Lost in Shadows

by CJ Lyons

  Their working relationship was similar to sparring, as soon as one found an opening in the other’s defenses, they’d expose it. It kept them both sharp, Billy’s analytical mind balancing Rose’s more intuitive approach.

  “Let’s just hope that we’re not too late.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Lucky followed Vinnie, trudging through the snow and trying to remember when he had ever felt this cold before. His hand on the walking stick shook and despite the gloves Vinnie had given him, his fingers were numb.

  His vision collapsed to a narrow cone that encompassed the woman in front of him and the tracks she left behind. It was a combination of blood loss, the ebb tide of adrenalin after their exploits on the bridge, and early hypothermia. At least that’s what his brain told him, urging his body to keep moving.

  Knowing what was happening to his body was one thing. Caring about it was another. The idea of crawling into the snow like a soft blanket and going to sleep had an allure Lucky didn’t have the strength to fight against.

  Vinnie disappeared from sight. He jerked upright, scanning the terrain.

  She had led them into a group of boulders. The roar of the waterfall drowned out all other sounds, filled his head. Before he could call out, she popped up from behind the rocks below him.

  “Take my hand,” she said. “Be careful, it’s a bit tricky.”

  Lucky lowered himself to sit on the edge of the rock formation and looked down. Vinnie had cleared a path through the snow.

  A steep set of steps formed from jagged rocks led down the side of the cliff. Some of the “steps” didn’t seem more than a toe-hold, others were spaced so widely apart that it would take a leap of faith to make it from one to the other.

  What did she think he was? A mountain goat?

  “It’s not as hard as it looks,” she coaxed him.

  He raised an eyebrow as he looked past her, down, down to the gorge that waited hungrily below. One false step and Mrs. Cavanaugh’s baby boy was going to be treated to a flying lesson.

  Lucky remembered Whitney’s fall into the abyss and pulled back.

  Vinnie scrambled up after him. Lucky ignored her, lay in the snow, letting the flakes coat his eyelashes, watching the world through the rainbow they created when he blinked. It was so peaceful here, couldn’t they just stay where they were?

  “Don’t give up on me now,” she said, tugging him to a sitting position. “It’s not far.”

  It was a struggle, but Lucky forced his eyes open. “Yeah, but will there be room service and ESPN waiting for me when we get there?”

  “Would you settle for a warm fire and hot cocoa?”

  “Throw in some of those tiny marshmallows and you’ve got a deal.” His voice sounded funny, like he was drunk or something. Vinnie’s smile was forced.

  “Deal. Let’s go. I’ll rope you to me like we did on the bridge.”

  He held up his hand to stop her. Even in the haze engulfing his brain, he was aware of the danger to Vinnie that entailed. If Lucky slipped and fell, he would take them both with him. He’d risked her life too many times already.

  “No rope.” Before she could protest, he rolled over onto his belly and slid down the side of the rock to the first ledge. He looked up once, saw Vinnie crouched on the rock above him, her face anxious.

  “The next hold is down about two feet, a little more to your left.”

  Lucky couldn’t see the path below him, so focused instead on her directions. He was about half way down the twenty-foot cliff when the trail she’d blazed turned sharply. His foot slipped from the narrow hold and he flailed helplessly, then catapulted off the ledge.

  “Lucky!” Vinnie’s voice was the last thing he heard before everything went black.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Hey, c’mon, stay with me.” Vinnie’s voice drew him from the darkness.

  Why was she shouting? Lucky’s shoulder throbbed. Every breath was a knife stabbing into his lungs. He opened his eyes. His head pounded like someone had mistaken it for a bass drum. Even his eyelids hurt.

  Then he focused on Vinnie. Suddenly things didn’t seem quite so bad.

  “What happened?” he mumbled. He looked around and realized that part of the roaring filling his brain was the sound of the waterfall. The ledge he lay on was directly beside it.

