No Broken Beast

by Snow, Nicole

  “Hey,” I say, my voice weak, catching against the tightness in my throat.

  He stops but doesn’t look back at me.

  I gather my courage. It’s never deserted me before, and I won’t let it now. “Are you sleeping outside? Isn’t it cold?”

  He shrugs tightly. “I’m used to it.”

  “Well, you could just...I don’t know, sleep in here?” I offer.

  A strange stillness passes through him like he turns to stone. Then he throws this piercing look over his shoulder, a single eye watching me with that predator’s gaze.

  “No,” he growls softly. “I can’t.”

  Then he pushes the door open and steps outside, disappearing into the deepening night.

  Leaving me alone with Zach and the wild, frantic beat of my racing heart.

  * * *

  I end up picking a recent college grad named Derek.

  He’s warm, friendly, with a Master’s in Education but no job in a depressed local market, and he talks to Zach in tune with what he is: an extremely smart little boy who still has the maturity of someone who doesn’t know how to regulate his own feelings just yet.

  He’s good with my son. I can see that from the first day.

  He’s good with me, too, making me feel a little less lonely cooped up in here and involving me in some of Zach’s more active lessons. They’re designed to keep his hyperactive mind focused and occupied.

  Derek doesn’t stay with us past evenings, though. His boyfriend expects him back every night and he’s already grumbling about the long-distance job, but it’s almost a relief to have someone to fret with over how frustrating men can be when we take a coffee break while Zach heads outside for “recess.”

  And I watch through the window with my heart breaking one little piece at a time.

  Zach and Leo playfully chase each other through the trees, only for Leo to lift Zach on his shoulders, raising him up high so the kidlet can gather acorns. The trees are all heavy with nuts tucked in their blazing orange leaves.

  When Leo gently shifts Zach’s loose scarf back into place, I almost die.

  Derek watches me across the kitchen island, his blue eyes glittering with warmth and sly amusement. “So you and the iron giant out there have history, huh?”

  I catch myself, face flushing hot, and look down into my coffee cup. “Is it that obvious?”

  “I mean, you’re looking at him like you’d climb him given half the chance, sweetie.”

  “I—no!”

  Oh my God, but he’s not wrong.

  I can’t forget the delicious way Leo used to touch me—coaxing my arms up over my head, stroking down them, gripping my wrists just so I could struggle against the pleasure he gave. His grip tethered me, left me writhing at the end of my leash while he teased me with slow touches and long, deep licks of his tongue.

  I feel too hot even thinking about it.

  My breaths come a little too short, and I set my coffee down and fold my arms over my chest, tucking into myself and warning my body to calm the heck down.

  I have company, damn it.

  But...it’s been a while.

  I never thought about dating. My whole life was taken up with a newborn and launching a business. There wasn’t time for romance.

  Actually, I didn’t want romance.

  I’d been burned by men too much already.

  And if I couldn’t have him, I didn’t want anyone at all.

  I guess I still feel the same way. So does a body that remembers his touch, and with him so close, it’s brutal.

  Like waking up from a long winter sleep, the heat of summer rushing through me.

  “Clarissa.” Derek smirks, but it’s full of sympathy. “You look like a woman who’s pining, darling.”

  “Shhh.” I drag a finger over my lips. “Next thing you know, he’ll be standing over your shoulder and you won’t have even heard him, but he’ll have heard you.”

  With a little laugh, Derek winks, holding a finger to his lips. “Your secret’s safe with me. I’m not here to get up in anybody’s business, just teach the kid.”

  He gives me a wink. He’s hinting he knows this isn’t normal, and neither is Leo. I’m grateful we don’t have somebody who’d try reporting him, but I imagine Leo already asked him about that during vetting.

  I offer a weak smile, then pause as my phone vibrates in my back pocket.

  My whole body goes cold when I pull it out and see the number for the Heart’s Edge sheriff’s department. Crap.

