by Mark Stone
“Because, Katherine Cross, in about a half a second, you’re not going to be able to see me.”
With those words, Natasha slammed the door shut behind her. As she did, the electricity to the building went dead. The entire windowless room we were standing in was now as black as a tomb at midnight.
“What the hell?” I heard Kate shout in the dark. Then, a couple of rustling sounds later, and a shot went off in the dark.
“My God!” I screamed, hearing another rustling and then feeling the press of weight on top of me.
It knocked me to the floor and I found myself on my back, with an unseen pressure pressing down on me.
I didn’t need to see who it was to know. I had felt this body pressed against mine in the dark more times than I could have counted right now. I remembered every contour, every curve. I remembered the smell of her and the way her breath felt against my cheek in the morning; the same as her breath felt against my cheek right now.
“Is she okay?” I asked. “Did you take her gun, Nat? Did you shoot her?”
“Yes and no,” Natasha answered, and the closeness of her voice startled me, even though I knew she was there. “I took her gun, but only after she tried and failed to shoot me, which is more than a little rude.” Her hand ran up my chest. “I hit her with the butt of the stupid thing. Bertha? Is that what she called it?”
“I honestly don’t remember,” I admitted.
“She’ll be fine, Stormy,” Natasha answered. “And so will you. So long as you do what I ask you to. Stay out of this, okay? I know things went south, really south, but I need you to trust me.”
“Is that a joke?” I asked wrestling with something in my pocket. “The last time I trusted you, I ended up with all of my possessions stolen. You took my underwear, Nat.”
“I needed something to remember you by,” she cooed, her hand roving my chest.
“He just wants his daughter back,” I said.
“His daughter can’t come back, Stormy,” she answered, her breath falling against my ear now. “Not yet anyway.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s going on here?”
“I wish I could tell you. Really I do. I never had as much fun as I did when I was with you, but this is about your pay grade, baby. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“I never knew you to be afraid of anything,” I said, swallowing hard. “You’re kind of a monster that way.”
“Maybe,” she admitted, and I could feel her shrugging against me. “But even monsters have feelings.”
“Feelings?” I scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“That’s why I’m here, Stormy,” she answered. “Don’t you get it? I know you think everything between us was a joke, a ploy. I’m not going to lie to you again, part of it was. But think about it. I wouldn’t have broken into a police department to warn someone who didn’t mean anything to me. I want you to be safe, Stormy. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you, something I could have stopped and didn’t.”
“Then bring her back, Nat,” I said. “Bring her back and all of this can be over. You can run away like you always do.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she started. “I don’t run away anymore. Turns out it doesn’t agree with me, and I already told you, Tanya can’t come back yet. Now, be a good boy and keep your distance. I’d tell you more if I could.” She took a deep breath and I felt her body rise against mine. “I’ve gotta go, Stormy. The generators are going to kick in soon, and I don’t need to be here when that happens.”
“I thought you said you don’t run anymore,” I answered, pulling something out of my pocket and placing it in hers deftly.
“I said I don’t run away,” she answered. “This is me running toward something. I’m really sorry about this, by the way.”
“About what?’ I asked.
Instead of answering, she leaned in and kissed me. Though I hated myself, my body reacted. I fell into it, breathing in tandem with her. As she pulled away, I wondered why she thought I would need to be told sorry about that.
Then she showed me.
She drove the butt of the gun across my forehead, knocking me hard against the floor.
I felt unconsciousness fall over me as, in the corner of my eye, I saw the sliver of light that told me Natasha had opened the door to make her escape.
It didn’t matter though, not as much as it did the first time she left me. Unlike then, I had a plan this time and, more importantly, I had given myself a way to track her.
Chapter 21
I woke slowly with something cold pressed against my head. It took all of a half a second for the memory of what had happened to come flooding back in, like water from a burst dam.
“Cross!” I yelled, remembering what Natasha had done and the fact that I never got the chance to see Cross before I passed out to verify worse hadn’t been done.
“She’s fine,” a familiar voice almost sang from over me. I had heard my share of familiar voices since getting to Vero Beach, and not all of them were pleasant. This one though, it might as well have been a prayer for all the good it did to my soul.
Opening my eyes, I saw Rebecca over me, holding a cold compress to my head, where Natasha had struck me.
I was obviously in an hospital room. The fluorescent lights shown down on Rebecca, making her look every bit the angel I’d come to know her to be. Of course, I’d also learned that this angel had some back.
“Sit back!” she said loudly, holding my down firmly with a hand. She wouldn’t be strong enough to keep me down if I really wanted to throw myself forward, but the way she spoke was enough. She had worked her way deep enough into my heart that I’d have pretty much done anything she asked. “You have a concussion, Dillon. I need you to take things slow for a bit.”
“I’m in the hospital?” I asked, swallowing hard to coat my dry throat.
“You and the other detective, Kate Cross, you were attacked in the police department. Do you remember?”
“I do,” I said, flashes of Natasha running through my mind. “Did she—”
“She got away,” Rebecca said, pursing her lips mournfully at me.
“How did that ha—”
“Tell me your birthday, Dillon,” she said, cutting me off.
