Longest Night

by Kara Braden

  As soon as she had the fire built and the kettle heating, she went into the bathroom and started the shower. “Ian! Get in here!” she shouted. Because the pipe from the water heater was only a couple of yards long, the bathroom almost immediately began filling with steam. She breathed deeply, letting it burn through the ice clogging her lungs.

  Stubbornly remaining in the living room, he shouted, “I’m perfectly capable of—”

  “I know!” Cecily interrupted sharply, leaning against the sink. She pressed her hands to her eyes, thinking this was a fine time for Ian to become a complete asshole. Lawyers. “Just get in here.”

  He stormed in a moment later, tall and furious, sharp eyes glaring, pale cheeks flagged with color. It would have been imposing if not for the snow-damp hair that hung in his eyes, waterlogged from light gold to brown. His glare softened into suspicion when he glanced at the tiny shower stall.

  “Get in there before you actually do die and I’m stuck with your corpse for the winter,” Cecily told him. “Pinelake doesn’t have a mortician.”

  Ian frowned as though puzzled. “You should shower first. Your shoulder’s too stiff for over-the-counter painkillers to help much.”

  Startled by the consideration, Cecily resisted the urge to touch the old scar. It was aching, but she thought she’d hid it well. “I’m fine,” she lied, gesturing toward the shower. “Just don’t use up all the hot water.”

  “You need it more than I do.”

  “Which is why you should get your ass in there and stop wasting it. God, are you always this stubborn?” Cecily muttered, trying to push past Ian so she could go build up the bedroom fire.

  He caught her arm, making her tense warily, but all he did was study her face intently. Slowly, Ian’s fingers uncurled, releasing her. He turned away, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw.

  “The Tuckers.”

  Baffled, Cecily asked, “What?”

  “Taxidermists. Almost the same skill set as morticians.”

  She stared at the pale line of skin at the back of Ian’s neck. Droplets of melting snow were slithering down his nape, disappearing into the collar of his shirt. The last of her irritation vanished under the desire to taste those drops as his words finally registered in her brain.

  She snorted out a laugh and forced herself to turn away. “There’s a gruesome thought.”

  “Impractical, too. Though you’re welcome to keep my skull. Didn’t they do that sort of thing in the Victorian era?”

  Cecily laughed. “Gruesome, but romantic,” she said, charmed despite herself.

  Ian’s laugh sounded pleasantly surprised.

  ***

  Ian pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped himself in the blanket taken from Cecily’s bed. He should have felt ridiculous in all his unwieldy layers of clothes, including three pairs of socks, but he still felt cold, and that never happened to him. Before the surgery and addiction, he’d been able to ignore cold or fatigue or hunger or any other discomfort his body imposed on him. Now, he’d apparently lost the knack. Despite the hot shower and the fire and the way he’d pushed the sofa right up to the hearth, he was still freezing.

  And the cold had apparently reduced his inhibitions to nothing. What the hell was he thinking, suggesting something so grisly, so serial killer as he had?

  But Cecily’s response was equally as puzzling. She’d laughed. She hadn’t reacted with disgust or disdain or even a hint of fear at what was, in retrospect, a blatantly sociopathic statement. Then again, police, like soldiers, tended to develop certain defense mechanisms, gallows humor being the most common. She should have adapted her behavior back to civilian standards when she’d reintegrated, but she hadn’t. Ian was glad of that. “Normal” was even more boring than nearly freezing to death—as he knew all too well, having experienced both.

  Cecily’s showers normally lasted just under four minutes. This one took six, and it was another five before she came out to the living room.

  “Still cold?” she asked.

  Ian nodded, turning to look at Cecily. “I hate Canada.”

  Instead of taking offense, she smiled at him. “I assume you didn’t make coffee or tea. Which would you prefer?”

  “Tea,” he said a bit plaintively.

