by Dana Marton
“What is it?” She pulled back to scan his face. “Bad day at the office?”
“Let’s hear about your day. Mine can wait.”
Her smile just kept spreading. “I got the donor files. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for them,” she enthused as he followed her in. “I cooked a huge celebratory dinner. Steak and wine. Technically, I can’t have red meat. Alcohol either, because of the drugs. But you can do that for me, and I’ll be living vicariously through you, which is the next best thing.”
He moved forward on autopilot, telling himself to snap out of his bad mood and not ruin her special day.
“You were right, it wasn’t Stacy. Okay, I know it’s stupid, but part of me was still worried about that. I want what we have to be real. And now I know it is. The donor isn’t even a woman.” Her eyes went wide. “A guy! How weird is that? Well, he was a good guy, that’s all I need to know, right? I mean he was an organ donor. He was killed in a car accident right here in Broslin. How is that for a coincidence? I didn’t even know about Broslin when I got the heart. I feel so guilty for being this excited about this. But some of his organs were good, and they were donated.”
A car accident right here in Broslin. Something cold and heavy reached for Bing. “Do you have a name?”
“Greg Bruckner.” She beamed.
The room spun with him.
He shook his head, feeling as if he’d been punched in the face.
She moved to take his hands, but he pulled away. “No,” he groaned the single word. This couldn’t be true.
Her smile didn’t dim, her eyes kept sparkling. “What is it?”
He backed away another step. “I have to leave. Lock up tight. I’ll send Joe over.”
“I made dinner. Bing?”
He shook his head again, wishing he could shake away the last three minutes, erase them and restart. But he couldn’t. “This is not right.”
Her brows furrowed, worry coming into her eyes. “What isn’t?”
He tried to fill his lungs, but he couldn’t. A dull, heavy ache filled his chest. “I got the fingerprint report back today. Greg Bruckner. He murdered Stacy.”
She turned white, her eyes going wide with utter horror. “The killer? I have the heart of the killer?”
His mind swam in a cold haze. “Don’t think of it like that. It’s a pump. It’s just a pump.”
The devastated look on her face twisted his guts, but he couldn’t help her.
“I have to go.” And then he turned and practically ran from her, from everything that could have been.
Chapter Twelve
Sophie sat in her kitchen, hyperventilating as the mouth-watering scent of steak she wasn’t going to eat filled the air. She’d tried to call Dr. Pratt, but he was in emergency surgery, something complicated that was expected to last hours, according to the nurse.
Wendy was taking her son to Florida to see her parents. Sophie glanced at the clock. They’d still be in the air.
She sobbed. She’d waited for the heart forever. Prayed for it. Obsessed endlessly over whether or not she’d get one in time. Her new heart was a blessing, a miraculous thing, the best thing that had ever happened to her. That was what she was supposed to feel. But at the moment she just felt trapped, tied to something dark and unimaginable.
How could she escape, when the thing she wanted to run from was inside of her?
“I’m okay,” she told Peaches between two gasps of air as the dog looked at her, worried, whined and licked her knee. “I’m okay.”
But she needed somebody else to tell her that, because she wasn’t sure if she could convince herself, not about this.
She didn’t want to call Jeremy. Jeremy wasn’t what she needed. And not her mother either. She had no idea what her mother would make out of this, and right now she couldn’t deal with more grief.
She wanted Bing, but Bing was done with her, she was pretty sure about that. The rejection hurt so much it took her breath away.
She could think of only one place where she might find some true understanding: the transplant support group at the hospital. She glanced at the clock on the oven again. She might just make the Monday night meeting.
She hurried into the bathroom to wash her face, then grabbed her car keys and put Peaches outside. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You take care of the place, okay?”
Peaches gave a quick bark as if answering in the affirmative.
She tried not to cry on her way over to the meeting. She needed to see traffic. Think about something else. She couldn’t. She hoped the first, terrible shock would wear off a little by the time she walked into the room. It didn’t.
Lillian, the always impeccably dressed team leader, greeted her with a welcoming smile as she smoothed down her black silk suit. “Sophie! I’m so glad you’re back. We were wondering how you were doing. How have you been? Are you okay?”
A dozen men and women were already seated, turning back to look at her, every gaze on her tear-soaked face.
After slumping into the first empty chair she came across, she dropped her purse at her feet. She hadn’t meant to talk. She’d meant to listen. She meant to soak up the support and the prayers. But the whole miserably story poured out of her in a torrent of words.
They listened, horrified, breath held, every eye on her. Then they were up and around her with hugs and prayers and words of comfort she tried desperately to cling to.
“Can you sue the hospital? I mean, how can they do something like this?” a twenty-something woman asked. She was new since Sophie had last been here, tall and sickly thin.
“I’m not looking for blame.” Sophie blinked back tears. She had no idea what she was looking for. “The ironic thing is, I thought I had the wife’s heart. I thought that was why I was so drawn to the house, that’s why I was falling for the man.”
Silvio, a middle-age vintner who’d spoken several times before on body memories, shook his head in sympathy. “Maybe the killer was the wife’s lover. He might have been a frequent visitor to the house and that’s why you remembered it. He might have come by every day while the husband was at work.”
