Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

Annie stood on the opposite side of the table, her lower back pressing against the edge of the counter at the sink.

"This is just another example of why this relationship thing isn't going to work out," she said, her voice going a little rusty under pressure. "Here I am and there you are and there's this-this- stuff between us." She used her hands to illustrate her point. "My job and your job, and when is it about the job and when is it about us. I don't want to deal with it, A.J. I'm sorry. I don't. Not now."

Not now, when she suddenly found herself caught up in the storm Fourcade had created. She needed all her wits about her just to keep her head above water.

"I don't think this is the best time for us to have this conversation," A.J. said softly, coming toward her, gentleness and affection on his face. "It's been a rough day. You're tired, I'm tired. I just don't want us mad at each other. We're too good friends for that. Kiss and make up?" he whispered.

She let her eyes close as he settled his mouth against hers. She didn't try to stop her own lips from moving or her arms from sneaking around his waist. He pulled her closer, and it seemed as natural as breathing. His body was strong, warm. His size made her feel small and safe.

It would have been easy to go to bed with him, to find comfort and oblivion in passion. A.J. enjoyed the role of lover-protector. She knew exactly how good it felt to let him take that part. And she knew she couldn't go there tonight. Sex would solve nothing, complicate everything. Her life had gotten complicated enough.

A.J. felt her enthusiasm cool. He raised his head an inch or two. "You know, you can hurt a guy making him stop like this."

"That's a lie," Annie said, appreciating his attempt at humor.

"Says who?"

"Says you. You told me that when I was a sophomore and Jason Benoit was trying to convince me I would cripple him for life if I didn't let him go all the way."

"Yeah, well, I would've crippled him if he had." He touched the tip of her nose with his forefinger. "Friends again?"

"Always."

"Who ever thought life could be so complicated?"

"Not you."

"That's a fact." He glanced at his watch. "Well, I suppose I should go home and take a cold shower or page through the Victoria 's Secret catalog or something."

"No work?" Annie asked, following him to the door.

"Tons. You don't want to hear about it."

"Why not?"

He turned and faced her, serious. "Fourcade's bond hearing tomorrow."

"Oh."

"Told you so." He started to open the door, then hesitated. "You know, Annie, you're gonna have to decide whose side you're on in this thing."

"I'm either for you or against you?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah," she admitted, "but I don't want to talk about it tonight."

A.J. accepted that with a nod. "If you decide you do want to talk, and you want to talk to a friend… we'll work around the rest."

Annie kept her doubts to herself. A.J. pulled the door open, and three cats darted into the entry and pounced on the muskrat box, growling.

"What is in that box?"

"Dead muskrat."

"Jeez, Broussard, anybody ever tell you you've got a morbid sense of humor?"

"A million times, but I'm also in denial."

He smiled and winked at her as he stepped out onto the landing. "I'll see you around, kiddo. I'm glad we're friends again."

"Me, too," Annie murmured. "And thanks for the flowers."

"Ah-sorry." He pulled a face. "I didn't send them. Uncle Sos assumed…"

Annie held a hand up. " 'Nough said. That's okay. I wouldn't expect you to."

"But feel free to let me know who did, so I can go punch the guy in the nose."

"Please. One assault a week is my limit."

He leaned down and brushed a kiss to her cheek. "Lock your door. There's bad guys running around out there."

She shooed the cats out of the entry and went back into the apartment. The bouquet sat dead center on her kitchen table, looking almost as out of place there as it had in the store. Her apartment was a place for wildflowers in jelly jars, not the elegance of roses. She plucked the white envelope from its plastic stem and extracted the card.

Dear Ms. Broussard, I hope you don't think roses inappropriate, but you saved my life and I want to thank you properly.

Yours truly, Marcus Renard

He wondered what she'd thought of the flowers. She should have seen them by now. She worked the day shift. He knew because the news reports about his beating identified her as "an off-duty sheriff's deputy." She had been on duty at the courthouse yesterday, and had helped save him from Davidson's attack. She had been on duty the morning Pam's body had been found. She had been the one to find it.

There was a thread of continuity running through all this, Marcus reflected as he gazed out the window of his workroom. He had been in love with Pam; Annie had discovered Pam's body. Pam's father had tried to kill him; Annie had stopped him. The detective in charge of Pam's case had tried to kill him; Annie had again come to his rescue. Continuity. In his drug-numbed mind he pictured the letters of the word unraveling and tying themselves into a perfect circle, a thin black line with no beginning and no ending. Continuity.

He moved his pencil over the paper with careful, featherlight strokes. Fourcade hadn't damaged his hands. There were bruises-defensive wounds-and his knuckles had been skinned when he fell to the ground, but nothing worse. His eyes were still nearly swollen shut. Cotton packing filled both nostrils, forcing him to breathe through his mouth, the air hissing in and out between his chipped teeth because his broken jaw had been wired shut. Stitches crisscrossed his face like seams in a crazy quilt. He looked like a gargoyle, like a monster.

The doctor had given him a prescription for painkillers and sent him home late in the day. None of his injuries were life-threatening or needed further monitoring, for which he was glad. He had no doubt the nurses at Our Lady of Mercy would have killed him if given ample opportunity.

The Percodan dulled the throbbing in his head and face, and took the bite out of the knifing pains in his side where Fourcade had cracked three of his ribs. It also seemed to blur the edges of all sensory perception. He felt insulated, as if he were existing inside a bubble. The volume of his mother's voice had been cut in half. Victor's incessant muttering had been reduced to a low hum.

They had both been right there when Richard Kudrow brought him home. Agitated and irritated by the interruption of their routines.

"Marcus, you had me worried sick," his mother said as he made his way painfully up one step and then another onto the veranda.

Doll stood leaning against a pillar, as if she hadn't the strength to keep herself upright. As tall as both her sons, she still gave the impression of being a birdlike woman, fine boned, almost frail. She had a habit of fluttering one hand against her breastbone like a broken wing. Despite the fact that she was an excellent seamstress, she wore dowdy five-and-dime housedresses that swallowed her up and made her look older than her fiftysome years.

"I didn't know what to think when the hospital called. I was just terrified you might die. I barely slept for worrying on it. What would I do without you? How would I cope with Victor? I was nearly ill with worry."

"I'm not dead, Mother," Marcus pointed out.

He didn't ask why she hadn't come to the hospital to see him, because he didn't want to hear how she hated to drive, especially at night-on account of her undiagnosed night blindness. Never mind that she had hounded him to buy her a car years ago so that she wouldn't have to feel dependent upon him. She rarely took the thing out of the carriage shed they used as a garage. And he didn't want to hear how she was afraid to leave Victor, and how she disliked hospitals and believed them to be the breeding grounds for all fatal disease. The last would set Victor off into his germ litany.