In the Heart's Shadow

by T. L. Haddix

  Stacy looked at Ethan. “What about you? Do you approve?”

  He was grinning almost as widely as Beth was. “You could do worse.”

  Beth bent to check on Cole. “He’s asleep, finally, thank God.” Straightening, she tsk-tsked Gordon. “Here I was worried you weren’t ever going to kiss her. And you go off and get married. Hopefully, you’ve done more than kiss by now.”

  Gordon’s face turned red, and seeing that, Beth pumped her fist in the air. “Yes! Now, if you will let me have Sir Ian, Stacy and I are going to run the two of you off so we can have some girl time.”

  Ethan transferred the baby easily, kissing Beth’s forehead. “Try to behave yourself?” he murmured.

  “I can’t make any promises.” She winked. “Do you mind grabbing Cole?” she asked Stacy.

  “Won’t he wake up?”

  “Nope. He’s out.”

  Once both babies were settled in a rocker crib in the living room, Beth eased back on the couch. “Tell me everything.”

  Stacy did. With the faint sounds of hammers and drills in the distance, she told Beth the whole story. She didn’t leave out anything, including the rape.

  “Ethan told me that you’d been traumatized, but he didn’t go into details. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t shrug it off as she usually did. “I had nightmares last night, and the night before. I’ve not done that in a while. And I haven’t been able to let Gordon touch me, not sexually, since Saturday. God, I can’t believe I said that.” She covered her face.

  Beth hugged a pillow to her belly and shook her head. “But does it bother you for him to touch you otherwise?”

  “Sometimes. Like when I first wake up from the nightmares, or when we were in the middle of finding everything out, arguing with his brother. Though it wasn’t really an argument.”

  “And the rest of the time? Like when you’re sleeping together?”

  “No. That doesn’t bother me.”

  “Then stop freaking out because you haven’t had sex for two days. That’s normal. You’ll make up for it later. Gordon’s a smart guy. He’ll understand. I hardly think he’s going to fall over and die because you weren’t intimate for two nights.”

  Stacy relaxed against the cushions. “I know you’re right. I just feel guilty. And then this thing with Kathryn happened, at the department, of all places.” She sighed. “I want my normal, boring life back. I’m tired of having it dictated by my sicko mother and her partner.”

  “Believe me, I understand what you’re going through. It will get better,” Beth told her softly. “And once this is all over and done with, think about how good it’s going to be.”

  From the look on her face and the way she was looking at the babies, Stacy figured Beth was remembering everything she and Ethan had been through.

  A question had been niggling in the back of Stacy’s mind, and before she could stop herself, she asked it. “What if I don’t want to be a detective anymore when this is done? What if I can’t do my job?”

  “Then you find something else. Or something finds you.” Beth stood and stretched. “Sorry, I have to move around. Walk with me?”

  “Sure.”

  Stacy waited as Beth set up the baby monitor, slipping one in her pocket. They set off down the driveway, their pace slow.

  “After I was shot, I couldn’t write. Not like before. And I honestly didn’t think I would ever be able to get me back. Does that make sense?”

  Beth was a reporter for the local paper, the Olman County Journal, which was owned by her grandfather, and she had never wanted to be anything other than a reporter and someday, the editor of the paper. Her words made so much sense that Stacy got goose bumps.

  “Completely. How did you overcome it?”

  “I didn’t. I fought through it, kicking and screaming the whole way. You know I left for a few months. That was simultaneously one of the hardest and easiest things I’ve ever done. When I left, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to come home, much less write again. After some time and a lot of miles, I started to heal. I’m not the same person I was before I was shot. I never will be that Beth again, and do you know, Stacy, I don’t want to be her? I like this version of me better.”

  “But you were able to get the passion for the work back?”

  “To some degree. But by then, Ethan and I had managed to fix us, and my priorities had changed. The paper wasn’t the only thing in my life, and to my surprise, I was fine with that. More than. As a matter of fact, I’m probably not going back, not for a while. I’ll be a part-time staffer, but my most important role now is being a wife and mother. That may change some as the boys get older, but I’m looking forward to seeing how things play out.”

