Tumbledown (40 page)

Alex dropped down from the bed, collected a pile of clothing, and came to kneel at the side of the chair. “Want to get some fresh air?”

Sarah tapped the window, drawing Alex’s attention to the grim weather. “It’s pouring down.”

“So we’ll get wet. Here, stick your foot in your sneaker.”

“We’re in our pajamas.”

“So we’ll get wet pajamas.” Alex held out Sarah’s jacket. “It’ll be good for you. Come on.”

“The Storm Troopers will not be impressed,” Sarah said, wrestling into her jacket. The protective detail camped in the corridor were duty-bound to accompany them if they left the room.

“They won’t mind. They’re used to us keeping some pretty odd hours.” From behind the chair, Alex leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s go wake them up.”

Outside, the rain had softened into a fine drizzle, the temperature mild beneath it. Sarah turned her face toward the sky and let the mist bathe her skin, sluicing away the clammy residue she could still feel clinging to her. The roads they walked beside were quiet, with few cars passing them as they approached Van Horn Park.

“Is it the weekend?” she asked. She found it hard to keep track of the days when there was little in the hospital to distinguish them.

“You really don’t know what day it is?” Alex chuckled. “It’s Sunday. Hang on while I get you over this bump.” She tilted the chair, easing it down onto the rough path that curved toward the park’s two ponds. The rain tapered off before stopping completely, and hazy fingers of sunlight broke through the clouds as she steered the chair toward a bench at the side of the water.

“You’ll get your bum wet if you sit on that,” Sarah said, and then laughed as Alex produced two plastic bags from the carryall strapped to the back of the chair. “Think of everything, don’t you?”

“Come and sit with me.” Alex held her arms out.

Sarah carefully transferred herself across to the bench, tucked her face into Alex’s neck, and kissed the damp skin there.

“Happy birthday.” Alex spoke so softly that Sarah thought she had misheard. The gift that Alex pulled out of the carryall quickly disabused her of that notion.

“Oh.” She pushed away a little. “Really? Today?”

“Definitely, today. I thought about baking you a cake, but…well, baking just wouldn’t be as much fun without you there,” Alex said. She smirked and dodged Sarah’s attempt to smack her on the arm. “Ash sent about three tons of Cadbury’s chocolate to the hospital for you, and this is from me.” She set the gift in Sarah’s hands.

When Sarah pulled at the ribbon, the wrappings fell away to reveal a hardback book. Its bold red cover was edged with beautiful gold filigree, the letters
JA
inscribed in the center in a flowing script. That gave her a good clue, but it was only when she turned to the spine that she found the title:
Pride and Prejudice
.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d gotten a chance to read it properly,” Alex said as Sarah ran her fingers over the embossed lettering. “And I wasn’t sure if you’d even like it, or whether it’d bring back bad—”

“I
love
it,” Sarah assured her. “And no, I never got to read it properly.” She pushed as close to Alex as she could and kissed her.

“Tell me what I can do to help,” Alex said. “What do you want to do?”

“Now?”

“No, after you get out of the hospital, after the trial, after all this…” She floundered, clearly searching for the right words. “After it’s all finished.”

“Finished” was exactly the right word but for all the wrong reasons. “I feel like he stole everything from us,” Sarah whispered. It was something she had never voiced aloud: the unfairness of it, the enormity of what Caleb Deakin had cost them. “Lyssa lost her life. We lost our home, and all that time while I was in jail. You’ve lost your career. We were so fucking happy, Alex, and he took it all.”

Alex tilted Sarah’s chin, ensuring that their eyes met. “So we start again,” she said. “We make sure that bastard gets locked away for the rest of his life, and we start ours over.”

Sarah nodded, drawing courage from Alex’s calm confidence. “Where?”

“Wherever you want to go.”

She rested her forehead against Alex’s. “I think I want to go back to England,” she said.

*

A strange blue-white flash woke Sarah. For a second, the bedroom was illuminated, its unfamiliar layout puzzling until she remembered where she was. The light vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving a yellow diode blinking as her cell phone notified her of an incoming text. Before going to bed, she had turned the phone onto silent, but forgotten to leave the damn thing next door. Instead it was sitting on the dresser, where she couldn’t reach it without getting up.

Oblivious to the disturbance, Alex slept on, too jetlagged to respond even to Sarah’s fidgeting. The trip to England had taken three months to finalize: three months of organizing and arguing, the calling in of several favors, and some serious pulling of strings. They had been granted permission to rent a cottage in the Derbyshire Peak District for three weeks while they tried to figure out where they might want to buy a property and what their job prospects were. To placate Kryger, Castillo had sent a detailed itinerary through to the local Criminal Investigations Department, arranging for them to monitor Alex’s and Sarah’s safety during their stay, and—more pertinently as far as Kryger was concerned—ensure that they returned to America to testify.

