Happy summer, everyone! There may be a couple more chapters after this one, hopefully within the next two weeks. : )
Chapter 8
When she enters the office an hour after leaving for the night, she calls out to Walt to let him know she's back. He grumbles some response.
It doesn't bug her the way it might have a month ago. She gets it now, in part thanks to Branch. But the situation with Cady is the last straw.
At her desk, she clicks on the lamp and opens her laptop and the file. She reads through the letter, cuts some stuff, adds some other stuff, runs the spell and the grammar checker, reads it one more time. Then she prints it and folds it neatly and slips it into an envelope. She writes his name on it. For the splittest of seconds she's embarrassed about the presentation: his first name scrawled off-center, awkward and inappropriately familiar, trying way too hard not to look like she's trying too hard.
She won't allow herself to start over.
His door is half-open, and he's there at his desk, forearms on the blotter, focused on the empty air in front of him. When she knocks on the frame, his eyes snap up to her face. He sits back in his chair. He smiles as though he'd forgotten about her, but the memory, when recovered, is a pleasant one.
"Hey," she says all casual and bland.
He pushes back from the desk. "Hey," he says.
So she enters because that's what indifference would look like. The heels of her boots crack thinly like powder caps across the floor.
In the same chill vein, she drops the envelope on his desk as opposed to handing it to him. She's not fooling anyone, except apparently him.
He's frozen, eyebrows high as he stares down at the white rectangle between them, like he thinks the letter might be laced with anthrax.
"What?" she says.
He looks up at her and all the way in for the first time since that night. Her stomach clenches.
"Vic," he says kind of as a sigh, as though she's wearing him out.
He sits up straighter.
The old her, the her she was before she got all moony and tangled in his web, wouldn't have put up with that.
Bite me, she thinks. But that's the difference.
He rubs his two-day growth, the scratchiness ear-splitting in the loaded silence.
"I know . . .," he starts, then he clears his throat. "I know I left you hanging."
"No," she says.
He did, but she doesn't want a fucking apology for it. And if this is what it takes for him to give a shit, she would have dropped an envelope on his desk a month ago.
"You've been preoccupied," she says.
It's the wrong word, but there doesn't seem to be a right one. It's almost inconceivable what he's going through. She does, however, understand enough to know it would be ludicrous for anyone, least of all her, to expect anything from him at this point.
She clears her own throat. "Don't worry about it," she says.
His brow crinkles.
"What?" she says.
She could have been home by now. She doesn't need to do this tonight. In fact, she's not sure she needs to do it at all: Cady's fine. Sam Poteet is fine. And David Ridges really, truly isn't dead.
"I, um, . . .," he says.
"Forget about it." She leans over and picks up the envelope, slaps it against her palm. "That's not what this is about," she says, though she fears it's a lie.
He stands, puts his hands on his hips, shakes and bows his head.
When he looks up, his blue eyes are sharp and clear and serious. "It wasn't a good time," he says. "And that's on me, Vic."
Is it? she thinks. On him? She started it after all. Then he did, but then truth be told, she did.
"It's nothing," she says.
Now he looks confused, but he nods.
"I mean," she says, "it's not important now."
He holds out his hand for the letter, and she gives it to him.
"I don't want to read this," he says with the vulnerable grin that makes her want to hug him, and hurt him.
"Well, you have to."
He slaps the envelope against his thigh and shifts his weight.
Only then does it occur to her that he thinks she's resigning—the bull is in her pen so to speak. It's not, but in this isolated, pulsating moment, he believes she has the power.
If this is a choice, she realizes, she needs to choose it more often.
He exhales loudly and opens the envelope, pulls the letter out with finger and thumb and unfolds it. She watches as his eyes scan the paper.
Then he looks up, newly baffled.
"This is about Branch," he says.
It's not ideal, but she does feel better.
\
Two days later he's there when Branch tries to kill her, which is fortunate.
Also fortunate is the fact that he's not there when Branch spits venom at her from behind bars, laying it on thick about how she betrayed him. Of course, he's right: She did betray him, and that probably explains how she gets roped into taking the keys to the Ghost of Ridges' vehicle and semi-committing to processing the scene.
Close to sunset, she's out there on the bridge sitting in the driver's seat of the gold Olds. As she listens to the last message on Ridges' phone for the third time, the smell of dusty oil and warm vinyl intermingles with the idea of a betrayal far broader and deeper than her own.
When the Bronco pulls up, she snaps the phone shut and tosses it to the passenger side. She fully expects Walt to lay into her for taking orders from the incarcerated loon. As painful as that sounds, at least it will delay the inevitable moment when she's forced to watch him process Nighthorse's recent voicemail to the long-dead Dog Soldier.
She steps out of the car and watches him approach. He doesn't look pissed. If anything, he seems guarded, or tentative. When he's close, she says, "Hey."
"Ferg get a hold of you?" he says.
"No." She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and looks at it. "No," she says again and holds it up for him to see, but his eyes are across the bridge somewhere, along the bank of the river, then back over his shoulder towards the vehicles before looking back at her.
She tilts her head. "What's going on?"
Pressing his lips together, he rubs the back of his neck. "Branch got out."
"Escaped?" she says. "How?"
"Not escaped exactly. Barlow showed up. Strong-armed Ferg."
"Huh," she says, crossing her arms. "Okay."
His eyes take the tour again then he looks at Ridges' car and her stomach plummets.
"You probably shouldn't be alone tonight," he says.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean with Branch out there."
"I'm a trained law enforcement officer, Walt."
"So is he."
"But I'm a better shot," she says.
He doesn't even crack a smile.
"You could spend the night at the cabin."
She laughs. "I don't think so."
"Vic," he says. "This is serious."
She cocks her hip and stares at him.
"I agree, Walt. It is serious. Someone could get hurt."
He squints at her. Then he takes a deep breath, and he looks back at the car.
"All right," he says. "What've we got here?"
She crouches to grab a pair of extra-large gloves from the kit.
"There's something you need to hear," she says.