Deadly Expectations (34 page)

I got my pants on and found my shirt.

“I’m not running Paul, or leaving.
 
I’m just going downstairs.
 
If you say that my being here now just hurts you more I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on my way out.
 
You’ll know where to find me.

“I love you forever,” I reminded him.
 
“It’s our future I’m trying to protect.
 
He said I was made to bring peace to a family I didn’t even know I had and no, it doesn’t seem worth it at all.”

I got up and made my way toward the door.
 
Paul blocked me so I looked up at him in the dark and waited.
 
He tentatively put his hand up on my heart then slid it up my neck to my face, letting his fingers curl around into my hair as his thumb moved over my cheek.

“I have never been as angry with anything as I am right now with what you
did
,” he told me, his nose brushing my forehead.
 
“I don’t even have the words for what I’m feeling.
 
Maybe in a few days … a week.
 
I need time to cool down.”
 
His lips were on my forehead, then my nose.
 
“If I didn’t still love you completely I wouldn’t have spent the last week trying to find the nerve to pull the trigger.”
 
My ear, my neck.
 
“No strings Anna … just come back to bed.”

Paul woke me up later, climbing back into bed.
 
The curtain was open a bit and the sun was up.
 
He’d undressed and was pulling me in close again.
 
I put my arms around him to pull him to me then I put a hand on his face.
 
The beard was gone.
 
When I reached up to his hair it was back as I remembered it … most of the curls were gone.
 
I put my fingertips on his chin.

“Did I give you the greys?”
 
I asked.

“Yes,” he laughed a bit.
 
More like the easy warm laugh I loved so much.

“Where do you get your hair cut around here?”

“Ross … now
sshhh
.”

Chapter 31

My fingertips traced the loose ring I put on Paul’s finger.
 
Lunch was starting downstairs and I wasn’t in a hurry to go.
 
After what I put Paul through for the past two months I wasn’t looking forward to facing the unvoiced judgement of his men.

“I fixed the heat in here,” I told him.

“I noticed,” Paul answered.
 
“What was wrong with it?”

“It was blocked … you didn’t do that?”

“No.
 
It just didn’t work this year,” he said.
 
“You keep me warm enough … I didn’t bother to look into it.”

“Who else would have put it there?” I asked him.

“Put what there?”

I showed him my palm.
 
It still had the small triangular puncture in it.
 
“I stabbed myself on it when I pulled it out the night before I left.
 
I kept it and put the shirt back in.
 
I thought you put it there and I didn’t think you would want me to keep it so I put the shirt back so you wouldn’t know I found it.”

His dark mood had flashed briefly on his face before he pushed it back.
 
I took the knife from my bag and lay it on the bed.

“It killed Catherine,” I told him.
 
“It was wrapped in an old dirty shirt of some kind.
 
It’s downstairs now with the sheets I took off last night.

“It’s mine now … it’s complicated but I need to keep it,” I told him.
 
“Did you … have any trouble from Damian while I was gone?”

“No.”

My mind wandered to the kitchen and I shivered as I traced past the seats by the window.
 

“I know why … one of the men at the table isn’t yours.
 
He knew I was gone … maybe he blocked the heat.
 
Thought you would find it … or I might and blame you.”

Paul went for his clothes.

“Let’s go Paul.”
 
I was getting dressed too.
 
“I’m not sure which one he is … just that he’s at the table now.”

I put on my gun and headed for the door.

“No … you stay here,” his arm around my waist stopping me.

I lifted my chin to face him.
 
“Do you think he has any chance of moving even a couple of inches on me before I have his own knife at his throat?
 
That’s not why he’s here anyway.
 
We can’t tip him off …”

He stared at me; the coldness returning to his eyes.

“Paul … I know it’s your job to protect me right now … and I’m not making it easy.”

He took a few deep breaths to settle down.
 
His arms tightened around me and he didn’t speak until his hold on me softened.

“Remember the night when we met when I told you the truth would never hurt me?” he asked.

The shame I felt was crushing.
 
I looked away.

“I remember,” I told him.

“Be straight with me Anna.
 
Are you going after Damian?”

I didn’t hesitate.
 
“Yes.”

He winced.

“Why?” he asked slowly.
 
He didn’t want to know.

“Death by a knife in my hand will break him … or anyone like him.
 
He won’t remember any more.
 
