by J. E. Taylor
“I’m going to pick up my schedule.” He opened the door, ignoring her question. His eyes never stopped moving.
“Are you?”
“That is none of your concern, Jen. As far as you know, I’m enrolled here,” he answered, and breezed past her.
She stopped in her tracks.
Steve approached the desk and retrieved his schedule. Studying it, he strolled in her direction, his lips pursed. He looked up and met her glance. “Start acting, babe.” He walked out the doors.
Jennifer closed her mouth and approached the desk. Moments later, she had her schedule and wandered out the same direction Steve had gone. She found him sitting on a bench, reviewing his schedule.
Steve squinted up at her with a scowl. He motioned for her to sit down next to him. “I can’t discuss this with you,” he finally said without looking at her.
“Steve,” she said, and when he glanced at her, her heart skipped a beat.
“I can’t.”
“Okay. I won’t ask.” Perplexed, she took a deep breath and leaned back. “I don’t have any classes today,” she replied, handing him her schedule. Her Tuesdays and Thursdays were loaded, and with the exception of a couple of Wednesday classes, the rest of her schedule was blank.
Steve handed it back. “Bitch.” He tilted his schedule so she could see. “I’ve got classes every day starting at eight.”
“Aww,” Jennifer said without sympathy. She saw his lips curve at the edges and watched in amazement as he suppressed it again.
“Here they come,” he said under his breath.
Jennifer stood and hurried toward Tracy. “I can’t believe you did that to me!”
“Was it really that bad?” Steve asked.
Jennifer glared at him and he met her eyes with the same ferocity. “As a matter of fact…”
“It wasn’t all that pleasant for me either,” Steve barked at her. “You are a bitch.” He stood and walked away.
Jennifer watched him, her mouth open in surprise.
Bill took off after Steve, grabbing his arm and swinging him around. “You need to apologize to her.”
“Fuck you.” Steve yanked his arm from Bill’s grasp and stormed away, disappearing around the rear of the student center.
Bill’s jaw went slack and he headed back to where Jennifer stood.
“What the hell were you two thinking?” Jennifer snapped when Bill returned to Tracy’s side. “He’s an asshole.”
Bill looked away. “He didn’t seem like one when I met him over the summer. I thought you two would be perfect together. You both know what it’s like to lose someone and I thought…” he trailed off and shrugged.
Her eyes narrowed. “That was the qualification for setting us up?”
“Jen,” Tracy sighed.
“That is such a bullshit reason!” She started to walk away and Bill caught her arm. “Let go!”
“Don’t be mad at Tracy. This was all my idea, not hers.”
Jennifer shook her head, her eyes bouncing between the two. “Bullshit. She pushed me just as much as you pushed him.”
“I’m sorry, Jen. I thought you two would hit it off.” Tracy wouldn’t meet Jennifer’s gaze. “Do you want a ride back to the apartment?”
Jennifer took a deep breath. “No, not right now. There are a few people I want to say hello to. I’ll walk back later.”
“It’s a haul, Jen,” Bill said.
“Then I’ll swing by the frat house. Someone there can bring me home, right?”
Bill shrugged. “True.”
Jennifer started to walk away.
“Are you mad at me?” Tracy asked.
Jennifer turned and fluttered her hand back and forth. “A little, but I’ll get over it.”
“You know I love you, right?”
Jennifer smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
Chapter 6
Jennifer walked around the corner of the student center and was yanked behind the trees.
Steve rammed her against a big oak out of sight from the walking path. His eyes sparkled. “Sorry I scared you.” He leaned in to kiss her and stopped inches from her lips, staring into her eyes. “I’m not so sure you really know what you want.” He pulled back a little and let the edges of his mouth curve upwards.
Jennifer’s heart raced. She couldn’t move and couldn’t speak, her eyes lost in his intense stare. “I… I,” she finally sputtered.
“You what?” Her ragged breath smelled like cinnamon.
Jennifer moved swiftly, stepping closer and sweeping his foot out from under him at the same time she pushed, knocking him flat on his back in a perfect Osoto Gari. “Don’t corner me like that, ever again.”
Steve stared up at her with wide eyes from his vantage point on the ground. “Damn girl,” he uttered when he regained the capacity to breathe.
Jennifer put her hands on her hips. “My dad thought I should learn to defend myself. I’m a black belt.”
“I’ll have to spar with you sometime.” He picked himself up and brushed the dirt off his shorts.
“You would lose.”
He laughed, musical and full. “Next time you’ll be on the ground.”
“Want to bet?”
He snorted and began to walk away. Jennifer lunged and found herself on the ground with his arm across her chest. He was infinitely faster and more powerful than she imagined.
“So, what did I win?” He barely concealed a smirk, masking it with a devilish grin.
A thousand thoughts flew through her mind but the one that slipped through her lips almost made her laugh. “The right to protect me any time you want.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “That’s a given.” He stood and helped her up, attempting to brush the dirt off the back of her pretty, white skirt. “You’re gonna need to change.”
She arched, trying to look at the back of her skirt but only saw the edges of dirt. “Can you take me back?”
