Guardian

by Natasha Deen

  “What are you doing here?” He had a soft, high voice that suited his delicate bone structure and hairless, round face.

  “I was watching the practice.”

  He looked at his watch. The overhead lights cut through his thin, blond hair and shone off his pink scalp. “It’s been over for a few hours.”

  “Oh. I guess I was watching the water. Very calming.” I pushed my shoulders back, thinking that would work out the kink in my neck. Pain shot down my back and made me grimace.

  He frowned and set the mop and bucket on the floor. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded and reinjured myself.

  His frown deepened. “Are you sure?” He came over. “Can I help?”

  The only way he could help me with Serge was if he threw himself in front of the bully and offered himself as fodder while I ran.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I twisted my neck.”

  He blinked. His gaze ran from one end of the pool to the other, searching the barren walls and randomly scattered paddleboards, probably trying to figure out how I could have injured myself in an empty room. “Why are you here so late?”

  “Oh.” I glanced—gingerly—down at my watch. It was nine o’clock. “I guess I lost track of time. Um, is the school empty?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, everyone cleared out.”

  That should have made me feel safe, but it didn’t. Visions of Serge lying in wait by my car gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  From behind his bifocals, he peered at me. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. It’s—”

  “Serge.”

  “How did you—?”

  “I saw the video.”

  Man, even people I barely knew were aware of Serge’s grudge.

  He gave me a small smile and patted my shoulder. “Why don’t I walk you out?”

  We walked to my car and after I’d climbed in and locked the doors, he went back inside.

  I started the ignition and let the vehicle warm up. The night was cold and frosty—a typical fall evening where my breath came in thick clouds and steamed the windshield. I checked my watch. Nine-fifteen. I didn’t have to be home for another hour and a half.

  Nancy was probably over, and since it was Friday I knew freshly made bread was waiting. But I didn’t want to head home. Dad could read me too well, and I didn’t want to relive the subtle rejection from Craig or the not-so-subtle threat from Serge. I had three-quarters of a tank and nowhere to be.

  After a stop to grab a burger and shake at The Tin Shack—Dead Falls’s answer to fast food—I drove to Widow’s Peak. Then I remembered it was Friday and every couple went to that hill to make out. Seeing rocking cars was going to take the taste out of my chocolate shake. The road was too narrow to do a U-turn, so I had to crest the hill before I could turn around. I didn’t pay attention to the cars until I saw a too-familiar hatchback. Craig’s car. And it was rocking hard enough to need new shocks.

  “Babysitting. Yeah, right,” I muttered as I drove by and repressed the urge to rear-end his car. I swung my vehicle around and left Craig to the rear-ending business. At the bottom of the hill, I idled by the stop sign and watched frost and fog creep along the road while I wondered why I’d believed Craig could ever see me as girlfriend material.

  I debated turning on the radio. Dead Falls is too small to have a proper radio station and too far away from any of the bigger towns to borrow theirs. Instead, we have Harriet the Heat—a sixty-year-old camp cook who broadcasts music from her iPod and waxes philosophical about hot flashes, bioidentical hormones, and a thousand uses for cream of mushroom soup.

  Nancy said listening to Harriet had helped her to lose fifteen pounds. “Believe me,” she’d said, “after listening to that woman talk about vaginal creams—their textures, prices, and applications—the last thing I wanted to do was eat.”

  I eyed the dial as though it were a snake waiting to bite. The radio could be mindless company. It could also be my psychic undoing.

  As if it heard my thoughts, the radio clicked on.

  My mouth went dry, my skin tightened, and my heart felt as though paddles had been applied.

  On the other side of the radio wasn’t Harriet with her smoked-unfiltered-cigarettes-since-the-womb gravel voice. Instead, it was the static—the weird, whispering kind that made my intestines twist and tighten.

  “Maggie.”

  The voice crawled along every vertebra on my spine and left it tingling.

  My clumsy fingers flipped the switch.

  It didn’t work.

  Of course not. It never worked. When The Voice came through, there was nothing to stop it.

  “Maggie.”

  A normal person would have run. A normal person would have launched themselves from the seat and raced for help.

  I wasn’t a normal person, and The Voice did more than freak me out. It had weight, this whispery, silvery murmur, and it held me shackled and imprisoned. I had no more ability to free myself from the driver’s seat than I’d had of escaping Serge at the pool.

  The Voice went silent. It filled the space.

  I flicked on the signal light. Home was on the right. I went straight on Miller’s Avenue.

  I did a U-turn.

  The voice disapproved and punished me by pressing its damp weight on my chest. “Maggie. He’s coming.”

  I grunted but pushed on. If I could make it home…if only I could make it home. I passed the turnoff for Widow’s Peak, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

  “He’s coming for you. Maggie. Ohhh, Maggie.”

  The shakes started next. They rocked me from side to side, made my abdominals clench and my teeth chatter. My fingers lost heat, turned ice-cold.

  Still, I drove. The pressure increased until it felt as though a giant was standing on my chest. My hands went numb. To control the steering wheel, I had to use my forearms. The nausea hit. Whatever it was that controlled this side of me did not want me going home.

