by J C Paulson
“Maybe we’ll know more tomorrow,” she said to Claire. “Sherry, the dog’s owner, will be at the cop shop at ten.”
At five, Grace tidied her desk, tucked her cellphone into her purse, grabbed her keys and said goodbye to Lacey.
She was wildly anticipating Adam’s call, particularly this night, after the flowers arrived with his note and the airline itinerary. She had no idea what he would say, nor what she would say. Her stomach was taut under the tension, the wondering,
Once home, Grace poured a glass of cold white wine and added two cubes of ice, then ran the glass over her perspiring forehead. A change in the weather would be more than welcome, she thought. Maybe a nice thunderstorm to clear the air.
Taking her phone, she went into the back yard, which was shady and slightly cooled by a light breeze whispering through the trees. Grace loved her little patio, surrounded by a low wall with flowers and vegetables growing on the other side of it — mostly tomatoes, a couple of zucchini plants, peas crawling up a trellis. So civilized, she sighed contentedly to herself.
Her mind returned to the Adam conversation, pending. She couldn’t keep her mind off it, or off him. Grace had never believed in crap like love at first sight, and definitely believed in taking things slowly, her relationship with Mick Shaw notwithstanding; but she fell hard for this man the second time she saw him. Grace remembered the moment, looking up into his face, her body instantly responding; then quickly looking down to cover her confusion. She knew she would have fallen for him when they met in the cathedral — and had been profoundly impressed by his policing prowess, as it was — had she not been so rattled by stumbling over the dead body of a high-ranking cleric.
Occasionally, she asked herself if this was simple infatuation with the most beautiful man she had ever seen, not to mention intelligent, authoritative, sexy, masculine and brilliant at his work. The list of attributes was endless. And sex with Adam was like nothing else she had ever experienced, which was definitely colouring her opinion of him. He was focused, passionate and expert but also sincere and responsive. She felt alive, sexy, and strangely both vulnerable and powerful in his arms.
It was terrifying to feel like this about a man. Grace had to admit to herself she was scared — not just by her own overwhelming feelings, but by Adam’s physical power. What if, one night, she couldn’t manage his dreams? Assuming, of course, that he wanted her to. They had only been alone together a few times. Where was this going?
Deep in her heart, she was both sure and very afraid it was Adam, or no one.
The phone rang. Damn. He was calling earlier than usual, and she wasn’t sure she was ready. Nor could she wait another minute.
“Grace,” said Adam when she picked up the phone, beating her to the greeting in the big, warm, thrumming baritone she mentally added to his attribute list. She could never mistake his voice for anyone else’s.
“Adam,” she said, her own voice husky.
“Are you coming to San Francisco?” he asked, without preamble.
Grace had been toying with making a flippant answer, to avoid the intensity of the conversation, to lighten things up while he was so far away. “It’s an offer I can’t refuse,” or “depends; will you be there?” or something equally stupid. She often used such humour to defray uncomfortable or intense situations. It had gotten her into trouble more than once.
The gravity in his voice told her this was serious for him — as it was for her. She was just having trouble handling her roving emotions. Grow up, Grace, and face this beautiful thing, she told herself. It’s all you’ve ever wanted.
“Adam. Oh . . .” suddenly Grace was fighting tears. “Thank you for your note. I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh, no, Grace, don’t cry,” said Adam, hearing the tears in her voice. “Just say you’re coming. Come on, Grace. Say you’re coming.”
“I’m coming, Adam. Of course I’m coming.”
“I want to make love to you for four days straight.”
“Adam, don’t. Don’t say that. Eight days to go. Well, seven. Please, I can hardly stand it as it is. But I thought you were in Los Angeles? Well, I know you’re in Los Angeles. Why San Francisco?”
“Because it’s too damn hot here, and in Saskatoon. We’ll go north up the coast, walk on the beach in the mornings and hide in the shade in the afternoons. I’ll meet you at the San Francisco airport, we’ll rent a car and go.”
