She dumped her purse by the nightstand, then took her weapon from her belt. She was about to put it in the drawer, as she usually did, but set it down on the nightstand instead. Then she grabbed a pair of shorts and a T-shirt from her dresser and started getting undressed.
Daniel looked around the living room. There was a time when Jennifer’s Grandma’s living room had been as familiar as his own. He and Jen hadn’t spent an awful lot of time apart, especially those last several months, after he’d given her the engagement ring. The ring that was at his house now, in a cigar box full of pictures that he didn’t look at much, either.
Even though patrolmen didn’t make much money, and his budget was frequently tight, he’d bought Susan a different ring when he’d proposed to her. He’d thought about giving her Jen’s ring, but only for a moment. It would have been disrespectful to Susan, but it had felt even more disrespectful to Jen. No, not to Jen; to him and Jen, to what they had had and planned. Although, by that time, he had not only stopped expecting Jen to come back, he had also stopped wanting her to.
He wasn’t saving the ring for her. He wasn’t saving it for anything, and probably should take it to Carter’s Jewelry and sell it back to them. It had been the kind of ring that a high school senior pulling extra hours could afford: nice, but not impressive. It wouldn’t bring much, but it wasn’t doing him any good sitting in the bottom drawer of his dresser.
He saw the TV Guide sitting on the coffee table, and bent to pick it up, just for something to do. He felt awkward and unsure, a stranger but not a stranger. Belonging but not. It was when he bent over the table that he heard it.
He knew that creak intimately. He’d forgotten he knew it until this morning, when he’d gone into Grandma’s room to check the windows, and had stepped on the loose plank just inside her door. He had smiled this morning, remembering all the times he and Jen had stopped making out, had hurriedly straightened out their clothes, because they’d heard that creak. He wasn’t smiling now.
He hesitated only the barest moment, bent over the table. He glanced over at the door without lifting his head, as he picked up the TV Guide. The door was cracked open. It hadn’t been this morning. He distinctly remembered shutting it when he’d walked back out.
He straightened up, and opened the TV Guide, looked down at the listings for two days ago. His weapon was in the kitchen, a good forty feet away, and past Grandma’s door. Jen was in her bedroom, changing. Her weapon was with her, or already in her nightstand drawer. Her room was only about ten feet closer than the kitchen, but it was the opposite way.
It was possible the person in that bedroom was unarmed, but not very likely. He couldn’t see a reasonably intelligent person lying in wait for a cop in her own house without having a gun.
He was about to call to her about watching some TV, to try to casually walk to her room with the TV Guide in his hand, when he heard her coming down the short hallway. He turned his back to Grandma’s door, and looked at Jen as she came back into the room in shorts and a T-shirt.
Daniel was standing there with the open TV Guide in his hands when Jen walked back into the living room. TV would probably be good. They were stuck alone together, and neither one of them seemed to know how to act, what to say, how to be casual friends.
“You want to watch some TV?” she asked. “I think The Alamo’s on tonight. Do you still like westerns?”
He had a weird look on his face as she approached him. He dropped the TV Guide back on the table, then reached out and took her hand. It startled her.
“I don’t want to watch TV,” he said quietly.
“Okay,” Jen said, hesitantly.
He gently pulled her toward him. The look in his eyes was intense, urgent. It scared her a little, and yet it didn’t. She felt a swirl of thrill in the pit of her stomach.
“Let’s go to your room,” he said soothingly.
“What?” she asked, in barely a whisper.
He reached up and his hand brushed a bit of hair from the side of her face. Then he dropped her hand and cupped her face in both hands, the way he used to do, a long time ago.
“I want to make love to you,” he said.
Jennifer didn’t have time to react. Her mouth opened just a little, to ask him what he was doing, when he bent and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, sweet, and so familiar that she felt her eyes warm, felt tears getting ready to form. She forced them back, and had just started to return his kiss when he lifted his face from hers, his eyes searching hers, for something. Permission? Reaction?
“It’ll be just like the first time, all over again,” he said intently, and suddenly her chest filled with ice.
He bent his head again, touched his lips to her temples once, twice, then nuzzled her ear.
“Someone’s in Grandma’s room,” he whispered in her ear.
It felt wrong. It felt wrong and unkind, but he didn’t know what the hell else he could do. He was relieved to see her eyes widen just a bit, for just an instant. She understood.
“Okay,” she said. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
He took her hand again and nodded, and she led him to the bedroom. Her heart was still pounding, but for an entirely different reason. Someone was in the house, and they had just turned their backs to him. It was an incredible effort to walk casually to her room, rather than run.
She could hear her blood pounding in her ears as she pulled Daniel into her room. Her eyes went immediately to her weapon sitting on the nightstand, and she looked over her shoulder. Daniel nodded at her.
She stepped quickly, silent in her bare feet, to the nightstand and carefully picked up her weapon. She couldn’t hear anything from beyond her door. She turned around to face Daniel, who was still in the middle of the room, watching the door. He looked over at her.
