Chapter One
Kyrano
Kyrano looked out the window of the taxi cab as it slowly wound its way through slush- and snow-filled streets. The quaintness of the little town called Cabot Cove in the US state of Maine, was evident even in the aftermath of the recent ice storm that had brought it to a standstill. A day of temperatures in the forties, Mel had advised, was melting everything that had been frozen. Here and there, tree limbs lay scattered in yards and alongside the road. Some people were out and about, but most of them were the younger and heartier residents; Kyrano could see that the sidewalks were just too slippery for the older citizens to venture outside in the chilly morning.
"Here we are!" Mel said brightly as the taxi rolled to a stop in front of a white two-story home surrounded by a white picket fence. "This is where my Great-Aunt Jess and Great-Uncle Frank lived. I never knew Uncle Frank, though, other than through the stories she told me about him."
He opened the door of the cab and was hit with a cold blast of wind that made him shiver. Carefully he stepped onto the curb while the cabbie moved to retrieve their luggage from the trunk. Mel scooted across the seat and he offered her a gloved hand, pulling her out and closing the door behind her. She smiled up at him. "Told you there was an ice storm. Sorry you came?"
He shook his head. "Not at all. I've lived in parts of the world where this type of weather is common."
She cocked her head at him. "You are so mysterious," she noted, to which he just gave a little shrug.
The cabbie had their three suitcases on the sidewalk in short order. As the man closed the trunk, Kyrano pulled out his wallet and gave him a one hundred dollar bill for his troubles.
"Hey, your fare's only half that," the man noted.
"The rest is for getting us here safely," Kyrano softly replied.
"Wow. You need another cab ride, gimme a call!" the portly man in his mid-fifties said with a grin. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a business card that had seen better days.
Kyrano took it. "David Loque," he read, then looked up at the man, reached out and shook his hand. "Thank you."
Tipping his houndstooth flat cap at the couple, David got back into his cab and made a slow U-turn, waving at them as he drove away.
Visible puffs of breath surrounding his face, Kyrano looked up at the Victorian home that had seen so much life and so very much mystery over the years.
"The frame and floor of the house were made of Douglas Fir," Mel advised, picking up one of the suitcases while Kyrano took the other two. "The walls and foundation are made of virgin, clearheart Redwood, all built in 1888."
"It's quite artistic," Kyrano commented. "I believe Virgil would appreciate the architecture."
Mel nodded and moved to open the front gate. "You should see this place in the spring and summer; I'm afraid winter doesn't do it justice."
As they made their way up the front walk, Kyrano noted the extensive landscaping that filled the front yard. From an apple tree to a wooden bench, to various bits of earth that currently appeared dead, but which he assumed would be filled with the likes of daffodils and daisies when the weather turned warm, it was well-laid out and well-kept.
"Aunt Jess did all the gardening herself until she got so she couldn't crouch and bend so well," Mel told him, unlocking the front door. "A few local teenagers helped her out until she died."
"And who does it now?" Kyrano inquired, grateful for the warmth that greeted him as the two stepped inside.
"I do," she said. "Here, let's take our luggage upstairs and get ourselves warmed up."
He watched her ascend the steps. "And how do you intend to accomplish this warm-up?"
She turned and grinned wickedly down at him. Then with a wink, she whirled and jogged the rest of the way up the staircase.
Kyrano felt out of place and yet strangely at home, as though he knew the layout of this house already. Knew the artwork and family photos that adorned the walls. Knew the white patterned wallpaper, the wooden furniture. The carpeted and hardwood floors, even the stairs that led to its second floor. He supposed he could understand the feeling of familiarity because for a short time, his and Mel's minds had been joined together as she'd struggled to help him overcome his half-brother's mental attack.
He closed his eyes against the memory, as though that simple act could shield him from what he had been so certain he'd done. Jeff had insisted over and over that no, he hadn't killed his half-brother...he'd simply incapacitated him. Yet no matter how many words his best friend had spoken on the matter, something deep inside Kyrano still struggled to believe any of them.
"Hey," came a quiet voice. He opened his eyes to find Mel halfway down the staircase, curious eyes searching his. "Are you okay?"
"Perhaps it is jet lag," he lied, instantly chiding himself for doing such a thing. He never lied. Withheld truths, yes...but never outright lied. He shook his head, placing his hand on the end of the wooden banister. "I can't help thinking," he admitted, "about my half-brother."
Nodding, Mel descended, closing the gap between them. "I know. That was harrowing for those of us not related to him." She placed a hand on his arm. "I can't imagine what it was like for you."