She drew back, horrified. Was that it?
Gretchen, a vivacious pastry chef, pressed a hand against her chest. “Oh my God. Silvio is right. It’s the body memories. You told the husband to dig up the bush. And he found the murder weapon under it. Part of you remembered where it was. What else do you remember?”
“Nothing. I didn’t even remember the bush. I swear. It just stuck out because it was in the wrong place, design-wise.” She swallowed hard, looking away. “I’m not sure if I can deal with this.”
Lillian squatted in front of her and took her hands. “You can and you will.”
Sophie wasn’t sure. “I feel…trapped. I’m trapped forever, aren’t I? This is not something I can ever walk away from.” She wiped her eyes.
“You can’t stress over this,” Silvio added. “You’ve made it through hell. You have a new life, and you deserve it.”
“Whatever that man did has nothing to do with you,” Gretchen said.
And they kept going, reassuring her and offering support, offering phone numbers if she needed to talk, day or night. They surrounded her, prayed with her, and understood her. She was so grateful she nearly began crying again.
Silvio walked her to her car when the meeting was over. He hesitated when they stopped. “I’ve been putting together an article for the local paper on my body memories. But yours are so much more dramatic. Not right now, but maybe sometime in the future, would you be willing to sit down with me for an interview for the article, maybe?”
She drew back, horrified by the idea. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Perfectly understandable. Hang in there.” The man gave her a disappointed smile. “And don’t hesitate to ask for help if you need it.”
She needed a new heart, she thought as she drove away, then felt ashamed for being so ungrateful. People died every single day w
aiting for organs. She was one of the lucky ones. Even if just now she didn’t feel very lucky.
She drove home, feeling a little steadier than when she’d left. A cruiser was parked in front of her house. Her heart lurched before she realized it wasn’t Bing sitting behind the wheel. She didn’t have it in her to go over and talk to the officer, so she simply offered a quick wave before she went in.
She went straight to the back and let Peaches come in. He was all wagging tail and happy dog. His big brown eyes were filled with love and unconditional acceptance.
She slipped to the floor and wrapped her arms around him, and the dog snuggled up to her, warm and comforting, a solid bulk of support. When it came down to the wire, it was possible that your dog was the only one you could fully trust, she decided.
Peaches normally slept downstairs by the door. But that night he slept at the foot of her bed, as if guarding her. She didn’t sleep much, mostly just tossed and turned. She fell asleep around dawn, a few hours of blissful oblivion; then she had a few more seconds of peace as she woke, before she remembered everything.
No more Bing. Deep breath. Part of her came from a killer. What did that make her? The heart was a big deal. It wasn’t as if they were talking about hair plugs here.
Peaches came over, put his head on the bed, and licked her hand.
She turned to him. “I don’t want to get up.” For the first time in a long time, part of her felt like she simply couldn’t face the day. She wanted to stay in bed. Possibly forever.
Then Peaches pulled back and lolled his tongue, did a little dance, turning in a circle. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a dance. He probably had to pee.
It got her out of bed. “We’re going to keep going,” she told him, making up her mind. “Wonderful things are on their way.” She was lying through her teeth.
She called Wendy in Florida, and they talked for two hours. Wendy offered to turn around and come right back. That felt good. But Sophie told her not to. There was nothing Wendy could do to help. There was nothing anyone could have done to change the situation she was in, not without the ability to time travel.
She went about her day, updating and designing web sites, playing with the dog, trying hard not to think about her heart or Bing. When darkness fell, another uniformed officer showed up at her door to let her know he’d be spending the night outside. She thanked him.
She managed to sleep more than the night before, her dreams a jumbled mess, a dark fog surrounding her, threatening to drown her. She woke covered in sweat but pushed herself out of bed and plowed into the next day. And the next, and the next. She worked through Saturday morning.
Saturday afternoon, she made her salads and dropped them off at the fund-raiser cookout at the station, but she avoided running into Bing, and she didn’t stay. She went back home to work late into the night. She didn’t want time to think or feel.
She was going to work through Sunday too, she decided the next morning as she plodded down the stairs with Peaches, let the dog out back, then went to the front door for the Sunday paper. She’d slept late, so the cruiser was gone, but half a dozen news vans were lined up by the curb.
“Miss Curtis!” A perfectly made-up woman in a crisp blue suit rushed up her walkway with a microphone when she spotted Sophie. “Is it true? Can I have an exclusive?”
Other reporters ran behind her with their cameramen, shouting questions.
Sophie had been in motion to pick up the paper, so she grabbed that, then pulled back to slam the door shut, and locked it too. Without pulling the curtain, she glanced out the window at the camera crew that was trampling her new flower beds, dang darn it. What the—
Then her gaze caught the lead title on the front page of the paper. LOCAL HEART TRANSPLANT RECIPIENT GETS HEART OF A KILLER AND HIS GRISLY MEMORIES.