  Cecily left him to his misery, returning a few minutes later with tea that smelled like decomposing plant matter. “We’re now out of milk,” she said as she climbed over the arm of the sofa and sat down opposite Ian. Leaning over, she set both cups of tea on the hearth and tugged her fleece blanket off the back of the sofa so she could wrap up warmly. Like him, she was dressed in layers, though perhaps not so extremely.

  After a few minutes of staring at the fire, Cecily said, “I’m sorry. I should have been more clear about going out in this kind of weather.”

  Ian huffed in irritation. “You didn’t even anticipate it. You were no more prepared than I was.”

  “Well, no,” Cecily said, frowning, “but it’s more than just wearing snow—”

  “Or did you?” Ian asked as new connections sparked deep in his brain. “You take precautions, but minimally. Your whole lifestyle is centered around personal risk. You brought a rifle and backup handgun to deal with the possibility of a bear attack—to keep Marguerite safe—but you didn’t bother to dress for what you surely recognized as the possibility of a snowstorm. And now you’re apologizing to me because your risk didn’t involve only you.”

  Taken aback, Cecily went silent. Her face, usually so open and expressive, became a blank mask.

  Ian twisted on the sofa, tucking one leg under the other, and leaned forward, studying Cecily’s face. Firelight and shadow changed the shape of her cheeks and eyes and jaw, darkening her green eyes to a shade closer to emerald.

  “Tell me something,” he said quietly. His thoughts were soaring now the way they did in court, when he picked apart his opponent’s argument point by point. He was high on the exhilaration of watching the pieces of a mystery come together, giving him another facet of the puzzle that was Cecily Knight. But this time, his high was tempered with the realization of a truth she was probably hiding from herself.

  “What?” Cecily asked tightly, still staring at the fire.

  “If you had been alone, would you have carried your usual handgun instead?”

  ***

  The last day of December. Seven years ago. Cecily could still remember that first day, the first year, how often she’d forgotten something critical. Food supplies. Firewood. Clean, warm socks. She’d risked injury and nearly died a hundred times that winter, and every time, she’d faced her trial with a stoic sense of calm. She’d never thought about it or psychoanalyzed it, because she’d been too busy trying not to get herself killed.

  She didn’t want to think about what Ian was saying. She didn’t want to follow his thoughts to their ultimate conclusion. She wasn’t a complete idiot; she could see where this was all leading.

  “I’m not suicidal, if that’s what you’re implying,” she said, as coldly as she could manage, and she threw in a glare for good measure. Then she picked up her mug, cupping her hands around the warmth, though she didn’t take a sip.

  Rather than looking properly apologetic, Ian smirked. “No. You just face ever-escalating risks and don’t care if the price of failure is your life.”

  “Stop.” Cecily snapped out the command and turned away, unable to meet his eyes. “Just stop it, Ian. I’m not being cross-examined by you. You have no right to go digging around in how I think.”

  “Someone has to. Seven years, Cecily. Seven years,” Ian said relentlessly. “You’re still hiding in the middle of nowhere, turning meaningless danger into a game and challenging death to win because you know that one day, it must.”

  “So?” The word came out as a shout. Cecily put her mug down on the stone hearth so she wouldn’t give in to the temptati
on to throw it. Anger raged through her, burning along her veins in an irrational blaze that she had to control.

  She breathed deeply, eyes closed, and listened to her heart pounding in her ears. Refusing to think about Ian’s words, she focused instead on her body: the crude support of the old sofa cushion over the hard wooden frame, the contrast between the cold air at the back of her neck and the fire’s warmth on her face and fingers, the smell of the smoke and the clean snap of wood.

  Slowly, she calmed down. Ian had been speaking, but Cecily hadn’t heard a single word. She took another breath, falling through the last, lingering anger to the other side, where everything inside her was cold and deathly still. “Are you staying up?”

  Ian’s frown turned puzzled. “Yes.”

