Heather Graham - Out Of The Darkness

Yes, poor Hannah. She’d disappeared after leaving a bar near Times Square.

Her torso and limbs had turned up on a bank of the Hudson River.

Her head had come up just downriver about a half mile. She had been savagely cut to ribbons, much like the victims ten years past.

According to the news, Hannah had become a bartender, and then a stripper—and then a cocaine addict. Had that already been in the cards for her? Or had her life been twisted on that horrible night?

“Poor Hannah, yes. Nobody deserves to have their life stolen,” Tyler assured Davey. “Nobody,” he repeated firmly. “Had you—seen her?”

Davey shook his head gravely. “My mom doesn’t let me go to strip clubs!” he said, almost in a whisper. Then he smiled again. “Tyler, I have a girlfriend. She has Down syndrome like me.”

“Well, wow! That’s cool. Got a picture?”

Davey did. He pulled out his wallet. He showed Tyler a picture of a lovely young girl with a smile as magnificent as his, short brown hair and big brown eyes.

“She’s a looker!” Tyler said.

“Megan. Her name is Megan.” Davey grinned happily.

“That’s wonderful.”

“Sarah set me up on the right kind of page on the internet. It really is cool.”

“I’ll bet it is! Leave it to Sarah.”

“She loves me. And, you know, she loves you, too.”

“Of course. We all love each other.”

By that time, Renee Cray had made it to the door. She was a tall, thin, blonde woman in her late forties, with big brown eyes just like Davey’s. “Tyler!” she exclaimed.

And then she, too, threw her arms around him, as if he was the lost black sheep of the family being welcomed back into the fold.

Maybe he was.

“Tyler! How wonderful to see you! We knew, of course, that you’d joined the navy. And I know Sarah had heard you’re living in Boston, working there as some kind of a consultant. Police consultant? PI? Something like that?”

“Exactly like that,” he told her.

Renee continued to stare at him. “You’re here...because of Hannah Levine, right? But...what can you do? What can anyone do? Is it horrible to say I’m glad her parents died in a car accident years ago? But what...” Her voice trailed off, and then she straightened. “Where are my manners? Come in, come in—you know the way, of course!”

He entered the parlor; Renee and Davey lived in a charming little two-story house in Brooklyn that offered a real yard and a porch with several rocking chairs. Renee was a buyer for a major retail chain and was able to keep up a very nice home on her own salary. Since the death of her husband, she had never done much more than work—and care for Davey. Tyler doubted she had changed. She was, in his opinion, a wonderful mother, never making Davey too dependent and never becoming codependent herself.

“Sit, sit,” Renee told him. “Davey, get Tyler some tea, will you, please? You still like iced tea, right?”

“Still love it,” Tyler assured her.

When her son was gone, Renee leaned forward. “Oh, Tyler! It’s been so hard to listen to the news. I mean, bad things happen all the time. It’s just that...you all escaped such a terrible thing, and now Hannah. Of course, her lifestyle...but then again, no one asks to be murdered... They haven’t given out many details. We don’t know if she was raped and murdered, but she was...decapitated. Beheaded. Just like—”

She broke off again, shaking her head. “It’s like it’s the same killer—as if he came back. Oh, I’ll never forget that night! Hearing what had happened, trying to find Davey, trying to find you children... Oh, Tyler! Hannah now...it’s just too sad!”

“It’s not the same killer,” Tyler said quietly. “I saw Archibald Lemming die. I saw him with a wooden table leg sticking straight through him. He did not miraculously get up and come back to kill again. Hannah had demons she dealt with, but they were in the way she looked at life. It’s tragic, because no one should ever die like that. And,” he reflected softly, “she was our friend. We were all friends back then. We haven’t seen each other in a while, but...we were friends. We knew her.”

Renee nodded, still visibly shaken.

Maybe they hadn’t seen Hannah in a long time, but she had still been one of them.

“Tyler, I guess it’s been in the media everywhere, but...you weren’t that close with Hannah, were you? Had you talked to her? How did you come to be here?”

He smiled grimly.

Sarah. Sarah was why he had come. He thought back, hardly twelve hours earlier, when he had heard from her. He had received the text message from an unknown number.

Hi Tyler. It’s Sarah. Have you seen the news?

Yes, of course he’d seen the news.

And he’d been saddened and shocked. He’d been there the night of one of the most gruesome spree killings in American history, and then he’d gone on to war. Not much compared to the atrocities one could see in battle. Between the two, he was a fairly hardened man.

But...their old friend Hannah had been brutally murdered. And even if her life had taken a turn for the worse lately—which the media was playing up—neither she, nor any victim, should ever have to suffer such horrors.

While Tyler hadn’t seen Sarah in a decade, the second he received the missive from her, it felt as if lightning bolts tore straight through his middle and out through every extremity.

They said time healed all wounds. He wasn’t so sure. He never really understood why he’d done what he’d done himself, except that, in the midst of the trauma and turmoil that had swept around them that night in a long-gone October, Sarah had still seemed to push him away. She always said she was fine, absolutely fine. That she needed to worry about Davey.

She had rejected Tyler’s help—just as she had refused to understand he’d been willing to make Davey his responsibility, just as much as Davey was Sarah’s responsibility.

They’d all had to deal with what had happened, with what they had witnessed.

Tyler had always wanted her to know he loved Davey, and he never minded responsibility, and he didn’t give a damn about anyone else’s thoughts or opinions on the matter. They had to allow Davey a certain freedom. When they were with him, they both needed to be responsible. That was sharing life, and it was certainly no burden to Tyler.

But Sarah had shut down; she had found excuses not to see him.

And he’d had to leave.

Maybe, after that, pride had taken hold. She had never tried to reach him.

And so he had never tried to get in touch with her.

But now...

Now Sarah had reached out to him.

He’d kept up with information about her, of course. Easy enough; she kept a professional platform going.

He liked to think she had followed him, as well. Not that he was as forthcoming about where he was and what he was doing. He had become a licensed investigator and consultant. Most of his work had been with the Boston Police Department; some had been with the FBI.

He knew she hadn’t gone far. Her parents had rented out their Brooklyn home and moved to California. Sarah was living in Manhattan. She’d found a successful career writing fiction—he’d bought her books, naturally. Her early romances reminded him of the two of them; they’d been so young when they’d been together, so idealistic. They’d believed in humanity and the world and that all good things were possible.

Her sci-fi novels were fun—filled with cool creatures, “aliens” who seemed to parallel real life, and bits of sound science.

Part of why he’d never tried to contact her again had been pride, yes. Part of his efforts had actually been almost noble—her life looked good; he didn’t want to ruin it.