Knowing it was far too late to guard her heart, she stood before him, this time waiting for him to decide how far to take their reunion, oblivious to everything and everyone around them.
Drebin broke the thickened silence, knowing the two of them needed a mediator of some sort, at least to start. As a man born and bred to read people, he could see where the wall between the Sheriff and Arden was coming from, and it wasn’t from the Air Force captain. He wondered if Ashton knew what he was doing.
“Captain Jones.” Arden nodded at the enormous agent, her eyes never leaving Bill’s. “Ma’am?”
Reluctantly, Arden pulled her gaze from the Sheriff’s, feeling the chasm yawn between them, scared to death that she had put it there. “Hello Agent Drebin. What do you need me to do?”
“We’d like you to take a look at a section of videotape and confirm or deny the identity of the woman in the video. What have you been told to this point?”
“Sheriff Ashton just told me that someone very similar to Samantha had surfaced, and could I please come up to ID her. Is there anything I should know before I see this tape?”
“Probably, but I’d like to get your candid reaction.” Drebin answered honestly. “You know your sister better than anyone else. We’d like to get your first impression, so please talk us through it, OK?”
Arden nodded, falling into step behind Drebin, knowing that Bill had remained behind and was now staring at her with an almost uncomfortable intensity. Drebin seated her in the conference room, making her flash back to the last time she’d been in here with Doug Brewster, just six weeks before. The room was just as stuffy and oppressive, just as cliched as a questioning room on any TV crime series. A large television and VCR sat on a rolling cart, the TV tuned to a Fresno station.
Arden saw herself enter the Sheriff’s Department, Doug Brewster pushing through the crowd of reporters with the finesse of a battering ram. The picture flashed to the midday reporter, who told the world that there had been a break in the Ladykiller case.
Drebin folded his long body into a seat next to her, watching her face as he hit the Play button on the remote.
There was no doubt it was Samantha, and Samantha in her prime. What made her gut clench, though, was not her sister, but the man on the bed behind her. Nausea roiled through her stomach as her mind flashed from point to point to make the obvious connection.
Keeping her game face on, she turned to the agent. “Porter. It was him?”
Drebin nodded slowly, hitting the Pause button, freezing Samantha in place as she stood before the folding screen with the sigil emblazoned across the front, her finger pointing directly to the arcane marking.
“How? I spent hours with the man, talking about Samantha, her strengths, and her weaknesses. I bared my soul to him! How could someone keep a secret like that, play it off so perfectly while I sat right next to him?” The questions were flying out of her mouth in a horrified jumble, all pretense of poise gone.
“For God’s sake, he was the police’s ‘expert.’ Don’t you people run some kind of background check before you give someone full access to a murder investigation?” Anger and frustration arced off of her like sparks. She knew full well that the department had followed standard procedure, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
The Sheriff spoke from behind her, his voice low and tortured. “Frank, I’ll take it from here. You didn’t have anything to do with this. Thanks.”
Drebin nodded, standing up. When Bill had asked him to perform the initial viewing with Arden, he’d agreed out of personal and professional courtesy. This case had been convoluted from the outset, and the relationship between the Sheriff and Arden only made it more complicated. He just hoped they both made the right choice.
Arden looked at the Sheriff, fury and hopelessness battling for supremacy in her eyes, in the rigid set of her posture.
The Sheriff walked to the other end of the table, turning off the television as he did so. The careful way he sat told Arden more about what this case had done to him than the clipped, precise words that came out of his mouth.
“Adam Porter killed at least fifteen women over the same amount of years across the country. We can tell that from his notes and the videotapes he left. Samantha would have been his sixteenth. From what we can tell by reading those notes and watching the tapes, he was trying to create a Goddess, someone who could elevate him to the level of God. It looks like he found one.
“The ME says he died from a heart attack, but Adam Porter was in the prime of his life, the prime of his health.”
“Are you telling me you think Samantha did this?” Incredulity raised Arden’s voice, gave it an almost hysterical lilt.
“Jesus Christ Bill, look at her. She’s naked and unarmed. Porter must have outweighed her by at least sixty pounds. Just exactly what are you implying?” Her eyes narrowed as she stared across the battered metal table, her hands claw-like on the sides of the tabletop.
