Ridley Pearson - In Harm's Way

“Got… it,” Brandon said, intentionally clipping his words so that Walt would not miss his unspoken message.

A man stepped up and, without so much as looking at the shelves, snagged a carton of milk from the case and dumped it into his cart, on top of several 12-packs of beer and a half-dozen bags of beef jerky.

Walt recognized him immediately from his driver’s license photo: Dominique Fancelli, stepfather of Dionne Fancelli, the pregnant highschooler. A dozen options crowded Walt’s mind: confrontation, arrest, intimidation. Maybe he could steer him out back and just beat the shit out of him and take his chances with voters. Paying no attention to the string cheese, Walt placed it into his cart, his eyes never leaving the man.

He pushed his cart, following the man down the paper aisle. Watched him load up on paper towels and toilet tissue and consider an air freshener. Stood there watching, hoping the man might turn and provoke him. Not much could test his patience, but this man had Walt’s heart going arrhythmic in his chest.

Fancelli continued toward the checkout lanes and Walt followed as if on surveillance, holding back yet fully focused on the target. Reminding himself how unprofessional it would be to confront the man, Walt turned his cart away and headed for the fresh bread beneath the Country Bakery sign. He was considering a loaf of raisin bread when Fancelli appeared in his peripheral vision, leaving with a bag of groceries in hand. A teenage girl, no older than thirteen, passed him on her way into the store, and Fancelli ogled her bare legs and tank top. Before Walt could even make sense of it, he’d abandoned his cart and rushed through the swinging door.

Fancelli was halfway across the parking lot, zeroing in on a tricked-out pickup truck, swinging the bag like a schoolboy.

“Fancelli!” Walt marched in long, stiff strides, reaching the man as he turned around. Fancelli’s eyes flared at sight of the uniform. His brow furrowed. The bag slowed its pendular motion.

Walt invaded the man’s space, putting his face to Fancelli’s, unbothered by their height difference.

“How’s Dionne doing?” he asked, a bit breathlessly.

Fancelli leaned away but did not take a step back, his eyes creased, his lips suddenly bloodless and thin. His nostrils flared.

“Give her my best.”

The man’s head nodded, nearly imperceptibly.

Walt stepped away and offered him his back as he returned to the store.

“No problem,” Fancelli croaked out.

Walt stopped and looked over his shoulder at the man, visions of Emily and Nikki playing before his eyes. For all the reasons bullets were manufactured, this seemed a way to put one to its best possible use. He caught his hand actually touching the grip of his sidearm. He turned back and walked on, a fraction of a second gone, but a lifetime passed.

He arrived at the top of Fiona’s driveway to the yellow profusion of the Engleton flower beds, the air gauzy and charged with a glow of late afternoon. He was slightly out of breath and light-headed, anticipation roaring in his ears.

Knocked on the cottage door. Stepped through as she answered.

“I’ve missed you. You’ve been awfully quiet.” The hopeful yet sad look in her eyes prompted him. He took her chin in his right hand, placed his left on her hip as if dancing. She didn’t object, and though he saw distance in her eyes as he kissed her, she returned his offer as if he was somehow the answer she’d been awaiting. As they spun, she shoved the door closed with the palm of her hand and they crashed across the coffee table and fell to the couch, this time without a hint of amusement. She infused the act with a seriousness, a disconnected commitment, and he sensed the danger of the moment, but was unable to hold himself back. If talk had been required, it was too late for both of them. If he’d thought himself bulletproof, he was not. She closed her eyes tightly as he joined her, a mask half of pleasure, half of pain that caused him to reconsider, but again, he couldn’t stop. He fell atop her with a gasp, surprised and alarmed by his urgency and the unshakeable knowledge that somewhere in the middle of their frantic actions she might have asked him to stop if she’d been so inclined.

“Wow,” she said, confusing him, because she sounded so happy. “I ought to answer the door more often.”

“I didn’t plan that,” he said.

“Which makes it all the more wonderful.”

“It’s not really me, to do something like that.”

“Well, then maybe you’ll change.” She kissed him.

“Maybe I already have.”

She left him, collecting and dragging her clothes with her to the back of the cottage. A few minutes later she had a pot of hot water going, and they were both dressed and it was, for a moment, as if nothing had happened. Her cheeks and chest were flushed as she sat down next to him. She looked out from behind sleepy eyes and he wanted her again, right there. But he behaved himself, containing himself to the tea and a few minutes of delicious silence that they shared with the fading gurgle of the cooling tea kettle.

“Tell me this was a social call,” she said.

He felt a painful spike in his chest. The uncommon urge to lie. A matter of days, and he was already corrupted, prepared to compromise his ethics for this woman. The danger sign flashed for the second time in a matter of hours: she was getting to him. If he went forward unguarded, unchecked, he needed to accept that some of this was irreversible, that the flip side of such happiness and heart-pounding excitement was the abyss.

“Not entirely,” he said, prepared for her to distance herself, glad when she didn’t. “Brandon noticed on the map that this place, and the Berkholders’, to a lesser degree, are in fairly close proximity to the body site.” He added, “As the crow flies, which bodies do not.” He’d thought he might win a smile out of her, but she’d gone cold and he thought back to their work on the body and again regretted keeping her on the scene for so long. He was about to apologize for that when she spoke.

“So what does that involve?”

“Asking you and Kira if you’d seen anyone matching Gale’s description, which I think you just might happen to have pointed out when we found the body. I’ll talk to Kira briefly-”

“She’s not around.”

“-or not, and then look around the place and call it good. Same at the Berkholders’. Really it was just an excuse to see you.”

“You saw a lot of me,” she said, cupping the mug of tea and offering him a vexing look of encouragement.

“This is getting complicated,” he said.

“It is.”

“More so for you than me.”

“Certainly not true. You have the girls to think of. I understand that. It can’t be easy. It’s the beast in the room we’re not discussing. Why is that?”

“Some of this can wait.”

“For…?”

He grimaced.

“You think this isn’t serious? It’s been two years in the making. It’s very serious. To me, that is. If it isn’t serious to you, that’s important for me to hear. I’m a big girl. I get it.”

“It’s serious.”

“Yes, it is. So the girls are a big part of it, and I want you to know that I defer to you on how we-if there is a ‘we’-handle it. They don’t need to know, shouldn’t know until we’re awfully sure where this is going. Once I become part of their lives, if I become part of their lives, it’s not fair to them to retreat, so we’d better be awfully sure we know what we’re doing. Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m looking forward, not back. I’m trying to keep my pulse down because every time I look at you it runs out of control. I’m seeing a future instead of fearing one and I’m hungry for the first time in what seems likes years.” He considered this. “You want to get something to eat?”