The Semi-Sweet Hereafter

by Colette London

  Instinctively, I pushed away whoever had grabbed me. It was never good, I knew, to be separated from the safety of numbers.

  “Whoa, Hayden! Calm down!” Ashley Fowler, the reporter from Jeremy’s local pub, chuckled as she held out her palms in a peacekeeping gesture. “These Tube stations are crazy, am I right? I’ve almost gotten trampled bunches of times already.”

  I stared at her in confusion while people zoomed past us, headed for the trains. “Ashley? What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes looked manic. Or, you know, just excited.

  “There’s been an arrest in the case!” she gushed. “I’m on my way down to the scene right now, with everyone else. I saw you over here, nearly getting crushed, and stopped to help.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “An arrest? In Jeremy’s murder?”

  Her nod was emphatic. She looked thrilled. “I’m finally going to get out of this place! Can you believe it? I’m so sick of quiet people and museums and stakeouts and the food. Ohmigod! It’s so awful, I can’t even believe it.” She moved closer to me, farther from the stream of commuters. “Did you know they have a thing called ‘mushy peas’ here? And they actually eat it? Ugh!”

  I didn’t care about food. Not with Jeremy’s murderer on the hook. I grabbed Ashley, willing her to focus. “Who was it?”

  She was busy waving to someone in the press corps. “Huh?”

  “Who killed Jeremy?” I nearly shrieked over the mêlée.

  “Oh, that. Yeah.” Ashley gave a trilling laugh. “It was the personal assistant who did it. Jeremy’s, I mean. She confessed.”

  Confessed? I was galvanized—and, for once, happy not to have been confused with one of Jeremy’s many personal assistants. Maybe I hadn’t even met this one. It was possible.

  “Who?” I pressed inane Ashley. “What was her name?”

  “The book writer. You know.” Ashley frowned. “Nicole?”

  “Nicola Mitchell? Nicola confessed? But why would she?”

  When she had every reason to stay mum and sell books?

  I never had a chance to ask. “Sorry, gotta run!” Ashley warbled. “You’ll read about it all in the papers tomorrow!”

  She waved me off and bolted for one of the escalators, following the last of the pushy reporters to . . . the police station, I guessed? I didn’t know. But I did know there was no way in the world I was continuing with my regularly scheduled day now.

  I was following Ashley—and, as it turned out, Nicola.

  Finally, Jeremy’s murderer had been caught. Unbelievable. There were zero chances of me waiting to read about it tomorrow.

  * * *

  I’d underestimated the journalists, I learned as I made it down to the platform level. It was easy enough to follow them. Heck, if ditzy Ashley could do it, I absolutely could do it.

  The trouble was, there’s a certain art to catching a train on the London Underground. You’re supposed to queue along the platform, which is generally long enough and wide enough to fit a train car’s worth of people. Then, as the train arrives, you stand to one side of the open doors so passengers can disembark. Then—and only then—are you supposed to board the train yourself.

  Evidently, London’s tabloid journalists did not adhere to this etiquette. The platform was already busy; they only added to the mayhem. A few of the earliest arrivers had caught a previous train—probably by pushing willy-nilly onto it—but there were still plenty of volatile people jamming the platform, pacing its length in search of better positions. Some elbowed aside the people who’d been waiting, earning themselves disgruntled looks from the locals.

  No one actually objected, of course. But there was much frowning, muttering, and tut-tutting in the reporters’ wakes.

  Oblivious to the safety protocol suggested by the yellow painted line at the platform’s edge, they crowded right on top of it, even while the last train whooshed away into the tunnel. Another would be along in two minutes, so I did the same thing.

  The tumult on the platform was deafening. To all sides of me, people yelled and jockeyed for position. Someone’s elbow gouged me. I tottered, then reclaimed my position. I haven’t made my way through transit systems all around the world—the U-Bahn, the Metros of Paris, Tokyo, and Shanghai, the Chicago “L,” and more—by being passive. I knew better than to stand meekly.

  I wanted to get to the police station and find out what had really happened with Nicola Mitchell. Like, yesterday.

