Chapter 6 #3
“Copper Mountain, all his life. Loved to work with his hands. Simple work, he said. Sweating always cleared his head. I spent a lot of time with him, especially after my sister went missing. Made me feel like my life wasn’t falling apart, like maybe I’d survive. Maybe he was trying to fix me too.”
Oh. He looked up at her. Aw. He hadn’t meant to reveal that.
Especially since her eyes widened, her face awash with a stricken expression. “Your sister went missing?”
He sighed. He hadn’t meant to go this far, tell her this much. Finally, “When she was fifteen—I was seventeen, away at Boy Scout camp when it happened. Came home . . . it was bad.”
“Did they find her?”
“Yeah. She’d been . . .” He lowered his voice. “Actually, she was a victim of a serial killer in the area.”
Keely’s hand pinned over her mouth.
“We only just caught him recently. But it . . . it devastated my family. My parents’ marriage didn’t survive it. Mom moved away to Montana. Want some cocoa?”
She shook her head, but he got up and walked over to where River and another woman had left a thermos on a workbench. He filled a cup. The door hung open, so he walked over to it, looked out to the swirling wind. Took a sip of the cocoa. It found his bones.
“Of course you were a Boy Scout.” Keely walked over. “I should have guessed that.”
He held up a three-finger salute. “Be prepared.”
She laughed. It had a sweetness to it that found a place inside him that didn’t feel quite so hardened over.
“Is that why you became a cop?”
“Because I was a Boy Scout?”
“Your sister.”
Oh. “Probably. I don’t know. My dad was an Air Force Security Force, sort of like an Army MP.
He was stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, but my grandparents lived in Copper Mountain, so we were in town a lot.
And then, after my sister died, my dad left the military and moved home. ” He glanced at her. “Where’s Caspian?”
“Inside, playing with Wren. She found a ball and is teaching him to fetch.”
He’d sort of expected Caspian to be sitting by the door where he’d left him, whining. But he didn’t want to worry about the dog running away in the storm. “Good luck with that. She’d have better luck with her socks.”
She laughed again. He could stand here all day. And weirdly, Moose snuck into his head . . . “God uses circumstances to wake us up, get at things inside.”
“What things?”
“Maybe there’s stuff.”
Maybe.
“My mom died of cancer when I was nineteen.
“ She wrapped her arms around herself. “She was . . . amazing. Creative—she used to paint watercolors, but she was this fantastic cook, and for a while, when I was in middle school, went back to work as a nurse.” She stared past him, into the swirling white. “Wow, I miss her.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. She herself didn’t have a great voice, but oh she loved to sing.
She’d say, ‘You don’t have to have a perfect voice to make a beautiful song.
’ She played the piano really well, though, and we’d sing all sorts of hymns—‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘It Is Well with My Soul,’ ‘Blessed Assurance.’ She loved Jesus, and even in the end, when the pain was great, she met it with a joy and said she’d be waiting for me in heaven. ”
He considered her a moment, then, “My grandfather said the same thing about my sister, Aven.” He didn’t know why he told her that. She might be too easy to talk to.
She glanced at him. “You believe in God?”
“I believe he exists, but sometimes I wonder if he . . .” Aw, shoot. “Just . . . wondering what he thinks about . . .”
“Our mistakes?”
He looked at her.
“Wrong place, wrong time.” She gave him a tight smile. “Also, River told me about the shooting.” She pointed at his knee, then met his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Oh. How had they gotten here, with him suddenly naked in a snowstorm? Still. “The worst part about it wasn’t my knee.”
“But you got him—the drug trafficker.”
He looked at her, frowned. “At the cost of a little girl’s life.”
He didn’t mean for the words to rush out, so hard, so blunt. Her mouth opened, closed. “Oh. River left out that part.”
He looked away, his chest tight, the terrible coil inside starting to take hold. “Yeah. The news media did a poor job of reporting that detail.”
