As Keri Russell, wearing her costume from the movie, arrives at my table I give my order and she walks away again. I start to relax, because I haven't in so long. I know there is something else that I am supposed to be doing, but I can’t be bothered right now.
Keri Russell comes back to my table and sets my pie down. “Why won’t you see me?” Her voice is begging me to understand her.
I stare at her, confused because I can’t imagine what she could be talking about.
The next thing I know we’re walking down a dark street. I recognize this scene, but I can’t figure out why. I’m about to ask her what is happening, when a man comes up behind her and holds a cloth to her mouth. Keri struggles at first, but in moments she is lying limp on the ground.
As I look at her face, it suddenly morphs and I understand.
“Can you see me now?”
Veronica sat bolt upright, so fast she knocked Nick off of his chair.
“What the Hell!” he yelled in surprise, scrambling to get back up.
Quickly, she grabbed him and said, “I figured it out!” She woke up her laptop and queued one of the videos to start. She stopped on the image of the woman lying on the ground.
“Look at her clothes...she’s wearing a uniform!”
That was all it took. Nick had taken his phone out and within a few hours they knew where she worked, and it did not take long after that to figure out who she was.
Her name was Jennifer McCordell. Finally they had a clue.
While the detectives were following up on the lead she had provided, Veronica and Nick had been forced to go back to their job as patrol cops.
All day in the car, they went through the case over and over again, looking for something they had missed. They only had a few hours left to find the latest victim or they would be too late. Every cop in the city wanted to solve this case.
Veronica had given them something to work with, but she still felt like she should be doing more. She was missing something important and she knew it.
◆◆◆
They had not been able to save Jennifer McCordell.
Nor did they save the many women that came after her. It took almost seven weeks for Veronica to finally figure out what she was missing.
She was watching all of the videos again, as she did most nights, and it finally dawned on her. The video of Jennifer being buried got her there. She understood.
She had been there before, or at least somewhere near there.
When she was a teen, she had gone hiking with her grandfather most weekends. They had climbed the mountains in the background of that shot at least a hundred times.
It took some time, searching through pictures, but finally she found one with the same mountains silhouetted in the background. Luckily, her grandfather had been anal and labeled the back of all of his photos.
Two days later, the PPD was digging up women’s graves in the middle of the desert, and it was all because her grandfather believed that she was not spending enough time outdoors as a kid.
She felt proud that she had provided vital information, and that they were now that much closer to catching the man, but she also felt sick. Of course, that could have been the pregnancy talking. She had found out only the day before that she was going to have a baby with Nick.
Later that day, the precinct received one last email from their mysterious killer. This one did not have a video attached; there was only a message.
“YOU MAY HAVE FOUND THEM BUT YOU WILL NEVER GET ME. I WILL BE GOING ON A SHORT HIATUS TO ENSURE THAT FACT. BE WARNED THAT YOU WILL SUFFER FOR STOPPING ME AND TAKING MY SANCTUARY AWAY.”
He had been true to his word. They never did find him. Not long after that, she found a note that was meant for her. Then her whole world had changed.
◆◆◆
Veronica was driving home from work after an amazing day.
Sergeant Blake had told her that she was being considered for an open position as a detective in training. Most people had to wait years to gain admittance into that group, but she had shown a real knack for it.
Veronica knew that she owed Ben big time. She was going to have to set him up with Tasha for this one. He had been begging her for years, and now she had no choice but to do it. She had not wanted Natasha to start dating a cop, because she did not want that life for her. But who knows, maybe if she and Ben hit it off, they could all grow old together. Now she was really getting ahead of herself. She had not even talked to Tasha about going on a date with Ben yet.
While she was driving, “Footloose” came on the radio, and she could not help but blast the music and sing with all she had. She loved singing in the car, because she could do it as loud as she wanted and no one would hear her.
It had been a beautiful day and now she was driving home to be with her wonderful fiance. Life couldn’t get much better than that.
When the song ended, she turned the radio down again and focused on where she was going. For a cop, she had always had a terrible sense of direction, so she had to concentrate on what she was doing.
After about ten minutes, she found her street and turned down it. When she pulled into her driveway, she saw that the lights were on in her living room and her heart leapt. In only a few moments, she would be able to share her fantastic news with Nick.
While she was walking towards her door, she noticed a card on the windshield of Nick’s car.
Rolling her eyes, she snatched it up. “I swear, one day he’s going to get into and accident, because he’s distracted by another flyer that he left on his car.”
She flipped it over and saw only one line of hand-written text. Thinking this odd, she paused for a moment to read it before she tossed it into the recycling bin.
“VENGEANCE IS BEST SERVED COLD...I THINK NOT.”
She had no clue what that meant, but it set off warning bells in her mind. She turned to walk into the house so she could tell Nick about it and ask his advice.
