Redemption, page 1
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Redemption
Copyright © 2009-2018 by Tabatha L. Haddix.
All rights reserved.
First Edition: 2018
Previously published as Redemption in the Shadows by T.L. Haddix
ISBN: 978-1-945445-23-1
Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
The need was riding him hard tonight. A tough arrest and even tougher processing followed by three hours of interrogation that had gotten him exactly nowhere with the suspect was wearing on his nerves. He was in the bullpen by himself, the other detectives having gone home more than an hour ago.
He would like to have gone home, as well. But there was no one there tonight. His son was staying at a friend’s. The house would be empty, cold, and as quiet as the tomb. So quiet that he was afraid if he went there, he would do something unwise.
The thing was, he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Except…
There was another option that was halfway palatable. More than halfway, really, as long as he didn’t let himself think about it emotionally. Physically? Hell, yes. He picked up his cell phone and thumbed through his contacts to the number listed simply under the name “Holly.” After a moment’s hesitation, he made the call.
She answered on the third ring, slightly breathless.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said and identified himself. “From the coffee shop in Madison?”
“Oh! Hey, you,” she said, a flirtatious tone coming into her voice. “I was hoping you’d call.”
“Were you?” He felt slightly self-conscious as he looked around the empty bullpen. He’d not done this sort of thing for a long time now, and he felt like a dozen pairs of eyes were watching him, judging him, and finding him wanting.
Her husky chuckle drew his attention back to the call. “Absolutely. So what are you into tonight?”
“If your offer still stands, hopefully you. As long as it’s just sex you’re after.” He wanted to make that clear from the get-go. He didn’t do relationships, not anymore.
“Oh, that offer is definitely open. When and where?”
He got her address, set a time, and before he could let himself back out, made the forty-minute drive to her apartment one county over. It was housed over a business on the outskirts of town, and when he pulled up, he could see candles burning through the sheer curtains on the windows.
Despite the cold, late-spring weather, she met him at the door in just a thong. His interest was already aroused by the thought of what he was there for, and seeing her in all her glory spiked him into the throbbing-hard range instantly.
They didn’t even make it to her bed for the first round. She was aggressive, going straight for what she wanted, undoing his pants as soon as she closed the door. He barely had time to get a condom on before he had her pinned up against the wall. The second time they did make it to the bed, but the coupling was no less frantic. By the time they’d finished the third round an hour after he’d walked in the door, his edginess and desperation had faded to manageable levels.
When he got up after they finished, she stretched and slid her hands down her body, highlighting her toned curves.
“Aren’t you staying? You should see what I can do first thing in the morning.”
He winked as he pulled on his shorts. “I’m sure you’re impressive, but no. I have to go.”
She pouted a little but when he didn’t relent, she shrugged. As he went through the apartment dressing as he encountered his clothing, she followed, completely at ease with her nudity.
“Will you call again sometime?” she asked as she let him out the door.
He tensed, then glanced down at his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He touched her cheek. “Thanks for tonight.”
“Anytime, Detective.”
More than ready to go home now, Jason Hudson made the long drive to the new house on which construction had been completed only a few weeks earlier. Once inside, he went straight to the shower, letting the hot water wash away some of his guilt.
The cleansing did nothing to ease his pain. Nothing he tried ever seemed to do more than take the edge off the cold, lonely heartache that had been his companion for too long now.
He felt tremendously detached, thinking about the last few hours. The sex had been enjoyable from a purely physical standpoint. It had provided him with more of a release than he could get with his hand alone. But the emotional desire he’d hoped to assuage was still there, lingering inside the hollow place his heart had become.
He hadn’t expected to fall in love with Holly or to even fall in lust. But he’d hoped for a smidgen of an emotional connection, maybe something like what he’d felt with girlfriends and bed partners before his marriage. That he hadn’t felt anything like that tonight nearly broke him.
He hadn’t even been able to kiss her on the lips as that level of intimacy felt too personal to explore with a woman who was a one-night stand and a practical stranger to boot. For someone who’d once been known as a ladies’ man, that reticence was telling.
One of the online support groups he’d joined after his wife Hannah had died had a sub-forum where members talked about sex after the death of a spouse. Some people were lucky and were able to have something approaching a normal sex life, even finding companionship and love again. For others, sex after the spouse’s death could end up being nothing but a physical release, little more than masturbating with a body instead of with a hand or toy.
