CHAPTER FIVE

 

“Hi,” Kinley said as she smiled timidly.

Reed was astonished. Thrilled, but astonished. “Hi,” he said, reaching down to clumsily and nervously pick up his mail in scattered pieces. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

Kinley stood up and helped him pick up his fallen mail. She handed him a couple of pieces from where they had slipped under her chair.

“Everything’s fine,” she said quietly, eyeing the open door as he set his mail down. “Can we, uh, shut the door?”

He was nodding before she even got the sentence out of her mouth, shutting the briefing room door and then facing her expectantly. He was rattled by her appearance and struggling not to be. He didn’t want to scare her off again but he had a lot of thoughts and emotions bubbling in his chest at the moment.

“I never thought I was going to see you again,” he said honestly. “How did you know where to find me?”

Kinley watched him take the seat next to her. He looked so incredibly nervous. Truth was, she was nervous, too.

“You said you weren’t stationed in Riverton,” she said. “This is the headquarters for the sheriff so I used my police training and my great deductive reasoning and figured you must be here.”

Reed was having difficulty doing anything other than just staring at her. “Good job,” he said, drinking in her face. He started to say something but thought better of it and shut his mouth. After a moment, he simply shook his head. “I’m really scared right now that I’m going to say something that is going to send you running again. I don’t want to screw this up.”

Kinley gave him a crooked smile. “Then why don’t you let me do the talking?”

“Good idea.”

Kinley gazed into his eyes, her smile fading. Where to start? She chuckled nervously and looked at her hands.

“I had it all planned out what I was going to say to you and now that I’m here, I’m at a loss,” she said, fiddling with her fingers. “I guess… I guess what I want to say most to you is that I’m sorry. You’ve gone out of your way to be kind and concerned, and I’ve acted like an idiot. I want you to know that up until three years ago, I was the most stable person you’d ever want to meet. I was the valedictorian of my high school, I graduated college with honors, and I had the same boyfriend since my sophomore year in high school who was the guy I ended up marrying. I’m not a game player and I don’t jerk people around. I know right from wrong and I have a good moral compass. I’m just so sorry that your acquaintance with me hasn’t conveyed that. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings or embarrassed you.”

She finally looked up from her hands to see that he was studying her intently. “You haven’t done either of those things,” he said softly. “I’m just sorry that I’ve been so clumsy in my attempts to get to know you. You made it clear you weren’t interested. I should have listened.”

She shook her head. “You’re reading me all wrong,” she said. “I am interested. That’s the problem. I’m just not sure… emotionally, it scares me to death to open myself up to someone again.”

“I completely understand.”

She looked at her hands again, growing increasingly nervous. “I don’t have any friends here,” she said softly. “I don’t have any friends, period. When I ran from L.A., I ran from everybody – my family, my friends – everybody. I just shut down and shut off. There were many times when I contemplated driving my car off a bridge or into a wall. I admit that I still have thoughts like that. But I know it wouldn’t solve the problem. When I close my eyes at night, I still see my kids and wonder what they would have been like now, you know, what interests they would have had. Vi was such an artist; she loved to paint. I wonder if she would have kept it up. Liam loved wild animals – lions, tigers, monkeys. He said he wanted to work in a zoo. I wonder if he would have. Anyway, what I wanted to say is this – over the past two weeks, you have shown up every morning when I arrived to work. I knew you were there. It gave me comfort even though I didn’t want to admit it. Now that you’re not doing it anymore, I miss it, and I realize how awful I’ve treated you. I… I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

He was listening carefully. “You didn’t need to apologize,” he said quietly. “But something has occurred to me.”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“You’ve been running from everything and everyone, not just me. I’m just one in a long line of people and situations you’ve run from.”

She sighed heavily and lowered her gaze again. “That’s true.”

“When are you going to stop running?”

She looked at him. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t have a reason to.”

“I’d like to give you a reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I want to be that reason.”

Kinley stared at him. Then, she took in a long, deep breath. “You know,” she said slowly, “my first instinct when you said that was to run off. Notice I didn’t give in to it.”

He grinned. “I’m glad. That’s progress.”

She reluctantly returned his smile, alternately looking at him and looking at her hands. She couldn’t seem to maintain eye contact with him more than a few seconds at a time. Then, she reached out and grasped his big hand. He held her hand tightly between his two big ones, squeezing it. He was so thrilled that he could hardly control himself. She was here, she was sorry… and she was holding his hand.