She was grateful now for the double action of the Chief’s. The hammer would have been as loud as a gunshot itself in the thick silence that surrounded them. She brought the revolver up to her midriff, her thumb trembling just a bit against the side. From where she was, she was a sitting duck, but could only see about three feet of the hallway wall across from her door. She wasn’t sure who would see whom first.
She glanced at the half-open bedroom door, then looked at him as she took a step forward. When she had his eye, she glanced at and nodded slightly toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at her, then back at her. Then he just barely shook his head.
He stepped over to her silently, then reached out and pulled her almost against him, his back placed squarely and openly toward the door. She pulled her weapon from between them and let her hand fall down and slightly behind her right thigh.
She couldn’t help it, didn’t know where it came from, the tear that suddenly slid onto her cheek.
“You know I love you, Jen,” Daniel said, slightly louder than he might have, but not so loudly as to sound unnatural.
“I love you, too,” she said, her throat thick. She wrapped her left arm around him, pressed her palm against his back, which was moist and warm.
He had her face in one hand, and he threaded his fingers through her hair again. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Then he bent his head and kissed the left side of her neck, giving her a clear view of her bedroom door from the right. They stood there for minutes, or seconds, Daniel’s heart pounding against her shoulder, her eyes glued to what she could see of the hallway.
Daniel rested his face against hers, his breaths warm and slow against her cheek. She could feel his heart pounding against her shoulder.
Her breathing slowed, and it seemed to take half an hour for her next heartbeart, and another half hour still before she saw the shadow.
She pressed her hand into Daniel’s back, and felt him tense from the ground up. To her, it seemed like she raised her weapon so slowly, but her gun arm straightened out just as hi
s arm appeared ahead of him in the doorway, gun raised. She waited until his body began to follow his arm, then she shot Frank Hamilton in the chest.
Daniel pushed her away and spun around as Hamilton was falling against the wall opposite her door. Jennifer recovered her footing as Daniel took two running steps toward Hamilton and was on him.
Hamilton had only a loose hold on his weapon, and Daniel brought his arm down on the man’s wrist. The gun skittered on the floor between them, and Daniel grabbed Hamilton by the shoulders and pushed him down in Jennifer’s doorway. As Hamilton fell, Jennifer saw the blood blossoming just under his right shoulder.
Daniel was on Hamilton’s back, pulling his right arm behind him. Jennifer turned just enough to yank her cuffs from the gun belt hanging on her open closet door. She was moving to give them to Daniel when he snarled at Hamilton.
“You should have just stuck with the scary pictures,” he said.
Jennifer saw a flash of confusion on Hamilton’s face as she reached to hand Daniel her cuffs, and then Hamilton suddenly reared up and drove the back of his head into Daniel’s nose.
Daniel’s grip loosened, and Hamilton tossed him to the side as Jennifer raised her gun again. But he scrambled back out the doorway before she could get a clear shot, and she saw him sweep up his gun as he ran.
Daniel jumped up, blood pouring from his nose, and put a hand up as he spun around toward the door. “Stay here!” he yelled.
He ran out of the bedroom. Jennifer could hear Hamilton crashing into something in the living room.
She ran after them.
Daniel was several steps behind him when Hamilton cleared the hallway and turned left, headed for the front door. Daniel got to the end of the hallway as he heard the front door crash open, and he headed for the kitchen. He lost three precious seconds as he stopped by the kitchen chair, unsnapped his holster, and freed his weapon.
He heard bare feet pounding from behind him, and looked over his shoulder expecting Jennifer to run into the kitchen. Instead, he saw her back as she ran out the front door. He cursed, lost another two seconds unlocking the back door and jerking the slide lock back. The door slammed against the wall as he ran through it, around the porch, and across the yard.
He could hear Hamilton running through the woods at the side of the house. There was too much undergrowth to go through them quietly.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jennifer hit the woods from the driveway, and he pumped his legs harder. As his heart pounded in his throat and his own breath filled his ears, he saw her running down that alley the other day, saw her frown at him as she told him she could still outrun him.
He was about even with her, twenty or so yards to her left. He could hear Hamilton maybe twenty or thirty feet ahead of her. Enough of a head start to stop, turn, and take aim.
Then he heard her cry out, and hit the ground. His first instinct was to help her. His second was that she was safer with a broken ankle.
Jennifer slammed into the ground face first, her free hand underneath her, instinctively trying to break her fall. Her wrist screamed at her, and her shin was on fire from where it had connected with a huge old tree root.
It took a second for her to get her breath. She heard Daniel moving ahead of her, heard his footfalls in the leaves, and his loud breaths as he crashed through the underbrush.
She pushed herself up, took a couple of cautious steps that told her that her leg wasn’t hurt, then broke into a run again.
Hamilton had enough of a lead on Daniel. If it were her, she’d stop just long enough to turn around and wait, then blow him away. The thought made her suddenly nauseous, and she ran harder, her heart feeling like it would pound right out of her chest.
She heard more noise up ahead, new noise. Then she heard a man’s voice cry out, though she couldn’t tell whose it was or what they said.
