Page 92 of At Her Pleasure
The ache the thoughts caused was just one more pain to bear. “Did Cissy like flowers?” he asked.
She spun, the hoe whipping around in a lethal swing. He ducked and back pedaled, barely escaping having his skull cleaved in two. She registered his identity, though her grip on the lawn tool remained as tenacious as a Scottish warrior’s on his claymore.
“What the fuck, Mick?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She recovered fast, though her brown eyes remained hot. She at least lowered the hoe, the business end on the turned earth. “Did Vera tell you how to find me?”
“No. Tiger said none of them knew where you lived.”
“Vera knows. She just doesn’t put it in the files.” The eyes narrowed further. “So if she didn’t…”
“That’s not what’s important. I—”
She shook her head. “I didn’t give you permission to be here. Leave.”
“You’re right.” He held up his hands. “But I have to apologize.”
“You already did that. I want you gone.” She threw down the tool and advanced, her fists clenched. “I will put a bullet in your ass if you don’t get off my property. This is my place. Mine.”
If she’d gone to these lengths to keep the people closest to her from seeing where she lived, she had big reasons for that. He didn’t want to disrespect her, but he’d be gone in less than two days. He had to fix this.
Tiger was right, that the stink could get on the people you cared about, but it wasn’t merely the life-threatening stuff that could damage them. He planted his feet, met her stare for stare. She didn’t respect weakness, and he’d handled more explosive situations than this.
“You can do that. But I’m going to say what I need to say. I owe you an explanation. I wasn’t expecting…what happened tonight. I’ve never let that out, never thought anyone could open that door…”
“So it’s my fault?”
“No, damn it. Will you… Can you listen? Then I’ll go.”
She stalked over to a patio chair. Chimes hung on shepherd’s hooks nearby. More little solar lights, on sticks. After he’d pulled up, he’d thought maybe she was housesitting for someone on an extended world cruise, but he’d checked. The house was in her name. Cynbad JoEllen Marigold.
Yet as he looked around him, he realized it made sense. “Is this what you and Cissy talked about having one day?”
Her expression didn’t alter. “You’re on a clock, Mick. Get to it.”
He took a seat in the other chair, even though she hadn’t invited him to do so. He had to pretend this was civilized.
Maybe that was what their surroundings were about, too.
He knew how to be direct. His life had depended on that ability, plenty of times. Also on his ability to lie so no one would doubt him, which meant he had to believe what he was saying even more than they did. It was an important habit for his job, a destructive one for real life.
Fortunately, as difficult as honesty was, he’d never wanted to give someone the truth so much. So it might not be smooth or pretty, but he was going to do it.
“Three days before you and I met, I was part of a raid. A human trafficking ring. But they found out we were coming, and killed the twelve girls they had, ages eight to fifteen.”
Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing. Life’s horrors weren’t a news bulletin for her. “While I was manning the barricade,” he continued, “I heard a task force guy say if they’d had more accurate information, if the confidential informants didn’t so often double cross them, get killed or too scared to help, or flat out disappear, they’d have better chances of getting in before things like that happened.”
They’d had to help zip the corpses into bags, lift them onto the gurneys. He remembered how beautiful one girl’s eyes had been, even glazed in death. They’d been the kind of eyes a boy would remember long after his first kiss with her.
“Before that night, I was already on a downward spiral,” he admitted. “Drinking too much after work, feeling like we were pissing against the wind. Too much to fix, not helping enough, seen as the enemy most of the time. Hands tied because of politics and the wrong kinds of decision makers.”
He drew a breath. “I was drawing away from the other cops, not able to hold onto that connection. That night, handling those bodies, I knew I wasn’t where I should be.”
She still didn’t look pleased with him, her body rigid with the offense of him invading her space, but she was listening. She’d sat back and crossed her legs.
“How I went outside the boundaries that night we met was a decisive moment. I’m not saying that’s the way it should always be done, everyone going rogue and doing their own thing. But I just knew…my head was built to help a different way.”