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“I’m fine,” Luke said again, sighing at the cool relief on his face. “The pain killers are working like a charm.”
The paramedic frowned. “Sir, you have two cracked ribs, a fractured nose and contusions over thirty percent of your body.”
“I know what I have,” Luke said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. “I already told you, though. I am not spending the rest of my night and part of the day sitting in the emergency room when I could be resting comfortably in my own bed. Not gonna happen.”
“Ma’am?” The paramedic turned his focus on her. “What about you?”
Terri stared up at the house, watching as another pair of paramedics wheeled a stretcher out the door, a black body bag strapped to it. The paramedic repeated the question, and she snapped out of the daze she had been trapped in. “I’ll be okay,” she said thickly, and turned to tuck herself against Luke’s side.
He cringed at the pain that zinged through his side, and she stiffened, prepared to pull away and offering her apologies, but he pulled her back against him, determined to offer her the only comfort he could.
Together they watched as Randy’s body was wheeled past the truck and out of sight. A vast sense of relief filled Luke, as if they had just left behind the mountain of an obstacle that had been standing between them. As he looked down at the top of Terri’s head, seeing the stark blond roots showing against the false black strands, he wondered if she might be feeling the same.
Sometime later, as the sun crested the horizon, its warm rays reaching lazily across the sky to tickle the trees and the grass, the ambulances pulled away, leaving behind a few officers who were busy taking statements and gathering evidence…or just standing around talking.
The detective that Luke had talked to before stood in the middle of the lawn talking to a taller, more distinguished man, who Luke guessed to be his superior, and relayed what Luke and Terri had told him, adding a few details of his own experience to the mix.
“I was questioning the Lefebvre kid,” he was saying. “But he couldn’t remember a damn thing. As it turns out, though, his friend remembered quite a lot. Apparently, he had been running to catch up with him when he saw the truck barreling down, and he caught the license plate. It just so happens I saw that same license plate earlier in the day.”
Luke sat up straighter, straining to catch everything. “I had been out at Mrs. Cunningham’s residence that very morning. I was performing a visual of a blue truck that was sitting in her drive, you know, because every blue truck was suspicious to me at that time, and I saw the plate. Thought it was funny at the time…” He paused, glanced back at the ambulance, an unreadable look strolling across his face. “I suspected right then and there who I was dealing with, but I had no idea how deep this case went until I got a call a few minutes after leaving the hospital.”
Luke was leaning forward now, his attention rapt on every detail that spilled from the detective’s mouth. “Apparently, the lawyer she had hired to help her with her divorce was working with the husband to keep her from getting one. Seems they went back a ways. I guess he had been helping him all along, paying him off and carrying out favors to keep him quiet about some not-so-honest things going on in his own life. Guess he couldn’t handle the pressure of knowing he could go down at any minute.”
“This sounds like a legal issue,” the other officer, or whoever he was, said, scratching his fingers across his bearded chin.
“My thoughts exactly,” Detective Young agreed. “I think The Bar might be interested to hear about how he’s been abusing his powers, too.”
“Indeed.” The man clapped Young on the shoulder. “Good work, Howard. Now let’s wrap this up. Somebody, and I won’t name names,” he looked at Howard pointedly, “woke me up very early this morning.”
Howard grinned ruefully. “Go ahead and take off, John. I can handle the rest from here.”
Luke and Terri were sitting on the top step of the porch when Detective Young approached them. “How you two doing?”
“About as well as can be expected,” Luke replied.
The detective nodded, looking over their heads into the open doorway where photographers and detectives were just wrapping up.
“I don’t have to tell you how lucky the two of you were tonight. The things he had stashed in that bag…Well, let’s just say that I’ve seen some things in my lifetime and none of them make me shudder like what I saw in there. He had plans for you two.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just glad he didn’t get the chance to act any of them out,” Luke said fiercely, anger still vibrating through his sore and injured body.
“Me too,” the detective concurred. He pegged Terri with a hard look. “You were incredibly lucky that you got away tonight. Not very many women have the strength to do what you did.”
Terri barely looked at him, but gave a subtle nod. She didn’t feel like a strong woman at all.
Finally, after a cleaning crew was finished erasing all signs of the carnage inside the house, and everyone else was gone, Luke led Terri back inside. They settled on the couch together, neither of them speaking, too worn out with everything that had happened to formulate the simplest of words.
When the quiet grew to be too much for him, Luke broke the silence. “Well, I didn’t get a chance to tell you this earlier, but you did a great job cleaning the house today. Very lemony fresh.”
Terri’s response was a long time coming, but eventually she nodded. “I didn’t clean the bathroom with my toothbrush like I promised, but I think you’ll be happy with the results.” She stared at the bucket of cleaning supplies still sitting on the table across from them, the iPod still lying on the floor. Moving like a zombie, she rose to her feet and bent to pick up the small music player. “I better put these things away,” she said, hooking the bucket’s handle and lifting it off the table.
A scrap of paper dislodged from the bucket and floated to the table. Stopping, they both stared at the innocent scrap of paper. Then, with mechanical movements, Terri set the bucket on the floor and pulled out a red pen that had been tucked inside. Sitting forward, Luke watched curiously as she took the pen and scratched it across the paper. Laying the pen down, she picked up the bucket again and left the room.
After Terri was gone, Luke leaned forward and spun the paper around to face him. It was a simple list of chores Terri must have made, each one numbered and scratched off as she completed them. Eyes tracking to the very bottom, to the fresh ink scratched deep into the paper, Luke read the words aloud. “Take out the garbage.”
Easing back into the cushions, he looked off in the direction she had gone and shook his head. Even after everything, that one small act said it all. Lips curving into a relieved smile, Luke dragged himself to his feet and went in search of her, sure that for the first time in his life, everything was going to work out just fine.