“You know my birthday,” I answered. “You took me out to that steakhouse on my birthday, the one with the ‘all you can eat fixin’s bar’.”
She smiled at me, a sweet thing that lit me up from the inside out. “I know that I know your birthday, you idiot. I’m trying to make sure that you do. You know, because of the concussion and all.”
“March 20th,” I answered softly. “First day of Spring.”
“Not every year,” she answered. “Stop trying to make yourself seem important.” She leaned down and gave me a light kiss on the cheek.
“Aren’t I though?” I asked, smiling as I thought about the differences in the kisses I’d just gotten. One was on the lips, of course. But it was also dark. It was deep and warm and instinctual, but it lacked the thing which made this simple kiss from Rebecca so damned special. It lacked connection. It lacked purity. It lacked truth.
“To me, Dillon Storm,” she answered, staring at me with sea foam eyes, eyes I never wanted to stop looking into. I used to think the water was my home, and it was. Now though, I could have plunged myself into those eyes and never come up for air. It would have made me a happy man. “To me, you’re exceptionally important.” She blinked hard, moisture pooling in her eyes. “And you have me very, very worried.”
“I know,” I answered, guilt prickling at the back of my mind like an errant thought I wanted to do away with. I raised my hand, wiping the tear as it fell down her cheek. “I’m so sorry about that.”
“This was supposed to be a vacation,” she said, shaking her head. “We were supposed to come over here for shopping and treasure hunting, and your grandfather’s party. Look at us now, Dillon. We’re both at work.”
I could
n’t help it. I laughed loudly, which caused Rebecca to laugh too.
“I’m surprised they let you treat me,” I said. “I’ve found the people out here, let’s just say, hesitate when receiving my services.”
“Hospitals are a little different,” Rebecca answered. “Besides, there’s a flu outbreak in town. They’re thrilled to get any qualified and willing hands.”
“They’re pretty good hands,” I said, glancing up at her fingers as they deftly held the ice pack. My thoughts drifted to the last time I saw Rebecca, and how tense that conversation had been. “I want you to know something. There aren’t a lot of women who would be comfortable with my relationship with Charlotte. She was my first love, after all.”
“That doesn’t threaten me, Dillon,” she answered, her hand pressed firmly against my forehead. It was like her touch, and only her touch, stopped the world from spinning. “I know she meant a lot to you, and I know she’s always going to be in your life, seeing as how she’s the mother of your nephew. I’m not bothered by it.” She bit her lower lip as she looked down at me. “What can I say? I’ve never been the jealous type. In a weird way, it was sort of the reason my first marriage ended. My ex-husband always thought I was more interested in my work than I was in him. I don’t think he understood what it meant to really be in love.” She shook her head. “And I’m not talking about the way children are in love, the way you and Charlotte were probably in love. I mean the real kind; the kind that lasts through paying your bills together, through countless boring Monday mornings, through catching colds and going broke. I’m talking about good old fashioned grownup love; the sort that doesn’t need to get jealous because it understands what’s important, because it understands what’s real will always be real, regardless of what other people you might find yourself surrounded by.”
“You never talk to me about your first husband,” I muttered, somewhat in awe, not only of what she had just said, but also of the way she had said it. It was perfect, but what else could I expect from the good Dr. Rebecca Day?
“There’s nothing to talk about, Dillon,” she answered flatly, her voice still the sweetest song singing through my head. “He’s part of my past, and I don’t care about the past.” Her smile grew wider as she looked down into my eyes. “The future however, that’s a whole other story.” She swallowed hard. “The bottom line is, I don’t give a damn who your first love is, Dillon Storm. So long as I’m in the running to be your last.”
Now it might have been the concussion talking, or it might have been the lack of sleep and breakneck pace I had taken since I’d gotten to Vero Beach. When I stopped to look back on this moment, there were any number of things I could attribute to what happened next. But laying there, with one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen (inside and out) leaning over me, telling her the truth just felt right.
“I love you. You know that, don't you?” I blinked hard. It was the first time I’d said that to her. Hell, it was first time I’d said that to any woman since the day Natasha Rayne burned me.
“I do,” she answered softly. “But tell me again, when your head isn’t spinning and your mind isn’t so foggy. That way, when I tell you how much I love you too, you might stand more than a snowball’s chance in a Gulf summer to actually remember it.”
She leaned down and kissed me again.
Just like that, for the smallest of seconds, I was granted a reprieve. I got to forget about Natasha Rayne. I got to forget about the fact that Tanya was still gone, that Mikey was still dead, and that my grandfather was still dying. I didn’t have to be Dillon Storm, bastard son of the richest man in Naples, half brother to the new richest man in Naples, and long suffering detective.
I just got to be warm, I got to be loved, and I got to be hers.
As I drifted back off to sleep, I said a silent prayer that this feeling would last, that the darkness mounting on our Vero Beach doorstep would be no match for the light, and that the rest of this horrible ordeal would come easy.
I should have known how foolish that was.
