McIver's Mission. Brenda Harlen

“Unexpected.”

      “Yeah,” he agreed, the husky tone of his voice making her wonder if he’d been as affected by the kiss as she’d been. “And probably not wise.”

      Although she could think of a dozen reasons why she knew it wasn’t smart to kiss him the way she just had, she wasn’t sure she appreciated his commentary on the matter. “You kissed me,” she reminded him.

      He grinned. “You kissed back pretty good.”

      Arden felt color flood into her cheeks. “You were leaving,” she reminded him, managing to pull out of his arms.

      “Yeah, I guess I was.”

      But still he hesitated, and it took more willpower than she’d known she possessed not to ask him to stay.

      “Good night, Arden.”

      Then he was gone.

      It was the sound of the door latch clicking into place that mobilized her, and Arden moved to engage the dead bolt. Then she leaned back against the locked door, her knees as limp as overcooked spaghetti, her lips still tingling.

      Arden awoke Saturday morning feeling rested, and she realized that the previous night was the first since Denise and Brian were killed that she’d slept deeply, peacefully, without the nightmares that had recently plagued her.

      She sat up in bed, frowning as hints of a dream nudged at her subconscious.

      Not a nightmare; a dream.

      A dream about a man.

      A kiss.

      She touched her fingertips to her lips. She could still feel him there. Taste him.

      Shaun.

      She covered her face with her hands.

      The last thing she needed was to be fantasizing about her cousin’s husband’s brother. Despite the events of the previous evening, Shaun McIver was the last man in Fairweather she would consider getting involved with.

      Not that he’d offered her anything more than dinner, she reminded herself. She wouldn’t put too much stock in the fact that he’d flirted with her. To men like Shaun, flirting was as natural as breathing, and he’d only paid attention to her because she’d cried on his shoulder.

      What had come over her? She never lost control like that. Not since she was ten years old and Aunt Tess had brought her to Fairweather. Maybe the tears had been building up for too long. She knew she could represent her clients better if she viewed their cases objectively, and for the most part, she managed to project an image of detached professionalism. But it wasn’t in her nature to shut off her emotions, and she’d never managed to distance herself from others’ problems.

      In the six years since she’d been out of law school, hundreds of clients had passed through the doors of her law office. Those who could afford to paid an outrageous hourly fee for her passion and expertise and thus subsidized those who could only manage a reduced rate. Some paid nothing at all. She didn’t like to turn away a client; she wouldn’t turn away someone who needed her.

      Denise Hemingway had needed her. Arden had first met Denise at the women’s shelter six months earlier. It wasn’t the first time Denise had gone to the shelter, but it was the first time she’d shown a willingness to discuss leaving her husband. Still, it had taken four more months—and several more beatings—before she’d done so. Only after her husband knocked their four-year-old son down a flight of stairs had Denise realized it was crucial to get out. Not just for her own sake, but for her child’s.

      Arden had got Denise a restraining order against Eric Hemingway and a judgment for interim custody and child support. Denise and Brian had both gone into counseling, Denise was actively seeking employment, and Brian had just started school. Arden had believed that things could only get better for them.

      She’d been wrong.

      She’d never forget Denise and Brian, but she knew she had to put the tragedy behind her and move on. She had to believe that she could still help other women, or there would be no reason for her to get out of bed in the morning.

      Arden spent a few hours at the women’s shelter, answering questions and dispensing legal advice. If one woman listened, if one woman managed to break the pattern of abuse, she knew the time was well spent. Just as she also knew that most women would return to their homes, their partners, the abuse. Even more never found the resolve to leave at all. And those were the ones whose lives, and those of their children, were in danger.

      She sighed, again remembering Denise and Brian. Their deaths had proven that leaving isn’t always enough, and that a restraining order is no match for a gun.

      Arden also knew that it was next to impossible to protect someone from an unknown threat. On her way home from the shelter, she stopped at the police station, anyway.

      She sat in a hard plastic chair across from Lieutenant Creighton’s desk and studied him. Early thirties, she guessed, with hair so dark it was almost black, eyes a clear and startling blue. Today his jaw was unshaven and his eyes showed signs of fatigue. Still, he was a good-looking man, and she wondered why he failed to make her heart race and her blood heat the way Shaun McIver could do with a simple smile.

      “Ms. Doherty. Good morning.”

      “I got another letter,” she told him, carefully lifting the envelope by the corner so as not to destroy any fingerprints that might be on it.

      “Today?” he asked, already starting to scrawl notes on the legal pad on his desk.

      “Last night,” she admitted.

      He looked up at her and frowned. “I gave you my pager number. Why wasn’t I contacted right away?”

      “I didn’t think the delivery of another letter was an emergency.” It was the third one she’d received, after all.

      “You haven’t opened it.”

      “I didn’t want to contaminate it,” she explained. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it said. “This one—” she swallowed “—was delivered to my apartment.”

      His head came up, his eyes sharp, concerned. “With the rest of your mail?”

      “No. It wasn’t in the mail slot. It was under my door.”

      “You should have called me,” Creighton said, pulling on a plastic glove before picking up the envelope.

      Arden nodded again. She couldn’t admit that she’d forgotten the letter—and everything else—when Shaun had kissed her.

      Creighton sliced open the flap and withdrew the single sheet of paper inside. When he unfolded it, she could see that the words on it were in the same careful block print and the same red ink as her name on the outside of the envelope.

      “YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE.”

      She wrapped her arms around her waist and leaned back in her chair, as if she could ward off the threat by distancing herself from the letter.

      “We’ll send the letter and the envelope to the lab to check for prints.”

      Arden nodded, but she knew better than to expect that they would find anything. The only prints on the other letters had been her own. “Oh, um, a friend of mine picked the envelope up off the floor,” she told him. “His prints will be on it.”

      “Who?” Creighton asked.

      “Shaun McIver,” she said, unaccountably embarrassed.

      “Colin McIver’s brother?” Creighton asked. “The lawyer?”

      Arden nodded.

      “I played peewee hockey with Colin,” he told her. “Even then we knew he was going to be a superstar.”

      “Colin’s married to my cousin,” Arden told him, wondering why she felt the compulsion to