Winter's Ghost

by Mary Stone

  When he leaned in to kiss her, she didn’t hesitate to circle her arms around his shoulders as she parted her lips. With the warmth of his body so close to hers, the worries of the outside world seemed distant and insignificant.

  “I want you to know something,” he murmured, his breath tickling the side of her face as he separated from the kiss. “This means more to me than just a fling. You mean more to me than that. I don’t want you to think that this is some sort of distraction for me. I really care about you, Sun, and I don’t want you to doubt that.”

  With a slight nod and a smile, she pulled away to meet his gaze. Like everything else about the man, his words were genuine.

  23

  Noah couldn’t remember the last time Winter had been the one to show up at his door with food. More often than not, their dinner time was driven by his appetite. But tonight, their roles had been reversed.

  The scent of garlic wafted past as she made her way into the galley kitchen of his apartment. Aside from the color of the wooden cabinets and the tile in the kitchen and bathroom, their places were almost identical.

  He pried open the refrigerator door and picked out two glass bottles of the same craft beer they’d been stuck on since Autumn introduced them to it months earlier.

  As he handed one of the brews to Winter, her expression was a cross between concern and curiosity. At the look, he realized he hadn’t spoken since she arrived, not even to offer a greeting.

  “Are you all right?” Her tone was gentle, but she kept her eyes on him as she sipped her beer.

  He wasn’t.

  Even if Sun Ming wasn’t responsible for the murders of Tyler Haldane, Ben Ormund, and Mitch Stockley, there was a real possibility that a fellow federal agent had been involved. If not a Fed, then an officer in another law enforcement agency or a veteran of the armed forces.

  Since the start of the case, he had kept his thoughts on the injustice of the whole situation to himself, but now he was sure the musings had reached a breaking point. If he didn’t talk to someone about them, he knew he would lose the sense of direction that had motivated him to pursue a career with the FBI in the first place.

  “No,” he finally replied. With a sigh, he raked his fingers through his hair. “No. Not really.”

  “Well,” she said, leaning her hip against the counter. “It seems like it’s been bothering you for a while. At least since we started this case. What’s up? Is it anything I can help with?”

  Squeezing his eyes closed, he rubbed his face with both hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Might as well give it a shot then.” When he dropped his arms back to his sides to look at her, she offered a reassuring smile.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “We don’t have to stand in here, though. Let’s go sit on the couch.”

  “It’s a sweet couch.”

  “Thanks,” he replied as he scooped up the foil container of fettuccine alfredo. “Autumn helped me pick it out. It was on clearance.”

  She nodded her understanding and followed him into the living room.

  Rather than parse through décor at a home furnishing store, he had dug out a few posters, framed them, and hung them on the walls. Though he didn’t have a knack for interior design, he still hated bare walls. But at thirty-two, he figured the time to tape band and movie posters on the wall had passed. He was an adult now, and he could afford a damn frame.

  “Your posters get me every time,” Winter chuckled as they dropped down to sit.

  “I’ve told you before,” he said with an upraised hand. “I’m a man of many interests. Don’t judge.”

  “Oh, no judgment. It’s just weird to see Johnny Cash next to Kurt Cobain, and Scarface next to John Wayne next to The Wire. It never gets old.”

  “I’m eclectic.” He twirled a huge bite of his pasta onto his fork. “I’ve got a Deadwood poster somewhere, but I still need to buy a frame for it. That one might go in the kitchen.”

  “The one with Calamity Jane?” Winter asked before she shoveled a bite of ravioli covered with tomato sauce into her mouth.

  “Yeah, that one. She’s my favorite character in that show.”

  “I can see that. If she was around today, I feel like you guys would be friends.”

  “I think so too,” he agreed.

  The room lapsed into silence as they ate their Italian takeout, only the soft drone of the television in the background. Though Noah had never been keen on paying an absurd monthly fee for the ability to tune into the three channels he’d actually watch, cable had come free with the apartment. Before Winter showed up with dinner, he had stared absentmindedly at a rerun of a competitive cooking show.

  Try as he might, by the time they’d each finished most of their food, he had been unable to come up with a way to approach the subject of the bizarre guilt that had wracked his mind over the last week.

  “It’s this case,” he blurted.

  “That’s what’s been bothering you?”

  He was glad he hadn’t needed to elaborate. “Yeah.”

  “How so?” Her query was gentle, and he could see the concern in her blue eyes.

  Heaving a weary sigh, he flopped back in his seat and shook his head. “It’s the whole damn thing, honestly. All of it. Everything from how shitty Anne Timson and Linda Cahill were treated by the police, the people who were supposed to protect them, all the way down to Ramirez asking us to narc on Sun.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Winter said, a glimmer of determination on her fair face. “But once we wrap this case up and get the press off our backs, I’m going to look into the people who helped Ormund push all his dirty secrets under the rug. Linda and her daughter deserve some kind of justice.”

  He made a sound that was close to a growl. “They got it, though, didn’t they? Not from the cops. I mean, those guys didn’t do a damn thing, but whoever shot Ormund in his perverted head was looking out for them more than the damn sheriff’s department.”