Although he’d taken strides tonight to make sure Holly’s desires had been addressed, he’d realized as soon as they’d finished that he fell into that second category. As his story wasn’t quite the typical one where he’d lost his beloved wife during the normal course of marriage but instead while they were separated, he’d wondered how he’d react emotionally. Now he knew.
Tonight was the first time he’d had sex since before Hannah had told him she wanted a divorce more than thirteen months ago. It left him feeling empty, dirty, and ashamed. Part of the need was gone, but the worst of it? Oh, that lingered, digging its despair-ridden claws deep into his soul.
Jason’s anger built, his tension returning with a vengeance as though he’d not just spent himself with a stranger three times. Anger because this was not what he’d planned for his life. Anger because he’d had no choice in the matter, as the love he’d thought he shared with Hannah instead had been an illusion. And when she couldn’t pretend anymore, she’d walked away and taken their son Paulo and Jason’s heart with her.
She’d been gone from him for thirteen months now, almost longer than they’d been married, and gone from the world not even a year. The anniversary of her asking for a divorce had been his tipping point, he knew, the stressor that sent him into Holly’s arms.
Their marriage was already over when Hannah died—the divorce a pending formality at that point, when she was killed in a car wreck on her way to meet her lover. The man whose child she carried, something Jason had discovered while packing up her belongings after her death.
That blow had almost killed him. It had broken him in ways he didn’t think he’d ever recover from. Every bit of trust he had in humanity had been dented, if not outright destroyed, at that point. The only good thing to come out of the mess was that he’d gotten his son back. If not for Paulo…
The tears came then. Tears of anger, of grief, of desperate loneliness. He’d learned a lot about crying in the shower over the last thirteen months. The water washed away a multitude of emotions if he let it. Not enough to fully cleanse him but enough to make life bearable. And he’d learned that bearable was the best he could hope for most days.
When the water ran cold, he turned it off and stepped out of the shower. The mirror was fogged over, and the air in the room was humid with a cloud of steam despite his having turned on the fan before he started the water running. He went to the mirror and wiped it down, staring at the man who looked back at him.
Blue eyes, curly blond hair cropped short. Laugh lines that were just starting to appear at the corners of his eyes, or they had been until Hannah had stopped talking to him right after their first anniversary. A few short months later, she’d asked for a divorce. And seven months after that, she was dead. Gone. Forever and ever, with no chance of forgiveness for either of them.
The face that stared back at him was that of a stranger. Jason didn’t know himself anymore. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. If he didn’t have Paulo to raise, he wondered if he’d even still be alive.
But he did have Paulo. He was the only parent Paulo had left.
True, he wasn’t the boy’s biological father. That didn’t matter to Jason, never had. He’d sworn a vow to love and cherish his son as much as he’d sworn a vow to Hannah. Just because she’d walked away from him and their life together didn’t mean Jason had forgotten his promises or that his feelings or his love for either of them had disappeared.
As soon as he could once Paulo was back in Indiana following Hannah’s death, Jason had formally adopted him, making sure no one would ever take his son away again. He’d needed the assurance as much as Paulo.
Tired to his bones, Jason went to the bed Hannah had never slept in, in the house that Hannah had never lived in, and crawled between the sheets. He’d changed all his bedroom furniture when he and Paulo had moved into the new house in the hopes that her ghost wouldn’t haunt him as much. Some nights it worked. Some nights it didn’t.
The furnace kicked on, warming the house with a gentle circulation of air. He’d put flannel sheets on the bed to help stay warm, as well, and he had pillows he curled himself around every night to have something to hold on to. None of that compared to being able to curl up with his wife, to feel her soft weight against him, to have her poke him to roll over when he stayed too long in one spot and started snoring. But the flannel and the furnace and the pillows were all he had, so he might as well get used to it.
Chapter 2
Two years later
Desiree Price was nervous, of all things. There were hideous little butterflies zooming and zipping around her stomach, causing it to churn in a way that she hadn’t felt for a long, long time—at least a few years, anyhow.
“Probably since Mama passed,” she muttered as she put her car in Park and turned the engine off. The late-May day was warm, sunny, breezy, and stunningly beautiful, but all she could focus on was the anxiety rising up into her throat.
