by Lee Driver
“I’ve had better days.” He glanced at the second floor again.
“She’s sleeping, finally.” Eunie wrapped a strong arm around his waist.
“I really appreciate you two coming over on such short notice.” He staggered to the couch and sat down on the arm. Every muscle in his body was starting to awaken and were none too happy.
“She’s such a precious little thing,” Eunie whispered. “She just curled up in a ball on her window seat and stared out into that dark yard. I don’t know what she thought she was seeing.” She turned to Simon. “She kept asking me if I heard the rattles. Don’t know nothin’ about no rattles.”
Dagger forced a smile as he brushed his dirt-caked hair from his face. “Her grandmother is buried out by the stream. Sara hung some feathers and rattles from the cross. She said if her grandmother’s spirit travels at night, it will be able to find its way back to the grave by listening for the sounds.”
Dagger couldn’t even picture Sara right now other than the last image in his mind of her fighting off Joey. His eyes settled on Eunie’s and he dreaded asking the question but he had to know. “Did Sara say...were you able to find out if...?”
Eunie grabbed his hand and patted it. “She’s fine. That bastard didn’t get to her.”
“Did they get the sonofabitch, Dagger?” Simon wobbled over to where his wife stood. They were matching bookends with identical hair, body shape, even their expressions.
Dagger looked sharply at his friend, his jaw tensed, and just hearing reference to Joey’s name brought the same savage look to his eyes that the hawk had seen. “Let’s just say he got his just rewards and leave it at that.” Dagger held Simon’s gaze and knew his friend understood.
Grabbing Simon’s arm, Eunie said, “We best be going.”
After saying their goodnights, Dagger locked the door behind them, set the alarm, and turned off the lights.
Once in his bedroom, he peeled out of his clothes and stepped into the shower. The water stung as he braced his hands against the shower wall. As the hot water soothed his sore muscles, he wished it could also wash away the events of the day. All his mind kept returning to was the scene of Sara barely conscious lying under Joey, whose hands were tearing at her clothes. The rest was a blur. The adrenaline took over, rumbling through his body like a freight train, unable to control, unable to stop. It had been a long time since that had happened.
After disposing of Joey’s body into the creek, Dagger had wanted to be alone, to regain some part of his sanity he had lost on that cliff. So he called Simon and asked if he and his wife could stay with Sara. Then Dagger spent two hours walking the shoreline. He sat for a while on a secluded part of the beach watching Sara’s clothes burn. He couldn’t leave them on the hill and he didn’t think she would ever want to put them on again. It wasn’t so much the way he had killed Joey that bothered him. It was the fact that something inside him enjoyed it.
He toweled off and stared at his reflection in the mirror. The cuts and bruises were starting to swell and there was discoloration forming under the skin on his arms, shoulders, and chest. Somehow he hadn’t felt the blows.
His fingers combed through his wet hair and he felt the fatigue in his arms. Slowly and painfully, he tugged on a pair of jeans. But they were too unyielding against his sore muscles so he stripped out of those and put on his white cotton drawstring pants. Barefoot and barechested, he walked to the bar and flipped on a dim, overhead light. He poured himself a glass of bourbon, grimaced against the bitter taste, and added ice.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor and peered into Sara’s room. She was asleep, lying on her side, the sheet pulled up to her waist. He fought the urge to climb into bed just to hold her, tell her he’d always keep her safe. It amazed him she was able to sleep after her ordeal.
Quietly, he returned to the living room and lowered himself onto the cool leather couch, setting the glass on the coffee table. He answered the phone on the first ring so it wouldn’t wake either Einstein or Sara.
“It’s about time,” Padre said. “I’ve been trying your cellular for the past two hours.”
“I turned it off.”
“I know.” After a moment of silence, Padre asked, “How’s Sara?”
“Sleeping.”
“Good, that’s good. Listen, I thought you might want to know how this whole deal worked out.”
So Dagger let him ramble while he studied the contents of his glass. J.C. had demanded to see the Australian ambassador, but he was busy instructing the Australian police to check J.C.’s apartment.
Nick had been an unfortunate accessory. They can only assume Edie had led him to believe he killed Rachel. Pete, the crew member, wasn’t a suspect but was being given a chance to amend his story and identify Edie as the woman on the boat five years ago.
Dagger took another long swallow then said, “Listen, can I possibly read the shortened version in the papers?”
“That reminds me,” Padre rambled on, “that young guy got the exclusive you wanted. My office told all the other papers to stop by tomorrow for a press conference, but Mr. Wormley will have his story in the morning edition.”
“Good, that will make Sara happy.”
“She knew Nick was connected to this whole scenario somehow, didn’t she?”
