Keeper of the Peace (Graveyard Guardians #2) (5 page)

“Come back later. I’ll be done here
soon.”

She didn’t hear him retreat. Nope, his
footsteps moved toward her instead. “I’m sorry, but I’m looking for
the body that was brought in from Lake County. Would this happen to
be the guy?”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and
cursed under her breath “Jeez! Do you not understand the meaning of
I’m working.” She spun around and faced the intruder. “Come back
later!”

The moment her eyes rested on the man in
front of her, her heart skipped and her stomach sank at the same
time. There stood the man who she had loved more than anyone except
her family. That very same man who had left her to move to Los
Angeles and never came back.

“David?” The words were out of her mouth
before she could think of something better to say. Like ‘get the
fuck out’ or ‘hey asshole, hope your life sucked as much as mine
did after you left.’ But, no, she could only manage to stumble his
name over her lips.

This fucked up day was never going to
end.

CHAPTER

4

DAVID

Time seemed to stop.

The facade of Detective David Foster fell
away and he was left with only David.

The sound of his name rolling off her lips.
Her dark red hair pulled back into loose bun at the back of her
head. Those big brown eyes staring him with surprise and anger. It
was almost an exact replay of the last day he had seen her.

He couldn’t even speak. He felt his mouth
open to say her name and nothing came out. The last person he had
expected to run into here was his ex-girlfriend. Those words,
ex-girlfriend didn’t even come close to describing Hannah. A better
description would be, the only woman he had ever loved.

She held some kind of sharp pointy tool
loosely in her fingers, but the moment her eyes settled on him, she
squeezed the tool so hard that her knuckles turned white. “Wha ...
what are you doing here?”

He was just as surprised to see her as she
was to see him. He knew that he would eventually run into her if he
was spending much time in Summer Hollow, but he had wanted to be
more prepared for their first encounter.

Shit, who the hell was he kidding? He had
replayed what he was going to say to her over and over in his mind
for the last twelve years. And what do ya know, it was all lost to
him the moment he set eyes on her.

“Hannah.”

A thick silence filled the air for about
half a minute and then he took a step toward her. She balked and
backed up, away from him. “Don’t.” Her eyes flashed with pain.
“Don’t come near me.”

“Hannah, I didn’t expect to see you here,
but…”

“No.” She cut him off before he could
apologize or say any of the words he had rehearsed for so long.
“You don’t speak to me. All those years you didn’t speak to me and
now shouldn’t be any different.” She glanced over at the body. “I
will be done with the report in a little bit. You can wait out in
the hall if you want.”

“Can you give me two minutes to
explain?”

She shook her head. “You already explained.
I don’t need to hear it again.”

“Please, Hannah.”

“Get out of here, David.” She pointed that
glittering, sharp tool at him.

He stepped back a few paces and lowered his
voice. “You know that we can’t avoid this forever.”

A bitter chuckle escaped her lips. “Why not,
you’ve managed to avoid it all this time. What’s another twelve
years?”

She had every right to be pissed at him. He
had known that when he finally saw her it wouldn’t be easy, she was
after all, Hannah Estmond, but maybe this wasn’t the right time.
“Fine, I’ll leave you alone. But I’m waiting out there for the
report.” He pointed at the door.

“Good.” She held her position, waiting for
him to leave.

His inner voices fought for control. The
little angel told him to bid her a polite goodbye and leave the
room quietly. But that damn little devil was whispering that he
should force her to listen, that he had the right to have his
say.

In the end, he opted for a combo of both. He
headed for the door, but when his fingers wrapped around the cool
metal of the knob, he turned back and faced her again. “Listen, we
are
going to talk soon. I need to apologize to you. I know
that you don’t owe me anything, but it’s something I have to
do.”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “You’re
right, I don’t owe you anything. But you … you owe me a new fucking
heart, cause you broke the last one into so many pieces it was
impossible to put it back together again.”

Good lord. He had ruined her life only to
make his better. What kind of an asshole does that? Unable to look
at her anymore, he pulled the door open and stepped out into the
hallway where he let out a long, uneven breath.

There were several chairs lined up along the
wall beside the door to the morgue, so he flopped down into one of
them and pulled out his phone. Hopefully he didn’t have to sit out
here too long. It was agony knowing that Hannah was on the other
side of the wall and she didn’t want to talk to him.

He swiped the lock on his phone, opened the
app for the camera and pulled up the pictures he had taken at the
scene. He squinted at the photos, trying to get a better look at
them. Sometimes he wished he had a bigger phone, just for this
reason.

Judging from the look of the handprints,
they wouldn’t be able to get a good print from them. But, the hands
were small, indicating it was a woman’s hand. Same with the
footprints, they were small. The more he looked at the prints, the
more he was convinced it was a woman who had killed the victim.

He swiped it over to the next picture. “What
is that?” he whispered, enlarging the photo so that he could get a
better look. The tread of the footprint was smeared in the mud, so
he couldn’t see the exact detail of the tread, but in the heel area
of the tread he could just make out a slight indent. The mark was
not consistent with the rest of the print.

He continued to stare at the picture. Maybe
a pebble or something had lodged up into the tread of the shoe. It
was hard to tell just yet, he was going to have to run these
through a computer so that he could blow them up and get a better
look.

With a sigh, he closed out the camera and
clicked off his phone. The hallways outside the morgue weren’t as
busy as the rest of the hospital so he couldn’t even pass the time
people watching, which only left sitting out in the hall like a
child who was being punished.

He knew it would be a while until she
finished with the paperwork, but he didn’t want to chance leaving
for a cup of coffee or anything, so he leaned back in the chair and
closed his eyes.

