by Force, Marie
“Your plan has already been activated,” Addie tells me. “Kristian took care of that last week, so this is just a formality.” She leans in and lowers her voice. “He told the HR people to do whatever it took and pay whatever it cost to get you on the plan immediately.”
My eyes fill, and I blink frantically, not wanting to break down in front of Addie. Crying at work is not my thing, but the tears won’t be contained no matter how hard I try.
Addie hands me a tissue.
I mop up the flood of tears. “Sorry.”
“Please don’t be. We’re all so happy for you and Kris. We’ve never seen him like this before.”
“Like what?” I ask, because I have to know.
“For one thing, he smiles all the time. We’ve never seen so much of those elusive dimples of his. For another, he takes time off—real time off. No one heard from him all weekend. That’s highly unusual. He doesn’t say much about his life before he became part of Quantum, but we suspect it was difficult. If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s him—and you.”
“Thank you.” I dab at new tears. “Ugh, you’re making a mess of me.”
She smiles. “You could never be a mess.”
“Why’re you crying?”
The sound of Kristian’s voice startles me. I look up to find him standing in the doorway to the conference room.
“Addie, give us a minute, please,” he says.
“Of course.” She gathers the paperwork I’ve already signed and leaves the room.
Kristian closes the door and comes over to where I’m seated at the big table. “What’s wrong?”
He’s wearing a light blue dress shirt that does startling things for his beautiful eyes, and he’s showered and shaved since I last saw him. As much as I love the stubble he had all weekend, I like the clean-shaven look, too. “Nothing is wrong.”
“Then why were you crying?”
“Addie told me how you ordered them to add me and the kids to the health insurance.”
“I told you I was going to do that.”
“I know.”
“You still haven’t explained the tears.” He takes my hand, helps me up and then sits in my chair, bringing me down on his lap. With the brush of his fingers on my face, he wipes away my tears.
As always, his nearness makes my entire system go haywire in a wild mix of emotion, desire and need.
“Aileen…”
“I’ve never had anyone who wanted to take care of me and the kids the way you do. Hearing that you demanded your staff take care of me that way…” I flatten my hand over my heart. “It hit me right here, and that’s why I was crying.”
“I do want to take care of you—all of you.”
“That makes me feel very lucky.”
“You have no idea how it makes me feel.”
“Tell me. How do you feel?”
“Amazed. I can’t believe something like this is even possible. Of course, I’ve seen it happen to my friends, but it’s a whole other thing to have it happen to me.”
I rest my head on his shoulder and breathe in the rich, citrusy scent of his cologne. I want to drown in that scent.
“I’m supposed to be working,” I say after a long moment of contented silence.
“So am I.”
“You should probably let me go before the whole office is talking about us being in here alone together.”
Rather than let me go, though, he tightens his arms around me. “Let them talk.”
I have no idea where Aileen is, and as one hour becomes two and two become three without a reply to my texts, I’m frantic to hear from her. She left the office after lunch on her second day without telling me where she was going, and now, as the clock creeps toward five o’clock without a word from her, I’m starting to panic. Did something happen to her or one of the kids? She’s not used to driving in crazy LA traffic yet. What if she was in an accident?
Before the speculation can give me a heart attack, I get up and go look for Addie in her office. She’s not there, so I check Hayden’s office.
“Where’s Addie?” I ask him.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I can’t get ahold of Aileen, and I wanted to ask Addie if she’s heard from her.”
“Addie went to Calabasas with Natalie for a site visit at the estate where the carnival will be held.”
“Will you call her for me?”
“Okay…” He picks up his cell phone and makes the call. “Hey, babe. Kristian is here and looking for Aileen. Do you know where she is?” He listens for a minute, and his furrowing brows take five years off my life.
Something is wrong. I can feel it in my bones.
“Okay, I’ll tell him. Are you almost done there?” He listens for another interminable minute, during which I want to rip the phone from his hand and ask Addie myself where Aileen is. Somehow I manage to control myself until he tells her he loves her and he’ll see her at home in an hour. “Aileen had an appointment this afternoon with her new oncologist.”
The floor seems to disappear beneath my feet at the reminder that she’s still battling an illness that could take her from me. Why didn’t she tell me about the appointment? Is something wrong? Has she had symptoms? My brain is spinning like a top, and Hayden comes around the desk to push me into a chair.
“Sit your ass down before you pass out.”
I drop my head into my hands.
“What the hell, Kris? What’s wrong?”
“I… I’m so crazy about her. If something ever happened to her…”
Hayden sits next to me, his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure it’s a routine thing. Didn’t she say her New York doctor set her up with someone out here? She’s probably just touching base with the new guy.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“Because she didn’t want you to do exactly what you’re doing now?”
“I would’ve gone with her.”
“Maybe she didn’t want you to.”
“Why wouldn’t she want me to?” I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.
