The Darkest Joy (28 page)

“I could hear him hurting my family.” Her eyes well with tears. “My brother—” She jerks her hand out of mine and covers her mouth. Her horror—mine.

“It’s okay, it’s not happening now,” I tell her.

Brooke nods in quick succession, trying to convince herself.

“Hey,” I say, moving around the table to sit beside her on the four-seater bench. I put my arm around her. “I’m here.”

“I know,” Brooke says, leaning against me. I press my lips to her fragrant hair, still smelling of the soap I use. We sit like that for several moments, then she tells the rest.

“I heard glass crashing and the phone . . . Mom dropped the phone then . . . he . . . killed her.”

I wait more. It needs to come from her without urging.

“He picked up the phone. I’ll never forget his breathing into that phone.” Brooke shudders and I tighten my arms around her.

“And now he might be here . . . somewhere.”

“I’ll protect you,” I say . . . and know that I will. I’d kill anyone who touched a hair on her head. “Besides,” I say, stroking her silky hair and tucking her head underneath my chin, “Hardass is watching.”

Brooke pulls away, her laughter breaking through the wetness that covers her face like the remnants of a sad storm. “It’s Haller, Chance.” She shakes her head, a small smile ghosting her lips. “That reminds me of Lacey.”

I frown. “How?”

“She can never get Agent Clearwater’s name right either.”

I smile. Us Alaskans—not much for authority.

“So let’s celebrate!” I say, turning her around to face me. I jerk her legs apart and scoot her ass close to my open legs. I straddle the bench and throw her legs over each of mine, putting my hands on the small of her back.

“Celebrate what?” Brooke asks softly, wrapping her arms loosely around my neck.

“Your birthday,” I answer, kissing the tip of her nose. It’s beautiful and part of her face. Somehow, each little kiss is my way of healing Brooke’s many wounds.

Let me heal you
, I think,
my mouth speaking for me
.

“It’s ten days away.”

“Well let’s plan then.”

She thinks, rolling her bottom lip into her teeth, nibbling on it. I swallow again. Brooke just jacks me up. Any. Little. Thing. “It
is
the big two-one.”

“Yeah,” I say, my lips going to her throat, then moving up to her jaw.

She tips her head back, giving me better access. Her skin’s still moist from the long bath, smelling vaguely of my soap and beneath that, Brooke. I lick and peck along her jawbone and she gives a tight little moan.

“Hungry?” she asks.

“Always,” I answer, my hand wrapping the nape of her neck as her lips find mine, the kiss deepening into something more.

“I have to get back to the cabin . . .” she says, even as she strips my shirt off my body. Her words say no but her hands say yes. I dig nonverbal clues.

I move closer, standing with her legs wrapped around me, and Brooke lets my shirt slide to the floor.

“Why?” I ask, already moving to my bedroom.

“Lacey . . .” she says without strength.

“She’ll live,” I say as I move through my bedroom door
and lay Brooke down as I lower myself on top of her. My body lays cradled between her legs, every bit of me against all of her.

“Yeah,” she agrees in a whisper.

“Besides,” I say, my fingers trailing down her jaw then moving into her hair, “we finally get to try out
my
bed . . .”

Brooke gives a sardonic laugh. “Novel idea.”

“We’ll risk it,” I say.

We do.

I watch Chance’s car rumble down my driveway, leaving me at the cabin, and I’m already bereft at his departure.

I’ve got it bad. So . . . so bad.

I stand out on my front porch and sigh like a lovesick puppy.

Lacey joins me. “God . . . damn. What a shitty hostess you are,” she comments.

“Yeah,” I agree. I turn to her and notice she seems energized. I feel my brows quirk “I’m sorry . . . I’m crazy about Chance,” I answer.

Lacey crosses her arms across her chest. “Or just crazy.” Her eyes rest on me with that strange intensity that’s riding her.

She’s the one that’s acting crazy, so I switch topics to avoid a lecture; don’t want it. “I’ll be better. Promise.”

She raises her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “You better.” She
lifts a finger and I feel my face conform into a tight smile. I’m not escaping without something.

But she surprises me by not talking about Chance. “Have you been practicing?”

I shrug. “Some . . . but not like before.”

“Listen, about Juilliard . . .”

My eyes snap to hers. “Yes . . . what about Juilliard?”

“I want what’s best for you, Brookie.”

I cast my eyes to my feet, my pink flip-flops looking so out of place on the weathered rustic porch. It should be cowboy boots or . . . something.

“I know you do, Lace.”

“I’m so sorry about your family,” she says.

I breathe deeply. In and out. “Thank you, I know . . . I have no idea how you did it, but I know that you got the Juilliard thing turned around so at least I can have that. I might even be ready to play again.” In front of an audience. Without my family.

Lacey doesn’t say anything and I look at her.

Finally, she nods. “Your happiness is super important to me and when you took off to this—Lacey sweeps her palm around—“godforsaken place, I got desperate and threw myself at their mercy, playing on the tragic circumstances.”

Not too difficult
, I think.

“When they said yes and that they’d be sending you the welcome-aboard packet, I booked the first flight.”

“And porked the first guy,” I say, and Lacey smiles.

“Yeah,” she says, and a mild red creeps up her neck and settles into her face. “That was fun.”

“Fun?” I ask.

