Cole picked up the mugs and followed, wondering if he should say anything about the eerie sense of an intruder he’d picked up a few minutes ago. But now the idea seemed alarmist, especially with steam rising from the mugs with a hint of cinnamon. He watched the shadows all the same, and listened closely. No movement. No noise out of the ordinary. Yet he was palpably relieved when they shut the pool house door behind them.
“Did you hear that owl?” Keira said. “Sounded kind of upset. Wonder if that’s what went after Cheryl.”
“I doubt she would have survived if it was. Those talons can crack a cat’s skull like an eggshell.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so graphic.”
Keira laughed. “I don’t mind. That’s something I’ve always loved about this place. It’s so elemental. Just you and nature and whatever boat happens to be drifting by. It makes matters of life and death seem like things that don’t have to be forced, or even endured. They just happen, the way they’re meant to.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure Cheryl feels that way right now.”
“No. Maybe not.”
The cat curled up on the foot of the bed. Keira took a seat by the pillows, leaning against the headboard as the mug steamed into her face. Cole remained standing, transfixed as she tucked her bare legs beneath her, a gesture of coziness that also happened to clear a space for him on the bed, if he wanted it.
Under other circumstances he would have happily seized the opportunity, and probably would have then pursued the customary male ritual of touch and advance, testing his way toward an embrace, ready to keep going as far as she’d let him. But that was exactly what Steve and Barb would expect from him — the randy, uncultured pilot, forever on the prowl — so he sat down in the armchair catty-corner to the bed.
Keira sipped her tea, and he couldn’t help but watch her. Her skin was ambered by the glow of the bedside lamp, an attractive woman on his bed wearing a flannel robe and God knows what underneath. Maybe nothing. And now she was talking, and not a word of it had registered.
“I’m sorry. I zoned out. What was that?”
“I said, why don’t you come over here? You look so forlorn, like a lost boy who got left at school.”
He did as she asked. And she was the one who began touching. Her hand on his ankle, then his thigh. Touch and advance. A brush of her fingers across his cheek, a caress. He moved closer and she leaned forward, the bed creaking, the heat of her skin warm on his own. She was kissing him almost before he knew it.
“Is this all right with you?” she said.
“I was about to ask the same thing.”
“Don’t ask anything. Just act.” Her voice went straight down his throat. He again did as she asked, and it was better than in any dream. They moved softly, slowly, and then gave way to urgency. Cole couldn’t stop looking at her face, his eyes open until the very end, when he finally vanished from the world into the briefest oblivion. When he emerged on the other side he was gasping and alive. Keira smiled, then buried her face against his neck, her heartbeat fluttering on his breastbone.
A minute or so later she stirred.
“The cat,” she said, with a note of worry. But Cheryl was still curled on the spread at the foot of the bed, sleeping off her ordeal, ignoring them. Keira sank back into his arms. He was speechless. Happy, yes, but uncertain what to say next, about her or anything. A few more moments passed in silence, and she spoke first.
“So tell me about your wife, your family.”
Cole was so taken aback that he didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t worry. I’m not being judgmental. You needed this. I did, too. And now is probably the time when you’d be the most open-minded about your thoughts, and about your wife.”
“Or the guiltiest.”
“No. Really, that wasn’t what I intended.”
He studied her, the sincerity plain on her face.
“You’re very different.”
“Maybe so. But don’t take that to mean that I’ve got everything figured out. My life’s probably as fucked up as yours.”
“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Oh, c’mon. That place you were living? The state you were in? You can’t leave all that behind in a matter of days.”
“No. That’s true.”
“So your wife, then. Now that you’re back in civilization, don’t you find yourself thinking of her more?”
“I’ve been dreaming about her. Nothing that’s, well, erotic or anything.” He couldn’t believe he was telling her this. Keira’s powers in full force, he supposed. “Just daily life, stuff we used to do around the house, or with the kids. The good and the bad.”
“That’s a start.”
“Towards what?”
“Getting back to them?”
He shook his head. “That’s over. My fault, but over.”
“You’d be surprised how forgiving people can be. Especially when something matters to them.”
“That sounds like the voice of experience.”
She shrugged, lowered her eyes. “Sometimes the people who could forgive you are no longer around to do it.”
“Barb said something about a guy you were with, a photographer.”
“He was married. I’m sure she mentioned that part, too.”
“Yeah, she did.”
Keira sighed, then eased away from him just enough that he wished he hadn’t mentioned it.
“That’s the problem with the three of us living together,” she said. “We’ve become too interested in identifying each other’s weak spots. Sometimes I think Barb’s building a dossier on all of us, you included.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s all right. I’m nosy enough myself. He was killed in a plane crash. He was on his way to Paris to see me. I talked him into it. A weekend getaway. Guilted him into it, really. And helped him cook up a story idea he could tell his wife for cover. Then he was gone, like a big gust of karma had come along and blown his plane right into the Channel. And when his wife found out I was the one who ID’d his remains …”
She looked away, staring at the window.
“I can go back to the house, if you’d like,” she said. “I probably should anyway, before the others wake up.”
“Not yet.”
She nodded, then reached across him to switch off the lamp. Darkness. Outside he could hear the trees in motion, windblown, the night forest still full of presences that Cole could only imagine. But now, with this strangely frank woman folded in his arms — warm and alive, yet alone with her regrets — he felt that they were both shielded, protected. He sank into sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Something’s out there.”
Keira whispered it as she stood by the window with the shades pulled back, peering into the dark. The wind was down, the owl silent. Cheryl stood next to her, back arched, fur raised, a sight that was somehow as alarming as anything Cole had seen all day.
He sat up in bed.
“What did you hear?”
She shook her head, held a finger to her lips. She was naked, skin a silvery blue in the starlight. By now the moon was below the horizon, drowned in the waters of the Bay. The moment felt especially eerie because he’d just been dreaming of something he would have preferred to forget, another replay. Bad vibes then, goose bumps now, with both moments feeling related.
“I thought I heard somebody moving around, but maybe it was an animal. Too big for a fox, though. And too steady and regular for a deer, or that’s what I thought. It sounded like someone measuring his steps, being careful.”
“Deer can act that way. Sometimes.”
Cole could still see the afterimage of his dream, a view from an infrared camera in which six men were bright green blobs moving toward a huddle of prone bodies in the wake of a firefight, their weapons still aglow from recent use. It was his last mission before he fell off the edge.