“Thank you,” she whispered, still staring at the ground. “For your patience and your gentleness around a woman who’s kind of a freak.”

He laughed softly, lifting her hand to kiss it. “She’s not a freak,” he insisted softly. “I think she’s pretty wonderful. In fact… are you heading to work right now?”

Kinley nodded. “I am.”

“Do you ever take a day off?”

She shook her head. “Never. I work seven days a week.”

He tugged on her hand to get her to look up at him. When their eyes met, he lifted his eyebrows at her.

“Take today off,” he demanded. “Call in sick. I want you to ride along with me. I’d like to spend time with you.”

It was such a sweet offer. She gave him a rather lopsided grin. “In a patrol unit?”

He grinned in return. “You just never know what could happen,” he shrugged, watching her giggle. “We could find some banditos or outlaws or run into a Shoshone war party. We might even run into that guy who dances with coyotes.”

Her laughter grew. “I think it was dances with wolves.”

He just watched her, finding her laughter so incredibly enchanting. “Coyotes, wolves… whatever,” he said, sobering as he gazed into her eyes. “Come with me, Kinley. Please.”

Her smile faded as she gazed into his eyes. It was evident that she was weighing the request. Finally, she dipped her head in surrender.

“All right,” she said softly. “I’ll do it.”

 

***

 

The sun was already up by the time they pulled out of the parking lot, heading south to Main Street. Kinley had made a call to the Cakery and told the day shift manager that she wasn’t feeling well, clearing the way for a day to play hooky. The city was just coming alive, with people out walking their dogs and school buses throwing clouds of exhaust into the air.

It was nice, normal, and relatively quiet, but for Kinley, it was also relatively strange. It was the first time she had been in a patrol unit since the day before she’d lost her family. Her natural instinct was to bottle up the anxiety she was feeling to the point of panic but she thought perhaps that wasn’t the best way to handle it. Reed had offered his shoulder, and everything else, to cry on. Maybe now was the time to begin building some trust between them. She’d come this far… it was time for her to start opening up.

“Uh,” she muttered, taking a deep breath. “I have to tell you that I’m feeling kind of uncomfortable right now.”

Reed looked over at her. “Why?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

Kinley shifted in the seat and cleared her throat in a nervous gesture. “Because I haven’t been in a unit since everything happened,” she said quietly. “The moment I got in, I wanted to get right back out again and run. Just the smell, the sights, the sounds… it’s taking a lot of effort not to open the door and jump out.”

He immediately pulled the car over to the curb. “If you’re not comfortable, I’m not going to force you,” he said seriously. “I’ll take you right back to the station.”

He was being genuine and sincere about it. Kinley resisted the urge to agree. She grabbed his hand tightly and turned away, looking out the window.

“No,” she said softly. “I have to face my fears sooner or later. Just… talk to me, would you? Keep my mind occupied so I don’t go back to that day.”

Reed held her hand snuggly as he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “You got it,” he said softly. “But before I start rattling away, tell me what subjects are off limits so you don’t end up jumping out of the window.”

Kinley grinned but even as she did so, her eyes began to fill with tears. She could feel them coming on, her eyeballs burning, and a lump formed in her throat. In spite of her resolve, she could feel a breakdown coming. She squeezed Reed’s hand tightly.

“Oh, God,” she breathed. “Maybe… maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I haven’t dealt with any of these feelings since the day it happened and right now, the smell of this car and the sound of the radio… everything… is bringing it back on me like it’s all fresh and new and raw. Can you… can you please stop the car?”

Reed pulled over in a flash. They were in a mostly residential area and the second the car pulled close to the curb, Kinley let go of his hand and jumped out of the car. Reed threw the car into park and jumped out on the other side, running around the side of the car and grabbing her before she could get away. She fell against him, sobbing deeply, and her knees collapsed. He ended up practically carrying her.

“It’s okay,” he said soothingly, steadily. “I’ll take you back to the station. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Kinley wept pitifully. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “I miss my babies. Why did that have to happen? Why did it have to be them?”

She was on a roll. Reed picked her up and carried her back to the unit, putting her into the front passenger seat and slamming the door, making it around to the driver’s side just as she was opening her door and struggling to climb out again. He threw himself into the driver’s seat, reached over, and slammed her door shut. Then he shut his own door and hit the master lock so she couldn’t open any of them.