Steve glanced at his watch. “Sure, I’ve got a little time.”
They walked to his car, keeping an eye on the parking lot and the student center for Bill and Tracy. Fortune ran with them. No one they knew saw them slide into Steve’s car.
“Who do you work for?” she asked after a few miles of silence.
“I told you I can’t discuss this with you.”
“Local police? State police? What?”
“Let it go.” He gave her a sideways look before focusing back on the road. “Please.”
Jennifer took a deep breath and exhaled, her mind filtering through all the possibilities. One stuck, triggering a vague memory, and she tilted her head, glancing at him. When they were little, he told her his grandfather was an undercover agent. She looked at her hand, her brow furrowing as she fought to remember. “FBI!” Her head snapped up with the statement.
Steve sucked the air in and shook his head slightly. Jennifer always had the uncanny ability to read him and this time was no different. He pulled in front of the apartment building and threw the car in neutral. “Look, I can’t discuss this with you, Jen,” he said, meeting her inquisitive gaze. “Someday I will, but I can’t right now. Okay?”
Jennifer nodded and started to get out of the car.
“Jen?”
She turned back.
“I need to go somewhere and I’d really like company.” He offered a nervous smile.
“Oh. Okay, I’ll be a couple of minutes.” She trotted inside.
* * * *
Her dirty skirt swayed with her stride and Steve smiled a little. He sighed, closed his eyes, and tilted his head back against the headrest.
He had been doing field operations for close to five years, recruited right out of high school. He graduated at the top in his class from the academy and received a commendation for his first undercover assignment at Yale nailing a serial rapist.
Peggy went everywhere with him, and after his first collar he asked her to marry him. The relationship had been a quiet one, no tension, no fighting, nothing, just
simple adoration and no warning signals hinting at her unbalanced state. After re-examining their life together, over and over and over, every day since she killed herself, he still didn’t see any clear-cut sign.
After she died, he turned reckless with his career and his private life, requesting the most dangerous assignments and bedding every hot babe he came across despite his boss’ reproach. He felt no fear, no remorse, no passion, just a cold shell driven by a boiling anger.
This assignment was a little slower paced than the rat race of drugs and mafia games he chased over the last couple of years. When undercurrents of bizarre hazing rituals found its way into the bureau, they pulled him from a job in the city. His boss wanted him here, wanted his insight and his ability to blend in. And catching the son of a bitch was no longer a choice for him, not since finding the carnage in the woods this summer. It was now a need motivated by fury.
He opened his eyes and looked at the building. Jennifer was a complication he didn’t expect. He’d caved under Bill’s matchmaking harassment when he heard her name, and the memories of his youth came flooding back. Talking to her on the phone had been nice, but actually seeing her, man, that knocked him on his ass.
On cue, Jennifer walked out of the building in a pair of cut-offs, and slipped into the car.
“Thanks,” he said, and pulled onto the road, heading in the direction of the lake.
“Where are we going?”
“To my grandfather’s place.”
“I get to meet your grandfather?”
Steve shook his head. “He died after I graduated. The property is mine but I haven’t been at the cottage in a little over two years.”
“Oh.” She watched the scenery pass in silence. Her gaze turned in his direction and her brow creased. His eyes squinted from the bright sun, staring through his bangs with an intensity she didn’t remember ever seeing before. The line of his jaw set tight, moving ever so slightly as he ground his teeth together.
Jennifer wanted to ask him a question and thought better of it, looking back at the road until he slowed down and took a right turn onto an unpaved road.
Steve stopped the car on the dirt driveway, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his grip making his hands ache. Taking a deep breath, he moved his hand onto the stick shift, put the car in first gear, and released the clutch slowly. His heartbeat pulsed in his ears as the woods closed in, the car easing around one of the sharp turns in the driveway. “I’m not sure I can do this.” He slammed his foot on the brake, stopping, floundering.
“Why?”
“The last time I was here I found Peg.” He glanced at Jennifer then back at the rambling driveway.
Jennifer placed her hand on his. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I gotta face my demons.” He glanced at her hand. It was warm and soft on top of his and gave him the strength to roll forward again. He took a deep breath and rounded the last curve. The neglected cabin stood out among the trees. A slightly overgrown expanse of lawn surrounded the cottage bordered by the shimmering lake. Steve let out a little grunt of surprise.
“What?”
“I wasn’t sure if the landscaping company had been out here yet. Looks like they came when I called a couple of weeks ago.” He parked the car and shut it off but didn’t make a move to get out. He stared at the last place he’d seen Peg alive and let his eyes wander to the gazebo at the water’s edge. They were supposed to get married in the gazebo. The benches lining the makeshift aisle were still sitting on the lawn in the same position they had been two years before. The pain seared through him and he took a deep breath.
Jennifer followed his gaze and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Steve.”
Steve shrugged and got out of the car. The sympathy in her voice brought the anger back and with it the nerve to move. “Apparently, I wasn’t what she wanted.” He slammed the car door.
