Rushing into the walk in wardrobe, she slid open the drawers as quietly as possible before slipping on the first bra and underwear she laid hands on - a favorite black tee shirt, and black jeans. Her Doc Martens had been left off the shelf from her drunken evening out earlier in the week, and Mallory shoved her feet into them, not bothering with the laces.
She moved towards the bed silently now, not wanting to wake Dawn. The blankets had twisted around the young woman’s form as she tossed and turned in the night. Resolving herself to driving to the chemist alone, and then to the grocer’s for breakfast, Mallory straightened the outermost layer of blankets, and tucked it in gently around Dawn’s shoulders.
Dawn had been particularly angry last night when Mallory accused her of acting like a teenager. As soon as the words had flown out from her mouth, she knew that they had been intensely hurtful, and wished to take back the harsh words more than anything they’d hurled at one another. In return, the inconsolable Dawn had called Mallory a controlling tyrant. The insult had cut deep.
However mature Dawn acted on occasion, it was unfair to assume that the eighteen year old would never fly off the handle, or act irrationally. Hell, even she acted rashly at twenty-nine, sometimes only to revel in the rare feeling of freedom.
An apology would come later, but in the meantime, Mallory had an idea. She sat down at the writing desk near the bed, and began to fold a sheet of paper methodically. The tip of her tongue slipped through the front of her teeth in concentration as she did so; it had been over a decade since she’d done something like this, and the note inside was usually one of those adorably vomit-inducing ‘Yes or No’ questions.
Once satisfied with her folding, she wrote her thoughts as quickly as possible:
Dawn,
Please ~ don’t go anywhere.
I will be home soon . . . I’ve only just gone to the grocer.
Be safe. Don’t open the door for anyone. I have my keys.
Stay.
Mal
Feeling very much a teenager again, Mallory folded the note into a heart, and deposited it on the empty pillow next to Dawn’s head before walking out. In her haste, she didn’t realize that she’d forgotten her phone on the nightstand, where it had laid ever since Dawn’s tense call with Isla ended.
She crept down the stairs to grab her purse and keys from the hanger near the door. Once outside, Mallory turned around to pull the front door tightly against the jamb before locking both the bottom lock and the deadbolt with her keys. She turned around to walk to the car, but stopped short and swung back towards the door again.
Yanking on the handle and wiggling the door, it still wasn’t good enough. Her hands unlocked and locked the door again before she pulled on the handle with all of her might. When it didn’t budge, a comforted sigh escaped her lips.
At last, she tossed her purse into the blue Jag and started the car. As she wrenched the wheel towards the road, Mallory’s foot smashed down on the accelerator. The Jag’s wheels squealed, throwing gravel as the car sped down the drive and towards the highway.
_____________________________________
Dawn woke to the pinging noise of gravel hitting the cottage’s outer walls, just as angry as when she’d finally fallen asleep at 4:29 AM. Mallory had outlasted her, but she didn't know for how long. Even that pissed her off.
She spotted something on Mallory’s unused pillow - one of those stupid, cutesy folded notes. Grabbing it with one hand while rubbing at her eyes with the other, she fully intended to throw it across the room like the bratty teenager she’d been accused of being last night.
As her arm wound up to toss the note, her ears registered two things: The cottage was eerily quiet, and Mallory had left her phone on the nightstand. It was vibrating a most annoying rhythm against the wood. Dawn snatched it up.
The iPhone blinked accusingly at her. ‘3 Missed Calls - 1 New Message from E. Sørensen.’
Feeling quite naughty, she grinned and tapped in the passcode that she’d seen Mallory enter the night before; 2-0-0-4. She took the phone with her as she padded out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
Once she’d figured out that the car was missing and that Mallory had left the cottage, Dawn answered Miss Sørensen’s text wondering why “Mallie” hadn’t picked up her “damn phone.” Giggling madly when her former teacher inquired as to whom was texting, she pulled up the Photo app, snapped a picture of her bedraggled form, and sent it. Let Miss Sørensen think what she wanted.