  I’d just staked out my own square foot of space when my phone buzzed. I fished it out of my crossbody bag while peering down the tunnel to look for the next train. I was getting on it.

  In front of me, a huge advertising poster pushed “city breaks” to Brittany. Beside me, a hardened commuter stood, with his laptop bag secured on the floor between his feet, reading a copy of the Financial Times. Unlike the shifting, squirming mass of reporters to my left, he wasn’t likely to budge. I edged closer to use him for a shield during the few moments I’d be distracted by looking at my phone, then peered at the screen.

  There were three recent missed calls from Travis. They must not have rung through while I’d been underground. There was also a new text message from my financial adviser. I opened it.

  Watch out for Andrew Davies, he’d typed. H&H had insurance on Jeremy. Dead or disabled meant compensatory payout. Broken contract did not.

  That was interesting news. If I understood correctly, Travis’s findings meant that while Andrew Davies had needed Jeremy to “skyrocket” his family’s company “back to success!” Andrew had also had an escape hatch: that insurance policy.

  Even now, shambolic Andrew might be pocketing the disbursement that Hambleton & Hart were due because of their spokesperson’s death. I didn’t know if such corporate arrangements were typical, but it made sense. Hambleton & Hart would have wanted to protect their (expensive) investment in (unpredictable) Jeremy, by whatever means possible.

  Leave it to Travis to dig up all the (legal and/or fiduciary) dirt. I’d need to call him to clarify this, but in the meantime, I smiled fondly as I looked at his text again.

  Travis wrote text messages as though he were paying by the word. He might as well have used Morse code—his missives were sometimes that concise. On the other hand, he had spelled out compensatory correctly, just like the financial genius he was. That was impressive. In true Travis fashion, he hadn’t buried the lede, either. He’d barreled right into his suspicions of Andrew Davies, then followed up with a reasonable rationale.

  In his own way, Travis had my back too, every bit as much as Danny always did. Travis cared. That meant a lot to me.

  On the other hand, we had a confessed killer now. Nicola. That meant that Andrew Davies’s potential motive for potentially murdering Jeremy—their advert argument—didn’t matter anymore.

  A rumble drew my attention back to the tunnel. I glanced briefly down it, glimpsed the train’s lights, then looked back at my phone. I needed to stash it before everyone pushed forward to board. If I lost it, I’d lose touch with Travis. Even divided by several time zones and a raging air-travel phobia, we were—

  Slipping. Flailing. Pushed? My heart shot to my throat as I tried to keep my balance. The train’s approach grew louder.

  Hot air buffeted me. The din of the crowd confused me.

  One thing was sure: if I fell on the tracks, I was dead. That oncoming train’s driver would never have time to stop.

  I didn’t want to die. But I was falling, shaky and queasy.

  Suddenly, the strap to my crossbody bag yanked higher, to my throat. I was choking, held in a hideous suspended state at the platform’s dangerous edge, eyes widening as I saw the train.

  It looked huge. And fast. Oh, God. I thrashed my arms, trying to grab hold of something. Anything. I felt clothes, brushed someone’s arm, heard startled cries as people around me finally realized what was happening. This was it. The end.

  Someone wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me to safety, just in time
.

  My rescuer gave a final mighty tug as the Underground train pulled in. My knees gave way as it whizzed past within inches of my face. The rest of me flew backward. I stumbled, then fell.

  Instinctively, I covered my head with my arms so I wouldn’t be trampled. My rescuer was already on the job. He hauled me up like a rag doll, then surfed the crowd to the refuge of the platform’s tiled wall a few feet away. There, I gazed at the yellow-lettered WAY OUT sign without comprehension. For the moment, I was nothing but nerve endings, alive with panic.

  The disembarking passengers pushed outward. The newly boarding passengers—including the journalists—surged forward.

  I pushed away. “I’ve got to get on that train.”

  It felt critical that I do so. The strap of my crossbody bag inexplicably waylaid me. Impatiently, I yanked at it with my shaky fingers, trying to get free. Confounded by its twists and turns, I followed its length to the person who’d rescued me.

