A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense (2 page)

So this was how it happened. This was how five years of marriage ended—stuffed haphazardly into a red sports bag.

Craig finally faced her, his hands on his hips, his expression both guilty and boyishly defiant. “You’re home early. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I can see that.” She pressed her hand hard against her stomach.

The air in the room lay flat, fatally quiet. His mouth worked silently, and his eyes scanned the room before at last settling on her face. “I’m leaving, Camryn.”

His words slapped her, and she balled the hand she was holding to her stomach. “I get that, too.” Questions, too many of them, backed up in her brain; she couldn’t find one to start with.

His eyes shifted away from her, but his voice softened. “I tried to tell you, Cammie. I’m sorry.”

Sorry.
A glib, soft-in-the-mouth word intended to mollify, wash away sins, either heinous or venial, and assuage all hurts. It was like using a silk scarf to suffocate a fire. Not enough. Not nearly enough. “This isn’t about ‘sorry’ or what you ‘tried’ to do. This is about sneaking out the back door. This is about deception.” The words came before her feelings, feelings too varied and coming too fast to make sense of. “What in hell were you planning, Craig? To send me a postcard?”

“No, I—” He rubbed his neck.

“What, then?”

“I tried to tell you,” he repeated, his voice low. “But, damn it, there’s never a moment in this house since your dad landed in on us, when he isn’t hanging around, looking over our shoulders.”

“He’s only been here for a month.’ You’re using him as an excuse.” Her father’s sudden arrival, after virtually no contact in years, had shocked even her, but she wasn’t about to turn him away. She didn’t know how.

“It’s almost two months! And he’s in our face, day in, day out. And it doesn’t look as if that’s going to change anytime soon.”

“He’s having a hard time right now.” A weak defense, but the best Camryn could offer when it came to her father.

“He’s the goddamn master of hard times, Camryn, and you know it.” He stopped, let out a noisy breath, and looked upward, like he always did when he was trying to settle his anger. “But you’re right, he’s not the reason I’m leaving. Not all of it, anyway. But him coming here? Living here? It took up what was left of the space in our lives. And that makes him the last straw.”

Camryn rubbed a knuckle along her lower lip. What was happening here had nothing to do with her father. This was about—her face heated as her heart tumbled—something else entirely, something . . . irreconcilable. “If you wanted to talk,” she said, “we could’ve talked. We sleep together, remember? Right here in this room, all alone, not a father in sight.” She waved a hand, buying time, ignoring her own insincerity, not wanting to go where the real problem sat poised like a scorpion.

“Yeah.” He looked at the bed she’d waved her hand over, and his expression turned rueful. “I guess you could call it sleeping together.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “And if you’ll check your memory banks, you’ll remember my pitiful male efforts to tell you how I felt about the way things were going between us. That I wanted to . . . ease up on things for a while.”

Ease up on things . . .
Oh, yes, she remembered—that exact and terrifying phrase. And she remembered brushing his words aside, certain he’d come around to her way of thinking as he’d always done. Guilt struck a glancing blow, then another, this one sharp with accusations of her selfishness, her blindness. She’d known his feelings, and she’d ignored them. Now she was watching him pack a red bag. Watching him leave. Watching her dream leave with him.

“You don’t have a stupid bone in your body, Camryn. You had to see this coming. You
had
to.” He took a few steps away from her. “Your dad showing up? Hell, he was just the icing on a fallen cake.”

“It’s about the . . . baby, isn’t it?” The words tumbled out on a rush of breath and honesty in a question that frightened her more than losing her husband.

“The baby . . .” he repeated, and again shook his head.
“Jesus.”

“The truth, Craig. You owe it to me.” Even as the words escaped her, she wanted them back. Truths were unpredictable and fearsome, like snakes, venom-packed and lethal. Truths were turning points.

He hesitated, then put his hands back on his hips and faced her, but he didn’t speak right away. He seemed to be looking for the right words. “Okay . . . It’s about
the baby
—the baby we don’t have, can’t have. The whole getting- pregnant thing you’re into—”

“I thought you were with me on that. We talked about it.”