* * *
Bing sat in his office, working a case. He’d been in pretty much around the clock since he’d walked away from Sophie, only stopping by the house to take care of Mango and grab a few hours of sleep.
He didn’t want to think about her. The logical part of his brain knew he’d acted badly. Whatever heart she’d gotten, it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t even known about it, and even if she had, would he have expected her to refuse it?
But he couldn’t separate her from the past now, from Greg Bruckner.
He’d lived these past two years to see Stacy’s killer prosecuted, to watch the death penalty carried out, to have the bastard’s heart stop as the killer had stopped Stacy’s.
He didn’t know how to deal with the unlikely situation he suddenly found himself in. Any future relationship with Sophie, even friendship, would be a monumental betrayal of Stacy.
If he pulled Sophie into his arms again… Whose heart would be beating against his?
The thought was enough to drive any sane man crazy.
Yet he didn’t hate her. He found he couldn’t. He understood on some logical level that she was probably having as difficult a time processing this as he was. A more difficult time, actually. He couldn’t even imagine what she must be going through, finding out that her heart had come from a murderer.
Bing rubbed the back of his neck and swore under his breath. He’d handled things badly. He had to somehow apologize to her for that, tell her none of this was her fault, but they couldn’t see each other again.
But maybe not today. He needed a little more time.
When his phone rang and he recognized his father’s number, he picked up the line.
“My car died.” The old man grumbled on the other end. “I’m too old to ride the bike.”
Bing wasn’t in the mood to coddle him. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I ain’t got no money to get the truck fixed.”
Yet, if Bing gave him money, he’d drink it away. Easy come, easy go. Bing rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “How about picking up a couple of extra hours at work?” Money earned the hard way would be more appreciated, and extra work would leave his father less time to spend at the bars.
“Already asked. They ain’t got none.”
Should he, or shouldn’t he? What the hell. “I’ll talk to Jason about something out at the farm.”
A moment of silence came through the line. “Weekends would be good.” But no thank you. They weren’t at that level of civility yet.
“You two can set that up.” He hung up, only to pick up the phone again to call Jason, who said he could use some help.
That done, Bing paged through the latest file on his desk, notes Chase had given him on the destruction-of-public-property case he was working, vandals setting a bus station shelter on fire overnight. He barely got into it when his phone rang. He picked it up.
“Just checking in to see how things are going,” Jack Sullivan said on the other end.
“You’re not supposed to care when you’re on vacation. You’re supposed to give your undivided attention to Ashley and her daughter.”
“The girls are in a sugar coma.”
“How is Disneyland?”
“First couple of days, I wanted to call you to send in a SWAT team to get me out. You get used to it after a while. Thousands of screaming kids can be fun. Who knew?”
“Stop drinking the water immediately,” Bing joked, happy to hear Jack happy.
He liked to think they were friends. Jack was coming out of some tough times, having been tortured for three days, then buried alive by the same serial killer who’d killed Jack’s sister. There was a time when he’d had a lot of darkness in him, enough to make Bing concerned. Love was changing a lot of that. Bing was happy to see it.
Love could lift you up. But love could also bring you down, stomp you into the dirt, and rip your guts out, he thought, refusing to think anymore of Sophie. He talked to Jack instead, but not about the Haynes case or the new clues in Stacy’s murder. Jack deserved his break.
They talked for maybe five minutes. After they hung up, he tried to force his attention back to the destructio
n-of-public-property notes he was looking over, teenagers with nothing better to do on a Saturday night, out on a rampage, most likely. He glanced up from his computer as Joe walked into his office with a constipated look on his face, holding some newspapers.
“What is it? Who’s complaining about the police this time?” If they came down hard on someone, everyone cried police brutality. If they cut someone a break, they were accused of being soft on criminals and ineffective. Dealing with the media and PR was his least favorite part of the job. It figured that something would pop up on a day like this.
Joe held the paper out for him. “You might want to see this, Captain.”
He scanned the headlines. On the first run, his brain refused to process the title that caught his attention. So he grabbed the paper away from Joe and read it again. Then he moved on to the article and swore like he’d never sworn before in the office.
Unbelievable.
She’d gone to the papers with the story? Was that what she wanted, her fifteen minutes of fame? She wasn’t the woman he’d thought she was, for damn sure.
Steam gathered inside him. His private business. His wife’s murder dragged up again. On the front page. He gripped the paper so hard his knuckles were cracking.
He shoved to his feet and strode to the door with grim determination, Joe hastily stepping out of his way.
Dammit, Sophie. He stomped through the office, every eye on him.
She better be home. Because they were going to talk about this.
Chapter Thirteen
Sophie hovered in her living room to stare from behind the curtains at the surreal scene on her front lawn when a knock at the back scared the spit out of her and sent Peaches barking. The dog ran to the sliding doors, nails clicking on the tile floor as he slid to an ungainly stop in front of the glass. At least this time he stopped before he hit, which wasn’t always the case.
Bing stood outside, motioning for her to let him in.
God, she was glad to see him. He’d come around. He’d come to let her know that he’d overreacted the other day. Right now, she didn’t care. With the crowd on her lawn, she was just happy that he was here.