Before she could take one step, she was thrown backwards by a wave of heat and glass. She felt some of the larger pieces ripping through her clothes and slicing her skin. As she landed on the ground about five feet away, she looked up to see fire blazing inside of her house.
All of the windows had been blasted out, and the walls looked as if the were about to fall in on themselves. She picked herself up, but she had a hard time standing. She looked down to see blood oozing from a particularly deep gash on her leg.
She knew that she should feel more pain than this, but it was as if her whole body had gone numb. Nick was still in the house.
Nick IS STILL IN THE HOUSE!
All at once, it was as if she was flying towards the front door.
She had to get to him!
Her left leg did not want to support her weight, but she pushed forward anyway. Before she could get to the door, she felt another wave of heat roll over her as the walls started to collapse in on themselves.
At that moment, it was as if all of the fight left her body. She knew she was too late. She stood there, unable to move, or think, or even breath.
She heard sirens approaching as the fire truck arrived. She knew that it would only be a matter of time before her entire precinct showed up, too. The moment that they heard her address over the radio, they would be jumping into their cars, calling the detectives and everyone that was off duty.
A fireman ran up to her and Veronica knew that she should at least try to understand what he was saying, but she could not focus.
She knew this fireman. They had run into each other before. She glanced at his face and tried to remember what his name was, but it was like her mind had gone numb along with her body.
She could tell that he was trying to ask her something, but nothing was working anymore. She was trying to think of where Nick would have been in the house.
Was there any chance?
When he saw her headlights, he usually went to the kitchen to get her a beer. Maybe if he was in the kitchen when it went
off, he could still be alive.
This thought...this hope, gave her fire.
She sprang into action like a cat. One second she was standing next to the fireman, and the next she was trying to sprint for the structure that used to be her home.
Just before she reached it, she felt someone drag her back.
“Let me go!” Her scream filled the night.
Ben’s strong arms coiled around her and Mark joined in as she fought him. “I can’t let you go in there Veronica. Nick would never forgive me if I let you die by running into that house.”
Veronica continued to struggle against Ben and Mark, “I will NEVER forgive you if you don’t let me save him!”
Ben spun her around and held her by the shoulders, with tears in his eyes he made one final plea. “Ronnie...he’s already gone. I know why you want to go in there. I want to go in too. But there’s nothing that anyone can do for him now.”
She struggled for a moment longer and then slumped against him and started sobbing. “I have to save him. It's all my fault.”
Before he could answer her, she shoved away from him and hobbled over to Nick’s car.
Ben tried to help her, but she pushed him off.
She picked up the note and handed it to him. “I found this right before it went off. I think he wanted me to see.”
Ben stared at the note for a moment and then took it from her. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Then he turned and went over to where Blake was standing, talking to the fireman in charge.
Veronica watched them talking for a time, but then her vision started to darken and a tingle started to spread from her fingertips. She looked down to see that her entire pant leg was soaked in her own blood. She tried to call out to the paramedics, but before she could, her vision went completely black and she felt herself falling.
◆◆◆
Veronica woke to the sound of beeping. She recognized the sound, but could not place it in her memory. She struggled to remember the sound, and then in a flash she understood. It was the medical equipment they had her attached to.
Opening her eyes, she found herself in a bland room on an uncomfortable bed, hooked up to a bunch of machines. She looked around to find half of her precinct watching her and the other half pressing their noses up to the window in her door. Normally she would have been embarrassed, but she could not manage to summon any emotion.
She tried to sit up, but she found that she did not have the strength to.
Blake finally spoke up. “Be careful, you came close to losing your leg. For once, do what you’re told and take it easy.”
Groggily, she tried to remember being brought to the hospital or anything after that, but there was nothing.
“How long have I been out?”
Everyone looked uncomfortable.
“You’ve been unconscious for about two days.”
A doctor walked into the room, so everyone got up to leave.
For an hour, Veronica laid there as the doctor described everything that was wrong with her leg, and how much rehab she would have to do before she could walk properly again. It turned out that the glass had cut deeper than she had originally thought.
Veronica wasn’t listening, because she didn’t care. She knew that she would do the rehab, but she didn’t care if her leg ever went back to normal. Her life would never be normal again, so why did it matter if her leg worked?
The doctor knew that she was not absorbing anything he said, but he had one more thing to tell her that she could not ignore. He clicked is pen to make sure she was paying attention before he went on.
“There is one more thing that I have to tell you. It will not be easy to hear, and I am sorry to be the one to have to tell you. It seems that...with all of the emotional trauma...and the blood loss...I’m sorry. Everything that you suffered that night. I’m afraid you lost your baby.” He mistook her stunned silence for understanding, apologized once more, and left the room.
Veronica stared down at her stomach and began sobbing once more.
