by Lisa Ladew
One of the police officers had called her guy ‘Mac’. She frowned, trying to remember Mac’s exact words to her and to the other cops. He’d wanted to see her face, wanted to know her name, then freaked right the fuck out when his brothers in blue had taken their guns out, even though she’d had a knife to his neck, maybe even had stabbed him a little bit.
She rubbed her temples, feeling bad about that. Had it been unavoidable? Even if it hadn’t, was that really an acceptable excuse? She’d always prided herself on not hurting anyone, not stealing from anyone who didn’t deserve it. Criminals stealing from criminals was her domain, and one she rarely strayed from, at least not since she’d been in charge of her own crimes.
The truck turned left, then right, heading out of town. Rogue followed single-mindedly. She had to know who this guy was, and why he was so interested in her. The one thing she knew he couldn’t be, was a werewolf. Right? There’s no way a werewolf could be a cop. The rest of them would have figured out something was strange about him.
What if he was her cop? The one that she thought about so obsessively it made her stupid? She hadn’t gotten a good look at him, but the guy who starred in her mind movies didn’t usually have a face, anyway. He certainly was big enough, brash enough, badass enough. And the way he smelled… Ugh, Rogue had to stop her eyes from rolling back in her head. He smelled good enough to eat, literally. Like if he were ever on the menu, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from taking a long, leisurely trip through his pants.
Fuck. Just what she needed. A crush. Or worse, an obsession. What she really should be doing was getting the hell out of Dodge, but here she was, still in Serenity, hadn’t even been home yet, following some cop just to see what his connection was to her. Not her smartest moment.
But she couldn’t help herself.
After several more miles, he turned right down a farm road, pulling into one of the newer subdivisions that had been built around old farmhouses, then right again, disappearing from her sight. Rogue had put even more distance between the two of them, because traffic was light out here. For a brief moment, she wondered if he knew she was following him, and if he was doing a quick U-turn to get into position to turn the tables on her. The thought of him confronting her made her heart speed up, but, as she pulled level with the road he’d turned down, she saw his truck parked in front of an ordinary looking house, no one inside.
She cruised past, checking out houses on the next street until she found an obviously empty home. Real estate sign out front. Grass a little too long. Lock box on the front door. No trash, no cars, no signs of life. Rogue parked her car a block down, grabbed a bag from the back, walked as quickly as she could to the house, straight up the front walk like she belonged there, put her hand on the door knob, and clunk, she was inside with a mental twist of the lock. She shook her head as she went in. If she wasn’t meant to be a criminal, why did her biology make it so damn easy? Even if she had to get out her picks, she would have been inside in less than thirty seconds, but the ability to spring a lock with only a touch? It suited her.
She prowled through the empty house, straight to the back porch, which was off the kitchen on the second floor. Perfect.
She fished a pair of binoculars out of her bag and trained them on the house Mac’s truck was parked in front of. It was one level, and all the windows she could see in showed nothing but empty rooms: part of a dining room, a sparse kitchen, and a bedroom.
Wait, there he was. He stalked into the bedroom, his face almost sad, his shoulders lowered like he was defeated. She frowned, wanting to know what made him feel that way, then frowned again because something about him was so familiar it almost hurt, like she just had to figure it out. He stopped in front of the bed and stared at it like he hated it, head drooping. She took the time to trace his face with minute movements of her head, the binoculars making it jump into stark focus. His jaw was chiseled, his eyes hard as diamonds, thick stubble giving him a harsh look. His almost-light hair was cut short, just the way she liked it, and his body, from what she could see of it, was broadly perfect. Thick arms, wide torso, slim hips, muscles filling out his shirt in a delectable way. She licked her lips, caught herself doing it, stopped, and trained the binocs on his neck, wanting to see how bad the slice was that she’d made.
There was only smooth, unbroken skin.
Rogue let the binocs fall for a second, perplexed, then picked them up again, focusing harder. Mac turned away from the bed and looked out the window, away from her, his expression still sorrowful, but contemplative. His shoulders twitched and he shook his head slightly, giving her the feeling he wasn’t comfortable with the contemplation. He looked like more of a man of action.
She could see all of his neck now, and there was no injury. Impossible! She could see the blood on his shirt that had dripped down from a slice in his neck that was no longer there!
Rogue dropped the binoculars, her mind spinning furiously. No one healed that fast. No one. It had been… she counted back, not even ten hours since she’d cut him. He should have something there!
She wanted to go outside, scale the fence between the yards, then press her face up against his window, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even go into his yard. She got the feeling he would… smell her or something.
Rogue’s hands shook. She tightened her fingers on the binoculars, but they fell out of her hand anyway, the sound of their impact on the hardwood floor shocking in the empty house.
Get ahold of yourself. It doesn’t mean anything. She tried to bend to grab the binoculars and ended up falling on her ass, instead. She’d seen Twilight, mostly to see what all the fuss was about. The werewolves in that movie had healed lightning fast.
