Blood of Cain (Sean O'Brien (Mystery/Thrillers)) (43 page)

Max barked.

“Sometimes it’s quiet,” I said, as Kim turned toward the back porch and approached the door. Max stood on her hind legs and cocked her head, almost smiling at Kim.

“Max,” she said, “what are you doing in there?”

“She’s doing what watchdogs do … keeping an eye on this part of the property.”

“Can she come out?”

“Sure.”

Kim opened the door and Max almost jumped into her outstretched arms. “How are you girl? I’ve missed you.” She petted Max, then stood, her eyes rising up to mine, the light of the moon in her wide pupils. “I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here.”

“The thought crossed my mind. First, tell me how are you doing, how are you feeling?”

“Good as new, for the most part. My body’s healed, my psyche is getting there.” She smiled. “The reason I drove out is because Dave said you might be going out of town. He said a lot of stuff happened to you, but he wouldn’t get into details. Anyway, I thought I’d offer to watch Max if you’d like. My sister went back to her home. Max could stay at my house until you got back. We’d do girl things. Watch sappy movies and eat popcorn out of the same bowl.”

I smiled, glanced down at Max. “How about it kiddo, you want to hang with Kim? Remember, she cooks better than me.” Max tilted her head and barked. “There’s your answer, Kim. I’d pack her bag, but she travels light. Let me show you the river while you’re here.”

We walked down to the dock, the three of us, Max scampering ahead, running to the end of the dock. The bullfrogs sang baritone on the riverbank and perched on half-submerged cypress knees. The moon lit the river and the national forest with an ethereal light that appeared to hover through the tree limbs and over the surface of the river.

We sat on the wooden bench I’d built months ago, Kim looking at the stars and the silent flow of the dark water. A great horned owl hooted, its call coming from a dead cypress tree on the edge of the national forest. I pointed to three white-tailed deer standing where my backyard merged into the forest, the deer nibbling from a mulberry bush. They looked our way and then drifted back into the pockets of shadow under the trees.

Kim hugged her upper arms and said, “This is powerful … earthy … I feel it in my soul. It’s like some kind of an enchanted land, the full moon off the river, the owls, deer—even the bats, and look over there, I’ve never see so many fireflies in one place.”

“To the left of the cabin is a shell mound. It was used by the Timucua Indians for a century or two as a sacred burial ground. A friend of mine, a Seminole, his name is Joe Billie, tells me this spot above the river is hallowed ground.”

Kim smiled. “You mean haunted ground?”

“No more than any cemetery, I suppose. I think the ancient mound is a place to respect and hold in a higher light.”

She raised one eyebrow, her eyes feisty. “So Sean O’Brien’s never seen ghosts?”

“Well … I didn’t say that.”

She lifted my drink from the end of the bench, sniffed, her eyes even more playful. “The good stuff, Jameson. I bet after a few of these you’d see ghosts out here.”

“Would you care for a drink?”

“Looks like you barely touched yours. Will you join me? But only one. I have to drive.”

We walked up to the cabin, Max following us after sniffing the spot where the deer had grazed. On the back porch I said, “This is a reversal. You’re always fixing drinks for me, Dave, or Nick, and now I have a chance to reciprocate. What would you like?”

“What do you have?”

“Jameson, of course. Vodka, gin, a few craft beers, and a bottle of cabernet.”

“The wine sounds nice, thank you.”

“Let’s go into the kitchen.” I uncorked my last bottle of cab, poured it slowly in a wine glass and handed it to her.

Kim sipped, closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the taste, her lips wet, and said, “This is good.” She looked around the kitchen and adjoining dining room with its knotty pine walls, ceilings, and cypress floors. “I love your cabin, which is more like a rustic home.”

“I’ll show you around.” She followed me throughout the house, stopping in what would be called a great-room in many houses. To me, it was a cozy den, a place to make a fire in the hearthstone fireplace, read a book, or watch an NFL game during the season.

She said, “This is so you, Sean. This room, this house, this place. It’s got a rough-hewn feel to it, yet the home is very comfortable. I like it.”

“Glad you do. It’s a little large for Max and me, but we like it here.”

“How’d you ever find this grand old home?” She sipped her wine and followed me onto the back porch, Max behind us.

