by Tracy Sharp
“Hey girl.” Callahan stroked Pango’s head before reaching in for the bags. There were several.
“Did you buy up the entire store?”
“Pretty much,” He smiled. “I want her to be comfortable.”
He’d even gotten her a giant dog bed.
“You deserve a treat.” I kissed him and gave him a devilish smile.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I do.”
I searched the bags for bowls. “Cal, did you forget bowls for her?”
He stopped taking items from bags and turned to me. “You still have Buddy’s dog dishes. I thought you wouldn’t mind if Pango used those. Is that okay?”
I’d forgotten about Buddy’s dishes. I had other things she could use, too. Leashes and some dog toys that I hadn’t had a chance to open for him before he’d gotten sick. I’d always had plenty of spares since he’d torn through them pretty quickly.
“Absolutely. I’m sure Buddy wouldn’t mind.” I went into the back bathroom and got Buddy’s giant aluminum food dish and water set up. The water dish was a plastic bowl with a gallon water jug attached. I felt a lump rise in my throat holding them again.
“I miss you, Baby,” I whispered.
Callahan poured Pango a generous bowl of food while I got her water ready. We got her fed and set up, and then I showed her where her bed was. She did a slow circle on the bed, and then lay down. She was tired, but wouldn’t close her eyes until we’d settled down ourselves.
I took Callahan by the hand and led him, slowly and favoring my feet, upstairs to the bedroom. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, Leah, so much.” He pulled me into a tight hug.
I closed my eyes and pressed my face against his neck, breathing in his scent. Callahan always smelled woodsy and spicy at the same time. He smelled delicious.
I pulled away and we undressed, leaving our clothes on the floor. I climbed in between the sheets, luxuriating in the feeling of the warm, soft flannel against my skin. I’d taken sleeping in a soft, warm bed for granted. It was amazing how much you could miss simple things.
He kissed me like he hadn’t seen me in months. I kissed him like I’d been afraid I would never see him again, moving my hands over his back, feeling the muscles under his skin. I breathed him in deeply, unable to feel close enough to him.
We made love slowly, not breaking the kiss, our tongues twirling over each other. I brought my hands up and cupped his face, looking into his eyes. I wanted him to feel how much I loved him, to see it there in my gaze. I’d never given that to him before. It was as if I hadn’t had it to give, and suddenly here it was. I felt every movement as if it were new, yet Callahan and I knew each other so well it was like breathing for us. We knew every inch of one another, and we were always in perfect sync. It was a language we spoke without saying a word, and he felt so good that I never wanted the moment to end. I didn’t want to think about anything t except him and how perfect life was right then.
At that moment, I didn’t want for a single thing. Everything was as it should be.
But it didn’t last.
* * *
Morning came mercilessly quickly, and once again, I felt cold. The air was chilled, the temperature outside having dropped to the low teens the night before. They had been calling for it, but I hadn’t wanted to think about it. I’d felt so cold when I was at the compound, cold enough for a lifetime.
But here I was, pulling myself out of bed in the murky light of early morning, reaching for the phone to silence the loud trilling that had sliced through the slumbering silence. I didn’t want to leave Callahan’s warmth. I’d been curled up to his naked back, and I felt his absence profoundly as I pulled away from him and the frigid air found me.
“Yes.” My voice was still thick with sleep.
“Leah.” It was Jack. There it was again, the tight edge to his voice that I’d grown to know over the years as the harbinger of terrible news.
I closed my eyes and hung my head. I didn’t have the energy for it, whatever it was. “Jack. Please.”
“I’m sorry.”
His heavy sigh went through me. It was bad. I stared at the gloom through the window. “Tell me.”
“They found one of the women. Lucas just called me.” His voice was low and held a note of defeat.
“No.” I moved a hand over my eyes and squeezed them shut. I felt Callahan move behind me, and a hand caressed my arm, the warmth of his skin unable to reach me now.
Jack’s voice came over the line. “Look, I’ll go this alone if you’re really not up to it. Seriously, Kicks. Just say the word.”
I said nothing for a long moment, considered it. “No. I’m coming. Where are you?”
“Raven’s Hill.”
“Okay. Give me ten minutes.”
“Leah, it’s really icy. Do you want me to come and get you?”
“No, I’ll be okay. I’ll drive slowly.” My eyes were still closed, as if by keeping them closed I could pretend that this was all part of a terrible dream.
“I’m coming with you,” Callahan said, moving away from me and climbing out of bed.
I felt a strange combination of relief and trepidation fall over me. I wanted Callahan near me, but I didn’t want him to see what we were about to see. I didn’t want those images to be burned in his memory for life, because of me. Just one more bad memory attached to us. “Callahan’s coming. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Sit tight.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Leah?”
“Yeah.”
“This is bad.” He was silent for a beat. “This is really bad.”
* * *
It was five-fifty-seven. I pulled on some jeans and a warm fleecy top, and ran a brush through my tangled hair. I looked like hell and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon. My feet were still sore from my ordeal in the frosty woods with two of Gabriel’s finest, but they felt considerably better. I’m a quick healer, and I kept my feet gauzed so that I wouldn’t feel much pain. The hospital had given me some wonderful painkillers, too. And that made life just a little bit better.
