Today's Promises (23 page)

“He figured it all out, Flynn,” she says quietly. “Every last bit of it.”

“I could’ve warned you he was coming,” I mutter, “if you’d picked up before you got there.”

“I had no cell service,” she replies, which I know is the truth. “And, besides, it’s not like you knew what I was doing.”

She’s right on that one. Had I known I would’ve stopped her.

I blow out a breath. “Just thank God you’re okay.” And then it hits me, the full implications of her story. “Wait.” I peer over at her, confused. “How are you even here with me in this apartment? How are you not down at the police station, under arrest? Not that I’m not overjoyed that you
are
here, but
how
are you here?”

“Detective Silver let me go” is Jaynie’s easy-going response. Like this happens every day, the police letting criminals go.

“He let you go?” To say I’m in a state of disbelief would be an understatement.

“Yes,” she replies.

“Even after he admitted that he knew I stole the blood
and
that he’s aware we created fake evidence?” Before she can reply, I add, “Oh, and let’s not forget you were tampering with that fake evidence, pretty much right in front of his face.”

“Yes, I was,” she admits.

“Yet, after all that, he was willing to look away?”

“Yes, Flynn, that’s pretty much how it all went down.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why let us off the hook like that?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know, but let’s not question it too much. Let’s just be happy we finally have someone in our corner.”

Shaking my head, I reply, “That’s fine with me. But I’m still shocked. He always claimed to have our backs, and—”

“He definitely does,” Jaynie finishes for me.

Arching a brow, I say, “You
do
realize there is one bad thing in all of this, right?”

“That Allison will walk now,” she replies. “Yes, I know. But she would’ve walked anyway, if I’d destroyed the evidence.”

“Would you have, though?” I eye her intently, searching for the truth of how far she was willing to go. “Or were you planning on planting that shit somewhere else?”

“I never got that far,” she answers, looking sheepish and guilty as hell. “Detective Silver showed up prior to my deciding.”

Sighing, I say, “Well, it’s over. And it’s probably for the best all the way around. It’s not like it was real evidence.”

“True.” Jaynie crosses her arms and shakes her head. “God, though. I hate that there was nothing up there, nothing real, to keep Allison behind bars.”

Suddenly feeling more optimistic than I have in ages, probably due to the fact we received a huge break today, I say, “Hey, you never know. Maybe Detective Silver will feel compelled to look around one final time. And maybe something will turn up if he does.”

Jaynie then hands me her cell, and says, “Forget about maybes, Flynn. I think we should call him, beg him if we have to, but let’s make sure he takes one more look before he closes the case.”

Jaynie

W
e call and ask, but Detective Silver makes no promises one way or the other. He does tell us the usual: “If I decide to go back to the Lowry property, you two will be the first to know.”

“Fair enough,” Flynn replies.

Exhausted from the day and all that’s happened, Flynn and I decide to go to bed early. We’re asleep within minutes, but I awake hours later with a start.

Flynn is up in an instant as well. He’s that attuned to my night terrors.

“Bad dream?” he asks, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Not this time,” I reply. “There was no dream, actually. None at all. But I still felt…” I search for the right words to explain what exactly has me so uneasy that I woke from a dead sleep.

“I don’t know, Flynn,” I whisper. “I just suddenly felt like you weren’t lying here next to me. Like”—my voice trembles—“like you had left and I was all alone again.”

I touch his cheek, his nose, his chin, just to verify he’s really here.

“Babe…” He leans in and presses his lips to mine. “I’m here. And I’ll always be here. We’ll never again be apart.”

“Yeah, but we could’ve been,” I say, sighing. “If Detective Silver wasn’t so kind, we would’ve both been arrested.”

“But he is kind,” Flynn assures me as he rolls on top of me, a little breathless. “And neither of us is in any kind of trouble.”

He then smothers me in kisses, a successful attempt to distract me from my unnecessary worries.

“Yes,” I breathe out, my pulse racing as Flynn deposits feathery kisses along my neck. “We may not be in that bad kind of trouble,” I say. “But you’re going to find yourself in a really good kind of trouble”—I gasp—“if you keep kissing me like this.”

“Duly noted,” he murmurs.

The intensity of those kisses is amped up, each one hotter than the kiss before. But then it’s too much…all the damn clothes, that is. I need Flynn, and I need him now.

Tugging at the hem of his tee, I murmur, “Take this off.”

He complies and then, nodding to his boxer-clad lower body, asks in a teasing tone, “You want me to leave these on, though, right?”

“Are you kidding me?” I scoff.

I slide my hand inside his boxers and that pretty much puts an end to any additional silly talk of leaving on clothes that clearly need to come off.

A minute later Flynn is back on me…and then he’s in me. A few minutes more and I am crying out his name, along with declarations of my undying love.