“Well sure . . . I want an Alaskan man too. Y’know, ratio and all.”

We smile at each other.

Lacey’s gone out to be with Evan with promises of being back home at the cabin by midnight.

I realize that I’ve found a rare moment of solitude. Chance is still fishing and Agent Haller is skulking around somewhere.

I pick up my cell, seeing another message from Agent Clearwater.

I heave a great sigh. I can’t hide my head in the sand any longer.

He deserves for me to respond to him. Even if his fellow agent is responsible for me, Clearwater is the one who has come against every wall I’ve thrown up, still advocating for me.

I need to call him.

First, I cruise through the messages.

Shame hits me like a well-aimed fist when I listen to the first one, over two weeks old by now:

Miss Starr, this is Agent Clearwater. There’ve been some ongoing developments in the case that I’d like to discuss with you at your earliest convenience. Phone me please
.

He recites his number.

I click on the next one.

Hi, Miss Starr, Agent Clearwater again. Did you get my last message?

My guilt sharpens when there’s two more of those.

Then:
Miss Starr, because of your continued nonresponsiveness, I have sent a certified return receipt letter. Please phone me the instant it’s in your possession
.

I stand, walking over to the table and look for the envelope with all the colorful attachments for delivery confirmation.

I can’t find it. All the other mail is where Chance left it, but not the piece I need. I swear he set it on top of the table. I run a finger over the brightly gold-speckled cream Formica, the chrome ribbon border catching on my flesh and drawing a drop of blood. I suck it off my finger, my eyes scanning the interior of the cabin.

I frown as a prickling disquiet surrounds me. It seeps into my body like the sea did on that fateful night Chance saved me.

I listen to Clearwater’s final message, my hand losing feeling as I clutch the cell against my ear.

Brooke, I have sent an agent for your protection. We believe that the killer is moving toward you. And . . . we know who it is. We’ve enlisted the local police to contact you as you won’t contact us. Please respond
.

That message was left yesterday.

The killer is moving toward you
.

I move my thumb over the icon to call Clearwater back as a knock on my door thunders against the wood and I jump.

Shit
, I think, moving to the door in slow motion as I slip the phone inside my back pocket.

I press my ear against the wood and say, “Yes?”

“Brooke!” a male voice yells through the wood.

I know that voice
. I’ve never heard it yell, I’ve never heard it in terror. I recognize it anyway.

I open the door and Agent Haller staggers in, blood pouring out of his mouth like a faucet let go. He slams into me and I stumble under his weight, both of us going down to the floor. He lands on top of me and knocks the wind out of my lungs and I grunt, unable to breathe.

As though from a great distance I see a large knife hilt standing at attention, the blade buried inside his back. The blood runs down his federal-issue threads, pooling beside us like a small lake. From inches away, Agent Haller no longer looks smug.

He looks scared.

Haller’s mouth opens and closes like a great gasping fish. He’s trying to say a word as my lungs burn for oxygen and his blood slicks our bodies together. I am helpless beneath him. Pinned by his weight, aching to breathe.

“Lay . . . lay . . . lay . . .” he says.

Movement is captured in my peripheral vision. I turn my head, blackness and shock eating at the edges of a brain gone fuzzy, like I’m thinking through Swiss cheese.

Lacey appears over his body as he stammers those syllables over and over.

Thank God
, I think as my body recovers, taking a painful first breath. I suck in a lungful, relief sweeping through me. She can get help.

Then in my bewildered state it occurs to me that she’s not with Evan.

Suddenly, in one swift movement, she jerks the knife out with both hands, her long nails contrasting against the blood on the blade.

I lie there, the blood roaring in my ears like a great flood, my heartbeats a smothering too-fast rhythm inside the tightness of my chest, my bladder threatening to let go—my terror so great it has its own texture.

Taste.

Suddenly it hits me.
Lay
. Lacey. He’d been trying to warn me.

Her legs are spread and planted on either side of Agent Haller’s dying body. Lacey’s eyes have a fevered look to them when she slams the blade down into his back, the sound of tenderized meat as it sinks home makes me turn my head and throw up while Haller lies on top of me, bleeding. I retch until my vision triples and nothing else comes out.

The mess I make mixes with the blood from the Fed who lays dying above me.

His eyes meet mine . . . the light inside them fading as his lashes brush his cheek and his head lowers to my chest, his body growing heavy.

With the stillness of death.

I close my eyes; wetness is all around me. The metallic scent of blood thickens the air as I hear the knife find its target and my body takes some of the impact, moving with each stab.

Again and again. Then it stops.

I know when I hear her breathe.

I’d recognize it anywhere.

I
’m whistling to distract myself from how badly I want to be with Brooke.

But fishing can’t wait forever. I slice the last one open, hosing off the sea lice, blood, and other disgusting shit, and it runs where I put it, where the pressure of the water directs it. I flop the two fillets, cheeks, and other edibles in my cooler that sits on top of the fish dolly and close the lid. I squint against the low sun, catching the glint of metal as Matt soaps up the hull of the boat with a long-handle brush and nod to myself. At least that chore doesn’t await me.

Brooke
.

I begin whistling lyrics for a song that’s been threading through my mind . . . about love. About her. It looks like something has finally taken the sea away—it no longer calls as strongly.