  “Fine.” Cecily untangled herself from the blanket and rose, climbing back over the arm of the sofa. She threw the blanket over her shoulder and went into the bedroom, closing the door to keep in the heat. It took two minutes to bank the fire for warmth and darkness. She put the gun on her nightstand, took off her belt and holster, and dropped them on the floor beside the bed. Then she climbed onto the mattress and dragged the blanket over herself. She didn’t want the damned herbal tea anyway.

  ***

  Ian leaned back, staring at the wall over the fireplace. At first, he couldn’t decipher Cecily’s reaction. He was correct about her motives—of course he was—and he was accustomed to hostile reactions, usually from witnesses. But Cecily had gone from anger to hostility to…something else, something he couldn’t readily identify. And then she’d left, going to the bed where he had been sleeping for the past week. Was that an invitation or simply a practical reaction to Ian remaining on the sofa?

  He rearranged the blanket more comfortably and looked down at the fire, mentally replaying every word and nuance of their conversation. On the surface, her actions seemed reasonable, but not when scrutinized. Tonight, the easy solution would have been to invite Marguerite to stay at the cabin. Then they could have escorted her home tomorrow, in daylight. Instead, Cecily had risked an accident and the weather, as well as a potential encounter with a bear. If she were genuinely interested in avoiding the risk, she simply would have stayed at home.

  Ian closed his eyes, thinking of the criminal world of Manhattan, of how he often had to venture into the city’s underbelly to ferret out truths about his clients, both guilty and innocent. That was part of his appeal as a lawyer; he still did much of his own investigative work, which was how he’d ended up getting attacked and injured in the first place.

  A normal girlfriend would tell Ian he was insane for living the life he did. But Cecily was hardly “normal.” Now, he just had to figure out if he had a chance of convincing her to go from friend to girlfriend.

  ***

  Even before Cecily was fully awake, she rolled off the bed, dropped to one knee, and braced the surprisingly heavy weapon on the mattress, muzzle aimed directly at the open door. Her trigger finger trembled as she was caught between the conflicting urges to identify her target first or shoot blindly, and for painfully long seconds she had no idea where she was. The darkness and fire and smell of smoke disoriented her more than her sudden awakening did.

  “I’d rather you not shoot me.”

  Silky baritone, full of dry wit. Cecily exhaled and dropped her face to the bed as her fingers relaxed, letting the gun rest safely on the blankets. “Fuck,” she muttered, trembling with the jolt of adrenaline coursing through her veins. She didn’t think she could stand, so she sat down on the floor, resting her right arm on the bed. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “You didn’t shoot,” Ian said, as if the end result was all that mattered. Cecily heard him cross the room and felt the other side of the mattress dip under his weight. Fabric rustled loudly—one of the blankets. Air moved in a soft breeze against her arm and face as Ian shook out the blanket.

  “Right. Want the bed back?” she asked, leaning on the mattress for balance as she stood.

  “Stay.”

  “No.” Cecily moved her gun out from under the second blanket, hands still shaking.

  “Cecily, stay.”

  “Which part of ‘no’ did you miss?”

  Ian sighed dramatically. “You’re not going to hurt me, and I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I don’t sleep near other people.” She stripped her blanket off the bed—or tried to. Ian was holding the other end.

  “Stay,” he repeated. This time, he added, “Please.”

  Forced to either give up or put down the gun and get into a schoolyard fight over a blanket, Cecily let go and stepped back from the bed. The cool bedroom air had her starting to shiver already. “I’m sorry, Ian, but I’m really not interested in sex right now,” she said bluntly. Silently, she berated herself for not keeping extra blankets on hand. She had a sleeping bag rolled up in the basement, but she had no energy to go down there and get it.

  Ian laughed in amusement. “I turn down most clients because their cases are too boring. Police cases, too. I did cold cases as a hobby during law school.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Cecily asked, giving her blanket an experimental tug. Either Ian was still holding it or he’d rolled on top of it. Of all the times to revert to being a five-year-old, apparently he had to pick now.

