AN: Chapter title from 'Ain't No Sunshine' by Bill Withers

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone. It's not warm when she's away. Wonder this time where she's gone, wonder if she's gone to stay. Ain't no sunshine when she's gone, and this house just ain't no home anytime she goes away."

Chapter 10: Ain't No Sunshine

Gone.

Just gone.

It's like an empty hole inside me, a missing piece so huge and gaping and raw that I know it will never heal and I'm as good as dead.

I stare at the crime scene photos and look for clues, any clue, that she might still be out there. Might still be alive.

But I know.

I know because of the emptiness.

And I can see it in my mind, her buried out there, forever alone and forgotten and rotting in a shallow grave.

If they ever find her, some hiker, climber, camper, ranger, they won't know who she is.

Maybe someone will remember I came looking; maybe someday I'll get a call that I can finally bury her with a headstone and a grave, and someone might remember that she was important.

Because she was.

There's no hint to how he killed her, what her last words were, her last feeling.

The blood presses images into my mind, so many crime scenes I've seen that I can read blood like words.

She was bound, her hands behind her back. Her tiny fists made impressions on the sheets as she was pressed against them again and again and again, as he…

Blood mixed with fluids down lower and I remember her screaming.

Blood in her hair, like paintbrushes across the canvas sheet. Blood from her side where he must have cut her, but not cut away because there would be skin and more blood.

Blood on the floor, circling the dust. They are knee-prints and I know he forced his way down her throat then.

He wiped off the knife there, and I can see how long and sharp and flat it is. The sheet is sliced where it caught the edge and I know that it cut through her skin like butter.

But not enough blood to kill.

How did he kill her?

I have to know; it haunts me.

There are a thousand ways to kill someone without shedding blood.

Strangulation, suffocation, those images are the strongest as I remember her hanging there, spinning as he smiled and watched.

His fingers around her slim neck, clenching and unclenching enough to prolong her death until she begged him to die, to release her.

Her last words a plea to die.

I know he killed her because they found the plastic zip-tie, cut and bloody, on the floor under the bed.

I stare at the picture of the front of the cabin, the close-up of the wood there, darkened by blood.

And then nothing.

The wind and rain and sleet had driven away anything, any clue, beyond the overhang.

And it was all my fault.

I should have protected her better. I should have known that he'd come back.

But why had he come back? The trial was over; the brother imprisoned for life.

What benefit would killing her have now?

I should have known.

It was a pride thing; an honor thing.

He could no more leave a job undone than I could.

But I did. I should have known she needed more protection then, how would he put it, 'banging' a cop.

She should have stayed in a safe house. Should have changed her name and identity and moved far, far away where he would never find her.

But she didn't because I'm selfish and I wanted her for myself.

And now I've killed her.

I ignored everything; every bit of logic and law I knew.

And she paid for it.

I sit in Henry's house on our bed- the last place I saw her. I was still here, not because I wanted to be here, but because I simply couldn't move.

The room still smelled of her. Of strawberries and musty earth and the sea.

They were holding a wake downstairs.

They didn't call it that, of course, because no one would admit she was dead.

Missing, they called it.

O'Hara made the flyers; sent them out.

She showed me one and gave me the picture she used. She only used part of the picture; a profile of her face as she looked up, almost smiling.

I look over at the original: neatly, simply framed and sitting next to me.

She was looking up at me, my arm around her shoulders as I glanced down at her, a small smile of my own faintly visible.

She was looking up at me, love and happiness and trust so, so apparent.

O'Hara had taken the photo. The only photo I have of her. The only thing I have left to prove that she was real and not just someone I dreamed one long, cold, lonely winter night.

But no, this hurt too much to be a dream.

Angeline.

I hadn't said her name aloud since we returned; the flight long and silent.

I had gone back to work the next day, despite O'Hara's arguments and the Chief's forbidding frown.

Without her, I had nothing else to rely on.

Work was safe, work was constant, and work couldn't be stolen away.

I couldn't kill work.

I worked until they made me go home, and then I sat in the room and looked at the photos and drank.

It had been over a week.

Over a week since we left the cabin. Almost two since she'd been taken.

It was only a week until Christmas.

The very thought of a holiday without her, Christmas without her, had me reaching for the bottle.

But it was empty.

Like the house I bought her.

I couldn't live there, not now. But I couldn't decide if I should sell it or not. Part of me wanted to; wanted to cut any ties with the past. Part of me wanted to leave Santa Barbara and never return.

There was so much pain here.

And then there was part of me that was afraid that if I left, if I sold it, it would be like she never existed at all.

And then there was that tiny, tiny part of me that still had hope. That still believed she lived and would return one day and we could be happy and finally, finally at peace.

Fool.

How many happy endings had I seen? How many triumphant returns? How many unharmed or rescued or found?

I knew the statistics.

I knew Daemon.

But I still waited.