I didn’t know our location in the room, but suddenly we were falling over a glass table, the sound of it crashing as we fell on top of it, shards of it flying up and hitting me in the face with sharp pings.
I hit the ground on my back with a shout of pain. We rolled over the floor, our grunts primal and harsh. I finally managed to get on top of Susie and straddle her hips, but she was strong. So strong, she flipped me and almost got the gun.
But moments before she managed to buck me off her, I saw her face. A mask of fear covered in sticky coffee, her eyes wild—and it was terrifying.
Yet, I had no time to ponder my terror. Now she straddled me, our arms high in the air, both pairs of hands still around the gun. I was panicked she might get her fingers on the trigger, and that spurred what I did next.
Lifting up high on my heels, I bucked her off with a fierce howl that came from deep within me, catching her off guard and finally wresting the gun from her.
I scrambled to a standing position, gun in hand, but Susie was lost in her rage as she charged at me, her face one I almost didn’t recognize.
“Susie! Stop!” I bellowed as she barreled toward me like some mad bull.
Somehow, as clunky and tired as I was from the fight, I lurched out of the way—
And watched in slow-motion horror as Susie headed straight for the bank of windows.
She flew right into them with an ear-splitting crash of glass.
And then she flew out of sight.
My heart in my throat, I tucked the gun in my back pocket and ran to the window—to find Susie clinging to the soaking-wet ledge.
Her fingers dug into the concrete of the tiny windowsill as the wind blew in at us in harsh gusts and the rain pelted my face. In the distance, I heard someone banging on the elevator doors, but my sole focus was to save Susie.
Brushing the water from my eyes, I dropped down on all fours and grabbed her wrist, my arms aching as she dangled her full weight, swaying back and forth.
The tear of muscles in my shoulders was almost unbearable, burning and aching. My fingers throbbed with not just the cold, but the effort to hold on to Susie.
“Susie! Susie, give me your other hand! Help me! I’ll pull you up!”
I hadn’t prayed in a long, long time—not since we’d left the convent, but as I struggled to cling to her, I prayed I’d be able to save her.
But then I saw Susie looking up at me, her eyes desolate, empty but for the sorrow I saw in the tears rushing down her face. “I’m alone, Trixie. I’ve always been alone,” she whispered into the wind as it tore at her hair and slapped her red cheeks.
I felt her anguish in my core, felt her agonizing pain coursing through her and invading me, and that was when I begged, “No! No, Susie, don’t give up. Please, take my hand. Please, Susie! Don’t do this! Just hold on. I’ll help you, I swear! We’ll do this together. I won’t give up! Don’t you dare give up either!”
But she shook her soaking-wet head and gave me a wan smile…and that was when I felt her do exactly that.
Give up.
Susie let go of my hand then. She simply went slack, her fingers limp, her resolve gone, and then she slipped away from me into the black night as though she were never there.
There was no piercing scream. Not even a whimper. There was nothing.
Only the rush of the wind and my howl of sorrow as the rain battered my face and the night swallowed Susie whole.
I heard the sound of the banging on the door as someone crashed through it. There were voices and people yelling to one another, but I couldn’t bring myself to move or look away. The rain battered my face, the wind tore at my hair, but I couldn’t move.
And then I heard Higgs. Always Higgs.
“Trixie!” I heard as he dragged me from the window, scooping me up in his arms and holding me close. “Oh, my God, Trixie. Are you all right?”
Letting myself go limp against him, letting him take the burden from me, I thought right then and there I’d never be all right. I’d never be able to erase Susie’s look of sheer agony from my memory.
“Talk to me, Trixie. What happened?” he asked, pushing my soaking wet hair from my face.
I heard the panic in his voice, I understood answers would have to be given, but I didn’t think I had it in me right now.
“I…I don’t think I can right now…” I whimpered. At that very moment, I couldn’t process the horror I’d witnessed. I didn’t have the words. I don’t know that I can ever craft a word that will fit what happened to Susie.
Suddenly, Coop was there, throwing her arms around both of us, pulling us close with her steely grip. “Trixie! Oh, Trixie, I was so worried. I don’t know what I’d do without you! I’m so glad you’re okay.”
It struck me how filled with emotion her voice sounded, how afraid she sounded, and I briefly wondered if she’d hit a milestone we should acknowledge, but I couldn’t find my voice.
