by L. T. Vargus
She felt odd and out of place at the start of the service. Like she was an outsider given a close-up view of a family’s grief. She couldn’t stop thinking of all the people sitting behind her, wondering who she was. This stranger in their midst.
Father Pascal’s words filtered through her thoughts.
“Let us not forget Ethan’s family — his mother, Constance, and his brother, Owen. They will surely need their time to grieve, but too often our reaction is to pull away, not wanting to intrude. For while they need those quiet moments for thought and prayer, they also need to feel the warmth of communion and community.”
Violet glanced at her hand, clasped in Owen’s, and suddenly the awkwardness was gone.
Maybe that was all that was required to make it right.
Owen needed comfort, and he’d chosen her.
The funeral-goers converged on the home of Constance Baxter, dressed in their Sunday best, casserole dishes in hand. Violet gnawed on a piece of fried chicken, seated in a tufted wingback chair across from Owen.
“You ever been down to Lake Anna?” Owen asked.
“No. Why?”
“Friend of mine has a place there. A little cottage right on the water. I’ve been thinking… I have these damn weekly check-ups with the transplant team for a while, but after that, I thought I might head out there. Take some time away from everything.”
“Sounds like it would be a nice place to do that,” she said, wondering why he seemed to be seeking her approval for such a thing.
He stared down at his plate, nudging a pile of macaroni and cheese with his fork.
“Lot of tourists in the summer, but they start thinning out over the next month or so. The changing leaves reflecting on the lake can’t be beat, or so I’ve been told. It’s only about an hour south of Quantico, you know. ”
The realization hit her like a slap across the face. He wanted her to come stay with him. And he was being almost bashful about it. She couldn’t resist drawing it out a little.
“Are you trying to ask me something, Owen?”
“Maybe.”
“So ask.”
He gave her a flat look, and then, seeing that she really was going to force it out of him, he closed his eyes and sighed.
“Would you like to join me some weekend, or perhaps a week, if you could get the time away?”
She speared a chunk of potato salad, popped it in her mouth, and smiled.
“Is this your standard routine for picking up women? Rescue her from a bar fight, get yourself blown up, invite her up to your cabin for a romantic getaway?”
“Believe it or not, usually I don’t have to work quite so hard. I mean, the bar fight is pretty standard, but…”
“Oh? So I’m special?”
She waggled her eyebrows.
“Very,” he said, no hint that he might be teasing.
“Of course I’ll come. I would love to.”
“Good,” he said with a nod, then leaned forward. “Now my next question is: you wouldn’t happen to have any skimpy little Wonder Woman outfits lyin’ around, would you? After our talk the other day, I just can’t seem to get that picture out of my head.”
Violet used her elbow to reveal the gun holstered on her belt.
“Do I have to remind you that I’m armed?”
Epilogue
Her footsteps echoed down the long, empty corridor. Darger passed the indoor firing range, usually a source of endless noise, but today it was silent. It was Friday afternoon, and most people had already left for the weekend.
Darger’s heel caught on the floor as she rounded a corner, emitting a high-pitched yelp. Stupid squeaky soles. She missed her old boots, all worn and perfectly conformed to her feet. She should have sent the bill for the new pair to the owner of that damned blood-thirsty Chow.
As she turned another bend, Darger caught sight of the elevator ahead. A man hurried to slip through the wood paneled doors, and they clunked shut behind him. Darger inhaled sharply.
The man stepping into the elevator had looked exactly like Casey Luck. She only caught the side of his face from an angle, but he had the same height, same build, same meticulous hair.
By the time she reached the elevator herself, she realized it wasn’t possible. Casey lived in Ohio. What would he be doing here at Quantico? The DOWN button lit up as she jabbed it with her knuckle, shaking her head. With the week of vacation time she had planned, she supposed her mind couldn’t help but wander to whatever nook held the memories of lovers, both past and present.
Darger glanced at her watch as the elevator droned down to the ground floor, noting that it was a few minutes past 5:30 PM. Owen would be getting antsy, especially after spending the last five days on his own. A little smile touched her lips. He didn’t strike her as the type that spent a lot of time reflecting in solitude.
Her car hummed to life, and she pointed the unlit headlights toward her apartment. She needed to grab her mail before she headed south.
The cottage was unlocked when Darger arrived. She elbowed her way inside, both arms hugging grocery bags, and nudged the door closed behind her. Depositing the bags on the kitchen counter, Darger was about to call out when something moved in the reflection on a nearby mirror. It was only a dark blur streaking past, and before she could turn around she felt the presence behind her. The gentle current of an exhale of breath on her neck.
“What the hell took you so long?”