  “You took a short cut. Knocked yourself out for a few seconds. Any pain?” Vinnie checked him for any major injuries. She sat back on her heels, wiped his blood from her hands with snow and smiled. “I think you’ve earned your nickname. Looks like only a nasty scalp laceration and an assortment of bruises.”

  “Where’s the fire you promised?” he asked, bracing himself up on one arm.

  “Just through there.” She helped him to his feet and led him through a narrow opening that had been etched through the eons into the rock behind the waterfall.

  Water poured down on one side of the path. The solid rock on the other finally gave away to a large opening directly behind the main path of water.

  Lucky looked around. The cave was dry, more spacious than their lodgings last night, with a fire pit close to the rear wall. The air was crystalline, energizing, as if the water emanated a magic elixir.

  Vinnie helped him to sit on one of several rocks. “Start getting undressed,” she instructed him as she removed her own wet outer gear. “You’re soaked, freezing.”

  Then she vanished into the curtain of mist and water.

  Lucky was glad she wasn’t there to watch his deadened fingers fumble with the layers of clothing that swathed him. Before he finished stripping more than the outer layer, she returned with an armful of firewood and quickly had a roaring blaze going. She disappeared again, bringing more wood that she stacked to one side, then turned her attention to Lucky.

  “We’ve got to get you warm,” she said, finishing the job he’d begun. Soon he sat in only jeans and socks, his other clothes arranged around the fire to dry.

  Vinnie clucked her tongue in dismay as she observed the ruined bandage on his shoulder, now blood soaked and drooping after his exertions.

  Lucky was too tired to argue with her as she thrust a water bottle into his hand, instead he relinquished himself to her ministrations.

  “Drink as much as you can.” She collected water in her pan and set it on the fire to heat, then unpacked her first aid supplies. “Let me do the scalp first, it’s still bleeding.”

  Lucky leaned forward as she flushed the cut. The icy water stung like sharp needles shooting into his head, but her touch was gentle as she probed it. Then she began to tug at his hair, and he jerked away.

  “What are you doing?” This was no time to be playing make-over.

  “Hold still. It’s deep enough to need stitches. If I don’t close it, it’ll keep on bleeding and you need all the blood you have left.”

  Again her fingers twisted and yanked on his hair. Then he realized what she was doing. “You’re tying it shut with my hair?”

  “Using the stitches God gave you. Good thing you don’t like crew cuts. In a week or so, just cut through the knots and you’ll be good as new.”

  He smiled. Prepared for everything, that was Vinnie. Lucky thing she was the one who found him last night after he crashed.

  He forced the thought aside. Luck had nothing to do with it, it was just random chance, probability and circumstance.

  There was no such thing as luck, no such thing as fate, destiny or God. He’d learned that the hard way last month during the longest night of his life.

  Lucky allowed Vinnie to minister to him. She quickly re-dressed his shoulder, then fixed hot chocolate for him. Complete with mini-marshmallows and a protein bar. Better than room service, Lucky decided as he leaned back and allowed the heat from the fire and hot drink pour through him.

  Vinnie finally sat down, sipping at her own water bottle.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, feeling ashamed. He remembered now that there had only been one packet of hot cocoa in their supp
lies. He tried to think, how many protein bars did they have left?

  “You impressed the hell out of me out there on that bridge,” Vinnie changed the subject. He split the rest of his protein bar in half, shoved it into her hand. She nodded her thanks and took a bite. “Should have told me you were afraid of heights.”

  Lucky didn’t meet her gaze. This woman was too smart for his own good. “Wouldn’t have made a difference, we had to get to this side of the gorge one way or the other. And there wasn’t any other way.”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “Still, there aren’t many men who would have been able to do what you did. Thank you.”

  “For what?” he asked, suddenly irritated by her continued discussion of the topic. “Killing three men, almost getting you killed?” She pulled away, and he regretted his harsh words. “Vinnie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, you’re right. Facing death, your own or someone else’s, is never easy. Causing it,” her voice trailed off and she lowered her head, her hair creating a thick, impenetrable veil between them, “is the stuff of nightmares.”