Squashing down the negativity that threatened to consume him, Kyrano straightened his spine and forced a smile. "It's in the past, Melody," he said, patting her hand. "I think I'd much rather live in the now." And with that he leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips, radiating outward the love he felt for her.
She gasped, allowed his kiss to linger, and then pulled away, taking his hands and guiding him up the stairs. For a good, long time thereafter, no more words were spoken.
Hours later, freshly showered and dressed, with their luggage unpacked and Kyrano having been given a tour of the house from top to bottom, Kyrano and Mel found themselves in a bit of a bind. They were hungry, but there were hardly any groceries thanks to Mel's extended absence.
"Why don't we have lunch at the Hill House?" Mel suggested. "Then we can stock the kitchen up and maybe I can show you a little bit of Cabot Cove in the process."
"Sounds great."
"You know, when it's this cold, I usually stay holed up in the house," she told him as he put on his black down coat that reached halfway down his thighs. She slipped into a dark blue winter coat and continued as they donned their gloves, "but today I want to be out there, because I want to show you my world."
And Kyrano wanted to see it.
While the food at the Hill House was commendable, Kyrano felt uncomfortable from the moment they stepped into its restaurant to the moment he placed his napkin on top of his plate. Even now, as Mel excused herself to use the restroom, he felt so many pairs of eyes on him that it very nearly made his skin crawl. He could sense the curiosity from those surrounding them, but more than that, he could sense their disdain.
It was no surprise to him; after all, even in today's day and age, when a stranger appeared in a small New England town it was liable to send tongues wagging. Melody had warned him how off-putting Cabot Covers could be to new arrivals. And truthfully, it wasn't lost on him that he was the only non-white person in the entire restaurant. Even as they'd walked from her house to where they now were, he'd noticed there wasn't a single person in sight who wasn't some variation of Caucasian.
So, he supposed, as he sipped some tea and waited for their dessert to arrive, his presence was probably something of a novelty to the townspeople – especially in the dead of winter, which wasn't anywhere near their standard tourist season. His eyes moved to the restaurant entrance as a man appeared there. He was dressed in a brown uniform, and the star-shaped badge on the outside of his heavy coat bespoke who he was. The narrowed eyes that met Kyrano's own gave him an uneasy feeling that he'd committed some horrible crime known only to locals.
It was interesting, he thought, that after spending so many years with a family like the Tracys, who paid no mind to race, religion or creed, his nationality had become something he was almost no longer even aware of, for the most part. Until now.
At that moment, Melody returned to the table. "That's Sheriff Lazslo," she said, following Kyrano's gaze to the door. "There's always only been one sheriff and one deputy in Cabot Cove. Right now, the second spot's filled by Tony Carrington."
Kyrano nodded and turned his attention to their waitress, Cathy, a young woman in her twenties with blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. As Cathy deposited a slice of warm homemade apple pie in front of each of them, Sheriff Lazslo approached.
"Welcome home, Melody," he stated, looking at her in a way that Kyrano didn't particularly like.
"Thanks, Gabe," she responded with a smile. Then, to Kyrano, "Eat up while it's warm. Mae makes the best apple pie in Maine!"
He picked up his fork and started to do just that.
"So who's your friend?" Lazslo asked.
"Oh, God, I have no manners," Mel lamented, gesturing to Kyrano. "Sheriff, this is Kyrano. Kyrano, meet Sheriff Gabe Lazslo."
Kyrano rose to his feet and held out his hand, but Lazslo didn't move an inch. "Kyrano, that's an odd name. Where are you from?" the sheriff blatantly asked.
"I was born in Malaysia," Kyrano replied, returning to his seat as Melody's eyes shot daggers at Lazslo.
"He works with Tracy Corporation," Melody said, her tone defensive. "You know, Jeff Tracy, former astronaut, richest man in the US?"
Lazslo shot her a look, then returned to staring at Kyrano. "Well, have a nice stay," he said, the tone of his voice not matching the pleasantry of his words.
"Thank you," Kyrano nodded.
The sheriff looked at him a few seconds more, then turned and headed for the bar.
Melody reached out and placed her hand on his atop the table. "I'm sorry. I told you they're a suspicious bunch."
"It's all right," he stated, lifting a piece of pie on his fork. "This more than makes up for it."
She laughed and they finished their meal in peace, their fingers entwined, their eyes only on each other.
And so it went for the next five days, with Melody showing Kyrano her world, and him questioning everything, insanely curious to understand it all…to understand what made her tick.
