I'm not sure just how long I sat with my back to that cliff, the shotgun a sodden ghost in my lap, the rain falling and falling until I was so wet I thought I would drown. I cried from time to time, I think, mourning a part of my life I would never get back. I had betrayed my best friends, aided and abetted a murderer. Yet worst of all I had killed a part of myself.
I thought of a line from a movie I had loved in my childhood, when a shepherd dog had willingly fallen from heaven to save a friend. You can never come back.
That voice echoed again and again.
I glanced at my watch. The timex hadn't stopped, at least not yet. The hands beneath its water beaded face read 11:36.
I had fallen asleep, it seemed, though mercifully dreamed no dreams. And so there I was, drenched and in the dead of night, not just one of the world but one of the soul.
Of a sudden I felt a coldness pressing between the slender, sublte curve between my neck and my jaw, glanced down startled.
I had put the shotgun to my throat and even as I realized it I heard the snick of the safety click and my finger found the trigger.
Without knowing why I began to laugh. It was a broken sound, no mirth...just despair. I heard Brett's voice again in my mind, the same question: "Boss? Are you really doing this?"
And again, yes I was.
"You shouldn't," she said softly from somewhere in the trees, her voice a mixture of wary caution and deep concern. "What you did was right, not wrong. You don't murder a woman in the woods without giving her a chance to defend herself, to explain, to at least make an argument of innocence."
My laughter died in the sounds of the deluge. Far away thunder rumbled. "It was you though," I said quietly. "Wasn't it? Who else could it have been? We knew you stole Harold's hat, you were seen at the bar he was tending before the murders, and several witnesses told us you stuffed it into your purse. Rex swears he was home with him all night. Then there's the paw prints. Wolf, not dog, and there are only three wolves in town...two of which are currently away on business, with allibis irrefutable."
She stepped out of hiding and knelt in front of me, now the woman I remember not the monster we had found lurking beneath the cliff. Her smile was guarded and grim. "You're not asking a question, you're making an accusation. Clearly you believe it was me, yet you're a man of the law. Why help, if I were already guilty in your eyes?"
I shivered and my finger tightened on the trigger. I bit back a bitter whine. "Because I love you."
She was quick, so quick I didn't even see her move. Viper strikes were slower by orders of magnitude. Before I knew what was happening she had snatched the gun from my paws and cast it into the woods.
I rose with a snarl, shocked, but before I could speak she had put a finger to my lips.
"Shh," she said, reaching back into her pack. "I've brought you two things. I know you like your drinks so..." she gave me a bottle of 80 proof. "Also, there's this trinket. I found it on the beach. Maybe it will help you come to terms with your conscience."
And then she pressed the strange irridescent shell into my palm, and when she did something happened, something sublime.
Of a sudden I couldn't remember who I was, or how I had gotten there. Stranger still, the wolf before me was no longer there, though I was certain someone had been there...or had they?
I decided I had imagined all that. I found a path through the forest and followed the sounds of the sea towards the beach. Perhaps there I could find help or at least find out who I was and why I was out here alone in a storm in the middle of the night.
A few minutes later I opened the bottle and began to drink. It took the edge off the misery of being soaked and lost, and it wasn't long before I lost myself a second time in a quest towards the bottom.
And before me, though I knew it not, two assassins lurked upon that path...