“It was the
only
thing we talked about.
Ad nauseum.
And I was with you at the beginning. But I didn’t think we’d end up selling our souls to the fertility industry.”

“Then this is about money?”

He shook a negative. “No. Money’s the least of it. It’s about . . . this drug, that drug, this clinic, that clinic, this test, that procedure. We’ve been on the get-a-baby treadmill since we got married, with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

“I just need to know—”

“You
do
know. But you refuse to accept it. You’ve had four doctors tell you the same thing. The last one, what’s his name? Andrews. Only last week, for God’s sake.”

She had the insane urge to cover her ears. Dr. Andrews, yet another reproductive endocrinologist, had been the frankest and most direct of all of them. He’d put her chances of conceiving at “around minus zero.”

“That doctor was—”

“Right,
Camryn. That doctor was
right.
Confirmed to the letter everything you’d heard before.”

“There’s still a chance.” She had to say those words, had to, even while hating the sliver of doubt embedded in them.

Craig shook his head. “You won’t let go. You’ll never let go. You’re obsessed, Cammie.” He paused. “And I’m . . . not.”

Camryn unclenched her hands, forced herself to calm. He was right. She was determined, and focused. She didn’t know any other way to get what she wanted, what she needed from life. “I see.” Somehow, hearing the utter blandness of her response brought some degree of acceptance to her mind. Craig was leaving. She’d survive.

Craig shook his head. “You still believe it will happen, don’t you?”

“Whether I do or I don’t doesn’t matter.” She took a step toward him. “There’s more, isn’t there?” She wanted it out, all of it. It was the only way she could deal with it.

After a long silence, he said, “Yeah, there’s more, and it shouldn’t matter—me being such a caring, contemporary kind of guy.” He took a breath, then his eyes met hers directly. “It’s the sex. Maybe you don’t remember, but we used to make love. And afterwards we held each other . . . touched each other, laughed with each other. We didn’t have intercourse on the clock and by the book, and we didn’t spend an hour after sex—very
tense
sex—reviewing the odds of my sperm meeting up with your egg and heading upstream from there.” He hesitated. “Lately? I guess you could say the sex is running ninety-percent procreation and ten-percent masturbation.” He shouldered the sports bag and picked up the suitcases. “I’m done, Camryn. I’m gone.”

She swallowed, knew his words came from justified frustration, knew they were true. But, still, they cut deep.

Yet, sadly, not deep enough to bleed.

“Then there’s nothing more to say.” Her words were stiff and tight, but all she had. She suddenly wanted him gone, wanted the emptiness of the house, an endless silence to paw through her mess of feelings. Dear God, there was actually relief buried in there, a weird warmth that had no place in the chill of a marriage failure.

When he reached the bedroom door, he looked back at her. “You know, I didn’t figure you’d try too hard to stop me, and it looks as though I was right.” His own words seemed to hurt him. “The truth is I think you stopped thinking of me as anything more than a sperm donor a long time ago.” He dropped his head a moment, then straightened. “I’ll get the rest of my things later.”

She nodded. “I’ll have them packed for you.”

“And there’s something else you need to know. There’s no other woman, Camryn. Never has been. I didn’t cheat on you. You’re better than that. I’m better than that.”

He walked out and silence entered.

Camryn sat stone-still on the edge of the bed. For a moment, she had the insane wish there had been another woman, some noxious female she could call nasty names and hate. It would be easier to take than losing your husband because you were lousy in bed and your womb was a black hole. A vacuum.

Nothing grew in a vacuum.

She covered her mouth, stayed a sick laugh edged with hysteria.

Craig was right. She was obsessed, deaf to the countless doctors who’d told her she’d never conceive a child of her own. She’d refused to believe them, because hope was all she had, hope and the entrenched notion that if you wanted something badly enough, you didn’t quit. Ever.

Maybe she’d been wrong . . . Even her mother had told her to let go, to accept her infertility and move on.

But more than anything else in the world, Camryn wanted a child. When she’d attended Kylie’s delivery, watched that precious new life jerk and cry in the doctor’s hands before being placed in Holly’s arms, her heart had filled with a longing so intense her knees had weakened.