Now his breathing hitched, and sweat beaded his back. He braced his hand on the doorframe.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” No. Dumping out his cocoa, he set the cup on a ledge inside the barn and took off for the house, not sure why.
He made it to the porch, climbing up when—“Dawson!”
Her voice cut through the storm, and he turned, shoving his hands in his pockets. She’d run out into the wind, the snow catching on her blond hair, her eyelashes. She came up to stand next to him, her puffer jacket tight around her.
And he couldn’t escape the words pressing through him, out into the open.
Or their sharp edge. “I knew he was going to kill her—I knew it. I’d been following this guy for months.
I should have moved, but I waited for SWAT to get in place, and so I sat there, negotiating with a killer and I . . . Stupid. I . . .”
His breath was knotted, and in a moment, he was at the scene, the night sky frozen above, breath in the air, his gut tight, listening to a little girl cry.
His heart hammered inside his chest so tight it burned.
He should sit down—But he gripped the porch railing, hanging on, unable to stop.
“When SWAT went in, I went straight for her. And that’s when he shot her.
Just—shot her. The bullet took out my knee.
But it hit her. The guys behind me took him down, but .
. .” And now he almost bent over, the world spinning, his words choked. “She died.”
There, it was out, into the frozen air, and he just stood, his breath forming in the air.
It occurred to him then that he hadn’t let the full story out since . . .
Never, at least not since his statement that night. Because who wanted to revisit that nightmare?
She folded her arms, shivering. They should go inside. But somehow, standing here in the shelter of the porch, his words taken by the wind, made the telling easier.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
He didn’t mean his tone, but, “Wasn’t it? I should have said something, done something. I should have convinced the chief to move.”
“Maybe,” she said softly. “But you can’t blame yourself for other people’s evil.”
Oh. He drew in a breath. “Yeah, except I can’t seem to escape it either.”
Somewhere, the crying continued. In his brain or—
“Do you hear that?”
She stilled. Frowned. “Yeah. Someone shouting, maybe?”
He looked around, then walked to the edge of the porch.
In the distance on the lake, he spotted an orange dot through the snow and wind. “Is that a person?”
She joined him. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Barking. “Is Caspian out there?”
“Do you think Wren took him for a walk?”
Her words sliced through him. “On the lake?”
He took off down the stairs, slipping. “Wren!” He started through the snow, barely able to make her out. “Wren!”
His steps sank in, nearly thigh deep as he headed out. Surely a little girl couldn’t get through this snow—
The orange started to move across the ice, and the barking sounded louder, sharper.
“Wren!”
He reached the shore—or what he thought might be the shore. The hole in the ice had completely snowed over. The wind cut off visibility, but there, in the distance, he made out an orange blob.
Barking sounded behind him.
Turning, he thought he spotted Caspian, a black outline against the white.
He turned back, the orange drifting farther.
What—
Not a person, maybe, because suddenly it lifted off the horizon.
A hunting vest, caught in the wind—what an idiot. All that regurgitating of the past had turned him jumpy.
Except, someone was crying. The sound lifted above Caspian’s barks.
Trust the dog. He felt it, more than heard it.
He plowed back through the snow, toward the black blur. “Wren?”
The next step simply broke out underneath him, and he went through, and through, and suddenly, water sucked at his boot.
He’d hit the hole, and with the snow, it had kept it warm enough to stay open.
Worse, Keely had fought her way out, even with her bruised ankle, through the snow, all the way to the edge of the lake. “Stay right there! Don’t move!”
She turned then, as if hearing something. And then took off toward his dog.
And that’s when the ice under him decided to give way. He flung himself onto the loose snow, trying to spread his weight. The effect of it felt like jumping on a floating air mattress, unwieldy.
And slowly, but surely, sinking.
Keely ran over to Caspian, and he looked up to see her in that white jacket, reaching for something.
Someone. She fell back, a child in her arms. Clearly Wren, or whoever, had been caught in a drift, unable to pull herself out.
He tried to move, managed to work himself onto the floating perch, but water sank into his boots. Of course, he was going under.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Story of his life.