As I clung to Higgs, Coop brushed my wet hair from my face and draped a blanket over my shoulders, rubbing my back. “It’s all going to be okay now, Trixie. We’re going to take you home to Knuckles and Goosie and feed you some dinner, and it’s all going to be all right. I promise. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered raggedly as I grabbed her hand and pressed it to my cheek, mine shaking.
“I love you, Trixie Lavender. I promise I’ll take good care of you.”
And for now, as Higgs carried me out of Susie’s posh apartment, his arms wrapped around me and Coop clinging to my hand, they were all I needed.
Epilogue
One week later…
“That is really beautiful, Trixie Lavender. I know you don’t think you’re as good an artist as Artur, but I wholeheartedly disagree.”
I blew my nose into a tissue for the hundredth time and smiled up at her. I’d drawn a pink, sparkly, eye-shadowed green eye in the same shape as hers, with long, sweeping eyelashes.
It did look pretty good, if I do say so myself. I thought it might make a pretty decent tattoo.
I patted her hand as she set a cup of hot tea on the coffee table next to me. “Thanks, Coopie. I finally feel well enough to draw again. I can’t believe how awful one stupid cold can make you feel, but sakes alive, I think my eyelashes even hurt.”
“The flu’ll do that to ya, lass,” Livingston chirped. “Ya look much better today. Not so much like death reheated in that fancy microwave.”
I giggled, and then I coughed. “Thanks, Livingston. So what is everyone up to today? I feel so out of the loop since I got sick.”
Since that night with Susie—when, among other things, I’d caught her flu—I’d been in bed. Some of that had to do with the image of her staring up at me, so lost, so alone, I had to sleep it off.
When the image haunted me, I tried to remember what Father Rico said when he came to see me after he’d heard what happened.
With his flu mask in place, he’d sat on the edge of my sick bed and reminded me of something very important. Something that had comforted me greatly.
“I’m going to say something to you that you’ll likely find goes against what we’re taught as good Catholics, but I always believe there’s an exception to the rule.” He paused then and patted my hand. “Some souls don’t want to be saved, Trixie. Sometimes the pain runs too deep, cuts too close to the surface. You reminded Susie there was good in this world because you are all that’s good. You showed her she was worthy of love and forgiveness, and you offered to help her find it if she wanted to seek it out. But mostly, because of you, when she chose to let go, she wasn’t alone. You were there.”
Still, the memory of her clinging to my arm, her fingers on the ledge slipping off, her intentionally letting go, will probably haunt me for the rest of my days.
But I’d talked long and often with Father Rico, Coop, and Higgs. They’d brought me a great deal of comfort, and while I hated that Susie was gone—even though, had she lived, she’d have gone to jail and likely would have felt more alon
e than ever—I was healing.
But as with all things, it would take some time.
“Trixie?” Higgs stuck his dark head out of the kitchen with a warm grin.
“Uh-huh?”
“It’s time for your antibiotic. I’ll grab some water.”
Higgs had been here every day and late into the night, worried about my health, but I wasn’t sure if it was my physical health or my mental health he fretted over. According to him, I’d suffered a trauma, and he wanted to be here in case I needed to talk.
“On it!” Coop called back, popping the cap off my antibiotics and handing me one. They’d been tag-teaming me since my first cough, and I have to admit, I didn’t hate the love they were showering me with.
“So any news on Ames?” I asked, letting Coop fluff my pillows behind me.
Higgs brought me some water with lemon and handed it to me. “Tansy says he’s recovering slowly, but he’s in pretty rough shape. He’s got two broken legs, a crushed pelvis and about thirty stitches in his head. But thankfully, the guy who hit him is in custody.”
Tansy…
She’d dropped by a couple of times to visit, and we’d made up—for the most part. How can I hold a grudge against someone who brings me a box of chocolate-covered cherries and a dozen sketch pads, I ask you?
She’d explained to me that the day I went to Susie’s, they were on their way to bring her in for more questioning. It was just dumb luck they’d arrived when they had.
The windows in Susie’s apartment had just crashed open when they’d arrived, and they’d called for backup—and of course, Higgs. Then Higgs had called Coop. It took them a few minutes to get past the security on her elevator, which meant I’d sat at the window for a few minutes in the cold and rain.
The rest is history.