Pango lay in the hallway outside our bedroom. She had guarded the door. I doubted she’d do anything differently from here on out. She’d sleep on the dog bed during the day, but she’d guard the bedroom door at night. There was no point in arguing with her. It was just the way things were going to be from here on out.
I poured some food into her bowl and patted her head before we left. I could hear the freezing rain battering the windows and I shivered. Callahan had used my remote car starter to blast heat in the car and melt the ice on the windows. That had been ten minutes earlier. We still had to scrape the hell out of the windows to get them clear enough to be able to see through.
There was a layer of ice over everything. Trees were coated, their branches hanging low, being pulled down by the weight of the ice. Power lines were covered in ice, and I knew that it would be a miracle if we didn’t lose power. The last time we’d had an ice storm like this it had shut down everything, leaving thousands without power in the Northeast.
We drove at a snail’s pace, which was fine with me, since I wasn’t in a rush to see what horror was awaiting me. Lucas had police connections, and since we were working the case of one of the missing women, there was a good chance that what was awaiting me was the body of Alexia Clemmons.
The freezing rain let up, turning into a steady pattering of pure, wet rain in the warming air. I hoped to hell it didn’t freeze again. The roads were like a skating rink, with vehicles off the side of the road every hundred or so feet, it seemed.
When we finally got to Raven’s Hill, there were several cop cars and rescue vehicles lining the road on both sides. The road was blocked, but Lucas had called us, so we were allowed to drive through.
The sky was lightening from charcoal to a slate grey as the sky wept.
* * *
We didn’t go right up to the cri
me scene, but we could see her clearly from where we stood. Several crime scene experts moved around her, not quite sure what to do with her. She was frozen, encased in ice. She lay with her arms at her sides, and even with the ice glistening from her we could see the large gash in her stomach. Her face was turned up toward the sky, mouth and eyes open, frozen in silent horror.
We wouldn’t know for certain right away but I knew this wasn’t Alexia. This was the red haired woman, Colleen Ashburn. She’d gone missing two months ago, when she was seven months pregnant. Time of death would take a while to discover. They would have to thaw her out before they could gather any evidence from her. It was almost certain that the rain had washed most, if not all of the evidence, off of her.
I moved a hand over my own abdomen, unable to fathom the barbarity of what was done to her. Her death had been brutal. Somebody had taken her baby from her. Hadn’t cared that she was a human being, only that she was an incubator for an infant they’d wanted. I couldn’t believe my eyes. As I looked at her, a gnawing pain began eating a hole in my chest.
“Jack.” I could hear the moan in my voice, and my throat tightened over it.
“I know,” he said.
Callahan turned away, doing a slow circle on the road, his head tilted up to the sky. This was why he didn’t want me involved in the work that I do. This was exactly the reason why. I’d become tainted with it. Every time I was involved in a horrible case, I took part of it away with me forever. Wore it over me like a dark cloak. He already had so many dark memories attached to me from the last couple of years, and he would never be able to look at me without seeing this woman from here on out. This woman was one more memory for us to share. I wondered just how much more of this he could take.
How much more could I take?
But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t give it up. As abhorrent as this crime was, I couldn’t turn away from Colleen. She had nobody at this moment except those of us who were surrounding her. She’d died; terrified for herself and her baby, and nobody had been there to help her then.
By Christ, I was going to do my best to help her now.
Chapter Eight
Callahan left me.
I didn’t blame him. He didn’t wait for me to come back from the slowly thawing field before he got into my car and drove off. He didn’t call me. He didn’t need to. What could he possibly say? It had all been said before, and this time was worse, just so much worse. The absolute worst any of us had ever seen.
I wondered if he’d have his bags packed when I got home.
“Who would do this?” I was speaking to nobody in particular.
“One sick son-of-a-bitch,” Jack said beside me. He placed a hand on my back. His touch always steadied me. We’d been there for each other since we were teens. He was the one person I could trust would never abandon me, while I pushed every single person I ever loved away, Jack was always there.
Lucas came walking over, long, grey coat billowing around his legs. He shook his head, eyebrows pinched together. His mouth was turned down as he spoke. “It’s horrendous.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty horrific.”
“Can we get out of here, please?” I couldn’t stay there another second. There was nothing we could do for her there, and I could feel the weight of her death all around me in that frozen field.
We headed to our office, stopping at the drive-thru to get coffee on the way. I ordered a large, black. Something with bite that I could wrap my hands around, keep close to me. Lucas followed close behind us.
The office was warm. We had the heat on a timer, and six a.m. had come and gone, giving the furnace plenty of time to reach seventy degrees. I like seventy-two. Jack likes sixty-eight. We compromise and I wear a fleece I keep there. I threw it on now and curled into my favorite chair.
Jack stood in front of the white board, looking at his jotted notes. “Does this seem like Gabriel to you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He turned to look at me. “You spent some time with him, Kicks. What does your gut tell you?”
