“Lonely?” Reggie ventured.
Sariah nodded. “That’s it exactly.”
Seeing her in this new light brought questions to Reggie’s mind that hadn’t really come up before. It wasn’t like her to pry, but it seemed like there was a sort of permissiveness that was running through this strange encounter. An intimacy that was here now, but might not last beyond tonight. So she decided to ask.
“I’ve never seen you… I mean…” She cleared her throat. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you date anyone, since we started working together.”
Sariah made a face. “Kind of hard. The job is everything to me.”
“But you had to have dated a ton when you were back in high school and college,” Reggie insisted. “Come on. You’re gorgeous.”
Ducking her head, Sariah took a small drink. “A little. Not much.” It seemed like she was about to say something else, but instead she turned her attention back to the Scotch in her hands.
Reggie pursed her lips, shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s just crazy to me. And nothing since you’ve been on the job? Like, nothing?”
The BAU agent shrugged. “It’s not like I meet a lot of eligible individuals while I’m tracking down serial killers.”
She peered into Reggie’s face, her gaze lingering there for a moment. Then she turned away and took another sip of her drink.
What was Reggie seeing there in Sariah’s face? Was the agent blushing? That didn’t seem possible, and not just because her darker skin and the dim lighting in the bar would hide it. Then it dawned on Reggie what it might be.
“You have a crush on someone,” she accused her. “Don’t you?”
Sariah’s expression went from embarrassed to horrified in the space of less than a second. Her drink was placed back on the bar with what looked to be shaking hands.
“No. No,” she insisted. “Why would you say that?”
“Look at you, it’s written all over your face. You might as well be screaming it to the entire bar.”
The look of mortification increased, and Sariah lifted a hand to her face. She was so busted.
“All right, chickadee, spill,” Reggie insisted. “You have to tell me. And don’t worry… it’ll stay in the vault.”
But Sariah just shook her head. There was something twitching about her mouth. Was she trying not to smile? It was hard to tell in the low light.
But no details were forthcoming. Time for Reggie to start the interrogation.
“Okay, is it someone on this case? Agent Klingler, maybe?” He was a good looking man, Reggie thought, in a very military sort of way.
But Sariah’s expression made it clear what she thought of that idea. Reggie thought for a minute. Then she flashed on a terrible idea.
“It can’t be Shively, can it?” A slight shake of the head from Sariah was a relief. “Okay, I’m running out of ideas.” Then another idea sparked. “Wait a minute. Is it someone from our team?”
This time, the expression on Sariah’s face went from horrified to something far beyond. But at the same moment, it was almost like there was a yearning there. A desire to have the information out.
“I think we should stop with the guessing games,” Sariah said, her voice husky.
Reggie pondered that for a second, picking up her glass to take a sip. It was empty, so she grabbed Sariah’s and downed a gulp of the smoky, fiery and somehow smooth Scotch. Sariah watched her with a look that seemed filled with fear as she did so.
“It’s not Had, is it?” No reaction. Then that left… “Oh, hell. It’s Joshua.” That was the only choice left. It was Joshua. They had feelings for the same member of the team. Prying into this had been a terrible idea.
But then Reggie looked deeper into Sariah’s face. At the mention of Joshua’s name, a sadness had come into her eyes, but there was no embarrassment. No secret desire that flashed in those stunning chocolate eyes of hers.
It wasn’t Joshua.
But who else could it be? Unless Reggie was way off the mark with reading her boss’ tells, it was a member of the team. But…
She glanced down at Sariah’s drink and realized that she had left a smear of lipstick on the glass. Moving her hand forward, Reggie went to rub it off with a finger.
And met Sariah’s hand as she started to pick up the glass.
A surge of electricity went through Reggie as contact was made. She lifted her eyes to meet Sariah’s and suddenly she knew the answer to the question.
It was Reggie.
Memories of previous conversations, other looks, moments of unexpected awkwardness flooded into Reggie’s perception, and she realized that the answer to this question had been clear for anyone to see. Anyone that was choosing to look, that was.
Sariah wasn’t interested in men.
And as the contact between them lingered, Reggie realized something else. While her own attraction had turned toward men for the most part, her own sexuality had always been a bit… fluid.
From the time she had met Sariah, she had found the woman compelling. Beautiful. Fascinating. But her dysfunctional attraction to Joshua had always gotten in the way of her seeing it.
Joshua wasn’t here right now.
Sariah was.
Reggie swallowed, and did something that took more courage than it had taken to face down the sniper earlier that day. Reaching out a thumb, she stroked the back of Sariah’s hand, feeling the contact ignite a fire deep down in her being. It was a deeper and fuller sensation than the warmth that had come from the Scotch, and she relished it as it spread to the rest of her body.
There was no desperation here. The attraction was deep, but without the edge of pain that had always accompanied her feelings for Joshua. It was quite lovely.
Sariah, for her part, seemed to be coming out of some kind of a trance. A look of surprise and wonder passed over her face, and she looked a question at Reggie.