  I pulled to the side of the road and wiped the sweat off my face. Fumbling in the dark, I found my cell and called Dad. “Hey,” I wheezed, letting my voice shake because there was no point in lying. “My chest hurts.”

  There was a sharp pause. Then, “How does it hurt?”

  In the background, I heard Nancy say, “Who’s hurt?”

  “Giant on my chest hurt.”

  The silence grew pointed ridges. “Where are you?”

  “It’s not where I am—it’s where I should be.”

  “Is that Maggie?” Nancy asked, her voice tense. “Is she hurt? Did someone hurt her?”

  “No,” Dad’s voice moved away from the phone. “She’s fine.”

  “Then why are you asking her if she’s hurt?”

  I smiled despite the stomach pain that cut me in half. Trademark Nancy. A cop, interrogator, and nurturer, combined.

  Dad ignored her and said, “Tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.”

  Muffled rasping filled my ears. Nancy’s voice came over the line. “Maggie. What’s going on?”

  She didn’t know about me—not this. “I think my milkshake was old, or maybe I’m coming down with something.”

  “I knew it!” She turned from the phone.

  I couldn’t hear what she said, but I got the general tone, and sent up a prayer for Dad.

  “Where are you? I’m coming.”

  “Um—”

  “Maggie.” Concern mixed with cop Don’t-Screw-With-Me attitude.

  Now what? If it had been Dad, I’d have told him I was heading to the old lumber mill and he would have known. What was I supposed to tell Nancy? And if she came with Dad to the mill, how would I explain any weird discovery made?

  “Maggie! Answer me!”

  Roll in pain and vomit, or face the un
known? I hate the taste of a milkshake coming up instead of going down. “I’m by the lumber mill.”

  “We’ll be there, soon.”

  “Okay.” I ended the call.

  As soon as I turned the car around, the pressure eased. My car rumbled to the mill, and with every passing kilometer the pain in my abdomen lifted. Heat and warmth returned to my fingers, my muscles turned from hard cement to pliable tissue, and my lungs found space to breathe again.

  I turned left off the road. The barren trees creaked in the wind, leafless skeletons of the branches butted and rubbed together, and clattered like bones. There was only a pickup in the lot, though even if it had been packed full, I still would have known this was the vehicle I was destined to find. It glowed, an angry orange-red only I could see, and spewed raw-edged flames skyward.

  The psychic fire burned so bright and hot that I didn’t realize who the vehicle belonged to until I was right beside it.

  Then the sick, nauseous feeling returned.

  Serge.

  I pulled my car next to his. My tires crunched on the gravel. I put my head on the steering wheel and hoped if I clicked my heels this would all turn out to be a dream. There was only one thing I could do.

  I shut the engine off, pocketed the keys, and got out of the car. “Serge? Can you hear me?”

  Of course not. Purple fog rolled from the jambs of the door. “Serge?” Yeah, because calling his name slower and louder would really help. The tips of my ears went cold and frosted air broke the barrier of my jeans. I crossed to the driver’s side. A darkened shaped slumped in the seat.

  I pulled the sleeves of my jacket over my fingers and tried the door. It opened and the interior light came on. Serge’s half-naked body fell out the door. The purple vapour swirled into the air. I put my jacket to my mouth, tried to breathe through the stink of vomit and human fluids seeping down his jeans. Gingerly, I reached out and felt for a pulse.

  I may have been wrong before, but this time there was no mistake.

  Serge was dead.

  Chapter Six

  Through my spot in the back seat of the sheriff’s black SUV, I got a view of the dashboard, cut into tiny squares by the metal grill that separated the front and rear sections of the vehicle, and the occasional shadow cast by the emergency personnel. Breathing in air made mouldy with stale coffee and listening to the hiss of the dispatch radio did nothing for my nerves. I climbed out.

  The air, sharp with the bite of the coming winter, nipped my skin and devoured the lingering sheen of sweat from my forehead. I headed to the rear of the vehicle. I crawled in and wrapped the grey blanket around my shoulders.

  From my vantage point, I saw Dad off to the sidelines, waiting behind the crime tape for someone to question me so he could take me home. The red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles turned in slow, silent rotation, bathing the ground and the faces of the emergency crew in alternating shadows of black and blood.

  The entire force—all three cops—bagged evidence and took photos. Systematic and slow, they didn’t move as much as they seemed to dance. One cop pirouetted and stretched toward the windshield. Another twisted forward and leaned inside the vehicle. Elegant despite the bulky coats, lithe with the grace and synchronicity born of years of working together, they arced and lunged, turned and sidestepped, with the occasional flash of the camera serving as a spotlight to their quiet choreography.

  The paramedics leaned against the side of the white ambulance. They’d long since come to the same conclusion as I had: Serge was dead and no amount of needles, drugs, or CPR was going to save him. They talked to each other in hushed tones, waiting for the moment Nancy gave them the nod. Then they would put Serge’s body in a black bag and take him to the morgue.