One evening after yet another dinner at Hill House, during they experienced the same amount of whispering and staring as there'd been for the entirety of his visit to date, Kyrano couldn't help but feel as though it would never get better. Not that they'd made any plans as yet about what was going to happen after this initial visit ended. He wasn't expecting her to know what was at the root of his uncharacteristic silence tonight. It was far too soon to concern themselves with future anyway, he chided himself…and yet he could think of nothing else.
"They're good people, they really are," Melody stated as they strolled along the small downtown's sidewalks that were currently littered with sand to provide traction. He looked at her in surprise as she continued, "Aunt Jess used to talk all the time about how every one of them would give you the shirt off their back, even though they'd treat you like you'd stolen it."
She really could read him like an open book. He found it just as disconcerting as when Jeff did it.
"I am familiar with small towns," he replied, eyes taking in the various stores, some of which were closed down for the winter. "Don't apologize for those who are what they are. They'll learn I'm not here to do them harm."
She squeezed his hand. "You couldn't harm a fly," she said.
He squeezed her hand in return, but her words cut deeply into his psyche, bringing back once again the memory of fighting Belah Gaat's mind so fiercely. If she noticed this sudden change in his demeanor, she said nothing.
That evening, as they held one another on the pale lavender-and-cream-colored couch in her living room, they had the local news on, but the sound was too low for them to really hear what was being said.
"It feels strange to have you here," Melody remarked, pulling his arms more tightly around her.
"In what way?" he asked.
She shook her head, staring at the television but not really seeing it. "It's hard to describe," she told him, then turned enough that she could look at his face. "When my mom and dad moved us back here to help Aunt Jess as she was getting older, I spent every moment of my free time listening to stories of her adventures helping the authorities solve murders. I'd read every single one of her murder mysteries by the time I was twelve. By fourteen, I was already writing my own mysteries, with her mentoring me."
Mel lay back against him, her head on his shoulder. "But even with early successes and with Aunt Jess, Mom and Dad cheering me on, I always felt like something was missing."
"And now?"
She smiled softly. "Now I've found it." Then she shook her head. "And yet here, in this place...you just don't seem to belong here. At least, it doesn't feel like you do. It's as though I've removed an exotic creature from his natural habitat and put him somewhere he simply can't exist...like Cabot Cove's a frozen zoo or something."
"Exotic creature," he murmured, amused. "I suspect the townspeople would agree with that assessment."
She chuckled. "You know what I mean."
He nodded. "Yes. I do. But I am still me no matter where I may go."
Sighing, she sat up a little so she could look at him properly. "I know. But your family isn't here."
He looked at her curiously, then reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand. "What is it that troubles you?"
She looked down at where his other hand was holding one of hers. "When you said you were coming home with me," she said quietly, "I had sudden visions of you wanting to stay here with me. I mean, stay stay. For good." She shook her head and looked into his eyes. "But you, as magical and wonderful as you are no matter where you are...you belong on Tracy Island. That's your home. They are your family."
"You're part of that family, too. You're actually more related to them than I."
"That's not what I mean and you know it, Meor," she admonished. "It's just...I guess even though we've only been here five days, I've already realized that to try and take you from that paradise is so wrong that it borders on criminal."
"Don't worry about such things now," he told her, maneuvering her so she was stretched out between his legs, her head resting over his heart as his arms encircled her. He kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes. He did feel out of his element here so far away from home...so far away from Jeff, from his daughter, from those he loved so dearly. And yet with Melody, he felt as whole as he ever had.
What he couldn't bring himself to admit to her just yet, however, was that he'd been feeling exactly what she'd given voice to, for a good portion of the day. No matter how much he wanted her, wanted to be with her, he knew even now that he could never leave Tracy Island. And he also knew that a long-distance relationship of this sort, with one so far away who led such a different life, was probably not going to be enough for either of them.
But he didn't want to think about that right now, and he didn't want her to, either. For right now, he was visiting a place of great importance to the woman he'd so improbably fallen in love with. And while at some point in the near future they were going to have to make some difficult decisions about that love, all he wanted to do was bask in what he felt...in the here and now.
And so to that end, his hands stole under her sweater, his lips captured hers, and he helped them both forget about life beyond the small, fragile bubble that was the newfound 'them.'