Owen buried his face in her hair and then began to kiss her, working his way around to the soft spot under her chin.
She leaned back, pressing into him, and he nibbled at her ear.
“Are you going to help me unload this stuff, or are you just gonna gnaw on me?”
“Can’t help it. You left me in such a state after last weekend, I don’t know if I shall ever be able to let you out of my sight again.”
“Some of us live in the real world and have something called a job,” she teased. “Loshak says hello, by the way.”
“Now hold on a minute. Before you start besmirching my name, let me clarify something: I have a job.”
“You’re in Virginia.”
“So?”
“So, you’re not licensed to investigate in Virginia.”
“Well that may be true, but I don’t recall you complaining the last time I was investigating your priv—”
She spun to face him and clapped her hand over his mouth, cutting off the words.
“You swore you wouldn’t make that joke anymore.”
Owen feigned an innocent look, and she removed her hand.
“What joke?”
She squinted at him with distrust and then returned to tucking groceries into cabinets.
“Anyway, I thought my job was as your manservant-slash-concubine?”
She snorted. “Shouldn’t the manservant be putting away the food?”
“Ma’am, I am far too delicate for that kind of manual labor.”
Owen twirled her around and kissed her full on the mouth, moving her across the kitchen until she was backed up against the refrigerator. When he released her, he gazed into her eyes for a long time, and she had the sense he was about to say something serious for once.
“Mrs. Kleinstubel was out pruning her roses yesterday. She gave me some very wanton looks. I think she noticed that you went away and decided to make her move.”
Mrs. Kleinstubel lived in the house next door to the cottage Owen was renting, and she gave them dubious looks every time they happened to cross paths outside. Violet suspected the old lady might have caught a glimpse of a midnight skinny-dipping session Owen had talked her into the first weekend she’d visited.
“I don’t think Mrs. Kleinstubel sees all that well. She is 82, you know. She probably thought you were a sasquatch,” Violet said, running her fingers through his shaggy hair.
One of Owen’s eyebrows rose a few degrees.
“If so, she was having some very bawdy thoughts about Bigfoot.” He squinted over Violet’
s shoulder. “And I must confess, I considered it.”
Violet bit down on her cheeks and attempted to appear sullen.
“Now you’re just trying to make me jealous.”
“Is it working?”
“Maybe,” she said, her mouth disobeying and pulling into a smile. “And as punishment, I don’t think I’ll be showing you the special underwear I wore just for you.”
Owen’s eyes sparkled.
“The what?” he said, reaching for the waistband of her jeans. “Let me see!”
Violet dodged away from him, laughing. She took off for the other end of the house, knowing he would chase her.
Before he could catch up, she shut herself in the little bathroom off the master suite. The box spring squeaked as Owen bounced onto the mattress.
“Don’t lollygag in there, you hear? If you make me wait too long, I’ll have no choice but to trot over to Mrs. Kleinstubel’s house.”
Violet came through the door wearing only a thin white t-shirt and the underwear.
Owen looked her up and down, grinning ear to ear.
“Wonder Woman panties. Why, Miss Darger, you know exactly how to push my buttons.”
He was leaning up against the headboard, and he pulled her closer by the waist until she knelt on the bed next to him. He pressed his lips to hers, and he tasted like milk and honey. His hand snaked around the back of one thigh and tugged it over his lap until she was straddling him.
“You like?” she asked.
“I like,” he said, his voice raspy with arousal.
She shivered as his fingers slid under her shirt, up her spine, then around her rib cage to her breasts.
She leaned into him — the feel of him — and the rest of the world dropped away.
They lay in bed after, tangled up together in a cocoon of sheets. She ran a finger over his surgical scar, and he trembled under her light touch.
“It’s funny,” he said, “but sometimes I almost feel like he’s in there a little bit.”
“Ethan?”
“Yeah. More like there’s part of him in my head, I guess. Not always. Just sometimes.”
“Like when?”
“Like now.”
“And what is Ethan thinking now?”
Through half-closed lids, he studied her.
“He’s thinking all manner of virtuous and honorable thoughts about what a fine woman you are, and how it would be a shame to let you get away.”
Violet propped herself up on one elbow.
“And then your response is… what? Fuck ‘em and forget ‘em?”
His mouth spread into a wicked grin.
“Now Miss Darger, what did I tell you about that salty language and the effect it has on me?”
He disappeared under the sheets with a ravenous look.
Owen collapsed onto his back with a contented sigh.
“Well after all that, I am just about hungry enough to eat a damn sea cow.”
“They were fresh out of sea cow at the supermarket,” Violet said. “How about regular cow?”
“Regular cow will do just fine.”