* * * *
Jennifer didn’t respond. She could see the fire in his eyes—the sadness and hurt overlaid by an anger and ferocity she didn’t think he was capable of. She got out of the car and slipped to his side, never taking her eyes off him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said without looking her way.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m gonna explode into a million pieces and take everything in my wake with me.”
Jennifer huffed at the analogy until he shot his eyes to her. “Sorry.”
He nodded and headed to the door, digging the key out of his pocket. He put his forehead to the old wood and closed his eyes for a moment as the pain broke through the anger. He felt her light touch on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, but this is hard for me.”
“If it wasn’t hard, I’d think there was something wrong with you.”
“I knew I brought you for a reason.” He met her gaze. “You always made me feel stronger than I really was.” He flipped the lock and pushed the door open.
Jennifer ran her fingers down his arm and clasped his hand in hers. He took it without reservation and together they stepped into the cottage.
It was exactly the same way he left it; things in slight disorder but neat nonetheless. A thick layer of dust covered everything and it stirred in the gentle breeze.
Jennifer sneezed.
An underlying smell of mold and rotting wood drifted around them, along with something more sinister.
Steve gripped her hand tighter as he walked toward the bathroom. “I found her in here.” He reached for the doorknob and hesitated, bringing his hand away. Shaking his head in defiance, he grasped the doorknob again and turned it.
The slow creak gave Jennifer goose bumps and she clamped her jaw against the shiver that threatened. Steve threw open the door and the moment Jennifer stepped into the bathroom, the room changed. She gasped and her grip tightened, clamping down on his hand like a vice.
Candles flickered around the tub, filling the room with the scent of lavender. A pretty blonde sat in the water, glancing at the array of items she had lined up on the shelf. She reached for the prescription pills and emptied the bottle, downing the pills with the glass of wine sitting on the edge.
The woman closed her eyes. “I can’t do this to him,” she whispered, looking out the window toward the lake. “I just can’t.”
She reached for the shiny razor blade and deliberately slit from wrist to mid-forearm. Deep crimson red flowed from the open wound.
With less dexterity, she switched the blade and repeated with the other wrist, the gash not as deep, but equally as devastating.
She gently set the razor on the edge of the tub and lowered her arms into the hot water, tears streaming down her cheeks, waiting for death to take her away.
“Jennifer!”
His voice cut through the vision like the razorblade slicing through the woman’s wrist and she blinked, back in the dusty baron bathroom. “I smell lavender and red wine.” And then the room went black.
* * * *
Steve caught her and looked around frantically. “Wake up.” He softly tapped her cheeks. “Come on, baby, wake up.” Repeating the words he said two years ago drove panic into his voice. He glanced at the tub and back at Jennifer. “Jesus, wake up!” He shook her more violently than he intended.
Jennifer snapped her eyes open. The fear in his expression brought her around with lightning speed. “I’m awake,” she said as he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her against him. “I’m awake.” She looked around the room. The vision ebbed into her foggy memory. “You’re crushing me.”
Steve pulled away. He touched her face and sat back against the doorjamb, watching as she blinked away the cobwebs. “What was that?” he asked when he was certain his voice wouldn’t shake.
“I saw her.”
Steve’s eyebrows creased, etching skepticism in his rugged features. “What are you talking about?”
“There were candles and she had a glass of wine.” She glanced at him. “Lavender scented candles, and a bottle of
prescription pills. She emptied it with the wine.” Jennifer looked at the tub. “It was filled so the water was over her body, but not to the rim. There was a good four to five inches between the water line and the lip of the tub.” She took a deep breath and looked at her wrists, tracing the path of the razor blade. “She cut her wrists the long way and put the razor on the edge of the tub.” Jennifer closed her eyes. “And she was crying.” When she opened her eyes and looked at Steve, she was sorry she had gone into such detail.
Steve stood and slowly moved away from Jennifer. She had described the room exactly as he had found it, as he found Peggy. He wanted to believe her, he really did, but his life was based on fact and tangible evidence and this was as far from tangible as it got. A high pitched whine drowned the sound of his breathing and he reached for the doorjamb, the air sharp, suffocating. He needed fresh air and he turned and walked out the door.
Jennifer followed him, her legs still wobbly even when they reached the end of the dock.
Steve glared at her. “What the hell are you doing? Do you think this will make me feel better?”
Jennifer stepped back.
“This isn’t a joke.” He grabbed her, digging his fingers into her arm. “It isn’t something to mock like you just did.” He jutted his chin toward the cottage.
“Let go!” The anger flared in her as well. “I saw what I saw, now let go!” She screamed and pushed at the same time.
His foot slipped on the edge of the dock and he lost his balance, falling back first into the lake, dragging her with him. The chill in the water slapped him back in control and he hauled himself onto the end of the dock, his wet clothing clinging to him, wringing an icy shiver from his bones.
Jennifer swam to the edge and he offered her his hand but she slapped it away. “I can get out by myself.” She pulled herself up next to him.
A few minutes of strained silence went by and then Steve started to chuckle. Shaking his head slowly from side to side in disbelief, the hysterics took hold. He gripped the edge of the deck shaking with his head hung over as the laughter belted out of him.