The Taken

“So who’s your next so-called Take?” She made finger quotes in the air, and nearly lost her sheet. She grabbed it, angry, and spun to leave… but froze. Stilling, looking at him, she asked, “Who is your next Take, Grif?”

Clearing his throat, he held out his hands. “Look, I screwed up. I did something I shouldn’t. I helped Nicole extend her life by minutes after she was already dead. She circled Schmidt’s name in your notebook, and that changed everything. Schmidt found it, and that’s why he’s after you. I let that happen. I… killed you.”

“I’m right here.”

“But you’re not supposed to be.”

“You saved me,” she pointed out. That had to mean something.

“I only prolonged the inevitable.”

“What? No…” She looked around the kitchen like it was the moon, frowning and shaking her head, then zeroed back in on him. “Bullshit.”

“What?” Grif drew back.

“I call bullshit on your black-winged angelic ass, that’s what.” Securing the sheet, she placed her hands on her hips, advanced on him like she was the one who was dangerous. “You’re just scared. You allowed yourself to feel something for me that you hadn’t felt in a long time, and it spooked you. You’re… chickenshit.”

“I’m in love with another woman!” he roared, causing her to flinch. “The woman you’re researching. Evie… Evelyn Shaw. She was my wife. They… they killed her. Right after they killed me.”

“You have had a total psychotic break with reality,” Kit said evenly.

“Really?” Grif used his anger as a counterpunch. “You’re the one who said you saw wings on my back. Tell that to your shrink.”

“They were shadows, I know. Don’t change the subject.” Don’t remind her of what she thought she saw during their lovemaking. It’d be just her luck if crazy was catching.

“So you don’t believe me?”

“I don’t even care!” she yelled, and then pulled at her hair in a way that probably made her look crazy. Grabbing at the sheet, she yelled, “All I know is that you’ve been there for me in the biggest shitstorm of my life, and there have been quite a few, Shaw! But you’ve stuck with me and helped me and we just made love for an entire day, and there’s something real between us and don’t tell me you didn’t feel it, too!”

Breathing hard, he opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Yeah, he’d felt it all. She took it as a concession, and moved close, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Look, I understand about losing someone. There’s no real getting over it. No one can replace a mother or a father or take a wife’s place in your heart. Those places forever belong to those you first loved. But you can carve out new places for new people. Love matters. It’s greater even than your Everlast.”

“The Everlast you don’t believe in.”

Kit crossed her arms. “Honestly Grif? I don’t care if you play the harp and shit stardust. But even if I did believe you, and you were a legitimate blast from the past, your Evie is long gone.”

“Not to me.”

She shook her head. “This is not cheating.”

He flinched like he’d been slapped, and Kit knew that of all the thoughts roiling in his mind, that was the one he hadn’t allowed to bubble up. “I am here because I want to know who killed me and my wife. That’s all.”

“You need to move on, Grif.”

Turning his back, he pressed his palms against the tiled countertop. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t I understand?”

“You don’t just dispose of love, Kit. Not this kind.”

Sucker-punched, Kit was silent for a long moment, then let out a gutted exhalation. “Wow. That hurt even more than hearing that I’m destined to die.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said, turning to her. But of course he had. “Look, this is the only thing I’ve cared about for the last fifty years. And she’s the only woman I cared about before that. If pain can go on throughout lifetimes, then love can, too. When I get this information, when I find out what happened to Evie, and where she ended up, then and only then will I move on.”

But Kit was done talking, listening, understanding. “Jeez, Grif. The way you talk about her you’d think she was the fucking angel.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“You’re a dick.”

“I told you that.”

“Not that kind of dick.”

“Hey, I’m helping you.”

“Your help hurts!” she screamed, bent over herself, holding the sheet tight. Then she growled, whirling away, whirling back, all her anger turning in and around on itself. Finally, eyes stormy, she pointed at Grif. “I don’t want to hear another word about your wife and your wings and your lying mid-century ass. You’re just another man who’s afraid of commitment. Truth is, Grif, you don’t have any thrust!”

“Yeah? Well, I’m calling bullshit on your pseudo Lois Lane rockabilly self. How about that?” he shot back, then hit himself in the chest so hard that Kit winced. “Because I was there, I know what it was really like, and it wasn’t all Lindy Hop and circle skirts. It wasn’t different from anything you’ve seen in the past few days. It was just more of the same. Evie was the only good thing I had in that life, so-”

“Oh Evie this and Evie that…” Kit blew out such a hard breath the curls lifted from her forehead. “I swear to God if I hear one more thing about the perfect and precious Evelyn Shaw, I’ll kill myself! ”

Grif stared, then narrowed his gaze. “You’re not going to have to hear another word about her, Kit. Guaranteed.”

“Get out!” Kit pointed to the door.

“It’s not your house.”

“I meant, get out of my life!”

And Grif stared. And then he turned.

And then he left.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kit didn’t know why she was surprised. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been left before. But Grif’s abrupt departure was at such great odds with his actions the night before, and the silence so deafening in the wake of the previous night’s lovemaking, that she stood in the kitchen long after the front door had slammed shut, shaking with mental vertigo.

An angel.

“More like a walking plague,” she muttered, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other. She couldn’t stay here now. So she headed unthinking, unseeing, back to the bedroom, tossing the sheet on the bed that had barely cooled from her and Grif’s intertwined bodies, and quickly dressed.

“I am not the crazy one,” she whispered, as she packed her toiletries. “And I don’t chase after men who don’t want me, I don’t allow anything in my life that isn’t greatly desired, I don’t… I don’t…”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Letting her toiletry bag fall to the sink, Kit stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were shadowed from too little sleep in too many nights, and the lids themselves were low and hooded… sexy, she thought. Or would have been minutes earlier. Now she just looked tired.

Leaning toward the mirror, she pulled her hair back from her face until it hurt, then let her fingertips trail over her cheeks and chin. Pursing lips still swollen from kisses, she then shook her head and turned away. The answers she sought wouldn’t be found in her unadorned face. Something small and unseen inside of her had her choosing men who just couldn’t seem to choose her back. Shaking her head, Kit left the bathroom, picked up her bags in the