by Sara Reinke
“You’re moving?” he asked, with a nod toward the moving truck.
“Yeah, back to Hebrides for a month, for the funeral and stuff, and then onto Chicago,” she said. “I’ve had a resume with a station there for about six months now, and they finally got tired of sitting on it and offered me a job. It’s a pay raise and a change of scenery. I…I guess I need that right now.”
“Oh,” he said, tucking his hands in his jean pockets. He rocked back and forth on his heels, feeling uncomfortable. “Well, hey. That’s great.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking as anxious as he felt. After a moment, she turned, setting the box down on the trunk of her car. “Look, Paul, I’m sorry about what happened,” she said. She tucked her hair behind her ears and blinked down at her toes, her voice small and timid. “About David…about us…your kids…everything.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
She shrugged, still without looking at him. “I was molested when I was a kid,” she said. “Our dad died when we were little, and my mom’s second husband was a creep.” She gave her head a slight shake. “He’s long gone now. Probably dead in a ditch somewhere, who knows. And my stepdad’s been practically like a father to me, so it doesn’t matter anyway. But it really messed David up. I don’t know. I think maybe he was molested, too, but he never told me. But I think that’s why he was the way he was…why he did those…horrible things.”
She shivered slightly, drawing her arms about herself. She suddenly looked very small and fragile to Paul, and he felt obliged to say something. “I’m sorry, Susan.”
She glanced at him and smiled, crooked and with little humor. “You did what you had to do, Paul. I don’t blame you for that.”
She turned back to her car and hefted the box again. “David always used to say that’s why I have a thing for older men, what happened to me when I was little,” she said. “But I don’t know. I think it has more to do with the men themselves.”
Her words called to mind something he’d read on the internet the night before. There were too many things left open-ended in the case, and he didn’t like that. It all seemed too easy, too convenient, too much like blind, bad luck that David Vey had abducted M.K., Bethany and Jay within hours of Paul telling Susan he didn’t want to be with her.
Sounds like Susan has some anger management issues, Jason had told him. Not to mention an Elektra complex…you know, the Freudian theory, the one that talks about how girls are secretly in love with their fathers, or how they’ll look for mates who remind them of their fathers, or something like that. It’s from Greek mythology. Elektra killed people for revenge over the death of her father.
Paul had looked up the Elektra complex online, because he’d hoped to find an explanation in it, something to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle, to give him that culminating a-ha moment that was critical in completing an investigation.
What he found instead had only left more questions in his mind, and an uneasy disquiet in his gut that remained with him that morning. The daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Elektra wanted her brother to kill their mother in revenge for their father’s death.
Elektra wanted her brother to kill…in revenge
Bethany had told him that David Vey had spoken to her as he’d tried to strangle her. He’d called her a whore, and asked why she couldn’t just be a little girl? Paul wondered whose innocence, whose lost girlhood, had affected him the most―his victims’, or his sister’s?
Elektra wanted her brother to kill…in revenge
And if Susan, knowing this, might not have steered his psychosis to her advantage?
Susan gave him a smile. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” she said. She rose onto her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his softly, quickly.
“Yeah,” Paul said, reaching up unconsciously and brushing his fingertips against his mouth, wiping her kiss away. “Maybe.”
* * *
“What are you doing here?” Jason asked as Paul crossed through the Public Affairs department several hours later, heading for his office.
“Hello to you, too,” Paul replied, not slowing in the least.
The younger man rose to his feet, wide-eyed and surprised. “You…you’re not supposed to be here,” he said, following quickly on Paul’s heels. “You’re supposed to be out on administrative leave.”
“I know,” Paul said, sitting down at his desk.
“For two weeks, they told me,” Jason said.
“I know,” Paul replied, looking around on the floor. He meant to grab a few things, some paperwork he could fool with while sitting at the hospital with Jo.
“Paul, you shot someone,” Jason said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I know,” Paul said.
“You shot someone seven times,” Jason said. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you about it. I’m not supposed to be talking to you at all. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“It’ll be alright, Jason,” Paul said, opening his desk drawer and gathering together some files to bring with him.
Jason uttered an unhappy, sputtering sound at this. “Wh…what are you doing?”
Paul glanced at him. “Just some homework, that’s all. I’ve gone through all of the magazines at the hospital and Jay’s there at least through the end of the week. He caught some kind of infection and they have him on all kinds of I.V. antibiotics. I need something to do.”
“But that…you can’t…” Jason whimpered in protest, his eyes widening as Paul gathered even more files together. “Paul, the chief is going to shit. He’s already about to shit, now that he’s caught wind of us contacting the federal prosecutor and ratting out the mayor. He―”
“The chief’s head has been buried up Mayor Allen’s ass for so long, he can’t remember the goddamn color of daylight,” Paul said, his brows narrowing. “And we didn’t rat out the mayor. We did our jobs.”
It had been a mistake coming there. Paul was feeling on edge with Jay still in the hospital, and now that the initial shock and trauma had worn off, Vicki was feeling particularly nasty and vindictive about what had happened over the weekend. She’d called him the night before asking him to quit his the police force. Paul, in the last two years, you’ve nearly been killed, I’ve nearly been killed, and now your children damn near died, all having to do with your job, she’d told him. It’s too much, and I can’t handle it anymore. And I’m sure as hell not going to ask our daughters to. Either you resign, or I’m suing for full custody. You love your job or you love the girls, Paul. Which is it?
Paul stood, tucking the files under his arm. He hadn’t had an answer for Vicki last night. He still didn’t have an answer. And he sure as hell didn’t appreciate her giving him such a piss-poorly timed ultimatum. “Look,” he told Jason, leveling his dark gaze at the younger man. “I’m leaving. Happy now?”
