Xander laughed.
“No wonder the guy was so focused on the phone!”
“After getting that text,” said Miles, “I’m sure he was too busy trying to process that unexpected bit of information and forgot what he was up to. Before he could recover, he was in sight, and at that point any control he had over the situation was gone.”
“I’m sorry I got in the way, man. When I heard Cheryl, I just—couldn’t think of anything else.”
“It’s okay,” said Miles. “I understand, and you didn’t prevent me from saving her.”
We heard the buzz of the intercom, and Miles started to get up.
“I’ll get it, you guys stay put,” said Annette.
“Thank you,” said Miles, settling back onto the couch with me.
“I’ll help,” said John, and he followed her.
“So today were you guys doing good-cop bad-cop?” I asked.
“Well… I was,” said Miles.
“I was too I guess,” said Xander. “I really would have let him have it with that firewood if I’d found out he hurt her, though.”
“I loved your countdown,” I said, and couldn’t help smiling.
Xander and Miles both smiled too.
“Yeah, that was pretty good,” said Miles. “You got him moving.”
“You’re talking in code,” said Jenny, her blue eyes curious.
“We’ll fill you in when John and Annette get back,” I said, as I heard a knock at the door. “Oh thank goodness, finally the food is here!”
“I’ll get out the plates Anika, you sit still.” Jenny took off in the direction of the kitchen, and I was perfectly happy to let her act as hostess.
“I’m glad this is all over,” I said. “In so many ways! We can relax now, at least for a while, and I can practice my abilities without being under duress. It’s a relief Westin can’t claim to the world that you have superpower abilities, too. Even though no one would believe him, I wouldn’t want the kind of attention that would draw.”
“No kidding,” agreed Miles.
“Oh, yay!” I said, as John and Annette returned to the living room loaded with Chinese food, and Jenny followed with plates and bottled water. “Just set it on the coffee table, that’s perfect.”
“You guys go first,” said Annette, and we didn’t argue.
Miles and I loaded plates, and Jenny fixed one for Xander. Then she, John and Annette filled their own.
Everyone was silent as we directed our full attention to eating what was on our plates. It tasted so good after skipping lunch, I went back for seconds.
“As much as you love food,” commented Miles, “it’s hard to imagine how you managed to go almost entirely without it the month and a half I was in the hospital.”
I thought about that as I chewed.
“Well… that just goes to show how much I love you,” I said, then thought some more. “As bad as hospital food is, it’s hard to imagine how you could eat that, the month and a half I was at the estate by myself!”
Miles laughed, then thought for a second.
“That just goes to show how much I love you,” he said. “If I wasted away like you did, they never would have let me out. So, I ate the hospital food, and worried the whole time that you’d gotten over me, and were dating someone else.”
“I can’t believe you worried about that,” I said, taking a brief moment to grab Miles by the front of his shirt so I could pull him closer and kiss his cheek. “You must have thought I was pretty shallow.”
“No! I did not,” he protested. “I regretted writing you that letter though, I was afraid you’d done what I asked you to.”
“I didn’t get the letter until the day before you came back. And for your information, I wanted to move on to honor your sacrifice as you asked, but that wasn’t going to include moving on to someone else. My heart went with you, and I had nothing to offer anyone else.”
Miles gave me a melting look. I started to put my plate aside, then remembered our friends were in the room. I consoled myself with more sweet and sour chicken, and the fact that they’d go home eventually.
“The way that you two are makes a lot more sense now that we know how you met and all that,” said Xander.
“It probably won’t cut down on giving us a hard time though, will it,” Miles smiled.
“Absolutely not,” Xander smiled too.
“But what goes around does come around,” I reminded Xander.
“I’m so glad you’re on my side,” said Miles.
“I was thinking the same thing when you had hold of Westin today!” I said, and everyone laughed. “You’d be saying the same thing about Xander, Jenny, if you saw him wielding that piece of firewood.”
That brought us back to the day’s events. It grew late long before we were finished saying all there was to be said about the case of Rob Westin, so when we had done so, our friends bid us goodnight.
“Please, let me,” said Miles, keeping his arm around me and sending all of the trash to the kitchen trash can.
“Oh my goodness, you are so handy in every imaginable way,” I said, curling up against him and thinking how nice it was that we didn’t have anything else we had to do, or anywhere we had to go…
The sound of jingling caught my attention. Chip and Trixie sat down, holding their leashes expectantly in their mouths.
“Oh my goodness, I completely forgot!” I exclaimed.
“I hate to say it, but I did too,” said Miles. “It’s kind of been one of those days.”
I got up off the couch, and Miles did too.
“You don’t have to go Anika, I’ll take them. I know you’re tired after everything that’s happened today.”
“I am, but you are too. I’m coming along. I don’t want to be alone even for a few minutes. I feel more like talking.”
“Okay, then,” Miles smiled.
We each grabbed a jacket, and left the brightly lit apartment building behind. We walked down one peaceful residential street after another, the jingle of our dog’s tags, the chirping of crickets in the night air, and the rustling of leaves and branches swaying in the breeze, the only sounds.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Miles, as we walked.
“Nothing much,” I said. “I do wonder though, what are we going to do about college?”
“I was planning to go to my classes tomorrow,” said Miles. “Are you not?”
“No, I mean yes, that’s not what I meant,” I laughed. “What I mean is, how are we going to solve missing person cases while we’re in college and have classes we’ve got to show up for? School hasn’t even been in session two full weeks, and we’ve missed quite a few of our classes.”
“Hm. You’ve got a good point,” said Miles. “There’s a lot to consider there. You can do so much good for people using your gifts. The jobs that we provide through our many businesses also do a lot of good. I feel that the education I’m getting will help me to make the best decisions possible so that our employees can keep their jobs, and we can offer additional jobs to others.”
