Chapter 17 #2
“Because a life of war has honed your instincts?” she said sweetly. “It’s past time for you to go jump in a lake, Sheriff. See you this evening.”
He trailed her out the house, leaning against the railing at the top of the porch stairs and watching her walk home.
For the first time in a long time, Santiago felt like life was looking up.
And for the first time in a longer time, it was because of a woman.
When she got close to her house, he saw his deputy approach her and walk beside her until she entered the house.
Santiago walked back into his own home frowning. A phone that wasn’t his phone was vibrating against his desk.
Damn woman was always leaving her phone someplace she wasn’t.
Unable to resist temptation, Santiago picked it up and saw the name of the ex-fiancé. Derrick.
He was going to pick it up, but fate intervened, and the line went dead. Seemed a cooler head was forced to prevail.
The phone vibrated again and he picked it up, because why the fuck was this guy calling Lauren anyway? He’d made his choice, now he needed to grow some fucking balls and live with that shit.
The phone disconnected again and not fifteen seconds later rang again.
“Sheriff Stillwater here.”
“Uh, is Lauren in trouble?”
“Lauren’s not available…Derrick. This is Derrick isn’t it?”
“Yes. Why is a cop answering Lauren’s phone?”
Santiago sat down at his chaos-free desk and propped his feet on it, crossing his ankles.
“She left it at my place this morning, and I’m answering because of the obnoxious number of times you’ve called.
If it wasn’t clear before, let me make it clear to you now.
She doesn’t want to talk to you, and she doesn’t want to hear from you.
The time for all that would’ve been before you fucked her sister. ”
Santiago didn’t know why he was angry on her behalf, but he was.
“I understand why she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me, but I’m not calling about me. I have urgent news for her. And tell her, for the love of God to pick up her phone.”
Santiago hung up without responding.
Stripping, he walked to the lake shore and dove into the waters.
To know Lauren was to not to know peace. The woman was an unchecked firestorm, and he felt the call to throw himself head long into her flame, death and consequences be damned.
Santiago stopped, treading water, and did a 360, his heart slamming against his rib cage. Something had happened to his vision. The world leached of color and took on sepia tones.
The sun was dull. The sky, land, and water all looked like they’d been painted with a sodden brush tinged with old, dried blood.
Habit compelled Santiago to sink to the depths of the dark waters, to drop like a 250-pound stone and let the earth and sky right themselves. Then he felt movement in the current, barely a ripple, but he felt it.
Something cold slid against his leg.
Gritting his teeth, a low, throated growl that precipitated physical battle rumbled through him.
A hand gripped his ankle, and he knew it wasn’t the hand of a living being.
It was an echo, a spirit reaching for life.
Santiago sunk, fully submerging himself, and listened to the water’s movement.
Sinking deeper, the naked pale body of a man, bloated and fed upon, observed him in grotesque greeting.
Cody Earl Dagney.
The man had been missing for about two months.
Sinking deeper still, because bodies didn’t float in place vertically this way, he saw where his waist was bound by a metal chain that disappeared in the depths.
Propelling himself back up to Cody Earl’s face, Santiago said a prayer for peace and retribution.
You were a good man, he thought, surfacing. You didn’t deserve that kind of ending.
Swimming back to the shore, he wasn’t surprised that the world was vibrant and filled with the sounds of life. A day off reviewing files and eating cake made just for him wasn’t in the cards.
His job was to get justice for the living and the dead, which meant it was time to get back to work.
Sirens wailed, two cop cars sped past Lauren, moving up the mountain as she
drove down. Reaching for her bag, Lauren dug through it, groaning when she realized she’d left her phone in Santiago’s office.
She was going to call him to be nosy but she needed to get to town, get the notary to sign off on the contract she’d created, then go to the bank and place it in a safe deposit box for added security.
Living in the Moors’ ancestral home imported lessons about living in this town she wasn’t going to willingly ignore.
After completing her business, she drove over to Lina’s bed and breakfast to see what was on the menu for dinner, maybe take something home to Santiago.
Not that Santiago’s home was her home, but after spending an hour in the house she’d purchased, it was painfully clear that Santi’s house felt like home.
She felt like she was meant to purchase the Moor home, initially out of revenge, but now it felt like she was a respite for Deborah from all the folks rotating out of that house.
