The Chilling Spree (27 page)

“Does this we include me?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Johnny said.  “I’d rather
that you get back into your normal routine again.  There’s
also the matter of looking after our houseguest.”  He focused
his attention on Crevan.  “I’ll meet you back at Downey in a
bit.  I need to take Doc home.”

We were less than a block away from The
Cockpit when Johnny spoke.  “Tell me what you’re thinking,
Helen.”

“I don’t understand why you’re suddenly
cutting me out of the investigation.  If I did something you
didn’t like, you should tell me.”

He chuckled softly.  “Sweetheart, I
recognized that spacey moment you had in there tonight.  It’s
what happens right before you go off and do something stupid. 
Now I’m not accusing you of solving this case and refusing to share
the burst of insight I know you had, but I am asking you to sleep
on it and consider carefully if this is really the pattern you want
to establish with your fellow law enforcement officers in Darkwater
Bay.”

“I haven’t solved anything,” I snapped
impatiently.  “Don’t you think I learned my lesson when
you
were the one who got hurt this time?  Jesus,
Johnny.  It’s one thing if I’m the one getting shot and bashed
over the head –”

He reached for my hand, lifted it to his
lips.  “I’d rather avoid those outcomes as well, Doc. 
I’m not sure yet why you’ve got such a bent for self destructive
behavior, but I’d like you to remain among the living – at least
until I figure out what all these feelings I have for you
mean.”

I yanked my hand away.  “Because you
don’t think you’ll care enough when you figure it out to give a
damn if I’m dead or alive?”

“That’s not what I meant.  I’d like to
see if you can get through one investigation without being
assaulted, shot, or otherwise incapacitated.  I’d also like
the rest of us to come through this unscathed too.”

“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

Johnny’s frown penetrated the darkness in
the car.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ned,” I whispered.  “He’s already
dead.  It could be argued that he’d still be alive if I hadn’t
stomped off in a huff on New Year’s Eve and kept the case that
should’ve been mine and Devlin’s in the first place.”

“Now you’re just being foolish,” he
said.  “I was determined to have OSI take the lead on this
case.  Doc, I
wanted
you to work with me.  The
last thing I figured you’d do was give up without a fight.”

“So it is my fault.”

“No, nothing is your fault.  You’re
impulsive, and from what I’ve been told, this was something I’d
come to expect from you when we were looking into Datello and the
link to what happened to Journey Ireland.  Doc, why would I
have followed you, called for backup at Dunhaven if I didn’t know
what you planned to do from the beginning?”

“If you knew, why didn’t you stop me?” 
It came out more accusation than question.  Was I blaming
Johnny for what happened to him?  Even a little bit? 
Somehow that seemed very wrong to me.

“Maybe I’d rather have you start confiding
in me because you trust me, not intervene because I have no choice
but protect a woman who is so guarded that she doesn’t share what
she thinks about even the little things.”

Silence settled heavily, uncomfortably
between us.  Well, at least that was my perspective on the
situation.  Johnny might’ve felt something different.  He
reclaimed my hand after all, his thumb swishing back and forth over
my knuckles.

Breath heaved in and out of my chest,
stabbed its way inside, hitched and required a conscious effort for
release.  The outskirts of Darkwater proper bled into Bay
View.

“It was what he said about other people,” I
rasped.  “That Bobbi probably got what he deserved. 
Somebody carved judgment on that poor child’s body.  Who gave
anyone the right …?”  The words choked in my throat. 
After all, who gave
me
the right to decide if Rick should
live or die?  Who gave me the authority to determine that his
lies, his attempt to manipulate me into securing his freedom from
prosecution and make me complicit in his crimes should be
punishable by death?  I didn’t want Johnny to remember what
I’d done, even though I had the foresight to cloak my crime in a
plausible suicide.  Had he seen through that lie too? 
Did he see through me every time I lied?

“Nobody has the right to decide that just
because Bobbi Tippet was gay or dressed like a woman that he
deserved to die, Helen.  It’s not a crime to be who you
are.”

I stared at my lap.  “What if whoever
did this was genetically born a killer?  Aren’t we condemning
him for being who he is?”