  Beth seemed truly at peace with her decision, and Stacy hoped that someday, she would be able to say the same about her life.

  “Gordon’s fine with me keeping my badge, but I’m starting to wonder if I am. I never expected to have a husband and possibly a family at some point. I don’t want to work the kind of hours this job requires and not get to see my children grow up. On top of that, Wyatt said something today about retiring, that he might not run for re-election. Guess whose name he threw out as the potential replacement?”

  Beth smiled. “Yours? That’s not surprising. I think you’d make a good sheriff.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Give it time. You have a while before you’d have to face that decision. Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll do what’s right for you and Gordon. That’s the important thing. Nothing else signifies.”

  Stacy hoped Beth was right, that she would be able to make the right choices when the time came. She had her doubts, but she would see.

  CHAPTER 37

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE full of ups and downs. On Tuesday afternoon, the state police excavated the area where Maggie had told them to find Matt Kirchner’s body. After a couple of hours of digging, they found his skeletonized remains. Detective Hathaway himself drove to Lynchville to notify Stacy’s grandparents.

  “I passed along your contact information,” he told Stacy when he called her afterward. “They’re shell-shocked, but they might be in touch. You’re his legal next of kin, so all the arrangements will have to go through you.”

  Her uncle David called Wednesday morning. “We’d like to meet, discuss Matt’s arrangements. When can you make it down here?”

  Stacy wasn’t ready for a face-to-face meeting. She knew she didn’t have the luxury of time, though. Still, she pushed it off a couple of days. “How is Friday?”

  “That will work, I guess. After all these years, a few more days won’t make much difference.” David had hung up without further ado, leaving her devastated.

  “They don’t want anything to do with me. I’m telling you, Galen, they blame me.”

  He held her while she cried, not trying to convince her otherwise, merely reminding her that he loved her.

  They met with Wyatt, Jason, and Neva on Wednesday afternoon at The Brown Bag. Stacy had been a little leery of going back there, but Gordon had assured her Kathryn wouldn’t be there. “She always takes Wednesday afternoons off. Besides, where else are we supposed to meet? We’re running out of restaurants, and Kat’s only part owner of The Brown Bag.”

  After they got there and ordered drinks, Wyatt let Neva bring them up to date on what they’d discovered.

  “There are several people within the department that we think could be our mole. We don’t have enough information to narrow the list down much.” Person by person, she went through their list of fifteen names.

  Wyatt sat back and rubbed his face. “It’s very disturbing that there are that many people in my department that we think could be responsible for this.”

  Neva disagreed. “If you’re looking at this on paper, these are the people it could be. But if you add in intuition and opinion, the list gets a lot smaller.”

  “What I did was approach Neva and Carrie,” Jason interjected, “and I went over what w
e had. We know that he’s male, his shoe size, top age range, that the person met Pam in Cincinnati. We assigned a point system. Married men get less points. Single guys get more. Anyone who was on a call when something happened, like your house being vandalized? They get less points. It doesn’t rule them out completely, but chances are good they were with Pam when that happened.”

  “This is so organized and fast. I’m impressed,” Stacy told him.

  Jason tapped her cast with the tip of his pen. “There’s a lot at stake here.”

  “So then what?” Gordon asked.

  “That gave us our fifteen. We sat down and went over the list person by person. We looked at personalities. Some of these guys, it doesn’t fit that they’d be the mole. Again, that doesn’t rule them out, but it’s a big point in their favor. We looked at who would have the most to gain in the department if Stacy was discredited. And we came up with one candidate that we all three really like. Wes Mason.”

  Stacy felt as though she’d been sucker punched. “Wes?”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah. He fits every single detail. He’s divorced, he lives alone, he has a reason to resent Stacy. According to Carrie, he goes to Cincinnati quite frequently, and speaking personally, I can see him doing this.”