Kinley really didn’t seem to notice much or even care that he had effectively trapped her. She had quickly descended into the world of misery, the one she had kept herself so carefully guarded against, but the experience of being in the police cruiser had been too much. The dam had burst and there was no way to stop it.

Reed took off in the direction of Main Street. In fact, he lit up the rotators and ripped through town westbound, blowing lights until he reached a street that headed south out of the end of town. As Kinley sobbed into her hands, he hit speeds in excess of one hundred miles an hour heading south into the wide open high plains of Wyoming. He made short work of the southbound road until he came to Squaw Creek Drive. Hanging a right and nearly spinning out, he tore down Squaw Creek and into the red plateaus and scrub brush of the desolate countryside.

The road had intermittent houses on it, big and fairly wealthy spreads on several acres on an exclusive road. Reed finally turned off the rotators when he came to a dirt driveway that veered off the road to the north. He hit the gravel and tore up the dirt road, throwing up rooster tails of dust behind him. Up a hill and down into a wash he went, heading into what seemed to be a no man’s land of rocks and hills and badlands. After about a quarter of a mile on the road, he ended up at a big gate attached to a massive fence that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

Reed hit a remote in his glove box and the gate rolled open. Kinley’s hysterics had quieted but she was still weeping softly, worn out and exhausted. Reed passed her a concerned glance as the gate rolled open enough that he could get through it. Once through, he hit the remote again and the gate began to close. A half mile down from the gate along that gravel road, hidden among the plateaus and rocky hills, an entirely new world opened up.

It was green here because a decent sized creek ran through the property, feeding the dry soil and producing grass and other foliage. There were corrals here and two big barns, with horses in one and cattle in the other. There was even a chicken coop, although there were chickens both inside the fence and outside of it, scattered about. The entire scene was rather bucolic. At the end of the gravel road on the top of one of the plateaus stood a typical ranch house, two stories, with a long porch that ran the entire length of the front of the house. It was the crowning glory of the unique, little world it supervised out in the middle of the Wyoming plains.

Dogs ran out of the barn as Reed pulled the unit up to the house. He turned off the car and climbed out as four very happy, and very big, dogs wagged their tails and pawed eagerly at him. Usually he would pet and play with the dogs – two German Shepherds, a Rottweiler, and a giant Alaskan Malamute – but at the moment, he was too preoccupied to acknowledge them. He raced around the back of the unit and came to the passenger door.

Opening the door, he pulled Kinley out and picked her up again. She was utterly exhausted and not inclined to fight him about anything at this point, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder as he carried her up to the house. Keys in hand, he deftly opened the lock and shut off the alarm.

With the dogs following, he took Kinley back to the master bedroom, realizing he hadn’t even made his bed that morning but hardly caring. He lay Kinley down on the messy sheets, eyeing her as she lay there with her eyes closed and makeup down her cheeks, before heading into the big bathroom and throwing open the medicine cabinet. He was back at her side in less than a minute with a pill in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

“Here,” he whispered, pulling her up into a seated position. “Take this. It’ll make you sleep.”

Kinley was lucid but she was so overwrought with emotion that it made it difficult to think clearly. She caught a glimpse of the pill before he popped it into her mouth.

“What…?” she sputtered, mouth full.

“Shhhh,” he murmured, holding the water to her lips. “Just drink.”

She frowned and tried to push the water away. “What is it?” she demanded weakly. “You’re not giving me something to knock me out so you can take advantage of me, are you?”

He cocked a droll eyebrow. “In your dreams,” he teased softly. “Just take it. You need to take a nap for a few hours. Swallow it.”

He practically poured the water into her mouth, forcing Kinley to swallow the pill he had put there. She gulped it down, still frowning, as he pushed her back down onto the bed. She was about to let him know that she wasn’t pleased he was making her pop pills when the picture of two small boys on the nightstand caught her attention. Immediately, her demeanor changed. She grew serious.

“Are those your sons?” she asked.

Reed set the empty water glass down beside the bed. “Yes.”

Kinley stared at them for several long moments. “How old are they?”

He sighed faintly as he began to peel off his duty jacket. “Christopher is ten and Jackson is eight.”

Kinley gazed at the two handsome young men. “When was Christopher born?”

“June the fourth, two thousand and four.”

Kinley continued to stare at the picture a moment. Then, her face crumpled and the sobs came again. “Violet was born on June the twentieth of that year,” she wept. “She would have been ten years old this month.”

The tears were back with a vengeance and Reed felt as bad as he possibly could. Slinging his jacket across the nearest chair, he sat down on the bed beside her and gently rubbed her back, trying to give her some comfort. Kinley had her hands over her face.