  Lucky took her hand, squeezed it tight. Finally, after all of the department shrinks, well-meaning friends and family, finally here was someone who understood.

  They sat in silence for a long moment.

  “Michael proposed to me here, in this cave.” Her words startled him. “I always thought this would be one place where no matter what, I would always feel close to him. But,” her breath shuddered through her body and he felt her hand tremble, “he’s gone. Really gone.”

  Why was it that every time he felt close to her, she brought up her dead husband?

  It was time to exorcize this memory, clear the air. “He was killed in the line?”

  “Shot by a kid holding up a gas station. Sometimes I think it was his own fault. I get so angry that he wasted everything, that he should have done something different. Most of the time, I blame myself.”

  “You were there?” Jeezit, she saw her husband die? No wonder the wound was still fresh even though she’d said it happened more than two years ago.

  Talk about living your nightmares—especially for a woman like Vinnie, accustomed to being able to take charge of any situation.

  “We were on our way down here. My family runs a roadside café just north of here, near Seneca Rocks. I grew up in these mountains, met Michael when he and a few friends were up here hiking and got lost.”

  “I’ll bet he wasn’t too happy to have a girl be the one to find him.”

  She lifted her head, a wistful half-smile parting her lips. “Typical hot-shot cop. His two buddies were cops as well, you’d think between them they’d learn how to read a map properly. Till the day he died he swore that they knew exactly where they were the entire time, that they meant to end up down in the gorge with no way out.”

  “You said he had to win you over.”

  “Turns out you Irishmen are just as stubborn as us Italians. Before I even got their sorry butts out of the gorge and back on solid ground, he was marking his territory, telling his buddies he was going to marry me. Michael never believed much in beating around the bush.”

  Her trembling had stopped, and her voice was steady again. Lucky wondered if she’d ever spoken of this to anyone. He felt privileged that she had chosen him. “Michael would fit right into my family—all cops and all bull-headed.”

  “That was Michael. But he was sweet, too. Had this way about him, people just always wanted to be near.”

  “Charismatic.”

  “Right. Finally I agreed to go out with him, and he started driving down here on weekends. When I showed him this cave, the sun was shining, filling the air with rainbows shimmering every way. He said the only thing more beautiful was the feeling he had when he was in my arms. And he asked me to marry him.”

  She fell silent, her eyes half closed as she remembered. Lucky brushed her hair back, watched as the emotions swirled across her face. Joy, sorrow, finally resignation.

  “So we got married and moved to the city. I worked as a medic and he got promoted to detective and then one night we stopped at the wrong gas station and pouf, everything was gone.”

  The words came out in a rush as if the faster she said them, the less pain would accompany them.

  Lucky could tell by the look on her face that it hadn’t worked. He knew the feeling, had learned the hard way that you couldn’t outrun your memories.

  “So now you know my entire life history, tell me about yourself. Aren’t you upset that you missed your friend’s wedding? Or are you more upset that you missed getting the girl?”

  Lucky cringed at her directness. Talk about not beating around the bush. “I like KC a lot, but not that way. She and Chase are perfect for each other.”

  She arched an eyebrow at the twinge of jealousy that colored his voice.

  “I just wish that—Chase had been through a lot before he met KC, first over in Afghanistan, then during our assignment undercover, so don’t get me wrong, he deserves every happiness—it’s just that lately I keep wondering if I’ll ever feel that way.”

  Wondered if he would ever really feel anything again. It had taken all his acting ability to maintain a show of enthusiasm about the wedding—even though, in his heart he was happy for Chase and KC. He just couldn’t feel it.

  It was as if his heart was numb, dead wood. Maybe the doctors had been wrong about the damage being only temporary.

  “You said something happened last month—with The Preacher, that you had to kill a man.”