  “Sorry!” I tell Derek. “I have to take this.”

  I rush off to the bedroom and swipe the call. “Hello? Sheriff Langley?”

  “Yes, ma’am, Ms. Bell.” He sounds uncomfortable. I sink down on the edge of the bed as my legs go weak, already anticipating bad news. “Er, listen, I...”

  I close my eyes. Pain lances through me. Please, no, not this. Not now.

  Please.

  “Just say it,” I whisper, shaking, already picturing the worst.

  I can already see the morgue, the cold table, the white light, someone asking me to identify my little sister’s body. I can’t.

  “It’s been more than forty-eight hours,” he straggles out. “I dunno if you know the statistics about leads going cold on missing persons cases, but...”

  “I do.”

  “Well, ma’am, we haven’t found anything. The Spokane and Missoula teams haven’t either, and they’ve been diverted to other business. We can’t keep them here indefinitely. They’ve got responsibilities in their home precincts and some follow up work to help us with thanks to the ruckus in town the other day. Right now, they can’t even confirm it was a kidnapping. It’s just as likely your sister and an accomplice staged a break-in and left with—”

  “With what?” I demand, hot anger rushing through my blood. “That’s crazy. She wouldn’t. And all the cash was left in the register and the safe. You saw it, Sheriff. They weren’t there for money. They came for her.”

  “I’m sorry. My hands are tied. I just don’t have the authority to make them stay on this case.”

  “So what, then?” I hiss, unintentionally harsh, but it’s either hiss, snarl, scream, or sob. “Everyone just gives up and moves on with their lives like she never existed?”

  “N-now, we’ll keep looking locally, but we’ve got that incident with the shooting to investigate, I’m afraid, and—”

  “And a single gunshot with no victim takes precedence over my missing sister.”

  “It could be a federal matter of terrorism—”

  “And this is a personal matter of my sister’s life!” I’m shouting now.

  I think I’ve heard enough.

  So I fling the phone away, barely remembering to cut it off on yet another stammering excuse before it goes skittering across the bed.

  Jesus. I only sit there for a few miserable moments, hugging my arms to my stomach, before I jump to my feet and fling the bedroom patio door open.

  I go spilling out into the afternoon light, taking in deep breaths of cool, crisp air, clenching my fists. There’s a scream building up in my chest, and I’m ready to lose it.

  What now?

  What do I do now?

  I’m not a cop. I have no flipping clue how to hunt down a missing woman properly.

  But I can’t just leave and forget her. Never.

  Our father swept us under the rug so often. He forgot we existed, acting like we didn’t matter at all, whenever he wasn’t beating us and chewing us out by our teen years.

  I won’t abandon her the way he abandoned us. Acting like she’s dead when she’s still alive.

  I won’t cry, either.

  Tears are for grieving. You only mourn the dead.

  Somehow, I effing know my sister’s alive.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I nearly shriek at the gravelly voice at my shoulder, even though I should be used to this. Leo moves like a ghost, appearing out of nowhere. With a startled squeak, heart thumping,
I jerk back, turning to face him, breathing hard—then groan, hanging my head.

  “Swear to God, I’m going to put a bell on you.”

  That twitch of his mask hints he might be smiling. “I could try to make more noise.”

  “Yeah, and I’d probably still jump out of my skin.” There’s no denying I’m on edge. I sigh, straightening, pushing my hair back as I scan toward the house, watching as Zach goes tumbling up the front steps to meet Derek. “Recess over?”

  “He found an old seed pod he couldn’t identify and wanted to look it up.” There’s an odd way his voice softens when he talks about Zach, and it does twisty things to my insides.

  But Leo’s still watching me, not Zach, as he murmurs, “You’re upset.”

  “Yeah.” I can’t meet his eyes for long.

  Every time I do, the memories swamp me. So do the questions.

