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They think they are being so subtle. EVERYONE KNOWS! They are all being too polite to say anything, but I’m not that nice. Maybe it’s time they realize that they’re not very good actors.
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Ben and Veronica had managed to keep things from getting too awkward during the day, but when they got back to his house that became far more difficult. When they had been at the station and at lunch they had to keep up the appearance that everything was normal. It was fun to mess with each other to see if the other could keep a straight face, but it was not serious.
When they were at home there was no one to pretend for anymore. They could do whatever they wanted; the only problem was they no idea what they wanted to do. When they got home they spent a lot of time saying hello to their pets, changing into more comfortable clothes, and avoiding all contact with each other.
Eventually, they found themselves on opposite sides of the living room without any more excuses to stay away from each other. Slowly they started making their way closer together until they were standing right in front of each other.
Ben looked down at her, “I get… if you don’t want to… if you want to forget about…” He eventually stammered to a stop not knowing how he wanted to finish that sentence.
Veronica stood thinking for a moment. “I’m not sure how this is gonna work. I don’t even know for sure what this is. We could stop now and say it’s because we want to save our friendship, but I think we both know we would be lying. I have no idea where this came from. Until last night...I never even entertained the possibility...but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m not saying I want us to jump in and run with this. I think we should take it slow, do the things that make us happy and go from there.”
Ben moved a bit closer and twined the fingers of his left hand with her right. “I can live with that. I do seem to remember something that made us both happy last night.”
Veronica smiled and tipped her head up as she rose up on her toes.
They were a moment from finally kissing when the doorbell rang.
Ben paused for a moment, “Ignore it. They’ll go away.”
Veronica let out a small laugh and leaned towards him again.
Once again, they were interrupted before they could get too close. This time whoever it was had started knocking on the door.
Ben tipped his head back and groaned, “I will kill them.”
Veronica started laughing as the knocking became more insistent.
Ben scowled at her and stalked over to the door. He threw it open and groaned once again. He turned to Veronica, “This one is for you.”
Veronica looked at him quizzically, but when Natasha sauntered through the door holding two bottles of wine she understood.
Ben grabbed his keys and headed for the door. “It looks like girl talk is imminent. I’m gonna head over to Mark’s place. There’s a weekly poker night that some of the guys have...guess I won’t be missing it this week. Call me if anything happens, and do not go anywhere the protective detail can’t get to you.” With one last look he trudged out the door.
Natasha and Veronica heard the engine turn over and then there was nothing.
Natasha burst out laughing, “Did I interrupt something?”
Veronica chucked a pillow at her before starting to laugh herself. “Shut up! If we are going to have this conversation, we are going to need a lot more wine and I need to make a call.”
Twenty minutes later, there was another knock on the door.
When Veronica opened it, she was surprised to see Erica grinning next to Cheyenne. Veronica smiled good-naturedly, “I didn’t know you were bringing Elsa.”
Cheyenne grinned wider while Erica looked confused. “Elsa…?”
Veronica took pity on her and explained, “Ice Queen. Don’t you remember the nickname Andrew gave you?”
At this, Erica gave a startled guffaw and the three started laughing together.
Erica’s laugh had always had a somewhat sinister quality to it, so when she was laughing hysterically, it almost sounded like a cackle.
When Natasha began to get annoyed with being left out of the joke, they stopped and explained it to her.
When the five newbies had started at the station, Erica had been relieved, because that meant that she could pass the infuriating moniker of “rookie” on to them.
Andrew had taken an instant liking to her, but Erica had never cared for him. This resulted in some truly uncomfortable nights at the bar and Erica having to freeze out Andrew so that he would finally take the hint. This suited her fine because she had never been a particularly affectionate person in public, but it did earn her the unfortunate epithet, Ice Queen.
After becoming friends with Cheyenne, Jennifer, and Veronica, she had opened up to the group more and even scored herself a few invites to their rookies-only movie nights. However, the nickname never died.
Once they were all seated with a glass of wine each Veronica started speaking. “Okay, this is how this is gonna work. If we are gonna talk about this, it stays between the four of us.”
Natasha grinned at Veronica and took a sip of her wine. “I knew there was something going on!”
Cheyenne could not contain her laughter. “You should have seen the two of them at lunch. They literally couldn’t keep their hands off each other...or their feet,” Cheyenne spoke in a mocking tone.
Veronica tried to hide her face behind a pillow, but Cheyenne would not allow it. She pulled the pillow back as she spoke again. “I know you two thought we couldn’t see you, but you were wrong. Ryan might have been oblivious, but I saw the whole thing. Don’t worry… I won’t say anything.”
Erica cut in, “You mean to tell me that Veronica dared to feel up Ben in front of our poor, innocent Cheyenne? Before we go on, I have to ask, is this conversation going to be Cheyenne-able? Should we have her cover her Mormon ears? We wouldn’t want to shock her.”
