I nodded.
Hart leaned back against the car at my side. We both watched the detectives and uniforms do their job. HEAT Prevention had cleared the house not long after their arrival. My eyes automatically tracked to where they were now surrounding Damon; as if offering a buffer against the world. Against his heartache.
“You did good, Keen,” Hart said softly.
“Sir,” I said, about to argue.
He held up a hand.
“It’s a shit world. And shit things happen. I believe Carl would have said something like that.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, quietly.
“You did the best you could with what you were given, Detective. You kept your head. You focused on the evidence. You followed the clues.” He turned to look at me. “Carole Michaels was not your fault.”
I looked across the space between Damon and me and thought perhaps it wasn’t that easy. To just say it and everything goes back to how it was. Nothing would ever go back to how it was again.
The HEAT guys chose that moment to pack up. Damon’s eyes met mine across the expanse of what felt like a million miles.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours to get your head on straight,” Hart said. “And then I expect you at work giving your statement and helping to wrap this case up for filing.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“It’s over, Keen. Weston is dead. All that’s left is the sweeping. And you’re not alone in cleaning up this mess.”
He stood up and slapped me on the shoulder, just like I was one of the boys.
“Go see to your man, Lara.” And then he walked off shouting orders at some poor uniform.
I shook my head. Damon was still watching me, even though it was quite evident that HEAT was about to pull out and take their brother with them.
Carole was dead.
I took a step toward him.
And my father’s police car pulled up.
I stared at it as he got out, dressed in a pressed uniform, hat placed immediately on his head. My steps faltered. I blinked at the incongruous sight before me. My father. Here.
“Lara-Marie,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I immediately offered.
He strode towards me and then did the most illogical and unexpected thing; he reached out and pulled me into a hug.
My father. The Ice King. Hugged me.
And then he abruptly let go and stepped back, placing much-needed space between us.
He cleared his throat.
“You’re alive,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, still stunned.
“That’s good,” he offered.
“Why are you here?”
“I, ah, I needed to see Hart.”
I let out a huff of breath, and then another, starting to laugh.
“I love you too, Dad,” I said.
He looked horrified. Then he just looked put-upon, as if my saying that was an inconvenience.
“Well, then,” he said. “Haydee would like to invite you to dinner.”
I waited. He didn’t elaborate.
“When?”
“When you’re through with this… this case.” I was sure he was about to call it something else but had caught himself. Possibly he was going to call it a mess. That would have fitted nicely.
“OK,” I said.
“Bring Michaels.”
I looked across the space to where the HEAT guys had been, but they and Damon were gone.
My heart clenched.
“Anyway,” my father said, straightening his tie much like Hart did. “Will you come? To dinner?”
“Yes,” I said because it was time to build bridges. But because I am also who I am and he is my father, I added, “Will Haydee talk?”
He glared at me; staring ice daggers as if they could make me see sense. “Don’t be such a child,” he admonished.
“It’s just that she didn’t say much, or anything at all actually, last time I met her.”
“Lara-Marie,” my father said, sounding aggrieved.
“It’s a fair question, Father,” I told him.
“Haydee,” he said carefully, “will talk.”
I stared at him. He stared back just as icily at me.
“What we do in the privacy of our own home,” he started.
I held up a hand and said, “Not listening. La-la-la-la!” Fingers went into ears, and I smirked. If he called me a child, I’d act like one. It was strangely liberating.
“You are the most irritating person I have ever had the displeasure of knowing.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said cheerfully. “Chip off the old block of ice, eh?”
He stared at me. I blinked back up at him.
“See you at dinner,” he said and turned on his heel to go annoy Inspector Hart.
I stared after him and then stared around at the aftermath of a sting gone wrong and then stared at where the HEAT guys - and Damon - had disappeared from. And then I turned and went in search of Pierce’s car. I still had his key. I’d use it. He could catch a lift with someone else.
I walked in a numb kind of haze towards the police-issued sedan, not really seeing anything. I didn’t really want to look.
Carl was dead.
Carole was too.
But hey, at least I was mending bridges with my father.
I snorted to myself and tried to shore up my defences. Dad had come because he was worried about me. Damon had been right; he was a broken man who was unable to show he cared, but he did care. And maybe Haydee could help him rebuild some of his fractured self. She seemed sweet enough, even if she hadn’t talked. I actually was looking forward to hearing her speak. Maybe she’d surprise us all and have something worthwhile to say.
It was something to look forward to.
I stifled a sob.
Carl was dead.
So was Carole.
And Damon had left without saying a word.
I stopped at Pierce’s car and tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. I would survive this. I had survived worse. But no matter what I told myself, Carl’s death was nothing compared to losing Damon. To letting him down and getting Carole Michaels shot.
I had failed him, and he hadn’t been able to face me afterwards.
It hurt.
