Murder in the Shadows

by Jade Astor

“No worries. We’re okay. We both enjoyed the show a lot, in spite of what happened later.”

  “What was he talking about?” Argo asked the moment he hung up. “Was he trying to get you to complain about Maddy?

  “Not at all. He was telling me what a pain Hanson’s mother is. Don’t worry. I admit I missed you last night, but I’m glad Maddy was here.”

  “She doesn’t like me being a cop. She’s convinced I’m going to be taken out before I can retire. I told her that only happens in the movies.”

  “You mean when the guy with one last shift to get through ends up gunned down? Yeah. I’ve seen plenty of those flicks. I know that’s not reality. I’m sure she does, too.”

  Argo remained grim. “Does it bother you? My job?”

  “Of course not. Don’t forget, I would never have met you if you hadn’t suspected me of murder.”

  “I never suspected you of murder,” Argo snapped. “Well, not for more than a second or two. And that was only because you—”

  “Only because I found the victim’s body. Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ve talked about this plenty of times. But the point is that I know how much your job means to you. You got into it because you wanted to make the world better—heal the people who have been wounded by crimes. That’s a good thing, Argo. I wouldn’t want you to change your mind.”

  “Glad to hear it. Because I don’t think I ever will. Not even after…this.” Again he wriggled his bandaged arm.

  “I know,” Darian said softly. “Why should it? Like you said, it comes with the territory.”

  “Just the same, I know it’s not what you signed up for when we got involved. You’re an English teacher at a ritzy private school. The worst thing you should expect is a paper cut.”

  “Don’t underestimate how nasty those things can be.”

  Argo grunted, and Darian gave up on initiating playful banter. Things just seemed off tonight. Like they were strangers.

  Later, after Argo had closed his eyes and slept—or at least pretended to—for a couple of hours, Darian heated up some lasagna Maddy had left in the fridge for the two of them. He brought the plates over to the sofa, since Argo didn’t seem inclined to move.

  “Do you need to go home tonight?” Argo asked as they ate, stabbing halfheartedly at the food with his fork. “I assume you have school in the morning.”

  “I don’t have to. I keep a suit and tie in your closet, remember? In case I ever got stuck here on a school night. I just need a shower and shave in the morning and I’ll be ready to report for duty.”

  Argo nodded, seeming less happy about that than Darian would have wished. Exasperated, Darian set down his plate with a bang.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on with you?” he demanded.

  “Interesting way you phrased that. Do I want to? No. Do I feel I should? Yes. Absolutely.”

  The painkillers again, Darian figured. He shook his head, bewildered. “Never mind. It’s okay. You’re hurt. You need to rest.”

  “I’m sorry, Darian.” Argo took both their plates away and set them on the end table by his pill bottles. He drew Darian close and held him for a while, stroking the base of Darian’s neck. The rhythmic motion made him close his eyes, lulling him into contentment until Argo’s taut voice jarred him out of it again. “I’m not good company right now.”

  Darian sat up, combing his tousled hair back from his eyes. He felt the heat of the fire pressing on his cheek and saw the red glow bouncing off Argo’s rigid jawline. It gave his face an eerie, mysterious hue. “Do you keep thinking about what happened? Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “Of course I think about it. Every minute. I keep imagining what could have happened.”

  “But it didn’t happen.”

  “No. Not this time.”

  “You know the saying. An inch is as good as a mile if it’s a miss. No one was seriously hurt. Cutler’s going to find this guy in no time. We can accept that and move forward. Right?”

  “This time. What about the next one?”

  “I trust you to take care of yourself.” Darian shifted his weight and gave Argo a one-armed hug. He didn’t feel Argo’s thick muscles relax into his embrace the way usually did. That creep with the gun sure had a lot to answer for. He hoped Cutler would make an arrest soon. Darian couldn’t wait to testify at his trial. “This all happened so fast. We haven’t had time to process it. I haven’t, anyway. People say a life-threatening experience changes you, but you can’t imagine it until it really happens. We’ll be okay, though.” Darian rested his head on Argo’s chest and felt it heave with a deep sigh.