“You’re brilliant. How did you come up with that?”
“Lust. I admit it. Wanting you,” said Adam. “Let’s get away, be together. Learn some things. Eat food. Drink wine. Talk. Make love. And not melt — at least, not because of the sun — while we’re at it. What do you think?”
She was speechless. What was this incredible man saying? Was she hearing him right?
“Tell me, Grace. What do you think?” asked Adam, a tiny edge of anxiety creeping into his voice.
Grace swallowed hard.
“I love it when you say, ‘tell me.’ You do it a lot, do you realize that?” she said. “It’s an invitation to speak, and be heard. I can’t believe you’ve done all this, and, and, yes, I want to eat and drink and talk and . . . make love. With you. Now.”
By the end of her answer, Grace’s voice was trailing off. The thought of being alone with Adam somewhere in California made her tremble.
“Hold on, Grace,” he said, emotion thickening the words.
Did he always know exactly what to say? Grace wondered.
“Hold on, Adam,” she said, from deep in her constricted throat.
For a moment, neither spoke, overwhelmed by the emotional conversation. Grace pulled herself together and asked, “I know this might sound stupidly practical, but what should I bring to wear? What will the weather be like, where we’re going?”
“The days should be warm, maybe hot, but not an oven like at home or in L.A. right now. Evenings will be cool, or cooler anyway, so bring a sweater, maybe a light jacket? A dress in case we go somewhere special for dinner?”
“I’d love that,” said Grace. “But forgive me, is this not costing the Earth? Can I contribute? It’s not like we’re going out for dinner and a movie.”
“I haven’t been on a decent holiday for four years. I’ve been home to the farm for seeding and harvest, a few weekends away, but that’s about it. This is on me. It’s the least I can do. Please. Let me.”
“How would this be the least you can do? You’re flying me from Hades to the California coast, for God’s sake.”
“We can talk about it when we see each other. By the way, anything new about the car accident you mentioned yesterday?” said Adam, abruptly changing the subject away from the financial topic.
“A lot,” said Grace, and told Adam about Suzanne, Sherry, Argo and the car spitting gravel in Suzé’s alley. She also told him about taking Suzanne to see James, and meeting Sherry.
“Something’s off here,” said Adam. “Do we know if a neighbour hated the dog or something? Even so, killing it seems extreme. Shooting it is bizarre.”
“I agree. Suzanne definitely thinks something weird is going on, and so do I. Sherry acted very strangely when we asked her to talk to the police. She didn’t want to.”
“That is weird. Do you think she’s protecting someone?”
“I have no idea. That seems to make the most sense, though.” Grace sighed. “I can’t wait to see you, Adam.”
“And I you. Hold on, Grace.”
*****
The loudest crack of thunder Suzanne had ever heard shocked her out of sleep. Or was it a tree coming down in the storm? Bruno had awakened, too — he was barking his head off as Suzanne leaped out of bed and slammed the bedroom window shut. Rain was hammering through, and splattering onto the floor.
She flicked the light switch but, of course, the power was out. It always went out in powerful lightning storms, and even not-so-powerful ones. Suzanne waited a few seconds until the next flash allowed her to see well enough to get to the liv
ing room, where a candle awaited on the coffee table. Lighting it with the matches she kept nearby, she took it into the kitchen and dug a flashlight out of the junk drawer. Bruno was right on her heels. For a big dog, he was sure a wimp in bad weather.
Turning on the flashlight, she directed its beam through the kitchen window into the back yard, worried the big noise had signalled a tree or a big branch crushing her garage roof. A small mess of branches and twigs left by the howling wind littered the yard, but she saw no serious damage. She clicked off the light and stared into the dark.
In the sudden light of a massive fork of lightning, she detected movement. She caught it on the periphery of her vision, at the edge of perception. Someone was out there, in the crazy July storm. It was three in the blasted morning, and the world sounded like it was going to crack apart. But someone, or something, was out there in the rain, wind and lightning.