Call her obsessive, call her fixated, call her plain crazy; none of the tags mattered, because somewhere deep inside, there was a pool of love, a very special love meant for a child. Her child.

Or so I always thought . . . .

It wasn’t as if she couldn’t carry on, keep trying. She didn’t need Craig . . . or any man. There were other options. Options that offered a world of waiting, a world of disappointments. The idea of them weighed on her, exhausted her.

She stood, walked to the window overlooking Lake Washington, and leaned her forehead against the cool glass, hurt and weariness sapping her resources, making her feel lost, outside herself.

“You had to try, Camryn Bruce, you had to travel that road. You had to take it as far as it would go.” She blinked, then blinked again, feeling no regret, only emptiness. “And now you’ll have to travel another . . .” She lifted her head, stared vacantly at the still autumn waters of the lake, and let the tears flow.

The trouble was she had no idea what road it would be.

For the first time in months, Holly Lambert felt free. Free of worry. Free of guilt. Free of her rotten decisions.

Closing her eyes, she savored the peace that came with visualizing her future without him. Finally and forever, the mess she called a life was cleaned up. Purged. If she were any happier she’d break apart, the pieces of her floating away like butterflies. She almost laughed at her own silliness, but smiled instead. She’d save the laughter . . . for when she could share it, when she’d told him her decision.

It’s over. Done. At last. Irrevocably done.

She’d done what she had to do. She had a second chance—or sure as hell hoped she had—and she didn’t intend to mess it up. There’d be no more stupid mistakes. She’d get it right if it killed her.

Pulling her long auburn hair into a hasty ponytail, she breathed deeply.

The morning air was autumn sweet, scented with pine and rain-dampened moss. The sun sent shafts of light through the trees to kiss the cool earth. Mist rose lazily from the ground, curled around the trunks of maple and birch, then disappeared. Its time spent.

She stretched, first one long tanned leg, then another, and rolled her head, circling her strong, straight shoulders. Impatient to get started, she took a drink of water and another lung-expanding breath.

Shifting her gaze to the path in front of her, she happily anticipated the five miles of running-high and heart-pumping solitude that lay ahead. The narrow lane, dense with brush and trees on either side, was soft-packed earth, bare and inviting—a commercial for Nike or New Balance.

Before tugging her T-shirt down, she patted the words scrawled in bold blue italics across its front.
Life is good.
She ran, gained speed and ease with each stride, thinking of all the good things that would flow from her finally having made the right decision for her and Kylie. Now all she had to do was convince Dan.

Yes! For the first time in years her shapeless old running tee had it right. Life
was
good. Damn good!

A mile down the trail, she learned something else.

Life was short . . .

“Hi.” Surprise made her stop abruptly. “What are you do—”

Falling…

One last, searing thought. Kylie!

One last desperate breath
.

One last beat of her healthy heart.

A person clad in coveralls and wearing a hairnet and rubber gloves stares down at her through eyes shot through with shock and fear.

The lithe, strong body lay sprawled on a mat of fallen leaves, arms flung outward, one knee bent. Her head, which the bullet had cratered deeply on the left temple, is clotted with hair, filling up with blood and brain fluids; it rests on a bed of stones at the side of the path at an angle only death allows. A stream of red flows from her ear.

Even in death she’s beautiful. Always so beautiful.

When the tears start, a blood-spattered gloved hand brushes them away.

One shot, thank God. Only one shot.

The incongruity of thanking God for assisting in a murder is lost in the mind static, the after-blur of violence. The first cloud of sorrow.

A leaf, bright copper under a solitary ray of sunlight, adheres to the spittle and blood oozing from the corner of Holly’s mouth. Her eyes, shocked open by sudden death, stare upward, then inward to . . .

My soul! She sees my sick soul. A miserable, frightened soul repulsed by what its body has done.

The body’s heart pounds, threatens to burst with its pounding.

Had to do it, had to do it . . . No choice.

As a last act of kindness, the soul within yearns to close those damning eyes, but the body is repelled, immobile, unable to touch the blood and death it rendered.

There was love in life, laughter and shared history, but in the sin of killing, there is only cold fear and the void of death.