  Soon Argo shifted around as though he wanted to stand up. “Come on. Let’s go to bed. I’ve got a crick in my neck from this damn couch. That’s all I need—a wrenched back on top of everything else.”

  “Okay.” Darian stood up first and offered his hand. Argo took it, moving slowly, and hoisted himself to his feet. “What about the fire? Should we put it out?”

  “Nah. Screen’s in place. It’ll burn out on its own. Leave the dishes, too.”

  In his room, he slid under the blankets without changing out of his sweats and lay with his back to Darian. Of course, Darian reasoned, he didn’t have much choice. He had to sleep in a position that was comfortable for his arm.

  “New day tomorrow,” he murmured as he fitted the length of his body against Argo’s. He could feel the tension rippling through his husky frame. “Back to school. Back to normal.”

  “Normal,” Argo grumbled. “Right.”

  As he drifted off to sleep, Darian wished he could think of some way to bring Argo peace. But magic words didn’t exist. Everything he said only seemed to make things worse. The ones he wanted to say most, he suspected, would be the worst possible choice under the current circumstances.

  In the morning, he decided. He could say them then, after both of them were rested and refreshed. Argo would see that they had come through the crisis just fine. He would be ready to move forward. Things would be like they were before they’d gone to Bryce’s play. Even his arm would feel better.

  Just before dawn, he felt the mattress shift as Argo sat up. He opened his eyes to find him looking down at Darian. The darkness in the room made his expression unreadable.

  “You don’t have to get up with me. I’ll make some coffee for you before I leave, though.”

  “It’s okay,” Argo said, pushing back the bedclothes. He cradled his arm as he got to his feet. “I’m sick of lying around like an invalid. I’ll take care of breakfast.”

  By the time Darian stepped into the kitchen scrubbed and dressed for work, he found Argo at the table with toast and coffee ready. The caffeine didn’t seem to have had much effect on him yet. Argo was staring straight ahead, his body as still as a statue’s. Eventually he cleared his throat.

  “This isn’t easy for me to say, Darian. So I’m just going to come out with it. I need some time alone.”

  Darian broke a piece of toast in half. “Well, I’m off to school now anyway. I won’t be back till evening.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Argo persisted. “I meant alone in a more general sense.”

  The toast fell to the table, landing beside the plate in spatter of crumbs. For a moment, Darian was sure he’d heard wrong. “What?”

  “Darian, please don’t make this any harder by pretending not to understand. I’ve been mulling this over for the past few days. I’m putting it out to you in the clearest terms I can come up with.” Argo jerked his head to one side as though he were blinking back tears. “Don’t you get it? I can’t be a long-term partner to you, Darian. Or to anyone.”

  “So you’re…you’re breaking up with me?”

  “Not exactly,” Argo said. He spoke the words so forcefully that Darian had no doubt that he was telling the truth about planning this whole little speech out to the last detail. “I need to think. To take stock. At this point, it wouldn’t be fair to you to continue this. I probably shouldn’t have let it go this far. I�
�m sorry about that. Truly.”

  Darian thought he’d been prepared to hear almost anything, but Argo’s words left him gaping. It took him a moment to recover his voice. “Don’t you think it’s up to me to decide what’s fair? I can manage my own life, you know.”

  “I know what you’d decide—you’d go for what you want, or at least what you think you want. But it’s not what’s best for either of us, Darian. I’m asking you to trust me on that. You may not see it now, but in time, you will.”

  He sat back, smug and taciturn, while Darian leaped to his feet. His coffee cup rocked and sloshed with the force of his motion. He didn’t bother to mop it up, though he saw Argo’s stony gaze flick to what landed on the table. “Don’t tell me what I’m supposed to want or feel! Why are you so damn controlling, Argo? In some ways, that’s what attracted me to you in the first place, but in others it’s just plain maddening.”

