Swerve

by Inglath Cooper

  After a revolving effort of staring at the ceiling, restacking my pillows, and rolling from one side of the bed to the other, I finally give up and vault off the mattress to head for the kitchen.

  I open the bedroom door quietly, hoping the click of the lock doesn’t wake the detective sleeping on my couch. I close the door behind me so that Pounce doesn’t come out, and then tiptoe my way through the living room and into the kitchen.

  I crack the refrigerator so that the light doesn’t shine into the living room.

  I’m about to reach for a yogurt when I hear, “Not much of a night for sleeping, huh?”

  I jerk up, cracking my head on the top of the refrigerator. “Ow!”

  The yowl that comes out of me surprises me as much as it does him.

  He steps forward and presses two fingers to the place on my scalp. “That’s gonna be a goose egg.”

  His touch surprises me, stuns me, actually. I take a step back, reaching my own hand up to press the sore spot. “Yeah.”

  He picks up a dishtowel from the kitchen counter and then opens the freezer and pulls out some ice, wrapping the towel around it. He walks over and holds it up in question.

  I nod, wincing a little as he tentatively presses the ice to the knot. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I was trying not to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t doing much sleeping.” Something in his voice makes me look up. “Bad dreams?”

  He shrugs. “I’m used to it. I have something at home that I take most nights.”

  “Can you sleep without it?”

  “Not very well.”

  “That’s miserable.”

  He shrugs. “One of the things I brought back from Afghanistan.”

  “PTSD?”

  He studies me for a moment, as if weighing how to answer. “That’s what they say.”

  I consider this before answering with, “I’ve worked with some soldiers who are dealing with it. It’s way more common than anyone would think.”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’ve wondered why that is.”

  “That soldiers come back with it or people are surprised by it?”

  “Both, I guess.” I realize that I must sound as if I am taking the realities of war lightly. “That didn’t come out right.”

  He stares at me for a few long seconds, glancing off when he finally says, “Maybe it used to be that soldiers didn’t survive the horrible stuff as much as they do now. Or maybe they came home and put it away better than we modern soldiers seem to be able to.”

  “Your training—”

  “Prepares you for the battle. Just not the aftermath.”

  I lean against the kitchen counter, weighing my next question. “Do you ever regret being a soldier?”

  He shrugs, holding my gaze. “If we pull a thread from the person we’ve always been, how do we know what we’ll be when we finish unraveling?”

  “We don’t.”

  “So I guess I’d have to answer that with, ‘It’s who I am.’ I don’t know how to be anyone else.”

  “Was it what you thought it would be?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Like most things in life.”

  “Yeah. You’re young to have figured that out.”

  We’re looking directly at each other, and even in the dimly lit room, I feel like I really see him and that he really sees me. It’s the most unsettling thing I’ve felt in a long time, but I don’t want to look away. I want to see him, want him to see me. “I don’t think it’s age as much as it is experience.”

  “Life’s a steamroller. It gets around to all of us eventually. Some sooner than others.”

  “You’re strong. Or you never would have made it as a SEAL.”

  “I always thought of myself that way.”

  “You don’t anymore?”

  “I never thought I had a breaking point. Now I know I do. Even steel has a breaking point.”

  I see him hesitate, wait for him to go on.

  “A tensile test finds out what happens when steel is stretched,” he says. “You can place a steel bar in a device that pulls one end away from the other fixed end. The tensile strength is the maximum amount of stress the bar can handle before it breaks. If I had to describe what it was like to be in Afghanistan, that would be it.”

  He glances away, and there is another stretch of silence, before he adds, “We like to think some things are just indestructible. Certain people. Certain places. Maybe that’s how we convince ourselves things are safe enough for us to do. Who would ever have thought two skyscrapers in the middle of New York City could be brought down with airplanes?”

  “It was unthinkable.”

  “And yet they were. All that steel and concrete couldn’t withstand the impact of a commercial airliner turned into a kamikaze.”

  The remembered image is a sobering one. “There really aren’t any words, are there?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think we’re made to handle the kamikazes in life.”

  I think about Mia, the true horror of what has happened in the past few days, and tears fill my eyes. I bite my lip and glance away, reluctant to let him see.

  He takes the ridiculous ice pack from my hand and sets it on the counter. We stare at each other in the dim light, and I feel somehow as if I’m really being seen for the first time in a very long time. Maybe because my own mother and father could look at me and know exactly what I was feeling. The thought brings tears to my eyes, and I am instantly mortified that this man whom I barely know continues to see glimpses of my bare soul.

  I turn away, but his hand is on my shoulder, turning me back.

  We don’t say anything, watching each other, absorbing the silence and all the unspoken things shooting through the air around us. I have never before felt this kind of awareness of another person’s effect on me. The obvious reasons are obvious enough. He is a beautiful man in every way I have ever thought counted. I’ve never felt the physical pull of attraction to be so undeniable. But it is. Undeniable. I think of the reason our paths have crossed—my missing sister—and my emotions are in a sudden jumble again.