The query was obvious, and Reggie felt the responsibility that came along with the answer Sariah was seeking. It was like the woman’s entire soul was exposed in that one brief instant, and Reggie held Sariah’s wellbeing in her hands.
But somehow, it wasn’t scary. She reached out and took Sariah’s fingers, detaching them from their death grip on the whiskey.
It was time to leave the bar and go someplace more private.
* * *
A dark fire blazed inside of Joshua. The day had tested him to his limits, and he’d come away filled with pain and sadness oozing from his every pore.
He wanted to drink.
Jack and Jill went up a hill…
Why was that song going through his head right now?
Bella trotted along at his side, her cone of shame wrapped around her head. Something about that protective device kept Joshua from feeling the comfort in her presence that he usually experienced. It was strange, he knew, but that’s how it felt.
The hunger inside of him grew, and to combat it, he decided to grab a bite to eat down at the restaurant. After a murmured conversation with the tired-looking waitress and what felt like an interminable wait, his meal arrived. The food, which looked like it should be decent enough, tasted like cardboard and ashes in his mouth.
He dropped a twenty on his plate, not wanting to wait around for his check to come, for more inane chit-chat from the server, who was probably in her thirties but looked to be closer to Joshua’s age. The world around Joshua was a haze of misery, and he was the cause right at the core of it all.
Need seared him, burning deep in his soul. The alcohol in his minibar called out to the deepest places inside of him.
There was one place he could go. One person to whom he could turn for solace.
Without consciously willing it, Joshua’s feet turned him away from his own room and toward someone else’s.
Reggie would be there for him. She always was.
Yes, she’d turned away from him when he’d started drinking again. The distance had been palpable. But that didn’t change wh
at he felt for her.
He stood outside her door for a long moment before mustering up the strength to knock. The idea of reaching out to someone in his addiction was not something he was used to. But it felt right.
Maybe with her help, he could keep from drinking. Learn to live a life free of alcohol. Find Humpty and achieve some modicum of peace in Reggie’s arms.
He knocked.
When the door opened and Reggie’s face peered out at him through the narrow crack, he could sense that something was wrong. Surprise registered as she realized who it was at the door. Her face was flushed, her hair askew. And when she spoke, her tone was breathless.
What was wrong with her?
“Joshua…” she murmured, clearing her throat. “What’s up?”
He opened his mouth to speak, when he saw a flash of movement behind Reggie. There was someone else in the room with her. He felt something give inside of him. At the same time a blinding anger flooded up from a deep well of pain in his core.
Reggie must have seen something in his face, as she took an involuntary step back, giving Joshua just the room he needed. He stepped forward, pushing the door wide.
And there, waiting inside Reggie’s room, was Agent Cooper.
The hem of her white blouse was loose, pulled out from her slacks, and there were several buttons undone at the top. Coop’s mocha skin had a glow to it that Joshua had never seen before, and there was a look in her eyes that spoke of a need that was every bit as deep as the one that had led him here.
To this place of pain.
Jack fell down and broke his crown...
There was a long pause, during which both Agent Cooper and Reggie looked at one another and dropped their gaze. A nasty part of Joshua relished in their embarrassment, even as the rest of him wanted the ground to open up and eat his shame.
He turned to walk away. Back to his own room. Someplace that was away from the picture he had just seen. Away from the image that was seared into his mind, that would haunt him forever.
“Joshua?”
It was Reggie. She had followed him out. He faced her, trying to school his expression into one of a blank slate. To prevent this woman from seeing how much pain was there.
She blurted, “It’s not what… We didn’t… Nothing happened.”
But he just continued to stare at her. It wasn’t more than a second or two before her gaze dropped. Then she turned and made her way back to her room. Back to Agent Cooper, who was waiting inside for her. To share in the comfort that Reggie could offer.
That she could no longer offer him.
And Jill came tumbling after…
Joshua hadn’t been back in his room more than fifteen seconds before he had the minibar open and the alcoholic contents spread out in front of him. He stood there in front of the dresser, sorting the tiny bottles in the order that they should be consumed.
The Johnny Walker Red Label was first. Drink it while he could still taste what was going down his gullet. He felt his mouth salivate in anticipation.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know what was going on here. He was in pain from multiple mortal wounds to his soul. And now he wanted… no needed… a drink.
Made sense. He was a drunk, after all.
Images fought for preeminence in his mind. Bella. Yes, it had turned out to be a minor injury, but the sound of her yelp of pain played itself over and over again in Joshua’s mind. As well as the sight of her crumpling to the ground right before him.
One foot to the side and she would be dead.
He’d been helpless to do anything. If she had been hurt any worse than what had actually happened, there wouldn’t have been a damn thing he could have done about it. He would have knelt there with Bella’s head on his lap, watching the life bleed out of her.
Then Reggie…
His mind wouldn’t allow him to back to that place. It was still too raw, too fresh.
And now, Joshua was going to drink to forget it all.