  Rory, one of the only two tow truck drivers in town, was our coroner. Though I couldn’t see his face, I knew the squat, round body standing by the EMTs was his. The red glow of his cigarette flared in the dark and disappeared. His job was administrative—thank God. Rory was many things, but that guy couldn’t tell a heart from a hiney. He’d arrange for a medical examiner to come up from Edmonton and perform an autopsy—typical procedure for anyone who didn’t die of natural causes, and I knew nothing natural had taken Serge out.

  Nancy came over. The night had dusted her cheeks red and her nose had a glow that would make Rudolph jealous. She stamped her feet. The action caused blond curls to fall from her hat and bounce about her face. She folded her arms across her chest. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait inside the car—where you can’t see…?”

  I nodded.

  Her brows pulled together.

  “My dad’s an undertaker,” I said. “I’ve probably seen more dead bodies than you have.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “I know, sugar, but this isn’t like old lady Singh popping off in her sleep.”

  I didn’t bother to tell her that I helped to prepare the bodies of guys who’d died on the rigs and in highway accidents, and Serge was downright pretty in comparison.

  She took my silence for mourning, because she said, “I know it’s hard. He was a jerk, but it’s never easy to see someone you know in such a state.”

  His state was exactly what I was worried about and I prayed he’d gone into the great hereafter without a backward look.

  “It’ll be over, soon.” She sighed, pained and sad, and I knew she was more upset about his death than I was. “The M.E. will have to do an autopsy, but it’s pretty obvious he died of alcohol poisoning.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand—Serge only drank beer. The truck reeks of…well, I dunno, but it’s not beer.”

  “Tequila.” She grimaced. “You get drunk on that stuff once and you never forget the smell.”

  “Who left him here?”

  She said nothing.

  “You know this isn’t normal—”

  “Honey—”

  “His shirt was off. He wasn’t here alone. Besides, tequila wasn’t his drink. I heard enough about his weekend partying to know that. Someone killed him.”

  “It could still have been accidental.”

  “You think he decided to shuck his shirt off in the middle of minus-ten weather and chug tequila?”

  “No. We’ll have to clear up some details,” she said. Her forehead wrinkled. “It’s a police investigation and I can’t talk about the specifics. The boys—they think he was having some alone time, but there’s no way that kid would be here by himself. It’s so…”

  “Un-Serge-like.”

  She nodded. “But this may be a death from misadventure. It could be an accident.”

  “We—uh—I mean, you need to figure out who he was with.” I paused, then added, “And why they left him here.”

  “Maybe they went to get help. Cell reception isn’t that great out here.”

  “How long has he been dead? Do you know—exactly?”

  She shrugged. “That’s hard to determine. We know, because of the polo game, that it had to be within the last three to four hours.” Her face scrunched together. “They always make it look so easy on television. Just take the liver temperature and there’s your time of death, but the human body is so much more delicate than that.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He was in a vehicle, and Lord knows if the engine had been running when he died. If he’d had the heater going that’s going to screw up his TOD—Time of Death. Add in the cloth seats, the cold weather, and open windows…”

  “I don’t think this was accidental. I think someone did this to him on purpose.” Actually, the red-orange fire had assured me of that, but I couldn’t offer psychic visions as proof.

  “No, sweetie—” She sounded sad. “I don’t think it was an accident, either.”

  “It doesn’t take four hours to walk into town from here. If someone had been with him and he’d drun
k too much, they would have reached a phone by now.” I waited. “Someone left him out here on purpose, Nancy.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “And it breaks my heart on so many levels, I can’t even begin to tell you…he was a prick, but leaving someone to die? That’s cruelty that even he wasn’t capable of.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “I sure am sorry you’re the one who found him.”

  Me too.

  “But good thing you did.” She glanced at me, concerned. “How’s your stomach, anyway?”

  I shook my head. “Seeing Serge and everything—it kinda made the whole nausea disappear.” I couldn’t have been more truthful—more specific, but not more truthful.

  She hugged me close. “It’ll be over, soon.”

  “Did you call his parents?”

  “This is the kind of news,” she said, her voice strained and tight, “that you want to give in person.”

  I nodded.

  “I know it isn’t easy, honey, but can you go over the night for me, one more time?”

  I told her the same story as I’d told her when she first arrived, about watching the game, Serge’s parents showing up at practice, his fight with me, and my driving around town. I didn’t add in the part about Widow’s Peak. The way I figured it, seeing Craig’s car was personal information and not necessary to their investigation.

  “Was there anything unusual—anything that may have caused him to drink too much?”

  I snorted. “Serge lived for drinking. He didn’t need an excuse. Did you guys see anything unusual?”

  “There’s nothing.” She drummed her fingers on my shoulder. “It’s weird, too, that he had a girl with him and she took off. You think it was Amber?”

  I shook my head. “She doesn’t have the guts to walk out on him, let alone walking out on him in the middle of the woods.”

  “Did he mess around on her?”

  “Obviously. Don’t ask me how, but he could always find a girl. He cheated on Amber from the day they started going out. But she stayed with him. That’s why it couldn’t have been her tonight.”

  “Did he have any regulars that he had sex with?”