  Danny. Of course.

  “You’re going to have to catch the next one,” he said, finally relinquishing my bag’s strap. His palm was scraped raw.

  The look in his eyes was inexplicable to me. So were the standard directional signs, the bright adverts, the people . . .

  I was a mess. “You finally saved me,” I wheezed. “On time!”

  If I haven’t told you, Danny is a chronic latecomer. He’s prone to arriving an hour late for . . . everything. Also, I realized numbly, now I understood his expression. He looked . . . wounded.

  “Yeah,” he said drily. “It took me a couple of seconds to realize what was happening and react. Sorry about the delay.”

  I’d meant that he hadn’t been there for some dangerous incidents in the past, not this one. I was already sorry I’d blurted out that observation, too. But Danny didn’t address my growing remorse, even though I knew he must have sensed it.

  With his eyes smoky, he adjusted my bag’s strap so it lay where it was meant to, snugly across my chest and shoulder.

  Hazily, I caught on. “You rescued me . . . with my bag?”

  He nodded. “It was all I could reach. At first.”

  Dazedly, I stared down at it. “Good job, bag.” Shakily, I patted it, thankful for its near-constant presence in my life. “This is the same bag Travis surprised me with as a gift in Portland,” I reminded Danny, dizzy with relief. “I’ll have to tell him he rescued me from being smashed by a Tube train.”

  Danny’s lips tightened. “Yeah. You tell Harvard that.”

  He gave me another evaluative look, then turned away.

  I had to follow him. Thank him.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “What are you—” Doing here? “Whoa.”

  Unable to finish, I stopped with my hand to my head. I felt awash with vertigo. My knees threatened to buckle again. I sagged against the nearest wall as exasperated commuters coursed past, caring only that I was between them and the next train.

  I’d almost been killed. The stark reality of it scared me.

  What was I doing, messing around with murder? This wasn’t what normal people did. I needed to stick to chocolate. Period.

  Danny’s big-booted feet entered my downcast field of vision. He put his hand on my arm. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “I can’t. I’m supposed to be—” I broke off, uncertain what to say next. Headed to the police station? There had to be many of them in London. I wasn’t sure which one the reporters had gone to. I looked at Danny. “Nicola confessed.”

  He arched his brows. “The one with the skeevy book?”

  I nodded, still feeling nauseated. I didn’t want to be sick in an Underground station, but any movement seemed to make things worse. My knees still felt unsteady, my hands shaky.

  Helpless for the moment, I looked up at Danny.

  Something passed between us. Something tender. I knew, when the chips were down, that Danny cared about me. But this was—

  “Ahem.” The sound of a man deliberately and loudly clearing his throat broke into my thoughts. “Terribly sorry, but is this yours? I saw you go down back there and managed to grab it.”

  My phone. I took it from the stranger’s hand and clasped it in my own, stupidly grateful to have it. “Thank you so much.”

  At the familiar feel of my phone in my hand, I felt my throat close. My eyes filled with uncontrollable tears. Uh-oh.

  Saved from death? Fine. Reunited with phone? Waterworks.

  This had obviously affected me more than I wanted to admit.

  The good Samaritan glanced anxiously from me to Danny and back again. He leaned in. “Are you quite all right? Do you need anything? Anything at all? Can I call a member of staff?”

  “No, no thank you.” I dashed my tears, feeling dopey and embarrassed. “I’m fine, honestly. Just a little overwhelmed.”

  He hesitated. “Are you utterly sure? It’s no trouble.”

  Danny put his arm around me. “She said she’s fine.”

  My phone’s rescuer nodded. “All right then. Be careful!”

  He strode away, wearing a trench coat and carrying a brown laptop bag. Almost instantly, he was swallowed up by the crowd.

  The way he disappeared made me bawl a little harder.

  Danny saw. He hugged me closer against his broad, strong chest, then gave me an unmistakable “cheer up” squeeze. “It’s all fun and games until someone almost gets killed, right?”

