SULLIVAN'S MIRACLE

by Lindsey Longford

He shivered.

  Staring at the deepening brown of her eyes rimmed by that band of deep black, seeing the specter of himself staring back, he struggled to follow the thread of an idea that flickered in and out of his consciousness.

  Something was wrong about Maggie’s terror—too much terror for his simple questions. The idea wavered in front of him. Terror didn’t fit. Sparked by an erratically firing cell in his anesthetized brain, curiosity stirred. He lifted his free hand to her chin, anchoring it as he drifted in the dark river of her eyes.

  She was utterly still. The faint movement of her breasts under the thin red cotton ceased as if she had momentarily forgotten how to breathe. In a strange paralysis, his hearing preternaturally keen, Sullivan heard the rasp of his own breathing, the rattle of sand blown against the deck. Heard, too, the slide of his thumb over the soft skin of her inner wrist as he tightened his grip.

  Then she blinked and he lost the shape of that illusive idea fluttering formless at the edge of his awareness. For a moment, clarity sharpened the cloudy edges, but it dissolved, taking the idea with it. Gone. He frowned, regretting the bourbon for the first time tonight. Trying to frame his thoughts, he struggled for words and failed. “I did,” he insisted finally, drunken persistence substituting for logic in his tired brain. “I wrote about you.”

  “Congratulations. I’m sure it was a terrific article. Sorry I missed it.” Her voice was pitched a tone higher, but she looked straight at him, ease in every line of her body, her smile casual and mockingly courteous, the condescension of the very sober for the very drunk.

  For a moment he was sure he’d imagined that glaze of terror.

  Then the skin at the corner of her eyes stretched, giving her away.

  Like a dog with a bone, Sullivan hung on. “No scrapbook filled with pictures and newspaper clippings for you, huh?” He flopped her hand up and down, reluctant to release that warm wrist, enjoying her resistance that told him—what? He frowned again, feeling stupid. “Everybody keeps scrapbooks. People collect mementos.” Like a windshield wiper, his thumb stroked against her skin, and he felt the jump of her pulse.

  “No.” She jerked her hand away. “I didn’t make up a scrapbook. I don’t need trophies.”

  “Why not, I wonder?” Sullivan watched the spread of pink over her cheeks as he continued. Her hands lay loosely in her lap, but he saw the twitch of her little finger. “It’s not every day a cop saves the lives of two little kids, Maggie. And lives to tell about being shot, lives to tell about her last moments. I think you’d want to remember that day.”

  Uneasiness pinched her face. “Some people might. Not me. I don’t think about it. It’s over. Done with. In the past.”

  She was lying. He smelled it.

  She rubbed her side and abruptly stood up. “I did my job, what I’m trained to do. Nothing more. Any cop would have done the same.”

  Her response was mechanical, as if she’d said the same thing so often it no longer had meaning for her. He wondered how many times she’d responded with the same words and phrases. Her answer was too rehearsed. Too controlled. The kind of answer that always hid something—sometimes something interesting, sometimes not. But in his experience, it always hid something the other person didn’t want him to know, and for that reason alone her answer became irresistible to him.

  She should have waited out the silence, he thought, but she rushed into repeating herself, her words again automatic. “I’m a cop. I did what I had to do. That’s all.”

  “Is it?” On the prowl, Sullivan unfolded himself from the chair, not ready to see her leave in spite of the fatigue and confusion overwhelming him. “You’ve put it all behind you, huh? Damn, but I have a hard time buying that, Detective Maggie.” He looked down at the heavy thickness of her hair. A silver clip jammed into the unruly curls winked back at him.

  “That’s your problem, not mine, Mr. Barnett.”

  As she took a determined step toward the door, Sullivan shifted, blocking her. No longer certain what he wanted from her, knowing only that she was lying through her pretty little teeth, and goaded by instinct, he could only keep butting his head against the wall of her resistance. Halting her quick shift away from him, he gripped her shoulders. The light threw their shadows onto the deck, merging them into one, his shadow engulfing her smaller form. Pain pierced him in an exquisite ache.