Moments later, the phone rang in her hand. Miss Sørensen was calling... again.
Dawn’s eyebrow rose in mischievousness as she slid the Answer toggle. “Mallory Moore’s phone, Dawn speaking,” she announced sarcastically as the call connected.
“Er du gal, du lille krabaten?!” came the shrill reply.
Pulling the phone away from her ear, Dawn winced and put the call on speaker - just in case of a repeat performance. “Uhm, Miss Sørensen? English?”
An incensed huff came from the phone as Miss Sørensen replied. “I said – Have you gone completely nuts, you little rascal? What are you doing with Miss Moore’s phone, and where is she? Where are you?”
Still angry at Mallory for the night before, Dawn glowered and crossed her arms at the iPhone as it lay on the kitchen counter top. “Mallie isn’t here right now, I told you. I’m at the cottage, and I’m not crazy… I’m a teenager.”
Elisabeth sighed in frustration, but drawled her voice as if she knew precisely what the issue was. “Yes, Dawn. You are a teenager.” Pausing to tell a woman in the background whom she was talking to, she came back to the conversation at hand. “Did you two fight?”
Emotions getting the better of her at Miss Sørensen’s instant understanding and assumption, Dawn’s eyes watered and her lip trembled. “Y-yes,” she cried. “It was awful, Miss Sørensen! My sister called from London saying that my father was sending her to Scotland because I was disobeying him, and Mallory forbade me from going to get her. She said I wasn’t thinking properly, that I’d bring the police down on our heads if I went and got Isla!”
Hiccuping and wiping at her eyes, she continued her ramble. “She said I was acting like a teenager! I don’t care, Miss Sørensen! I just want my sister!”
With a groan, she remembered the horrible, awful things she’d said to Mallory. “She was so mean. I was so mean.”
“Elisabeth,” was the quiet answer. Another sigh, this one sad.
“W-what?” Dawn sniffed, not understanding.
“Just call me Elisabeth. I’m your um… Mallie’s best friend, and if you want to keep her, there are some things you have got to understand, Dawn. I’ve known Mallie for nine years. Nine long years, and even I don’t pretend to know how to map out the entire iceberg that is Mallory Moore poking her head out from the ocean.”
After asking someone named Claudia to get her a cup of coffee, Elisabeth went on. “Sit down, lille. She’d kill me if she knew I was telling you this, but I don’t see other way. It was 2004, and I was attending American University in Washington D.C. on international scholarship. I didn’t have a room mate, and the flats there are so expensive…”
_____________________________________
Mallory sat in the chemists’ waiting area, her legs crossing and uncrossing in agitation. Somehow, she’d let her script lapse. While the fine chemist had offered to call her doctor for more and rush it through, it didn’t make the wait any less unbearable.
She glanced at her watch to grit her teeth at the time: 12:41PM. Dawn must be out of her mind with worry by now, having no way of contacting her because she’d forgotten her phone at home. Either that, or she’d hopped a train back to London. Perhaps both.
Glaring at the grocery bags at her feet, she could almost imagine the pints of Death by Chocolate ice cream melting into slop. Hopefully, the freezer would salvage it, but she wanted it now.
Her back complained to be stretched, so she stood up, her fingertips drumming against her sides in
impatience. Meeting the eye of the clerk, she tried to smile. It probably came out as more of a grimace. “Do you still sell cigs here?”
The young man behind the counter smiled back and shook his head slowly. “Not since a few years back. We have e-cigarettes though, if you want to quit. Smoking is bad for you, you know. A pretty lady such as yourself…”
Irritated by the offer and his insinuation, Mallory interrupted him. “What are you, sixteen? Who made you a doctor?”
The clerk scurried back behind the shelves of medicines in fear.
