Montaine (20 page)

To my surprise, when the scuffle
subsided, Trent stood in the center of the melee. He had leapt from the ring
with superhuman reflexes and pounced on the gun barrel before Kill was able to
squeeze off a single shot.

“Kat, are you ok? Are you
hurt?” Trent ran to me and placed his palms against my cheeks. He looked into
my eyes with heartfelt concern. I nodded, my tears dropping and rolling onto his
fingers.

I held up my phone and
pressed play on the recording. In the stunned silence that followed, we could hear
Kill’s words, slightly muffled but still fully understandable. I had his entire
confession on tape, every word of it. Trent turned pale as a ghost when Kill
described strangling Rosie. He wrapped his arms around my waist, rested his
chin on the top of my head, and embraced me firmly and tightly.

“You don’t have to fight
Peter,” I said. “You can walk away. Don’t play into Kill’s hands. Don’t let him
win.”

Trent nodded. “I’m so
sorry, Kat. I’m sorry I put you through this.”

“You don’t have to
apologize.”

“Yes, I do. If it weren’t
for me, you never would have been in that position. Kill never would have been
able to touch you. I should have been there. I will be there from now on. I’m
never leaving your side again.”

He kissed me long and
passionately. “I’m never leaving your side either, Trent.”

“I love you, Kat.”

“I love you, Trent.” We
kissed again.

“Well, this is
beautiful,” said a gruff and growling voice. “But we have a fight to get back
to.” Peter squatted on the edge of the ring, just behind the cage netting. His
massive fists rested on the mat. He glared with a fiery anger.

“It’s over, Peter. I call
it.”

“It’s not fucking over.
We had an agreement. We fight until the end.” He stood, his towering physique
blocking out the light and leaving his face in shadow.

Trent shook his head. “I
don’t have an issue with you Peter, not anymore. I thought that I did, but I
was wrong. He’s the one that you want. He murdered Rosie and made everyone
believe that it was you.” Trent pointed to the gasping and red-faced Kill,
still pinned by Finnegan’s meaty, tattooed forearm. “I am sorry for what
happened all those years ago. I really am. And I don’t forgive you for what
happened to Oscar. But this,” he swept his arms in an arc around the ring and
the crowd, “this will not solve anything.”

“Like hell it won’t. Get
back here.”

“No.” Trent pulled me to
his side and kissed my temple. “I forfeit. You win.” He paused and locked his
eyes on mine. “Love is stronger than revenge.”

The bell clanged. The
referee walked to the center of the ring and announced Peter as the winner of
the fight.

Trent stepped toward Kill
and stopped. “You’re going down. You can’t prevent it now. All of your plans
are ruined. You’ll pay for what you did to Rosie. I’ll make sure of it.” He
punched Kill in the face with a thundering blow. Kill’s knees buckled. His head
lolled sideways.

Trent gripped my hand. We
walked away from the ring and through the crowded bleachers. The audience stared
after us, shocked and speechless. A few people clapped softly and patted Trent
on the shoulder as we passed.

“What do you say we head
upstate tomorrow and play that recording for the Leidensburg police department?
I think they might be interested in what it has to say.”

“Sounds like a plan to
me.”

He winked devilishly and
kissed me hard on the mouth. “Right now, I’d like to take you home.”

“Sounds like an even
better plan.” I winked in return. We hopped into his car and drove off into the
waiting night.

***

Hours later, we lay entwined
in each other’s arms, gazing out over the twinkling lights of the city skyline
through the floor-length windows in Trent’s bedroom.

“I feel like a weight has
been lifted from my life,” he said as his fingertips stroked the curve of my
neck and skated along my shoulder blades. I rolled over onto his chest, resting
my chin on his bulging pecs.

“The past doesn’t have to
haunt you anymore. You can let go.”