This was the first time she’d been back in Leroy, Indiana, since she’d left more than sixteen years ago when she’d been forced to run away in the middle of the night for her own safety. Even though she’d only called the small, Ohio River town home for six years—from the time she was nine until right after her sixteenth birthday—she’d felt like she belonged there more than any place she’d ever lived. And since her mother tended to move around a lot, Desi had lived in a good number of places by the time she was nine, enough that she’d learned not to expect to stay longer than a single school year.
If it had been up to her, she’d have stayed in Leroy. But the choice hadn’t been up to her, even though she’d been the one to pull up her roots and flee right before prom the year she’d turned sixteen. The events that had transpired over the course of a few fateful days had seen to that.
Now, though, she was back and on her own terms this time. As an adult, and a successful one to boot. She was finally ready to come back to the place she thought of as home, to see if she could build a life for herself in the small town or not. To find out if her memories of the place lived up to its reality. Maybe even to find love, though that wasn’t her primary reason for returning.
“But none of that will mean a damned thing if you don’t get out of the car, Desiree.” She made a face at herself in the rearview mirror and grabbed her purse. “Don’t keep your potential landlord waiting.”
As she started down the sidewalk toward Annie’s Arbor, the flower shop that was her destination, the breeze coming off the wide river a few hundred feet away lifted her short hair off her face. For all the world, it felt like her grandmother running her hand over Desi’s hair, and the thought made her smile. Nadeen Price had encouraged her to make this trip, and she’d be shaking her head at Desi’s hesitancy.
“Put your best dress on, girl, and show those people how you shine,” Nadeen had said that morning when Desi talked to her on the phone before she left her room at a local bed and breakfast. “Find yourself a handsome man and make me some grandbabies.”
“Nadeen, you act like you expect men to fall prostrate at my feet as soon as I step onto Indiana soil,” Desi said with a laugh. “I’ve been here a full night now, and no one has fallen yet.”
“Give them time.”
Desi thought about one boy—well, one man—in particular. She doubted Jason Hudson would be thrilled to see her, not given how their relationship had fallen apart because of the way she’d left, but she couldn’t lie to herself and pretend she wasn’t halfway eager to see him again. She was also dreading that first encounter, a big reason she was so nervous now.
“Given that you’re about to possibly rent an apartment from his sister-in-law, chances are excellent that you’ll run into him sooner rather than later,” she told herself as she stopped in front of the flower shop, taking in the profusion of springtime blooms that were on display in a wooden wheelbarrow on the sidewalk. Taking a deep breath and saying a prayer that she was doing the right thing, she opened the door.
Chapter 3
“That’s the second break-in we’ve had in the industrial park in as many weeks,” Jason said. “Same MO—nothing taken, but the buildings broken into were clearly searched. Some property damage but nothing major.”
“So what’s the motive?” Sheriff Wyatt Dixon asked from his seat at the head of the conference table. He turned a pen end-over-end, frowning as he studied Jason. “What about security?”
“I think whoever’s doing it is looking for something, though God alone knows what,” Jason answered. “And in both cases, the intruders broke in while the security guard was on patrol in a different area. Same security company from out of Louisville serviced both businesses. Garrett’s working on backgrounds on all their local employees.”
Garrett Gordon was the department’s lead cyber investigator and backup IT specialist. He was also Jason’s brother-in-law through Jason’s baby sister Joely.
“How long before you have those backgrounds?” Wyatt asked.
Garrett shrugged. “A day or two. There are six people to work through.”
The sheriff nodded. “Good enough. What else do we know?”
“The companies who were broken into are in completely different industries,” Detective Ethan Moore, Jason’s other brother-in-law, said. “One makes metal parts and the other is a sewing factory. So without more information to go on, we’re shooting in the dark.”
“And the times aren’t really helping us, either,” Stacy Gordon, the department’s third detective and Garrett’s sister-in-law, added. “One happened just after midnight, and last night’s was at three a.m. One on a Sunday night, one on a Thursday morning. Unless there are more break-ins, we don’t have a pattern to work off.”
“So far no one’s been hurt, and aside from some minor property damage, nothing’s been taken. I don’t think there’s much more we can do on this, Wyatt,” Jason said.
“No, I guess not. I still don’t like it. Keep your eyes and ears open, people. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this was simply kids out having ‘fun’ or something.”
“But?” Ethan asked as they all stood.
Wyatt gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, but. We’ve not had a big, messy case in a while. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I kind of feel like we’re overdue.”