  “There, you see? Proof that I do know what I’m talking about.”

  Under other circumstances, Darian might have laughed at the irony of that statement—or, as his colleagues in the English department might put it, the meta-ness of it all. But right now, he just felt like crying.

  He refused to give Argo the satisfaction, though. He took a deep, calming breath that wasn’t entirely effective.

  “So where are we now?” he choked out.

  “I can’t answer that. There is no right answer. We’re just…here.” Argo shrugged. “We’ll talk again later. You’ll see I’m right. One day, you’ll thank me.”

  “Maybe I should do that now.”

  “If you want,” Argo mumbled.

  Darian stormed out to his car. Was Maddy behind this? Had she filled Argo’s head with reasons why they shouldn’t be together? He was too numb to be angry at her, or even at Argo. He was just bewildered. But he didn’t have time to argue about it any longer. He had to get to school.

  While he was buckling his seatbelt, his cell phone chirped. His hand trembled as he pulled it out of his coat pocket. Argo, he thought with a rush of emotion, summoning him back inside to apologize and take it all back.

  He tried not to sound disappointed when an entirely different voice greeted him. “Oh, hi, Victor.”

  “Hope you don’t mind me calling you this early. I forced Bryce to give me your number. I wanted to catch you before your first class.”

  “I don’t mind. And you caught me just in time. I was just…uh, pulling out of the driveway.”

  “You had to know I’d be following up with you after what Bryce told me. Darian, how could you not tell me you’d been involved in a shooting? My god! We spent the whole afternoon laying our souls bare to one another and you never mentioned it!”

  The way he phrased it made Darian blush. Was that his intention? “I wanted to forget about it. It’s been…difficult.”

  “I can imagine. Anyway, I have just the remedy. Come to a dinner party tonight. You and Argo. The people I’m making the film with will be here this afternoon. Jamie London, too.”

  “Thanks,” Darian said. His voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears. “But Argo can’t come.”

  “Ah.” Victor seemed to sense what he was really saying. “Any particular reason?”

  “He…” Darian gulped some cold November air and blurted it out. “He needs some time to himself. You know, the shooting and everything.”

  “Okay, then.” Victor didn’t sound too disappointed. Darian wasn’t surprised in the least. “Come alone. Forget your boyfriend troubles.”

  “I don’t know.” Darian chewed his lower lip. Part of him wanted to stay in and spend the evening venting to his moms and crying. Another part of him didn’t want to give in to that kind of insecurity. He had a life before he’d met Argo—a fun, fulfilling one, if he discounted part about finding a dead body in the pond. He’d have a good life after Argo, too. The time in between was very short. Too short. And over.

  “I’m not asking you, Darian, I’m telling you,” Victor persisted. “And I promise to take your mind off the whole sorry mess. Give it one night to stew by himself and see what happens after that. You might be surprised. We won’t even mention his name.”

  “All right,” Darian agreed. “Thanks. Should I bring anything?”

  “Just your game face. Six o’clock. This will be a cheerful event. I insist upon it.”

  “See you then.”

  Game face. That was the right term, for sure. Would he be able to hide the fact that he felt like he was dying inside?

  Still, he saw no point in refusing to accept reality. Here goes the first day of the rest of my life, he thought as he hit the gas pedal.

  Chapter 5

  Patricia met him on the sidewalk outside his office building. “Good thing you got here early. Jeanette wants to see you as soon as you get here. She called the faculty lounge a few minutes ago, looking for you.”

  That didn’t strike Darian as a welcome development. “I take it she heard about what happened Friday night.”

  “No way to avoid it,” Patricia agreed. “It’s been all over the news. Don’t worry, though. She probably just wants to warn you not to talk to the students about it. She probably thinks it will upset them.”

  Darian smiled at her surreptitious eye-roll and reversed direction, heading toward the administrative building instead. At this early hour, the campus was still quiet, with most of the students either in the dining commons or still in their dorm rooms. The creeping cold weather discouraged them from hanging around outside, though he saw a few bundled-up cyclists moving along a path in the distance, heading in the direction of the pond. He’d avoided that area since the events of the previous month, but maybe he should get back to jogging there at some point.

