“Rowan…”
“Save it.” My voice was cold and sharp. I could tell that each word was cutting him deeply and I didn’t care. “You had a chance to stop this and you didn’t.”
“Row…”
“Go to hell, Ben,” I cut him off again. “Just fucking go to hell.”
I turned and walked away.
“Benjamin is terribly concerned about you, Rowan.” Helen Storm spoke to me in a soothing voice.
She was direct and wasted no words; still, her tone had the ability to lull one into the fold of her confidence. I was glad that she was here, even if I didn’t show it.
I had been spiraling through the various emotional states one can experience at a time such as this. Disbelief, anger, fear, guilt… All of them rolled into a tense ball that I couldn’t escape. At the moment I was experiencing some form of defiant hostility that had arrived directly on the heels of an uncontrolled fit of sobbing.
“What about you, Helen?” I asked, my dull words forming a weak challenge. “Are you concerned about me too?”
We were seated on my deck, both of us holding lit cigarettes and staring into the darkness. Well, I was staring into the darkness; she could have been staring at me for all I knew. I didn’t bother to check. It was nearing 10 p.m.. Crime scene technicians were still finishing up around the interior of the house but had finally vacated the garage, so this one spot had become my safe haven for the time being. Out of sight, out of mind-if only that really worked.
A biting wind rose and fell in a serpentine arc around the corner of the house and dragged its icy claws across my face. I ignored it. I could hear Helen shift, and I glanced over as she pulled her heavy shawl tighter, but that was her only acknowledgement of the chill.
“Of course I am, Rowan,” she said.
“Humph,” I grunted. “There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”
“You do understand,” she began and then paused for a brief second. I could tell from her silence that she was gingerly picking the words she was about to use. “There is every indication that your wife has not been harmed.”
“I don’t feel her, Helen,” I stated plainly. “If she was okay, I’d be able to feel her.”
“I am not so certain of that. You have been dealing with a severe emotional trauma, Rowan,” she offered. “I would be greatly surprised if you could feel anything at all in the sense to which you refer.”
Helen was correct. I couldn’t even feel her, and she was sitting right next to me. How could I expect to sense Felicity, wherever she was? The only thing I really felt was bitter hatred for Eldon Andrew Porter.
“So did Ben bring you over here to make sure I didn’t wig out?” I changed the subject.
“Benjamin asked me to come here with him because, as I said, he is very concerned about you.”
“He thinks I blame him for this, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does,” she answered. “You all but told him that yourself when we arrived.”
“I guess I do, in a way,” I sighed. “But not completely. Not irrevocably.”
“That is understandable, considering the circumstances. But be aware, Rowan, that he blames himself much more than you blame him. The judgment that my brother is exacting upon himself is a far higher price than you would ever dream of asking.”
“Are you asking me to feel sorry for him?”
“Not at all,” she confessed matter-of-factly. “I am simply showing you both sides of the coin.”
“How clinical of you,” I remarked with an underlying harshness in my voice. “Aren’t you supposed to be coddling me and telling me everything will be okay?”
“If I was dealing with someone else in this situation, perhaps. But not you… And not now. It would serve no purpose.”
“What? I don’t deserve a little coddling? My wife has been kidnapped and is probably dead,” I spat the comment almost angrily.
“What you deserve, and what you want are two vastly different things, Rowan. You know that,” she answered. “Besides, I have a feeling that your particular talents will be necessary to find her, so the time for coddling will have to come later.”
“You seem convinced that she’s still alive.”
“You should be too.”
“I want to be.” I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. “Gods, I want to be. But then at the same time, for her sake, I have to hope that she isn’t. I saw what he did to his other victims, Helen.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you?” I asked. “Because when I say that I saw what he did, I mean I saw what he did. I saw it… I felt it… I experienced it. To believe that he is doing those things to Felicity, now… That’s more than I can take.”
“Yes, Rowan, I understand that far better than you know.”
“Then you know why it’s hard for me to believe that Felicity is still alive.”
A healthy supply of anxious energy was crackling along every nerve in my body, and I found myself fidgeting almost constantly. I was unable to maintain a grip on myself for more than a few minutes at a time. This latest period of calm reached the end of its somewhat protracted cycle, and I angrily leapt from the chair.
“What the hell are they doing in there?” I exclaimed as I began to pace. “Shouldn’t they be out there looking for the sonofabitch?!”
“They are, Rowan,” Helen told me calmly. “You know that.”
“A few minutes,” I muttered. “If I’d only been here a few minutes sooner.”
“What would you have done had you been here?” she asked with a shake of her head.
“What would I have done?” I echoed the question back to her harshly. “I would have blown the sick bastard into next week.”
“Would you have?” she asked simply.
“I have a gun and I know how to use it,” I retorted. The words sounded sophomoric even as they tumbled out of my mouth.
“I do not doubt that, Rowan.” She tactfully ignored the childish bravado of my comment. “But neither the implement nor the skill to use it are what I am questioning. What I am curious about is your innate ability to take a life.”
“I shot him once,” I offered.
“Yes, you did,” she agreed. “But you shot him to wound, not to kill. Furthermore, you did so when your own life was literally hanging in the balance.”
“I assume you have a point here?” I contended.
She didn’t allow my adversarial posture to faze her. “My point is that when presented with the opportunity to kill this man, you did not. Furthermore, when you believed that there was some possibility that you may have been responsible for his death-however unintentional-emotionally, it brought you very close to the edge.”
“I never really believed he was dead. I made no secret of that,” I told her. “Besides, this is different.”
“Now it is,” she nodded in agreement. “But what if you had been here? Would he not have set his sights on you instead of Felicity? At least, initially?”
“I think that’s a given,” I responded with a shrug.
“Then you would simply have been repeating history,” she commented.
“So maybe I realized I made a mistake out there on that bridge,” I offered.
“Perhaps,” she returned. “But I do not believe that, and I am inclined to think that you do not either. You are a man of firm conviction, Rowan. The rede by which you have lived your life is more a part of you than you wish to admit.”
“Maybe it’s time for me to wake up,” I told her sadly. “Idealistic beliefs are for fools.”
“That would be a terrible loss, Rowan,” she offered. “Your ideals are a very large part of who you are. And I know that you do not truly believe that idealists are fools.”
Before I had a chance to formulate a retort, our conversation was interrupted by the sound of someone purposely clearing his throat. I looked over toward the door and saw Ben standing on the top step. The light cast at a downward angle across his face and his chiseled features were craggy with lines and shadows. He looked tired, and he looked very old. Helen was correct. He wasn’t taking this any better than I was.