It’s what I was made for.”

I stepped in closer to him to avoid the dark stare.
 
“I was made to want to finish him.
 
Even pregnant I’m faster and better skilled than he is.
 
And when it’s over those things about me will go away.
 
I’ll need you again for all the things you expect your wife to need you for, not just most of them.”
 
I sighed.
 
“If you want me to stay up here can you bring me up something to eat?
 
Or do you want me to come down and try and figure out who it is?”

He thought; pushing back anger at the past to deal with the present.

He decided.
 
“Come down … but stay close to me, okay?”

“Okay Paul.”

He put his arm around my waist and pulled me in tight as we went down the hall.
 
Part way down the stairs he grabbed the railing and rubbed his eyes.

“Suddenly I felt like my eyes fell down into my feet,” he explained.

I laughed quietly.
 
“I thought I did all the work.
 
That’s my one hour warning that the black sleep is coming.
 
Eat fast and get back to bed; you can’t fight it when it hits.”
 

“Okay,” he yawned.

The sudden silence in the room said everything.
 
I took a quick look around the table and all eyes were on us.
 
Paul pulled me closer and loudly cleared his throat, almost growling.
 
He sat me next to Ray and filled up two plates for us.
 
I gave him a quick smile as he sat but his eyes were already scanning the faces around the table.
 
I whispered in his ear.

“I can be less obvious about it …”

He nodded.

I started with the end of the table by the window, letting my mind just float lightly among them.
 
I chewed absently waiting for something to come to me.
 
Nothing.
 
Just the sense that he was at that end of the table.
 
I realized that I had been looking for what I had seen before in the other three.
 
The smudges.
 
This one wasn’t like Paul, or Damian.
 
I wasn’t sure what to look for now other than maybe a weak version of Damian’s flavour I had tasted so strongly in the first three.
 
Or maybe even smelled but that wasn’t it either.
 
It was like I used some sense organ between my nose and the roof of my mouth.
 
Paul nudged me with his knee under the table.
 
I sighed; nothing yet.

I decided to target them one at a time to see what might make one of them stand out.
 
After spending some time lingering in a few of them I got to Rice.
 
There was something different about him.
 
I couldn’t put my finger on it.
 
He just didn’t quite fit.
 
I moved along through the others.
 
I was almost done eating by the time I had finished going through that end of the table.

BUTTON!

I jumped in my chair.
 
Paul tensed next to me so I tried to stay relaxed and dismissed the distraction.
 
My focus went right back to Rice but I kept my head down and tried to keep eating.
 
More like pushing the last of my food around looking like I was still eating.
 
Rice stared up toward the ceiling, withdrawn from what was going on around him.

BUTTON!

It hit me again and it wasn’t just the word … it was the overwhelming and sickening sudden violence that I felt with it.
 
Like an explosion of massive and overpowering rage.
 
Maybe it was an experience he’d had.
 
Some horrible event he’d lived through in his past that he kept finding himself in like I seemed to exist in the carnage of the plane crash.
 
Paul was watching me.
 
I looked back, my mouth trying to open in bewilderment.
 
The cold quick obliteration I pulled from Rice started to sicken me and I felt myself starting to go white.
 
I was going to throw up.

I took a few sips of water and focused on Paul.
 
As I tried to pull myself together he started to droop.
 
“Upstairs,” I got my hands on him.

“Ray,” I said quietly.
 
“I need help … get him out of here.”

He looked and saw Paul going over.
 
The distraction was enough for me to push Rice back out of my mind.

“Denis …” Ray said.
 
The room started to go quiet again as the others noticed what was going on.
 
We got him up and out of the kitchen while his legs still worked.

“What’s the matter with him?” Denis asked.

“Get him up to bed,” I told them quietly.
 
They each took a side and we started for the stairs.

“Anna …” Paul mumbled.
 
“Brief the officers if you found anything.”

“Yes Paul … bed.”

We got him half way up when his legs quit working and they had to haul him the rest of the way.
 
I had no idea how the three of them fit up the stairs at the same time.
 
The stairs weren’t exactly wide and the three men weren’t exactly narrow.
 
They got him up to the bed.
 
We got his boots and pants off and covered him up.

“Is Joshua here?”

Ray shook his head.
 
“He went to Paul’s parents place before Christmas.
 
We’re overcrowded … nobody in the field right now.”