Ivar: A Time Travel Romance (Mists of Albion Book 3)

by Joanna Bell

  But there was no sign of a tall man wearing fur and leather. None of the local hospitals had any reports of anyone even slightly matching that description turning up with a gunshot wound to the leg.

  "I did," I said, shaking my head. "There was a man in the woods on the Renner property. I told him to stay back but he didn't. So I shot him in the leg and now no one can find him. He – mom, he had a sword."

  My mother furrowed her brow. "A sword? Was it one of those freaks from the internet?"

  I chuckled at that comment, grateful for the unintended comic relief after one of the most confusing days of my life. "I don't know. He – he just seemed really odd. I don't know how to explain it – he didn't seem afraid of my gun, for one thing. He didn't seem to know what it was."

  "Everyone knows what a gun is."

  "I know," I shrugged. "And now this is going to be a big thing. The media haven't gotten wind of it yet, thank God, but now there's going to have to be an investigation because I discharged my weapon and it's just going to take away from the real investigation itself and –" I stopped, recognizing the stern look on my mom's face. "What?"

  "Oh I don't know, Sophie," she replied, getting up and going back into the kitchen to get my dinner out of the microwave. "It's not my place to say."

  "But you're going to say it anyway," I called after her, "aren't you?"

  "Shh," she scolded me, setting my plate, which held a pork chop and a portion of rice, down in front of me. I swear to God without my mother I would still have been living on boxed macaroni and cheese. "Ashley's asleep."

  I got to work on the pork chop, looking up at my mom expectantly only after I'd shoveled a few forkfuls into my mouth. "Well?" I asked.

  "Well what?"

  "Mom!"

  "Fine," she said, sighing. "I think you're too involved in this case, that's all. You're probably not going to find those girls, you know. You do know that, don't you? Besides, it's making you snappy."

  I swallowed a mouthful of rice. "Snappy? What do you mean?"

  My mother wrung her hands, the way she does when she's going to say something that upsets me. "Don't look at me like that. You were just a little impatient with Ashley this morning, when she forgot her lunch. This is hard on her, you know. I'm happy to take care of her when you need, of course, but she needs her mother."

  I put my fork down and closed my eyes briefly as my mother poked my one sore spot. I'm generally an easy going person, not quick to anger or impatience. But when it comes to my child – who I live for – I can get a little... passionate.

  "What exactly are you saying?" I replied heatedly. "What do you think –"

  "Oh, sweetie. Don't get all dramatic, I'm not accusing you of something terrible. I just think she could use a little more time with you is all. She was upset when you weren't home in time to tuck her in tonight, you know. She –"

  "Mom!" I replied, exasperated. "Did you forget the part where I shot someone? I am home to tuck her into bed almost every night. Damn."

  I leaned back on the lumpy sofa and exhaled slowly. "OK. I'm sorry. I'm really tired. And I have to be up at six tomorrow to go in and deal with – everything. Thank you for saving me some dinner. Thank you for looking after Ashley. I don't – I don't mean to snap. I'm just so busy. There aren't enough hours in the day."

  My mother reached out and brushed a lock of hair off my face. "I know, I know. I don't say any of this to criticize you, I know you're doing your best for yourself and for Ash. I just think it might do you some good to try to take a little more time for – well, for both of you. You know I'll help you in any way I can."

  I did know it. Ashley's father left us when she was barely 6 months old. He kept in touch at first, the handsome and utterly lost boy I'd first laid besotted eyes on in the eleventh grade, but it had been over 4 years since I'd heard from him by then. There was no point in trying to chase him down for support payments, either, because he wasn't the type to be able to hold down a steady job. Without my mom I never would have been able to go through the training to become a police officer, and I never would have been able to get a mortgage on the modest little house on the outskirts of River Falls where I lived with my daughter. I was grateful. I just needed to show it a little more.