Chapter Two
The next day was bright and sunny, and they took full advantage of it. Melody drove them all over Cabot Cove; from high cliffs overlooking the whitecaps of the frigid Atlantic Ocean to the docks devoid of boats for the season. From the peaceful nature preserve just outside of town to the places where Jessica Fletcher's own sleuthing had once taken her. The house that had belonged to her best friend, Seth. His old doctor's office that now had two doctors working out of it, to service the small town's residents. From north to south, from east to west, though their cheeks were cold and their lips sometimes numb, they saw everything that Cabot Cove, Maine had to offer.
Kyrano found the beauty of the seaside breathtaking. It was so different from the tropical tranquility of Tracy Island. Rougher, more unforgiving, and yet, with waves slapping rock and swirling eddies of near-whirlpools in amongst the jagged edges of earth, still beautiful in its own terrifying way.
Everywhere they had gone that day, he'd been looked at quizzically by some, whispered about by others. He'd been watched, and if he and Melody had been holding hands at the time, even pointed at. Yet because his closeness with Melody warmed him in a way that the winter sun could not, he paid it very little mind.
Except, of course, for the fact that one of those observers he'd seen multiple times that day, had been Sheriff Lazslo. He had to wonder if they were being followed; if for some reason Lazslo assumed Kyrano was up to no good with their local celebrity author. Still, he was enjoying learning about the area's history, seeing all that was important to Melody. He let every whisper, every stare, every pointed finger and even the ever-present sheriff fade into a pastel background. The only thing he saw with clarity was her. But the more they walked, talked and drove around, the more he began to think about what she'd said last night.
By the time the sun was hanging just above the horizon, Kyrano still wasn't certain what he was going to do. Because he found that with each passing minute, he was growing more and more attached to the woman with the fiery red hair who had known him, felt him, in a way no woman had since Tin-Tin's mother. A little brass entry bell rang as she darted into one of the few open stores just before eight o'clock at night, saying she'd only be a few minutes. Kyrano decided that was a good time to seek the counsel of the only man he'd ever confided in.
So he moved to a deserted area behind the row of stores, lifted his watch to his face, and called home.
"Ah, Kyrano, I'm glad you contacted me."
"How are things, Jeff?" he asked in a low tone, to avoid being overheard.
"Not too bad. The boys are out on a call in Colombia. Should be pretty straightforward, according to Scott." Jeff got a conspiratorial grin on his face. "And how are things with Melody?"
Kyrano felt his cheeks begin to burn. "All is well. She has shown me all over Cabot Cove for the past several days. It's a beautiful town. If somewhat chilly."
Kyrano's attempt at levity fell flat, and the grin on Jeff's face faded. "What's troubling you?"
"I never could keep much from you," Kyrano said as Jeff shook his head in agreement. "I am troubled, and am not certain what to do."
"Well, what's the situation?"
"I want to stay with her," he blurted out, and then felt heat creep over his entire face. He swallowed once, noting that Jeff's face had gone unreadable. "What I mean is, I wish for us to remain together, but..." His voice trailed off. He shook his head and leaned against the yellow-painted wall that was the back of the store Melody was in.
"But you live in two different worlds," Jeff finished for him. "And you don't see any way of making those two worlds into one."
Kyrano gave an internal sigh of relief. Jeff understood. He always understood, and kept Kyrano from having to give voice to things he wasn't used to talking about even after so many years of calling this man his friend.
"Well, I hate to point out the obvious here, but in spite of the fact that the two of you have serious chemistry, Kyrano, you haven't really known each other that long."
"That is true," he admitted.
"And not only that, but it was a traumatic experience that brought you together. Who knows if in a mundane everyday existence, that spark will last?"
"There is one flaw in your thinking, Jeff," Kyrano said with a hint of amusement. When Jeff's eyebrows skyrocketed, Kyrano chuckled. "While I would wager that Melody's life is slightly more sedate than mine, I hardly have what you might call a 'mundane everyday existence.'"
Jeff laughed out loud. "Well, I can't argue with that." Then his face grew serious once more. "Kyrano, I don't know if you called me because you thought I would make the decision for you, but I can't do that and you know it. Of course I don't want to let you go, but it's not my place to decide what you do with your future."
"Then perhaps just some advice," Kyrano sighed.
"You're always telling me that if something's meant to be, it will happen. I suggest you take your own advice, and let it evolve to whatever it's meant to be."
Kyrano smiled ruefully. "I guess you have learned something from me."
"I guess I have."
"Kyrano?" he heard Melody call out from the other side of the building.
He looked at his friend and felt a deep pang of longing for Tracy Island, for being in the presence of his family. How he missed waking in the peaceful dawn, seeking Jeff out to talk of the day's plans. How he missed his morning hug from his daughter, and hearing the banter of the Tracy boys.