  “My work, Cecily,” Ian said as if that should be obvious. “When I was new, I had to take the boring cases—DUI, assault, theft… Things any half-competent law clerk could do.”

  Cecily shoved the gun into the back of her jeans, pinning it temporarily in her waistband. It was ridiculously unsafe, but at the moment, she didn’t care. “So?” she asked, folding her arms as if she could trap her body heat.

  “I defended an accused serial killer three years ago. Only five victims, so the police didn’t have much to work on. Circumstantial evidence. The killer electrocuted them. Did a good job making it look accidental, too.”

  Cecily went cold, flashes of memory—of the war—shattering her composure. She sat down, landing on the edge of the bed by sheer luck. Her arms tensed, pressing against her body, fists clenching against her ribs.

  “The detective investigating the last death needed a conviction. As it turned out, the killer had stolen uniforms from my client’s service truck two years before, and that’s where their DNA evidence came from.”

  Faced with the choice of listening to Ian’s odd story or venturing into her own nightmares, Cecily clung desperately to his voice. She told herself to breathe, steady and deep, and tried not to count her too-rapid heartbeats. She didn’t feel cold anymore, but that was an illusion. She knew she should get under a blanket. She just didn’t want to move.

  “The real killer wasn’t in some run-down tenement or abandoned warehouse. Movies are hardly an accurate representation of reality,” Ian scoffed. “He lived with his wife in an apartment in midtown. Worked at a bank. When the police wouldn’t listen to my evidence, I went to his apartment and confronted him.”

  Slowly, the foolishness of Ian’s actions worked its way through the jagged thoughts scraping at Cecily’s brain. “That’s incredibly stupid. You went alone, I take it?”

  “The idiot detective had no interest in accompanying me, so yes.” He huffed as if irritated. “My mistake was dismissing the wife. She stabbed me with a fork.”

  “What?” Cecily twisted around to stare at Ian in the darkness. The motion tightened the waistband of her jeans, forcing the gun to dig uncomfortably against her spine.

  Propping himself up on one elbow to face Cecily, Ian shrugged. “It happens. After I disarmed her, I called in a detective who wasn’t so obsessed with fame as to blind himself to reality, and that’s one less serial killer on the streets.”

  “Were they working together?”

  “No. She was apparently afraid of losing her husband’s pension if he
went to prison.”

  Cecily couldn’t help but laugh. It was terrible, because Ian was talking about a serial killer and an insanely devoted (and greedy) wife and an incident in which he’d ended up stabbed, but once the laughter started, she couldn’t stop.

  “So tell me,” Ian continued, reaching out to touch Cecily’s hip, “why should I let you go back to the couch?”

  “What does that have to do—”

  Ian shifted closer, sliding his hand down to curve over Cecily’s thigh. “You won’t hurt me.”

  “It’s not…” Cecily hesitated, shaking her head. “It’s not just that, Ian. You saw how I woke up. It’s dangerous. It’s not—”

  “Don’t say ‘normal,’” Ian interrupted quietly. He sat up so he could move closer, pushing the blankets aside. “If I wanted normal, I would have followed my family’s very successful, very boring traditions instead of going into criminal law.”

  Cecily closed her eyes and raked a hand through her hair. She supposed she should take offense at the thought that the only person who was actually stupid enough to want to spend an entire night with her, nightmares and all, was most likely clinically insane, but “normal” held little appeal for her, too. Logically, she knew she should get up and leave the room, even if it meant shivering sleeplessly through the night until Ian relented and surrendered a blanket, but logic had nothing to do with the emptiness inside her. She’d never meant to be alone.

  Ian moved even closer, drawing his hand up from Cecily’s thigh to her abdomen, resting right over another patch of scar tissue that he hadn’t yet seen. She flinched, but he made no effort to get under her shirt.

  “You don’t have to talk about your scars.”