I lifted myself up and
straddled his hips. He cupped my naked breasts with both hands, gently caressing
them. He was hard beneath me. I took his full length inside of me with a low
and sultry groan. I rocked my hips in a smooth rhythm, grinding on top of him
while he squeezed my nipples and moaned with delight. I tossed my head back and
rocked harder. Waves of pleasure coursed through my body. I panted and groaned,
thrusting and grinding with increasing ferocity. My breasts bounced against his
rough palms.

“Oh, Kat,” he moaned.
“You are amazing.”

We writhed together in a
steady rhythm, our bodies locked in a mind-emptying rush of delicious carnal
bliss. We came together, emitting long throaty cries that echoed from the walls
as electric surges of orgasmic frenzy overtook us and rocketed through every
nerve ending. I collapsed onto his chest and felt his strong hands enfold my
naked back in a powerful embrace.

“It’s you and me, baby,
forever.” He pushed a sweaty tendril from my forehead and kissed the top of my
head.

“Forever,” I repeated
with a breathy sigh.

Trent rested on one knee
before the square of pink marble. He placed a bouquet of bright wildflowers at
its base and brushed a few smudges of dust from its surface. The sky over
Leidensburg was a cornflower blue speckled here and there with wispy cotton
clouds. The sun warmed the silent headstones. Birds chirped from within the
canopy of towering elms.

Trent rose to his feet
and took my hand. “The pain will never go away.” He gazed down at Rosie’s name
carved into the headstone’s polished surface. He turned his head toward me and
squeezed my fingers. “I hope she would be proud, though. She finally got the
justice that she deserved after all these years.”

We had driven up here on
the day after the fight and delivered the recording of Kill’s confession to the
local police. They wasted no time in securing his arrest for murder. The story
was suddenly back in the papers, with pictures of a young and smiling Rosie,
her entire life seemingly before her, juxtaposed with the grisly details of her
untimely and violent death. I read a heartbreaking interview with her parents,
an elderly couple shrunken with age and sorrow, who stared blankly into the
camera while they sat side-by-side on a couch upholstered in old-fashioned flowered
fabric. They still lived only miles from the town where Rosie had lived and
died, within walking distance of the woods where her body had been recovered.
She was their only child, their whole world. They visited her grave on a
monthly basis. They expressed a measured joy at the news that her murderer would
face justice after so many years. “It won’t bring my girl back,” her father
said with a pained finality.

Now Trent and I had
returned a month later to pay our respects on what would have been Rosie’s
thirty-third birthday. “I am sure that she would be very proud to see you
today, to see all that you have accomplished and all that you have become.”

He nodded. “I hope so.”
He kissed the tips of his fingers and tapped them on the top of the headstone. We
were both silent a moment longer. “Come on.”

He pulled me across the
grass, soft and smooth underfoot, and toward the gazebo centered amid the acres
of mute stones and monuments. We climbed into its cool shade. He placed a hand
against my cheek and kissed my lightly on the lips.

“Things were a bit
different the last time we were here.” He smiled and wound an arm around my
waist.

I flushed at the memory
of our torrid encounter in this very gazebo, beneath the thunder and lightning
of a tumultuous summer storm, when the rain fell in sheets and blocked out the whole
world. We had traveled a long road since that moment, but we had traveled it
together and remained locked in a special bond of deepening feelings. I lifted
my arms around his neck and hugged him tighter, resting my cheek on his sturdy
shoulder.

“I spoke to Ezzie today,”
he said in a quiet voice.

I raised my head and
gently stroked his hair. “How is Oscar?”

Soon after Oscar awoke
from his coma, we learned that he had sustained several broken vertebrae. The
injury left his legs paralyzed. Doctors doubted that he would ever walk again,
but he was determined to prove them wrong. He kept his spirits high despite the
dim prognosis and served as an untiring inspiration to his family, friends, and
fellow patients.

“He is the star of the
rehab center,” Trent laughed. “The nurses adore him. The doctors told Ezzie
that they’d never seen anyone work so hard to gain back his strength. I
promised him a job at the magazine as soon as he feels up to it. To my
surprise, he accepted right away.”