Then she heard a shot, followed not one second later by two more shots in quick succession.
“Daniel!” she yelled without knowing she was going to. “Daniel!”
She heard another man’s voice, and was still trying to pick it out when she burst through a line of young oaks and into the barest of clearings.
Daniel was standing there, his chest rising and falling, his breaths loud and shallow. Hamilton was lying face down on the ground about ten feet in front of him, his gun still in his outstretched hand. Anthony, still in uniform, was rushing toward him, his gun trained on him. Just a few yards past Hamilton stood Ray, who was just lowering his weapon. Then Patterson came crashing through the trees from the left. He lowered his weapon as he saw Anthony check for Hamilton’s pulse.
Jennifer walked toward Daniel as Anthony looked up and shook his head at Ray. Ray slid his weapon back into his arm holster.
Daniel looked over at her, his face gleaming with perspiration in the setting sun. “You okay?”
She still hadn’t quite caught her breath. She nodded, then looked at Ray.
“Frank Hamilton,” Ray said quietly, looking at the man’s body. “I’ll just be damned.” He shook his head sadly.
Jennifer and Daniel walked over to the other men.
“What are you doing here?” Daniel asked.
“I thought maybe it would be a good idea to see if I could get a couple of off-duty volunteers.”
Jennifer looked at Anthony and smiled. He just nodded.
She and Daniel both looked at Patterson, and the blond officer holstered his weapon and then looked up at Jennifer and frowned. “What? I’ve got a mother, too.”
Inez and Jennifer stood side-by-side at the kitchen counter, Inez sautéing onions and garlic, Jennifer rubbing some salt and pepper into the steaks she and Daniel hadn’t eaten the other night.
“Hamilton’s sister told Ray that his wife left him for a black man,” Jennifer said quietly.
“Really?” Inez asked, looking up at her.
“Yeah, about a year before Jonah, Mom and Ned were killed.”
Inez shook her head. “Hate comes from all kinds of places,” she said. “All kinds of hurts.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him,” Jennifer said firmly.
“Oh, I don’t, either,” Inez said. “It just never stops surprising me, the reasons that people do things.”
Jennifer heard the front screen door open and then slap shut. Daniel coming back from loading his tool kit into his truck. He’d installed deadbolts on all three of her doors.
“Well, I wonder why the other guy did it,” Jennifer said. “Maybe we’ll get to ask him about that.”
That was one bad thing about Ray shooting Hamilton dead—though Hamilton had fired at Patterson first—nobody could ask him who he’d been with that day at the lake, or which one of them had strangled Jennifer’s mother. It would have been logical for her mother to open her door to one of the men who was investigating her son’s murder, but wouldn’t he have just gone to the driver’s side?
Hamilton was dead, and couldn’t tell them anything. But there had been two guns fired that day at the lake, two different calibers of bullet that ripped through her brother. Maybe the other shooter was gone. Maybe he was still here. She didn’t know.
The one thing she did think she knew, though, was that Hamilton hadn’t been the one to hang those pictures on her bedroom wall. She’d seen it in his face. Ray doubted her certainty, she knew. Ray was hoping Hamilton was the only one of the two that had still been around, though he didn’t say as much.
“I’m gonna head out,” Daniel said behind her.
Jennifer and Inez both turned.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?” Jennifer asked, but she knew he’d say no again. Things had been even more awkward between them the last two days.
“Thanks, but I’m just gonna go home and get some rest,” he said. He paused for a second. “Could I talk to you for a minute, though?
“Sure,” Jennifer said, a twist of dread running through her stomach. They were going to have a talk. “Let me just wash my hands.”
Daniel nodded distractedly. “See you later, Inez.”
“See ya, Daniel.”
He went back out of the kitchen, and Jennifer turned on the faucet, squeezed some dish soap into her hands.
“Don’t be so scared,” Inez said softly, not looking at her.
“I’m not scared,” Jennifer lied.
“Sure, you are. You’re still in love with him, and that’s scary.”
Jennifer swallowed and rubbed at her hands underneath the running water. “I was too old to stay in love with an eighteen-year-old boy,” she said sadly.
She turned off the water and rubbed her hands on her butt. “But I think I fell in love with the man, and that’s even scarier.”
She walked out of the kitchen without waiting to hear what Inez had to say about that.
Daniel was standing on the front porch, his hands on the rail, looking out at the yard. He looked over his shoulder as she came through the screen door and let it shut behind her. She went to stand beside him, leaned her hip on the post.
“You need a dog,” he said.
“I don’t want a dog.”
“You probably don’t want deadbolts to lose the keys to, either, but there you go,” he answered.
“I won’t lose them.”
He rolled his eyes. He’d known her most of her life. “I have an extra set for when you do.”
They were quiet for a minute. Daniel pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket, turned it around a few times, then put it back and looked at her.
“I’m sorry. For the way I did that, the other day.”
Jennifer just looked at him. She didn’t know what to say to that, even though she’d been expecting to hear it, or something like it.
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