Page 31 of Deadly Deception
That was the moment when I held my breath. The moment when I saw confusion followed by realization come over the man, followed by hurt and anger and a myriad other emotions flash in Glenn’s eyes that all spelled one thing: danger.
Brenda had made her move, and she’d failed. It was the worst possible thing that could have happened.
Glenn grabbed her by the upper arms, his angry words lost on the wind, but I don’t have to know how to read lips to understand the context. Glenn was enraged. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
I wasn’t about to wait around and find out. Best case, Glenn would haul her back to the cabin and call the police, charge her with attempted murder, and she’d be locked up. Worst case, he’d do to her what she’d attempted to do to him. I couldn’t abide by either option.
As the two struggle, I step into the open and make my presence known.
“Let her go!”
They freeze, two figures not much more than shadows against the setting sun.
“Cal?” Brenda’s soft voice is filled with shock and a plea for help.
“Who the hell is Cal?” Glenn wants to know.
“Brenda, come over here.” I crook my finger and point to a spot on the ground beside me. I will take control of this situation by force if I have to. No one is going to hurt Brenda if I have anything to say about it.
Glenn is even more confused. He looks to his wife. “Who the hell is Brenda?”
Brenda’s mouth flaps like a fish, and then, in one decisive move, she snaps it shut. I take their moment of distraction to move closer, and at his new proximity, I see the exact moment she decides to come clean. “It’s my alias. Cal is the hitman I hired to kill you.”
Glenn’s entire face freezes in shock and horror. Most people don’t know when they are going to die, not even when it is delivered upon them, but in those rare moments that they see it coming, they look exactly like him.
“You—you hired someone to kill me?” His voice rises with panic and so much more. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he bellows.
Brenda chooses that moment to wrench free and darts away from Glenn, toward me, the lesser of two evils at that moment. Glenn grabs for her, but she evades his touch, just barely.
“I’ll kill you!”
“You won’t touch a hair on her head,” I say calmly. It’s in moments like this that I am at my most peaceful. That moment just before I make my kill. The moment of truth.
Glenn lunges for me, and I react. Brenda lets out a shriek as we collide, wrestling with each other until I’m suddenly thrown free. I stumble backward, my feet unable to find purchase, and my arms pinwheel in a desperate effort to balance myself.
For a brief, suspended moment in time, I think this is it. I’m going to die. But I’m not afraid. Not at all. The unknown has never been a fear of mine, and I already know where I’m going after this life ends. I accepted it long ago. I only have one regret, and to my shock, it isn’t what I thought it would be.
I regret not kissing Brenda that night in my apartment.
If I had it all to do over again, I would throw my rules to the wind that is currently aiding in my demise, and I would plant one on that woman that would carry with me well into the afterlife.
At the edge of my awareness, I hear the frantic shouting and angry words, the struggle of an ongoing fight, probably physical.
And then I’m not falling anymore. I land on my back, in the grass, with my head hanging over the rocky edge overlooking the tranquil waters below. Somewhere my body registers minor injuries to my extremities, my lungs winded from the explosive landing, but a quick mental check reveals all is relatively well.
My senses, expanded outward in the onslaught of what had been assumed my execution, stop their outward progression and reverse direction, quickly gathering inward, pulling toward me at rapid speed. As they return to me, they sharpen once again to razor focus, and I lift my head toward the commotion…
Just in time to see Glenn Overmeyer sail past me and over the side. His cries fade on the wind as he descends, but my attention is no longer with the dying man. As I pull myself to sitting, my gaze is glued to the woman who captured my attention from their first meeting. Eyes wide as saucers, lips that I ache to kiss parted as she pants, arms still outstretched in front of her, she is a vision in golden sunlight.
At that moment, something dawns on me.
Am I…in love?
The realization doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t pinpoint an exact time or place that it had occurred, and I’ve never experienced anything its equal, so I have no point of reference. But that’s what it has to be. This overwhelming need to shelter, protect, and kill for her, to wrap her up in my arms and promise that I will ensure everything will be okay is something that can’t be ignored.
I don’t have the first clue what to do with all of that, so I do what I’ve always done: I act on instinct.
“You killed him.” My assertion is delivered with a gruff, almost intimidating tenor that breaks Brenda free from her dazed state, and she looks at me with a new kind of horror. I roll to my feet and approach slowly, as one might a frightened animal.