“Sorry!” she called at him, not really meaning it. Beyond irritated now, she sat back down to close her eyes. The noise of papers shuffling and pills being sorted assaulted her ears, but she did her best to ignore it.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. The sound of heavy boots walking towards the waiting area perked her ears.
The squeak of leather against laces as the boots bent with the wearer’s foot. She took a deep breath, and refused to acknowledge the dread clawing at her gut.
Clank, clink, clank. Jangle, clank. A metal chain dangling.
Shooting out of the chair like a rocket, Mallory’s eyes searched the immediate area. She glared fiercely in the direction of the noise, her fists balled.
“Jesus Christ, lady! What the hell?!” a boy yelped, and jumped back. He was just one of those punk-loving, chain-wallet wearing kids; the kind that stapled old ‘The Misfits’ and ‘Sex Pistols’ patches on their ripped denim vests.
Forcing her glare into a mask of calm, Mallory’s nostrils flaring still gave her distress away. “You’re… very,” she stammered, trying to find the words. “Noisy.”
The boy rolled his eyes at her, turning his back to peruse the selection of chewing gum.
At long last, the chemist walked rapidly towards the counter, waving a white paper bag.
“Miss Moore? Miss Moore… All done, now. Please get some rest,” he counseled her. “Those kids can get on your last nerve, eh? I know! Oh boy, do I... have kids of my own...”
Mallory snatched the bag from him, paying what was due. The chemist's words morphed into a monotone drone as she shut him out. She refused to look at the pitying man, and left the store as quickly as her legs would carry her.
_____________________________________
Dawn jumped out of the lounge chair in the library nook at the sound of the Jag pulling up the drive. She had learned a lot from Elisabeth during their two-hour chat, stolen time during a lull in family time in Oslo. Knowing so much more about Mallory made Dawn nervous, but also ecstatic. She could barely contain herself from doing a happy dance in the foyer.
Elisabeth and Mallory had lived together in Washington D.C. while completing the last bit of undergraduate and then master’s degrees. Then. Elisabeth followed Mallory to England to take the vacant spot available in the Physical Education department at St. Augusta’s, while her friend took her post as teacher of Latin. Mallory had apparently mellowed a lot during their years as friends.
“Geez, Dawn - when I met her for coffee to go over the rental agreement between us, I think she smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. Five locks on the loft door, and a strict promise never to wake her up without announcing myself first, and loudly. I made the mistake of doing it once, and she nearly tore me a new one,” Elisabeth had laughed.
“You have it easy, kiddo. Those cashmere sweaters and khaki waistcoats? Bah. You and I both know – that’s not the real Mallie.”
Dawn couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous at the history between the two, especially knowing how Elisabeth had thrown herself at Mallory during the staff’s last Christmas party. No matter how much the Physical Education teacher assured her that they were just friends, and how much she loved her now-fiancée Claudia, the sting bit a little at her heart. The congratulations Dawn had given regarding the recent proposal in Oslo had been heartfelt, though.
While waiting the long hours for Mallory to come home, she started to feel horribly insensitive for the fight. In Dawn’s pocket was the note that Mallory left for her. It had been so lovingly written, begging her to stay. She had gone to retrieve it from the bedroom while speaking on the phone.
Elisabeth’s parting words replayed in her mind. “She just wants to protect you, beyond all her better judgment to let you be a dumb kid and make your own mistakes. She really loves you, Dawn. Please don’t mess this up for her... she would lose everything.”
When Mallory finally unlocked the front door and entered the cottage, Dawn’s entire being shook with anticipation.
Launching herself against Mallory, she peppered kisses all over the woman’s sharp cheekbones and plump lips. “I’m… sorry. I’m. So. Sorry,” she spoke between each kiss. “I didn’t mean to call you names!”
Grocery bags spilled onto the foyer floor.
