Alone (22 page)

It was only nine in the morning and the
whole day stretched ahead of her; an impossible void to
fill.

The
police worried her. She didn’t like
the idea of them waiting for her at home. Madeline might have gone
back to the police and told them more lies—or even worse—the truth.
Sebastian might think their biggest threat was Madeline but the
possibility of a lifetime in prison filled her with
dread.

The idea niggled at her. Was it worse for
her to be hiding in a hotel or should she be at the house to defend
her corner? It seemed crazy to want to go back to the house when
yesterday she’d wanted to get away. For whatever reason, the small
duplex was legally her home and she didn’t like the thought of the
police thinking she had run.

At least during the day she was safe from
Madeline.

S
itting around in the hotel room all day
would drive her crazy. She would go back to the house, grab a
change of clothes and make sure the police weren’t waiting for her
to return home.

There was no sign
of
anyone at the house,
no cards dropped through the mailbox, no notes left for her. From
next door, the neighbor shouted at her children to get back into
the house and someone drove past, blaring loud music from their
car.

Relieved not to find the cops
camped outside her front door,
she decided to take a walk.

The local area was decent enough for Los
Angeles and didn’t suffer too much from the violence plaguing many
of the city’s suburbs. A cafe, its walls lined with books, appealed
to her. If she could take one of those books off the shelves and
lose herself in another world for an hour, she would be
happy.

T
urning into the doorway, she collided with
a man heading out, carrying a large take-out coffee and something
in a brown paper bag.

The man glanced down at her in surprise.
“Mrs. Hathaway?” he said. “How are you?”

He wore civilian clothes—jeans and a
sweater—and for a moment she didn’t recognize him. Then she
realized who the man was; the officer who had questioned her.
Serenity searched her memory for his name.

Bently. Officer
Bently.

She was surprised to see him.
For some reason
, she’d not expected to bump into someone she knew in this
neighborhood. With everything happening in her life, it seemed
strange how other people carried on their normal lives around
her.

“
Officer Bently,” she
said.

“
It’s James, please,” he smiled,
an easy, warm gesture. “As you can tell, I’m off duty.”

“
Sure,” she forced a
smile.

He gestured back to the coffee shop. “You
heading for a caffeine fix?”

“
Yeah, I guess you could say
that.”

He reached across her and pushed the
door open for her. “Mind if I join you?”

His request
took her by surprise. He must
have seen the hesitation on her face.

“
I’ll buy,” he
offered.

That made her smile and she nodded, bowing
her head in surrender. He held the door open as she walked in. A
woman in a suit, working on a laptop, sat at one table. A young
couple had taken up position by the window and they held hands
across the table. Otherwise, the place was empty and they had their
choice of tables. Instinctively, she headed to the table at the
back of the coffee shop, as far away from the other people as
possible.

Officer Bently went straight up to the
counter and turned back to her.

“
Coffee?” he
asked.

“
Just a fruit tea,” she told
him and watched as he ordered.

He was handsome, though shorter than
Sebastian and appeared older, in his late-thirties. He hadn’t
shaved that morning—a benefit of not having to work—and a distinct
shadow lay beneath his skin. Lines fanned around his brown eyes and
grey flecked his hair; all signs of aging, all the things Sebastian
would never experience.

Bently
sat opposite her and pushed the large
takeout cup across the table. “I don’t think you’ll find much
caffeine in fruit tea.”

“
I’m trying to stay off the
stuff,” she said. “I’m staying up too much at night as it
is.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Heard nothing from
your husband, Mrs. Hathaway?”

“
I thought you were off duty,”
she said. Then she sighed, “And it’s Serenity.”

“
Serenity? Unusual
name.”

“
Yes, it is,” she said, without
offering an explanation.

She took a sip of her tea and the hot
liquid scalded her mouth. She had a flashback of sitting in the
hospital cafeteria and Sebastian warning her the coffee was hot.
The memory made her smile to herself.

“
Look, Serenity.” Officer Bently
said. His broad chest expanded as he took a deep breath and her
heart sank. Whatever he was about to say, she didn’t want to know.
She only wanted to while away the hours of daylight alone and
later, get back to being with Sebastian.

The officer
carried on talking.

“
I don’t want to step out of
place but I couldn’t help notice some things about you—how you
flinched at the house when I reached for your husband’s cell, how
you move carefully, as though you’re worried sudden movement will
hurt, and then there’s the faint bruise on your wrist.”

Suddenly self-conscious,
she pulled at her
sleeve, trying to cover the bruise. Jackson had caused the mark a
week ago when he grabbed her wrist to make her drop the television
remote. The strength of the memory made her blanch. It was so fresh
in her mind—everything was so fresh in her mind.

She saw
no aggression in Officer Bently’s
brown eyes, only concern and compassion, but her defenses went up
in the same way they had any time someone made a friendly, but
concerned enquiry into her private life. Only this time she had
more to worry about than work colleagues finding out her husband
liked to use her as a punching bag.

Serenity said nothing. Bently continued to
talk.

“
The thing is, Serenity, if I am
right about your husband—about how he treated you—then men like
that don’t leave their wives. They wouldn’t allow their wives the
freedom of being left.”

She cleared her throat, her gaze fixated
on her hands “I don’t know what you want me to say. Am I supposed
to be justifying my husband’s actions to you?”

“
No, but if you do have any
information that might lead us to your husband’s whereabouts, not
telling us is as good as being an accessory.”