"Kyrano, where'd you go?" came Melody's voice from just around the corner.
One last look in his friend's eyes spoke volumes between them as Kyrano stated, "I must go. I'll contact you soon."
"Oh! Hold on, I didn't tell you why I was glad you called," Jeff said as Melody rounded the corner and smiled when she realized what Kyrano was doing. "John was wanting me to get in touch with you. We figured you probably weren't watching much news right now."
Melody came up, hooked her arm through Kyrano's upraised one and grinned. "Hi, Jeff."
"Hi."
"No, I haven't seen any news," Kyrano said. "Why?"
"John says there's a weather system on its way that's set to bring the entirety of New England to its knees. Meteorologists are predicting up to ten inches of ice from Bangor to Boston."
"Oh, man," Mel groaned. "When's it supposed to hit?"
Jeff looked to the side for a moment and tapped a few keys with both hands, sending the picture from his end reeling. Then his face was back front and center. "According to the last update five minutes ago, the leading edge of the storm's due in your neck of the woods in roughly four hours. It wasn't supposed to get as far north as Maine originally, but it shifted direction about fifteen minutes ago, changing the expected trajectory."
"You know, I'm not sure Cabot Cove knows about this," Mel said thoughtfully as she shifted a brown paper bag from one hand to the other. "Kaylie Mackenzie works at the hardware store right behind us," she explained to Jeff, "but she didn't say a word just now about anyone coming in to get supplies for battening down the hatches." She looked at Kyrano, then put the bag down on the snow-covered ground next to him. "Let me just check back with her."
Kyrano nodded as Mel scurried back around the side of the building. "They were having an ice storm here when we left Tracy Island," he said to Jeff. "It's been in the forties since our arrival, but freezes at night."
Jeff nodded. "Well unfortunately, if this storm holds its path, you're in for something a lot worse than what they already got. Just be careful, okay?"
Nodding, Kyrano bent to pick up the back Mel had left behind. "Thank you for the warning." He smiled softly. "And the advice."
"Stay safe, my friend. And keep in touch."
With that, the call was ended and Kyrano pulled the edge of his glove back up over the gold Rolex. It was as he looked up from this task that he noted the sound of footfalls; in the half-melted, soggy grass, each step made an unmistakable splotching sound. But here, behind the row of stores that fronted Cabot Cove's main street, was the town's central park with its historical monuments and plaques noting the town's part in the American Revolution. And though not large by any means, it was cast in the shadows of a setting sun and surrounded by trees. So initially, Kyrano couldn't tell where the footfalls were coming from.
Distinctly, and seemingly far too loudly, Kyrano heard the small bell just inside the hardware store's door clang twice. He assumed it must be Melody opening that door to come back outside. But then he heard a yell from a woman's voice he didn't recognize, come from the other side of the building. Just as he turned to run toward the front of the store, he was shoved roughly to the ground, the tightly twisted handles of Mel's paper bag ripped from his grip.
The woman's yelling continued as Kyrano hopped catlike to his feet. A man in a black trenchcoat was racing away from him into Cabot Cove Historical Park, Mel's bag swinging from his hand. Kyrano immediately gave chase.
He heard Melody round the corner of the building and holler out his name, but he was gaining on the thief so he kept going. Just ahead was the largest statue in the center of the park, which he knew from Mel's earlier guided tour was a ten-foot bronze statue of Cabot Cove's founding father, standing on a six foot tall marble base. As the last rays of the sun disappeared, it seemed a shadow just to the right of the statue moved.
The running man stopped abruptly, yelling, "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Give it to me," the other voice said menacingly, carrying over the chill of the night air.
"I don't have it."
"That's unfortunate."
And that was when Kyrano realized the shadow – a man – was holding a gun. He tried skidding to a halt, but the slushy snow under his feet made such a move impossible, and he slid, losing his balance and plunging face-first into a foot-tall snowdrift.
"Who the hell is that?" he heard.
A shot rang out. Kyrano froze, not daring to move. Then he felt the barrel of a gun to his head. "You're the one he took this from," the menacing man said as he retrieved Mel's bag and turned it upside down. On the ground next to Kyrano's head fell a plastic container of long nails, a new furnace filter and a receipt. "And since it's not in here, you must have what I came for."
Kyrano chanced a look up even as he heard Mel calling for him in the distance. "I'm sorry, but I'm a stranger here. I don't know what you're looking for."
"Hey!" Mel called. "What the hell are you doing?"
