A/N: Hello again! I've been out for the winter, but I'M BACK NOW. Huge thank yous to everyone who's read this story, especially if you left a review (hugs to ElvenDestiny and phantomcat97!). Y'all are part of the reason why I made sure to come back and finish this. That, and I just really can't WAIT for Betrayals, so I have to make my own fun.
This last chapter will be in two parts; below is Part 1, and expect Part 2 very soon!
All rights belong to Kelley Armstrong.
"Remind me why we're out here, again?" Olivia asked, as a tree branch whipped her in the face.
"We are looking for evidence of an unconfirmed death that our client allegedly deposited in these woods," Gabriel said, from further ahead.
"Aww, you take me on the best day trips. Maybe after this we can get ice cream and go to the gun range."
"If you're a good girl and help me find the body."
Another branch snagged in the neckline of her top, and as she disentangled herself a third smacked her across the ass. Olivia growled in frustration and lashed out at the dense underbrush.
"I'm being sexually harassed by a bush, I hope you know that," she called up to Gabriel.
"Cease and desist, bushes," Gabriel said firmly.
"Wow, that was really scary, and I'm sure it will have a huge impact on them. Ow."
"It better." Gabriel tramped back to where she was and held up a tangle of vines and branches so she could pass through. "I've never requested an injunction against plant life, but I'm sure there's a precedent."
Olivia smiled in spite of herself and they continued down the hillside, holding back branches for each other to make the way easier. It had taken them the better part of the day to drive out here from the city, and Gabriel's good mood had only increased the farther they drove. They had been deep in cases all month, and she'd missed the easy banter they usually settled into. Gabriel had been working outside of the office more than usual lately, and if she didn't know better, she'd almost have said he was avoiding her.
But out here in the wilds of southern Wisconsin, all of the worries and distances fell away between them, like city smog dissipated by fresh air. Gabriel helped her down a particularly steep incline, and when she left her hand in his even after they were on level ground, he didn't pull away.
Olivia started recounting the plot of "The Client," pointing out the similarities to their current situation, and letting Gabriel pick apart the legalities.
"And that is why," he said, when she came to the end, "we don't have clients from organized crime."
"Because we'd spend all our weekends tramping through the woods, looking for bodies?"
"Exactly. Or in boats, on the lake."
"I don't know, it's pretty nice out here." She swung their joined hands back and forth playfully. "We could have brought a picnic."
"I'm sure we can find a reason to have a picnic that doesn't involve dead people."
Olivia bit back a smile at Gabriel's casual suggestion that they spend recreational time together. Progress.
"I realize I was asleep for most of the drive out here," she said instead, "so if you were talking, I wasn't listening, but what exactly is the plan if we do find this guy?"
"We call the police," he said.
"And explain our presence here...how?"
"We are hiking."
Olivia snorted.
"Technically, this is a national park," he pointed out.
"Technically, we are nowhere near a trail."
Gabriel stopped, and Olivia's momentum swung her around to face him, their hands still intertwined.
"Perhaps we got lost," Gabriel said quietly.
She stared at him for a moment, trying to read into those ice blue eyes what exactly was going on. Things had been off-kilter between them, their dynamic shifting. She hoped—but she knew if she got it wrong, it would destroy everything.
"Neither one of us is very good at following directions," she said at last.
"Or reading signs."
She laughed a little at that. "Speak for yourself."
"Interpreting omens isn't what I meant, Olivia."
"I know." Even as she said it, she heard a crow caw overhead. There was a rush of flapping wings, and a large black bird settled onto Gabriel's shoulder.
He didn't move.
She dropped his hand and stepped back, and all he did was frown at her. The crow shifted from foot to foot, and let out what should have been a deafening caw, right in his ear. He didn't even flinch.
"Olivia?"
Two more crows appeared, cawing loudly and circling the clearing where they stood. Olivia kept backing away from Gabriel, unable to take her eyes off the crow on his shoulder.
One for bad news...
She glanced up, and there were six new birds, with more coming all the time, pouring into the sky overhead like black ink into a clear pool.
"Olivia, what's happening? Olivia!"
She knew he was shouting, but it was as if he was far away, muted by distance or a wall. All she could see were the birds, all she could hear were the birds. And then the birds fell.
They rushed down into the clearing in a swirl of ratty black feathers, sucked in and centering around her. She tried to back away further, only to run into a thicket of bushes behind her, with birds on every other side. Cawing, closing in, their feathers choking her and falling in dusty sweeps of wings, out of which came claws and talons and the sharpest of beaks, scraping her arms and chest. They began diving at her face, pecking, pecking, and she put up her arms to ward them off, trying to yell and getting only a mouthful of feathers.
