“Yeah. I noticed.”
They were laughing and helping each other to their feet when a car pulled in from the highway. The headlights shone on the barn, then Ben’s SUV and finally hit the two of them standing in each other’s arms in front of the bulldozer. Faith squinted and looked away. Ben did the same.
“Who…?” she started to say, then recognized the silhouette of the Prius.
“Great minds think alike,” Ben murmured.
Two people got out of the Prius; two car doors slammed.
“Char?” Faith said in shock. “She came, too?”
“She loves you,” Ben said.
“I’ve never been sure—” She had to swallow. “Never believed…”
His hand caught hers, squeezed. “Believe. You have to believe, Faith.”
He’d said that to her once before, and she knew suddenly that he wasn’t talking just about her sister any more than he had the other time. He wanted her to believe she could be loved, that he truly loved her.
Her mouth trembled. “I do.” Wonder rose in her like the sun in the morning. “I do,” she repeated, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his scratchy cheek.
And then she went running to her sister, stumbling on the uneven ground but meeting her halfway. They fell into each other’s arms.
In bursts that made her almost incoherent, Char exclaimed, “I should have known sooner where you were. Should have been here for you, Faith. But I will be from now on. I swear I will. Always.”
“I know you are. But I’m okay.” It felt so right, hugging her sister like this. “I really am, Char. I love you.”
At some point she lifted her head and saw Gray, hanging back by the car, hands in his pockets, waiting. And there was Ben, doing the same, so patient. How could she and Char both have gotten so lucky?
She and her sister pressed their wet cheeks together, laughed and wept and babbled words of healing.
THEIR LOVEMAKING the last time had been rushed, urgent, a tempest too powerful to fight. Tonight’s was different, the hunger as strong but seasoned by tenderness. They started with a hot shower and moved, damp, to Ben’s large bed.
He said, “I love you,” over and over again—against her breasts, and her belly, and her thighs. She said it looking into his eyes, mumbled it into his hair. “I love you.”
He was dazed with incredulity, reeling at the miraculous knowledge that, yes, she did love him, that she was here, beneath him, holding him with as much need as he held her.
Afterward, she lay with her head on his shoulder, one leg draped over his, her hand playing with his chest hair. And she whispered, “Tell me one of your nightmares. Just one.”
Ben closed his eyes. How could she ask that tonight, with everything she’d gone through? But he heard her voice.
If you can trust me, at least a little…
He remembered his own promise. More than a little.
“I crossed the line sometimes as a cop. I roughed up suspects a couple of times because I was angry,” he said. “But one of the hardest things I’ve had to live with was a simple mistake.”
He told her, then, about two women, a mother and her daughter. About the serial killer he’d arrested, about the search warrant he’d carried out and, in his arrogance, violated, finding the evidence he needed in a place he wasn’t allowed to look. About having to let the killer go, because he, Ben, had screwed up. About the thirteen-year-old girl who was brutally raped and murdered two weeks later.
“This time he left evidence on her body. The condom tore, or spilled, and there was semen on her legs. She’d scratched him, too. There was blood under her fingernails.”
“So you were able to arrest him this time? And convict him?”
Ben shook his head. “Not me. I couldn’t be involved, or I’d have been a target in court. I made a mistake. Nothing else I said would have been seen as reliable.”
Her hand was no longer playing; as he’d done for her, she was stroking him, using her touch to comfort. She said nothing, waiting for him to go on.
“The girl’s mother blamed me, of course. One day she walked into the squad room, asked someone to point me out and laid a picture on my desk. Her daughter—Brianna—had been elected by the student body to be their speaker at the eighth-grade graduation. The picture was taken that day.”
Brianna had been almost plain, but looked as if she’d someday grow into prettiness. He remembered her chaste dress, blue sprinkled with white flowers, and her shyness at being the focus of attention. But at the moment that photo had been snapped she had also shone with pride and intelligence and hope.
And because he’d screwed up, she had died horribly, and would never grow into that prettiness, never realize any of her hopes.
“I see their faces.” He was shaking. “The way the mother looked at me when she handed me that picture. And Brianna. I saw the crime-scene photos, too. I will never forget….”
He was crying now, the tears hot on his face. He hadn’t known he could.
Faith didn’t recoil, even though he deserved it. She rose above him and cradled his face in her palms, kissing him, tasting his tears.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” she said, so gently. “Everybody, Ben. You didn’t kill her. You’re not responsible, that monster is.”
When he was spent, and able to kiss her back, she whispered against his mouth, “I love you. I will keep loving you.”
With a desperate sound, he gripped her hips, lifting her so that he could plunge inside her. Become part of her. Fill her as she filled him.
If you can trust me, at least a little…
With everything I am, he thought, and showed her the only way he could right now.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6492-6
THROUGH THE SHERIFF’S EYES
Copyright © 2010 by Janice Kay Johnson.
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*Lost…But Not Forgotten
†The Russell Twins
Through the Sheriff's Eyes Page 21
