Steven Womack - By Blood Written

They drank the local beer and ate pastechis, the plump little pastries full of spicy shrimp and meat. They ordered giambo, the thick, spicy okra soup that was sort of like gumbo, only with a twist. They ordered steaks and fish and wine and ate like starved, caged animals for the next hour, almost without talking. When they finished, Taylor leaned back in her chair and stared across the table at Michael.

“I don’t want to go,” she said simply.

“I don’t, either. But we have to. We have to get back to the real world.”

“Why?” she complained. “Why can’t this be the real world?”

“Because it isn’t,” he said. “I have a book to write and I’m on deadline. You have clients that need you. Joan needs you.”

“She can’t need me that much. I haven’t had a single call from her.”

“That could have something to do with the fact that you didn’t tell her where you were going,” Michael said, smiling.

“Maybe. But she has ways of finding out.”

“You know she’s champing at the bit for you to get back.”

“Maybe.”

Michael leaned forward on the table and took her hands in his, then pulled her toward him.

“There is one thing we can take with us from the island.

Something that will make this an even more important week than it’s already been.”

Taylor looked at him, questioning. “What?”

Michael squeezed her hands and they suddenly felt cold.

Taylor looked down at their hands and realized his palms were sweating.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“Oh,” he said slowly, “nothing’s the matter. I guess I’m just a little new at this.”

“New at what?” she said, almost exasperated.

He let go of her right hand with his left and reached into his pocket. When his hand came back up to the table, it held a small, velvet-covered cube.

Taylor stared at his hand, stunned. “Wha-”

Michael let go of her left hand and raised his right index finger to his lips. “Ssshh,” he said.

“What are you-”

“Let me,” he said hurriedly. “Please.”

She was silent for a moment, uncomprehending. “Ever since I met you, Taylor, it’s been like my life has come together. The day I met you is the day I turned the corner. It was the day when everything started to make sense. Suddenly, I know what I want with my life, and I know who I want to spend it with.”

“Michael, I-”

Michael’s voice rose just a notch, and he looked directly into her eyes. “Now that you’re in my life, I don’t ever want to take a chance that something might happen and you won’t be. I love you, and I want to be with you and nobody else, ever. I’m through with everything I used to do and used to want. I know what’s important to me now, and now that it’s here, right next to me, I don’t want to ever let it slip away.

“Taylor, will you marry me?”

He opened the small ring box and held it toward her.

Shocked beyond recognition, she stared at it a second before realizing what it was-a beautiful European cut diamond that had to be pushing three carats. It was the largest diamond she’d ever seen up close, even larger than her grandmother’s.

“My God,” she whispered. And as she finally got what he was saying and asking, her eyes began to fill. She looked up from the box, into Michael’s eyes, and looked at him through a film of tears.

“Are you sure?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

He nodded. “More sure than I can even begin to tell you.”

She laughed. “A writer at a loss for words. When’s the last time we saw that?”

She laughed again, louder this time. “Yes, Michael,” she said after a moment, taking the box from him and setting it on the table between them. She took his hands and squeezed them, hard.

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

All around them, the other restaurant patrons began clap-ping and cheering.

Friday afternoon, Nashville

Hank Powell slipped his rented Mitsubishi Gallant into the first available space in the public parking garage across from the Nashville Criminal Justice Center and jerked the gearshift into park with a loud crunch. Next to him, Special Agent Fred Cowan, the resident agent who worked out of Nashville under the supervision of the Memphis Field Office, bounced forward and caught himself with his palm on the dashboard.

“Easy, Hank,” Cowan said. “We’ll make it.”

“We’re late,” Powell muttered. “I hate being late.”

“We’ve got a couple of minutes,” Cowan said, climbing slowly out of the car in a manner far too relaxed to suit Powell. “This is Nashville. Everybody gets hosed up in traffic sooner or later.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Powell said, slamming the door and turning for the exit at a near-trot.

“Wait up!” Cowan called, racing to catch up.

The two agents crossed the side street and walked hurriedly up to the main entrance. Powell already had his badge and credentials out when they got to the main reception desk. He fidgeted nervously as the desk officer phoned upstairs. Less than a minute later, the metal entrance door to the police offices buzzed and Maria Chavez stepped out.

She waved Hank and Cowan past security and held the door for them as they entered the long hallway.

“Sorry we’re late,” Hank said.

“Don’t worry, we haven’t started yet. C’mon, this way.”

Maria Chavez wore jeans and boots, with a long-sleeved white cotton shirt. She looked like a clean, freshly scrubbed farmhand, with the exception of the nine-millimeter Glock Model 19 attached to her belt.

“Maria, I’ve got to tell you,” Hank said as the three walked quickly down the hallway, “that report you did was sensa-tional. I can’t believe you put all this together.”

Maria turned, smiling broadly, her white teeth glistening in the harsh fluorescent light. “Thanks, Agent Powell. I appreciate it. But it was really that daffy old lady who convinced me.”

“Please, Maria, it’s Hank.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

Maria came to a bank of three elevators and pushed the up button. Hank leaned down and glanced at his watch, which read one-twelve. Twelve minutes late …

As if reading his mind, Maria chimed in. “Don’t worry, Howard Hinton just got here, too. There’s road construction all the way down I-24 to Smyrna. Took him an hour and a half to make the last twenty miles.”

Cowan grinned. “I hear the legislature’s thinking about making the orange traffic barrel the state bird.”

Chavez chuckled. “Good one.”

Hank secretly wished Cowan would shut the hell up. He was a bit too relaxed and jovial for the circumstances, or maybe it was just that Hank was unable to be relaxed or jovial about any of this. If this meeting went the way he thought it would, then Maria Chavez’s theory was the break in this case they’d been needing for years.

Hank had spent the entire week reading the rest of Michael Schiftmann’s work and analyzing Maria’s report. He now believed that Maria was right, but he also knew that if she was right, this was going to be the biggest media fire-storm since the O. J. case. Hank wasn’t even ready to begin thinking about the consequences of charging a celebrity like Michael Schiftmann with being a serial murderer, with the corroborating theory being that he was basing the plots of his own best-selling novels on murders he committed himself.

As Maria Chavez led Hank and Cowan into the small conference room that was already crowded with Murder Squad investigators, the voice in his head was still warning that even though he believed it, no one else was going to.

Max Bransford sat at the head of a long table and rose when Hank entered the room. He looked like he’d gained ten pounds and lost a year’s sleep since that cold February night of the Exotica Tans murders. In fact, Hank noticed, looking around the room, they all looked tired.