“I’m saying that we both know enough about the Wiccan religion to know that weird things can happen. Regardless, the ME says it was a heart attack, so that’s what it was.” He shrugged, his studied nonchalance showing that he was anything but indifferent. “Has Samantha tried to contact you at all in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Oh yeah,” Arden snapped. “She hopped on her fucking broom and dropped in for a Halloween nightcap. Of course she hasn’t.” Irritation bloomed ripe and potent in her voice. “You know I would have called you. Let’s stop circling around whatever it is you want. Why don’t you just get to the point?”
“The point is, we want to talk to her, find out what the hell happened here. We can figure out ninety-nine percent of it from his notes and tapes, but that one percent is killing us. We’d just really like to talk to her as soon as possible, okay?” At her nod he pushed up from the table.
“Are you going back to L.A. tonight, or staying here in town?” Weariness, with a dose of abject sadness, laced his words. They dropped out of his mouth like lead weights.
He could see the look in her eyes, the confusion of being hit hard and fast with too many facts. They didn’t need to complicate matters even more by addressing their relationship, even if all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and absorb the absolute rightness, the comfort and commiseration he knew would be offered.
“I don’t know Bill.” Arden spoke softly, slowly, looking him straight in the eye. “Where am I staying? I know that things haven’t been very easy for us lately, but up until yesterday I wouldn’t even have thought that was a question. Apparently it is now. What I’m not sure of is why.”
Bill’s back straightened, annoyance forming like a thunderstorm in his eyes. “You’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you? You would. You’re a great one for talking. I didn’t think, after what we shared, after the things we learned about each other in the past few weeks that you would be this mean, this spiteful, but I guess I was wrong. Again.” He was leaning forward over the table, his own anger and frustration thickening the air between them. Arden met him head on.
“Yeah, I think I am going to make you say it. Especially since I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. So, go ahead, spill.” Arden pushed back from the table, arms crossed, foot tapping.
“For God’s sakes woman, I fed your sister to a serial killer on a silver platter. I gave him everything we had, all of it, and then went as far as to have him collaborate with Josie and you. How do you think that makes me feel? If Samantha hadn’t finished him off, how likely do you think it is that Josie would have been his next victim? Or you? Pretty goddamn likely.” He shuddered, pacing his side of the room in furious, choppy steps.
“So now, as of tomorrow, I’m out of a job I love. I’ve also probably lost the only woman I’ve ever loved,” he stopped long enough to glare at her, “and Samantha is gone again. And I mean gone, like in ‘poof.’” He paused taking in a breath, the inside of his mouth suddenly dry as a desert.
“How a
m I supposed to react to all of that Arden, huh?” He raked a hand through his hair viciously, his frustration a tangible thing. “Am I supposed to walk up to you and say, forgive me for putting you in league with a serial killer, so sorry I couldn’t seem to extricate your sister before she offed the creep, now let’s pick up where we left off?” He snorted in derision at his own statement.
“I don’t think so. And even if we were to try to work it out, to work on an ‘us,’ how long would it be before this whole mess started to become an issue? I’ve invested too much in you, too much in us to watch it go down the shitter. I just can’t do it again. I’d rather be alone.” He stopped, looking suspiciously at the smile beginning to cross her face.
“What the hell are you smiling for?” He snapped.
“You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?” Arden asked, in a quiet, controlled voice.
“Hell yes I’ve been thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about it.” Bill began to get angry all over again, at himself, at circumstances, at Arden for standing there looking so damned good, so damned right when everything around him was going to hell in a handbasket.
“As someone who over thinks, overanalyzes everything to death, I have four words of advice for you. Stop thinking so much.” That slow, lazy smile that had started out small now spread into a full grin.
Bill looked at her as if she were totally insane, but then again, she felt that way. The utter terror that struck her when he started talking about ending them still shivered down her spine. Utter terror that she would never see him again, never again be held in his strong, sure arms, never again feel the comfort and harmony and downright carnality of their lovemaking. She’d be damned if she’d let that go, let him be virtuous. Screw that.