Cheyenne slapped her, but was obviously a little worried about what the answer might be.
Before Veronica could answer, Natasha cut in. “Please! We both know that she’s a bit of a Jack Mormon. Note the wine glass in her hand.”
Cheyenne turned even more red.
Veronica chugged down half of her glass of wine. “Fine...here it is. We kissed...once. And...that’s it. That’s the whole story.” Then she chugged down the rest of her wine and refilled her glass. She summoned up the most innocent look she could manage and gave it to her three friends because she knew they were not buying it.
When Natasha started speaking, Veronica retrieved the pillow to hide behind, but she still peeked at them from over the top of it. “Yeah, right! That is so not the whole story! If you want to make up for not telling me about moving in here, you owe me way more details than that.”
Veronica lowered the pillow and hugged it. “Okay, fine. I did tell you the truth. We have only kissed once...” Veronica took a deep breath. “It happened last night. We were talking. He was apologizing for saying something stupid. I didn’t even notice how close we were until he was right there. I didn’t know what to do at first. It was so weird...I mean...he was going to be Nick’s Best Man. He pulled away and I thought ‘screw it’ and I kissed him back...Then the microwave went off, and we haven’t kissed since. We didn’t even talk about it until we got home earlier. We had some fun with it today. Neither one of us are jump-into-a-relationship type people, especially not with each other. So we’re gonna go slow. We’re gonna do what feels right. If it grows into something more...we’ll deal with the weirdness of it then.”
Cheyenne, Erica, and Natasha were silent for a few moments. None of them had expected to get the whole story from her. At least not without having to pump Veronica full of wine first. They got over the shock of Veronica opening up to them fairly quickly.
Cheyenne was the first to speak. She raised her glass and said, “To Ben!”
Natasha, Erica, and Veronica all burst out laughing and rai
sed their own glasses, “To Ben!”
All four women clinked their glasses together and took a sip. They spent the rest of the night working their way through all four bottles of wine, laughing, and dancing to music.
When the clock struck midnight, Veronica poured Natasha into one cab and Cheyenne and Erica into another, and told them to come back the next day for their cars.
Cheyenne had not drunk much, but she was extremely tired and Veronica worried about her driving.
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Veronica was still stumbling around downstairs when Ben made it back from his poker night.
He chuckled when he saw her struggling to walk in a straight line from the living room to the kitchen with the empty wine bottles. “You know you are gonna have to work tomorrow and yet you still get yourself stumbling drunk. You are so gonna regret that in the morning.” Ben took a look around his trashed living room. “What in the world did you two do to my house?”
Veronica shuffled into the room behind him and crashed onto the couch. “Four, actually. Cheyenne and Erica came over too. There was lots of drinking...and dancing...there might have been some talk of you.”
Ben continued to laugh throughout her explanation. “And what exactly did you tell them about me?”
Veronica looked down at the couch for a moment then tipped her head up again to look him in the eye. “I told them that we had only kissed once.” Veronica moved with surprising accuracy to straddle his lap, “Then I told them I intended to change that.”
Before Ben could speak or there could be any more interruptions, Veronica crashed their lips together. They spent the next few minutes making out on the couch like teenagers.
Eventually, Ben pushed her off him. “Don’t think I’m not enjoying this, because I am, but you’re drunk. As much as I would love to continue this, I think it’s probably best if we follow your earlier plan and take this slow. I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and regret more than the wine you drank tonight.”
Veronica looked at him for a moment and then slumped onto the couch next to him. “Fine. I might have some difficulty with the stairs tonight. I think it’s best if I sleep here.”
Ben thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He stood up and scooped Veronica into his arms.
She squeaked and threw her arms around his neck.
“I said we should take things slow, but I like waking up with you in the mornings. We’re both adults, we can sleep in the same bed without letting things go too far.”
Without a comeback, she snuggled into his chest. She lost consciousness before they even made it to his room.
DAY 7
Veronica felt like death warmed over when she woke up the next morning. It had been a long time since she had had a hangover this bad. If her brain could make a sound, she was sure it would be screaming in agony as the sun light from the window reached her now open eyes. She groaned and flipped over so her face was buried in the pillows.
When she heard Ben laughing from the bathroom she groaned again. “I hate you.”
Ben started laughing louder.
“Shut up!”
Ben managed to stop laughing long enough to say, “I told you that you’d regret all that wine this morning. I left a present for you on the table.” Then he continued to laugh as he went back into the bathroom to finish getting ready.
Veronica lifted her head enough to see the two aspirin capsules and bottle of gatorade on the bed-side table.
“Bless you!”
She shifted herself up to take the pills and gulped down at least half of the gatorade bottle. What with her brain being in so much pain, Veronica had forgotten that Ben had been there for some of her more intense hangovers and was well aware of her favorite cure.