She also reminded me of the reason behind her holding off on charging anyone with murder.
That lame old phrase, physical evidence. The DA had claimed he wanted more.
Then I reminded her, I’d handled that for her. And then we’d laughed, and she’d thrown on a face mask and hugged me and all was right with the world once more.
Margot had even dropped by to wish me well before she went back to LA to pack up her things and move home to Nashville with her cat Kenny. Turns out she had been the one arguing in the hotel room that night with Mitzy. She’d finally confronted her about Kelly’s suicide, sending Mitzy into an angry rage.
I was just glad this was all over, and Coop was mostly back to normal. Either she was too busy caring for me to mope, or she’d zipped past that stage the way she had every other one. She’d apologized to me, but I told her it wasn’t necessary. This was what life was all about.
Highs and lows, peaks and valleys, and, I reminded her, there’d never be a valley low enough or a mountain so high that I wouldn’t find a way to get to her and make her grab my hand.
And she, in return, had smirked. A huge accomplishment on her part—one we’d decided to call a Coopie special.
“Trixie,” Coop said, sitting down next to me on the couch. “It’s time we have a discussion, now that you’re feeling a bit better. We have a proposal for you.”
“We? Do you mean you and Higgs?”
Higgs bustled into the living room and stood over us. “She does.”
I rubbed my tired eyes and pulled my legs up under me. “What have the two of you been cooking up now?”
Coop looked at Higgs, tucking her auburn hair behind her ears. “Road trip.”
I cocked my stuffy head in question. “Road trip? Where?”
“Back to Saint Aloysius By The Sea,” Higgs said. “And before you say no, hear us out. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“We…er, the two of us think it’s time for you to face your demons. If Artur can’t be exorcised, we need to find out what he wants and how he got here. That means you have to talk to Father O’Leary. Now, we both know you don’t want to do that, but he has some of the answers, Trixie, and even though you’re not raging anymore, Artur has proven himself pretty useful.”
Higgs dropped a kiss on my forehead. “What she said. He’s been key to solving some mysteries, just like he tried to do with this one. What if you could channel that? Tansy’d hire you in ten seconds flat.”
What they said was right, and who better to do it with than people who loved me? I was always pushing Artur’s existence to the back corner of my brain and only facing him when forced. That was no way to live. So if I was going to live with him virtually inside me, if I was going to ask other people in my life to do the same, I had to understand him and learn how to focus his efforts.
“Well—”
“Wait!” Coop held a finger up. “Before you say no, I think you should hear the rest of the plan.”
I grinned. “I don’t have to. I say yes. Yes, let’s figure out what happened that night. I’m sure we’ll be met with plenty of resistance, but…let’s do it.”
There. I’d said it out loud. I couldn’t take it back.
“Atta girl,” Higgs encouraged. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. Promise.”
“We both will,” Coop said as she pulled the sides of her mouth up to create a smile.
And as I hunkered down under my covers and let the people I love most in the world cater to my every need, I knew it was true.
They would always be there for me.
No matter how low the valley. No matter how high the mountain.
There was nothing like that kind of peace of mind.
Nothing in the world.
The End
Thank you for reading What A Nunderful World! I hope you’ll join me for the next installment of The Nun of Your Business Mysteries where we return to where it all started! Until we meet again…
Note From Dakota
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About the Author
Dakota Cassidy is a USA Today bestselling author with over fifty books. She writes laugh-out-loud cozy mysteries, romantic comedy, grab-some-ice erotic romance, hot and sexy alpha males, paranormal shifters, contemporary kick-ass women, and more.
Dakota was invited by Bravo TV to be the Bravoholic for a week, wherein she snarked the hell out of all the Bravo shows. She received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for Talk Dirty to Me, won a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Kiss and Hell, along with many review site recommended reads and reviewer top pick awards.
Dakota lives in the gorgeous state of Oregon with her real-life hero and her dogs, and she loves hearing from readers!
Other Books By Dakota Cassidy
Visit Dakota’s website at http://www.dakotacassidy.com for more information.
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Witchless In Seattle Mysteries, a Paranormal Cozy Mystery series
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2. Quit Your Witchin'
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2. Hit and Nun
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The Plum Orchard, a Contemporary Romantic Comedy series
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4. Talking After Midnight
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What a Nunderful World Page 17