Epilogue
Gabriel
Wednesday
Gabriel climbed from his car with a huge bouquet of celebratory flowers. Whiskey dressed up in a bow, trotting happily on her lead.
“For me?” Sommer danced down her front steps and ran out to meet him.
Gabriel scooped her into his arms and spun her, a grin lighting his face.
He set her on her toes and kissed her breatless.
“Wow, this is quite the hello,” she said as she accepted her flowers.
As they walked inside, Gabriel saw that two bouquets already filled Sommer’s table by the front door and paused.
“Those are for Abbie and Marna,” Sommer said, breezing by and heading for her kitchen. “They’re back at their apartments, and I thought I’d swing by to see them and check if they needed anything.”
“On the mend then,” Gabriel and Whiskey followed her to the back of the house.
“I’ll be wearing my N95 and a pair of gloves when I go. But the worst is over.” She laid the flowers on her counter. “Thank you. They’re lovely.” Sommer stood on her tippy toes, stretching for a vase.
Gabriel came up behind her and reached it down.
“You look happy,” she said as she filled the vase with water.
“Very.”
“Come tell me.” She pointed to a chair as she snipped the ends off the stems and arranged them. “Hello, Whiskey, with your pretty pink bow. Don’t you look festive?” Sommer opened the fridge, took out a piece of chicken, and handed it to her. When she turned to Gabriel, his face had turned serious.
“The three men that got pulled out of my kitchen Saturday struck a deal with the prosecutors.”
Sommer put the scissors down and turned stiffly toward him.
“Sommer, we had a missing special agent. Part of the deal was that our guy was to be dropped off on a dirt road with no cameras, alive and conscious.”
“Not alive and well?” Sommer frowned.
“Given the condition of the three men we had already found. That wasn’t an expectation.”
Sommer knotted her fingers together, resting them on the counter. “Do you have him back?”
“We do. They picked him up and took him to your hospital, as a matter of fact. He’s in rough shape, but my understanding is that there was nothing life-threatening.”
Sommer walked to the table, smoothed her skirt under her, sat, and reached for Gabriel’s hand. “I need you to tell me something first, before we launch into this new set of bad men. I’m worried that the man you testified against yesterday is going to go free and seek retribution against you.”
“The evidence was overwhelming. The jury had it for three hours this afternoon. He was found guilty on each charge.”
“What’s his sentence?” Sommer asked.
“We won’t know that until his sentencing hearing. The witnesses get a chance to make impact statements to the judge.”
“Will I have to do that?” Sommer asked.
“Because of Saturday? The deal was that we get our guy back, and they each plead guilty to their crimes.”
“You had it all on camera. That’s overwhelming evidence, too.”
“It is.”
“But when they plead guilty, according to Sloane’s true-crime shows, they still have to go through sentencing. The judge won’t want to hear about my experience?”
“Usually, yes,” Gabriel said carefully. “In this case, the sentence was part of the deal. They agreed to fifty years each. And that time would be suspended, but they had to get on a plane and leave the United States, and they’re barred from ever returning.”
“So if they sneak over a border?” Sommer asked.
“If they’re found, they go straight to jail to serve their time.”
“If this weren’t agreed to and accepted by the judge,” Sommer’s face looked stormy, “then they would have gone to trial.”
“And been convicted,” Gabriel said.
“But I would have been a witness, and I would have made a victim statement.”
“You would,” Gabriel said.
“But under this agreement, they’re out of our society and can’t come back.”
“They’re convicted felons. They can’t go to most places now. Canada, for example, wouldn’t let them in.”
“So everyone’s safe.” She squeezed his hands.
Gabriel put her hands together and rubbed them. “You’re shaking.”
“I didn’t want to go to court. And I guess those feelings were taught to me at work.”
“Work?”
“Nurses experience violence all the time. I always say that I’m going to file charges, but I never do.”
“You should,” Gabriel said, lifting his hand to paint his thumb gently over the bruise that was just now beginning to fade from last week’s full moon ER disaster.
“Maybe. But we get a lot of pressure not to. There’s always the insinuation that had we handled the situation better, things wouldn’t have turned violent.”
“That’s insane,” Gabriel said. “Nurses have the right to work without violence.”
“Preaching to the choir, Mr. Special Agent man. But it is what it is. I don’t know what would change our circumstances other than all of us walking out en masse.
And we have mortgages and grocery bills.
” She pulled her hands free from his and put them on her forehead as she took in a deep breath.
“It’s over. That’s good.” She paused. “Yes, very good. Thank you for the news.”
Gabriel didn’t know how to answer that. He was just glad it all went down as fast as it did.
After a moment, Sommer exclaimed, “Oh! I have news for you, too. I got an electronic transfer from my time as a content creator. I guess when I took down my videos and deleted my accounts, they cleared the books. But the amount that came in is enough for me to go to the Bahamas.”
Gabriel smiled. “Where you can risk skin cancer as you lay on the beach sipping an umbrella drink.”
“Not only that.” She leaned forward and put her hands on his knees. “There’s enough money for two. And I was wondering if you might like to accompany me.” She smiled.
“Going on a vacation to paradise sounds like a big step to take with someone you just met.”
Disappointment painted Sommer’s face. And she leaned back, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. “I … Well, we … Look,” Sommer glanced down at Whiskey lying between them, then brought a steady gaze up to meet Gabriel’s.
“You and I both have jobs with high drama, and that’s exhausting.
I don’t want to come home to anything that feels like an obligation.
I want to tend to the things that bring me joy, puttering around my little cottage, going out on hikes, hanging out with comfortable friends who have been through the wash with me a thousand times and feel that much more comfortable to me each time we go through the wringer together.