  Gordon’s put his arm around her shoulders. “Why does he resent Stacy?”

  Neva answered. “Because she made detective before he did.”

  Gordon’s answering curse was succinct.

  “It’s not as simple as me just getting a promotion he wanted,” Stacy explained. “I’m the youngest person to ever make detective in this department. I’m female. Not only that, Wes has been here a lot longer than I have. So from his perspective, I didn’t earn my detective’s shield. Not the way he thought I should.”

  “Well, added to that, Wes was counting on getting that promotion,” Neva said. “His wife, ex-wife, had a spending problem, and she got them pretty far in debt. That’s part of why he put in for detective in the first place, to get the raise that comes with the promotion.”

  “Why didn’t he get it?” Gordon wanted to know. “And not that I don’t think you’re a good detective, but why did Stacy get it instead?”

  “Because she worked herself nearly to death for it,” Wyatt said. “She never stopped working on her education. She volunteered for extra shifts when she was needed. And she outperformed Wes all-around. I should have put this together sooner. I’m sorry.”

  Stacy frowned at him. “Seriously? Until yesterday, we had very little to go on. Shoe size, and that’s about it. If you’re going to blame yourself, then you have to blame the rest of us for being slackers, too.”

  “It’s my department, my responsibility to protect the people who work for me. I’ve not done that.”

  “Okay, then. Have it your way. It’s all your fault. You’re solely responsible. Not Wes, not Pam Kirchner. It’s all on you,” Neva muttered. She was the only person in the department who would dare speak to him like that in front of other people, and Stacy smiled into her coffee as Wyatt rolled his eyes.

  “You’ve made your point. Now let’s figure out how to stop him and Pam from whatever they’re planning on doing,” Wyatt said. “Wes’s three days off this week are today, tomorrow, and Friday.”

  “Have you tried to contact him?” Gordon asked.

  “Yes. He’s not answering his phone. His cruiser’s outside his apartment, but his personal car is gone. I’d bet they’re planning on doing something. We need to figure out what and stop them.”

  “Are you running a background check on Wes?” Stacy asked Wyatt.

  “I called Charlie first thing, as soon as Jason and Neva came to me. We still aren’t one hundred percent sure it’s him, and I don’t want to sully his reputation if it isn’t.”

  Gordon leaned forward in his chair. “What does your gut tell you?”

  “It’s him.”

  “So now what?” Stacy asked. “We can’t get a search warrant, obviously. If we can’t find him, we can’t talk to him.”

  “And if we issue an APB and it isn’t him, we’ve not only tipped our hand to the real mole, we’ve ruined a man’s life,” Neva finished.

  “I’m going to increase the patrols in the subdivision where the condo is,” Wyatt told them. “I don’t want to make things too obvious, like stationing someone outside, because that could scare them off. I hate to say this, but we need to use you as bait if we can.”

  “Can you get someone in one of the empty units? There are two for sale just across the street,” Gordon said.

  “That’s going to take a little time. It’ll be tomorrow or Friday at the earliest, assuming we can get permission from the owners to do that. Does your condo have an alarm?”

  Gordon shook his head. “No.”

  “Well, you might consider getting one,” Jason said. “Though that’s going to take a few days, too.”

  Wyatt tapped his mug. “You’re both trained professionals. You have handguns, I believe?”

  “Yes, a few.”

  “Good. Stay armed. Stay vigilant. We’ll make due until we can get some protection in place and hope it’s enough.”

  The meeting broke up after that, with everyone promising to stay in touch if anything happened. Once she and Gordon were alone, Stacy let her head rest atop her folded arms.

  “It will be okay,” he promised her. “We know who we’re dealing with now. That’s huge.”

  “I know. I hate that it’s Wes, though. I wouldn’t necessarily rather it be someone else, but it still stings that it’s him.” She sat up. “Do you still want to go look at couches?”