Did her werewolf obsession really hold water? Was she not crazy? Not pushing through life because that was the only thing left to do? Because sitting at home doing nothing because you thought you were insane was so gauche as to be stupid?
Unable to gather her will, Rogue let the shaking go, let it move right through her until it dissipated, since she was unable to do anything else, then, when she was still again, she stood, certain Mac would no longer be visible in the window. Certain she had fucked up somehow.
But he was there, sitting on the bed, a pen in his hand, as he wrote furiously in a notebook on his lap.
She watched until he filled a page, then held the book to his chest like a life preserver as he laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. Only when his eyes slipped closed did she move from the room, leave the house, and head out into the real world, trying to figure out what she could possibly do now.
Chapter 21
Rogue drove home on high alert, her homecoming much different than it would have been if she had gone directly home the day before. Now she was suspicious, scared, nervous that she was going home at all. She had some decisions to make about the rest of her life. She’d always thought she would retire in Serenity, at least some of the time. Expand her house, get some horses, find someone to share her life with. Maybe by then she would have found her sister. They could have been a part of each other’s lives.
Was that all ruined now? Maybe. She knew she hadn’t killed that guy, but if she were ever caught, ever fingerprinted for any reason, she’d be the main suspect in the murder of that man.
She couldn’t leave it like that. Even if she disappeared, she had to implicate Rex somehow.
That cop will help you. He would protect you with his life, even from the other cops.
Rogue frowned at the thought. Really? She didn’t know him, had no idea who he was or why he’d acted so strangely. And there was no way she was going to him for help.
Her home come into view and suddenly exhaustion weighed on her. She could shake it off long enough to get into bed. She watched her country home as she drove up to it, still admiring it even through her tiredness. The trees in the yard were still bare, but buds protruded from each branch. Past them, the two-story limestone-exterior sat solidly in the middle of its plot
of land, beckoning her.
Rogue pulled her car around the back of the house, walked once around the perimeter to ensure all the bug traps were in place, and that none of them were too full to work, then stepped up the back steps.
Once inside, the slight smell of peppermint greeted her. She smiled, knowing Boe had been following her instructions in her absence. That was one of the best things about having Boe around, he kept up her war on bugs while she wasn’t around. No spider or fly would dare show its face in her house.
She found Boe in the library, of course, sitting in the window seat, a cup of tea beside him, a book in his hand, a look of quiet enjoyment on his face.
Oh, but he looked old! Like he’d aged another ten years in the few weeks she’d been gone. The lines on his forehead and around his mouth and eyes had turned into grooves, and even more of his hair had fallen out, leaving him only a horseshoe around his ears and the back of his head. He looked like a man on the tail end of his eighties. Which made no sense.
He noticed her and scrambled to his feet, still able to move around well. “Mistress!” he cried and hurried across the room to her. She bent and accepted the arms that went around her waist.
“Hi, Boe, good to see you.”
“And you, Mistress. I had hoped to see you soon.”
Something in his tone made her look closer at his face, and she wondered suddenly if he was dying. She pressed her lips together. “Oh? Do you need to tell me something?”
“No, no, it just gets lonely in this big house all alone. I missed you.”
That was something she could understand, although she did not get lonely too often, and she did love her space.
He held her at arm’s length. “You look tired.”
She nodded. “I haven’t slept all night.”
“Oh! Will you be sleeping now?”
“Yeah.”
She headed into the hallway, knowing he would follow her. It was his way. “Wake me up when it gets dark?” she asked. He nodded. “And tell me if anyone pulls into the driveway or down the street, anyone at all, even…” She hesitated to say a word, but she had to. “Even the police.”
His eyes got big, but he nodded and didn’t ask any questions. “Your linens are clean. I turned them down last night, but made your bed this morning. Please, let me.” He pushed past her to get into her room. When she got there, he had the blanket and sheet stripped to the foot of the bed, checking for spiders as he knew she always did, then he pulled them back and folded a corner over for her.
“Thank you, Boe.”
“Of course, Mistress.”
She changed her clothes, took care of her face and teeth and hair, then crawled into bed, tired in her very bones. But it was a long time before she was able to fall asleep.
The faceless fearless cop was no longer faceless, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
***
After Boe woke Rogue, she had quickly put away the dinner he’d made for her, calling it breakfast, then left the house, a nearby destination in mind.
She had some very serious thinking to do, and only one place seemed right to do it in.
The sun had set an hour before, and the night was chilly already, the stars high in the sky. She parked her car on the side of the road in front of Sinissipi Park and walked in, taking a well-maintained path through the ten acres of forest that bordered one side of it, breathing deeply through her nose to catch the forest scent. As she walked, her mind worried out one of the reasons she always returned to Serenity, and she tried to decide if she was there at that park to say goodbye. Was it time to give up? Leave and never come back, giving up her hopes of retirement there? Maybe, if her hopes were based on nothing more than the desire for something that might never happen. Seeing her sister again.
As she walked down the quiet path, hearing the whispers of small night animals over and under the leaves on the ground around her, she imagined the laughter of that day at this very park, the last time she’d seen her sister.
