Level Five (17 page)

             
“This is much better.”  Edie’s voice pulled him from his maudlin thoughts. He turned to look at her.  She’d changed from her shorts and T-shirt into a light blue sundress that emphasized the sweet curve of her slender shoulders and the aching blue of her eyes. For a moment his love for her swelled so tight in his chest he couldn’t breathe.

             
“Jake?  You okay?”  She gave him a troubling gaze.

             
“Yeah, I’m fine.  I was just thinking about how much I love you.”  He opened his arms and with a smile she walked into his embrace.

             
He closed his eyes and held her tight, noting that her hair smelled faintly of fruity shampoo and a summer breeze.  He kissed her on the temple and finally released her.  “Let’s get a cup of coffee and then it’s time for me to head home before the storms move in.”

             
Minutes later they sat on the sofa and talked about the afternoon and what they each had on their plates for the coming week.

             
He talked to her about his frustration with the two missing women and how he and Teddy had checked files to see if there was a serial kidnapper working the area.  “Unfortunately there just isn’t enough information to know.”

             
“You need a body,” she said softly.

             
He nodded.  “As much as I hate to admit it, at least a body would bring some sort of closure for family members.”

             
“And might hold forensic evidence or clues that could lead to the killer.”

             
“Right, but enough about my dismal life.  Do you have more interviews with Colette set up for the week?” he asked.

             
She frowned.  “Actually, I’m taking the week off from Colette.”

             
“Problems?”

             
“Not with Colette, I just need some time at the computer typing up notes and pulling things together.”  She took a sip of her coffee. The frown still danced a vertical line down the center of her forehead.  “This story is getting to me more than any I’ve ever explored.”  She placed her cup on the coffee table and curled her legs up beneath her.  “I’ve found myself jumping at shadows and I had a terrible dream the other night.” 

She shook her head and forced a laugh.  “I think that committing a lot of the notes I’ve taken to a printed page and taking a week off of seeing Colette will give me some much needed emotional detachment.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jake replied although what he wanted to tell her was that if he lived here all the time, he would ease her mind and protect her against even the darkest of shadows. He would be in bed right next to her to hold her after a particularly bad dream. But he was tired of being a broken record of the same old song for a woman who was obviously tone deaf.

              It was just after seven when Jake left her house. His ride to his place was accompanied by the roll of distant thunder. It was getting more and more difficult to leave her on Sunday nights, to know that for the next four days he was forced to lead a life separate from hers.

             
As much as he tried not to push her, not to need or want more than she could give him, the truth was that with each day that passed, his frustration with the situation grew more intense.

             
He loved Edie more than he could ever imagine loving another woman.  She completed him, made sense of his world. He worried that eventually the pain of loving her would overwhelm the pleasure.  And when that happened, he would be lost.  

The storm crashed through the city just after dusk, bringing with it booming thunder, killer lightning and high winds that whipped the trees and caused the house to creak and groan. 

Colette hated storms. The night she’d been dumped out of the back of her captor’s van, the night he’d slashed her face and left her at the edge of a parking lot, it had begun to storm.

She had only vague memories of pulling herself up from the pavement as the rain had begun to fall and thunder crashed overhead.  For a wild moment she’d thought the thunder was her heart exploding in her chest, the wild howl she thought was her screams. 

Crazed with pain, afraid that somehow he’d find her again, she’d staggered naked and bloody toward the discount store in the distance.     

She’d managed to get to the brightly-lit store but was too confused, too dazed to find the door.  Instead she’d slapped her hands against the window, drawing the attention of a woman and her small daughter at a cash register.

Colette would never forget the startled terror on the little girl’s face, would never forget the sound of her frightened scream just before her mother slipped a hand over her eyes to shield her from the sight of what Colette had become.

It pained Colette to know that she was probably the stuff of that little girl’s nightmares. Hopefully when she awakened screaming in the night, she had a loving mother and father to assure her that her world was safe.

Colette drifted from window to window, watching the storm light up the sky as rain pelted the earth.  The howl of the wind reminded her of that little girl’s scream.  It had been the last thing Colette had heard before she’d passed out. She’d later come to in a hospital.

The kinds of memories she had of those moments in the parking lot were amazing. The scent of her own blood had been thick in her brain, but beneath it she could smell the clean scent of the rain.  The asphalt bit into her bare feet as she’d stumbled and wobbled to safety, sounds escaping her lips that no human being should ever make. 

As she stood at the living room window, she sensed rather than heard Frank approaching.  His arms wrapped around her as he bent his head forward.  “You’re safe.”

She leaned back against him and closed her eyes, savoring the words, warmed by his strong embrace. “I know.”

“The storm will pass and the sun will shine again tomorrow.”

She turned in his arms and faced him, seeing the edge of worry darken his eyes. “I’m fine,” she assured him and placed her hand on his cheek. 

“And I’m glad you and Edie don’t have any sessions set up for the next week,” he replied.  “It’s been so hard on you, dredging up the past, remembering all those emotions.”

“It has been hard,” she agreed as she stepped out of his embrace.  “But, it’s also been cathartic.”  She moved away from the window and sank down on the nearby sofa.  “I worry about Edie.  I think this has been as difficult on her as it’s been for me.”

