Bitten By Regret (Just One Bite #2) (7 page)

Diandra stood up and started pacing restlessly, her red
heels clicking quickly across the hard wood of the parlor's floor. "I
didn't have anything to say to you. I was angry with you and I still am, but
that does not mean I have avoidance issues. You are always so nasty and hateful
to Jonah. Yes, he's a bastard but he's still Rae's father. He deserves some
respect for that."

"And when did you decide this? Two days ago he was just
a sperm donor, remember? You said he had to earn your trust and consideration.
It's amazing how quickly that happened." Diandra wouldn't meet Lizbeth's
eyes but that was fine with Lizzie. She wasn't done having her say yet.
"And what about my feelings?
Don't I deserve any
consideration at all or is everything in your hands alone?"

"And just what is that supposed to mean?" Diandra
asked as her face reddened with anger.

Lizbeth glared at her coolly as she replied, "It means
what I said. I live here, too, and you say we're a couple. You say you love me.
You've got a very funny way of showing it. You've made all the decisions thus
far. I know RaeLynn isn't mine but I've always felt I had a place when it came
to her. I've loved her and cared for her before she was even born and you just
ignore me now. It hurts like a bitch, Dia." Lizbeth hastily wiped a lone
tear from her cheek.

Diandra sank onto the loveseat as the words and the pain
behind them sank in. "I didn't realize," she said finally. "I
have been doing just that, haven't I? I just wanted RaeLynn to have a chance
with her father. Our whole marriage Jonah and I wanted a baby and he never knew
about her until it was too late. I guess a part of me feels guilty about that.
You were there for every checkup, every purchase, every kick and craving and
then her delivery as well. He should have been there, not you." Lizbeth
looked crestfallen and Diandra hurriedly explained. "I don't regret having
you there, loving you and building our life together. It's only that this is
not how I planned things when Jonah and I married. I planned him being in my
life forever- that's how true love works, and I always thought he was my true love."

Lizbeth raised a tear-streaked face to Diandra. "And
now?" she whispered. "How do you feel now? I need to know. You owe me
honesty at the least."

Diandra sighed heavily. "I love you so much that I
don't know what to do with my feelings half the time. I don't love Jonah now; I
love who he used to be, or who I thought he was. I realize he's not the person
I thought he was back then, and I don't love who he has become, but I do regret
that things turned out as they did between him and I, and I regret that he
missed that early special bond with his daughter. I'm so sorry if this hurts
you- I don't mean to. I love you and only you, and I'm not leaving you for him.
I want him to be a part of RaeLynn's life, that's all."

Lizbeth sniffled a bit and wiped at her eyes before
responding. "I understand that, I really do. I believe she should know her
father but that doesn't mean you have to be there for their time together. That
doesn't mean the three of you need to go out to dinner together and rebuild
your life if you're serious about me and you're only doing all this for Rae's
benefit. Don't you see? You're giving him what he wants, or at least he thinks
you are. He thinks I'll be gone and the three of you will be a family
again," Lizbeth said in a pleading tone.

"I'll talk to Jonah- I'll make myself clear. And you're
right, if he wants to go out to dinner we will all go, putting the emphasis on
"all" so it was obvious she meant Lizbeth would be invited, too.
Lizbeth's look of relief loosened something inside Diandra; a knot she hadn't
even realized had been there as she went about her business and ignored the
problems brewing at home.

"So," Diandra said briskly. "Tell me about
work." At Lizbeth's look of confusion she clarified. "There's
obviously something bothering you so I thought it might be work-related. Unless
there's something more troubling you about us?" she queried.

Lizbeth shook her head. She flashed back to the sight of her
former colleague's body lying in the alley and suppressed a shiver. Funny, there
were some similarities between the discovery of his body and Jonah's, she
mused. Was it coincidence or design?