  He wants to kiss me. I know this as surely as I have ever known anything. I feel the pull of it in the air between us, an electric current with its own charge.

  He wants to.

  But he doesn’t.

  His restraint impresses me even as I am disappointed.

  Knox

  “Some seek the comfort of their therapist’s office, others head to the corner pub and dive into a pint, but I chose running as my therapy.”

  ―Dean Karnazes

  THE SUN THROWS a strip of light through the narrow break in the living room curtains. Knox opens his eyes to the glint, turning over on the leather couch and wincing at the stiffness in his neck. He tries to stretch out, but the sofa’s length prevents it.

  He glances at his watch. Barely six a.m. He considers going back to sleep, but his brain is already playing back the events of last night. He thinks about the girl who’d been murdered and wonders again if he might have done something to prevent it. Picked up on some hint of what was to come. But then he didn’t think the girl herself had feared the guy or had any premonition of her fate.

  He runs a hand through his hair and stares at the ceiling, a familiar sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. It was the same feeling he’d known too many times in Afghanistan, the result of guilt and blame, constant companions of the battlefield, whether he’d deserved it or not.

  He vaults off the couch, heads for the half-bath near the kitchen and uses the toothbrush and toothpaste Emory had given him last night. He splashes water on his face, makes an attempt to tame his sleep-crazy hair, and then decides a run is the only thing that will subdue the tangle of anger inside him.

  He lets himself out the front door, trying to be quiet enough not to wake Emory. From the back of his Jeep, he grabs a duffel bag in which he keeps a change of clothes and running shorts and a
shirt.

  Inside the house, he quickly changes and lets himself back outside into the crisp spring morning. He takes off at a brisk pace, intent on blanking his mind for the next forty-five minutes.

  The McLean neighborhood is exclusive. Judges, senators, old money, each house he passes as impressive as the last.

  He picks up his pace, his breathing increasing with the effort. He tries to concentrate on the sound of his shoes hitting the asphalt, but the questions won’t leave him alone.

  The guy in the Range Rover. Sergio. Was he just some pervert who might have snatched Mia and Grace on a whim? A guy who otherwise lived a normal life, dating normal girls like Madison? Or was that part of his cover?

  What would have made him think he had no choice but to kill her? It seemed an extreme choice given that the most she could have told him was that a cop was asking questions about him. And it wasn’t as if she had given them any information at all.

  Had she told him that? Had he not believed her? Had she known something he wasn’t willing to risk her divulging at some point? Possibly. Likely. Why else would he have killed her?

  He kicks the pace up again, sweat running down the sides of his face. He wipes it away with the bottom of his shirt, glances at his watch to see how far he’s gone. Three miles. He crosses the street and heads back the way he came.

  And now he’s thinking about last night, about the awareness between him and the woman who’s supposed to be his client and nothing more. Had he imagined it? He didn’t think so. Not that his own judgment where women were concerned was anything resembling reliable. Relationships weren’t an option. He’d sacrificed his marriage to his own need to sabotage whatever good might be left in his life.

  As for the senator’s wife, he’d be the first to admit his judgment was severely lacking. But she was a woman who’d expected nothing more from him than what she’d asked for.

  Emory Benson was a different thing altogether.

  And he wasn’t going there.

  Maybe he wasn’t a complete lost cause.

  ~

  HE’D LOCKED THE front door when he left the house, so he has no choice but to knock when he gets back just before seven-thirty.

  Emory opens it, peering around the edge of the door and then opening it wider when she sees that it’s him. “Good morning,” she says, running a hand through the ponytail at the nape of her neck. He’s noticed she does this when she’s uncertain about something.

  “Morning,” he says, stepping inside. “I hope I didn’t wake you when I left.”

  “No,” she says. “I set the alarm. But good for you, getting a run in this early.”

  “It’s how I face the day,” he says, trying to insert a light note in his voice. “How did you sleep?”

  “Not much, actually. My brain doesn’t want to turn off. I think exhaustion finally got the better of me.”

  “Yeah,” he says, suddenly aware of his sweaty clothes and the fact that he’s probably smelled better. “You mind if I get a quick shower?”

  “No,” she says. “You can use the one in my room. There are towels on the rack by the tub.”

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “Thank you for staying last night. I went to bed thinking about that guy, and I don’t think I would have slept at all if you hadn’t.”

  “No problem.”

  “Do you like eggs?”

  “Yes. That sounds good.”

  A few beats of silence hang between them, and then he heads for her bedroom while she turns toward the kitchen.

  In the bathroom, he turns on the shower, pulling off his sweaty shirt. There’s a rap at the door. He opens it, and Emory hands him a white mug of steaming coffee. “That looks great. Thanks,” he says.

  She stares at his bare chest, her eyes snagged there just long enough to allow the return of that same awareness he’d felt last night. She looks up, meeting his eyes with an uncertainty that makes him wonder about that doctor from the hospital and whether he makes her this uncomfortable.

  “I thought you might like a cup,” she says, her voice low now and a little uneven.