For once, Bella was not on top of him, trying to keep him from consuming the liquor that sat in front of him. She was off in the corner of the room, trying to take off her cone with her paws. Growling at the contraption, she wriggled and squirmed, contorting herself into all kinds of pretzel shapes to rid herself of the infernal thing. Under normal circumstances, her antics would have been funny. Joshua might have even called his teammates in to watch. Bella’s acrobatics would have had them all in stitches.
But right now, all her movements did was serve as a reminder of how badly he had failed her. How he hadn’t been able to protect her. They mimicked that moment of collapse right after she’d been shot. The tumbling over and over.
Bella had now switched from using her paws to try to get the cone off, to using the furniture. She had wedged the device between the legs of the chair that was at the desk, and was scraping and pulling, trying to get free.
Joshua felt the itch of the monitor at his own ankle and knew how she must be feeling. At least this time it wasn’t a device that would go off when he drank. Although to be honest, he didn’t really care all that much right at the moment.
The crack of the seal of the tiny bottle echoed through the room, and Joshua realized that he had opened it. How had that happened? He had no memory of picking it up. No recollection of grasping the lid and turning.
The plan had been to go and get some ice. To place the bottles in between the frozen cubes of water, to get them all down to a chilly temperature.
The plan had been to wait for Bella to grow weary of her fight with her cone and to fall asleep. To savor each tiny bottle as he watched something inane on the flat screen television that sat opposite his bed.
The plan had been to get drunk with dignity.
But as Joshua looked at the open bottle before him, he recognized a fact that had somehow eluded him before. That plan had been nothing but bullshit.
He was a drunk, and he needed to drink.
The bottle reached his lips, and the liquid burned going down. It was the Red Label, his favorite, but he hardly tasted it. There was no enjoyment, only need.
By now, Bella had realized what was happening and was at his side. She butted him with her coned head, her whines amplified by the device she wore.
Too late, Bella. It was too, too late. For him. For her.
Then the next bottle was open. What was it? Did it matter?
Vodka. The tasteless burn seared his throat, settling into his gut with a familiar warmth. There was nothing pleasant about that heat.
Just desperation.
Another bottle. Another. And another. Punctuated by Bella’s increasing whines. Each plaintive cry from his beloved dog was a cut to his soul, but he kept going, hating himself with every drop that passed by his lips.
They were gone. All the tiny little bottles lined up on the counter, a testament to his drinking tolerance. Because it wasn’t enough.
Joshua’s mind was still clear. The sights and sounds of Bella’s injury still bright and precise in his thoughts.
But they weren’t only of Bella.
No. The sounds were those of his beautiful daughter. Her screams of rage. Of pain. The moment in which the bullet struck her. The bullet fired from Agent Cooper’s gun. It wasn’t Bella’s injury that he was reliving. It was his daughter’s death.
More. He needed more.
The blissful haze, the deadening of feeling and of thought… that hadn’t been achieved. Not yet.
There might not be enough alcohol in the entire world to wash away this pain permanently. But he knew if he drank enough, he’d pass out. Or die of alcohol poisoning. Either outcome was acceptable to him right now.
Maybe he could call down to the front desk. Make up some story about the minibar not being stocked. No, wait… he could say that the room had been left open. That it was open when he got there. He could pretend that someone else had broken in and taken the alcohol.
And then maybe they would restock it.
He grabbed up a
ll of the tiny little bottles, looking for a place to hide them. They were surprisingly difficult to grasp. Probably because they were so small, and he was so tired from the events of the day. That had to be it.
But where could he hide the bottles? He didn’t want housekeeping to find them and realize that he was lying. That he was nothing more than a pathetic drunk.
Not the trash can. That was out in the open. It was the first place they’d check.
The dresser? That was too obvious, though. If they were suspicious, they would go there straightaway after looking in the trash cans.
The tank of the toilet was always a good bet, but Joshua knew from experience that hotel toilets weren’t that easy. There wasn’t an easy way to access that hiding spot.
His luggage. They wouldn’t search his luggage, would they? Especially not if he hid them underneath his underwear. They wouldn’t dare.
He zipped open his bag, sorting through his clothes. Tossing the bottles inside, he did what he could to cover them over. Put each one in a sock to keep them from clattering together.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice called out to him, trying to get his attention. It spoke of his insanity, about how far gone he was right now. It told him to reach out to those around him.
He ignored it.
Staggering toward the phone, he tried to plan out the phrases that would convince housekeeping to bring him more of his precious painkiller. They shouldn’t fight him on this. It wasn’t any of their business what he did in the privacy of his own hotel room.
But as he picked up the receiver to dial the front desk, he heard a sound at the door of his room. The sound of a quiet knock, followed by another after a long beat.
A louder, more insistent rapping, and a muted “Joshua” called out through the thick wood. Agent Cooper’s voice.
The last person in the world that Joshua wanted to see right now.
The murmur of her voice continued, the words now indistinct. She was talking to someone. Was she talking to her new girlfriend? Was Reggie out there in the hall with her? They were probably talking about him. That would make perfect sense.
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