“After Sherri died, I needed to get out of Miami. I resigned from the department, sold our house, and began looking for someplace remote, someplace to find stillness again. I always liked the St. Johns River, fished it years ago, and I found this place in an estate sale, the surviving family members at each other’s throats over ownership, sale price, you name it. No one had lived here in ten years. I made them an offer when they were in a compromising moment. They accepted, and ever since I’ve been replacing stuff—stuff like bathroom plumbing, wood around the house, the dock, fixed the roof twice. Please, sit down. I’ll be right back.”

I freshened my drink, brought the bottle of wine to the porch, and we sat on wicker chairs with overstuffed cushions. Kim curled her legs beneath her, holding the wine glass in both hands. Max jumped on the wicker couch and transformed into a reddish-brown ball, her chin resting on a toy squirrel she often carried from floor to chair.

Kim sipped from the glass of wine, the cicadas chirping in the oaks and palms, the nasal call of a nighthawk over the river. “Is that a picture of your wife?” she asked, looking at the framed picture of Sherri on the table next to the couch where Max slept.

“Yes, that’s Sherri about a year before her death.”

“She was beautiful.”

“Inside and out.” I stirred the ice in my glass and sipped the Jameson.

“She was your only family, right? At least until Courtney entered your life.”

“Sherri, and of course Max, were the only family members I had on the planet, or so I thought until all of this began unfolding. And it’s not unwrapped yet.”

“You mean determining whether Courtney is your daughter, the daughter from your relationship twenty years ago with Andrea Logan, right?”

“Wrong. Courtney is not my daughter. If she’s still alive, she’s my niece.”

“Niece?” Kim sipped her wine, took a long second sip, her eyes caring and confused.

“What Dave Collins didn’t tell you, Kim, is I found out my life, as I knew it was … it was a lie. I just buried my biological mother—someone I never knew existed. I learned that Courtney is the only child of a sister I didn’t know I had, and I discovered that a brother—my older brother … killed her.” I told her what happened.

“Oh, Sean … dear God.” She reached out and touched my hand. “I wish I knew what to say.”

“And that’s why I’m going to Ireland tomorrow.”

“Ireland?”

“That’s where it started when my mother was raped by the Catholic priest. I need to go back in time to alter the future, if I can.”

She sipped her wine again, slowly exhaled and set the glass on the table in front of her. A look came over her eyes that I’d never before seen in Kim. She spoke without speaking, reached for me without reaching to me, touched me without touching me—and she did it with such unreserved honesty it felt as if time somehow really stopped or at least slowed in a dimension that can’t be calibrated by a mechanical clock. It’s attuned and measured in heartbeats, in the pendulum motion and cycles of life itself.

I said nothing.

She spoke in a voice above a whisper, never looking away, focusing with all her spirit, her life-force on me. She said, “Sean, my heart aches for what you’ve gone through recently. You are such a good man to have such bad—no, such evil come into your life. If what’s happened from Senator Logan’s people wasn’t enough … you bury you mother and learn your brother would kill your niece if he could. I know you well, Sean. Call it a history … call it a connection. Just being a small part of each other’s world through the good times and the bad. I hurt seeing you hurt, and I know one thing. Tonight, on the eve of you traveling to Ireland to find the man who raped your mother … maybe even killed your father … tonight you don’t need to be alone. I believe we need each other, at least for one night. Can I stay the night?”

I set the house alarm, put Max in the great room, and held Kim’s hand, leading her into my bedroom. The bedroom was on the east side of the cabin, and moonlight poured in through the windows. I kept the lights off as we stood at the end of the bed and undressed, Kim laying her clothes across the chair at the small desk in the room. She stepped to the edge of the bed and held out her hand. I took it. She kissed my palm, never taking her eyes off of mine. Under the light of the moon, she stood nude, no tan lines, body firm and toned, breasts and hips flawless, like a Greek goddess. Her natural beauty took my breath away.

I touched her cheek, using one finger to brush a strand of hair from near her eye. I cupped her face in my hands and leaned down to kiss her lips. She responded with a kiss soft as the moonlight, lips warm, mouth slightly open. We kissed for a few minutes, searching, probing—the heat building between us. She looked up into my eyes and then at my chest. Her fingertips tenderly tracing the beaded scars across my chest. War wounds. She said nothing. And then she saw the birthmark on my shoulder. She touched it, her index finger moving slowly over each of the four images that resembled the leaves of clover, an Irish shamrock.