  “Why don’t you want to talk about that night, Maggie?” He touched the gleaming silver clip. It was cool against his fingertip. A satin-smooth strand of hair snagged on the rough skin of his finger and curled around it. Its softness surprised him, and he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “Tell me about that night, Maggie.” In spite of himself, his voice was scratchy with memories.

  Lifting her chin, she grimaced. The strand of hair slipped free of his outstretched finger and curled over the barrette. “I don’t think so.” She shook her head and silver winked and glittered.

  “Why not?” That sparkle of silver beckoned him like a light shining in the rich darkness of her hair.

  “Why should I?” she countered, and the wariness in her voice broke the spell between them.

  “Be an interesting story.” Under his cupping palms, she shrugged, her movement sending his hands down the curves of her arms. He couldn’t get over how warm she was. Her skin had an inner glow that seduced him, made him want to pull her close and bury himself in that warmth until he dissolved the cold knot inside him. He slid his palms upward, her warmth drawing him nearer and nearer.

  Irritation quickened her speech. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it? The story. You’re only one more reporter who wouldn’t think twice about shoving your tape recorder in a man’s face and asking him how he feels while he’s watching his home burn down with his wife and children in it.” She pushed against his chest.

  Catching her hand, Sullivan closed his fist around it. So much heat and energy in that one small hand radiating into him. “I’d think twice about it.”

  “But you’ve done it.” Her hair swung forward, hiding her face, but he heard the accusation. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it, and he didn’t like it any better now.

  “Yeah.” He dropped her hand and leaned against the door. The fragrance from her hair lingered in the air around him with her every movement. He didn’t think he could bear these memories flowing in with the early morning shadows and the lingering sweetness of her perfume. “And I’d do it again if I had to.”

  She stepped back. “Like I said, just another reporter.”

  “Like you said.” Only the dying embers of curiosity kept him upright in his bone-dissolving weariness and pain. It was that same fading curiosity, though, that made him ask “Between us, Detective Maggie, why won’t you tell me about the rest of that night? About what happened afterward?”

  “You’re the one who’s making it into the crime of the century, not me.” She folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Why?”

  “Golly gee, damn, I don’t know.” Growing tired of the game, he yawned. “Inquiring minds want to know and all that. Fatal curiosity, I reckon.” He yawned again, his jaw popping.

  Tilting her head, she studied the floor for a minute before looking up and fixing him with a steady gaze. “Well, we all know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t we?”

  “Oh swell, Detective, a warning?”

  She rubbed that spot on her left side. The drag of the T-shirt across her breast outlined the design of lace underneath.

  The idea of tough little Maggie in lace snagged his flagging attention. Sullivan straightened. “Or a threat?”

  “Look, you’re in no condition tonight—” she looked out at the deck, where the shadows were growing dimmer in the predawn “—this morning, rather, to make sense, so I’m going to let that pass. I didn’t come here to threaten you, to set you up, to trap you. I didn’t come here for any of those reasons, no matter how it looks to you. I just want to solve this case, and believe it or not, I’m on your side.”

&n
bsp; “No,” Sullivan said, enunciating each word carefully, “I damn sure wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” Her challenge was halfhearted, as if she, too, were tired of the contest.

  “You have too many secrets, Detective, and secrets make me itch.”

  “And you always scratch whatever itches, I suppose?”

  In the mix of natural and artificial light, her face was tired and strained. The light emphasized lines he’d barely noticed before. She was older than he’d figured earlier today. Thirty-something, not the mid-twenties he’d assumed. In her rumpled wariness, she made him think of other mornings, mornings not spent playing head games with a cop with secrets. It was the memory of all those other mornings that burred his voice, not the sight of a Maggie suddenly vulnerable. “You bet I do. Scratch and scratch. Until the itch is gone.” Deliberately vulgar, he scratched his belly and watched her eyes follow the movements of his fingers. Leaving the tips of his fingers flat against his stomach inside his jeans, he hooked his thumbs over his waistband and shifted his weight to one hip.