Ben allowed her to stay in bed for as long as he could, but eventually he had to get her up so she could eat before they headed over to the station.
“You have to get out of bed now. There are eggs and a cup of coffee waiting for you downstairs… A shower might be a good idea too. You smell like hangover and sweat.”
Veronica rolled out of bed and started to walk out of the room. “Bless you twice.”
Ben chuckled as he watched her leave.
When they made it to the station she could be seen sporting a pair of dark sunglasses. Everyone knew what it meant when she did not remove them after she entered the building.
The first thing she did upon arriving at the station was to go straight to the break room to pour herself a new cup of coffee. The aspirin had kicked in, so thinking was less painful but it still felt like her brain was about two sizes too big for her head.
Once she had finished with her newest jolt of caffeine, Veronica went over to the locker room to get changed into her uniform. While she was there, she noticed that Cheyenne was nowhere to be seen.
“I swear if she called out sick…”
Veronica pulled out her cell phone and dialed Cheyenne’s number.
After the fourth ring a groggy Cheyenne answered the phone, “First of all, I hate you. Second, no, I didn’t call out sick. Thirdly, if you bothered to look at the schedule, you would know that today is my day off. I’m going to hang up now because I’m tired and I want to sleep in. Goodbye, Veronica. I’ll see you when I don’t feel like punching you in the face for letting me drink and keeping me up so late. Oh, and slap Erica for me. I told her the two extra wine bottles was a bad idea.”
When Veronica heard the click of Cheyenne hanging up she started laughing. “At least I’m not the only one in bad shape today. I wonder how Tasha’s doing?”
She finished loading all of her stuff into her locker and met Ben in the hallway to have their morning meeting with Blake.
When they made it into his office, Blake was waiting for them with a smile on his face. “Veronica, I got a call from the crime lab. Looks like you can get your car back today. They didn’t find anything in it.”
Veronica was grateful she was going to have her own vehicle again. She did not mind riding with Ben, but missed her independence.
Blake did not have any more news for them, so he sent them on their way.
Before they moved on to researching a new theory, they found one other thing that they wanted to look into. They looked up to see if there were any strings of unsolved murders in other areas that even somewhat matched their killer’s MO.
Unfortunately, they were not able to find any traces of a serial killer with a penchant for burying people alive that had not already been caught or killed.
When they had exhausted all methods for researching this theory, they turned to their board to start looking after other ones. Both of them were tired of calling people and begging for information so they decided to work the only theory where they already had access to all the information they needed.
Veronica still found it difficult to believe that someone so meticulous would get caught for something that would only put them away for a short time, but it was a theory that needed to be looked into.
The first thing they did was run a search for all men that had been arrested around the time of the bombing at Veronica and Nick’s home and were recently released. They came up with far more names than either of them wanted, but it gave them a place to start. They went through all of their files and narrowed that list down by filtering out anyone who would not have been physically able to dig the graves and carry the bodies. Many of the names that they had were repeat offenders. They checked police records to make sure the men were unaccounted for on the dates of the abductions. This narrowed down their list a little bit more, but they lived in a large city and it was full of criminals who would love pulling one over on the cops.
They were so engrossed in going through every man’s file that they decided not to go out for lunch. Instead ordering Chinese food and having it delivered to the building.
It felt like old times as they leaned back in their chairs chowing down on General Tso’s chicken while they continued
to work through the files that their search had kicked out.
Mark and the other detectives had come and gone a few times throughout the day, but other than that they were left undisturbed.
By the end of the day they had 47 more names of potential suspects to give to the psychologist. When they stopped by her office, she thrust the pile of files from the day before back into Veronica’s hands as she took the new one.
“Only a few of those matched the profile. I put their names on the note at the top. I would appreciate it if you would check out those guys before you give me any more names. I have other things to do and this stack is going to take me days to work through.”
Ben and Veronica thanked her and went on their way. Stopping by Blake’s office as they left, they gave him the names that the psychologist had identified.
“We’ve got Jerald Simpson, Andrew Marx, Rafael Castillo, Randy Sanders, and Jason Axley. Veronica and I will look at them more in depth tomorrow. Right now we have nowhere near enough information to check out their places, but we can run a more thorough background check to see if we find anything.”
Blake saw nothing wrong with that course of action, so he let them go.
When they walked through the door into the parking lot, Ben and Veronica both stopped in their tracks.
Veronica was the first to speak, “You have got to be kidding me!”
As she fell back against the closed door Ben spoke, “What is it with this guy and vehicles?”
He pulled out his cell phone and dialled Blake’s number. After a moment he started speaking, “Guess what Veronica and I found when we got into the parking lot...Nope, there appears to be a white note card on my windshield...No, we did not go check it out...Yup, we’ll stay here and wait.” Ben put his phone back into his pocket.
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