Out Of The Darkness

Sarah nodded, listening to Kieran. It was good, she figured, to have a concept of what they might be dealing with.

But dead was dead. Hannah was gone. And it didn’t matter if she’d been viciously murdered by one kind of killer or another. It had been brutal.

Kieran smiled at her grimly. “I know what you’re thinking. But when hunting a killer, it’s helpful to have a concept of what you’re looking for in his or her behavior.”

“Of course! And thank you!” Sarah said quickly.

“So...Tyler Grant has come back to help?” Kieran asked. “And you were listed as Hannah’s next of kin. That’s good. It will allow him a lot of leeway.”

“The FBI hasn’t been asked in yet, right?”

“No, but Craig has a lot of friends with the police.”

Kieran was referring to Special Agent Craig Frasier, FBI. They were living together—sometimes at Craig’s and sometimes at Kieran’s. He had the better space in NYC, so Kieran would eventually give up her apartment, most probably, and move in with him. They were a definite duo; Sarah was sure marriage was somewhere in the future for them, especially since Kieran’s brothers—Declan, Kevin and Danny—seemed to accept him already as part of the family.

“Do you think...” Sarah began.

“Yes, I think!” Kieran said, smiling. She inclined her head toward the door. Tyler must have arrived. Sarah found herself inhaling sharply, her muscles tightening and her heart beating erratically.

Why? She wanted him here; she wanted...a solution. Hannah’s killer caught and put away for life. She wanted...forgiveness.

Maybe it just seemed that their lives—so easy a decade ago—had come to an abrupt break. It had become a breach, and she wasn’t sure things could ever be really right for her if she didn’t come to terms with that.

Once upon a time, she had been so in love with him. High school! They’d been so wide-eyed and innocent, and the world had stretched before them, a field of gold.

Kieran stood, waving to him.

“You’ve met Tyler?” Sarah was surprised. She hadn’t known Kieran in high school.

“No,” her friend said, shaking her head. “He called about meeting up with Craig. I looked him up after—found some pictures online. Rock solid, so it seems.”

Rock solid.

Yes, that had always been Tyler.

“But how...?”

Kieran laughed. “How do you think?”

“Davey!” Sarah said. She wasn’t sure whether to be exasperated or proud of her cousin. Devious! No, being devious wasn’t really in his nature. Pretty darned clever, though!

Tyler reached the table. Sarah stood, as Kieran had. It was still awkward to see him. He’d grown into a truly striking man with his quarterback’s shoulders and lean, hard-muscled physique. There were fleeting seconds when they were near one another that she felt they were complete strangers. Then there were moments when she remembered laughing with him, lying with him, dreaming with him, and she longed to just reach out and touch him, as if she could touch all that had been lost.

He was obviously feeling awkward, too. “Sarah,” he said huskily, taking a second to lightly grip her elbow and bend to kiss her cheek—as any friend might do.

That touch...so faraway and yet so familiar!

“Hey, I hear Davey has been at it again,” Sarah said. “This is Kieran, of course.”

“Of course,” Tyler said, shaking her hand.

“Craig should be here any minute. He had to drop by the office,” Kieran told him.

“Thanks,” Tyler said.

“Coffee? Tea? Something to eat?” Kieran asked. “We are a pub. Our roast is under way.”

“I’m sure it’s wonderful,” Tyler told her, smiling. “I’ve heard great things about this place—you’re listed in all kinds of guidebooks.”

“Nice to know.”

“I would love coffee.”

“I’ll see to it. Black?”

“Yep. It’s the easiest,” he told her.

Kieran smiled pleasantly and went to get a cup of coffee for him.

Tyler looked at Sarah.

“Craig is great. You’re going to like him a lot,” Sarah said. “I can’t believe Davey is making all these connections.”

“The kind we should have made ourselves.”

Kieran was already heading back with coffee. And she was indicating the old glass-inset, wood-paneled doors to the pub.

Craig had arrived.

He hurried to the high-top table where they’d been sitting. “Hey, kid,” he said to Sarah, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. He looked at Tyler. “Tyler, right? Grant?”

“Tyler Grant. And thank you, Special Agent Frasier.”

“Just Craig, please. And sorry,” he added, watching Kieran arrive with coffee, “you’re going to have to slurp that down. We need to get going. The man on this particular case is a Detective Bob Green. He’s a twelve-year homicide vet—he worked the Archibald Lemming case years ago. You might know him when you see him, though he wasn’t the one doing the interviews back then, his partner was. He’s senior man on his team now. Good guy. We can join him for the autopsy.”

“That’s great! Thank you,” Tyler told him. “I know you have other cases.”

“This caught up with me in the midst of a pile of paperwork,” Craig told him. “My partner is handling it for me, and my director knows where I am, so it’s all good.”

“What about the site where Hannah was left?”

“I can take you there.” Craig turned to Kieran, slipping an arm around her. “Save us supper, huh?”

“You bet.”

The affection between them wasn’t anything overt or in-your-face. It was just that even the way they looked at one another seemed to be intimate.

“Okay, we’re on it,” Craig said. He turned and headed toward the door. Tyler looked back and nodded a thanks to Kieran. He glanced at Sarah and gave her something of an encouraging smile.

She remembered his words from last night. He would stay on this.

He loved her still.

Friends...

Yes, sometimes friends loved each other forever. Even if they couldn’t be together.

* * *

AUTOPSY ROOMS COULD be strange places. It was where doctors and scientists studied the dead and did their best to learn from them. The NYC morgue downtown was huge; the body count was almost always high. It wasn’t that so many people were murdered; New York had had less than a hundred homicides in the past year—a large number, yes, but considering that it was home to eight million-plus people, and double that number came through almost on a daily basis, it wasn’t such a massive amount.

But the homeless who died so sadly in the street came to the morgue, as did anyone who died at home or in hotel rooms, or anywhere else about the city other than with a doctor or in a hospital or directly under a doctor’s care and with a known mortal disease.

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