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“Yours?” he asked, admiring a photo of a black woman on a porch holding a small terrified child.
“Yes. Just after Katrina.”
“Powerful.”
“Thanks. So who was this guy with the gun? This sports guy?”
“Believe me, you don’t care. Just another guy with a gun who shouldn’t have been drinking. I gave him a warning.”
She seemed about to say something, but didn’t.
“No prowlers, I take it?” he asked.
“For the record, I tried to get Kira to take a trip with me. And that was before the campsite and the hikers. I’d just as soon not be here. For her sake, not mine,” she added emphatically-a little too emphatically, he thought. “She doesn’t need any more scares.”
He recalled seeing Kira with the bat and made sense of it.
“Gilly’s a good tracker,” Walt said. “I think we’ll catch this guy.”
“You’d get no complaint from me. But seriously, did he know it was this football guy? How weird is that?”
The water was begi
“He has a history with this guy.”
“What kind of history?”
“Money. You’re certainly the curious one tonight,” he said.
“I like staying up on your cases, knowing what you’re doing.”
“Since when?” he asked.
“Since… I don’t know. I just do. Particularly this prowler at the Berkholders’ or now at this other guy’s.”
“Could have been the same guy, I suppose, though that’s a long way to travel.”
“Not so very far.”
“That, and the Berkholders’ home was empty at the time. With so many homes empty in this community, why hit one where there’s a chance of ru
“Better stocked. Fresh food.”
“So, you’re the detective now?” He waited. “Hey, that was a joke.”
“Ha, ha.”
“Listen, Gilly and I found a spot with the grass beaten down outside the Berkholders’. This guy scouted the place, and timed it so no one was home. You don’t have anything to worry about here.”
“Which is why you parked the Jeep at the top of the hill where you can’t miss it?”
“You noticed that,” he said.
“Earth to Walt: I have a photographer’s eye. I don’t miss much.”
“No, you don’t, do you?”
His photographs had downloaded. She worked the laptop. Walt stood and looked over her shoulder, impressed with how she modified each one.
“That’s amazing,” he said.
“You can do anything to a picture. You know that.”
“You can. Not me.”
“Is it typical of squatters?” she asked. “Scouting a place like that?”
“Probably not.”
“No, I didn’t think so.”
“Keeping all the lights on is good,” he said. “He’ll stay away, if he hasn’t left the area already.” He paused. “Why do we make everything about the office? I didn’t come here to give you my camera. I thought about that at the last moment.”
“Then why did you come here?”
He barely hesitated. All the time spent thinking about this moment, the right situation, and it came down to no thought at all.
He bent down and kissed her on the lips. Her eyes expressed her surprise, but her lips, warm and sweet with wine, pressed to his more tightly, and then her eyes shut and her hands came around his head, and her body shook as if caught in guttural laughter.
He pulled back and she held on to him saying, “Don’t… don’t you dare stop,” kissing him hungrily.
Her chair went over backward, Walt throwing his arms around her and saving her from the fall, the weight and warmth of her pressed to him as he eased her to the floor, her hair spread like a fan on the throw rug. She was laughing, in fact, like a child opening an unexpected, yet long anticipated, gift. Their bodies touching, hands begi
Walt answered with smiling eyes, his fingers trapping a tear as it spilled down her cheek.
“Do we dare do this?” he whispered.
“You’re damn right we do,” she answered breathlessly, tugging the shirttail from his waistband and ru
Time arrested all thought. Walt fell away from himself, from his pla
When it was over, when the flush beneath her collarbone flared and her bare flesh rippled with gooseflesh, she opened her eyes to the ceiling and smiled devilishly, chortling to herself.
“Oh my God,” she said. She took him by the hair and tugged and laughed privately again and said more softly, “Oh my God.”
He answered not with words-couldn’t find any; they’d all deserted him-but with a squeeze of her hand and by lying next to her and hooking his ankle over hers so that their feet embraced as their bodies just had. They stared at the ceiling together.
“You must promise me,” she said, “that you’ll never pretend that didn’t happen. It’s all I ask.”
“Promise.”
Five minutes passed into ten. She offered little touches as if making sure he was still there beside her, as if reassuring herself. “There are moments you never forget,” she said. “This is one of them.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m not saying it has to happen again. I’m not saying it won’t. I’m just saying… it had to happen now and it did and we can’t have any regrets.”
“No. None. Not from me,” he said.
“You don’t have to court me, but you mustn’t ignore me.”
“Never. Not possible.”
“And I promise to keep it professional in public. I know that can’t be easy for you. I don’t want you worrying about that.”
“I’m not even thinking right now. I’m certainly not worrying about anything, except disappointing you, because I never want to, I don’t intend to. If I could wrap up all the happiness in the world into a package, if I could give you that, I would. Whatever the word means to you, whatever it is you want-I would give you that.”
“Then you’d wrap up yourself,” she said, her fingers absentmindedly finding his face and the tips of her fingers searching his expression like a blind person’s. Finding a grin, they pulled away, satisfied.
“I know you can’t stay,” she said, “but I want you to, you’re welcome to as long as you can. I’d like to fall asleep in your arms. I’d like to never wake up.”
“I’d like to take a shower with you,” he said. “To soap you all over.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
Later, he could hear the water still bubbling in the kettle, the chorus of night creatures-crickets, frogs, and things that go chirp in the dark; beneath it all he heard the steady, comforting sound of a cat purring and his eye finally lighted on the tabby balled up by a pillow on the loveseat, so still he’d not seen it.
“What’s its name?” he asked.
“Her,” she said. “Angel.”
He nodded.
“It never hurts to have an angel around,” she said. She wore a terry-cloth robe pulled tightly around her slim waist as she fixed them both tea and brought him a cup. He wore his uniform again, its shoulders damp from his wet hair.
She sat cross-legged on the couch.
He stared at her. The cat got up and climbed into her lap.
“I like this about you,” he said.
“The silence?”
“Umm.”
“Me, too.” She hesitated. “You were like an eighteen-year-old tonight.”
“Had a few, have you?”
She threw her spoon at him and hit him in the chest. He caught it as it fell and placed it on the coffee table.