Heart of Stone. C.E. Murphy

lifted a hand to stop the lecture before it began. “Shut up, Tony, and just let me finish, okay?” She watched him set his teeth together, holding the pose a moment before he gestured for her to take a seat. Margrit did, crossing her legs at the knee and brushing invisible lint off the slacks she’d finally selected. “The park lights bleached enough that I don’t know what color his eyes were. Light colored, blue or green, but they could’ve been yellow. Same with his hair. Pale, practically white under the lights. We talked for about thirty seconds. I can probably give a good enough description for an artist.”

      Tony sighed explosively. “I’ll get one. Does Russell know you’re going to be late?” At Margrit’s nod he sighed again and picked up his phone, punching in a four-digit number and requesting a sketch artist before hanging up and turning a dark expression on Margrit again. “Why didn’t you call me last night, Grit?”

      She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids, trying not to disturb the makeup she’d applied to hide signs of the nightmare she’d had. “Because I hadn’t called in three weeks,” she muttered into her palms. “Because our conversations always turn into fights. Because I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know, Tony. I didn’t know how to call.”

      “Picking up the phone and dialing the number is a good start, Grit, and ‘I just met a murderer’ would have been one hell of an icebreaker. A guy’ll forgive a lot for that.”

      “Especially when he’s a homicide detective.” Margrit took her hands away from her eyes, looking at the spots of soft brown eye shadow left on her fingers. “Cole’d already lectured me on running in the park, and I didn’t want more of it. I hadn’t talked to you in weeks. I didn’t know what to say. A bunch of stupid reasons. I guess it was easier to face you in sunlight.”

      Tony cast a wry look at dirty, glazed windows and the thin morning light struggling through them. “In that case I’m surprised I saw you before March.”

      “Tony.”

      “Over lunch,” he said quietly. “Can we talk over lunch?”

      Margrit lifted her eyebrows. “Are you going to be able to take lunch?”

      Chagrin crossed the detective’s face and he let a shoulder rise and fall in a shrug. “I didn’t say it’d be lunch today. Look—dammit.” The last word came out softly before he stood and gestured past Margrit to a bald man approaching his desk. “Margrit Knight, this is Jason Webster, our sketch artist. You’ll be working with him on describing our suspect. Later,” he added sotto voce to Margrit. “I’ll call you later.”

      She’d ducked out of the police station at ten-thirty, well before the promise of “in after lunch” she’d made her boss. Enough time to hurry home and change into workout clothes and take a daytime run in the park. It’d make everyone happy: she would get to run, and neither Cole nor Tony would have to worry.

      A compulsive check of her cell phone told her Tony hadn’t called. Not that a couple hours with the sketch artist properly qualified as later, but Margrit checked a second time. As if she’d misread, she teased herself, but the mockery had more sting to it than she liked to admit to. She pushed the phone back into a zip-top pocket on her hip and lengthened her stride again, trying to capture the sense of freedom running in the park usually brought her.

      It escaped her for once, her sneakers pounding out the syllables: ir-rah-shun-al. Irrational to expect him to have called already; irrational to hope it.

      She went around a corner and splashed through a puddle that would be ice after dark. The whole relationship was irrational, always bordering on disaster, always coming back together. It wasn’t just the sex that kept them coming back for more, although that didn’t hurt. There was some inherent challenge they saw in one another, something unnamed that Margrit wasn’t sure she wanted to label.

      What drove them apart was easier to quantify. They stood on opposite sides of a flawed legal system. It made for an endless bone of contention, but never quite enough to keep them apart for good. Some days that seemed important. Today, abruptly, it didn’t. Margrit pulled her phone out again and dialed the detective’s number.

      “How about dinner tomorrow?” she asked his voice mail. “I’m sorry I haven’t called, Tony. I want to talk about it, okay?” She hung up, good humor restoring itself, as she darted around other joggers, feeling lithe and quick. Within moments, she was in a flat-out run, focusing on the horizon, nothing in the world but her harsh breathing and the ricochet of her feet against the pavement. Her blood felt hot, burning in her hands and cheeks, as tears brought on by speed blurred the corners of her vision.

      Reaching the end of her route brought her to a violent stop, skidding and tripping over her own feet in the spasms of muscles pushed hard enough that they no longer knew how to do anything but continue forward. Margrit walked it off, stopping to flip her ponytail upside down and gasp for air after the numbness faded from her thighs. When she straightened it was with a clear expectation formed. Genuine surprise swept her as the blond murderer proved to be nowhere in sight.

      Murderer. That wasn’t fair. He was wanted for questioning, not necessarily guilty. And he hadn’t hurt her. She was sure he wouldn’t hurt her, given a second chance.

      She let out a quick blast of hot breath that steamed in the cold afternoon air. That sort of dubious logic would get her killed, if not by the blond man, then by Cole or Tony, whose concern might drive them to frustrated homicide. The sense of expectation lingered, and she frowned into winter browns and greens, searching.

      New joggers, the women running in pairs or groups, made their way around people talking on their cell phones and children hauling their parents across paths. Weak light from the low sun glinted through the trees, making empty branches into shimmering sticks. An ordinary morning at the park. The dead girl hardly mattered. The blond man was nowhere to be seen.

      Margrit waited, then twisted her wrist to look at her watch, shrugged, and jogged home to change clothes for work.

      Something was wrong.

      Sunset had come and gone, and there was no sign of his ward. His dark-haired, fearless runner. Margrit. He savored the name even as he glided from one tree to another, searching the routes she ran. She changed them regularly, a sensible self-defensive measure, but he had watched her for years. He knew the paths she preferred, the stretches of park that she defaulted to.

      Did her scent linger in the air or was it his imagination? His own hope, prodding him to belief where none belonged? He had wanted to speak with her again. To hear her voice, even colored with caution. Her accusing irritation the night before had woken in him a spark of life so long dampened he was surprised to discover it still existed.

      He’d hunched in the cold atop the building across the street until dawn had driven him away. Wondering, from that distance, if he might ever step past the threshold into the warmth of her life, and dismissing the possibility in the same moment.

      The kitchen window had been open, wind shifting a curtain enough to allow him to see that the table in the dining room was covered with paper, used as a workspace rather than for sharing meals. Changing light flickered from the room beyond it, a television droning on. His ears had pricked, preternatural hearing picking out words even from across a street filled with city noises. He was unaccustomed to bothering with such focused listening, but last night, having learned her name, having dared as much as he already had, he’d heard stories of trouble in the park. Hardly unusual, but the man described—

      He had lost his focus then, catching his breath as he wrapped his mind around the idea that someone had described him as the murderer. Shudders had taken him, despite the fact that he didn’t feel the night’s cold. It was impossible; he only needed to explain.

      Explain to Margrit. She was a lawyer. She could defend him when he couldn’t possibly defend himself. And there was no one else. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to remember the last time he might have turned to a human for help. A moment later his eyes came open again and he chuckled under his breath. Over a century and a half ago. Since then he’d had even less contact with