Beneath Dawn’s urgent embrace, Mallory melted. “I didn’t mean to negate your feelings as immature,” she whispered, squeezing Dawn for good measure. “There are ways we can help Isla, but we have to go about it the right way, do you understand me?”
“Yes! Yes!” Dawn squealed, hopping up and down. She rose on her tiptoes to pull Mallory into a delighted kiss, which her lover turned around and deepened into a blisteringly lustful one.
Pulling away to gasp for breath, Dawn giggled as she felt fingers dance up the inside of her shirt to her ribs.
“Are you particularly fond of this tee shirt?” Mallory mumbled, pressing kiss after kiss onto Dawn’s neck before nipping her teeth at a tender earlobe.
“N-no… But the groceries,” Dawn protested.
Her t-shirt was torn halfway up her stomach before she could get out another word. Mallory lifted her from beneath her rear, and all Dawn could do from falling was wrap her legs around surprisingly jean-clad hips.
“Screw the groceries, the ice cream’s melted any how,” came a bitter mutter from the crimson painted lips, smeared from kissing so passionately.
Dawn’s eyes zeroed in on the blurred lines surrounding Mallory’s lips, and blushed when she felt warmth shoot straight to the juncture between her thighs. “Ice cream?” she squeaked.
While marching them up the stairs and into the bedroom, Mallory rolled her eyes before giving Dawn a hungry look. She tossed her onto the bed and proceeded to maul the poor, mangled tee shirt some more, insistent on feeling Dawn’s skin beneath her hands sooner rather than later.
Dawn wriggled out of the tee shirt with a sly grin and held Mallory's hands to her breasts, glad she hadn't bothered getting dressed out of her pajamas today. Her sleep shorts rode up against her sensitive flesh as Mallory's knee pressed between her legs, before she leaned to nibble at Dawn's neck, and downwards to worship her nipples.
Dawn's own hands wandering, she tried to lift Mallory's shirt but stopped when the head above her chest shook in disapproval. Her lover bit down sharply in admonition, and Dawn suddenly found her hands being drawn upwards, captured in Mallory's strong grasp.
Her groan quickly turned into a yelp as Mallory flipped her over on the bed, swiftly tugging her shorts down, and not wasting any time before plunging fingers into her dripping depths. Dawn's prolonged and deafening moan was a surprise, an animalistic quality overtaking every sound that tumbled from her lips.
She pushed back at Mallory to rock in the same rhythm that was being set from behind. She thrust her chest down into a hand that had snuck under to tug, pinch, pull and knead.
As Mallory leaned heavily against her back, the softness of her shirt sent shivers up Dawn’s spine. Her hearing tuned into the noises coming from her lover’s mouth: for every one of Dawn’s gasping inhalations or throaty moans, there was one matching it. Mallory’s deepest need today was to take her. The air was heavy with it – take, take, take.
Dawn gave, finding strange and exciting the completion she felt as she came in the blinding light of the afternoon sun.
_____________________________________
Oliver sat on the cold, unforgiving plastic chair in the interview roo
m at HMP Holme House, the medium security prison in Stockton-on-Tees. He had been assigned here to await prosecution for breaking into Mallory Moore’s home, and he was livid.
Steven was willing to let him rot in a jail cell for six months at the very least, according to Mr. Carey, his defense barrister. Refusing to go down for an errand his own employer had sent him on, Oliver requested to meet with Detective Sergeant Thom Smythe once more.
The D.S. sat down and opened a file with a flourish, smirking at him with a knowing grin.
Oliver frowned back; painfully aware that what he was about to do could possibly end his life if the Detective Sergeant didn’t agree to his terms.
As D.S. Thom Smythe pressed ‘Record’ on the tape player between them, he hovered a pen over the file. “So, Mr. Ulster – you claim to have some grand information on a cold case double homicide from 1998. You implicate your employer, Mr. Steven Rose.”
Peccatum in Carne: Sins of the Flesh (The Three Sins of Mallory Moore Book 1) Page 13