for the right words. “After it’s all finished.”
“Finished” was exactly the right word but for all the wrong reasons. “I feel like he stole everything from us,” Sarah whispered. It was something she had never voiced aloud: the unfairness of it, the enormity of what Caleb Deakin had cost them. “Lyssa lost her life. We lost our home, and all that time while I was in jail. You’ve lost your career. We were so fucking happy, Alex, and he took it all.”
Alex tilted Sarah’s chin, ensuring that their eyes met. “So we start again,” she said. “We make sure that bastard gets locked away for the rest of his life, and we start ours over.”
Sarah nodded, drawing courage from Alex’s calm confidence. “Where?”
“Wherever you want to go.”
She rested her forehead against Alex’s. “I think I want to go back to England,” she said.
*
A strange blue-white flash woke Sarah. For a second, the bedroom was illuminated, its unfamiliar layout puzzling until she remembered where she was. The light vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving a yellow diode blinking as her cell phone notified her of an incoming text. Before going to bed, she had turned the phone onto silent, but forgotten to leave the damn thing next door. Instead it was sitting on the dresser, where she couldn’t reach it without getting up.
Oblivious to the disturbance, Alex slept on, too jetlagged to respond even to Sarah’s fidgeting. The trip to England had taken three months to finalize: three months of organizing and arguing, the calling in of several favors, and some serious pulling of strings. They had been granted permission to rent a cottage in the Derbyshire Peak District for three weeks while they tried to figure out where they might want to buy a property and what their job prospects were. To placate Kryger, Castillo had sent a detailed itinerary through to the local Criminal Investigations Department, arranging for them to monitor Alex’s and Sarah’s safety during their stay, and—more pertinently as far as Kryger was concerned—ensure that they returned to America to testify.
Wide-awake now, Sarah was beginning to worry why someone was contacting her at such a stupid hour. She fretted for another five minutes, and then crept out of bed, collected the phone, and took it into the living room. Already regretting leaving the warmth of the duvet, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and huddled on the sofa. Her hands were numb, her fingers repeatedly fumbling the numbers on her passcode, but she eventually managed to enter it and open the new message.
It was from Castillo, who started by apologizing for the early morning shout. The remainder of his text was brief and short on detail, but it brought a smile to Sarah’s face. She set the phone on the arm of the sofa, gathered up the blanket, and headed for the kitchen.
*
Alex couldn’t be sure at what point she had noticed that Sarah was no longer in bed. She vaguely recalled some odd sounds infiltrating her dream: soft footsteps, the click of a door, the turning of a key. Then she had rolled over onto a cold patch of sheet and woken to find Sarah missing. The bedside clock told her it was still early, the pattern on the drapes just becoming visible as dawn lightened the
sky. She pulled on a thick sweater and socks, and decided to start her search in the living room.
The cottage was tiny, and it didn’t take her long to establish that Sarah wasn’t in it. Growing concerned, she opened the front door to find their rental car still parked in the driveway, and a black cat that yowled optimistically at her.
“Hey, big guy.” Alex bent to stroke him. “Have you seen a lovely young lady, bit shorter than me, slight limp, pretty eyes?”
The cat purred, wrapping himself around her legs and pointedly not being helpful, but from somewhere around the back of the cottage, she heard Sarah laugh.
“You need to go out of the kitchen door,” Sarah shouted.
Alex followed her instructions, shadowed by the cat, who trotted through the building as if he owned it. He seemed just as familiar with the garden, leading her down a set of stone steps to a bench where she found Sarah tucked beneath a tartan blanket.
“Morning.” Sarah opened the blanket and rewrapped it around them both as Alex sat down.
“Wow,” Alex said, taking her first chance to get a proper look at where they were.
Sarah nudged her. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?”
