Ethan drove back to his house and Audra was relieved not to have to face what was coming next right away. As she stepped from the truck she wondered about the fact that Kendra's biological father had been in the picture right up until the conception of Abigail's youngest daughter, Gwyn. Audra scrambled from the truck, leaving behind the photo albums and shoebox Renee had given her as well as her cellphone, making it to the grass before throwing up.
Ethan placed an arm around her when she was spent and helped her back into the house. He guided her up the stairs to rinse her mouth and brush her teeth before helping her back into bed and pulling the covers up over her head. She didn't know what she had expected to encounter when meeting Renee Stevens, surely she knew the end would be the death of Abigail and her daughter.
Audra hadn't shared Kendra's story with Renee since it was a story that would have only added to the burden of sadness that she was finally ready to shed and move away from. Even so, Audra hadn't expected to feel tenderness for Abigail and such a strong sense of injustice over the hand she'd been dealt in life.
If Audra were at all superstitious she would have pinned the misfortune on a family curse, but she was smart enough to know that somehow, Abigail had been targeted. At some point someone had drawn a bull's eye on her back when she was just a child.
"Are you okay?" Ethan's voice was heavy with worry.
"No." Audra was too shaken to hide the truth. Ethan pulled the covers from her back and stretched out on the bed behind her.
"Do you think it's the same killer?" Audra asked aloud.
"Yes. We'll go to the bank after lunch and interview Annie." Ethan pulled Audra back to rest her head on his arm so he could kiss her.
Audra closed her eyes and tried to remember a time before she knew how cruel and harsh the world really was. She tried to remember anything before the night she walked into her pregnant sister's room and found her gasping for air. Anger filled her when she couldn't. She turned over and wrapped an arm around Ethan and, instead of trying to remember, she tried to force herself to forget.
She focused on the feel of Ethan's warm lips against hers. She felt his strong arms tighten around her and opened her mouth to receive his hot tongue. Her body relaxed beneath his as he reached for the hem of her borrowed sundress and pulled it upward. The heat from his body became more and more intense as he allowed the back of his hand and his knuckles to trace a wavy line over her legs and thighs. She felt him pause just over her panties and took a deep breath.
He kissed her harder as he dropped the hem of her dress just over her navel, freeing his fingers to trace the top of her panties. Audra moaned and began to return his kisses with more passion and abandon. She felt him smile against her lips before pulling back to look at her.
"I love you," he said.
Audra thought for a moment and pulled him back down to her. She maneuvered her legs around his waist and pulled the sundress up and completely over her head. Ethan's hands and lips worked over her body until she was a soft mass of flesh. He took off his clothes, and Audra felt her heart swell with how right and perfect his skin felt next to hers.
His arms tightened around her once again and his mouth covered her lips as he slowly entered her. Audra sighed with pleasure, wrapping her legs over his and pressing her hand to his back. He kissed a trail from her lips, over her jawline, to her ear.
"I love you," he whispered softly.
Audra smiled and kissed his lips as she felt herself climaxing. Ethan held onto her until she was spent and followed her release with his own. She sighed against his chest as he pulled the blanket up over both of them.
"I love you too," she finally said and drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.
She woke up ten minutes later to Ethan shifting on the bed and sitting up.
"Hey," she said softly.
"I was trying not to wake you."
"It's okay, I should get up. We need to interview Annie, check on that bank account, and see about Abigail's math tutor, Mr. Hawthorne."
"Do you want to divide and conquer, or to do it all together?"
"Together." Audra smiled.
Ethan smiled also. "You want to shower alone, or together?"
Audra laughed. "We should do that separately."
"If you say so." Ethan winked and stood up. "I'll put more coffee on and meet you in the kitchen in fifteen minutes. We'll still be on schedule."
Audra nodded and watched him stroll bare-bottomed out of the room. She met him in the kitchen less than fifteen minutes later and he had a cup of coffee waiting for her.
"So, what are you thinking?" he asked as she took the cup and they headed outside to his truck.
"I don't know. The usual suspects; those closest to Abigail at the time who still have something to hide," Audra said as she checked to make sure her specter shield was activated.
She hopped into the truck and found her cellphone next to the photo albums and shoebox of letters. She slid it open to find that she had twelve missed calls. She checked the time and noted that it had been a little less than an hour since she and Ethan had left Renee Stevens' house. She feared what the urgency of the calls, all from Cordero, would be about.
"Cordero called twelve times in the last hour," she told Ethan as she pressed the button to hear one of the voice messages he'd left and put it on speaker.
"Wheeler," Cordero's voice was strained, "you have to get to town ASAP. Someone set fire to the sheriff's station."
"Shit!" Ethan peeled out of the driveway one handed as he used the other to put on his seat belt.
Audra followed suit as she pressed the callback button for Cordero.
"Where the hell have you been?" Although his voice was raised she could hear a sense of relief.
"I'm sorry. Sheriff Cole and I stopped for lunch after our visit with Renee Stevens and I left my cellphone in the car."
"The station's gone." He sounded grave and exhausted.
"Shit," Audra said and looked at Ethan whose expression turned dark. "We're on our way."
"Take your time," Cordero said sarcastically.
Audra hung up the phone and looked over at Ethan. They remained silent for the duration of the trip. The fury and relief in Cordero's voice made Audra think back to the day they'd met, three days after the attack on Kendra. Audra's niece had been born and her sister was in the ICU. She'd slept in the waiting room the previous two nights as their parents, close friends, and family stood vigil over Kendra's condition. Kendra's husband had dropped everything to be there and was more or less a walking ghost himself.
"Are you sure?" He'd looked at Audra as if trying to decide if it were a sick, twisted prank taken way too far.
"Yes," Audra had said in horrified confidence. "She was in the air choking, nobody else there. She was grabbing for her throat, which was burning. When I turned the light on she just fell back into the bed. I gave her CPR and called 9-1-1."
Audra remembered hearing a psychologist suggest that she was blocking out the details of the trauma. Someone else must have been there, she just couldn't remember. She'd even been strapped to a lie detector and given a series of questions. She passed the lie detector but still felt as if they didn't believe her. She'd felt alone and responsible for being too young to believe when Cordero walked into the hospital waiting room and asked to speak with her.
"I know this is very scary," he began when they were in a room alone, "but my name is Special Agent Jonathan Cordero. I've been put in charge of a new division of the FBI that investigates unexplainable crimes."
"But, I did explain," Audra mumbled, knowing it was pointless.
"You explained what happened, but not how it happened," he corrected her. "If you had to form a theory on how it was possible for your sister to be choking in midair with no one other than you around, what would you say?"
It was then that Audra remembered how the room had felt when she entered.
"It was cold," she blurted out.
"Cold?"
Audra swallowed and closed her eyes, taking herself back to that night. "The air was cold and thick, almost hard to breathe." In her mind she replayed the sounds of the struggle. "Like there was not enough air, like cold smoke, dry fog." She saw herself turn into the room to see her sister's strange silhouette hanging in the air. "I turned on the lights and she was in the air reaching for her throat." Audra opened her eyes and looked at Cordero earnestly. "Then she just fell back onto the bed."
She remembered the haunted sadness in Cordero's eyes as he nodded his understanding. "I believe you," he'd said.