  Winter sighed. “You’re not wrong.”

  “And that’s part of it. Part of what’s wrong with this whole thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re trying to track down someone who’s looking out for real victims. I don’t think it’s Sun, and I know you don’t either, but what if it’s someone like Sun? What if it’s a federal agent or a sheriff’s deputy who just got sick of watching all this shit happen and decided to do something about it? How does it make any damn sense that we’re trying to lock them up for life or execute them?”

  Winter lifted an eyebrow. “Because it’s illegal?”

  He grunted. “I know it’s illegal, and I know that even if they are in law enforcement, it doesn’t give them free rein to go rogue and start shooting suspects in the head. The Constitution is there for a reason, and we adhere to it. I get all that, but how is what they’re doing any different from what I’ve done, you know? Scott Kennedy and Douglas Kilroy. I shot them both, killed them. I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t think I’ll ever feel bad about it. You know I did two tours when I was in the military, right?”

  She nodded and swallowed a bite of pasta before she answered. “Afghanistan and Iraq, right?”

  “Yeah. Afghanistan was the second one, and Iraq was the first. Then I was in the Dallas PD for four years after I got back to the States. I’ve seen people like Ben Ormund and Tyler Haldane. I responded to two different active shooter situations while I was in Dallas. One was downtown, and the other one was on a college campus. The one downtown, no one died except the shooter. A couple people got hurt, but they made it through. The gunman blew his own head off before we could get to him.”

  Winter reached for his hand, gave it a quick squeeze. He wanted to link their fingers together, take comfort from the contact, but he didn’t. He just dealt with the sense of loss when she moved her hand away.

  “The one on the campus, though, that one was different. I got a bead on the guy, and I didn’t even give it a second thought. I just pulled the t
rigger. And if I hadn’t, I don’t know how many people would’ve died. But I didn’t get arrested or sent to prison or even reprimanded. The brass gave me a damn medal and a recommendation when I applied to the bureau. How’s that any different? How many women do you think this person saved by taking out Ormund and Stockley?”

  “Yeah, I get it.” Winter shrugged as she reached out to clasp his shoulder. As she kneaded her fingers against the fabric of his shirt, the warmth of her touch seemed to radiate through his tired muscles.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It just feels like we’re hunting the good guy.”

  “I think it’s all right for us to feel like that,” she said. “I don’t think feeling that way and wanting to find them are mutually exclusive, you know? We can acknowledge that they might not be a bad person, but we still have to do our jobs. Even if they’re decent, we can’t let vigilantes run around killing people. But just because we know we have to put them away doesn’t mean we can’t sympathize with what they’re doing, at least a little bit.”

  “I hate it,” he muttered.

  She squeezed him again. “I do too, but we’ve got to play by the rules, and so do they. Kennedy and Kilroy were both guilty, and they were both killed to save someone’s life. My life, actually. Society doesn’t work if we all just go off and do our own thing. I mean, maybe we agree with this person’s morals, but who’s to say some other asshole out there won’t start killing people based on some messed up set of ideals like Tyler Haldane and Kent Strickland? And I hate what Linda and Anne had to deal with, but we don’t fix that by letting people get away with murder.”

  “We won’t,” he rushed to assure her. “We fix that by doing our jobs and holding the people who fucked up accountable.”

  She nodded. “We fix that by doing our best, not by letting someone make up their own rules. And, honestly, we both know there’s no way this guy or gal is going to be executed, right? There are mitigating circumstances out the wazoo, and I doubt any judge in their right mind will give the death penalty to someone who’s only killed murderers and rapists. My best guess? I doubt it even goes to trial. I bet the US Attorney pleads it down to life in prison without parole, and that’s that.”

  As she released her grip on his shoulder, she leaned forward to pick up the dinner roll that had come with her meal. She tore off a piece and used it to mop up some of the leftover sauce.

  Each movement was fluid and nonchalant, like she hadn’t just made one of the most profound observations he’d ever heard in his law enforcement career.

  “You’re really going to do that?” he finally asked. “Follow-up on Ormund, I mean.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded as she swallowed the first bite from the roll. “And if Max won’t let me work it, then I’ll hand it to someone who can. Everyone and their brother will know about this case by the time we’re done working it, and I intend to make sure that everything those scumbags did gets dragged out into the light. Even if I’ve got to do it on my own time.”

  A crumb was glued to her lower lip, and Noah had to look away in order to fight the temptation to not lean in and lick it off.

  She didn’t seem to notice his predicament. “Like I said, just because I’m trying to find the person who killed them doesn’t mean I have to like or even tolerate Ormund or Stockley. They were pieces of shit, and they deserved to be put in prison a long time ago. Same with anyone who helped them get away with what they did. I might not be able to put Ormund and Stockley away now, but I can make sure their buddies pay for letting them get away with it.”

  “Yeah.” He took a drink of his beer. “You know I’ll help you, right?”

  She turned her head and flashed him a warm smile. “Of course. And you know I wouldn’t exclude you, right?”

  He laughed. “Right.”

  An impossible burden—a burden that had called into question the same set of ideals around which he’d based his entire life—had been lifted, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that would convey the depth of his gratitude.