She cleared her throat before filling Diandra in on the
twist her case had taken. Diandra was silent but attentive as she listened to
the concise rundown in cop-speak. After she was finished Lizbeth took a deep
breath. "So I have to ask someone, and you're the only one I trust to ask
this of. Am I crazy to be seeing parallels between this and Jonah's
murder?" She held up a hand to make sure Diandra let her finish. "I
realize their bodies were not even remotely damaged in the same way. This was
definitely not a vampire attack as we know was the case with Jonah. But listen,
both involved drugs, both bodies were disposed of in alleyways, and drugs were
involved in both cases- Robbins was found with a lethal injection of the
tainted drug and the needle by his side, and Jonah was murdered because he
stole from the drug dealers and gun runners."

Diandra sat pondering everything for a while before she answered.
"Okay, there are some superficial similarities but some very large
differences in these cases," she began. "Was Robbins a known
associate of Carson?"

Lizbeth shook her head. "No more so than any other cop
who had a case tried by the former ADA.
 
That
would be a good portion of the cops in this area so no, it's not enough to
narrow down as a real connection between the two." She was frustrated and
Diandra was immediately sorry that she hadn't been more attentive these last
couple of days. Obviously Lizbeth had a lot of weighty stuff on her mind and
Diandra knew she'd been blowing all of it off as unimportant. She regretted
that and vowed the two would make time to talk. Now seemed like a great time to
start.

Chapter Twelve

The next day Lizbeth strode into the station with
determination. Bypassing her own office she gave a cursory knock on Alexar's
door before peeking in. Seeing him on the phone she raised an eyebrow at him
and he gestured at the chair across from his desk before returning to his call.
She sat as he wrapped up the phone conversation and looked at her expectantly.
"Out with it, Detective Snyder.
I know you well enough
to know you've thought of something."

She grinned at his office formality before clearing her
throat and acknowledging the statement. "Well, Commander Thompson, I have
a new thought pattern to it, anyway. I don't know if it'll lead anywhere
but…" she shrugged as he looked at her steadily, urging her silently to
continue. "Well, I was just wondering if I'm the only one who noticed the
similarities to the murder of former Detective Malone."

Alexar was stunned into silence. He opened and closed his
mouth a few times without speaking a few times. After digesting this new
thought process for a moment he nodded. "You have a valid point,
Lizzie," he said gruffly, dropping all pretenses of professionalism and
formality. "I wish to God you were wrong but you have a very valid point.
If I weren't still so blind to Jonah's faults I would have seen it myself.
Damn," he swore more to himself than to her. "This is something we'll
have to take care of ourselves then. Since no one else knows about Jonah's…
side jobs, no one else will see beyond two officers murdered in
alleyways." He rose from his desk to stand in front of his office window,
staring blindly out at nothing.

"Here's what we're going to do, Lizzie. We're going to
treat it like the last case- we'll work efficiently like the others here, and
we'll track down the obscure leads in our off hours, okay?' He nodded jerkily
to himself and Lizbeth was instantly sorry she'd clued him in. After all, she
knew that the one man who had survived the warehouse incident last month was a
vampire. Alexar was in the dark and he should have stayed that way about everything.
She knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing she could do, as she
clued him in to everything, but she'd hate for him to be hurt because of this.
An officer takes their shield knowing they may go down in the line of duty- she
didn’t want him to go down not knowing everything. Regretfully she swallowed
the lump of words that would tell him everything, tasting bile in the back of
her throat as she did so. She nodded at him and told him she'd keep him
apprised. Lizbeth fled to her office as quickly as she could and locked herself
in. Putting her head in her hands she fought the nausea brought on by guilt.
When she felt steadier she unlocked her door and sat back down to work.

*****

RaeLynn so loved the beach, Diandra mused as she sat in the
sand with the happy baby. After Lizbeth had left for work she had found herself
restless. Instead of sitting on the rear deck with her coffee she used the
sliding glass door in the parlor and took the steps down to the beach. She
wanted to play with her daughter instead of sitting idly by watching her play.

RaeLynn dug her fat baby hands into the sand, making little
cooing noises as the dry, warm sand gave way to the colder, damp sand
underneath. Diandra laughed as she watched the baby repeatedly pull her hand
out of one hole in the sand to move it to a fresh spot, cooing again as the
temperature in the new spot changed as well.