Please don't come near, please don't come near, Kyrano prayed silently.
"The hell you don't. You have to have been his contact. You were standing in the right place."
"I don't even know who he is," Kyrano said softly, making to use his hands to push himself off the ground.
The gun pressed into the top of his skull, and he stilled. "Don't think this is over. I'll get what I came for."
Then the gun barrel disappeared, and when Kyrano looked up, the menacing man was nowhere to be seen. All there was, was the hardware store bag, the filter, the box of nails, the receipt and the body of the man in the black trenchcoat who'd taken the bag from Kyrano's hand. He scrambled forward and turned the man over in the snow, only to find his wide-open eyes unseeing, and a bullet hole in the very center of his forehead. He frowned, because while most of the man's face was hidden by a thick scarf covering him nose to neck, something about the dark blue eyes seemed familiar.
Melody reached them and sank quickly to her knees, cell phone to her ear. "What happened?" she asked breathlessly as she waited for the 911 operator to answer.
"I'm not certain," Kyrano replied, looking all around them. He was afraid the man with the gun would return.
"Hi, yes, this is Melody Fletcher," she said into the phone. "I'm in Cabot Cove Historical Park. A man's been killed, gunshot wound to the head."
Kyrano rose to his feet, pants so thoroughly soaked now that he was really beginning to feel the cold, and moved around behind the statue. There, lying in the snow, was a handgun. Mel had also gotten to her feet just as she'd hung up with 911, and came to stand next to him.
"I take it that's probably the gun that killed him," she observed. Shrugging, Kyrano looked at her as she asked again, "What happened?"
But Kyrano was at a loss, because none of what had happened, made any sense at all.
Chapter Three
While Cabot Cove's sheriff's office was warm, Kyrano was chilled to the bone. In spite of Melody's protests to Sheriff Lazslo and Deputy Carrington that she needed to get Kyrano a dry pair of pants, the two had insisted they remain right where they were until some facts had been sorted out.
"All right," Lazslo said, taking his fingers off the keyboard of his computer and leaning back in his chair. It creaked as he slowly twisted left and then right and back again.
Kyrano, trying to keep himself from shivering, eyed the sheriff tiredly. He looked to be right around the same age as him, and that walnut brown hair color had to have come from a bottle, because it didn't match the silvery-gray five o'clock shadow the man's angular face was sporting. He was tall and thin, rather reminding Kyrano of Brains' build. And his personality seemed as cold as the outside air.
"You say the dead man knocked you to the ground, stole the bag Mel had handed you, and you gave chase."
"Well, he wasn't dead when he did it," Mel snapped, earning her a glare from Deputy Carrington, who was leaning against the low wooden wall that separated the main reception area from the officials' desks.
"Yes," Kyrano acknowledged. "I gave chase, but before I could overtake him, another person stepped out from behind the statue and shot him."
"You know," Lazslo said, sitting forward and leaning on his desk, "funny thing about that. There don't seem to be any other footprints than yours, the victim's and Mel's."
"Maybe the ground was just too slushy for the footprints he would've left behind to stick," Mel offered. "I mean, I couldn't even find a depression in the snow behind the hardware store where he got knocked down."
"Which begs the question, did he get knocked down?"
Kyrano frowned. He and Mel exchanged glances.
"I'm sorry, my friend, but what we have is someone who was shot, with you the only person we can find who was anywhere near him when it happened. The murder weapon was behind the statue, where you say you found it, but where you could easily have tossed it yourself."
"Are you kidding me?" Mel asked incredulously. "Are you seriously saying you think Kyrano killed that man? He doesn't even know who he is!"
"So he says," Lazslo concluded.
"Give me a break, Gabe. Kyrano's the most peaceful man I've ever met in my life. He wouldn't hurt a fly!"
Inevitably, Kyrano's thoughts strayed to the fight with Belah. Wouldn't hurt a fly certainly didn't seem to be true anymore.
Lazslo looked to be on the verge of saying something, but decided against it and rose to his feet. "Okay, look. We've got a storm system coming in that's going to hit Cabot Cove hard, so I don't have time to sit here in a verbal sparring match with the two of you."
Mel glared at him.
Pointing his finger at Kyrano, the sheriff continued, "But I've got Doc Unger doing an autopsy on the shooting victim as we speak, and I had a courier take your gloves and that gun to the county lab for analysis. So you don't go anywhere until I get a handle on what the hell happened in that park tonight, you got me?"