  "You're right," I said quietly as I finished off my rice. "I know you are. This case is just – it's driving me nuts. It's driving all of us nuts – even the FBI. I just don't understand how –" I stopped myself before I could go any further, noting the look in my mother's eyes.

  Before going to sleep on the sofa – there was only one spare room in my mom's house – I checked on Ashley. She was asleep on her back, her auburn hair flung across the pillow and her breathing slow and even. She was losing that early-childhood chubbiness in her cheeks and my heart managed to swell with pride at the young girl she was becoming at the same time as it almost felt it would stop for how fast time was going by. Surely it was just yesterday I tidied the house or walked down to the mailbox with a baby on my hip?

  I smiled at my own sentimentality in the darkness, blinking away the sting in my eyes and tip-toeing back to the living room.

  Four

  Sophie

  A week after I shot the strange man in the woods, Jerry Sawchuk suggested what he described as a "short leave of absence." Blood had been found on the Renner land, in the spot where I reported firing at the man with the sword, and enough of it to indicate that someone had been quite badly wounded. But the man himself hadn't been found and my boss, although he was trying not to show it, was having a hard time reconciling the fact that I'd let him get away. So was I.

  "But he was wounded, Sophie," he said on the day we got the DNA test results back confirming that the blood belonged to a human male – although no matches could be found in any of our criminal databases. "I've been in those woods with you a thousand times – it's impossible for anyone to get away, let alone someone who just got shot. How did you lose sight of him – how did he –"

  "I don't know," I mumbled, because that was the truth – I didn't know. And as difficult as Jerry was finding it to accept, it was even more difficult for me. I couldn't explain it. How had he gotten away? It was as if he'd simply disappeared into thin air.

  "I've been thinking maybe you should take a little time off," Jerry continued, in that tone people use when they're afraid someone is going to blow up. Which I wasn't going to do, mostly because I felt too ashamed to do so. I knew Jerry wasn't totally comfortable with a female colleague. I knew that. I knew I was on trial in a way Dan wasn't. And I still let the man in the woods get away!

  "You were out at the Renner property off the clock," Jerry said. "I was thinking maybe it would be a good thing for you to put a little space in between you and this case. I'd also like you to talk to someone about it."

  "Talk to someone about it?" I asked, looking up sharply. Was Jerry hinting at what I thought he was hinting at?

  He was. I'd discharged my weapon and been unable to come up with an explanation that didn't make me look incompetent. There were procedures to follow, apparently. Boxes to be ticked. I was placed on formal leave, with a mandatory series of meetings with a psychologist to be fulfilled before I would be allowed back on active duty.

  That day, when Jerry told me what was going to happen, I left work at just past noon and drove, with my shaking fingers clutched tightly around the steering wheel, to Lamont Park. Lamont Park was where we used to come as teenagers, to drink awful, brightly colored drinks and make-out with our boyfriends and just generally do what teenagers in small towns do. I parked in the little gravel lot where I'd had my first kiss, fought with my best friend, cried over a crush gone wrong, and turned off the engine.

  "What are you doing?" I whispered to myself, out loud. I was afraid, that afternoon. For as modest a background as I came from, as certain as it had always been that I wouldn't be leaving River Falls to go to college in California or New York City or Florida like some of the other girls had, and as predictable as it m
ay have seemed to some that I would have a baby out of wedlock at 20 years old, I'd never really doubted myself. I'd never really bought into the idea that coming from a certain class meant you were somehow less capable of anything. Sometimes I actually thought it was the opposite – I felt more adult than some of my friends from high school, especially the ones who had gone away to college. At 27 some of them were still studying, still living in shared apartments with other students. I had a 7 year old child and a job and a mortgage. I didn't have wealthy parents to fall back on, or the support system of a wealthy college behind me. If I didn't pay my bills or put food in my daughter's mouth, no one would.

  But I'd let that man in the woods on the Renner property get away. A stupid mistake, and one I couldn't explain to myself, even days later. Maybe I wasn't as competent and on top of things as I'd always thought?

