Thursday, December 3rd
The dark room, sometimes her mother’s house, sometimes Marcus’s apartment, sometimes a hotel room, but tonight her own apartment bedroom.Creaking footsteps.A voice too soft to understand the words but one that Kate knew belonged to Elijah Cox.
This time the voice was different.This time, instead of knocking, Cox opened the door.Kate tried to move, tried to cry out for help, but she couldn’t.She could only lay in the bed, transfixed with terror, while Cox approached.He was carrying something, something she couldn’t identify in the darkness of the room.His own face was shrouded, giving him the appearance of a wraith.Though he was right in front of her, his voice was still too soft for her to make out the words.
He reached for the nightstand on the edge of her bed and set an object down.Kate looked at the object.Terror bubbled up in her throat.Her eyes widened, and she—
“Kate?Kate!”
She flinched and sat bolt upright.Her head collided with something hard, and she winced.
“Ow!Jesus.”
Apparently, the something hard she collided with was Marcus’s head.
“Sorry!”she called.“I had… I’m sorry.”
“Nightmare again?”
Marcus was massaging his nose, and the words came outNidemare agedd?
“Yeah.”She rubbed the top of her head, wincing at the tender spot where a welt would certainly form.“Sorry.”
“It’s all right.”It's all ride.
He grabbed a pair of tissues from the box on the counter and blew his nose.“Ah,” he said, his voice clear now.“You’ve got a mean headbutt, Vee.”
Kate’s heart fluttered.“You haven’t called me that in a while.”
“What?Vee?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.Do you like it?”
She definitely liked it at that moment, but she didn’t want to have a complicated conversation about her feelings right then.“I was just pointing it out.Why’d you wake me up?Was I being noisy?”
“No.I got us a flight to Knoxville.The scene’s been closed and turned over a while ago, but I told Knoxville PD to let Detective Morrow know to expect us.”
“Wonderful,” Kate said, grabbing her bag and starting to change.
“Oh, uh…”
She stopped, realized she was changing in front of Marcus, and flamed bright red.“Sorry.I’ll go to the bathroom.”
“No, it’s okay.I’ll turn around.”He laughed nervously.“Not like I haven’t seen you naked before.I mean, I haven’t.Not completely naked, and not in a sexual setting.”He whistled.“Boy, I’m talking a lot.”
Kate’s own embarrassment was off the charts, but something in Marcus’s embarrassment started a glow inside of her.She regarded him, taking advantage of his averted eyes to look him up and down.“Why don’t you make some coffee and give your mind something to do other than dig a deeper hole?”
“That sounds excellent,” he agreed, striding toward the compact drip maker.
And just like that, Kate’s nightmare had faded.Take that, Cox.
Still, underneath the glow Marcus had sparked within her was a restlessness, a certainty that she had just missed something important, something meaningful.Whatever object Cox had laid on the nightstand was important.Kate didn’t know what it could be or how she knew it was important, but she knew it was.
She put it aside for now.If the dream was important, it would come back to her.In the meantime, she had the real Cox to worry about.
***