Kyrano nodded. Mel jumped to her feet, grabbed Lazslo by the sleeve of his brown sheriff's jacket and pulled him through the swinging door in the low wall, clear over to the door which led to the office's few jail cells.
"Let go of me," Lazslo groused, jerking his arm away.
"I want to know what your problem is," Mel whispered fiercely. "Why are you acting like Kyrano murdered that man? There's no evidence showing he did, and besides, I'm an eyewitness. I saw him running, and he was at least five feet away when he fell. The man in the trenchcoat was shot after Kyrano fell."
"It's awfully difficult to put much stock in an eyewitness when that eyewitness is sleeping with the suspect," Lazslo countered, loud enough that Mel knew Kyrano and Carrington had to have heard.
She felt her face flush red-hot and ground her teeth together. "He wouldn't kill anyone," she seethed.
"I don't know that's true. He's a stranger here. We don't know him."
"Well I do," she retorted, then shoved her way past him to where Kyrano was waiting just inside the swinging gate. "We're going home," she said.
He nodded, wondering what the hell had happened to turn his vacation into this nightmare. As they walked out of the sheriff's office into the cold night air, his shivering finally got the best of him to the point where it felt like his teeth were going to rattle right out of his head.
"Damn, you're frozen solid," Mel lamented. "Come on, Carrington drove my car here. Let's get you home and into a hot shower."
Kyrano simply followed her to the car, got in and started fumbling with the seatbelt. By the time Mel was in the driver's seat all buckled up, he still hadn't managed to get his numb fingers to follow his wishes. Silently she reached across him, pulled the seatbelt over and buckled it for him. Then she turned the key in the ignition, blasted the heat, and headed for home.
An hour later and Kyrano finally felt warm enough to stop hugging himself. He stepped out of the shower and toweled himself off, taking enough time to also blow his hair dry. He hoped fervently that he wasn't going to get sick as a result of having gotten so cold, but Mel had said she was whipping up a batch of chicken noodle soup and making some hot tea that would be waiting downstairs for him.
As the hair dryer did its work, Kyrano's mind wandered back to the two hours they'd spent at the sheriff's office. While he understood that the situation left everyone with more questions than answers, and that a man had died not five feet in front of him, what he didn't understand was why Sheriff Lazslo seemed so hell-bent on the idea the he was the one who'd committed the murder. Especially since, as Mel had pointed out, she had seen enough of what happened to know Kyrano couldn't possibly have pulled the trigger.
It had been a long, long time since Kyrano had handled a machine pistol like the one apparently used to kill the man in the black trenchcoat. The Tracys had weapons that were a lot more effective, and those he'd only used at their shooting range, just to be certain he was capable if the need ever arose. What troubled him even more than the sheriff's opinion that Kyrano was capable of murder, however, was the way in which he'd looked at Melody, and the vehemence with which he'd countered her every argument in Kyrano's defense.
He sensed there was more going on here than he was aware of, but as he clicked the hair dryer off and stood looking at himself in the mirror over the bathroom sink, he realized that he was far too tired to give it much more thought than he already had. What he needed right now was Mel's soup, some hot tea and a warm bed.
A loud banging startled him from a sound and much-needed sleep. Blearily he blinked awake as the pounding continued.
"What the hell?" Mel mumbled from her spot next to him. She sat up and clicked on the bedside lamp.
"What's going on?" Kyrano asked.
"I dunno," she replied, sliding her feet into her slippers and grabbing her bathrobe from a hook on the back of the bedroom door. "Someone's banging on the kitchen door."
As she exited the room, Kyrano forced himself out of bed. He slid his feet into slippers that were more shoes than anything, and in his flowing two-piece black linen pajamas, adorned with a gold-thread dragon on the left chest pocket, made to follow her.
As he reached the top of the stairs, Mel's voice drifted up to him. "What are you doing here?"
"Where's Mr. Kyrano, Mel?"
"Why?"
Kyrano came down the steps, recognizing the voice of Sheriff Lazslo. A glance at his watch told him it was three-thirty in the morning, merely three hours after he and Mel had finally fallen exhausted into bed.
"I'll ask you again, where is he?"
Kyrano came down the steps into the kitchen. A blast of cold air entered with Lazslo and Carrington as they stepped in, Mel closing the door behind them. "I'm here," he said softly.
"What's this about, Gabe?" Mel asked, but the sheriff ignored her in favor of pulling handcuffs from his belt.
"Meor Kyrano, you are under arrest for the murder of Dwayne Cibrian."