I beeped the locks on Pierce’s car, but they were already unlocked. It wasn’t like him to leave his police car unsecured. Some part of me must have still been acting the cop because I bent down to check it was safe to enter before I opened up the door.
Damon sat in the passenger seat, twisting Pierce’s spare key in his hand.
My heart jumped. My eyes stung with tears. I was such fucking mess, but Damon looked up and offered a small, understanding smile. He reached over and opened the driver’s side door.
“Do you want me to drive, love?” he asked.
Dear God, how did he do it? How did he stay so strong when the line was right there, and he’d crossed over it? How did he hold himself together? How did he do it?
“Lara?” he pressed. “It’s all right, love. Get in.”
I practically fell into the driver’s seat of the car.
He reached over and wrapped a hot palm around my nape and pulled me toward him. His lips pressed into mine and he kissed me as if he were drowning and I was his air. I kissed him back as if he were my very reason for living.
“Love,” he said between breaths and kisses. “Lara.”
“Damon,” I tried, but nothing else would come out. I had to apologise.
“It’s over,” he said. “Hush.”
“But I…”
“You were brilliant. You fought so hard. You risked your life to end this. It’s over. It’s done.”
“Carole,” I said, my voice a barely heard whisper. It cracked, like the crack in my heart.
He didn’t answer me.
Instead, he said, “Stretch has come to. The guys have gone to be with him up at the hospital.” He didn’t let me go, but it felt like he was pulling away fr
om me even if he wasn’t. “Jesus, Lara,” he added on a heated breath of air. “She looked after him. He said she was fighting back.”
Tears fell down his cheeks, and I brushed desperately at them. I tasted my own tears as we silently cried for his sister. For the loss. He pulled back, sucking in air, gripping my hand and staring out the window. The scene might as well have not been there; I was sure he saw nothing. Or maybe, he just saw his sister. Tending to Stretch. Throwing herself in front of the bullet to protect him.
“She fought back,” he said. “She wasn’t Weston’s in the end.”
I didn’t know what to say. Anything I said would sound too small, too little. The heartache filled the car up until there was no air left.
“Maybe if we’d got there sooner,” he said quietly. “I don’t know. We’ll never know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“So am I.”
My heart was breaking. I tried to pull my hand from his.
He held on tighter.
“But it’s over,” he said. “Stretch is going to be OK. It’ll take some time to heal all the wounds, but he said, Carl looked out for him, distracted Weston; took the brunt of his actions when he could and tried to fuck with the spook’s head when he couldn’t. I think it helped Carole as well.”
He looked at me then.
“It’s over.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I was getting what he was trying to say.
“Do you understand, love?”
I shook my head.
“Life is for the living, Lara. It’s to be treasured. I will grieve Carole as you will grieve Carl, and we’ll help each other get through it. But I intend to live life to the fullest as of right now. To remember and not forget, but to move on. Can you do that, love? Can you move on? With me?”
I stared at him, this man who kept coming back to me. Who understood that sometimes I needed to hide behind an icy shell. That it was how I dealt with what this world threw at me time and again. I stared at him, this man who let me use that shell and then went digging; chipping away at it. This man who was so steady and strong, so caring and yet so demanding in bed. Who held my heart in the palm of his hands and didn’t crush it.
I stared at the man I loved more than I had loved any other. More than my idolisation of Carl. Or my longing to be part of the boys’ club in the Criminal Investigations Bureau.
He’d melted the Ice Queen, and I didn’t for a moment regret that he had.
I wanted to be melted. I wanted to be melted by him.
I stared at him, this beautiful man, this fiery soul.
“Yes,” I said, and it was the easiest thing I could have said. “I can do that.”
“Then we go home,” he whispered, kissing my cheek, my forehead, my nose, my lips. “We go home, and we start living. Cardrona in winter. Fiji in summer.”
“Fiji?” He hadn’t said anything about Fiji to me before.
“Or Northland, perhaps? A beach in any case. I want to see you in a bikini, love.”
“I don’t wear bikinis, Michaels.”
He chuckled. “You do in my dreams, Lara.”
“Pervert.”
“But I’m your pervert.”
“Whatever.”
He smiled at me. There was heartache there. There was sadness. But underneath it all, permeating it all, was hope, and love, and a future. Our future.
Carl was dead.
Carole was too.
But we would live on. We would love one another and support one another, and live life for ourselves and for those we loved.
For Carl and Carole. For us.
And we would do what we did best; help people; solve crimes. I might even sit my sergeant’s exam like Pierce kept hounding me to do.
And we would make love, with heat and passion; two parts that made up the whole of us.
A flare of heat. A touch of heat. A lick of heat. That was Damon and me together.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
“Where’s home, love?”
“Home is with you,” I told him.
He clasped my hand, lifted the back of it to his lips, and said, “My place has the bigger bath.”