He started to march for the door, and blinked as Jason caught him firmly by the arm, stopping him abruptly.
“No, I’m not happy now―and goddamn it, will you stop walking away or hanging up on me or otherwise completely ignoring every goddamn word I say?” Jason snapped, his voice sharp and furious. Paul had never heard him sound like that before, and he paused, turning, his brows raised in surprise.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your brother and your kids,” Jason said, his brows narrowed, his blue eyes flashing hotly. “I’m sorry your wife left you, and I’m sorry you’re stuck down here in Public Affairs with me, because it’s obvious you hate it. You think you’re the only one? Welcome to the club, Lieutenant!”
He balled his hands into fists and hoisted his chin so he could glare at Paul eye-to-eye. “You think you’re the only one who catches shit around here for being P.A.? I get laughed at, too. You think no one calls me names? I hear it all over―‘Hey, there, Scrappy Doo,’ or ‘top o’ the morning to you, Doctor Watson,’ or ‘how’s it hanging, there, Frodo?’”
“Frodo?” Paul said, and blush bloomed brightl
y in Jason’s cheeks.
“Yeah, Frodo,” he said. “You know, like in The Lord of the Rings. He’s a hobbit. He’s short. I’m short. And some people think I look like Elijah Wood, the actor who played…” He shook his head, his brows narrowing again. “That doesn’t matter! I’m a bigger joke than you, because at least, you’ve shot and killed people. Everyone thinks I either fucked someone to get here, let someone fuck me or I’m the chief’s kid! You see this?” He jerked his wallet out of his blazer pocket and shoved it squarely under Paul’s nose, flipped open to his badge. “I didn’t get this out of a goddamn cereal box! I’m a police officer, just like you, and just like every other fat, slouching, stinking, middle-aged, overweight son of a bitch in this building! I may not have walked a beat or busted someone’s chops, but I’m still a police officer, and I’m your goddamn partner! And if you’d fucking listened to me and let me help you like a partner, instead of hanging up on me on Saturday morning, you might have found David Vey a lot faster, and saved your goddamn brother a world of hurting!”
He fell silent, trembling, gasping for breath, his face flushed and glossed with a sheen of sweat. Paul had never seen him so worked up before.
“You’re right,” he said quietly.
“You walk out of here all the time and leave me to catch the shit,” Jason snapped. “Do you have any idea what I’ve had to put up with since we…” His voice faded, his furious expression faltering. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re right,” Paul said. He stepped toward Jason and clapped him gently on the shoulder. “I’ve been unfair to you, and I was wrong. I’m sorry, kid. You did a good job.”
He turned again, walking away. “Come on,” he said. “I’m meeting Brenda for lunch.”
“Dr. Wheaton?” Jason asked.
“Yeah,” Paul replied. “We’re seeing each other. But that’s between you and me―as partners. So come on, join us. I’m buying.”
“But I…I…” Jason sputtered, his eyes wide with disbelief. “I can’t, Paul. I’m not supposed to―”
“Talk to me, I know,” Paul said, nodding. “Administrative leave, I know. Shot someone seven times, yeah, yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder, his brow raised. “Kid, if we’re going to work together, you’re going to have to learn to bend the rules every once in awhile. They’re made that way, you know.”
He turned around and walked again, smiling as he heard Jason’s footsteps behind him, hurrying in his wake.
* * *
“Who was that lady again?” Emma asked, as Paul drove her home from school that afternoon.
“What lady?” he asked, puzzled, glancing at her.
“From this morning,” she replied. “The one with the box in her hands.”
“Oh,” Paul said. “She’s just a…a friend of mine. That’s all.” He’d been wondering when Emma would say something about Susan. He hadn’t missed the dark, cautious look that Emma had awarded the woman, or the rather morose silence that the girl had adopted for the ride to school that morning following the encounter. He wondered if Emma shared his suspicions, the same misgivings he did about Susan. Did Grandma tell you something about her? he’d thought of asking, but had been unable to muster the words. “She’s leaving, moving away,” he said. “She wanted to tell me good-bye.”
Emma nodded, patting her hands against her lap and looking out the window. “That’s good.”
Christ, let’s hope so.
Emma turned to him. “Did you ever find out about Claire Boyett?”
“Yeah,” Paul said quietly. “Yeah, I did.”
“Who is she?”
“Just…just another friend,” he replied. Claire Boyett is clairvoyant, kiddo, and maybe that’s what I am, and maybe it’s not. Who knows what the hell your daddy woke up in me when he raised me from the dead. But I’m a different man in all sorts of other ways―so why not that, too?
Emma reached for him, placing her small hand against his and lacing her fingers through his. “I missed you, Uncle Paul,” she said, and it was like she knew somehow that he had been feeling like a stranger in his own skin, that his mind had been tormented by someone else’s thoughts and dreams, that his life had felt unfamiliar―and now, all of that had changed. He’d found his place in things again―a new place, but a good one still the same. It’s like she knows.
Paul smiled as she looked at him, and he gave her hand a little squeeze. “I missed you, too, kiddo,” he said. It’s good to be back.
# # #
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Definitely an author to watch.” That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards calls Reinke “a new paranormal star” and Love Romances and More hails her as “a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale.” Dark Thirst and Dark Hunger, the first two books in her Brethren Series of vampire romance are available from Kensington/Zebra Books, while the third installment, Dark Passion, is available from Double Dragon Publishing. Find out more about Reinke by visiting online: http://www. sarareinke. com
Table of Contents
Eye of the Storm