Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

butter. Her gaze locked with his. “No one ever asks me questions like that.”
    “I’m interested.”
    She sighed. “Lev, everyone believed I murdered people by setting houses on fire. I was strange and that just added to their conviction that I was the guilty one. Maybe I even acted guilty. It occurred to me that I was setting the fires in my sleep.”
    Lev watched her push away the plate and cross to the breadbox. She looked over her shoulder at him as she extracted a piece of bread. “Why in 129

    the world would someone eat those things when they could put peanut butter on bread?”
    He waited until she sank back into her chair, drawing her knees up, feet tucked up where no one could see while she spread peanut butter on the slice of bread. He wasn’t going to get drawn into another discussion on the merits of peanut butter, not when she was giving him pieces of her childhood.
    “You were thirteen when the first fire broke out?” He prompted. “Do you remember much about that night?”
    She jumped up and paced across the floor with a quick, restless movement. She poured herself a cup of coffee before she turned and regarded him from what she must have considered a safe distance. There were shadows in her eyes and her mouth trembled. “I remember everything about that night.” She took a small sip of coffee and turned to stare out the window. “My mother told me I could read in bed. I couldn’t sleep much and she or my dad stayed up with me as a rule, but if they’d gotten a book I wanted that day, they’d often let me read. I loved reading.” She turned around, leaning back against the sink. “They’d given me the complete works of Sherlock Holmes the week before and I was anxious to start it. I’d wanted it for so long, and when we’d gone to the bookstore to get it, there was a terrible wreck on the freeway. A huge pileup. Both my parents were injured and taken to the hospital. I’d been so scared, afraid I’d lose them. I didn’t read a word. I sort of made this pact with God, you know—let my parents live and I’ll be so good. The kind of thing kids do.”
    He watched her drink her coffee to steady herself. Her hands trembled slightly. He doubted if anyone else would have noticed that small sign. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her but he knew she wouldn’t allow it. She was holding herself together by a thread and one touch would shatter her.
    She sent him a small humorless smile over the coffee mug. “I was already so strange, you know. I couldn’t do things like other children. I was clumsy and never quite got their social cues so school was extremely difficult. My parents were my safety zone so you can imagine how frightened I was. My dad was able to leave that night, but my mom couldn’t.
    So my idea was that I wouldn’t read my book until she was home.”
    “Was Sherlock Holmes worth the wait?” He kept his gaze locked on her, observing— absorbing —her reaction. He knew he’d been trained for interrogation, for gathering information, and he automatically had fallen into the examination mode. In the back of his head he recognized—as he usually did—that this information was important and he needed to file it carefully for future reference.
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    She turned abruptly and dumped the rest of the coffee in the sink, set the cup on the counter and simply walked out the back door. He caught the glint of tears in her eyes as she turned her head. Lev sat there quietly finishing his breakfast while his mind turned over what she’d said, continuing to dig through the facts to get to the reasons anyone would target her for death in such a particularly ugly manner.
    He sat back and contemplated what to do. His head wasn’t completely better, despite all the energy he’d spent trying to heal himself. The force of the waves had been tremendous, slamming his body into the rocks. Even with his special gifts, he hadn’t been able to combat the power of the ocean.
    He was dizzy most of the time and his head still pounded with alarming vigor, threatening to explode if he moved around too much.
    All of a sudden, he felt a sense of urgency, and for a man who lived in the shadows with no real name and only one purpose, it wasn’t a good idea to ignore his feelings. He had recovered enough memories to know he didn’t want the man he’d been to come back from the dead. As far as Lev was concerned, Sid Kozlov was going to stay in the sea, his body lost for all time.