I felt sick deep in my soul, and just wanted to crawl into a ball and cry, but it wasn’t my style. I looked at Lucas, who was leaning against Jack’s desk, watching me. Those grey eyes waiting for an answer. “My gut tells me that this isn’t his style.”
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Why not?”
“Too messy for him, he’s cruel but not vicious in that way. Not like this.” I thought of Gabriel, his face more pretty than handsome. “He’s more into deception and manipulation, he’d wait until she’d given birth and then steal the baby in the night, telling the mother that the baby had died. If he wanted somebody dead, he’d just have them shot.”
“I think you’re right,” Lucas said. “This is the work of somebody who is desperate for a baby, willing to do anything to obtain one. The mother is just a method of getting a newborn. And the psychiatric literature suggests that the taking of the baby from the womb is fulfilling the perpetrator’s fantasy of giving birth herself.”
“So it’s a woman,” Jack said.
“In all of the cases of murder by c-section, women are the perpetrators of the crime, yes.” Lucas slowly turned his large paper coffee cup in his hands. “That doesn’t mean that a man isn’t involved. But usually in this kind of crime, the perpetrator is a woman acting alone.”
“Desperate measures,” I said. “She might’ve tried to take a baby before, right? What would she have done before to get her hands on an infant?”
“She likely would’ve tried abducting an infant. I’ll look into local infant abductions over the last few years.” Lucas leaned forward, slowly pushed himself from the desk. “But this could be our woman advertising to sell baby clothes.”
My cell phone rang. I looked at the number. It was Garrett Clemmons.
“Mr. Clemmons,” I said.
“Ms. Ryan.” His voice sounded tight and edgy. “Was that my wife out in that field this morning?” His tone went up on the last few words, panic barely contained.
I frowned. His fear was real. He really didn’t know if it was his wife that had been found dead. “We don’t know for sure. The police contacted you? Is that how you knew about the woman in the field?” I couldn’t say ‘dead body.’ I just couldn’t do it. It seemed to take away from Colleen as a person. She had been a person, a happy person, preparing to have a baby.
“Yes. They said they would call me if they needed me to identify the remains.” There was a quiver to his voice that went right through me.
As much of a dick this guy was, I couldn’t prolong his torture. “Dr. Clemmons, I don’t think it was Alexia.”
“You don’t.” There was a note of urgency in his tone now and a little hope.
“No, I don’t. I’m fairly certain that she didn’t have dark hair.”
“Okay,” he said, “Okay.”
“Sit tight, okay? Wait for the police to contact you again.”
“Thank you.” He disconnected.
I sighed. “Well, there goes one suspect in the disappearance of Alexia Clemmons.”
Jack raised his eyebrows.
I lifted a hand and dropped it back into my lap. “I don’t think the Dr. did it.”
“So you mean he really does think she was having an affair? He wasn’t making that shit up just to bash her?” Jack said.
“Maybe. He might’ve been making it up to justify his affairs. I don’t know. But he just sounded pretty upset that that woman out there in the field could be his wife.”
“Well, somebody made her disappear,” Jack said.
“Yes, and she hasn’t been found yet.” Lucas looked at the whiteboard, his eyes squinting.
Jack stood. “I have to go talk to Noel. Give her the news that her sister has been taken somewhere by Gabriel and we have no idea where they are. Jesus. Maybe she has an idea where he’d take them.”
“I’ll stay,” I said.
Lucas glanced at me. “I’ll stay with y
ou.”
It’s what I was both afraid of and hoping he’d say.
Jack glanced at me, then at Lucas. Finally he dipped his head, grabbed up his brown leather jacket, and headed for the door, waving a hand behind him as he went. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Okay.” Lucas and I said it at the same time.
If I’d had trouble concentrating a few minutes ago, I really had become stupid by now. I could smell the musky scent of his aftershave from where I sat in my chair. I watched his toned back, his long legs, and his ass as he looked the white board over.
You could cut the sexual tension between us with a knife. I got up from my chair and walked over to the white board, standing beside him. Both of us looked at the board, and I was sure neither of us was really seeing what was on it.
This thing between us, this thick, sexual desire, was like a freight train. What happened next was inevitable.
I didn’t want to move away from him, but I knew that if I didn’t, we’d end up kissing. If I stood there one second longer, long enough for him to look at me, then we’d each acknowledge how much we wanted the other. In just that look, a half second before we moved together, closing the space and meeting each other’s lips.
I waited that second.
It took about thirty seconds before our clothes started falling. Another fifteen before we were on the floor. I felt the roughness of the carpet against the bare skin of my back and my ass. Our kisses were urgent and hungry, almost panicked. Neither of us said a single word.
I held him close to me, wanting him crushing against me. I needed the sensation, all of it, the smell, touch, the sound of his ragged breathing in my ear. I moved my hands over him and pulled him closer, wanting him to melt into me. The sound of my moaning was far away, like it was coming from somebody else. This was my drink. My drug. My escape. Sex with Lucas was a numbing agent. For me, better than anything else for making me feel good and to forget, if only for a moment.