Dia shifted her gaze to the Atlantic Ocean stretching out
before her. There was a fog in the distance and even her keen vision couldn't
see past it to the horizon. It was almost as if the sky just continued all the
way down into the water- both sky and ocean were a dark blue color, nearly a
navy blue. She loved mornings like this.

She turned back to RaeLynn. At almost five months old she
looked more like a baby model as she sat in her pretty purple sundress than she
did a baby at play. Her strawberry blond curls caught the light and glinted a
golden color only a few shades lighter than her mother's bronze tones. Her
lavender eyes were bright with excitement as she continued her game of
sand-digging. Suddenly her eyes lost the laughter as she pulled something out
of the sand and held one chubby fist towards her mother.

Diandra took the object gently and a shiver of distaste ran
through her as she realized it was a dead sand crab. Anything that crept or
crawled disturbed her and these little guys definitely qualified.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. Mister Crab is dead- he went to
Heaven, that's all. We'll just bury him," she said as she pressed a kiss
to the baby's curls. RaeLynn made distressed noises, tears gathering in her
eyes as she reached for the crab with both hands. "Do you want to say
goodbye? I suppose that's not a bad habit to enforce now," she mumbled to
herself as she reluctantly cradled the dead crab in the palm of her hand and
held it out to her daughter.

RaeLynn took the crab gently again into her hand and closed
her other hand over the top. Her eyes closed tight in concentration before she
let out a giggle and held the crab back out to her mother. Diandra warily let
her deposit the crab's body into her hand once more, nearly dropping it when
she felt the legs scratch against her palm. She let out a shriek more of
surprise than disgust. She would have sworn the damned thing was dead, she
thought as she wiped her hand frantically against her own white sundress. She
watched as the crab scuttled to one of the holes RaeLynn had made in the sand.
It turned a bit almost as though it was watching her daughter, and then the
crab disappeared into the sand once more. RaeLynn let out a giggle as she
filled the hole back in with both hands. The sun shone bright overhead and the
day was going to be a scorcher, yet Diandra shivered in the sunlight without
really knowing why.

*****

A few hours later they still played on the beach. The tide
had come in and the water was closer to them now. RaeLynn giggled to herself
and made happy noises as she piled the wet sand up into her own version of a
sandcastle. A shadow fell over Diandra and she jumped up, scooped RaeLynn into
her arms, turned and hissed all in one smooth motion. Jonah stood behind them
hands held out to show he meant no harm as he chuckled under his breath.

"Easy now, hellcat!
I just
wanted to see how you both were doing. I figured on a day like this you'd be
out on the beach." Diandra reluctantly set her daughter back down in the
sand and Jonah lowered himself next to her, still grinning because he'd managed
to scare her.

"What did I tell you about calling first? What if
someone who knew you had been here? You know you can't be seen." Diandra
kicked angrily at the sand, refusing to settle back down and join them.

Jonah kept his eyes on the sand as he slowly built a little
sandcastle for RaeLynn. He'd participated in and won several of the local sand
sculpting contests and he could build most anything without any tools other
than his two hands. "I tried calling, Dia. You didn't answer the phone. I
called a half hour later and then again. When the third call went unanswered I
got concerned and came to make sure everything was okay." He was full of a
smug reasonableness that made Diandra want to punch him.

"First of all, Jonah, I told you that nickname is not
for you. We're not friends or lovers; we're a former couple trying to raise a
baby without being together. That's not friendship, it's being good parents.
Second, I am a vamp, too. If something was wrong I could take care of it
myself. I do not need your help or anyone else's. Third, if you show up again
without my okay I will ban you from visiting RaeLynn. There are rules that will
be set up for visitation and you will follow them or lose out on the right to
see her." Diandra was pacing restlessly as her voice grew louder. She was
mad as Hell and he needed to know she meant business. This wasn't his home any
longer, regardless of what he thought or how he acted. He had no right to show
up and disrupt all their lives whenever he had the urge to.