She had only known that she was pregnant for a short time. She and Nick had only recently decided to postpone the wedding so their child could be there. She had been planning on calling her father in a week or two, to tell him that he was going to be a grandfather.
It could not be possible that she lost the love of her life and her child all in one horrible night. It could not be possible that someone could be so evil as to do this to her on purpose.
There was only one person on the face of this Earth that could hate her enough to do this. At least she could tell Blake exactly that, so that he would not waste his time hunting down someone else.
Her only comfort was knowing that one day, they would find him and he would be brought to justice. Until then, she would wait.
* * *
“Veronica...Veronica! Earth to Veronica Taylor!”
Slowly she came back to the present, and was staring at Ben in the middle of his living room floor. She was surrounded by papers and pictures.
“Where did you go?”
Shifting into a more comfortable position, she hugged Ace. “I was running through it all in my head again.”
Ben looked like he wanted to ask her more, but he held his tongue. He knew exactly what she had been doing, and could not bring himself to ask her any questions about what she had remembered. It was bad enough that she had to think about it at all.
They spent the next few hours going over everything that they knew about the case, and all of the things that Ben had found. Unfortunately, there was not much.
When Veronica pushed up off of the floor suddenly, she startled Ben.
“Where are you going?”, he half asked and half yelled.
Before he had a chance to stop her, she grabbed Ace’s leash and attached it to his collar. “We’ve gone through everything we have and I’m tired. I promised myself that I would sleep in my own apartment tonight, so I’m going home.”
Ben bounced up off the floor and grabbed his car keys. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes. He knew that he could not talk her out of going home, and she knew that she could not talk him into letting her go home alone.
When their gazes held for a fraction of a second too long, Ben shifted awkwardly and said, “Let me add more food to Charlotte’s dish.”
As a response, Veronica scooped the cat up into her arms and walked out the front door with Ace in tow.
Ben gently shook his head and followed behind the odd parade.
They drove to her apartment in complete silence. Neither of them was willing to admit how scared they were.
When they reached her apartment building, they sat in her parking lot for a full ten minutes before Ace started whining, and they got out of the car.
They approached her front door hesitantly, and were relieved not to see anymore notes. When Veronica unlocked her door, they both drew their guns before entering.
Opening the door, they were both ready to take out anyone that was in the room…but no one was there.
Working as a team, they cleared every corner of her apartment before they sheepishly holstered their guns.
Ben flopped down on her couch and flipped her television on. As Charlotte curled up on his chest, Veronica noticed how comfortable they both were.
Shaking her head, she walked over to the linen closet and pulled out an extra blanket. She threw it at him, careful to get only his face and not his cat.
He tossed an annoyed look in her direction and opened his mouth.
“See you in the morning,” she interjected before he could speak. With that, she turned and practically ran into her room.
How long has it been since I showered?
She honestly could not remember.
Upon walking into her bathroom, she looked in the mirror and groaned. She had terrible dark circles under her eyes and her hair was a greasy mess. Without any more thought she stripped off her clothes and jumped into the shower.
Never had it felt so
good to stand under the blast of hot water. As she felt the it wash over her, it seemed like all the tension fell off of her body and ran down the drain. She must have stayed in there longer than she thought, because there came a hesitant knocking at the bathroom door.
“Everything cool in there?”
She rolled her eyes and felt the sudden urge to open the doors and splash water at him. Before she could act on that impulse, she remembered that she was completely naked so that would have been a horrible idea. “I’m fine Ben. Enjoying the warm water.”
As if on cue, the warmth ran out and she was suddenly blasted with a shot of ice cold water. She squealed and desperately tried to dance out of the stream.
Ben must have heard her, because suddenly the door burst open and he came running in, looking for something wrong.
For a moment, he stood transfixed in the middle of the room. Then he burst out laughing at the sight of her cowering in the corner of her shower, trying to avoid getting hit.
In an outrage, she slid open the glass door. She simultaneously grabbed a towel and stepped towards Ben.
He was so distracted by her attempts to cover herself, that he was taken by surprise when she gripped him by the front of his shirt and dragged him bodily into the shower with her.
“How do you like it?”, she asked as he tried to squirm out of her grasp.
She turned the spray of water off and tried to vacate the shower. Unfortunately, Ben was trying to do the same thing. They crashed into each other and tumbled out of the shower stall together.
They landed in a pile of limbs and wet fabric. For a few moments they laid there laughing on her bathroom floor. Then it became painfully obvious how naked she was, and how soaked his clothes were. Desperately trying not to be caught looking at each other, they disentangled themselves and Ben fled the bathroom.
Once she was safely in her pajamas, Veronica went back into her room and tried to find some clothes Ben could wear while she dried his. She landed on an old t-shirt of Nick’s that she often wore as a pajama top, and a pair of baggy sweat pants with an elastic waistband.
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