The presence seemed to walk through Sherry’s yard, and slip in through her back door. Maybe it was Sherry? Between the deafening howls of wind and cracks of thunder, Suzanne heard something else — a cry. Or the storm was playing havoc with her senses.
Still . . .
She picked up the phone to call Sherry, but the power had been off for too long. It was dead, and so was her cellphone. Lightning must have hit a tower. There was no service. It was the middle of the night during the storm of the summer, if not the decade, and someone was out there.
And Argo had been shot.
She couldn’t call the police, nor text them — there was no such thing as 911 text service.
Suzanne and her flashlight, followed closely by Bruno, returned to the bedroom, where she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. Slipping on sandals and throwing a raincoat over her head and shoulders, she crept out the door, leaving Bruno behind.
Soaked within seconds despite the raincoat — the wild winds were driving rain under its hood — Suzanne hurried up the path to her neighbour’s home and knocked loudly on the door. There was no candlelight, no flashlight. She rang the doorbell, knocked again, and called Sherry’s name.
Nothing. She tried the door. Locked.
Suddenly terrified, Suzanne gave her own little cry, turned on her heel and ran the few steps back to her home. She pulled the door open and dashed inside, locking it behind her. Shaking and on her knees, she flung her arms around Bruno’s enormous, warm and stalwart body.
Chapter Four
Grace awakened to pounding on her front door. Her heart lurched; it was early in the morning, still dark even in July, and raining like hell with claps of thunder following explosions of lightning. It sent her back to the horrific night in March when the deranged Duane Sykes broke into her house and assaulted her. Who would be knocking at this hour, during a storm?
Well, she couldn’t ignore it. Slipping out of bed, Grace hit the light switch, and immediately realized the power was out. Hell, she thought. Hell, hell, hell.
By the time she made the hallway, she could hear the voice behind the door.
“Grace! It’s me, Suzé! Open up, for God’s sake.”
Relief flooded through Grace, followed immediately by concern. What was Suzanne doing at her door at this hour, in this weather?
“I’m coming!” she shouted, over a fresh rumble of thunder. Seconds later, she threw open the door to reveal her drenched friend.
“Suzanne, what is going on? Come in . . . get in here, you’re soaked.”
“Do you have power?” asked Suzanne, shivering. “Doesn’t look like it,” she added, surveying the dark house, as Grace rummaged through the kitchen for a flashlight and towels.
“No. Do you?”
“No. No power, no phone. Grace, I’m scared. Something happened, next door. I tried texting and calling you. Did you sleep through that big clap of thunder? I thought the world had ended. Le dernier jour.”
“It did wake me up — it was insanely loud, wasn’t it? But I must have gone back to sleep. Oho, here’s the flashlight. Give me a sec and I’ll find you a better towel and maybe a blanket. You’re freezing, by the look of it. I can’t make you tea, though.”
Grace found a big, white, fluffy towel and put it on her friend’s head, then wrapped the TV-watching blanket from the couch around her shoulders. She found some cold tea in the fridge, and poured them each a glass in the beam of the flashlight.
“What do you do when the power’s out and your phones don’t work?” asked Suzanne, through chattering teeth.
“I don’t know, Honey. Try to calm down. We’re okay right now. We’re safe here together. Warm up for a second, then tell me what happened.”
Suzanne took a big gulp of her iced tea.
“I think there was someone trying to get into Sherry’s house,” she said, then explained what had happened, and described the sound she thought she’d heard.
“Could it have been Sherry herself in the back yard?” asked Grace.
“It occurred to me, but I don’t think so. What would she be doing back there with no flashlight? It was pitch black, except during flashes of lightning. I thought maybe she’d be out there checking her trees, too, but I could see my garage and trees through the back window during the lightning. She’d be able to as well. And there were no lights inside — no candles or anything. What should I do now?”