“Kim …”

“Shhh …” She pressed one finger to my lips. “Lean closer,” she said in a throaty whisper.

I lowered my shoulder and she stood on her toes, kissed my birthmark, her eyes never leaving mine. The last woman who’d touched the birthmark was my mother, touching a birthmark that consummated what she knew and felt—that I was her son. And now Kim pressed her full lips to my skin, like she might do if she found a four-leaf clover, picked it, and made a silent wish as she kissed it.

She used one finger to touch each spot that resembled a clover leaf and said, “This one’s for faith … this one’s for hope … this one’s for the spirit … and the leaf closest to your heart is for love.” She leaned in and kissed me again, this time her mouth searching, tongue touching mine, her passion rising.

I lifted Kim up and carried her to my bed, her brown hair fanning out over the white pillow cases. We kissed, intensely, her eyes tender, desire building, and her body arching up to meet me. As I entered her, she wrapped her legs around my hips, pulling me deeper inside her, kissing intensely, mouth voracious, moaning with each deep thrust. Our bodies fell into a perfect rhythm, slowing and building again and again. She uttered a sensuous moan, her eyes closing, her mouth slightly open, breathing fast. She looked up at me, her brown eyes expressive and caring, drawing me to her.

“Kiss me, Sean … kiss me.”

I kissed her, holding deep inside her body. She shuddered, a moan coming from her throat, both of us climaxing together. We lay there, neither moving, just breathing, the bedroom filled with moonlight. I kissed her on the lips and then withdrew, lying on my back beside her. She pulled the sheet to her breasts and turned toward me. She ran her fingers through the hair on my chest, touching one of my scars. She said, “Your wounds, the scars … how did you get them?”

“In the desert. The Gulf War. I was captured for a month.”

“You mean somebody did this to you. Tortured you?”

“Yes.”

“Sean, why haven’t you shared or told anyone about this?”

“Some things are better left in the past.”

“Maybe … but it can make us really appreciate the present. Maybe plan for the future a little better. You so much as said that on your porch. The reason you’re going to Ireland is to learn more about your past, to try and help Courtney, to help her future.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes you do, and that’s what makes you the man you are. You do have choices and you choose to take the high road, to do what’s good and right. I heard Dave Collins tell Nick at the bar one night that the meaning of life is to find meaning in life, because without it, without purpose, then what’s really worth living for?”

“I think the challenge is beating or learning from the tests of pain and human suffering. Those things are inevitable. It’s what we choose to do about these trials that makes conquering them rewarding. Or as Nick puts it when he’s in the gym–no pain, no gain.”

Kim squeezed my hand and sat up, her body a silhouette against the moonlit drapes. She looked toward the window and then back at me. “Sean, all this you’ve been through, whatever happened in the war, the crime on the streets you saw as a detective in Miami, losing the parents who raised you, losing your wife, finding and losing your mother … in a way you’ve been blessed. I know that sounds weird, but think of how you’ve survived—lived in spite of the dark side, the danger. Someone, maybe some
thing
—a guardian angel, is keeping you from harm because of the good you do here on earth. That doesn’t mean you don’t suffer, but you somehow survive to go on another day. I’ve never been a very religious woman in terms of traditional religion, but I have to believe there’s a purpose, a connectivity, between forces in life and even death. Why did Courtney walk into your life? From that day you saved her life, pulling those two men off her, to what you’re trying to do now, finding her again, righting the wrongs that happened to her, and even your mother, is a good and moral thing.”

She leaned over and kissed me, pulled hair behind her right ear and said, “It goes back to what Dave and Nick were talking about at the bar, the meaning of life is finding your meaning in life.”

I sat up and smiled. “You’re a smart and perceptive woman. And you’re a beautiful woman, on the inside and out.”

“Ahhh, you know how to touch a girl’s heart, Mr. O’Brien.” Her wide smile suddenly melted. “After tonight, after you come back from Ireland, after you face those dragons, I don’t want you to think you owe me anything, Sean. You have known the pain of finding and losing family, we’re your family at the marina. I’ve always been close you. I don’t need to be your wife, your girlfriend … anything more than a part of your family of people who care deeply about you, okay? This is important. Are you okay with that … because I am?”