Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

“Honestly, I don’t know what Eden is,” Frost said.

“But she’s not ‘Shut Up and Dance,’ like me?” Tabby asked, smiling again.

“You are way more than that,” he told her before he could stop himself.

“Thank you.” Her face had a little blush in the shadows, but then she changed the subject. “I met Eden a few years ago, you know.”

“I know. She mentioned it.”

“I confess, I didn’t like her much.”

“She mentioned that, too.”

“I don’t think it was her. It was me. She caught me at a dark time. She was asking about Nina, and I didn’t appreciate anyone prying into our lives.”

“Sure.”

Tabby picked up on his reluctance to talk. “I’m sorry, Frost. Sometimes I get too personal with people too fast. I didn’t mean to go where I don’t belong.”

“You didn’t,” Frost said.

“Well, I’m making you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing I wanted.”

She looked unhappy with herself, and she put distance between them and smoothed her dress. They stared at each other in strained silence. Neither one of them knew what to say. When that had gone on for too long, Frost returned to the busy restaurant, and Tabby followed behind him. She took her seat again without looking at him, but he didn’t bother sitting down. He was ready to leave. He said his good-byes to his family and tried to pay for his meal, but his father wouldn’t let him, as Frost expected. He kissed his mother, and Janice gave him one of those maternal looks that didn’t change no matter how old a child got.

“We will see you tomorrow afternoon, right?” she asked. “At the Lubins’ for the support group?”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

He suspected that Janice would only believe it when he actually walked in the door.

Frost picked his way between the restaurant tables and exited onto the sidewalk at the Embarcadero. The Bay Bridge was lit up as it crossed to Yerba Buena Island. Bushy heads of palm trees were silhouetted in the median of the wide avenue. He still felt unsettled and unhappy, but he was liberated by being outside in the cool city air. He turned toward Mission Street to walk to the garage where he’d parked his Suburban.

As he did, he stepped into a faint cross wind of cigarette smoke. It was distinctive and acrid. He’d smelled that smoke before. Inside his own house.

Frost spun around quickly.

Across the Embarcadero, in the streetlights near the bay, he saw an old Cadillac sedan, its lights off but its engine rumbling loudly, like a death rattle. The driver’s window was open, but he couldn’t see inside, other than to spot the pinpoint ember of a cigarette. He started across the street, but as soon as he did, the window rolled shut, and the Cadillac peeled away into an illegal U-turn across the trolley tracks and disappeared at high speed.

He couldn’t read the license plate, but he knew who it was. He’d seen that Cadillac in front of a seedy house in the Crocker-Amazon neighborhood.

Phil Cutter was watching him.

The first thing Frost did when he got home was check the locks on the doors and windows. Eden watched him curiously, without asking questions. He went from room to room, but there were no signs of tampering or break-ins. Everything was secure.

When he was done, he returned to the living room. Eden sat in a lotus position on the floor, with a laptop balanced on her calves. Cheater glasses pinched the end of her nose. She had a half-full glass of white wine on the carpet beside her. He didn’t recognize the music playing on his Echo, but it had a new-age serenity. The overhead chandelier was dimmed. Eden had lit a fire in the wood fireplace, and the logs crackled and smoked.

He sat down beside her. The fire made it hot.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Phil Cutter was following me. I wanted to make sure that Rudy wasn’t trying to find you while I was away.”

“He doesn’t want me. He wants Maria Lopes. Whoever that is.”

“I thought the same thing before Jess was killed,” Frost said. “I don’t want to be wrong again.”

“Well, I like being worried about.”

She drank her wine, but her gaze didn’t leave him. The firelight danced around her face. A few of her corkscrew curls swished her forehead. She lifted the glasses from her nose and put them aside, and she closed the cover of her laptop. There was no misreading her eyes. She’d already admitted that she wanted him. He wanted her, too, but with a hollow, physical need that he hated giving in to. And yet he knew he would. Tonight, with his brain fogged by alcohol and Tabby, he didn’t care.

“I didn’t even know that fireplace worked,” Frost said, stalling.

“You’ve never lit a fire here?”

“Never.”

“There was wood in the garage,” she said.

“It must have been there for years.”

Eden leaned back on her hands. “I brought some personal things with me. Not for long, just a day or two. I put them in the master bedroom. You said you didn’t use it.”

“I don’t,” Frost said.

“Shame. It’s a soft bed. Really nice.”

“Good.”

The dance went on. They both knew where this dance went.

“Shack’s hiding in the closet up there,” Eden said. “Doesn’t he like me?”

“That’s one of his spots. He goes there when the world gets too overwhelming.”

“Your cat has issues?” Eden asked.

“He’s very complex. And protective. When the old woman who owned this place was killed, Shack wouldn’t leave her. Practically mauled anyone who got close. But I persuaded him everything was going to be okay.”

“That’s sweet,” Eden said.

They didn’t say anything else. They didn’t need to. Frost took a long look at her body, from the smoothness of her face to the gray silk blouse with two buttons undone to the shorts that left most of her honey-colored legs bare. She waited for him to start. He slid a hand behind her neck and pulled her to him, and she bent into the kiss. Their lips met, soft, warm, and wet. Her fingers worked gracefully on each button of his shirt.

He laid her back on the carpet, and his body slid on top of hers. He was propped on his forearms. They kissed again; they struggled piece by piece out of their clothes. As her blouse opened, as he parted the silk, he was conscious of the scar just above the hollow of her neck.

She saw his eyes go to it, and she said, “Touch it. Please.”

His thumb caressed the smooth gash.

“Kiss it.”

He leaned down. His mouth and his tongue found it.

“Oh my God,” she murmured.

Then they weren’t tender anymore. They were rough with each other, as if they both had something to prove. They didn’t go upstairs; they didn’t bother with the soft bed. They stayed in front of the hot fire until every inch of their skin was damp with sweat.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Frost woke up alone. The fire had died to gray ash, and cold, whistling air blew onto his body through the chimney. He stood up. Their clothes were strewn on the floor, and he grabbed his boxers and stepped into them.

“Eden?” he called softly.

There was no answer in the house.

He surveyed the downstairs, which was lit only by the outside city lights through the patio doors. At some point, Shack had gravitated back to his usual spot on the sofa, where Frost typically slept. The cat didn’t bother opening an eye. Nothing around the house was out of place. The boxes of research materials for Eden’s book were still stacked against the foyer wall.

Frost went silently upstairs. The door to the master bedroom was open. From the doorway, he could see Eden stretched across the bed. He walked inside and stood over her. She was on top of the comforter, lying on her stomach, with her head sideways on the pillow. Black curls draped over her face. The memories of their lovemaking went through his mind. Expressions on her face. The catch of her breath and the pleasured rumbling in her throat. The warmth of her fingers. Her legs wrapped around him. He stared at her and remembered all of it, and he asked himself what he felt about it.