His thoughts should have been revolving
around the case, but the only thing he could think of was Hannah.
What would life have been like if he hadn’t left Summer Hollow? He
was fairly certain that they would have eventually gotten married
and probably even had a kid or two.

He would have joined the Summer Hollow
Police Department, since being a cop was what he had wanted to do
since he was thirteen years old.

They would have bought their own little
house outside of town and their kids would have gone to the Summer
Hollow school, just as they had. On Sunday afternoons they would go
over to the Estmond house for family dinner and their kids would
play with their cousins.

Wait, did any of Hannah’s brothers or
sisters even have any kids yet?

He suddenly realized that he didn’t know
very much about the life Hannah was living now. Maybe she had
gotten married and already had children. He left and she had to go
on. Why would he think that a woman like Hannah would still be
single, never mind pining for him all these years.

To his right, he heard a click as the door
to the morgue opened. He heard footsteps lightly make their way
over to him and then stop beside him. “Here’s your report,
Detective.” He opened his eyes just as a folder landed in his lap.
“Have a lovely afternoon.”

“Hannah.” He whispered her name as she was
turning to go back through the morgue door.

“Yes, Detective.”

He rolled his eyes and stood, grasping the
folder in one hand. “Stop calling me that.”

Her spine straightened and she squared her
shoulders before she turned to fully face him. “You are a
detective, aren’t you?”

Good grief, she was going to make this so
hard. He felt the tickle of anger flare up inside him. He knew that
she didn’t owe him a damn thing, but she should at least talk to
him, dammit. He tucked the folder underneath his arm and marched
toward her. “You know damn well that I am. Now do you have a minute
to talk to me?”

Her eyes widened as she recognized the old
David come out a little bit. For a second he thought that maybe she
would give a little, but instead she shook her head and opened the
door. She looked in and then back at him. “I’m sorry, I have a lot
of work to catch up on.”

“Hannah …”

“Sorry, Detective.” With those last words,
and tears welling in the corners of her eyes, she stepped over the
threshold shutting the door behind her.

God damn, those words hurt. She couldn’t
even say his fucking name. This moment was probably one of the only
times in his life that he resented his title of detective.

With nothing left to do but stare at the
door she had just shut in his face, he spun and hurried out through
the deserted hallway, not stopping until he was seated in the
stifling hot interior of his car.

For a moment, he just sat there, staring out
at the parking lot and thinking about how that could not have gone
any worse if he had tried to fuck it up. The more he thought about
it, the angrier he got with himself. “Shit!” He curled his fingers
into his palm and then slammed his fist into the steering
wheel.

He hit the wheel again and again until he
finally realized that beating the shit out of his car wasn’t going
to fix anything. He had to make this up to Hannah, he had to at
least try to make up for some of the pain he had put her though.
Only problem was he had no clue on how he was going to do that.

CHAPTER

5

HANNAH

“Oh, God.” Hannah released a sob as soon as
David had gone into the hallway, shutting the door softly behind
him.

She moved back over to the body and set the
scalpel down on the tray. Of all the people … of all the things
that could happen after the previous events of the day,
this
was what was chosen to top it off.

She took a deep breath in through her nose
and released it slowly from between her lips. Her whole body was
shaking, there was no way she could work on that body until she
calmed down. But, how in the hell was she supposed to calm down.
The only guy she had ever loved just walked back into her life and
he was investigating the murder she had committed.

Awesome. Just, awesome.

God, he looked amazing. His hair, his
clothes, his eyes. Dammit, everything about him made her want to
jump into his arms and tell him how much she missed him. But, at
the same time, she could never forget how he broke her heart.

He had just left her. Left for Los Angeles
never to be heard from again.

As the memory flashed through her mind she
felt the tears falling down over her cheeks. With a gloved hand she
swiped at the unwanted proof that he had hurt her so bad that she
could still cry over him twelve years later.

Fuck that.

Fuck him.

She had to shove this to the back of her
mind and deal with it later. This body had to get done and out of
here. Sniffing loudly, she ripped the rubber gloves off her hands
and tossed them in the trash. With a yank, she extracted another
two gloves from the box on the table and pulled them over her
hands.

It only took a few minutes for her to
compose herself enough to get back to work on the body, and it took
just that long for thoughts of David to consume her as well.

Not a day went by that she didn’t think of
him. After he left to L.A., she had gone to school and tried to
move on. She had always planned to be a medical examiner, but that
didn’t mean she had to leave the area like he did.

Aside from her mother’s death, getting over
him was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. Even then, at
least with her mom dying, she had closure.

School was lonely and hard. All she did was
sleep, eat and study. It did help take her mind off of David
though, so at least there was that. But it took her a long time to
get to a place where she didn’t hope for him to come back.

That last night after the dance, they had
gone up to their spot at The Springs and he ruined the perfect day
with the news that he would be leaving.

They were on the bridge, which overlooked
stone pools that filled with water when they released the dam in
the spring. In the winter they drained the water back into the
creek. She and David were both sitting with their shoes off and
their legs hanging over the moonlit water.

“Hannah, I have to tell you something.”

She turned and looked up at him. “What is
it?”

He didn’t say anything right away. “What?
David, what’s going on?”

Still, he kept silent and couldn’t look her
in the eye.

“Now I know this is bad.” She reached up and
turned his head toward her so that she could see his eyes.
“Seriously, what is it?”

She stared into his deep blue eyes and saw
that he was holding something back. Instead of asking him what was
wrong again, she took his hand and laced her fingers between
his.

“I’m leaving Summer Hollow.”

She felt her heart sink. That was not what
she had expected. There were a million other things that could have
made David act this way, with all the crap that went on with his
parents, but she didn’t think he would ever just pick up and
leave.