All around them, the hills of the Dark Peak rose from undulating valleys. Dry-stone walls crisscrossed the lower sections where the land was cultivated, but the farthest reaches were given up to a wild tangle of heather, bilberry, and sedge. The sun was creeping above the horizon, picking out pink and lilac hues on the moors and prompting the sheep in the nearby fields to bleat to their neighbors. The cat halfheartedly stalked a magpie, then seemed to think better of it and rolled over in the grass at Sarah’s feet.
She wiggled a toe into his belly. “Look at the size of him. He’d have Bandit for breakfast.”
“He’d have Tilly for breakfast, never mind Bandit. What do they feed cats over here?”
“It’s the fresh air,” Sarah said. “Builds character.”
Alex arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think Bandit needs any more character. We could just leave him in the States, you know. He’s perfectly happy there.” She laughed when Sarah slapped the back of her hand.
“You don’t mean that, and his sister would never forgive us. Besides, it’ll be funny watching him get his arse spanked by the hill sheep. They have a reputation for being feisty.” Sarah kissed Alex’s cheek. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Nightmare?” Alex asked. It was the most obvious explanation, but to her relief Sarah shook her head.
“Text from Castillo.” She took a breath, and when she spoke again there were tears in her eyes. “Leah had the baby late last night. A little girl. Well, a tiny girl, actually. She was a few weeks early. She’s in the NICU, but Castillo thinks she’ll be all right.”
“And Leah?”
“She’s fine.” Sarah smiled. “And her daughter is called Grace.”
“Huh. Seems appropriate.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” She sighed deeply, as if letting go of months of turmoil. “I love you,” she whispered.
It was a simple sentiment, but it told Alex that, given time, everything would heal.
“I love you too.” She encircled Sarah’s cold fingers with her own, then raised them to her lips and kissed them one by one. “Come on,” she said, nodding toward the cottage. “Let’s go get a cup of tea.”
End
About the Author
Cari Hunter lives in the northwest of England with her partner, two cats, and a pond full of frogs. She works as a paramedic and dreams up stories in her spare time.
Cari enjoys long, wind-swept, muddy walks in her beloved Peak District and forces herself to go jogging regularly. In the summer she can usually be found sitting in the garden with her feet up, scribbling in her writing pad. She also loves hiking in the Swiss Alps and playing around online. Although she doesn’t like to boast, she will admit that she makes a very fine Bakewell Tart. She can be contacted at: [email protected].
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Wingspan by Karis Walsh. Wildlife biologist Bailey Chase is content to live at the wild bird sanctuary she has created on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula until she is lured beyond the safety of isolation by architect Kendall Pearson. (978-1-60282-983-1)
Night Bound by Winter Pennington. Kass struggles to keep her head, her heart, and her relationships in order. She’s still having a difficult time accepting being an Alpha female. But her wolf is certain of what she wants and she’s intent on securing her power. (978-1-60282-984-8)
Slash and Burn by Valerie Bronwen. The murder of a roundly despised author at an LGBT writer’s conference in New Orleans turns Winter Lovelace’s relaxing weekend hobnobbing with her peers into a nightmare of suspense—especially when her ex turns up. (978-1-60282-986-2)
The Blush Factor by Gun Brooke. Ice-cold business tycoon Eleanor Ashcroft only cares about the three P’s—Power, Profit, and Prosperity—until young Addison Garr makes her doubt both that and the state of her frostbitten heart. (978-1-60282-985-5)
The Quickening: A Sisters of Spirits Novel by Yvonne Heidt. Ghosts, visions, and demons are all in a day’s work for Tiffany. But when Kat asks for help on a serial killer case, life takes on another dimension altogether. (978-1-60282-975-6)
Windigo Thrall by Cate Culpepper. Six women trapped in a mountain cabin by a blizzard, stalked by an ancient cannibal demon bent on stealing their sanity—and their lives. (978-1-60282-950-3)