“She felt he was drowning some bad memories in a bottle.” Dagger looked at his empty glass and walked to the bar to refill it.
“How did she know where the necklace was?”
Dagger smiled for the first time since the morning. “That was Einstein. Whenever we mentioned the word kangaroo, Einstein always spit out the words Kangaroo Paw. Sara looked it up on the Internet. Then she remembered seeing an identical plant on the balcony.”
Padre laughed. “You have got two partners any cop would kill for.”
“You’ve got that right.” Dagger thought back to that blur of time from when he had pulled Joey away from Sara to when he had tossed his limp body over the cliff.
“Oh, and that guy, Mince? One of our beat cops stopped him earlier for driving your stolen truck. Now he’s singing like a canary.”
“How is Robert Tyler taking it?”
“As well as can be expected. I think the Tyler men will do just fine by themselves with Lily to mother them.” After a pause, Padre said, “Okay, I’ll let you get some sleep.”
Dagger hung up the phone and held out his hand. It quivered as if tiny rivers of adrenaline were still pulsing through his body. He pressed the cold glass to his forehead, realizing that the bourbon was adding to his headache. He left the half-empty glass on the bar and saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. Sara was standing at the bottom of the stairs, a floral cotton robe buttoned up to her neck as though any amount of skin would be too enticing.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she whispered as she stepped out of the shadows.
Dagger wanted to wrap his arms around her, hold her close. But the same fear he had seen in the hawk’s eyes was still there. Sara had watched him kill a man, and not just by accident. It had been ruthless, without hesitation, professional.
Dagger slowly walked back to the couch and sat on the coffee table. Sara followed, taking a seat on the couch facing him. The dim glow from the bar light fell across his face and she couldn’t help but notice the cuts and bruises.
She reached out and touched his face. Dagger winced.
“It looks painful.”
Dagger just stared into her perfect face marred only by that one small bruise, the result of Joey’s punch. He resisted the urge to touch her hair, her face. A part of him was afraid she would recoil, revert back to being fearful of any movement he would make.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come home right away. I drove around a bit, went by the lake.” His voice trailed off.
“I wanted to come home, make sure you were okay.”
Sara nodded. “Simon’s wife is nice.” Her gaze dropped down to his battered knuckles and she stared at his hands a
s if they were ruthless weapons. But she touched them just the same.
Dagger sandwiched her hands between his and gathered his thoughts. After a few moments he said, “Listen, Sara. There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, about the people I used to work for, the things I have done in my past.” She pressed her hand to his mouth to silence him but he moved it away. “I’ve done a good job of forgetting that part of my life, of controlling the anger. But when someone hurts someone close to me…”
“It’s okay.” Her heart pounded in her chest and tears welled. “Grandmother told you, didn’t she?”
Dagger stared. “Told me what?”
“That’s why you killed him. Grandmother told you there can be no witnesses. The wolf will kill. And Joey was a witness to my shifting. You killed Joey so I wouldn’t have to.”
Dagger cupped her face in his hands and stared intently. Yes, Ada Kills Bull had told him Sara couldn’t control the wolf when it wanted to kill witnesses. Instead, she and her grandmother would flee, get as far away as possible so the wolf wouldn’t be tempted. Dagger often wondered if it was the necklace with the wolf’s head he wore that protected him. But he reminded himself that he had saved the wolf’s life.
On the first case Sara had helped him on, he had found the wolf in the woods, its leg shot off. He had wanted to shoot the wolf to put it out of its misery, but then it shape-shifted to Sara. He had been unaware of her special talents. She had pleaded with him to take her to her grandmother, not the hospital. And he will always remember his shock when he watched through a crack in the partially closed door to Ada’s bedroom. Sara’s leg had grown back! She had regenerative powers.
But the fact that the wolf would hunt down Joey wasn’t the reason Dagger killed him. So innocent, so trusting. Dagger knew Sara didn’t believe, couldn’t believe that he was capable of cold-blooded murder. How could he tell her about his past? That Dagger had his own demons he couldn’t control? That Chase Dagger wasn’t even his real name?
Her fingers touched his swollen lip and traveled to the cut above his eye. “You and I are a lot alike,” she whispered. “We both have parts of our lives we have to keep secret. We have only each other to trust.”
And with that she rose. Dagger watched her climb the open staircase, the dim light filtering up from the bar, outlining her body, accentuating the curve of her calves. When she had spoken, it was as if they were her grandmother’s words, wise and intuitive. She seemed older somehow. And she understood, at least enough to know some things needed no explanation. She had matured before his eyes, no longer the child.
He walked back to the bar, finished his drink, and cursed Simon for being right.
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Author’s Note:
For more information on books, essays, and short stories written by S.D. Tooley/Lee Driver, visit her at www.sdtooley.com