  This time, I laughed through my tears. I had to get a grip.

  “What are you even doing here?” I asked my security expert.

  “I said I’d be there when you were working out with Liam.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t see you.”

  Danny gave me a long look. “You weren’t supposed to.”

  His sardonic tone smoothed away some of my weepiness. His earlier hurt feelings seemed to have mended somewhat, but that didn’t let me off the hook for what I’d said. Feeling sorry about that all over again, I looked up. “I’m sorry, Danny. About what I said before, about you ‘finally’ saving me. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He let me go. “It’s all good.”

  “But it’s not all good! I hurt your feelings.”

  “I deserved it.” Danny obviously didn’t intend to admit having anything as mushy as feelings. “I’d followed you to the platform, but then I got separated from you in the crowd. I’d just managed to reach you when I saw you start falling.”

  I shuddered at the memory. “One second I was fine, just looking at the train coming down the tunnel, and the next—”

  “I grabbed your bag, but it almost wasn’t enough.”

  That effort had cost him, too. “How’s your hand?”

  Danny hid its abraded surface inside his fist. “Fine.”

  I didn’t believe him. I unfolded his fist and looked. “You’re bleeding! We should get this looked at right away.”

  He pulled away. “I’ve had worse.” His concerned gaze roamed over me, just as intensely as it had before. “How are you?”

  “Anxious to get to the police station.” Tentatively, I pushed away from the wall, then stood on my own. I still felt wobbly, but I could walk. I couldn’t help grinning at my own tottering steps. “You wouldn’t believe how a near-death experience messes with your ability to do the little things, like walk and think,” I cracked, fighting an urge to grab Danny for support.

  He stuck close to me anyway, just in case. “You know,” he mused, “I think my hand does need medical attention.”

  His disingenuous tone hit me like a record scratch. That wasn’t the way my old pal usually talked to me. Then I got it.

  “I’m going to see Nicola,” I warned, realizing he didn’t really want medical care. He wanted to save me. All over again. From . . . everything. “I have to. After all the effort I’ve expended trying to track down Jeremy’s killer? After all we’ve both done?” I went for drama. “After I nearly got killed?”

  “That’s all the more reason you shouldn’t go.”
/>
  I frowned. “Someone just bumped me, that’s all.” I hoped.

  “Someone could have pushed you,” Danny maintained darkly. “The platform was crowded. No one would have seen. They would have melted into the crowd right afterward. They could have slipped into another tunnel or even gotten on the next train.”

  I envisioned someone pushing me to my (almost certain) death, then blithely boarding a Tube train to Westminster.

  It was too absurd. “Nobody wants to kill me.”

  Danny’s face disagreed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  He was referring to the other times I’d been hurt on my unofficial, nonchocolate-whispering murder investigations. In hindsight, they seemed ludicrous. At the time? Critically important and perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances.

  “All right. Let’s say someone did push me on purpose.”

  Danny crossed his arms over his brawny chest. “And?”

  I tried not to look at his bulging biceps. This was no time to be distracted, no matter how many caring looks he’d given me today. Things that happened during emergencies didn’t count.

  “And I’m fine! See?” I performed an unsteady twirl on the nearly unoccupied platform. Between Tube trains, it emptied almost completely. “No lasting harm done.” I knew that wouldn’t be enough for Danny, so I added, “Did you see anyone push me? No. I was standing too close to the edge, that’s all, trying to be first to board the next train. Next time, I’ll be more careful.”

  There. All sorted. I felt marginally better already.

  “Who are you trying to convince? Me? Or you?”

  He was too astute for his own good. “Nicola confessed, Danny! I want to know what she said. Don’t you? We’re wasting time. If she’s at the same police station as DC Mishra—”

  “Hayden, it’s over,” Danny said in a low voice. “This time, you didn’t get the bad guy. You weren’t really supposed to.”

  I gawked as he started walking toward the escalators, leaving me no choice but to follow. I strode after him, feeling uncertain. Was this really about me not wanting to admit defeat?