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Nutsbe pulled out his phone and showed her the picture. “Any office supply store in the country would have these tracking pods. Iniquus forensics is checking for fingerprints. I need to head back to work tonight. I have an overseas call coming in. I’ll check then for any updates.”
“Well, that’s just unnerving as hell, isn’t it? I mean…yeah, this feels scary. I definitely want to know who thought this up.” She handed him back his phone. “Thanks for finding it. Thanks for telling me about it.” She looked down at his uniform. “Are you going in now?”
Nutsbe thumbed toward the house next door. “I’m making my neighbors Clive and Milly some of my famous ziti and cheese.” As he turned back to Olivia, Nutsbe spotted a shooting star flying across the night sky. Pointing, he said, “Make a wish.”
She closed her eyes and smiled.
He wanted to paint his finger down the soft curve of her neck. He wanted to trace kisses along her clavicle. To take her into his arms. Nutsbe took a physical step back and a mental one, too.
When she opened her eyes again, Nutsbe asked, “What did you wish for?”
“Isn’t that the first rule of wish-making?” Olivia took Henrietta off her lead and laid the leash on the chair. “If you tell your wish, you’ve cancelled it out?”
He needed the bright lights of his kitchen to pull him away from the romance of this beautiful night sky.
Bad timing sucked, for sure.
“Do you believe in wishes? In fate? Like things are written in the stars?” He started through his back door with Olivia trailing behind.
She left Henrietta outside to enjoy. “The stars? I don’t know. I think it’s entertaining. I both quasi-believe and don’t believe, you know? It’s good fun. Like if my horoscope pops up in my email, I’ll read it.”
He rounded to the other side of the counter. “I was just on an assignment where I met a woman following her star chart to a specific place on a specific day.”
“Close by?” Olivia shut the door behind her, then let her gaze wander around his kitchen, taking in her surroundings.
“She lives in Virginia. She flew to Tallinn, Estonia.”
“Huh. That’s pretty far away.” Olivia pulled out a counter stool and sat down. “And was it worth it?”
“I’d say so.”
She reached down to smooth the flowered skirt of her light blue dress—pretty, fresh, feminine. “Why’s that?” Olivia asked, posting her elbows on the counter.
“Well, I’m just back from that assignment, so it’s hard to say. It looks like she’s going to marry one of the Cerberus K9 team, though. They made an intense connection fast.”
“Interesting. She was sent by her chart all the way over to Estonia to meet him?” She wrinkled her brow. “You’d think the universe could conspire better.”
Nutsbe pulled a salad bowl and one for scraps from the cupboard and set them beside his cutting board. “I think the universe did an excellent job of getting her where she needed to be when she needed to be there. Lives, many, many lives changed because she followed through. Made me a bit of a believer.” Nutsbe wanted to move off this subject. He was veering into sappy territory, and he didn’t want to share his thoughts about the why of his suddenly meeting Olivia after two years of her living directly behind him. So, as he wandered to the fridge, he went with, “Olivia, that grand jury case you have going, do you feel like it puts you in danger?”
“It’s one of the reasons why I’m so glad that I moved here.” She flicked her hand toward her house. “It would be all but impossible to trace me to that house. Anonymity gives me a layer of security. Work is pretty secure, too. Not today or yesterday, but generally.”
He pulled salad ingredients from the fridge and washed them in the sink. “Except for Mickey.” He looked up from his work to see her curl a derisive lip. “Is it out of bounds for me to ask why you’re divorcing?
“Since you have been candid with me, I will do the same with you.” She moved her hands to her lap, and her shoulders edged up toward her ears. “Usually, when people ask me that question, I shrug it off with a ‘we grew apart,’ but it’s more complicated than that. My soon-to-be ex has some monsters in his head—I think they were there from day one. When Mickey got out of the military, he joined the police and trained as a sniper. I wonder now about the why of that. He seems to relish the taste of blood, and when he’s out on patrol, he can get that legitimately. He likes the physical contact of a fight. It feels good to him. But outside of an innate brutality, he’s generally an honest man. I didn’t think he’d ever make a false report about you.”
“I think he was high,” Nutsbe observed.
“That’s a given. Lots of pills. He would have gotten away with it at the police department because he has prescriptions. If it were anything else, I’d turn him in, and he knows it. Yeah, I really don’t think it was the police department that made him who he is. I believe that being a cop gave him a path to express his nature. Turns out, he’s cruel in small ways and in big. He’s never broken the law around me, and that includes physical attacks against me. The mental and emotional ones, though, have been ramping up year after year. I’m done. My turning point wasn’t precipitated by any specific ordeal. It came uneventfully, unexpectedly. I woke up one day, and I realized I’d severed our relationship in my sleep.”
Olivia held up a finger and squeezed her eyes.
“I’m going to tell you. And like you, only one other person has heard this part of my story.”
Nutsbe stilled.
“Your story about your grandmother … The night I severed my relationship with Mickey, I dreamed of my mom. She’s still alive—this isn’t like your experience.” Olivia looked down to her lap, where she played with the ring on her finger. “Yeah, I dreamed about my mom and how much love she poured into me as a child. In my dream, she was lying on the bathroom floor, hugging a towel and sobbing because the person who had promised to gently care for me all the days of my life was tearing me down.” Olivia opened her mouth, pulled in a breath, and blew it out. “I remember this dream very vividly. I remember saying, ‘Mama, please, stop crying. It’s over.’ My best friend, Jaylen, says it was my subconscious talking to me, but I know for sure it was my mom. I could smell her—roses.” She lifted her prayer hands to her face, spread them just wide enough to cover her nose and mouth, and audibly inhaled as if reenacting the dream. “She uses argan oil infused with roses on her face. And where I wiped her tears in my dreams, my hands smelled of roses when I woke up.” She smiled over at Nutsbe. “To be clear, she shed dream tears, not real-life tears. But when I was awake, my hands smelled of roses for no explicable reason.”
His lips drew tight, and they looked at each other for a long moment across the counter.
