In Harm's Way

She stopped abruptly, locked in a stare.

Walt turned back, following her line of sight to one of the hall’s two center doors, just closing. His sheriff’s instinct was to jump up and hurry into the hallway to see who was out there. But he kept to his seat.

Kira then searched and her eyes found Fiona, who nodded back at her reassuringly. Some heads turned in the direction of their table. Kira’s eyes finally fell back to her notes and she continued speaking.

“But the emotional healing, the real healing,” she continued, “well… it really does take a village.”

Walt turned and reached out to both reassure and congratulate Fiona for her mentoring of the girl, but the chair stood empty, Fiona gone.

Eyes darting around the room, assuming Fiona had gone up to greet Kira as she left the stage, he found his vision blocked as an appreciative audience rose to its feet. Walt stood, tempted to climb up onto his chair, cursing his five-foot-seven frame.

Instead, he seized the moment, ducking out into the hallway, moving toward the restrooms-thinking Fiona might have gone there-but then, upon seeing a pair of bellmen outside, approached them.

“A woman?” Walt inquired. “Cream-colored top. Black purse. Maybe left just now.”

“Didn’t see her.”

“Don’t I know you?” the other bellman asked.

Walt ignored it, wondering if the kid had been in trouble or just knew his picture from the local paper. “How about a guy?” Walt said.

“Big guy? Yeah,” said the first bellman.

A couple came out-the exodus was under way-and the guest handed the second boy his valet claim stub. The kid took off at a run.

“Yes, the big guy,” Walt said, trying to hold the other boy’s attention. The rush of people wanting their cars was suffocating. Walt presented his sheriff’s shield, held down low. The boy caught sight of it. “The big guy,” he repeated.

“Came and went. Wasn’t inside more than, like, two minutes.”

“How big?”

“Solid Snake,” said the kid. “You know, Metal Gear, Sons of Liberty?” Reading Walt’s bewilderment, he added, “PSP? Gaming?”

“Uhh.”

“Huge, stupid huge. Ridiculous.” A valet stub stabbed at the kid and he accepted it. “Sorry,” he said to Walt. He took off.

Walt fought up-current against the departing guests and reentered the half-empty conference hall. He located his host and thanked him. He made his way toward the stage and awaited his turn with Kira.

“You seen Fiona?” Kira asked him immediately. Guests broke in, congratulating her. She shook hands with several of them. Walt wanted a private moment with her but wasn’t going to get it.

“Restroom,” he said. It was the only explanation that made any sense; Fiona wasn’t leaving Kira in the lurch. “You paused,” he said. “You were looking toward the doors.”

She shook her head as if by doing so she might convince him it hadn’t happened.

“Please,” he said.

“Roy Coats,” she said, lowering her voice and naming the man who had raped her, a man Walt had watched die. “Just a flashback. They still happen. Why it had to be right then… but I suppose it was because I was talking about it. I don’t talk about it much.”

“Did he look like Coats?” Walt asked.

“No,” Kira answered. “It was him.”

“Ms. Tulivich… Kira?” A woman wearing too much perfume pushed in front of Walt and he lost his moment.

He turned and looked back toward the center doors, imagining how it must have felt for her to see an image of Roy Coats listening in on her recovery speech. He lived with his own demons: memories of bloody murder scenes he couldn’t shake, traffic accidents, his killing a man in the backcountry, an incident with his father when he’d been nine years old. Things he didn’t talk about. He envied her ability to talk to counselors, to free the demons, to break the silence of those terrors.

People milled around him and for a moment it was almost as if he wasn’t there. He might have been a table or chair they were dodging. He’d internalized, he’d sunk beneath the surface and was kicking like mad to reach the air above.

Fiona wasn’t returning; he knew it without checking for her. He couldn’t imagine what would have taken her out of the room at that, of all moments. She had practically adopted Kira, had installed her into the Engletons’ main house as her associate caretaker. Abandoning her in the last few lines of her talk seemed impossible. Unthinkable.

Or, he wondered, had Fiona also seen whoever had been at the back of the room?

He reached for his phone and called her. It jumped straight to voice mail-the phone was turned off.

He had a vision of her reacting to whatever message she’d read on her phone. Had the message-some kind of personal emergency-caused her to leave? Should he stop by her place on his way home? Or was that overstepping his bounds, given that she’d shut off her phone?

He slowed the Jeep at the highway entrance to the private road leading to the Engleton and Berkholder properties. He didn’t need an excuse to check up on her, but she was also a woman who appreciated her space, and in the end he gave it to her, reluctantly.

Tie loosened, his suit coat slung over the back of a dining-room chair, Walt enabled the Skype software as he had for each of the past eight evenings and then checked on the girls.

He found Lisa asleep atop Nikki’s bed covers, a book in her lap. In her late thirties, Lisa still had the look of a woman much younger, and the energy to go with it. Catching her in a catnap was a rarity. He gently shook her awake, the intimacy of the moment not escaping him. He hadn’t felt the warmth of a sleeping woman in a very long time.

Walt nearly gave Nikki a goodnight kiss, but decided against it as she was such a light sleeper. He turned around and instead planted a kiss onto Emily’s cheek. She could sleep through an earthquake. Lisa hopped up and adjusted the blinds and shut the door as they left together.

“Any problems?” Walt asked.

“Smooth as silk.”

“Did Nikki say anything about Gail?”

“Didn’t mention her. Not to me.”

That was a first. Nikki was obsessed with using their marriage separation as an excuse. “Then you should be around more often,” he said, realizing too late a man didn’t say that to a happily married woman.

“It takes time.”

“They’ll never get over it. Nikki, she may not even get past it.”

“Sure she will.”

“Maybe Em’s hiding it all, but she doesn’t seem affected. She’s moved on, I think.”

“Nikki’s the one to watch, for sure. What’s the schedule this week?”

“There’s a city council thing on Wednesday,” he said, “and a Search and Rescue exercise on Thursday. A Chamber event on Friday night that I’m hoping to duck.”

“Wednesday and Thursday are no problem and I’ll keep Friday open just in case.” She paused. “Listen, Walt, I have a favor to ask.”

“Name it,” he said.

“It’s a big favor,” she cautioned.

“Let me be the judge of that,” he said.

“My neighbor’s daughter. She’s fifteen. Eight weeks pregnant. She’s blaming it, or attributing it, or whatever, to her boyfriend. I don’t know the boy, but I’ve seen him and he looks like a decent kid.”

“It happens. Do you want to make sure he steps up?” Walt offered.

He wasn’t familiar with the look on her face. She’d been helping with the girls since just after their birth, well before the separation. She’d learned to read his moods, knew when to keep her distance, when to try to get him talking; he’d learned that nothing ruffled Lisa, that she was one of those people who moved from good to better and back to good. She didn’t complain. She didn’t back down. But somehow she kept herself and everyone around her on an even keel. Her current expression of perplexity, concern, and fear was something new to him.

“Or maybe not,” he said, when she failed to speak.

“I think it’s the stepfather’s.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, her vision locked onto his neck.