This is good. This is better than we’ve been in a long time. This joining of our bodies doesn’t feel rushed. It’s not what it’s been these past couple months—frenzied, desperate.

Our joining this night speaks of one thing only—love.

Detective Silver

A
s I drive up the steep hill that leads to the Lowry property, the shovel I stowed in the trunk before I left the precinct clinking away, I have to ask myself one question: Why am I so hell-bent on helping Flynn and Jaynie? It’s not like I know them, not really. But here I am, at the Lowry property once more.

Really, what the hell?

I’ve already jeopardized my career by letting those two get away with planting fake evidence. I even went so far as to cover up what they did. Yet I’m back on this property at their request to search one final time before the Debbie Canfield case has to be closed for good.

As I make my way to the pole barn Jaynie and Flynn refer to as the ‘work barn’—that damn clanking shovel finally silenced since it now rests in my grasp—I think back to my own reckless youth.

Ah, therein I know I’ll find the answer as to why I am so committed to helping these kids.

I never had a bad home life, but I was a rebel at heart. I butted heads with my parents almost constantly. Caught up in the early ’90s grunge rock movement, I fancied myself at the time the next Kurt Cobain, or maybe even an Eddie Vedder.

Only problem was I had no band.

But I sure was determined to find one.

One day, after having no luck in my Podunk West Virginia town, I took off, hitching rides across the country until I ended up in Seattle.

Where it all began
, I thought.

Being the naïve seventeen-year-old that I was at that time, I was sure I’d find my future bandmates on the streets of the Emerald City. It was like I’d found my way to a grunge rock Oz.

What a fool I was
, I think, shaking my head.

Three days of hanging out in Pioneer Square with all the homeless was all it took for me to open my eyes. I realized then that the kids who were there weren’t looking to make music; they were looking to survive. I saw things no kid should ever see. And by day number four, I was calling my mom, crying and begging to come home.

My understanding mom, just happy I was alive and well, sent me a bus ticket back to West Virginia. The whole ride home I kept counting my blessings for what I had been so stupid to ever take for granted. Things like a roof over my head, plenty to eat, and parents who, though we fought, loved me.

And that’s it. That’s why I have a soft spot for Jaynie and Flynn. I see them as two kids, not so different from who I once was. But they’ve not been nearly as fortunate. Sadly, life’s dealt them a bad hand, until recently. Though I don’t think they always see it, they’ve been thriving since escaping the Lowry house.

But what’ll happen to those kids if Allison gets out of prison?

She may leave them alone, sure. But then again, she may not.

Why take a chance?

That’s
why I’m here and ready to search once more for something,
anything
to keep that wicked girl behind bars.

Where to start, where to start
, I ask myself as I walk into the barn.

I stop and look around.

The one thing that’s been bothering me since Flynn called that weekend is the loose cement slab. Why would a section of the flooring in a new structure come loose so soon after construction?

There’s no good reason, unless it was tampered with.

That’s where I decide to search, so I start walking again and head straight over to the area Flynn told me about.

Finding the right area is easy, seeing as Jaynie never moved the piece of cement back in to place.

Standing there, the hole in the ground that Flynn dug stares back at me, daring me to dig farther, much farther than where he stopped.

I take a deep breath.

And then I start to dig.

I dig and dig, going far beyond where Flynn once hid food. Deeper than where the fake evidence was placed as well.

I continue to dig and dig, until I finally hit something solid.

Interesting…

Dropping to my knees—to hell with my recently dry-cleaned suit—I fish around in the soft earth with my hands. And that’s when I find something.

I lift the item up.

“Damn,” I murmur.

It’s a bone—a human one, from what I can tell.

I continue to dig, uncovering another, then another…

Flynn

O
n Saturday, Jaynie and I drive up to Morgantown to visit with Mandy and the twins. Josh is working a double, so it’s just the five of us. Like old times.

Inspired by those old times, we take Cody and Callie to a local park so we can play the kids’ games they love so very much. The games they choose are the ones we used to play up in the fields by the Lowry house, games like Tag and Hide and Seek.

“Stay within the limits of the park,” Mandy tells the twins before we begin our first game, Hide and Seek.

“Okay, Mom,” Callie and Cody echo back as they run off in opposite directions.

I’ve been designated ‘it’ for this first game, so after counting to one hundred, I open my eyes and begin to search.

I find Jaynie first, hidden behind a swing set. “Lame,” I tell her.

“Eh.” She shrugs. “Maybe I wanted you to find me first.”

That earns her a peck on the cheek.

Next up, with Jaynie’s help, I locate Mandy. She’s curled up in one of those plastic tube slides.

“These are for kids,” I say to her when she has to crawl out, all awkward-like. “They’re clearly not designed for adults.”

“Pfft,” she snorts. “Admit it, Flynn. It was a pretty good hiding place.”