Today's Promises (Promises #2)(53)

“Not this time,” I reply. “There was no dream, actually. None at all. But I still felt…” I search for the right words to explain what exactly has me so uneasy that I woke from a dead sleep.

“I don’t know, Flynn,” I whisper. “I just suddenly felt like you weren’t lying here next to me. Like”—my voice trembles—“like you had left and I was all alone again.”

I touch his cheek, his nose, his chin, just to verify he’s really here.

“Babe…” He leans in and presses his lips to mine. “I’m here. And I’ll always be here. We’ll never again be apart.”

“Yeah, but we could’ve been,” I say, sighing. “If Detective Silver wasn’t so kind, we would’ve both been arrested.”

“But he is kind,” Flynn assures me as he rolls on top of me, a little breathless. “And neither of us is in any kind of trouble.”

He then smothers me in kisses, a successful attempt to distract me from my unnecessary worries.

“Yes,” I breathe out, my pulse racing as Flynn deposits feathery kisses along my neck. “We may not be in that bad kind of trouble,” I say. “But you’re going to find yourself in a really good kind of trouble”—I gasp—“if you keep kissing me like this.”

“Duly noted,” he murmurs.

The intensity of those kisses is amped up, each one hotter than the kiss before. But then it’s too much…all the damn clothes, that is. I need Flynn, and I need him now.

Tugging at the hem of his tee, I murmur, “Take this off.”

He complies and then, nodding to his boxer-clad lower body, asks in a teasing tone, “You want me to leave these on, though, right?”

“Are you kidding me?” I scoff.

I slide my hand inside his boxers and that pretty much puts an end to any additional silly talk of leaving on clothes that clearly need to come off.

A minute later Flynn is back on me…and then he’s in me. A few minutes more and I am crying out his name, along with declarations of my undying love.

This is good. This is better than we’ve been in a long time. This joining of our bodies doesn’t feel rushed. It’s not what it’s been these past couple months—frenzied, desperate.

Our joining this night speaks of one thing only—love.





Detective Silver



As I drive up the steep hill that leads to the Lowry property, the shovel I stowed in the trunk before I left the precinct clinking away, I have to ask myself one question: Why am I so hell-bent on helping Flynn and Jaynie? It’s not like I know them, not really. But here I am, at the Lowry property once more.

Really, what the hell?

I’ve already jeopardized my career by letting those two get away with planting fake evidence. I even went so far as to cover up what they did. Yet I’m back on this property at their request to search one final time before the Debbie Canfield case has to be closed for good.

As I make my way to the pole barn Jaynie and Flynn refer to as the ‘work barn’—that damn clanking shovel finally silenced since it now rests in my grasp—I think back to my own reckless youth.

Ah, therein I know I’ll find the answer as to why I am so committed to helping these kids.

I never had a bad home life, but I was a rebel at heart. I butted heads with my parents almost constantly. Caught up in the early ’90s grunge rock movement, I fancied myself at the time the next Kurt Cobain, or maybe even an Eddie Vedder.

Only problem was I had no band.

But I sure was determined to find one.

One day, after having no luck in my Podunk West Virginia town, I took off, hitching rides across the country until I ended up in Seattle.

Where it all began, I thought.

Being the na?ve seventeen-year-old that I was at that time, I was sure I’d find my future bandmates on the streets of the Emerald City. It was like I’d found my way to a grunge rock Oz.

What a fool I was, I think, shaking my head.

Three days of hanging out in Pioneer Square with all the homeless was all it took for me to open my eyes. I realized then that the kids who were there weren’t looking to make music; they were looking to survive. I saw things no kid should ever see. And by day number four, I was calling my mom, crying and begging to come home.

My understanding mom, just happy I was alive and well, sent me a bus ticket back to West Virginia. The whole ride home I kept counting my blessings for what I had been so stupid to ever take for granted. Things like a roof over my head, plenty to eat, and parents who, though we fought, loved me.

And that’s it. That’s why I have a soft spot for Jaynie and Flynn. I see them as two kids, not so different from who I once was. But they’ve not been nearly as fortunate. Sadly, life’s dealt them a bad hand, until recently. Though I don’t think they always see it, they’ve been thriving since escaping the Lowry house.

But what’ll happen to those kids if Allison gets out of prison?

She may leave them alone, sure. But then again, she may not.

Why take a chance?

That’s why I’m here and ready to search once more for something, anything to keep that wicked girl behind bars.

Where to start, where to start, I ask myself as I walk into the barn.

I stop and look around.