  So I tilt my head back, looking up at the sun dappling light through the orange leaves, making them glow like flame. “Langley called. Said the out of town teams can’t spend more time on this, and his two-bit team needs to focus on the shooting.”

  “So Deanna’s officially a cold case.”

  “Forty-eight hours.” I smile bitterly. “That’s as long as they’re obligated to care.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll just make up their slack.”

  I frown, glancing at him. “What do you mean?”

  “They quit. We don’t have to.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know where to start yet. Will you give me time?”

  A hurting, harsh laugh escapes before I can stop it. “Time is all I’ve got.” There’s a knot in my throat, and I swallow, but it won’t go away. “I don’t know what to do, Leo.”

  “You can start by thinking of everything you know about Deanna.”

  Those sharp, amethyst eyes are locked on, holding me in place with his magnetic, totally Leo Regis warmth.

  “You’re the key to saving her, Rissa,” he says softly. The way his gritty voice rolls my name feels like fingers on naked skin. “You know her better than anybody. You know her patterns, her habits. You’ll know where to find the missing thread to unravel all of this. Once you’ve got a scent, I’ll be your bloodhound.”

  He steps closer to me and my heart nearly pounds out of my chest. Even through the layers wrapped around him, even in the deepening autumn cold, he’s a burning force of nature.

  Almost more than I can handle. I swallow roughly, looking up at him as he nearly whispers.

  “I’ll do anything to bring her back to you.” But as fervent and heartfelt as he sounds, there’s something dark and almost ominous, too. “Anything,” he says again.

  Then he’s pressing something into my palm. I’m so shocked by the sudden contact, the strength of his fingers, their warmth through his gloves, that I don’t pause to wrap my hand around something cool and round and textured before I realize what I’m doing.

  Confusion swirls through me as I look down, unfolding my fingers.

  There’s a wooden coin in my palm, barely larger than a silver dollar. It’s wafer-thin, but delicately carved on both sides, with a detail most people couldn’t master with a fine-point pen on paper. Yet Leo manages with simple knives and etching tools.

  “Turn it over,” he tells me.

  On one side, I see a crescent moon, surrounded by glittering stars.

  On the other, there’s a woman in a Greek half-shoulder robe, hair flowing behind her, expression fierce as she draws back a longbow, readying an arrow to take aim.

  I frown—until it clicks.

  “Deanna!” I murmur, sucking in a gasp, lifting my head. “From Diana, goddess of the—”

  But he’s gone.

  Leo vanished into the woods, leaving behind nothing but the warmth of his body soaking into my palm as I clutch the little coin.

  It might be a small thing to some.

  To me, it warms my heart like a bonfire, easing the ache.

  It’s a symbol of hope.

  * * *

  The next morning, I set out on my own.

  I feel safe leaving Zach with Derek for a few hours. Zach doesn’t even notice I’m leaving because today Derek brought him a college biology textbook, turning him into an overexcited bundle of What’s this word mean? And this one?

  My kid.

  If you think he’s a handful now, just wait until he gets older and the hormones kick in.

  I’m so tired even coffee isn’t helping in the slightest. I barely slept last night, honestly, racking my brain for any clues I could find in Deanna’s life that might give Leo something to work with.

  And the entire time, I couldn’t stop myself from staring out the window at that glimmer of light burning in the darkness; that orange fire-glow that told me Leo was there.

  So close to my lonely bed, yet so far away.

  I hate this.

  I’ve been fine for years.

  Before, every day I’d just collapse in bed, so tired I never noticed how empty it was. I’ve done pretty well with this single mom thing. The only plus-one I needed was Zach.

  But there were long, dark nights, now and then, when I wondered.

  Why didn’t Leo try to find me?

  Back then I’d told myself that wasn’t a fair question. It’s not like I was looking for him, either. He probably stayed away for the same reasons. Too much confusion, too much chaos, too much everything.

  But now, I wonder.

  Where was he all these years? What turned Leo into Nine?