  They stand there, locked in a moment that could have been a second long or a hundred. All he knows is that the pull of temptation is as hot as the coffee she’s just brought him. “I won’t be long,” he says. He takes a deliberate step back and then closes the door.

  Mia

  “I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.”

  ―Markus Zusak

  ONCE WHEN SHE and Emory took a vacation to Saint Martin for her sixteenth birthday, they spent an afternoon in the hotel spa that overlooked the ocean. They’d had facials and massages, gotten themselves caked in a full-body clay detox thing that caused their skin to tingle and then glow afterwards.

  The spa room there had looked much like this one—low, soft lighting, white walls with a special bed in the middle made to look inviting with its white sheets and soft white blankets. It had smelled like this one too. Eucalyptus and mint and citrus layered together.

  But despite the similar appearance, this place wasn’t actually anything at all like Saint Martin. In this room, she is lying flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, her wrists and ankles anchored to the bed with some kind of special clasp to prevent her from getting up.

  She’d tried. So many times now that she knows there will be rubs on her skin. She doesn’t care though. If she thought it would do any good, she would jerk at the bindings until she freed herself, not even caring whether she left behind a part of herself in the trap.

  The heavy door at the side of the room opens. A woman enters. She’s dressed like a doctor, white lab coat over white pants. Serious, black-frame glasses on her face. She walks over to the sink and washes her hands.

  “Hi,” Mia says, staring at her back.

  She doesn’t answer so Mia repeats, “Hi.”

  The woman turns, still without answering, and walks over to pull the sheet and blanket off Mia, exposing her nakedness beneath. She studies her dispassionately, up and down, as if she’s observing a new car she’s considering buying.

  Crimson heat stains Mia’s face. “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I am Helga. I will need to shower you,” she says in a thick German accent, not meeting Mia’s gaze. “Can you do this without my assistant, or will I need to call him?”

  Mia knows who the assistant is. The same hulking man who had escorted her from the other room to this one. The one who had ordered her to undress and refused to turn his back while she did. The one who let his eyes take their fill of her as he strapped on the restraints. The thought of him watching her be showered made her instantly nauseous.

  “No,” she says. “He doesn’t need to be here.”

  “Good. I have a remote in my pocket. Should I push the button on it, he will be inside the room within fifteen seconds. I believe you have already been warned as to what will happen should his powers of persuasion be necessary.”

  Mia nods. She doesn’t trust herself to speak because the scream at the back of her throat will no doubt bring about exactly what the woman has warned her about.

  “Excellent,” the woman says, removing a key from her white lab coat and unlocking each cuff. “Stand up and walk to the shower, please.”

  Mia does so, trying not to think about her nakedness, realizing modesty is a long-gone luxury.

  The woman opens the shower door, beckons her inside with one hand. Mia stands with her back to her, closing her eyes on the futile hope that she can block out what is happening to her, somehow lessen its impact.

  The water turns on, runs for a few seconds, and Mia feels it hit the center of her spine. She draws in a sharp breath. The woman rinses her entire back and legs, orders her to bend over and aims the spray between her legs. Tears well in Mia’s eyes, but she bites her lip to hold them back. The woman turns her around and does the same to her fron
t side. When she finally turns off the water, she picks up a bottle on the wall shelf and proceeds to squirt Mia from head to toe body with its contents. The smell is a familiar antiseptic smell, and she realizes she is being sterilized.

  Humiliation threatens to choke her.

  Next, the woman pours soap onto a white washcloth, and then cleans every inch of her with that. She works as if she is preparing an operating room for surgery and every inch must be impeccably sanitary.

  Anger again burns through the humiliation, but there is no place for it to go. One misstep on her part will bring that monster of a man into the room, and so she is left with the choice of the lesser evil. But she doesn’t bother to hold back the tears now. They stream down her face, mixing with the soap and antiseptic.

  When the woman has finished cleaning her with the washcloth, she picks up the spray nozzle and blasts the soap away. She looks up at Mia’s face, notices the tears there and then raises the spray to wash those away also.

  When she’s done, she hands Mia an enormous white towel and says, “Dry yourself, please, and then return to the table.”

  Mia takes her time, somehow knowing she does not want to go back to that table.

  Noticing her reluctance, the woman reaches in her pocket and pulls out the remote, her finger resting on the button. Mia instantly drops the towel and goes to the table, refusing to meet the woman’s eyes.

  Once she lies back down, the woman places her wrists and ankles back in the restraints. She opens a cabinet, removes something and places it in the nearby microwave. A beep sounds and then the microwave turns on. The woman pulls a phone from her pocket, taps the screen, and then studies it for the sixty seconds until the machine beeps and stops.

  She pulls a bowl from inside and takes a wooden spreader from a drawer. She dips it in the bowl and stirs. Mia realizes it is a bowl of wax. The woman tests its heat with her finger, and apparently satisfied, begins spreading it on Mia’s leg. “You have been waxed before?” she asks.

  Mia shakes her head, refusing to look at her.