Chapter 31: : Epilogue

She said nothing when she came out again, looked back at the team still processing.

“I walked over. If I’d driven … Well, I didn’t. We’ll need to take your car or walk.”

“Walk. Oh God, yes, walk.”

They’d gotten to the end of the drive, made the turn to his when she stopped, bent over.

“Jesus, oh Jesus. Minute.”

“It’s okay.” He stroked her back, felt the shaking start. “Breathe, Sarge. Slow breaths.”

“Trying. I need—”

“To take your time.”

“I killed a man. Oh God, God, I killed a man. I didn’t even hesitate. I just fired.”

“And I’m thanking any god there is for that. You saved lives today, just like O’Hara said.” As he spoke, quietly, he stroked her back. “You saved your own, you saved Terry’s, and you saved mine.”

When she just shook her head, he ran a hand over her hair. “Yeah, mine, too. I was steps away, and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—have stopped.”

When she straightened, he put an arm around her. “Lean on me. Even tough women know how to lean.”

“Oh, I’m leaning. I couldn’t fall apart in front of the family.”

“Why?”

“Because they were already scared. Because what happened before would’ve been right there for them. It was for me.”

She shook so hard he wanted to just pick her up and carry her, but she took the next step.

Just as she had the first time he’d seen her on the lake path.

“He was already in the house. I knew someone was in there, or had been, the second I came in. Little things not exactly as I’d left them. Little things missing. I thought maybe kids, but…”

“You watched your back.”

“Yeah.” The next breath she drew in came easier now. “I had my gun out, clearing the house, and was about to call it in when she drove up. Blue van. A van, that was the first trigger. Then I saw her, and knew. ER nurse, I’d seen her, spoken to her when I was checking on hospitals.”

Absently, she rubbed at her chest.

“Her eyes flicked from mine for just a second when I opened the door.”

“You let her in.”

“I was armed, and she was the link to finding Terry. That eye flick, and I swung around. He came at me, gun, syringe. I shot him. She jumped on my back, he kept coming, and I shot him again, knocked her off. And you were there.”

“I saw the van, heard the shots. Christ, now I have to stop and breathe a minute.”

She let a few tears come. “You can lean on me, too.”

“I’ve been scared in my life. When I was a kid, they scared the crap out of me plenty. But I haven’t been that frightened since I thought Theo drowned. You handled it.”

“Part of me was sliding back and forth from the living room to the mini-mart.”

“And you handled it.”

“The things she said. They killed people because they decided they were meant to. And me? They had holy water and other things in that van. She’d convinced herself I was a witch, a demon sent to stop them from saving the resurrected.”

Finally, they turned into his drive, walked toward the house.

“The cops who found Terry? They found labeled packets of blood. The victims’ names. They drained them, Nash, but before, they demanded—they recorded—what they called their stories. What they experienced during clinical death. They had the tubing, medical equipment, restraints, and when they had what they wanted recorded, they exsanguinated them.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“They found a box with personal items of the victims. Like … keepsakes. And then?”

She pressed a hand to her belly. “Oh God, they found a well, they found bone saws, lye. It looks like they cut up the victims, dumped them in there, threw in lye.”

“Tell me she’s not going to do some time in an institution. Tell me she’s going to prison.”

“Not up to me. Either way, she’ll never get out. Not with what they’ve found.”

“Why don’t we sit outside? You sit on the porch. Water or wine?”

“Oh. Can I have both?”

“I’ll get you both. One thing first.”

Now he pulled her in, hung on. “I need to do that leaning. I heard those shots … I love you.”

“When you ran in, and Tic? Part of me knew it was all right. I could get through it. I felt sick, my hands were shaking, but I knew I could get through it.”

“Sit.” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “I’ll be right back.”

She sat, breathed in and out, listened to the birds. It wasn’t like a dream this time, she thought. And if it all played back in dreams?

She’d done what she had to do.

He brought her a glass of water, a glass of wine, and one for himself.

“Can you put it away now?”

“It’ll take a few days. I fired my weapon, and a man’s dead. Self-defense, and there’s no question of that. But there’s a process. I’m fine with it. And Terry Brown will get married in a few weeks.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She looked at him. “Yes, it’ll take time, but I can put it away. Janet Anderson, and all the rest, their families … It’ll be horrible for them, but they’ll know. And Terry? His family won’t have to grieve.”

“This didn’t ruin the house for you?”

“No.” She took a sip of wine and stared at the greening trees, the splashes of color from the redbuds. “I won’t let it.”

“I don’t want it to, but I want you to move in here.”

“Nash, I’ll be fine.”

“Sure, but I want you to move in here. Tonight moved that step up. I’d planned to take it when I had the library done, your office planned out.”

“My office?”

He shot her a look. “Did you really think I wanted a sitting room? You can keep your place as a sanctuary when you need it, if you do. Or we finish it, and you fold it into the family business, whatever.

“It’s your house, so you do what you want with it. But I’m asking you to live with me. Here.”

He drank some wine. “Maybe it’s not altogether fair to push you on this when you’re still a little shaky, but I am anyway.”

“You want to live together?”

“I want to live with you. I want you to help make this house home, for both of us. That’s this step.”

“It’s a big one. And there are more?”

“I’m not going to take the shine off Theo, or Drea. They plan their wedding, they have their wedding. Then we can start planning ours.”

“I—” She nearly bobbled the wineglass until he reached over to level it. “Excuse me?”

“That’s the next step. We can look at the one after that, actually getting married, over the winter or next spring. Whatever, because we’ll live here first.”

He looked over at her. “I’m not asking you now. I’m just letting you know what’s coming after Theo and Drea have their wedding.”

“That’s considerate of you.”

“I’m made of considerate.”

She hadn’t believed she’d laugh again for days, but it bubbled right out. “So you have this planned out.”

“It’s something I do.”

“It is. It’s something I do, too. This is a really great house. Of course, if I lived in it, I’d have ideas about a lot of things yet to be done.”

“That’s understood.”

“I’ve got a nice bathroom, but yours? That really weighs on your side of things. Then there’s the coffee bar, and another in the closet upstairs. Really heavy weights.”

“The glass rail system on the upper porch should count.”

“It does. It really does.”

She felt her shoulders unknot, her stomach smooth out.

“I like winter,” she said. “I missed the winters up here when I lived in Annapolis. The frozen lake, the white hills. But…”

She got up, slid into his lap. “Since I want to get married outside, outdoors, it’ll have to be spring. May, I think, or early in June.”

She angled her head to meet his eyes. “Oh, I’m not saying yes now, just letting you know I will.”

He ran a hand over her hair. “Considerate of you.”

Smiling, she met his mouth with hers.

“And that first step?”

“I’ve got a few days off, so I can move in easy enough. We have to find a place for my pansies.”

“Anywhere you want. I don’t have to practice saying it anymore. I just have to love you.”

“Just remember, hearing it never gets old. Look at us, Littlefield. This is what they call a happy ending.”

“Or a beginning.”

“I like that even better.”

She settled her head on his shoulder.

She’d been given a second chance at life. She’d been given love and a promise of a future.

And she wouldn’t waste any of it.