Frank sat next to her.  “She cares about you.”

Colette nodded.  “She’s become a good friend.”

“I wonder why she and Jake haven’t tied the knot yet.  They make such a great couple.” 

Colette frowned thoughtfully as she thought of the woman who had entered her life as a business partner and had also become a friend and confidante.  “There’s a darkness in her that I recognize, that speaks to me.  I don’t think she’s resolved issues from her past, from her sister’s murder.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“I’ve tried, but she’s pretty closed off on the whole topic.  I get the feeling she never dealt with the past and instead has shoved a lot of things into a box. She keeps it tightly locked inside her.” 

For the next few minutes they talked about Edie and Jake, about the baby that would make Colette and Frank a real family and summer plans to take a vacation to Branson, Missouri. 

She suddenly smiled at Frank. “You’re a sneaky one, Frank Burgess,” she said as she realized what he’d done.  He’d kept her talking, kept her engaged while the storm outside had spent its fury and moved on.

“You ready for bed?” Frank asked.

Colette nodded and together they got off the sofa and headed for their bedroom. It took only minutes for Frank’s snores to fill the air, but sleep didn’t come so easily to Colette.

She tossed and turned as a gentle rain pattered against the window pane.  Thoughts of Edie haunted her as sleep remained elusive.    

The crimes that had occurred in each woman’s life were different in nature. Edie had been a peripheral victim instead of an intimate one, but many of the devastating aftereffects of those crimes were the same.  

What worried Colette was that she knew in her heart, in her very soul that she was a survivor of what had happened to her. She had a feeling Edie was still a victim, that the events that had occurred so long ago still had firm fingers around her throat. If Edie wasn’t careful the past would slowly squeeze the heart and soul from her.

                    Part 2

                Inside The Hoard

                  Chapter 17

By noon on Wednesday Edie was already having a bad day.  An early morning phone call from her father had prompted a trip to the motel where she’d found her father naked and drunk and in the middle of the bed weeping because he’d lost his lucky bottle cap.

It had taken Edie over an hour to calm him down and finally get him into the bed and asleep.  When he’d finally fallen into a troubled slumber, she’d remained at the motel room door for several long minutes before leaving, seeking signs of the man she’d believed him to be when she’d been young.

There was nothing left.  The grief, the booze and drugs had all eaten him from the inside out, leaving nothing of the man she’d once known had existed.

As she locked and closed the motel room door behind her, she wondered what Jake would think if he knew that her father hadn’t died but rather lived a minute-by-minute existence in a seedy motel seeking any substance that would remove him from his life, from the painful essence of his soul.

Jake would be appalled.  First he’d be upset that she’d lied to him. It had seemed such a little harmless lie in the beginning.

It had been on their second date that Jake had asked about her family and she’d told him that her parents had divorced, her mother had relocated to Florida and her father had died in a car accident. 

At that time she hadn’t known that Jake would become an integral part of her life.  She’d only known the need to protect her father, to protect herself from any judgment and shame.

Over time the lie had expanded, like a piece of grisly meat in her mouth, growing bigger and bigger with each bite until it threatened to choke her to death.  It felt as if it were too late to spit it out and so she kept swallowing it, hoping it would eventually go away.

She locked the door and pulled it closed behind her, as always wondering if this would be the last time she saw her father.  She worried about him all the time. It was possible that one day he would take one drink too many, take a hit of some street drug that would instantly stop his heart.

She’d mourned her father long ago, in the days after Francine’s death when she recognized that things had changed forever.

She knew then that the father who had smelled of Old Spice cologne and had danced with his daughters was gone.  Francine had taken him to the grave with her.

A restless energy gripped her as she returned home.  She didn’t feel like working.  She thought about calling Colette to meet her for lunch but immediately rejected the idea.  The whole point of taking off a week from the interviews was to get some distance from the woman with the scarred face and the crime that had gotten far too deep into Edie’s head.

She felt as if the storm that had passed the night before still lingered in her veins, making her feel edgy and somehow off center.

She’d just pulled out the makings of a salad when her cell phone rang.  A glance at the caller ID let her know it was Jake.  “Hey handsome,” she said.

“Hey beautiful,” he replied.  “What are you doing?”

“I was just about to make some lunch.  What about you?”  She sank down in a kitchen chair and hugged the phone closer to her ear.

“I’m sitting in the car outside a convenience store waiting for Teddy to come back out.”

“Don’t tell me, he’s loading up on soda so he can serenade you with burp songs for the rest of the day.” 

“Apparently Snap ate her bowl of cereal this morning and then belched Twinkle Twinkle. Lisa went ballistic.  There’s a new household rule that nobody burps anything that remotely resembles a song.”

Edie laughed.  “Good for Lisa.  I’m surprised she hasn’t made Teddy quit that awful habit before now.”

“Unfortunately, Teddy has decided that means he has to burp twice as often while with me to get it all out of his system before he goes home each night.” 

Edie laughed again.  “You’re a big boy.  You’ll deal with it just fine.”

There was a long pause.  “There are a lot of things in my life right now that I’m not dealing with just fine…like us.”  An edge of irritation crept into his voice.