“
Are you still off duty, Officer
Bently?” she said. “Because if you are, I can’t see how this is any
of your business.”

“
You’re right, I apologize.” He
glanced down for a moment and then looked back up, seemingly
resolved to get out what he wanted to say. “The thing is Serenity,
we can get a warrant to search your house and if no other leads
come forward, that may be exactly what happens.”

Serenity froze, her jaw tight
with apprehension. Bently
leaned in toward her and lowered his voice, “I
think you’re a good person Serenity, a good person who probably
just has bad taste in men. Like I said before, abusers don’t leave
the people they’re abusing and if he didn’t leave, we’re going to
start wondering what happened to him.”

“
My husband left me,” she said,
“and if you want proof, you only need to check his computer. Maybe
you’ll discover one of the reasons a man like Jackson leaves a
woman like me is because he’d had his fun, got bored and decided to
hook up with some other poor sap.”

“
I’m trying to look out for
you—give you a heads up. I would hate for that warrant to find
something you wouldn’t want it to.”

She cocked her head to one side and
raised an eyebrow. “So you’re trying to tell me you’re one of the
good guys, James?”

“
I’m trying to tell you any
information you willingly give up to the police might work better
for you than tying our hands and forcing us to get it
ourselves.”

Serenity bit her lower lip. “I don’t know
where my husband is,” she said truthfully. “If you think you might
find something on the computer to give you some idea of where he
might be, please, take the damn thing.”

She resisted the urge to drop
her forehead to the table.
This whole situation was crazy; nothing more than
a charade. They were looking for a man who was already dead at the
time the crime had been committed. She almost wanted to laugh. The
part of herself she’d never felt completely in control of wanted to
reach across the table, grab the cop by the shoulders and shout, ‘I
murdered Jackson three days ago so he couldn’t have raped a woman.
And, by the way, the woman who told you she was raped is a
vampire.’

Serenity gave up. “So do you want to come
and check out the computer now, or do you have to wait until you’re
back in uniform.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t victory she saw,
it was relief that she had caved.

“
I’ll come now, but if anyone
asks, we ran into each other on your way to the
station.”

“
Isn’t that what happened?”
she said, reluctantly smiling back.

She might be making a colossal mistake.
The officer didn’t know she’d murdered Jackson but he’d made some
pretty uncanny suggestions. Of course it worried her, but he seemed
genuine. The last thing she wanted was the police coming back with
a search warrant. She had no idea what they might find and she
hoped showing them what a perverted cheat Jackson really was might
put them off the scent.

A
t what stage should she be asking for a
lawyer? No, this wasn’t an investigation into her, but Jackson. So
far, she hadn’t been accused of anything other than trying to
protect her abusive husband.

Her duplex was a couple of blocks from the
coffee shop and they walked in silence. In her head, she ran
through conversations she might be having with the man beside her,
‘Do you live close by?’ ‘How does your wife feel about you
constantly being on the job?’

Had she even
seen a wedding ring?

No, his finger was bare.

It was a shame; he seemed like a nice guy.
If they were under different circumstances and she had never met
Sebastian she might be looking at him in a different way. As it
was, only Sebastian filled her thoughts—there was no room for
anyone else.

Using
her key, she opened the front
door.

“
I guess I don’t need to
tell you where the office is,” she said. “You must be getting to
know your way around by now.”

“
Sure,” he grinned.

Bently mounted
the stairs toward
Jackson’s office, and Serenity followed. Each time she entered the
small room, nausea clamped down on her stomach. The atmosphere was
like being swamped in the essence of Jackson. Just the smell
brought back terrible memories.

Filled with anger, she swept a pile of
girly magazines off the desk and into the trash. Half of them fell
out on the floor and she bent down and gathered them up, stuffing
them back in. However, old beer cans already filled the trashcan
and most of the magazines only fell out again.

“
Damn it,” she
swore.

R
emembering the other person in the room,
she straightened up and ran a hand through her hair.

“
I hate mess,” she said in a
small voice. She felt as though she’d been discovered picking her
nose or squeezing pimples; an embarrassing intrusion on a private
moment.

Officer Bently watched with a faint frown
on his face—the one he seemed to get when something troubled
him.

“
You don’t seem at all worried
about your husband coming back,” he said. “Won’t he be pissed at
you throwing his stuff out?”

“
I don’t care if I never see
him again,” she said.

“
His type can be extremely
controlling, yet you don’t seem bothered.”

“
Oh, I’m bothered. I’m just
good at hiding it.”

Officer Bently pulled the office chair
toward him and sat down in front of the computer. His fingers
rested on the keyboard for a minute and then he turned back to
her.

“
Here’s the thing, Serenity. Most
women with abusive husbands are scared of their own shadows. You
seem different. I struggle to imagine you putting up with someone
who harms you.”

“
I guess something changed when I
found out I wasn’t the only woman in his life.” She put her hand to
her mouth, trying to think of a way to explain her situation to
someone who had probably never experienced emotional abuse in his
life.

“
I know you won’t understand,”
she tried, “but even when he hit me, I thought he loved me. Any
attention was good attention. I told myself he must really love me
to be so protective and passionate, even if his way of showing
affection was bad. He used to cry afterward, tell me how sorry he
was. I believed him at first, I honestly thought he regretted what
he did, but after years went by and nothing changed, the love
turned to hate.”