Amaranth Kendall, or Amara, as Rogue liked to call her, had been missing for twenty years now. Since the day after that lovely day on the playground that was burned into her memory. Her uncle, may-the-devil-spit-on-his-soul had done… something that five-year-old Rogue hadn’t understood, and Rogue had never seen her sister again. As an adult, she realized he’d probably sold her, and Rogue prayed that it had been to a good family who wasn’t able to have children of their own, someone who would have treated Amara right. Rogue knew the reality was probably the exact opposite, but that didn’t stop her from hoping… from getting down on her knees and praying every night, even though she didn’t quite believe in God, which she’d never admitted to anyone, especially Father Macleese. She still prayed because, well, what if she was wrong about the whole God thing?
Amara would be an adult now, no longer a child who could be kept in someone’s home like an animal if they so chose, but still Rogue prayed. Prayed her sister was well and happy and that Rogue would meet her again someday. Prayed Amara would remember Serenity as well as Rogue did, and maybe someday return here, looking for her sister.
The path branched in front of her, and she took the right branch, recalling how her five-year-old feet had pounded in the opposite direction as she had run from her sister and the other girl they’d been playing hide and seek with. The afternoon had been warm, their aunt and uncle hadn’t been fighting for once, and she’d been happy. If it was the last time she could remember being happy in her life, well, that was her business, wasn’t it.
The next morning, when she’d woken up, her sister hadn’t been there. Her uncle had ignored Rogue’s frantic questions, and her aunt would only say, “She’s on a vacation, having fun. You don’t have to worry about her.” Rogue barely knew what a vacation was, and since they didn’t live in Serenity, were only there visiting some of her uncle’s ‘old war buddies’, her aunt and uncle sleeping on a twin mattress in the corner of a filthy spare room in one of the buddy’s houses, while Rogue and Amara slept on the floor, and then only Rogue slept on the floor, Rogue couldn’t imagine how Amara had gone on vacation from there, but the more she insisted on going to find her sister, the more irritated her uncle and aunt had become. Her aunt mostly only hit with wooden spoons, her swats easily avoided, but her uncle, if he got ahold of you, he was more likely to shake you until you thought your brains were going to leak out your ears, or maybe your brain was going to bruise in your skull, swelling until you couldn’t speak or see. Rogue always made it a point to disappear when he got angry.
That day, when they were supposed to head back to Chicago, and she planted her feet in the driveway and refused to get back in the car, when she’d seen the look on his face that said she would be sorry, she’d run. Ran right down the road, into a culvert, across a ditch that she and Amara had played in, following it until she was sure she had lost her uncle, thinking she would sleep in caves and eat crawdads if she had to, yelling for her sister because her sister was the only thing she had in the whole world. “Amara!” she’d called, thinking if maybe she yelled loud enough, Amara would be able to hear her, even if she was across town.
Rogue cut the memory off mercilessly. She hadn’t found her sister that day and she never let herself think about what really had happened.
Rogue heard voices, young male voices, and she lifted her head. She’d reached the end of the path and was about to be spilled out into the moonlight flooding the open field, of which the large wooden playground sat right in the middle.
She let her eyes adjust as she watched the movement she could see at the top of the playground. Three boys, probably in their mid teens, bent over something at a turret at the very top. It took a few minutes before she realized one was spraying spray paint across the beams in wide, white strokes, while the other two were sawing the turret off at its support posts.
Shit. She should leave. Call it in anonymously. The cops could roust them. But if she did that, she might not have a chance to come back. Mig
ht not have a chance to say goodbye, if that’s what she was doing. Fuck that.
She strode forward, waiting for them to notice her, walking right up to the base of the turret they were destroying. They didn’t see her, not until she picked up a small rock and beaned one of them in the head, the biggest one. He was wearing a leather jacket and had his hair slightly long and curled around his head, getting in his eyes, but she could tell it was styled that way. In fact, all their hair was styled that way, and they had heavy eye makeup on. My Chemical Romance, juvenile edition.
“Hey!” he yelled, his voice whispered, but outraged.
She spoke at a normal volume, her voice hard and harsh, like her mood. “Get out of here, boys, and maybe I won’t tell your mommas you’re juvenile delinquents who need to go to military school.”
“Fuck you,” one of them whisper-yelled.
“Good one,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Wholly original. You should write comebacks for TV.”
The three boys looked at each other and she could almost see them sharing out their one brain cell. “We should kick her ass,” leather jacket said to the one with a platinum blonde helmet of hair.
“Totally.”
Not My Chemical Romance. Beavis and Butthead with a hanger-on. Fun. Not.
“That would be a very stupid move, boys.”
But leather jacket cast one more look at her, one that said he might do more than just a little ass kicking if he thought he could get away with it, and then the three of them were beelining for the stairs. Leather jacket stopped on the shaky bridge and ordered one of them back the other way. “We can surround her.”
Rogue shook her head and waited for them, knowing exactly how they would come at her. In fits and starts, none of them ever been in a fight before that didn’t end up with him on the ground, trying not to cry.