  They had decided to buy a sleeper sofa for Garrett and Emma to use over the weekend.

  “If you’re up to it. We need something to do.”

  “Yeah. But maybe this weekend isn’t the best time for them to come up.”

  “Probably not. I’ll call him this evening and explain.”

  They found a couch at the first furniture store they visited and arranged for delivery the following afternoon. As they stopped at the grocery store on the way home, Stacy’s world shifted half a degree off its axis. They were doing normal, married-couple errands, all the while waiting for the axe to fall on their heads. The paradox was surreal.

  By Thursday afternoon, Gordon was waving the white flag of surrender.

  “I can’t do any more.” He collapsed on the old sofa, which they’d moved into the hall to make room for the new one. “The furniture guys get paid to do this. If I move one more piece of furniture, my back’s going to give out. Then where will we be?” He’d been working since first thing in the morning, getting the condo set up to accommodate both of them.

  Hands on her hips, Stacy rolled her eyes. When he held out his hand out, she took it, gasping as he pulled her down on top of him. Sweaty and certain she stank to high heaven, she tried to pull back. He grasped the curves of her behind and held her firmly.

  “We can’t do anything. You know that.” She’d gotten her period the day before and was still feeling very self-conscious about it.

  Gordon grinned up at her. “I know that. Doesn’t stop me from grabbing these, though.” He tightened his grip and waggled his eyebrows at her. Giving in, Stacy gently flopped down on him.

  “You enjoy that a little too much, I think.”

  “No such thing,” he murmured against her neck. “Mmm, you’re salty.”

  Her husband was decidedly odd, Stacy thought. Deciding to pay him back, she bit his earlobe. Moving so fast he made her a little dizzy, he flipped her onto her back, pinning her hands above her head carefully.

  “That’s mean,” he growled.

  “You started it.”

  “And I might finish it. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, you know.” His eyes were soft and drowsy with desire as he moved his hips. Stacy’s eyes drifted shut as he lowered his mouth to hers, but before they could take things any further, the doorbell rang.

  Gordon groaned. “I’m going to shoot wh
oever that is. I swear I am.”

  Stacy snickered. “Better answer it before they start peeping in the windows.”

  Muttering an imprecation, he got up and made sure his shirt was over his groin before heading to the door. Stacy followed him, straightening her own clothes. There was a flurry of movement as he opened the door, and before Stacy could do anything, Gordon was on the floor, twitching. The familiar staccato tat-tat-tat of a Taser registered in her brain, and then she was also down. When she managed to look up, Pam was standing over her, Taser in hand.

  “Hello, sweetheart. Did you miss Mommy?”

  Fifteen long, tense minutes later, Wes Mason had Stacy and Gordon bound with duct tape in the living room. Stacy’s wrist was throbbing inside her cast where he’d manipulated it, but she tried to not let that show.

  Pam was leisurely pacing back and forth in front of them, laughing and talking to herself in a low voice. In her gloved hand, she held a gun that looked suspiciously like Stacy’s missing service pistol, and the look in her eyes terrified Stacy more than anything she’d ever faced. Pam’s eyes were cold and emotionless—a sharp contrast to her demeanor.

  “Wes, why are you doing this?” Stacy gasped as sensation started to return to her extremities. “Why are you helping her?”

  Pam stopped in front of Stacy and used the tip of the gun to tilt Stacy’s chin up. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” She slapped her hard across the face. “I’m in charge here. When you talk, you talk to me.”

  Tasting blood from where her cheek had been cut by her teeth, Stacy spit. She couldn’t look at Gordon, too afraid she’d lose her calm if she did.

  He growled, “Don’t you touch her.”

  Pam rolled her eyes. “Please. What are you going to do to stop me?”

  Stacy spoke up. “What do you want?”

  Pam stood front of Gordon. Wes had secured him to a chair, binding him tighter than he’d bound Stacy. Watching helplessly as Pam caressed his cheek with the gun, Stacy waited for her mother’s response.