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“What happened out there?” he asked.
Lydia shook her head and glanced across at the man. “I don’t know. You were with Daniel in the bedroom, and I figured I’d give you both a little privacy. I went out to move the car around to the garage… and I saw something out on the lawn…”
She had a feeling this was a story she was going to have to repeat to many people. Just like Daniel did with his list of symptoms.
Abruptly, she closed her mouth and looked through into the kitchen. A pair of men were standing off to the side, their guns drawn, their mouths pressed to communicators mounted on their shoulders.
“You—you know,” she stammered, “I sometimes thought that all this security of hers is overdone—”
“It’s not.”
Lydia glanced over her shoulder. C.P. had come into the alcove from the other side, and it was weird. She was only half dressed, a loose fleece on top—wait, wasn’t that something Gus wore around the lab sometimes? And why was she barefoot?
“Are you going to let Sheriff Eastwind know?” Lydia blurted at the woman who was in charge.
Not that she particularly cared about the answer—it was more something she felt like she should ask, just to show she was comprehending the common reality. One thing that was nice about being on the fringes of humanity because of her mixed blood? She didn’t feel the need to worry about the particulars—and something told her that C.P. might very well handle this in her own way.
“We’ll take care of everything,” the woman replied in a level tone.
Bingo—
All at once, C.P. came into sharp view, as if Lydia’s attention were a camera lens that was finally being operated properly after a period of incompetence. The other woman seemed pale and frazzled, but then again, there was a dead guy on her lawn. Except… there was something else that was off about her, something that was so much more than her wearing a total mismatch for her fine, formal slacks.
Flaring her nostrils, Lydia breathed in deep. Then she repeated the inhale.
C.P. frowned. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
I’m fine, Lydia thought to herself.But you’re… pregnant.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE FOLLOWING MORNING,Daniel was staring at the ceiling over their bed as the sun rose.
He figured he wasn’t the only one in the household who hadn’t slept well. Even after he and Lydia had gone to their bedroom and lay down, it was a long time before there was any shut-eye going on. He was very sure she was shocked that she’d seen a dead body, but maybe, like him, she was also worried about the what-ifs: What if the killer had been out there with her? What if she had been taken down, too?
Assuming that guard didn’t trip in a groundhog hole and fall in such a way so as to snap his own frickin’ neck, someone must have done the job for him—which meant somebody with serious skills had managed to slip past C.P. Phalen’s security.
And there was only one group of individuals he could think of with that kind of know-how—
As a sharpshooter went through his frontal lobe,he hissed and rubbed over his eyebrows—then again, his brain felt like a muscle that had been unused until very recently. Fortunately, the pain faded quickly, especially as he replayed, for the hundredth time, the fact pattern of Lydia walking out of the house, and seeing something on the lawn, and going over to find a man whose neck had been snapped.
He looked over at Lydia. She had tossed and turned beside him throughout the night hours, settling only when he’d wrapped his arms around her and held her close. And wasn’t that another moment when he’d felt like a man instead of a cancer patient.
Not that the two couldn’t exist at the same time, as he was beginning to learn.
As if she sensed his regard, her lids opened. “Are you okay?” she asked in a gravelly voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He brushed her cheek. “I’m just going to go down to the lab for another round of fluids and perk-me-up. If you can, stay here and get some rest, even if you’re not sleeping?”
The murmur that came back at him was encouraging. It was the sound of drowsiness, and sure enough, her even breathing pattern resumed.
Being careful not to disturb her, he sat up, then stood up. She was so vulnerable, all tucked into herself, her legs drawn up, her arms, too, her hands cupped beneath her chin. They’d fallen asleep once again in their clothes on top of the duvet, and hereached down and pulled the extra comforter all the way over her so she would be warm.
“Love you,” he whispered in her ear.
“Love you,” she mumbled as she puckered for his kiss.
After he obliged, she sighed—and he put his feet into his running shoes and headed for the exit. Outside of their room, he took a quick listen. When he heard no voices echoing through the polished stone halls, he went down to the kitchen. He was surprised no one was at the counters or the stoves, not even the chef, who, ordinarily, would be slinging gourmet hash for a dozen or more breakfast plates.