I nodded my head. He smiled. There was something wicked behind that smile now.
I started the car and took us home. It was time to start living life.
Epilogue
“You seem in a hurry, Lara,” Hennessey said.
“I am in a hurry, Doc. I’ve got a plane to catch. Are we done here?”
“You’re going somewhere? Holiday?”
“Cardrona. Skiing.”
“I see. I didn’t take you for a daredevil.”
“Do you even know me? I am constantly a daredevil. I live life to dare the devil.”
“That’s not what the phrase means.”
I grinned at him.
He tried to not grin back at me.
“Are you going skiing alone?” he asked.
“Damon’s coming,” I said.
“A romantic getaway. Good. That’s very good, Lara.”
“I can be romantic when it’s required, Doc.”
“Is it required now, you think?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why’s that?”
I shifted in my seat.
Hennessey waited patiently.
“He’s got something planned,” I finally admitted.
“Planned? What has he got planned; do you think?”
I smiled to myself and then reached forward and plucked a tissue from the box on the table between us. I started wringing it in my hands.
Hennessey watched me.
I realised what I was doing and counted my breaths.
He smiled serenely.
“I think he might propose,” I mumbled.
Hennessey cocked his head.
“You think? And how do you feel about that?”
I arched my brow at him. “Really? ‘How do I feel?’ I thought we’d got past all of that.”
“I am still your psychologist, Lara.”
“Only because I refuse to see anyone else.”
“Well, there is that. And thank you, by the way.”
“You’re welcome, Doc.”
“Damon? How do you feel?”
“You won’t let me leave here until I answer, will you?”
“No.”
I scowled at him. He looked back at me serenely.
“I’m onto you, Doctor Hennessey”’ I said, pointing a snarled up tissue at the man.
“I don’t doubt it. But still… How do you feel about Damon proposing to you while on holiday at Cardrona.”
“It’s not exactly a surprise,” I muttered. “He’s not stopped hinting at it for weeks.”
“The man is wise,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t handle surprises well, Lara. Especially personal ones.”
“I am perfectly fine with surprises.”
“Are you? How did that dinner with your father and his new girlfriend go last month?”
I narrowed my eyes at the man.
“Were you surprised he had asked her to move in with him?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and lifted my chin.
He said nothing. I eventually deflated.
“They’re so happy. She’s changing him.”
“How so?”
“His… his eyes laugh when he looks at her. The ice is thawing.”
“Does that scare you?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
I looked out the window at the naked tree. The leaves had long ago fallen, making way for winter.
“Because he’s different with her than he is with me.”
“You expect him to treat his daughter the same way as his lover?”
I grimaced. “Would be nice to have him laugh with me.”
“Give him time, Lara. Baby steps.”
I snorted.
“You, on the other hand,
have taken leaps and bounds. This is our last Department mandated session together.”
I looked at the shrink who had dogged my steps for more than a year now. We’d been through a lot together, Hennessey and I. Carl’s death. My insecurities at work. The nightmare cases. My falsely thought failures. Trusting Damon. Opening up. Recovering from the loss of Carole. All of it.
Including my childhood.
My mother had been pregnant when she died. It explained so much. About my father. He’d not lost one person he’d loved that day; he’d lost two. Did it make it exponentially harder?
I thought for him it might have.
But he’d also, in a way, lost me, too.
We were working on it. Haydee was helping. Damon was too.
“I’m not ready to say goodbye,” I told my shrink.
“It’s not so much a goodbye, Lara, as a ‘so long for now.’ You know where to find me; if you ever think you might need to talk again.”
I nodded my head.
“It’s like letting the baby bird you’ve nurtured for months fly away from the nest at long last,” Hennessey said.
“Steady on, Doc, don’t get all poetic on me.”
He smiled. Then reached out to shake my hand.
“Good luck, Detective Sergeant Keen.”
“Thank you, Doctor Hennessey,” I said in return, the words meaning more than just a thank you for wishing me luck.
This man had helped save me. Had, at the very least, helped me find myself again.
We are all a little broken; I thought as I stepped out into the crisp winter breeze. And with what we see daily, we’re all a little cracked in the head as well. But the glue that binds us together can be found in the strangest of places. In a work colleague who offers friendship. In a lover who stays no matter what. In a professional who takes his job seriously and doesn’t give up even when you think you’ve had enough. In a senior officer who pushes for excellence but allows you to find your own feet and to fall occasionally. In a community of saviours who try their best even though sometimes their best isn’t enough.
Carl said it most accurately, I think. If you keep looking backwards, you'll eventually trip up and fall hard on your arse. I wasn’t looking backwards anymore. I was looking forwards. And the future looked rosy.
Filled with snow-capped mountains and roaring fires. Filled with hope and love and everything I always thought I’d never have. Too cool. Too icy. The Ice Queen.
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 31