Wide-awake now, Sarah was beginning to worry why someone was contacting her at such a stupid hour. She fretted for another five minutes, and then crept out of bed, collected the phone, and took it into the living room. Already regretting leaving the warmth of the duvet, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and huddled on the sofa. Her hands were numb, her fingers repeatedly fumbling the numbers on her passcode, but she eventually managed to enter it and open the new message.

It was from Castillo, who started by apologizing for the early morning shout. The remainder of his text was brief and short on detail, but it brought a smile to Sarah’s face. She set the phone on the arm of the sofa, gathered up the blanket, and headed for the kitchen.

*

Alex couldn’t be sure at what point she had noticed that Sarah was no longer in bed. She vaguely recalled some odd sounds infiltrating her dream: soft footsteps, the click of a door, the turning of a key. Then she had rolled over onto a cold patch of sheet and woken to find Sarah missing. The bedside clock told her it was still early, the pattern on the drapes just becoming visible as dawn lightened the sky. She pulled on a thick sweater and socks, and decided to start her search in the living room.

The cottage was tiny, and it didn’t take her long to establish that Sarah wasn’t in it. Growing concerned, she opened the front door to find their rental car still parked in the driveway, and a black cat that yowled optimistically at her.

“Hey, big guy.” Alex bent to stroke him. “Have you seen a lovely young lady, bit shorter than me, slight limp, pretty eyes?”

The cat purred, wrapping himself around her legs and pointedly not being helpful, but from somewhere around the back of the cottage, she heard Sarah laugh.

“You need to go out of the kitchen door,” Sarah shouted.

Alex followed her instructions, shadowed by the cat, who trotted through the building as if he owned it. He seemed just as familiar with the garden, leading her down a set of stone steps to a bench where she found Sarah tucked beneath a tartan blanket.

“Morning.” Sarah opened the blanket and rewrapped it around them both as Alex sat down.

“Wow,” Alex said, taking her first chance to get a proper look at where they were.

Sarah nudged her. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

All around them, the hills of the Dark Peak rose from undulating valleys. Dry-stone walls crisscrossed the lower sections where the land was cultivated, but the farthest reaches were given up to a wild tangle of heather, bilberry, and sedge. The sun was creeping above the horizon, picking out pink and lilac hues on the moors and prompting the sheep in the nearby fields to bleat to their neighbors. The cat halfheartedly stalked a magpie, then seemed to think better of it and rolled over in the grass at Sarah’s feet.

She wiggled a toe into his belly. “Look at the size of him. He’d have Bandit for breakfast.”

“He’d have Tilly for breakfast, never mind Bandit. What do they feed cats over here?”

“It’s the fresh air,” Sarah said. “Builds character.”

Alex arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think Bandit needs any more character. We could just leave him in the States, you know. He’s perfectly happy there.” She laughed when Sarah slapped the back of her hand.

“You don’t mean that, and his sister would never forgive us. Besides, it’ll be funny watching him get his arse spanked by the hill sheep. They have a reputation for being feisty.” Sarah kissed Alex’s cheek. “Sorry I woke you.”

“Nightmare?” Alex asked. It was the most obvious explanation, but to her relief Sarah shook her head.

“Text from Castillo.” She took a breath, and when she spoke again there were tears in her eyes. “Leah had the baby late last night. A little girl. Well, a tiny girl, actually. She was a few weeks early. She’s in the NICU, but Castillo thinks she’ll be all right.”

“And Leah?”

“She’s fine.” Sarah smiled. “And her daughter is called Grace.”

“Huh. Seems appropriate.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” She sighed deeply, as if letting go of months of turmoil. “I love you,” she whispered.

It was a simple sentiment, but it told Alex that, given time, everything would heal.

“I love you too.” She encircled Sarah’s cold fingers with her own, then raised them to her lips and kissed them one by one. “Come on,” she said, nodding toward the cottage. “Let’s go get a cup of tea.”

End

Cari Hunter lives in the northwest of England with her partner, two cats, and a pond full of frogs. She works as a paramedic and dreams up stories in her spare time.

Cari enjoys long, wind-swept, muddy walks in her beloved Peak District and forces herself to go jogging regularly. In the summer she can usually be found sitting in the garden with her feet up, scribbling in her writing pad. She also loves hiking in the Swiss Alps and playing around online. Although she doesn’t like to boast, she will admit that she makes a very fine Bakewell Tart. She can be contacted at: [email protected].

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