“I know you don’t believe there is such a
thing as someone born to kill, Doc.  It’s something that goes
wrong in somebody’s head.  It’s a choice.”

Was it a choice?  I couldn’t remember,
couldn’t see past the red, blinding rage I felt when Rick laughed
and taunted me.  He made me complicit in his crimes the second
he married me, when he flaunted his criminal cousin Danny Datello
in my face in the reception line at our wedding.  Hearing the
words, knowing that there had been no love for me at all, that I
was nothing but an insurance policy for a group of corrupt men did
something to me.  It unleashed a darkness that had been
waiting silently, assiduously, lying dormant until the tiniest
little excuse justified its release.

I pulled my hand away from Johnny’s and
tucked it into the pocket of my coat.  I’d often wondered with
a sort of fatalistic defeat about the age old argument. 
Nature versus nurture.  Either way I looked at it, I was
fucked.  Nature dipped from Wendell and Marie’s gene pools to
create me.  Nurture had taught me how to lie and kill and
never look like what society had come to expect from the
conscienceless ilk of the world. 

Acid tears burned my eyes.  I fought
them, conjured every justification imaginable.  Damned
conscience.  Johnny had somehow sparked mine back to
life.  This whole damned city, with its corrupt residents,
police and politicians, they played their role too.  They made
me suddenly care beyond going through the motions of seeking
justice through legal means.

“Baby, “ he murmured.  “Something’s
eating you up.  I can feel it.  Why won’t you talk to
me?”

Same reason I hadn’t talked to him
before.  I feared prison.  I feared that my reawakened
conscience would force me to do the right thing and surrender,
confess, free myself from the burden that would either consume me
into darkness or sentence me to prison for the rest of my
life. 

“Will you at least tell me if this is
something I used to know?”

I shook my head.

“Doc, please don’t shut me out.  I
thought you wanted us to be together.  How can that happen if
you’re keeping secrets from me?”

“It’s better if you never remember some of
it.”

Johnny gripped the steering wheel with both
hands and silently focused on getting me home.  It was cruel
for me to voice my belief that he was better off never having part
of his life back again.  When you’re as riddled with guilt as
I seem to be these days, what’s a little more? 

We left the gate to my property open when we
left earlier, since Johnny didn’t have a remote control to open the
gate anyway.  He drove slowly up to the house, around the
circle drive and rolled to a stop in front of the low-walled
courtyard that buffered my front door.  I didn’t blame him for
his silence or the anger he surely felt.  Here he was,
struggling to prove to himself that he was the same competent law
officer, and I wasn’t shy about my preference that he never
remember.  It was beyond hypocritical when I was the one to
beg him to spend time with me so he
would
 remember.

I reached for the door handle, ready to
slunk away with my tail between my legs, to accept the rejection
that I’d earned.

“Wait,” he rasped.

“Johnny, you don’t have to say
anything.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.  It’s still
icy out here.”

Oh.  His assertion that he didn’t want
to see me hurt again apparently applied to falling on my ass, even
if I deserved it.  I waited for him and clutched his arm while
he walked, I skated, through the slick courtyard.  My mood
felt as frozen as the ice laden plants along the way.  They
drooped under the weight of frosty condensation, wilted and
defeated by the burden crushing them.

I stepped into the entryway and pulled the
key out of my coat pocket.  I stabbed it into the lock with a
vengeance, not because of Johnny, but because I couldn’t stop
hating myself, all the contradictions in my head that pulled me in
opposite directions.

His fingers curled around my key-grip
fist.  “Helen.”

“You don’t have to say –”

Johnny gently maneuvered me around and
tilted my chin with one hand.  “I’m not angry with you. 
I’m not blind.  I’m not stupid.  I’m missing a lot of
memories that I can’t help but believe mean everything to me. 
I know that whatever happened between us hurt you, and I’m sorry if
asking you to help me remember is making you relive that pain.”

I figured my tears would freeze in the
bitter cold if they were allowed to fall.  Some fights are
futile.  Moisture burned over my chilled flesh.

“Honey, please talk to me.”