  Now it was his turn to look away, pull away. She had struck too close to the heart of the problem, and he just wasn’t ready to go there.

  “I thought we were talking about weddings,” he muttered.

  He glanced around the cave. Everyone it seemed, was able to find someone, to find happiness even if only for a short time—everyone except him.

  Then he remembered the way Vinnie had stirred his soul last night, the raw passion she’d awakened inside him. Was it her? Or just the natural healing process?

  “After I lost Michael,” she said and stopped herself. “Isn’t that a silly thing to call it? Like I could get him back if I found the right claim ticket. After Michael died, my mom did what all Italian moms do, she cooked. All my favorites, food that should’ve brought memories of better times, food of comfort, solace. It all tasted of ashes. It was like I was numb on the inside, couldn’t feel anything—except fear. At first I couldn’t get into a car, pass a gas station without having panic attacks, then it got to the point where I didn’t want to leave the house. I couldn’t bear the idea of all those people looking at me, being so close that they could hurt me. I left. Ran away, actually, from the city and moved in with my parents.”

  “Did that help?”

  “No. Then I really felt under the magnifying lens of their pity and concern. Vinnie, what’s the matter? Why don’t you eat? Vinnie, everything’s going to be all right, it just takes time—that was the biggest joke of all. Every day it was like I was being graded on how many steps of grief I’d completed. So I ran some more, back here to where I’m close to Michael, in control, surrounded by peace and quiet. Until some idiot from the city comes along that needs rescuing.”

  Her smile warmed him. Lucky realized that she wasn’t referring to her saving him from The Preacher or his injuries. “You’re saying I can’t run from myself.”

  “Maybe. Maybe all I’m saying is that sometimes when the worst thing we can imagine actually happens to us, sometimes it’s harder to go on living than it is to give up. Sometimes it takes more strength and courage to face the future than it did to survive that awful moment.”

  She shrugged, “Or maybe I’m just talking because, unlike you Irishmen who suffer in stoic silence, drowning your sorrows in whiskey, we Italians have this compulsion to talk things out.”

  “Got any whiskey?” he asked hopefully.

  “At my cabin there’s a nice bottle of Black Bush—for medicinal pur
poses only, of course.”

  “Of course. Think the storm’s slowed enough for me to get moving?”

  Her smile died at his words. “Me, what’s this me? You’re not going anywhere, shape you’re in.”

  “You don’t think I’m going to stay here and let a civilian go to face The Preacher, do you?”

  The thought of her in The Preacher’s hands made his stomach clench with fear. The sounds of Vinnie’s screams filled his mind, leaving him nauseous. He forced them aside and concentrated on climbing to his feet.

  She didn’t move to help, even when his breath grew ragged with pain. He blinked back the dizziness that swept over him and staggered to her backpack. When he bent over to open it, the world seemed to tilt and he began to fall.

  Would have fallen if she hadn’t been there. Her strong hands caught him, eased him to the ground. At least she didn’t say she told him so.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of being right?” he asked her when he could breathe again. His vision was still blurry and his head was pounding.

  She handed him a water bottle in answer. “We’ve got time,” she said. “Nothing’s going to be able to move on this mountain for hours yet. Not unless you want to risk get blown off it, into the gorge.”

  Lucky remembered the way the bridge had swung him out over the bottomless chasm. “No thanks.”

  She added more fuel to the fire and settled back beside him, her knees drawn up to her chest, arms hugging them. “Tell me about your family. You said they were all police officers.”

  “My father and three older brothers are all with Metro PD.” This was better than talking about The Preacher or her dead husband, Lucky thought as he finished the water. “My big sister’s the over-achiever of the family, she’s with the Secret Service.”

  Vinnie looked up at that. “Alice?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know that?” Lucky wracked his memory.

  He hadn’t told her Alice’s name, he was certain of it. He remembered how he’d kidded her about being psychic. No way, he was a scientist, he didn’t believe in any of that mumbo-jumbo. How else could she have known?