“Only she can know that, but it could be that she wants to keep what’s happening with you separate from that.”
“Why?” I’m so out of my league in this situation. I want to hunt her down at the doctor’s office and force her to tell me every detail of her appointment. But my better judgment tells me that might not be the best idea I’ve ever had.
Hayden starts to laugh, and it’s all I can do not to punch him. “What the hell is so freaking funny?”
“You are. You’re a hot mess.”
“Kind of like you were when Addie wouldn’t give you the time of day?”
“Something like that,” he says, smiling as he sits back in his chair. “If it makes you feel any better, Aileen seems as crazy about you as you are about her. You’ve got nothing to worry about where she’s concerned, Kris.”
“Except for the dreadful disease she’s already battled once coming back to take her from me.”
“You’re getting pretty far down the road from what’s probably a routine doctor’s appointment.”
“Maybe so, but tell me how you’d feel if Addie had cancer and went to an appointment with an oncologist without telling you about it.”
“I’d probably feel exactly the same way you do.”
His agreement only makes me more anxious than I was before, if that’s even possible. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where’re you going?”
“To her place to wait for her.”
“Don’t be a bull in a china shop over the appointment, Kris. Let her tell you about it.”
“I will.” I leave his office, go into mine to grab my keys, and I’m on my way to her house within minutes. Traffic is hideous, and it takes me close to an hour to get there. Several more calls to her go unanswered, inching my anxiety firmly into the nuclear zone. I pull up to her house and breathe a sigh of relief when I see her car in the driveway. At least sh
e wasn’t in an accident.
I rush up the stairs and through the front door without knocking. Logan is on the sofa watching TV. He looks up at me, seeming confused by the way I came busting into the house.
“Hey, buddy. Where’s your mom?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Thanks.” I cross the threshold to the kitchen and stop short at the sight of her at the stove, tending to a boiling pot.
She sees me there and smiles at me over her shoulder. “Hey. Where’d you come from?”
Normally, I text her to tell her I’m on my way. I didn’t do that today, and she’s wondering why.
“Where’s your phone?” I ask, even though I can see the shape of it in the back pocket of those drool-worthy cutoff denim shorts that make me want to drop to my knees and bite her sweet ass.
She withdraws it from her back pocket and holds it up. “Right here?”
“Why haven’t you answered it all afternoon? I called you. I texted you, and when you didn’t reply, I asked Hayden to ask Addie where you were. She said you had a doctor’s appointment you didn’t tell me about.” So much for not being a bull in a china shop…
She glances at the phone and then at me. “I don’t have any calls or texts from you.”
“Give it to me.” I take it from her, look at the settings and see that it’s set to airplane mode. “Who put it in airplane mode?”
“Oh no! Maddie was fooling with it in the car earlier. She must’ve done it by accident.”
I switch it out of airplane mode, and the phone goes crazy dinging with texts and voice mails—all of them from me.
She slides her arms around my waist. “I’m so sorry.”
I can’t seem to bring my arms to move, to return the embrace.
“You were worried.”
“That’s a tame word for what I was, especially after I heard you’d been at an oncology appointment without telling me.”
“I’m sorry, Kristian. I feel terrible for worrying you.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“Nothing yet. I had all the usual blood work and scans. I won’t hear anything for a few days.”
“Days?” How am I supposed to survive days of uncertainty?
She shrugs as if it’s no big deal. “That’s how it goes.”
I want to shake her. How the hell can she be so nonchalant about such a big thing?
“Are you hungry?”
“No, I am not hungry! I don’t want to talk about anything other than whether you are okay, and there’s no fucking way we’re waiting days to find out if you are.”
She smiles up at me, her expression sweet and angelic. “You have to relax. I feel fine, and there’s no reason to believe there’s anything to worry about.”
Every muscle in my body is rigid with tension. “Don’t tell me to relax.”
“Kristian, honey…” She flattens her palms over my chest and slides them up around my neck. “This is my life now. Every three months, I have a complete workup, and then I wait days to hear that everything is okay. You can’t lose your mind every time.”
I notice the bandages covering gauze in the crook of each of her elbows where blood was taken, and an ache explodes in my chest at the visible proof of her ongoing illness.
“I can’t handle this,” I whisper.
“What can’t you handle?”
“Worrying about you this way. I can’t take it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I don’t think I can.” To have waited my whole life to find her only to have to worry about losing her… I can’t do it. I break free of her embrace and go out to the deck to get some air. I hear her tell Logan that dinner will be ready soon before the screen door slides shut when she joins me on the deck. Her arms come around me from behind. I want to resist her, but I don’t know how. My emotions are like a category-five hurricane swirling inside me.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me and that you were worried. I’m sorry that my illness is a lot for you to handle.”