  “Thank you, Winter.” He thought the statement sounded silly after what she had just said to him, but she smiled back at him just the same.

  “Any time.”

  “I told you,” he said with a grin. “Remember that day you felt bad, like you’d been hogging all our conversations?”

  She smiled, a gentle curving of her lips. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I told you that, someday, I’d be the one who needed help.”

  Her eyes grew shiny. “And today is that day?”

  He reached out and squeezed her hand. “Yeah. Today is that day.”

  24

  When Winter made her way to the main entrance of the FBI office, she could tell right away that Autumn was antsy. Once Autumn had been provided a visitor’s badge, Winter gave her a quick tour of the building or at least the part of the building used by the Violent Crimes Division.

  Though some of the nervousness left Autumn’s demeanor after Winter introduced her to Max Osbourne, she was still on edge.

  “Your boss is a good dude,” Autumn observed as they made their way to a breakroom. “He really looks out for you guys, doesn’t he?”

  The first memory that came to Winter’s mind was Max’s refusal to let her in on the Douglas Kilroy investigation, but she bit back the knee-jerk irritability.

  No matter her personal stake in the case, she knew Max had made the right decision. He knew the danger that Douglas Kilroy had posed, and he had only kept her off the case to ensure the cleanest possible investigation.

  “He does,” she replied.

  “Oh, this must be the fabled breakroom coffee I’ve heard so much about.” Autumn gestured to a half-full pot of dark liquid that resembled tar more than coffee.

  Wrinkling her nose, Winter nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. If you’ve got any furniture you need to strip paint from, I think that stuff’ll do the trick. And it’s free, so that’s a bonus.”

  “Sure, I’ll just go grab my paint bucket real quick, if that’s all right with you?” Arching an eyebrow, Autumn jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

  “If it’ll save you a trip to the hardware store, then sure.” Winter laughed. “You’ve got a little while before your interview, right?”

  “Technically, I can do it whenever I want as long as the person’s here,” she replied with a shrug.

  “Okay, then let’s skip the paint bucket.” Winter waved a hand at the coffee maker. “There’s a place in walking distance that Noah and I always go to. Let’s go grab some coffee and a scone. It’s still really nice outside too. It’s a good time for a walk, so we can take the long way back. Noah calls it the scenic route.”

  “Where is he, anyway?”

  Winter flicked off the overhead light as they stepped back into the hall. “I think he had some calls to make, something to follow-up on. We’ve basically been telemarketers for the last week.”

  “Yikes,” Autumn replied. “I worked a telemarketing job when I was in my undergrad. It was probably the most soul-sucking experience I’ve ever had. But every day when I’d go home from work, I’d be super motivated to do my homework.”

  “You did, really?”

  “Yep. For a whole four months. Worst four months of my adult life, and that’s not just because I was taking calculus at the time.”

  “Calculus was rough.” Winter wrinkled her nose. “I worked at a call center too. We did inbound customer service, and it was still terrible. I’d always be extra motivated to do my homework too. It’s like that job reminded me how terrible everything would be if I didn’t put some effort into school.”

  “Exactly,” Autumn snickered.

  As they walked through the Violent Crimes department and out into the cloudy morning, they exchanged call center horror stories. From their coworkers to the customers to their bosses, there hadn’t been a single aspect of the job they had enjoyed.

  At the early morning hour, the inside of the coffee shop was sparsely populated.
Most patrons were stopping by to pick up a caffeinated drink on their way to work, so not many had seated themselves throughout the space.

  Winter and Autumn accepted their drinks and their scones, a chocolate chip scone for Winter and a blueberry scone for Autumn, and made their way to a table near the corner.

  After the first bite, Autumn nodded her approval and complimented Winter for her breakfast decision.

  “I should make scones more often,” she mused. “They can be kind of a pain, though. You have to cut the butter into the flour and stuff, and when you’ve got the start of carpal tunnel like I do, it hurts your hand.”

  “You really need to meet my grandmother,” Winter replied. “She would love you. I was interested in cooking for a little while when I was in high school, but I think that’s because I was more interested in eating, honestly.”

  “Why do you think I like cooking so much?” Autumn asked with a grin. “It makes it a lot easier and a lot cheaper to stuff my face.”

  “I bet that’s why Noah taught himself how to cook earlier this year.”

  “No doubt about that.” Autumn nodded and sipped at her latte.

  “So,” Winter said after a short silence. “How are you feeling about your first job?”

  “I don’t know. All right, I suppose. It’s not like I’ve never interviewed someone in a clinical setting before, you know. But, it’s just a little weird since it’s one of your coworkers. Not that it’s a conflict of interest, I double-checked that. Since I don’t know her and you guys aren’t necessarily friends with her, that part’s fine.”

  “That’s good.” Winter offered her friend a warm smile. “You’ve got this, then.”

  Her green eyes darted back and forth as she tapped the side of her paper cup. “Can I tell you something? Ask you something, I guess. About, you know, your sixth sense, or whatever you want to call it.”

  Once she glanced around to make sure no one could overhear them, Winter nodded. “Of course.”