But with the memories of the decapitated deer’s head, those moments of unexplainable temperature drops, of gentle touches, the childlike humming, it made her hyperaware and unable to relax there.
So, until she returned to the Bay Area, she was commandeering Santi’s house.
And his bed. And if he was willing—she smiled as she pulled up to the bed and breakfast, putting her SUV in park—his very addicting body.
Pulling her bag from the passenger seat, she walked to the door and opened it without knocking.
“Lina, it’s smelling awfully good in here. I hope you’re setting up for a full house. I’ll take some to go if you have enough.”
Lina rushed into the hallway wiping her hands on a dish towel almost frantically.
“Mija, I’ve been calling you for the last hour. Did you get my messages?”
“No I...I forgot my phone at Santiago’s place.”
“I know you’re not using Ricky’s cheating as an excuse to hoe around, Lauren Gael Green.”
Lauren’s body jerked violently, heart lodging in her throat.
“I tried to call,” Ms. Lina said urgently. “She’s been here for hours.”
“Doing what? Being judgmental and hard to please, no doubt?”
Lauren couldn’t comprehend her mother being in Shrouded Lake. Did she come to tell her about all the ways she was being selfish for not prioritizing her pregnant sister and her cheating fucking ex?
“Why are you here, Ma!”
And why did she suddenly feel like bursting into tears?
“You abandon your family, not calling us back to tell us if you were alive or dead. You’d think she’d be happy I made an effort to find her, instead she’s over here carrying on like I’ve caused some great offense in wanting to make sure my only born daughter isn’t dead or worse.
” Ma Mable crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at Ms. Lina.
“I bet she painted me as the worst mother in the world, didn’t she? All I have ever done was try to…”
Ms. Lina shrugged apologetically. “Until you arrived, Mrs. Green, I wasn’t sure Lauren had family.
I’d assumed she had no one to turn to. Because why would she come all the way to Shrouded Lake, carrying so much pain, versus being with a family who could’ve help her through it.
” At any other time Lauren would’ve smiled at that delicate southern rebuking.
“But I am no mother, eh, what do I know.”
The way Ma Mable looked away in shame… She had never seen her mother look away in shame. But which behaviors was she ashamed of? Lauren frowned.
“How did you even find me?”
Because she knew Reese would stitch her lips together before she told anyone where Lauren was.
“He owed me. He owed you. So, I told him to use his fancy government job to find you or I would tell his superiors about what he did. You know how much he likes being seen as such an ethical upright citizen.”
“Derrick! You had freaking Derrick, of all people, find me?”
“I’m gonna need that drink you offered earlier Lina. And I’m gonna need it to be stronger than wine.”
As if she had the authority to boss Lina around, Lauren fumed.
“I have just the thing,” Lina smiled before leaving them alone together.
Lauren walked into the salon and sat. Ma Mable sat in the chair across from her, eyes roving over Lauren, searching for answers without providing any.
“Again, why are you here, Ma? If you had Derrick track me, you knew very well that I wasn’t dead.”
Ma Mable’s gaze turned away from her.
“Do you know how long it’s been since you called me that? Ma. Just Ma. Not Ma Mable?”
“I was eight.” She frowned, remembering clearly the day her mother demanded she do so.
“It’s what you told me to call you after Lahn came to live with us.
And that’s that,” she said, mimicking her mother’s finality.
No explanation, no discussion. In an instant Ma Mable had gone from being Lauren’s mother to their mother.
“I left your father.”
Her chest tightened, head throbbed, and tears burned her eyes and threatened to fall. But she was no longer a helpless child forced to accept a reality she had no control of.
“Of course you did,” she said coldly. “Because it wasn’t enough to turn my world upside down once within a month, no, you always have to outdo yourself, huh Ma. Rip away whatever sense of peace I have.”
“I wasn’t the one who cheated on you Lauren. I didn’t betray you—”
“But you did!” She took a deep breath. “You did. You chose her secrets over me for weeks. We talked almost every day—about the wedding, about the move, about my...my fear, questioning if I was making the right decision.”
She leaned forward in her seat, tapping the table.
“And what did you say? What did you tell me, Ma?”
“I told you what you needed to hear, Lauren.”
“What did you tell me!”
Her mother looked away. “That you loved Derrick. I told you that when you love someone you love them through uncertainty, good times and bad.”