“I agree with that,” I said. “So where does that leave us, then?”
“Let’s try this. You be open to what you can pick up on. If you sense this darkness in someone again, or some other type of situation arises in which your abilities can make a difference, then we’ll deal with it like we just did. In the meantime, we’ll go to class and study and have a life. Hopefully we won’t miss so many classes we have to re-take any, but if that’s what we have to do, then so be it.”
“Okay. I can live with that.”
“I also need to set up the Bannerman Foundation’s missing persons division. That’s going to take some time.”
“It’s just as well we stay in school then,” I said.
“I think so,” said Miles. “If we need to, we can switch to online classes. So long as we can though, I’d like to do things the way we are.”
“Me too,” I said.
Wait, what? Where is
this coming from? It’s not telling a lie if I don’t know my own mind and didn’t even realize, is it?
“Miles to Anika,” I heard, and my eyes focused. It was a huge shock to find myself back in our apartment again. Miles said, “You were at least a million light years away. What thought has you so lost?”
I hugged him.
“I don’t know,” I said. Drat! “I mean, I do know. I’m very confused.”
That was the truth.
“I have no idea what’s wrong with me,” I said desperately. “Here we’ve been dealing with a very disturbing psychopath, there may be more in the future, our lives are hardly normal as it is, I’ve got these new abilities that I’ve barely begun to navigate, we’ve only been married three months, I love spending time with you alone, we’ve got college to do, a fortress to build and a new branch of the Foundation to set up…”
Miles laughed softly.
“Are you having second thoughts about waiting to start a family until after college? Because that’s what it sounds like.”
“I don’t know! And that’s the truth!” I said. “I’m so confused.”
“It’s okay to be confused. And at the risk of sounding my actual age, let me just point out that years of observation has shown me that what you’re feeling right now is normal.”
“It is? Because it really surprised me,” I said.
“Yeah, it is, and since you didn’t hear a voice of truth telling you otherwise, you know that’s true.”
I laughed.
“I forget! It’s so much more noticeable when people lie.”
We were silent for several seconds, thinking about… so many things.
“Our lives are changing fast,” Miles said. “In lots of ways we never anticipated. I admit it scares me to think of not only having you to protect, but children too. But… you want a family and so do I, so we’ll figure it out when the time comes. We can talk more again later about when we want that time to be, if you still want to make a change in our original plan.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to have kids anymore, because of how extremely the opposite of normal our lives are, thanks to our abilities.”
“Following our original timetable wouldn’t break my heart any, but I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Okay, good. That’s what I needed to hear,” I said, hugging Miles a little harder as he kissed me.
“Our life together will never be boring,” said Miles. “We can give up on any hope of that.”
I nodded. He was so right.
“Our lives are going to be filled with excitement of all kinds,” Miles said, and then he smiled. “But… together, it’s going to be great.”
“You’re telling the truth,” I said, and smiled
About the Author
Melissa R. L. Simonin writes the books she wants to read: good clean rated G romance, mystery, suspense, fantasy, paranormal, supernatural, historical, and Christian fiction, with main characters that inspire, who have senses of humor and are good at heart, and which leave one feeling encouraged and better for having read the book. Her characters have stories to tell, so she gets up early and stays up late, because she doesn’t want to miss a thing. Unless she feels like writing two or more novels simultaneously and giving up sleep entirely, she’s learned not to name characters until she’s ready to write, because once they have their names their stories begin, and there is no “pause” option.
In addition to racing to keep up with her characters, Melissa currently resides in Katy, Texas with Brad, her husband of twenty-six years; fifteen-year-old daughter Emily; cats Pandora and Star; Golden retriever and retired Diabetic Alert Dog, Independence; Arctic the White German Shepherd; and Squinty the teddy bear hamster.
While famous for burning cheese sandwiches when her characters are in the middle of a conversation, due to popular demand she usually serves the rest of the household un-burnt offerings, grocery shops on occasion, cleans when absolutely necessary, studies the Bible daily, relies on Jesus completely, listens to Citizen Way and Hawk Nelson frequently, and carries her laptop and immersive headphones with her wherever she goes.
Melissa’s current and ongoing series include The House of Bannerman, Mystery Lane, The Investigations of Jack Ryland, and Terms of Engagement.
Get the latest news on upcoming books and behind the scenes info you won’t find anywhere else, by visiting https://melissasimonin.com
also by Melissa R. L. Simonin
The House of Bannerman
Miles, House of Bannerman book 1
House of Shadows, House of Bannerman book 2
Darkness Falls, House of Bannerman book 3
The Lodge at Whispering Pines, House of Bannerman book 4
Depart the Darkness, House of Bannerman book 5
Mystery Lane
715 Mystery Lane, Mystery Lane book 1
601 Suspense Street, Mystery Lane book 2
423 Apprehensive Avenue, Mystery Lane book 3
The Investigations of Jack Ryland
Last Chance Inn, The Investigations of Jack Ryland book 1
Cottonwood Hotel, The Investigations of Jack Ryland book 2
Terms of Engagement
Terms of Engagement, Terms of Engagement book 1
Failure to Engage, Terms of Engagement book 2
Disengaged, Terms of Engagement book 3
Stand-Alone Novels
Camp Emmaus
Stonecastle Inn
Isle of the Crescent Moon
Hiding Treasure
Lochlan Museum
Uncertainly Yours, a Bannerman Foundation Mystery
Coming soon…
Ashes of Roses, House of Bannerman book 6
Gone in a Flash, the Investigations of Jack Ryland book 3
Darkness Falls Page 34