And say what?  Tell the truth? 
Hurt him more than the lie ever could?  Be honest?  Make
him arrest me? 
This
Johnny didn’t understand the
emotions swirling around him like his previous incarnation
had.  He suspected that I murdered my ex-husband and broke the
law to protect me in spite of his dead-on correct gut
instinct.  This Johnny had no reason to protect me, and I knew
in my heart that I never wanted him to do it in the first
place.

“I can’t.”

His thumbs anchored my jaw and tilted it
upward.

“Helen, I feel like the luckiest man in the
world, if I remember what happened or not.”

“Why?”  More of a hiccup-sob than a
word.  Moisture drizzled from my nose.

“Because of all the doubt I feel right now,
I know you love me.  I get to learn who you are all over
again.  This time, you’re not running away from me.”

“Johnny –”

His head dipped, lips captured mine for a
tender kiss.  “God help me,” he whispered.  “But if you
don’t want me to remember certain things, I don’t want to know them
either, Helen.”

“You don’t really mean that.”  Still,
my arms circled his neck.  Fingers dug deeply into the thick
cap of blond hair.  Yeah, where Johnny Orion is concerned I’m
wrecked.  Ruined.  Want him beyond rationality.  And
who wouldn’t?  Even though he’s the one who can’t bring
himself to say the words this time, his emotions are exactly as
they’ve always been.  He loves me, and I’m not too blind to
see it anymore.

His next kiss was deep, filled with the
longing that we both felt for long months which he couldn’t
remember.  Johnny lifted me off the ground and ate
hungrily.  His moans drowned out mine.

“I do mean it,” he mumbled into my mouth
after several long minutes.  “I can’t explain it.  All I
know is that nothing feels right unless you’re right here, exactly
like this, Helen.”  The grasp around me tightened.  “I
don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t lose me.  Not ever.”

“Promise?”

I read the fear and uncertainty in his
eyes.  My intentions where Darkwater Bay was concerned were
spelled out quite clearly.  “I don’t want to leave you.”

“But you will.”

“No,” I whispered.  “I can leave the
job behind and never look back.  That’s what I want. 
You’re someone I need, Johnny.  It’s never been about running
away from you.  Never.”

“You can’t promise though, can you?”

“I can,” foreign words tasted acrid on my
tongue.  “I promise I won’t leave you.”

So much for a new beginning without the
lies.

“You frighten me.”

I looked up from the computer at
Devlin.  “Excuse me?”

“I don’t understand how someone can be so
alert when I know she didn’t sleep last night.”

My face burned, and I refocused on the email
in my inbox.  “I don’t know how you could possibly know that,
Devlin.  You’ve been dead to the world thanks to Percocet
since last night.  Are you ready for your next dose?”

“I’m wondering when we’re going to suit up
for Ned’s funeral.”

I squinted at the clock on the upper corner
of the computer.  Eight-forty.  “It’s not until
ten.  We’ve got plenty of time.”

“We should leave by nine-fifteen,
Helen.  The weather report says the roads are solid ice. 
What’re you doing anyway?  Is this about the case?  I
figured something must’ve happened when you and Orion sneaked home
in the middle of the night.  It was related to our case,
wasn’t it?”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes.  “We
should get ready to leave.  If the roads are really so bad,
I’ll have plenty of time to fill you in on the way to Saint
Angelo’s this morning.”

Dev tapped the badge on his police
blues.  “I’m not the one holding up the show this
morning.  Did you shower yet or are we looking at some long,
drawn out girl ritual?”

“I don’t have girl rituals.”  Not many
anyway.  I draw the line at skipping hygiene, even if it might
be construed as a sign of grief.  “Give me fifteen minutes to
shower, do the hair and find my uniform.”

Devlin’s eyes widened.  “They issued
you
a uniform?”

“Technically, my rank is just like yours,
Devlin.  Of course I’ve got blues.”

If those were wide eyes, they bulged like
someone with severe Grave’s disease when I emerged from the bedroom
in my official police uniform.  Skirt, jacket, and the only
sensible heels I own – a mere two and a half inches, but a wide
heel and not the spike I usually favored.