  I sat in the car for a long time, until the air inside became cold enough to see my own breath. When my teeth started to chatter, I called my best friend, Maria.

  "Hello?" She answered right away, and I immediately heard the sounds of her parents' restaurant kitchen in the background. "Sophie? Hold on, let me go outside. OK, that's better – it's busy right now. Are you OK? You never call me at this time of day."

  "Yeah," I replied. "Um, yeah. I –"

  "You're not OK," Maria cut in, hearing the wobble in my voice. "Is Ashley OK? Did something happen?"

  I took a deep breath. "No, no, it's fine. Ashley is fine. It's just – it's work. Jerry put me on leave today because of that, uh, that situation with the man I shot."

  "What?!" Maria exclaimed. "He put you on leave? Why?"

  So I explained the circumstances of my leave to Maria, and detailed what I was going to have to do to get back to full-time hours. She was offended and upset, angrily demanding to know why my partner Dan hadn't been put on leave when he'd crashed his cruiser into a parked car during an unnecessary pursuit last summer.

  Maria Gomez and I had been best friends since we were ten years old and her family had moved in next to mine on one of River Falls' most inexpensive streets. We'd been through our teenage years together, and then our early and mid 20s, and I couldn't remember us ever having a real fight or disagreement – we were about as close as it was possible for two people to be. She used to joke that if we both made it to 30 without husbands we would have to move in together as life partners, with the occasional hot guy visiting to take care of our 'needs.'

  The days of slurpees at the corner store were long gone, though, and now Maria and I both had jobs and responsibilities. Her mother had chronic health issues, which meant Maria had to take her place at the family's restaurant – Gina's – along with her two brothers. She worked harder than anyone I knew. She also wouldn't dream of letting anyone down. Before we hung up, she promised to come straight to my place after closing up Gina's for the night. Just knowing I was going to see her gave me the courage to get myself together and hold onto the hope that things were going to be OK, that the mess at work was just temporary.

  "Why are you sad, Mommy?"

  I lifted my head up and looked at Ashley, tucking stoically into her vegetables before allowing herself a bite of pasta – the kid was her mother's daughter, through and through.

  "What?" I asked, knowing it wasn't going to do any good to pretend. Ashley had such a good read on my moods she usually knew what I was feeling before I did. "Oh, I just didn't have a very good day at work, that's all."

  "What happened?"

  I tried hard not to let my disappointment in myself creep into my expression. "Well, my boss says I need to take a little break. He thinks I need to go and talk to someone about the case we're working on."

  Ashley tilted her head to the side, thinking. "You need to talk to someone? A counselor? Sam Hartman had to talk to a counselor at school, because he bit Macey Green."

  I laughed. "Well I haven't bitten anyone yet, Ash, and thank God for that. But yes, Jerry thinks I need to talk to a counselor."

  "Do you think you need to talk to a counselor?"

  I caught my daughter's eye, aware in the way I often was with her that she was really listening, in a way that adults often aren't. "I'm not sure," I told her. "But Jerry Sawchuk is my boss. Sometimes we have to do what our bosses want us to do, even if we think it might not be necessary."

  Later that night, after Ashley was asleep, Maria arrived with a brown paper bag full of tamales. "Here," she said, passing the bag to me. "I made a few of the cheese ones that Ash likes – and chicken for you!"

  "You didn't have to do that," I said quietly, afraid I was going to get emotional after my difficult day.

  "I know," my best friend replied, kissing me on the cheek. "But I wanted to. Have you eaten?"

  "Yeah. Have you?"

  "Yeah. Save them for tomorrow."

  We made small talk for a few minutes, talking about Ashley and Maria's mom, but she soon brought the conversation round to our earlier topic and asked me why Jerry Sawchuk had seen fit to put me on leave.

