I fell to my knees, hands shaking, not even looking up as someone gently pulled the gun from my hand. I was going into shock, I realized. All around me the Sapphic Security team was working. Lois was on the phone asking for a cleaner. Wanda was taking pictures of the body. An agent I didn’t know was righting the furniture.
I felt Boris come up behind me before I heard him. For a giant man, he was very quiet.
“Come Hazel, we will go to your mate now.”
“I have to give a statement to the police.”
“There will be no police,” he said. “Let boss wolf take care of things.”
He helped me up off the floor, one beefy arm coming around my shoulders. I was grateful for the support. I’d never killed a person before. I had no idea what it would feel like. The fact that Donny was an abusive criminal asshole didn’t make it any easier.
Boris walked me out to the SUV we came in, buckling me into the front seat and pressing a button on the dashboard as he eased away from the mansion.
“Marilee, I have Hazel with me,” he said as soon as she answered. “She is uninjured but shaken up. Where should I take her?”
“My house please Boris, I’ll meet you there.” Marilee raised her voice. “Hazel, are you really okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said, hating how weak my voice sounded. “A little bruised, but okay.”
Boris didn’t say a word the entire thirty minute drive to Marilee’s house, and I appreciated that. I needed time to think, to process. I remembered all the times my father had casually mentioned killing someone, like it was no big deal, another day at the office. Had he ever felt like this? The guilt and revulsion and sorrow were choking me.
We pulled into the driveway of a duplex that looked similar to the safehouse we’d stayed at, except there were flowers planted in the yard and a rocking chair on the porch.
“You will feel bad for a while,” Boris said as he turned off the car. “The first time you take a life, it is hard. But you did what you had to do to survive. He would have killed you with no regret. Remember this.”
Marilee came flying out of her house, wrenching the door open. I unclipped my seatbelt and she pulled me out of the car and into her arms.
“You’re really okay. I was so worried.”
Her normally calm demeanor was gone, her voice shaking. I didn’t respond, just let her lead me into the house.
“What do you need?” she asked.
I glanced down at my dress, realizing for the first time that it was covered in blood, and God only knows what else. “A shower. And clean clothes.”
***
After three days at Marilee’s house and a long debriefing at Sapphic Security, I’d mostly recovered from my traumatic experience. Don’t get me wrong, I was still grieving over what happened with Donny, but I could look at it with clear eyes now.
“It was self-defense,” Marilee reminded me more than once. “He’d already tried to shoot you. He wasn’t going to stop.”
That didn’t keep me from wondering if I could have done things differently and not set him off. It was Lois who made me feel better about it.
“He was an abuser, Hazel. If you hadn’t gone there, or you hadn’t fought back, he would have moved onto the next woman. They always do.”
What wasn’t making me feel better? Marilee was treating me like I was made of glass.
She’d asked Lois to take her off any new assignments for a few days while I recovered, but she’d barely touched me. She’d hug me, hold me close at night, but when I tried to initiate anythingshe’d tell me I was still recovering. Our conversations were brief and stilted, and I had the sense that she was upset with me but wouldn’t say why. We spent our days reading, napping, or watching TV in silence and it was making me go stir crazy.
Meanwhile my boss was emailing me asking about my return. Seattle had been fun… well, interesting was probably a better word, but it was time for me to go back to real life.
I broached the subject one night at dinner. “I need to go back to Canada. I booked a flight for tomorrow morning early.”
Marilee dropped her fork with a clatter. “What? Why?”
“I can’t just hang out at your house forever. My parents have gone back east, the Rossis have dropped the bounty on my head, and Lois says she doesn’t need anything more from me about the case. I have a job and a life in Ottawa to get back to.”
Her expression was carefully blank, but I could feel the pain in her. Yet she said nothing. I waited for her to ask me to stay. To ask if we could date long-distance. To ask me anything. But instead she picked up her fork and said, “I can give you a ride to the airport if you want.”
