Heart of Ice

By the end of the day, Mitch Crawford had found himself on all three Spokane TV affiliates with news feeds across the Northwest. Emily, Jason, Camille, Gloria, and all the others working the case let their jaws fall to the floor when he uttered a line that surely had to qualify for a place in the annals of crime reporting.

“I’m a successful businessman, a very successful businessman,” he said, dead- eyed to the camera. “Guys like me don’t kill our wives. We trade ’em in and get a new one.”

“He thinks she’s a used car,” Emily said, staring at the TV. “Unbelievable.”

Chapter Eight

The number on the minuscule screen of her cell phone had long been committed to memory.

She answered it immediately. Before she spoke, she heard his voice.

“Your Crawford case is making noise all the way over here in Seattle.”

It was Chris, of course.

“No kidding,” she said. “Gloria’s been fielding calls from the Seattle media like nobody’s business,” she said, almost feeling a little awkward. She was unsure if he’d called to talk shop—or to ask her to reconsider his proposal. She felt her face grow a little warm and looked around her office to make sure she was really alone just in case the conversation veered toward the personal.

“I hope some of the media attention does us some good out here.”

“Reporters are like maggots on a corpse,” he said. “They have a job to do.”

Emily let out a laugh. Chris always had a kind of cut-to-the-chase perspective when it came to everything. She watched as a pair of reserve officers walked by her office window. She waved at them. The sight of the young men snapped her out of the place that she was revisiting in her mind.

“Em?”

“I’m here. Just thinking. Sorry. Chris…” She let her words trail off to a whisper. “I miss you.”

“I know. Me, too. I’m coming to Cherrystone this weekend. I thought maybe this would be a good time to see where we stand.”

“In the middle of a possible murder investigation?”

“You were always best when you were on the hunt for a killer,” he said.

She laughed. “I think you might have something there. I know that I’m always happiest when I’m going after the bad guy.”

“Yup. And the guy you have in Cherrystone is as rotten as they come.”

“Mitch Crawford is really something, isn’t he?” she said. “What did you think of his TV performance? Made me sick to my stomach.”

“We only got a snip of it on the Seattle news, but yeah, made me sick, too. He seems preoccupied with how clever he is, how much dough he has in the bank, and absolutely everything in the world except for one thing.”

Emily nodded as he spoke, before interjecting, “Mandy.”

“He’s your guy, all right.”

“I can take care of this on my own, you know.”

“Of course you can. But you know how much fun we’ll have going after him,” he said. “And, Emily, don’t worry about my fee. Dinner with you will be satisfactory.”

“Let me think about that,” she said, kidding him to within in an inch of his life. “OK. Sounds good. When can you get here?”

“In my car now.”

Emily heard a car honk and she spun around and looked in front of the sheriff’s office.

Chris Collier, his lightly graying hair framing a handsome face that still retained the chiseled good looks of his youth, smiled and offered a quick wave through an open window.

Gotcha! He was already here.

While she was glad and surprised to see him, Emily felt a weird flutter of annoyance come over her. Had Chris come because he thinks I can’t work the case without him? Did he think I was too proud to ask for help on my own, when I determined I could use some?

His smile disarmed her and she glanced at her schedule to make sure nothing was pressing. Good. Quit overthinking, Emily, she thought.

On the way over to Cherrystone, a simple phrase reverberated during the drive. There was no other life without Emily. No other life he wanted. Chris Collier felt twinges of that from the day they’d reconnected after all those years of being apart—years of being married to the wrong people. Emily had David, the doctor. He had Jessica, the librarian. Neither spouse was the right match. And neither could be.

From his own failed marriage, Chris knew both the joy and the heartache of trying to make two people into an unbreakable unit. The love he had for his ex-wife had been lost long before Emily came back into Chris’s life. At first, he figured he could chalk up his mistakes to the fact that the life of a cop held little room for anything that resembled a real life. He’d been called away on a murder investigation in the middle of his oldest son’s Little League game—the game in which the boy had pitched a near perfect game. For the rest of his son’s life, there would always be the idea that “your job always came first.” Jessica Collier would not have a problem concurring when her son said those things. She, too, had felt the chilly glow of a cop’s blue light.

“I can’t compete with a dead girl. No woman can,” she told case-obsessed Chris the morning she packed her bags, took the kids, and returned to Idaho where she had family.

Chris said he understood, but at the time he was so wrapped up in a murder investigation that he really didn’t process his own personal loss—or the truth behind his wife’s analysis of the state of their marriage.

With Emily, there was the promise of a do-over. They were no longer kids, no longer bound to make the same mistakes. Their children were grown. Their lives were pitched toward a time when the focus was aimed more at themselves, their needs. They’d had their breakups. They had their passionate, endless nights. The time for being together was now. That moment. Chris Collier was certain.

He practiced the words in his head.

“Emily, we’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve been through things so dark and dangerous that we almost have no right to be here anymore. But we are. And I know now, more than ever, that life with you is the only life I want to have.”

Chris smiled at the idea that he needed to rehearse. Why was it so hard to be vulnerable to the ones who love us most?

But that evening, after dinner, talk about the case, Jenna, Chris’s condo, the subject of their future just didn’t wind its way into the conversation—rehearsals or not. It just didn’t seem to fit.

“The temp is dropping,” Emily said, pulling another comforter from the bench at the foot of her bed and spreading it across the mint green and white quilt that her mother had made.

Chris bent down to help her with the covers, and he placed his hand on the small of her back. She turned around and they kissed. She had missed the warmth of his touch, how he tasted. The way that he pulled her close. He undressed her in the pale light of the bedroom lamp, letting her blouse and dark wool skirt fall in a heap by her feet. He unhooked her bra. Emily returned the favor by unbuttoning his shirt. His body was lean, muscular, but not through some ridiculous workout regimen. Chris Collier played racquet-ball, ate right, and was blessed with genetics that kept him off the treadmill like so many men his age chasing after the body that they never really had, even in their twenties. The scar from the gunshot five years before had lightened somewhat; the hair on his chest encircled it with a light brown fringe.

Emily touched her fingertip to the scar. It was smooth, harder than his skin.

“I could have lost you forever,” she said.