He finished dressing first and went out to fire up the charcoal grill in the backyard. Violet followed a few minutes later, bringing along a sack of sweet corn and her pile of unopened mail.
Owen popped the cap off a bottle of beer and handed it to her while she shucked corn.
“Got an email from someone at HarperCollins yesterday,” he said.
“Really?”
“They want me to write a book about my experience.” He used his fingers to put air-quotes around the last word.
“Does that mean you don’t want to do it?” she asked, ripping the husk away from an ear of corn.
She didn’t see why he wouldn’t. He hadn’t shied away from making guest appearances on several cable news shows since the events in Atlanta, not to mention the dozen or so newspaper and magazine interviews. Owen Baxter was not a shy man.
“I don’t know. Writing a book is more the kind of thing Ethan would do. He was the book-smart one.”
Violet rolled her eyes.
“Quit doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Selling yourself as the dumb one. Besides, didn’t you say that he’s in your head? Tell him he’s gotta earn his keep.”
Owen pointed a grill fork at her.
“I never said I was the dumb one. I said he was book-smart. Me? I’m street-smart.”
He stabbed the sharpened tines into a tenderloin steak and slapped it on the grill with a sizzle.
Violet finished wrapping the corn in aluminum foil and handed it off for Owen to put on the grill. Then she turned to her mail. She fished through the pile with a fingernail. Junk. Cable bill. Junk. Junk. At the bottom was an envelope addressed by hand.
She plucked the letter from the stack, thinking at first that it must be something her mother had sent from Europe, but after a closer glance, she knew that was wrong. The handwriting was not her mother’s. But it was familiar.
Her finger slipped under the flap, and a small shock of pain went through her hand.
“Ouch.”
Owen turned from the grill, fragrant smoke coiling behind him like a cape. “What?”
“Paper cut,” she said, popping the fingertip into her mouth for a moment.
Then, more carefully this time, she ripped the top of the envelope open and shook the letter free.
Her body went rigid as she read the opening lines.
Dear Violet,
So many times over the past few weeks I thought of writing this letter and stopped myself. You see, I am retired (both from my work and from the world) and have been for a very long time. But when I saw your interview in Vanity Fair and read all of the interesting things you had to say about me… well, it awakened something. Something that lay dormant for so many years, I thought it might be gone forever. Dead.
But we all have a calling in this life, in this world. We all have a gift, a purpose, a job that we alone are meant to do. Not everyone can find theirs. Most people never do. You have to look through things, squint your eyes just so to see past the surface and stare upon that ugly beating heart in the middle there. The wad of misshapen meat that pounds out the rhythm of your existence, makes you tick, makes you who you are.
You have found your gift, it seems, and if I genuinely helped steer you toward it, I am glad for it. I suppose that, in turn, you have helped me rediscover mine.
And I get the feeling, just now, that our paths may cross again. Perhaps soon.
-Leonard Stump
Owen was talking to her, but she didn’t hear. Finally his voice broke through as she tore her eyes from the blue ink scrawled on the paper.
“Vi,” he said, frowning at her, “what’s wrong?”
She dropped the letter on the table and went into the house.
When she came back out, Owen waved the paper at her.
“What is this? Some kind of joke?”
“No. And don’t touch it so much. They’ll have to dust it for prints.”
“But this letter is signed Leonard Stump. Like the serial killer?”
“Not like. It’s him.”
Her voice came out sharper and higher than normal, like an overtightened string on a violin.
“Come on, it’s probably only someone playing a trick. And not a funny one, I might add.”
She brought up a scan from the Stump journal on her phone and laid it side by side with the letter.
“Where’d you get this?”
“The journal? He wrote it in jail. Before he escaped. Loshak gave it to me.”
“You don’t think Loshak would—”
Owen trailed off when she started to shake her head.
“That’s not his sense of humor. Not at all.”
“Who else would have access to that journal?” he said. His private investigator mind was kicking into gear now.
“As far as I know, only FBI personnel. And even then, I got the impression
that the journal’s existence is mostly secret. They don’t want the press getting a whiff of it and slapping them with the Freedom of Information Act.”
He stared at her for a long time.
“I suppose this’ll sound real selfish of me, but this is gonna royally fuck up all our plans for the week, isn’t it?”
She sighed.
“Probably,” Darger said. “Loshak needs to know about it as soon as possible. I should probably call him right now.”
Owen nodded.
“I don’t know how he’s going to react,” she added.
“How do you think he’ll react?”
Her eyes spun up to the sky. It was a clear sapphire blue, with a hint of pink beginning to show on the horizon.
“Helicopters, National Guard, Witness Protection. No big deal.”
The Violet Darger series
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