“We. What should we do now. Well, we could wait until the phones come back on, and call Sherry. If she doesn’t answer, we could call the police. Or, we could drive down to the police station. It depends how worried you are. You were there.”
Suzanne thought for a minute.
“You know, I’ve seldom been so terrified in my entire life, if ever,” she said. “My head says I may be overreacting, in the bad weather and everything. But my stomach says something is wrong.”
Grace had to admit the very last thing she wanted to do was climb into a car in the wild storm and drive downtown, then admit to the police they were frightened and worried about Suzanne’s neighbour.
But Suzé’s gut was pretty reliable. Grace hoped she was right about Adam, too, when she had said over lunch she had a positive feeling about their fledgling relationship.
“I’ll put on some clothes,” Grace said. “You warm up. We’ll brave the storm and get down to the cop shop.”
“You think it’s the right thing to do?”
“Yes, I do. Your feeling about those noises you heard the other day appears to have been bang on. So let’s go. We can’t do anything from here.”
As she threw on jeans and a T-shirt, it occurred to Grace that this night would be playing out much differently if Adam were in her bed. He had the communications, the weapons, the team, the investigative know-how and the power to take control over this strange and potentially terrible situation. But he wasn’t there. She had been alone. So had Suzanne. But now they were together, and they would have to manage.
Then she wondered if Sherry had someone to rely on, besides Suzanne. It didn’t, so far, seem that way.
*****
The drive downtown was insane. Rain hammered on and poured down the windshield, rendering the wipers useless. It was utterly black in the widespread power outage, which had also taken out the street lighting; it was impossible to see anything beyond the car’s headlights — except during ear-splitting, eye-dazzling forks of lightning.
It was so noisy, Grace and Suzanne were forced to shout at each other. Grace was trying to be Suzanne’s second set of eyes, because driving around broken tree branches — some of them very large — was also part of the stormy obstacle course.
“Shit! There’s another one on your right,” yelled Grace.
Suzanne swerved.
“Damn. That was a big one. Do you think we’ll notice in time if a whole tree has fallen across the street?” Suzanne shouted back.
“God, I hope so.”
It was the most violent, longest and wettest storm in years, the two friends had agreed as they climbed into the car. There had been a spectacular rainfall in the early eighties, when the
y were young: almost one hundred millimetres of rain in fifty minutes had flooded basements across the city and Grace hadn’t forgotten the storm’s aftermath, rescuing her toys and cleaning out the silt and sewage.
This was worse.
The bridge was a river, ending in an enormous puddle at its base. Suzanne blasted through the two-foot-deep pool, as Grace prayed the brakes wouldn’t quit on them.
A few blocks later, they pulled up in front of the police station, and the two women stared at each other.
“What a trip,” said Grace. “Was it as bad getting over to my place?”
“Pretty much,” said Suzanne, earning big points for bravery from her friend. “Thank God we don’t live too far apart.”
Taking deep breaths, they pushed the car doors open into the pressing wind. Heads down, they dashed to the front door of the station and were instantly soaked again; the rain was so heavy, it was like running through a waterfall.
A cursory evaluation of each other in the vestibule provided the conclusion nothing could be done about their drenched, makeup-free, drowned-rat-like appearances. Resigned, they approached the desk.
The young police officer on duty, whose widening eyes registered amazement at their wild, wet and dishevelled appearance, grinned at the two women.
“Enjoying the weather?” he asked. “Sorry. Seriously. Are you two okay?”
“We have not been blown into the river, electrocuted by lightning, or smashed by trees, if that’s what you mean, Monsieur,” said Suzanne. “I wouldn’t say we are okay, however.”
“No. I suppose not. How can I help?” asked the officer. “I don’t know if we have any towels or blankets or anything. Joan?” he called over his shoulder. “Do we have anything blanket-like?”
Sergeant Joan Karpinski, who helped determine the identity of Grace’s attacker in the spring and was promoted on the strength of her efforts, emerged from behind a door.