Suddenly everything around her darkened, the light cut out and a heavy weight across her head and upraised arms. She struggled harder until someone gripped her shoulders and she heard a voice, from very far away.
"They are incorporeal, and cannot hurt you...they are incorporeal, and cannot hurt you..."
The dark surrounding her shut out the sight of the birds, and slowly the other voice became louder and closer, clearer as the birds' cries faded away.
"They are incorporeal, and cannot hurt you."
Gabriel.
She lifted the darkness away from her head, and her arms came away wrapped in Gabriel's suit jacket. He'd thrown it over her, and she looked from it to him in question as he stood in front of her. He let go of her shoulders.
"Psychological defense," he explained.
She let out a shaky breath. "You're just a full-service defense lawyer, aren't you?"
"Indeed. I'll even investigate the scene of your alleged crime, which is the actual explanation I would give the police if we found that man's body, and not 'hiking.'"
"Oh, good. I was afraid you were slipping." She stepped away from the bushes, slipping past Gabriel to the left. Her adrenaline was dropping again, and she was suddenly cold in the open air.
Gabriel followed. He stepped in front of her again when she stopped, carefully removing his jacket from her grip and draping it over her shoulders. She slipped her arms into the sleeves without thinking, staring at the ground and frowning.
"Olivia? Tell me what's going on. What did you see?"
She looked up. "You don't know?"
"I know something was attacking you. I don't know what it was."
"The birds..." she whispered.
"The what?"
"The birds."
"Are the omens recreating Hitchcock films now?"
"I don't understand what they're trying to say," she muttered, beginning to pace the clearing.
Gabriel fell into step beside her. "Did they speak to you?"
"No. No, the omens... One for sorrow, three for... a wedding, grief, love, journey, secrets..." She stopped. "It was all of them. All the birds, all the omens."
"And then some, by the looks of it."
"But why all together? It doesn't make any sense. Everything together makes up-"
"Everything," Gabriel finished quietly.
Olivia stared at him. She hadn't even mentioned that the birds had centered around him begin with, before transferring to her.
"Why would I get an omen that everything is going to happen?" And that it's going to happen to us?
"Maybe because it is." He was gazing at her steadily, and she couldn't look away.
"What kind of an omen is 'everything is going to happen'? It's silly. I'm being warned that life is going to happen to us?"
She saw him register the pronoun. "Maybe we both needed a sign in our faces, to get us heading in the right direction."
"It's—improbable," she said, almost a whisper.
He started to smile. "Well, when you eliminate the impossible-"
"Oh my god, don't start," she said, laughing.
"-whatever remains-"
"I will hurt you."
"-however improbable, must be the-"
He took a few steps back as he spoke, trying not to laugh and never taking his eyes off her. With a sudden slipping rustle, the ground under his feet shifted and he stumbled. Olivia darted forward, in time to catch herself on a tree trunk as the ground gave way and Gabriel tumbled down the hillside.
"Gabriel?" Olivia peered through the trees, catching her hair in the branches. "Shit. Gabriel!"
"Stay back from the edge, Olivia!" he called up from somewhere beneath her, and she relaxed a fraction at hearing his voice. By bracing herself on two trees, she could lean far enough over to see. Gabriel had landed on a shelf of ground roughly ten feet down, the last outcropping before the incline fell away into rocks and sideways-clinging trees, ending in a creek bed far below. She couldn't see from her vantage point how badly Gabriel was hurt, but by the lay of his bad leg and the fact he wasn't jumping back up, Olivia judged the situation to be fairly serious.
She scanned the surrounding area and found, further to her left, a place where the hillside sloped down less steeply, and began side-stepping down to Gabriel's level.
The ground was slick with decaying leaves. Olivia grabbed onto bushes and tree roots protruding from the eroded hillside, her feet slipping almost out from underneath her. Just as she reached the ground level where Gabriel lay, she lost her balance, sliding past to land on a section of limestone.
"Olivia?"
Olivia caught her breath and moved to her hands and knees. Gabriel's jacket had protected her back on the slide down, and she tried to ignore the dull pain of her backside from landing on rock. She was about to call out her position to Gabriel, let him know she was ok, when a glimpse of denim caught her eye.
Tucked into the underside of the upper land shelf was a half-dug hollow resting on the rock. Olivia crawled forward. Exposed roots tangled in her hair, dropping damp earth down her neck. She followed the denim down to a work boot, and up something suspiciously leg-like, badly covered with leaves and cut branches.
"Olivia, answer me." Concern and pain sharpened Gabriel's voice. "Are you alright?"
"I'm good!" Olivia brushed away a branch, just to be sure. "This dead guy down here isn't, though."