When you showed up, it felt natural and seamless.
You stepped right into the kind of energy that I’m trying to develop in my life.
And I thought … I thought something.” She gave a little shrug.
“I think you misunderstood what I said, Sommer. I happily accept your invitation. And, going on a vacation to paradise sounds like a big step to take with someone you just met. I’m honored.
” Gabriel tugged her hand to pull Sommer into his lap.
“I like the sense of peace that comes over me when I have you in my arms.” He kissed her hair.
“That sense of ease.” He smiled. “I appreciate that not everything has to be a struggle.”
She held her fingers an inch apart. “Though maybe a little agenda.”
“Yeah?”
“I just think that maybe Daniel has something to do with us,” Sommer whispered. “Can we talk about that for a minute?”
“Sure.”
“You told me on the trail that Reaper said that dogs can’t memorize songs and sing them like whales can.”
“That’s right.”
“When you left me at home, Saturday, on the way in to handle your crisis at the office, Whiskey wouldn’t go in.
I had to carry her. And when I did, there were the unexpected visitors.
They had me walk Whiskey to try to find your house.
When we got to the stop sign, Whiskey sat and looked straight at Daniel’s grave and sang the song from the first night she howled. ”
“You said you put out witch pots. Have you done anything else? Any kind of séance or something?”
“No. Abbie says, ‘Sprinkle salt.’ I sprinkle salt. It’s just odd, don’t you think that Daniel chose to teach Whiskey opera in the days leading up to his death?
And that I had given up opera years ago, and suddenly, I felt compelled to sing again after his funeral?
And don’t you find it strange that the songs that Daniel taught Whiskey were the songs that I always liked to sing best? ”
“Quite the coincidence,” Gabriel said softly.
“Do you think it’s odd that Kate, who was close to Daniel. A woman you told me went to see him every day he was in hospice, suddenly made you a gratitude casserole for something you did for people she doesn’t know?”
Gabriel stilled.
“Has she ever made you a casserole before?”
“No.”
“And that Reaper drove it over to your house without calling you? And that Whiskey was waiting for him at the corner of a road that’s not the most convenient one for Reaper to drive?”
“When Reaper called to tell me he had Whiskey, I felt Daniel there in the room with me. It was the first time I thought something like that. And as I drove back to the neighborhood. I was talking to Daniel the whole way, asking him to please watch out for you. Please help my team make good decisions. I mean, I talk to Daniel every day, almost as much as when he was alive. But that time, I felt like I wasn’t gabbing with him, but I was depending on him.
I believed that was possible for the first time in my life. ”
Sommer nodded.
“Since I met you on the mountain,” Gabriel said. “I thought maybe Daniel really was using Whiskey, not to haunt me, but to bring us together because I think—and I’m sure Daniel would think—that we’re good for each other.”
Sommer smiled. “You passed the friends and family test when you saved me, then them, then me again. Sloane might have a little hero worship going on now.” Sommer leaned forward to kiss him.
“I have thought about this long and hard, Gabriel. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way we could possibly have met is by supernatural intervention. ”
“I’m on board with that.”
“Do you think this is ongoing?” She asked, looking up at him through her eyelashes, and all Gabriel wanted to do was gather her more tightly in his arms and hold her to his heart.
“What are you talking about here?” Gabriel asked. “Do I think our relationship is ongoing? The way I feel around you is different than anything I’ve experienced in my life. There’s a sense of satisfaction. That is not a great word. The other word I’m thinking isn’t any better.”
“No?”
“A sense of settling.”
“Settling for me?” Sommer lifted her chin.
“I told you it wasn’t a great word, not ‘settle’ as in ‘I guess she’ll do’—which is far from the truth.
Light years from the truth. It’s more a sense of settling into something comfortable.
In the old-fashioned sense of settling in for the night or settling into a seat by the fire with a good book and snacks. ”
“Snacks are happy.”
Gabriel spread his fingers wide on her thigh. “I’m usually good at expressing myself. But you aren’t words. You’re sensations and emotions. And those, I struggle to explain.”
She gave the slightest nod.
“Do I think this is ongoing? If you meant us, it’s been my life’s experience that I know right away if I have a good teammate—another wrong word—someone I would go to battle with and also someone I could hang out in a hot miserable tent for days on end without any other form of distraction other than our own company. ”
“From my life experience,” Sommer said, “in the emergency room and on the trail, I understand that. And I agree. Which is lovely.” She stopped and smiled.
“But my question was really about Daniel. You know him, and I don’t.
Do you think he’ll keep his gamesmanship up?
Is he going to keep moving the pieces around the board?
Us? Not that I’m thinking of him as a third wheel,” She skated a hand out.
“And not that I think he put viruses and bad men into our path. They were in our path, and I truly believe he was there helping us through.” She looked up at the ceiling.
“Thank you, Daniel.” She laughed, and that laughter danced in her eyes when she looked at Gabriel.
“Daniel and Sloane,” Gabriel said.
“Of course, Sloane. Sloane will always be there for me.” Sommer moved her hand through the air. “And since I’ve experienced that kind of etheric connection my whole life, the idea of Daniel isn’t a stretch. It doesn’t make me nervous at all. But do you think he’s going to continue to haunt us?”
“We did pinky swear,” Gabriel said.
“Which is very powerful magic.”
“This is my adult version of a pinky swear,” Gabriel whispered. He cupped Sommer’s face in his hands, and their kiss lingered. “There’s nothing like having a little magic to enchant our lives together.”
Sommer smiled. “Yes, I think I’d like an enchanted life together.”
The END