Chapter 22
Hearing my grandfather clear his throat was never a good thing. When I was a kid, it always meant I was in trouble. The old man always made sure the pipes were clear, so to speak, before he laid into me about something stupid I was doing. It happened the time I “borrowed” his car without asking a few weeks after my fifteenth birthday. It happened again when I got an F in Algebra after goofing off for three weeks straight before my final. It happened countless times in between. The throat clearing meant I was in trouble, and as I stood with my back to him across the living room of the Good Storm, I was sure that was what it meant right now.
"You okay?" I asked, pursing my lips and turning toward him, sure of the fact that he was upset with me for something. "Need a throat drop or something?"
"You know damned well I don't need a throat drop or something," my grandfather said, his jaw tightening as he spoke. The old man had been at my beck and call for the last two days, after being given a clean bill of health from both Rebecca and the doctor on call at Vero Beach United Health. It seemed backward, for sure, especially given the fact that we were here for his damned funeral party anyway.
"What's wrong, Old Man?" I asked, leaning against the wall after shrugging my jacket on.
'Don't play dumb with me, son," he barked, marching toward me with his finger pointed out in my direction. He stopped short of jabbing me in the throat, his teeth ground together. "Where do you think you're going?"
In the light of the Good Storm, my grandfather looked smaller than perhaps he ever had to me before. The horrible idea that this was an effect of, not only the cancer running through his body, but the treatments he was being given to fight it. If so, then there was absolutely no sense in trying to hide from what was happening anymore. If he was getting thinner, getting gaunter, getting more tired and less imposing because of what was going on inside of him, then the funeral his party was meant to emulate couldn’t be too far away.
With that realization, I wanted to cry. I wanted to drop to my knees, hug the man who raised me when my own father wouldn't, and tell him how much I loved him and how blessed I've been to have him in my life.
I couldn't though. My grandfather was a strong man. He was a proud man and a person who took pride in the way he presented himself and represented himself. Telling him he looked like he was on the way out would be a notch taken out of his spirit, and I would never do that.
Besides, there was more going on here than just the two of us. There was still a case to solve, a missing girl to find, and a murderer who needed to be brought to justice.
"You know where I'm going," I answered, staying strong and walking around him.
"Don't you walk away from me," the old man said. His words were as no nonsense as they came, and they were more than enough to stop me in my tracks. I might have been a grown ass man, but the truth of the matter was I would never be too old to stop listening to my grandfather.
"That's not what I intended to do. I'm sorry," I said, turning back to him. "I need to go to work, Grandpa."
"You certainly don't," he ordered. His eyes softening, he added, "You're hurt, Dilly."
"I had a concussion two days ago," I scoffed, shaking my head. "That's not enough to stop me, and you know it Besides, I have to do something. She found the phone I planted on her and turned it off. So, we have no way of tracking her." I stopped for a beat, sighing as I asked him, "What is this really about?"
My grandfather stared at me for a long moment. Any remaining hardness fell from his eyes like scales. "That woman is a monster, Dilly."
"You're talking about Natasha?" I asked quietly. I closed my eyes, the energy pouring out of me like air from a popped balloon. It was one thing for this woman to get inside my head, but getting inside my grandfather's was something else entirely. He was a strong man. He had been to war, for God's sake. If Natasha Rayne scared him, it meant she was worse than even I thought. Either that, or he was mor
e afraid for me than I'd allotted for.
"Of course, I'm talking about Natasha," he shot back. "The last time you messed with that woman, you ended up a mess on my couch for three weeks, and she wasn't even trying to kill you then."
"She's not trying to kill me," I answered. "If she was, she could have done it already."
"Well that's comforting," my grandfather said sarcastically. "All I'm saying is that maybe you're not the best person to deal with this. You're not yourself around that woman. Whatever it is about her, she rattles you. You don't think straight."
"That was a long time ago," I answered.
"Not long enough," he said. "Seeing as how you ended up unconscious on the floor." He shook his head. "She's trouble, plain and simple. If I've learned one thing in my life, it's that you run from trouble, Dilly. Especially the kind of troubles that twists you up like that damned woman does." He shook his head. "You gave her your grandmother's ring, for God's sake."
"She stole it," I said in a huff, leaving out the fact that- had she not done what she did- I would have likely given it to her on one knee. I must have been out of my mind back then. "I'm not the same man as I was back then, Grandpa," I answered. "I'm stronger than that now. Hell, I’ve got a strong woman beside me now."
"A strong woman whom I'll bet silver dollars to seashells you still haven't told about how you're connected to Natasha," he answered.
A blush crept up my cheeks. He had me dead to rights and he knew it.
"I didn't see the need in complicating things," I answered. It was an honest answer, but only barely. In truth, I hated the idea of Rebecca knowing what Natasha had done to me, how she'd played me, and how stupid and lonely I'd been to actually fall for it.
My grandfather must have known that too, because his answer said as much.
"Mistakes are what make us real, Dilly," he said kindly. "They're what make us human. She has to know you're human, son. Otherwise, she's only ever going to fall in love with a caricature." He put a hand on my shoulder. "She'll appreciate you more for it, son. If she doesn't, then she's not the girl for you anyway." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Besides, she's probably made her share of mistakes too. Opening up about yours might give her the push she needs to talk about her own."