  The truth was, since he and Argo had grown closer, he hadn’t been exercising much at all—at least not in the traditional sense. He spent far too much of his time just mooning over his relationship fantasies. Bad idea, he realized now. Already he’d begun to lose himself. Now that the relationship was gone—or at least on hold for a while—it would be a struggle to get that casual independence back.

  In the headmistress’s office, Jeanette Wexler faced him with one of those concerned yet supportive expressions that never boded well.

  “First of all, Darian, I’d just like to say that everyone at this school is just so proud of you for what you did during that robbery. You’re a hero, exemplifying the kind of courage and dedication to justice that Birchwood Academy stands for.”

  Darian bit back a wry smile. “What I did was foolish, according to some people.”

  “Your actions most likely saved lives. That’s all right in my book.” Jeanette hesitated, and Darian tensed.

  “But…?”

  “But you’ve been through a traumatic event. I spent quite a bit of yesterday and early this morning on the phone with several of the trustees as well as our Human Resources staff. We all agree that you need some time off. Therefore, I’ve arranged for you to have two weeks’ leave of absence. Full salary, of course. And don’t worry about your students. I’ll cover your classes myself. When you return, they’ll be getting ready to leave for Thanksgiving Break, and you can ease back in and pick up fresh when everyone gets back.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Darian assured her. “I’m not at all traumatized. I’m ready to get back to work today.”

  Jeanette’s smile turned to a condescending simper. “I’m sorry, Darian, but it’s the general consensus that you need some time to regroup. It’s HR policy.”

  Darian scowled. Most likely it was the sight of eager reporters circling the front gates of the school. The death in the pond a few months earlier had been enough to put Birchwood on the crime-beat map. Jeanette and the trustees had marked him as a trouble magnet. They wanted to wait for the current miasma to dissipate, and in some ways he couldn’t say he blamed them.

  “Besides,” Jeanette went on, “I’m sure you need to decompress. I can set up counseling, if you like, or you can get your o
wn. Either way, I would certainly encourage it.”

  Darian had no intention of going to counseling of any sort, but he decided it was best not to argue about that. “I’ll look into it,” he promised, mentally crossing his fingers.

  Jeanette sighed with obvious relief. “Good. It’s all set, then. Make whatever arrangements you want after you get what you need from your office. I’ll see you back here in two weeks. If you decide you need more time after that, just get some medical documentation and we can address it.”

  She rose, signaling the end of the meeting. “Oh, there’s just one other thing. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about what happened with anyone, either on campus or not. Direct any inquiries you may receive to the school press office. They’ll issue a statement on your behalf. Something generic about how the police are handling the matter and you are doing everything you can to assist.”

  “Right. I suppose that’s accurate enough,” he grumbled.

  “Darian, your leave of absence is a positive development,” she insisted, scrutinizing his glum face as she walked him to her office door. “I hope you see it that way. Not having to worry about your classes is one less stressor. I promise you I’ll take excellent care of your charges. And they’ll be that much happier to see you again when you return.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Jeanette said as he walked away on legs that felt numb. “It will be my pleasure. I’m looking forward to being back in the classroom. It’s been awhile.”

  He had no choice in the matter, it seemed. Of course, there were certainly worse things than an impromptu paid vacation. And maybe Jeanette was right. Darian really did need some time to clear his head—though not for the reason she imagined. The robbery seemed nothing compared to the fact that Argo had apparently broken up with him.

  Well, at least he had Victor’s dinner party to look forward to. Good thing he hadn’t gone with his first impulse and declined. Sitting home alone, without even his schoolwork to occupy his whirling mind, seemed much worse than forcing himself to make small talk about Victor’s upcoming film. Besides, he’d be meeting a genuine soap opera star. How many freshly dumped guys could say that?