  Those questions kept me up as much as the quiet ache that made me remember how it felt when he’d pull me in close, tangling our bodies together. Every single part of me used to lock with him. There wasn’t even a breath between us; just sweat-slick skin and gasps and shaking limbs.

  We’d throw the covers over our heads and shut the world out, pretending nothing was waiting to drag us back to reality.

  Not my father. Not Galentron. Not that mega-creep Dr. Ross, who always freaked me out whenever I saw him skulking around the house.

  Just us.

  Just me and Leo, with his strange eyes glowing in the dark like two gorgeous gems dug from the earth.

  Last night, curled up in the sheets, I’d pressed my hand over my stomach. Years ago, I’d known I was pregnant, before everything ended with my father dead and the fire at the Paradise Hotel.

  Leo obviously hadn’t.

  I’d been trying to figure out how to tell him, hoping he’d be happy, but worried it would be a problem. And night after night, once he’d fallen asleep, I’d lie there with my hand pressed over my stomach just like that, trying to find the words.

  He still doesn’t know. When he saved my life, he also saved Zach’s.

  My father nearly snuffed out two lives that fateful night.

  But I can’t think about it right now. I’m almost at Deedee’s apartment, hoping something there will jog my memory. Maybe she left me a message.

  We used to leave each other secret messages all the time. We had our own language, in a way. A really simple language, but one people wouldn’t think of.

  We called it mirror code. We’d write in alternating letters.

  The first letter of a word was the right one, but the second one would be an upside down version of what we called the letter’s mirror. If the right letter was five letters from the beginning of the alphabet, like the letter E, then we’d write the letter that was four letters from the end of the alphabet. V.

  But always there’d be a few random tricks to throw people off. Like if there was a dot next to the letter, then it meant add one when counting. So if there was a V, the right letter was actually F.

  Yeah, I know. It’s not exactly genius cryptography.

  It was the kind of silly little thing our father never bothered noticing, let alone decrypting to figure out we were warning each other when he was in one of his moods, telling each other where we’d hide when he wanted someone to take his temper out on.

  So we’d leave each othe
r notes tucked into diaries, behind picture frames, underneath vases.

  In the secret passages behind the walls in the house, where we’d creep around in the darkness to hide, huddled together and listening to the shouts echoing through the house.

  The crashing.

  The rage.

  Even if he couldn’t find us, he’d find something to hurt.

  We were just easy targets that gave him the reactions he wanted.

  Fear and pain. Raw, hurt human agony that might distract him from his own.

  I’m sick with the memories by the time I pull up outside Deanna’s apartment complex—one of only a few in the entire town. There are only twelve units and two floors. I probably look entirely out of place pulling up and climbing the steps to her door.

  Although everyone who sees me probably knows who I am.

  Even if the townsfolk don’t know the truth, I know the older ones blame my father for the Paradise Hotel burning down, killing the local economy. People lost their jobs, their livelihoods.

  But since he’s dead...it’s easy to transfer that hate to me and Deanna.

  Thankfully, no one bothers me while I fish around under the mat and then check the inner corners of the window until I find the spare key.

  I let myself into a space decorated in shades of light and dark teal, patterns that are so Deanna—fresh, lively, like she trails spring wherever she goes. I fight back a smile.

  The apartment looks like she left just this morning. Even though the police have been through here, they didn’t disturb much. There’s still a shirt tossed on the linen easy chair, a book sitting on the sofa with a bookmark in it.

  Leo Tolstoy.

  I smile to myself. Deanna always loved the classics, and I thought her double majoring in Russian lit was one of the most ridiculous things ever.

  I set the book down, then move slowly through the apartment, looking for places where she could’ve hidden a note. Some clue what she was working on, what she was getting into.

  Checking behind picture frames, I open the kitchen cabinets and look between stacked plates and bowls, even peep inside the freezer. I find her spare checkbooks—who keeps checks in the freezer?—but no note.