  The unconscious drift of her gaze across his skin had him growing heavy and hot. He jammed his clenched fists under his armpits and leaned back against the door, crossing his legs, hoping she hadn’t noticed his jeans growing snugger by the minute. He’d been about as dumb as a rock. The impulse to irritate her had sure rebounded on him. Served him right, he thought sourly. He’d made a mistake.

  She sighed, the droop of her shoulders touching him when he didn’t want to feel anything for her except annoyance. A little anger, too.

  “Why do you keep picking at something that happened months ago?” she asked finally. “It’s yesterday’s news. Nobody would be interested now in what happened to me.”

  “Oh, I am, Detective. Very.” Sullivan whispered the words into the stillness, her vulnerability blunting his aggression.

  “Why?”

  He didn’t need to think about his answer. He gave the one that had spurred him as long as he could remember, the answer that made him a reporter. “I don’t like secrets.”

  “So you dig and dig until you find someone’s private hell, some pathetic little secret, digging and digging until you find the one thing someone’s afraid of showing to the world? Then you write that secret in big black type for the whole world to laugh at or gossip about for an hour or two while you zip merrily off to the next story? Don’t you ever get tired of digging around in the dirt?” Her anger chased away her tiredness and her vulnerability and struck an answering chord in him.

  “Is that your secret, Maggie—fear? Is that what you’re hiding?” It made sense to him. “You killed a man and now you’re spooked? If it’s not that, what are you afraid of?”

  “Not one damned thing I’d tell you.” She whirled away.

  She moved so quickly he didn’t catch her until she was out on the deck. Reaching toward her, he snagged her around her narrow waist, halting her forward rush so abruptly that her fanny jammed against the notch of his jeans and settled against the swelling under his snug zipper.

  If she’d moved carelessly, bumping against him, he would have known the awareness thrumming between them had been all in his mind. It was her careful edging away that told him she was smart enough to tiptoe past sleeping tigers.

  “Let me go.” Ice sheathed that husky voice.

  He did. He was all for letting some sleeping tigers lie himself.

  After raising his hands in the universal sign of surrender and releasing her, Sullivan rubbed his knuckles over his head in exhausted resignation. As she stepped down the deck, her shoulders were as straight as if she expected to catch a bullet between them any minute. That resolutely stiff line of her spine made him ask, “One last question, Detective?”

  “Yes?” Turning, she rested her hand on the wooden railing. Tilting her head, she waited, shoulders back, spine poker stiff—one tough cookie who wasn’t about to let him intimidate her.

  Sullivan shut his eyes against the image of big-eyed, brown-haired Maggie with that look of forlorn courage. Some tough cookie, all right. So many times he’d seen Lizzie braced against this railing, her straight, silky hair tossed every which way by the gulf breeze, her smile widening as she saw him, that sweet smile shining in her luminous gray eyes.

  In the warm August morning, Maggie’s face wasn’t the one he wanted turned up to him.

  But it was Maggie’s guarded expression he saw when he opened his eyes, and so he asked his question. “What was it like, that night?”

  “What was it like?” She curled her fist against her chest. “What was what like? Killing a man? Being shot? Almost dying? What precisely is it you’re so damned curious about, Mr. Barnett?” Her voice rose in a tense whisper.

  What he wanted to know was what it had been like for Lizzie, those last moments without him. In some twisted kind of logic, what he wanted was absolution from Maggie because he’d been at the Quik-Deli with her and not with Lizzie when he should have been. What he wanted with every breath he took was to have Lizzie next to him. Impossible, all of it. And even knowing, he couldn’t stop himself. “Do you dream about that night, Detective? Does it haunt you?”

  “No.” Water lapped quietly against the beach. Looking out to the gulf, she spaced her words in a husky echo of the water against sand. “But if I do, it’s my business, no one else’s. Inquiring minds may want to know, but nobody buys my soul for fifty cents at the newsstand. Nobody.”

  Sullivan watched her throat working as she swallowed again, her face closed against him.