“I’m so sorry about this,” she cried. “I was totally fine when I came to see you this morning but getting into the unit… it just triggered something. I’m so embarrassed.”

He stroked her back. “No need,” he assured her quietly. “From what you’ve said, you haven’t really dealt with the situation, so… so maybe it’s time. Maybe you just need to get it all out.”

She didn’t really say much to that. She continued to keep her face covered as she sobbed. “Do you know why I wasn’t driving my car that morning?” she asked. “I was pregnant and had really bad morning sickness, so Tom took the kids instead. He used my car because it was the last one in the driveway and blocking his car in. That goddamn gangbanger was waiting for my car when it passed through a major intersection by our house and he and his buddies pulled up on both sides of it and opened fire. Tom was killed instantly when a bullet hit him in the head and crashed the car into a light pole. Witnesses said that then the cars pulled up behind the crashed car, walked up, and emptied out two or three clips into the car, killing the kids. They never had a chance.”

Reed closed his eyes tightly to ward off the horror of what she was telling him. He felt so sick for her. He lay his head down on her shoulder, his hand still on her back, trying to give her what meager comfort he could.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” he whispered. “I can’t even imagine what you went through. I’m so very sorry.”

Kinley was so exhausted from weeping that the tears were starting to taper off as she recalled that very dark day with great clarity. She could see every moment that passed, feeling every emotion as if just feeling it for the first time. The grief was agonizing but, very quickly, it became numbing as her mind switched into self-protection mode. It was either that or she would surely lose her sanity. She began to take on an oddly glazed look.

“I was feeling so bad from the morning sickness that I had fallen back asleep once Tom and the kids left the house,” she continued. “The next thing I realize, someone is pounding at my door. When I got up, I saw four units outside my house. I really had no idea that anything was wrong, at least not with Tom and the kids, until the lieutenant began to talk. He had to tell me the story three times before it sank in and I could actually comprehend what had happened. After that… I really don’t remember much about the rest of the day other than getting into Tom’s car that night and driving off. And I just kept driving.”

Reed rubbed her back, kissing her shoulder before pushing himself up. “Kinley, don’t think you have to talk about this,” he said softly. “If you just want to go to sleep for a while, I’ll sit here with you so you won’t be alone.”

She turned her head to look up at him, her face with its haunting beauty, etched with grief. “You’re probably wondering what happened to the pregnancy.”

He shook his head. “Not really. I suppose it doesn’t matter in the long run.”

She sighed and looked away, her lids growing heavy as the emotions rolled over her. “I was only a few weeks along,” she whispered. “I guess the emotional upheaval and the fact that I didn’t eat or take care of myself for weeks took its toll; I miscarried the day I ended up at the Hi-Way Café. I flushed the baby down the toilet in the restaurant. That’s why I sat there for so long; I was trying to work up the courage to drive the car into an overpass because I literally had nothing left to live for. My entire family was dead.”

Reed’s gaze lingered on her for a moment before standing up. He removed his Sam Browne belt and laid it carefully on the chair, followed by his uniform shirt. He had a t-shirt underneath, sexy as hell as it strained against his broad chest. Then he took the radio out of the holster on the duty belt and told Dispatch that he was indisposed for the next hour. When they pressed him, he shut them down and turned the radio off. Then, he carefully crawled onto the bed and got in behind Kinley as she lay there sniffling.

“Can I just lay here and hold you for a few minutes?” he whispered. “It would make me feel a lot better.”

Exhausted, and now being swept up in whatever drug he had given her, Kinley managed a weary grin. “It would make you feel better?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m feeling really sad right now and it’s been years since I’ve held a woman I really wanted to hold. Would it be okay?”

Kinley couldn’t even think about the fact that she was lying in the man’s bed and he had given her a drug of unknown origin. It had been very stupid, in hindsight, but on the other hand, she didn’t much care. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her and, after what she had just experienced, she realized she needed the comfort of human contact. She needed Reed.

“Sure,” she whispered.

Big, muscular, and warm arms went around her and Kinley sank back against him, feeling his heated body come into contact with hers. It was wildly arousing and wildly comforting. All of her restraint left her and she gave in to his heat, gripping his hands and pulling his arms more tightly around her, relishing in the feel of his touch. She was all wrapped up in him, and he in her, as she finally drifted off into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

It was the best rest she’d had in three years.