  I rubbed my forehead and sighed. "He says he's worried I'm 'too involved' in this case. But I know it's about the shooting – he thinks I screwed up letting the guy get away. And the worst part of it is I can't even disagree – I did screw up. I'm still the new girl on the block at the station, it's really the last thing I needed. And I still can't understand how it even happened!"

  Maria nodded. "And they didn't even put Dan on leave when he hit that car last year."

  I smiled grimly. "Nope."

  "Typical."

  "I know. It's just – you know me, don't you? You know I take a certain pride in –"

  "In having your shit together?"

  "Yeah," I chuckled. "Yeah. And as ticked off as I am at Jerry, I – I did let that guy get away. He was right there. Right in front of me! I literally looked away for a second and then he was – gone. Even I don't understand how it happened. And that's kind of scaring the shit out of me, to be honest."

  Maria clasped my hand in hers and squeezed it. "I know. Do you think something happened? On the Renner property, I mean – with the man you shot? Do you think you passed out or something? My mom passes out sometimes if she stands up too fast and she says that half the time she doesn't realize it's even happened. Last week she said it happened in the kitchen and she only noticed it when she felt something sharp on her belly and realized she'd kind of fallen against the cactus on that little shelf we have, by the fridge. She didn't even know how long she was out of it. Do you think that could have happened to you?"

  I admit, passing out was not a possibility I had yet considered. I thought back to that day, to the moments I'd already been over so many times both in my own mind and in conversation with Jerry. I remembered the man scrambling backwards, away from me. I remembered him clutching at his leg before I looked away very briefly to dial 9-1-1 on my phone. And then I remembered looking up and seeing – nothing.

  "I don't know," I said. "I remember it really clearly. I shot him, he started trying to get away – but he couldn't even stand up to run! – and I took my phone out to call 9-1-1. When I looked for him a few seconds later he was just – he disappeared. Maybe I did pass out? What other explanation could there be?"

  "Have you ever passed out before? My mom's doctor said that some people have a history of passing out, something to do with their heart rates?"

  I shrugged. "Not that I know of. As far as I know I never have. But – that man, in the woods? If I didn't pass out – then where the hell did he go? I'm not exaggerating or covering anything up – not with you. I really did only look away for a few seconds. Even if he was an Olympic sprinter, and he somehow managed to run through the woods in absolute silence, and with a gunshot wound! – I would have seen him. I would have seen him running when I looked up."

  Maria believed me, that went without my having to question it. And I was grateful for her belief, because I knew Jerry didn't believe me and I had my doubts about my mom who, although she trusted me, would probably
never stop thinking of me as a little girl.

  "I know you're not supposed to talk about it," Maria said a few moments later, "but honestly, I'm not surprised. The whole thing is just so weird. First that Renner girl goes missing, then she comes back, then she goes missing again? And then her friend? And the news shows are saying the friend's family are back in England, like they don't even care anymore. Or like they know what happened."

  I'd never actually spoken to anyone in the Renner or Wallis families. The FBI got involved pretty soon after Paige Renner went missing and they were territorial, only bringing state and local police into their investigations when they needed to. And even then it was almost always Jerry they dealt with. I decided I wasn't too full to eat a tamale and grabbed one out of the bag.

  "I don't know about that," I replied. "Their daughter is missing. It's more likely they went back to the UK because they were advised to – the investigation is stalled, and having them around just attracts more media attention."

  "Would you go back?"

  "Huh?" I asked, biting into a tamale. "God, Maria – did you make these? These are just as good as your mom's."

  Maria laughed. "Don't tell her that! But yeah – would you? Go back, I mean? If you were that girl's parents?"

  I thought about it for a moment and shook my head. "No."

  "And what about the sniffer dogs?" Maria continued. "They didn't find anything, did they? They traced the scents of both those girls into those woods where you shot that weirdo – and then they lost them. Did they use them again this time? To track down the guy you shot?"

  I nodded, knowing already what the next question was going to be.

  "And did they find anything? A trail?"