Smoke and Fire by Julie Cannon. Oil and water, passion and desire, a combustible combination. Can two women fight the fire that draws them together and threatens to keep them apart? (978-1-60282-977-0)
Asher’s Fault by Elizabeth Wheeler. Fourteen-year-old Asher Price sees the world in black and white, much like the photos he takes, but when his little brother drowns at the same moment Asher experiences his first same-sex kiss, he can no longer hide behind the lens of his camera and eventually discovers he isn’t the only one with a secret. (978-1-60282-982-4)
Love and Devotion by Jove Belle. KC Hall trips her way through life, stumbling into an affair with a married bombshell twice her age. Thankfully, her best friend, Emma Reynolds, is there to show her the true meaning of Love and Devotion. (978-1-60282-965-7)
Rush by Carsen Taite. Murder, secrets, and romance combine to create the ultimate rush. (978-1-60282-966-4)
The Shoal of Time by J.M. Redmann. It sounded too easy. Micky Knight is reluctant to take the case because the easy ones often turn into the hard ones, and the hard ones turn into the dangerous ones. In this one, easy turns hard without warning. (978-1-60282-967-1)
In Between by Jane Hoppen. At the age of 14, Sophie Schmidt discovers that she was born an intersexual baby and sets off on a journey to find her place in a world that denies her true existence. (978-1-60282-968-8)
Secret Lies by Amy Dunne. While fleeing from her abuser, Nicola Jackson bumps into Jenny O’Connor, and their unlikely friendship quickly develops into a blossoming romance—but when it comes down to a matter of life or death, are they both willing to face their fears? (978-1-60282-970-1)
Under Her Spell by Maggie Morton. The magic of love brought Terra and Athene together, but now a magical quest stands between them—a quest for Athene’s hand in marriage. Will their passion keep them together, or will stronger magic tear them apart? (978-1-60282-973-2)
Homestead by Radclyffe. R. Clayton Sutter figures getting NorthAm Fuel’s newest refinery operational on a rolling tract of land in Upstate New York should take a month or two, but then, she hadn’t counted on local resistance in the form of vandalism, petitions, and one furious farmer named Tess Rogers. (978-1-60282-956-5)
Battle of Forces: Sera Toujours by Ali Vali. Kendal and Piper return to New Orleans to start the rest of eternity together, but the return of an old enemy makes their peaceful reunion short-lived, especially when they join forces with the new queen of the vampires. (978-1-60282-957-2)
How Sweet It Is by Melissa Brayden. Some things are better than chocolate.
Molly O’Brien enjoys her quiet life running the bakeshop in a small town. When the beautiful Jordan Tuscana returns home, Molly can’t deny the attraction—or the stirrings of something more. (978-1-60282-958-9)
The Missing Juliet: A Fisher Key Adventure by Sam Cameron. A teenage detective and her friends search for a kidnapped Hollywood star in the Florida Keys. (978-1-60282-959-6)
Amor and More: Love Everafter edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman. Rediscover favorite couples as Bold Strokes Books authors reveal glimpses of life and love beyond the honeymoon in short stories featuring main characters from favorite BSB novels. (978-1-60282-963-3)
First Love by CJ Harte. Finding true love is hard enough, but for Jordan Thompson, daughter of a conservative president, it’s challenging, especially when that love is a female rodeo cowgirl. (978-1-60282-949-7)
Pale Wings Protecting by Lesley Davis. Posing as a couple to investigate the abduction of infants, Special Agent Blythe Kent and Detective Daryl Chandler find themselves drawn into a battle over the innocents, with demons on one side and the unlikeliest of protectors on the other. (978-1-60282-964-0)
Mounting Danger by Karis Walsh. Sergeant Rachel Bryce, an outcast on the police force, is put in charge of the department’s newly formed mounted division. Can she and polo champion Callan Lanford resist their growing attraction as they struggle to safeguard the disaster-prone unit? (978-1-60282-951-0)
Meeting Chance by Jennifer Lavoie. When man’s best friend turns on Aaron Cassidy, the teen keeps his distance until fate puts Chance in his hands. (978-1-60282-952-7)