“Have you heard anything
more from Peter Haverford?”

“Nah,” he shook his head.
“He faded back into the shadows as quickly as he appeared. I’m sure I’ll
encounter him again someday in the fighting world. But I’m through with those
Friday night bouts.”

“Really? I thought you
needed those fights to work off aggression and stress.”

Trent smiled down at me.
“I guess I don’t have any more aggression and stress left to work off. And I
would rather spend my Friday nights with you.” He kissed my forehead and
tightened his arms around my waist.

“Any news about Kill?” I
asked tentatively.

Trent inhaled deeply and
exhaled slowly through his nose. His fingers toyed with a bit of loose thread
on the waistband of my plaid miniskirt.

“I got in touch with one
of my contacts at the prosecutor’s office. He said Kill seems ready to plead
guilty in exchange for a deal. He will still be in prison for a very long time,
possibly for the rest of his life. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but the
plea will spare Rosie’s parents the ordeal of a trial. For that reason, I
support it. They have suffered enough. They don’t need to relive that time all over
again and dredge up those terrible memories.”

I nodded. “That seems
like the best thing at this point.”

“I visited them, you
know. A couple of weeks ago.”

I raised my eyebrows in
surprise. We normally were aware of each other’s movements. He had not
mentioned an additional visit to Leidensburg until this moment.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t
tell you,” he continued. “I just wasn’t ready to talk about it. It was a very
emotional visit.”

“What happened?”

He cleared his throat. “They
thanked me for solving the mystery of her murder. They told me to thank you as
well. We reminisced about Rosie, about our best memories of her. They showed me
photo albums filled with her childhood photos. Her high school yearbook
portrait is still on the mantle, frozen in time.” He shook his head. “Life is
so strange. A single decision, a single moment can change everything. I keep
wondering if there was anything I could have done to save Rosie. I could have
told her sooner how I felt. But I was just a kid. I barely knew how I felt. And
maybe if I had been paying more attention all these years, I could have solved
her murder a long time ago. The answer was right in front of my face. For all
of my supposed street smarts, I refused to believe in the existence of hidden
evil. In the end, I was naïve.”

“That doesn’t make you
naïve. It makes you good. You thought that Kill was your friend. You had no
reason to believe that he was harboring that kind of vicious evil. You’re right
that life is strange. A moment can change everything, but we never know when
those moments will arise. We can’t live our lives in hindsight, questioning
every action and every decision. We simply have to live.”

A songbird landed on the
gazebo railing, trilled a merry gradient of notes, and flitted away into the
treetops. Trent watched its ascent with a thoughtful expression. A light breeze
flowed through the structure, lifted a few tendrils of hair around my temple,
and stirred the surrounding trees with a soft tinkle of rustling leaves.

“Rosie would have liked
you, Kat.” Trent gazed down at me with a warm grin and kissed me gently on the
lips. “You have a similar spirit, the same feistiness tempered by kindness, and
a wisdom beyond your years. You are two of the best people that I’ve ever had
the privilege to know. I am so thankful to have met you, Kat. You’ve helped me
reach a closure that I didn’t even know I needed. And you have given me reason
to hope for the future.”

I stood on my tiptoes and
buried my face in the soft cotton of Trent’s shirt collar. When I raised my
head and looked out onto the rolling expanse of gravestones, I could have sworn
that I saw a figure in the distance. It was only a hint of a shape, perhaps a
shadow or a trick of the sunlight bouncing through the trees, but it resembled
a young woman with long hair and a smoothly flowing skirt. She hesitated in the
act of turning and raised a thin arm in farewell. Then, with another shift of
the breeze and the light, she was gone.

I convinced myself in the
next instant that I had imagined the whole thing. But a part of me will always
believe that was the moment when Rosie finally found peace and said goodbye.