  “You’ve had your question.” She slapped her hand against the railing. The thump was loud in the hush of dawn. “Now I have a couple. What makes that night so important to you? Why didn’t you follow up on the story before now if it was so important to you?”

  He shrugged, memories of that rainy November night pressing in on him.

  Damn you, Lizzie, I could almost hate you…

  “Cat got your tongue, Mr. Barnett?” She waited until it was clear he wasn’t going to answer before she hurled more questions, the words tumbling forth so rapidly that his sluggish brain couldn’t keep up. “Any fears and regrets of your own that you’d just as soon stayed buried?”

  It’ll be a long time before I forgive you, Lizzie.

  Don’t come back, Sullivan.

  “Why don’t you think about what’s going on inside your own head for a while instead of digging in mine?” She whirled away, the force of her anger sending her hair tumbling around her.

  Lost in the past, he still heard Maggie’s final words. Fear and regret? If there had been any laughter left in him, he would have roared at the irony. Oh, yes, he knew those two companions. Knew a soul-destroying fear that Lizzie might have been frightened without him, corroding regret for carelessly hurtful words, regret for all the things he’d left unsaid. A groan rose, gut deep.

  Taking a shot in the dark, Detective Maggie had hit the bull’s-eye. Oh, yeah, there were things he’d like to forget, too. He had his own ghosts. He’d let Maggie keep hers.

  As for the pricking of his curiosity, well, it was a small thing, after all. He was the only one interested in that night, and it couldn’t have any connection with what was going on now. He’d been there when she was shot. That explained the intensity of his reaction to her. That was all. It meant nothing.

  She was what she said she was. A detective assigned to his case, nothing more. No layers of motives involved. A clear-cut, simple situation. Nothing hidden, nothing murky. Everything what it seemed.

  Maybe.

  But he’d never believed in coincidences.

  He’d let her go through the motions, but he’d watch her every step of the way. The occasional show of vulnerability could be an act, probably was, and while he might not give a rat’s damn what happened to him anymore, he found himself surprisingly reluctant to let Maggie – with - the - big - brown - eyes play him for a fool.

  Stepping slowly off the deck, his knees creaking, Sullivan bent down
to pick up the slash of silver sparkling in the half shadows of the early morning sunlight. Holding the barrette carefully in his hand, he watched the small, sturdy figure trudge northward, the line of her footprints filling with the incoming tide and disappearing until she vanished in the curve of island and morning mist.

  For a long time he stared after her. Finally, his eyes scratchy and tired, he turned and pulled himself up the deck stairs, so drained he barely managed to make it to the bedroom, where he collapsed across the bed and burrowed his face into Lizzie’s pillow, the clean smell of pine trees and saltwater filling the room, mingling with the echo of a sweeter perfume.

  For the first time in month he slept, deeply and dreamlessly.

  *

  With the back of her wrist, Maggie rubbed the drop of sweat off the end of her nose. Twenty-five yards down range, she could see the target silhouette clearly, with its three new holes in the center of the chest area. Fourteen orange stickers covered the chest where she’d emptied the first clip.

  She was on the second magazine and still shaking. Her palms were slick with sweat and she’d rubbed them on the seams of her jeans over and over in a futile effort to keep them dry. A thin line of sweat trickled down her spine and soaked her waistband. Her jaw ached from clenching it to keep her teeth from chattering. Although muffled by the ear protectors she wore, the constant thuds from firing had given her a headache to end all headaches.

  Gulping air, she held on to the shelf in front of her where she’d carefully placed the 9 mm Smith and Wesson 459. Two clips lay next to it, one empty. After her last shot, the slide had locked back, the breech in open position. Now she flicked the safety on with hands shaking so badly she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to press the button hard enough.

  She could still qualify. She’d hit her target again and again. But if the sergeant in charge of the police pistol range ever saw her sweating and shaking like this, he’d have her on desk duty before she could remember her name. ‘Stress-related assignment’ would be how they’d put it. For that reason, she’d avoided the police range. This wasn’t the police range.