When he closed the back door he took a moment to lock it. Couldn’t hurt.
The seconds dragged on, and Lolly listened hard. She should move, do something, follow Gabriel or run away. She found she could do nothing but stand there, hold tightly on to the blanket, and listen to her own heartbeat as she waited. Was it over? Was Niki going to somehow get up again, ignoring death? Lolly wanted peace; she wanted this night to be over.
She heard the back door close, and her heart matched its thud. A moment later Gabriel walked into the kitchen, blessedly alone and unharmed.
“Is it really over?” Her voice shook.
“It’s over. She’s dead,” Gabriel said as he came to her, tightened the blanket around her cold body, held her close.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Lolly hadn’t thought she’d ever be glad to hear that anyone was dead, but pure relief washed through her. She rested her head on Gabriel’s shoulder, wallowing in the strength and warmth of it. “I killed her,” she whispered.
Gabriel stepped back, made her look him in the eye. How could he be so calm? So steady? The flame on the stove flickered, casting strange shadows over his face. “Good job,” he said briefly, paying a very subtle compliment to her strength by not sugarcoating anything.
Lolly squared her shoulders. “I’m not sorry,” she said. “She was coming after you with a knife. She would’ve killed us both.”
Lolly took the few steps that separated her from the stove and turned the knob that killed the flame, plunging the room into darkness. “I don’t want soup, I don’t want anything that comes out of this damned kitchen,” she muttered.
“We need to eat,” he argued.
“I have breakfast bars,” she said, hugging the blanket to her cold body and walking away. If she never set foot in this kitchen again she’d be perfectly happy.
Gabriel followed her out of the kitchen, so when she stumbled on the end of the blanket—halfway through the dining room—he was there to catch her, to keep her from falling on her face. After everything that had happened, to trip over the trailing end of a blanket shouldn’t be traumatic, but tears welled up in her eyes. Gabriel heard them, saw them, maybe felt them, and lifted her into his arms. She let him, without a word of protest that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. At the moment she didn’t feel capable at all. He whispered soothing words. She didn’t pay any attention to what those words were, but she felt the intent, the comfort, to the pit of her soul.
The living room was like another world: warm, lit by the fire, quiet. What was left of the storm raged on the other side of the window, beyond the sturdy walls, but for the first time tonight that storm was separate and unimportant. They were alive. They had survived a threat that was greater than the storm.
Gabriel lowered her to the sofa and sat beside her, continuing to hold her close. Lolly wanted to stop shaking, but couldn’t. It wasn’t the cold that made her tremble, not this time.
“I think I’ll hire someone to come in and pack up everything that’s left,” she said, her gaze on the fire, her body fitting nicely against Gabriel’s.
“Probably not a bad idea.”
“If I thought we could make it safely to town tonight, I’d be out that door in five minutes. I can’t come back here after this. I don’t ever want to see this house again.”
“Too bad.” His voice was a rumbling whisper, as if he were simply thinking out loud.
Lolly lifted her head and looked at him. “What?” Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly. “Seriously?” How could he think she could ever look at this house as home again? Why would anyone in their right mind want to return after a night like this one?
“Wilson Creek won’t be the same without a Helton around, even if just part-time.”
“Wilson Creek will survive,” she argued.
Gabriel sighed. “I guess so, but how am I supposed to ask you out whenever I come back to visit if you’re in Portland instead of here?”
She didn’t know what shocked her most, that he’d consider asking her out, or that he knew details of her current living situation. “How do you know I live in Portland?”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “I must’ve heard someone mention it. Mom, probably. Which reminds me, you’re invited to stay at the house until the roads are clear.”
“That’s very nice,” she said, knowing without a doubt that the invitation had been Valerie McQueen’s idea.
She turned toward the fire, finding Gabriel’s solemn face somehow disturbing, and her gaze fell on the drugs and needles sitting on the coffee table. She all but jumped from the couch, reaching for the plastic bags, intending to toss everything into the fire. Gabriel grabbed her hand before she could touch anything.
“Evidence,” he said simply. “Leave everything right where it is.”
She turned on him, irrationally angry. “I’m supposed to leave this crap sitting on my mother’s coffee table all night?”
“Yes.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s … it’s obscene! If Niki had died in the kitchen, would you have just left her there all night?”
“Yep. I’m a cop, honey—a military cop, but still a cop. You don’t disturb a scene until the investigation is finished.”
It was good to feel something besides fear, so she fully embraced her annoyance. “So Niki and Darwin are both dead, and yet somehow they’re still in charge.”