Her words snap me out of whatever state I’ve slipped into. I turn to her, hauling her in close to me, mindless of anything but the craving need I have for her. “I don’t give a flying fuck about your illness being a lot for me to handle. I care about you, and I need you to be okay. I need you healthy, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to make that happen.”
“Shhh,” she says, her fingers combing through my hair in that soothing gesture that makes me want to weep from the sweetness she gives me without knowing she’s the first person to ever give me that. “It’s still new to you. It’ll take time for you to figure out how to cope with it. I promise that, over time, it’ll become less frightening.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Yes, it will.”
“I’ll never become less frightened about losing you, especially if you sneak off to appointments without telling me or taking me with you.”
She pulls back to look up at me. “You want to go with me?”
“Hell, yes, I want to go with you. I’d much rather do that than sit on my ass wondering what the hell is happening to you.”
“I’ll take you with me next time. I promise.”
Hearing that, I relax. A little.
“I’m sorry you were so upset when you couldn’t reach me.”
“Don’t let Maddie play with your phone anymore. I’ll buy her one of her own to play with.”
“You absolutely will not.”
“Yes, I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
I kiss her to end the argument, but the second her lips connect with mine, I whimper from the sweet relief of being back in her arms.
She kisses me with the same desperation I feel, and little by little, the tension starts to leave my body.
I cling to her, needing her more with every passing second. Surely it’s not healthy or sane to need someone the way I need her. I only end the kiss when the need for air trumps my need for her.
Her lips move over my neck. “I love you so much, Kristian. I’m crazy in love with you. You have to believe me when I tell you it’s going to be okay.”
I soak up her reassurances, but I won’t be able to breathe normally again until we get those fucking test results.
* * *
Every minute of the next few days feels like a year. I can’t get anything done at work, and at night, I make love to her until we’re both completely exhausted. If I love her enough, maybe I can keep anything bad from happening to her. I can’t eat or sleep or do anything other than worry about her and those fucking test results. It’s the twenty-first century, for fuck’s sake. How long does it take to check some blood and review some freaking scans?
If we don’t hear something soon, I’m not going to be responsible for my actions.
A knock on the door precedes Lori’s entrance to my office. “Um, there’s an LAPD officer here to see you. A Sergeant Markel? He said you’d know what it’s about.”
As if I’ve been struck by lightning, I can’t move or breathe.
“Kristian?”
A lump the size of Canada has taken up residence in my throat. I swallow hard. If there were any way to escape without talking to him, I’d do it, but there isn’t. “Show him in.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Show him in, Lori.”
Thankfully, she doesn’t ask any more questions. I force air into my lungs as I wait. The original Officer Markel retired a decade ago, so this would be the son who followed his father onto the force. My mind races, wondering what the hell he wants after all this time.
He comes into the office, and I’m struck by the startling resemblance to his father, who looked just like his son does now when I first met him. My body goes through the rote movements of standing, shaking his hand and muttering a greeting. His father pursued my mother’s killer with relentless determination, until mandatory retirement forced him to turn the case over to his son, who’s been far less diligent. I haven’t heard a word from hi
m in five years.
“I’m sorry to drop by unannounced.” He sits on the edge of a visitor chair. “But we’ve had a development in your mother’s case.”
The words are like a nuclear bomb detonating in the middle of my life. I can only stare at him, wondering what he’ll say and how it’ll change everything. “What kind of development?”
“We got the guy, Kristian.”
For the second time this week, I feel like a trapdoor has opened beneath me, sending me reeling into free fall.
“You…”
“We got him.”
“How?” It’s been thirty-three years. Why now?
“Have you heard of law enforcement use of familial DNA to solve cold cases?” Before I can reply, he continues. “We ran the DNA from your mother’s autopsy and found a familial match to someone in the system. We’ve spent the last month tracking down that person’s male family members and testing them until we found a match.” Standing, he places eight head shots on my desk, four in each row. “Do you recognize the man who killed your mother in any of these photos?”
I’d know those cold, black eyes anywhere, as well as the scar that slashes through his left eyebrow. I was three years old when I watched from the closet as he killed my mother, but I’ve never forgotten his face. I point to him.
Markel nods. “That’s him. Jorge Muñoz. Does that name mean anything to you?”
I shake my head. I never knew any of their names. “What happens now?”
“He’s been arrested and will be charged today in Superior Court. I need to warn you… This is going to be a big story. We’ve tied him to the unsolved murders of six other prostitutes.”
What he means but doesn’t say is that the whole sordid tale will be made public.
“I tried to keep your name out of it, but as a material witness—”
I have no idea how that sentence ends, because I get up and walk away. I ignore the shout from Lori and the others who try to stop me with questions or routine business things I don’t give a shit about. I rush past the reception desk where Aileen is working and ignore her when she calls my name. Pushing open the door, I take the stairs because I’m not willing to wait for the elevator.
