Mariah Stewart - Last Words

The second floor accommodations were more than adequate for a long-term visit. The closet was large enough to hold Mia’s clothes and the sitting room made a great little office. The bedroom windows looked out over the backyard and there were skylights overhead through which she watched the stars. She wondered who might have helped Connor sketch out the renovations for the space when he’d had the house remodeled. She just didn’t see her cousin in the décor at all. At least, not the Connor she knew.

She stepped out of the suit she’d worn that day and hung it over the back of a chair with the other garments that had a date with the dry cleaner. She’d been in meetings most of the afternoon and had spent way too much time seated, which resulted in multiple wrinkles in both the jacket and the pants. She pulled on a one-piece swimsuit and slipped into sandals, then went back downstairs. In the kitchen she refilled her wineglass, and grabbed a towel from the back of a chair as she passed through the screened porch. Once outside, she lowered herself into a lounge and sipped her wine. The sun had dropped behind the tree line at the back of the property and spread color through the trees.

Perfect, she thought. This is the perfect way to slough off the day. A little wine, a beautiful sunset, a refreshing swim.

She put the glass on the ground next to the lounge and leaned back, closed her eyes and tried to think pleasant thoughts.

What was it the characters in Peter Pan used to say? Think good thoughts … Christmas. Candy …

Christmas was half a year away, and Mia never did acquire a taste for candy. Except truffles and the occasional chocolate that came in a gold foil box. But pleasant thoughts could not overshadow the other things that ran rampant in her mind. She sat up and reached for her wineglass, drained it, and decided perhaps a swim would help clear her head of the images of the three little boys they’d pulled from a drainage ditch a little more than a week ago.

She set the glass on the table and walked to the edge of the pool and dove in. The warm water washed over her, head to foot, and enveloped her. She swam laps until her arms hurt, then floated on her back watching the stars appear. So much brighter here than they were back in Arlington.

Bless Connor for having offered her his home.

She got out and toweled herself dry, then went back into the house and returned with the bottle of wine and a plate of crackers and cheese.

I’ll just have my own little cocktail party. She smiled as she placed the wine and the platter on the table next to the lounge. She refilled her glass and ate some of the cheese standing up. She took a few more sips of her wine before returning to her place on the lounge, where she finished the wine and closed her eyes.

Can’t wait until I can close this case. God, I hope I never have to face another family like the Jenners, give them the kind of news I had to give them. Poor babies…

She shivered and opened her eyes. For days she’d been trying to wipe out the vision of the three boys, ages two, three, and five, who’d wandered away from their home and ended up in four feet of water in a ditch hundreds of feet from the back of their thirty-acre property. How a two-year-old had managed to walk that far, she’d never know, but the evidence all indicated that they hadn’t been abducted and drowned. Rather, it appeared they’d gotten out of their yard while their mother was out front planting marigolds around the mailbox and chatting with a neighbor. Piecing it all together, it looked as if the boys had decided to take advantage of her inattention to explore a bit on their own, and had walked off into the woods at the rear of their property. A quarter of a mile on the other side of the woods, the ground sloped down abruptly, ending in a retention ditch. The sides of the hill were clearly scarred with gouges made by the boy’s feet as they slid down to the water below.

Mia rubbed the palms of her hands against her eyelids until all she could see behind them was white light. Better than the faces of dead children, she told herself as she settled on the lounge and lowered the back until she was almost prone, and then wondered if this was how she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

“I’m not a quitter,” she said aloud.

She was second generation in the FBI, and she wasn’t going to be the first one to quit. Well, her brother Grady had that honor, but he hadn’t quit because he couldn’t take it. And her brother Brendan…well, the less said about him, the better. Once there’d been seven of them… seven , she reminded herself. Seven Shields, not counting her father and her Uncle Frank, both of whom had retired. The four in Mia’s family and Uncle Frank’s three sons, Connor, Dylan and Aidan.

Of the seven, there were now only four. Mia and her brother Andrew, Connor and his brother Aidan. So much for the dynasty her father had once been so proud of.

That she, the only girl in the family, had followed the others into the Bureau had been a point of pride for Mia. She’d worn the badge for nine years now, but recently had begun to question her decision to join. Her career choice was only one of many things she questioned lately.

Until she woke, slightly disoriented with a pounding head, Mia hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep. From somewhere nearby there was a rustling sound. She jumped nearly out of her skin as the small table next to her crashed to the ground, sending the wine bottle and the glass to the grass along with the plate and the remaining cheese.

In the shadow of the porch lights, she made out the silhouettes of several furry creatures who were busy with the cheese and the box of crackers.

Raccoons.

She backed away as slowly and as quietly as she could, doing her best not to draw their attention, fighting an urge to run like hell, until she reached the porch. Once there, she sprinted up the steps and through the door. From the screened porch she watched the young raccoons who, she realized, had no interest in anything other than the tasty treats they’d found.

Lucky for me , Mia thought, Momma isn’t with them , though she’s probably close by.

She stood at the screen and watched the animals chow down on her snack and wrest the cork from the wine bottle, spilling the contents on the grass.

“Thanks, guys, that was a nice chardonnay,” she yelled.

After they’d eaten everything, shredded the cracker box, and licked out the wineglass, she said, “You’re welcome. Do stop by again.”

Eventually the raccoons lost interest in the backyard, and wandered off into the woods. As amusing as the incident had been, Mia wasn’t oblivious to the fact that it could have been a dangerous encounter.

Not to mention the fact that anyone coming into the backyard finding her asleep in her bathing suit in the middle of the night might have had more on their minds than eating her snacks and drinking her wine.

What the hell was I thinking? She chided herself as she locked up the house. Falling asleep in the backyard is just plain stupid. The fact that the entire back of the property was enclosed by a secure privacy fence made it no less stupid. She shook her head, wondering at her carelessness, and locked up the house.

The clock on the small chest next to her bed read one o’clock.

Jesus. She shook her head again. She’d been in the business long enough to know the kinds of things that could-and did-happen to careless women.

No more cocktails by the pool for me. At least not by myself.

She showered and slipped into a nightshirt and got into bed. As she turned off the light, she noticed the light on her cell phone, which she’d left on the bedside table, was blinking. She picked it up and looked at the number of the last call.