“Stop trying so damned hard to be noble. Take it from me, it isn’t worth it. I’ve been doing it for the last thirty years and I’ve come to realize that nobility only gets you so far, then it gets you screwed. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I’ve come to a conclusion.” She walked around the edge of the table, removing the last physical barrier between them. “Are you ready to hear this? Well, ready or not, here it comes.
“You need to stop thinking, and just know this. I’ve decided that you and I are going to live a long, hideously frustrating and incredibly happy life together. Because we love each other and because we’re just too damned stubborn and pissy to let the world get us down.” She stepped to him, putting her hand on his arm, ignoring the fact that he continued to just stand there, still and hard as a statue.
“Because I’ve finally figured out that for once in my life I deserve to be happy. Don’t try to be a martyr here Bill, because I won’t be kind or nice when it comes to snapping your out of this.
“I’m sorry, really sorry, about your career, about what that will do to your life. I know how important it is to you and it sucks that this whole boondoggle is going to end it for you. But you’ve got your ranch and your cats and your pride, and you’ve got me, good or bad.” She grinned crookedly. “Or at least you will in a few years when the Air Force decides to let me go.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, what happened here probably will have something to do with the rest of our lives, but goddamn it, it brought us together, and I can’t bemoan fate for doing that.” She pushed away from him, putting space between them and her heart in her eyes.
“So, what do you say, L.A. man? Are you gonna take a chance on being happy?”
Initium
Twining her hand in Bill’s, Arden stood on the veranda of the Homestead, a steaming cup of coffee in the other hand, watching the sun come up as her mind roved over the last three years, ten months. Since that Halloween night years ago Arden had been all over the world. She’d been transferred to Travis Air Force Base in northern California to be closer to Bill. Considering what had happened with her sister, the powers that be in the Air Force decided it was probably a strategic move. While there she was promoted to the rank of Major. With that promotion came a deployment for six months to the Middle East as section chief for the Air Force News.
Those forty-six months had crawled by on tortoise feet, torturing both Arden and Bill until the day had finally arrived. Her retirement ceremony was as low-key as Arden could possibly make it, but Bill had conspired with her peers to send her off in fine military fashion. She’d shed a tear when the Presidential citation was presented to her, commending her on twenty years of dedicated service to her country. Then she and Bill Ashton strapped into the ‘Cuda and drove the three hours to Reno.
Still in her dress blues, she became Arden Henning-Ashton at three-thirty in the afternoon in the Heart of Reno Chapel, with Doug Brewster and Josie Galloway acting as witnesses.
This morning, she’d snuggled into the warmth of her husband’s embrace, listening to the pre-dawn rustlings of her first day of ranch life.
Now, as she stood on the porch, soaking in the utter peace of a perfect sunrise and the love of a good man, she concentrated on an exercise Josie had taught her, and that she’d been practicing for some time.
Casting her mind free of her body, she went in search of her sister. Instead, Samantha found her. The greetings they exchanged were wordless, conveying only that each was healthy and happy and pleased to see the other. Saying goodbye for the last time, Arden drifted back to herself, turned to her husband, and beamed a smile to put the sunrise to shame.
The End
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About the author: I’m a great believer in Fate. Yeah, with a capital “F”. And I write in those terms. Why? Probably because my beloved husband said he fell in love with me the first time he saw me. You might ask if it was a two-way gig… In a word, uh-uh. Not that he wasn’t fine to the extreme, but I wasn’t looking for forever, but rather a fun vacation experience. Yeah, so now we’ve muddled our way through over twenty years of marriage, and I have to admit to his superior intuition on that one!!
So if you’re looking for Alpha heroes who just happen to “know” their life-mate when they see them, don’t be overly surprised.
I write paranormal romance as TL Schaefer and erotic romance as Keira Ramsay. Why the split personality? Because I started out as TL Schaefer, and didn’t want to confuse the heck out of the folks who loved that stuff when I went to the “dark side”.
If you like your heroes in uniform (be they cops, firefighters, or military) and your heroines with a bit of quirk, then wing by my website (www.tlschaefer.com) and check out an excerpt or two to whet your whistle!
You can connect with me on Twitter, via Facebook, or heck, the old-fashioned way at [email protected]!
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