Both Mel's and Kyrano's jaws dropped, but in Kyrano's case, at least, it was because he knew that name...and knew it well. "Dwayne Cibrian?" he repeated.
It can't be, he thought, mind churning. While he hadn't gotten a look at the shooting victim's full face, the eyes had looked familiar. But Dwayne Cibrian...it was a name he knew well enough to know that in spite of the fact that he hadn't killed the man, if the sheriff had done his homework, he would have every reason to believe Kyrano had.
"You have the right to remain silent," Lazslo continued as he moved behind Kyrano and cuffed his wrists together. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you."
"What the hell are you doing?" Mel asked, grabbing for Lazslo's arm.
"Back off, Mel, or I'll arrest you for obstructing a police investigation."
"Obstructing a—of all the—!"
"It's okay, Melody," Kyrano said quietly. "Call Jeff for me."
Lips pursed together tightly, Melody backed away and nodded. Kyrano saw the fear in her eyes, saw the apology she wanted to give. Saw from the twitching of her fingers that it was taking everything in her not to interfere with what was happening.
"Do you understand these rights as I've explained them to you?" Lazslo asked, jerking at the handcuffs.
"I do," Kyrano replied.
"Carrington, get him out to the squad car. I'll be there in a minute."
"Yes, sir," Carrington said. Kyrano glanced once more at Mel, then Carrington started moving him toward the back door in Mel's kitchen.
"Wait, at least let him have his coat, it's freezing out there!" She ran and grabbed Kyrano's winter coat from where it hung on the wall near the front door, and moved to hang it on his shoulders.
"Thank you," he whispered. And out into the frigid night he walked, allowing himself to be placed into the back of the squad car. He sat waiting and wondering, through his sleep-addled confusion, what in the name of the universe was happening.
Chapter Four
Melody
"You have lost your mind!" Mel screeched, furious at this man she'd known since her early twenties. "What the hell kind of evidence can you possibly have that makes you think you can make a murder charge stick?"
"For one thing, I'm not telling you anything about this investigation, Mel. This is police business, and you are not your great-aunt."
Mel balled her hands into fists, fuming.
"I know the stories about her as well as anyone," Lazslo continued. "The sheriffs in this town back then were incompetent, and only a mystery writer had the smarts to solve cases. Well, I'm not incompetent, Mel, and I certainly don't need your help to solve this. I already have, and that man you brought into town is a killer."
"Bullshit!" she spat. "I told you, Gabe. I know him, and he's no killer."
"We're going to have to let a jury decide that. In the meantime, keep your nose out of it."
Lazslo stalked to the back door, opened it, and closed it after himself far harder than was necessary. Mel ran to the door, parted the curtains covering its window and looked out as Gabe got into the passenger seat of the squad car. She could tell Kyrano was in the back seat, but couldn't make out anything other than the shape of his shadow. She turned, leaned against the door and pounded on it with her fists. Tears welled up in her eyes, which she angrily swiped away as she ran up the steps to her bedroom. On the nightstand opposite the one with the lamp, stood her vidphone unit. So she sat down where, barely ten minutes earlier, Kyrano had been sound asleep, and opened the secure line to Tracy Island that John had made her memorize.
The first slivers of ice started pelting her bedroom window as a few clicks and clacks were heard, and then the vidphone screen switched to a white background that said Processing. She looked at the digital time in the upper right-hand corner. 3:45am. A quick calculation in her head told her it was 8:45 that night on Tracy Island. One more click was heard and then the vidphone screen blinked to life. She recognized John immediately.
"Melody, this is a surprise," he said, grinning from ear to ear. Then his face grew immediately serious. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head, a couple of tears spilling out of her eyes. "I need to talk to your dad," she said. "Kyrano's been arrested for murder!"
"And that's what happened," Melody finished, eyes now dry, but a tissue wadded tightly in her hand.
"Dad, that alert that came in just after we got back from the rescue," came the voice of Scott off-camera.
"Yeah?"
"It was telling us a background check had been done on Kyrano."
"Well, our safeties are in place; they'd only be able to dig up what we want them to know."
"That may be true, but the fact is that sheriff thinks Kyrano's murdered someone."
Jeff turned to face Melody. "Who was the victim, do we know?"
"I'm hacking into their files as we speak," John said from somewhere nearby.
"No need," Melody said. "When Gabe arrested him, he said it was for the murder of Dwayne Cibrian." Melody frowned as Jeff's eyes widened. "Funny thing is, I would swear Kyrano recognized the name. He even repeated it out loud after Gabe said it." That was when she noticed the look on Jeff's face. "You know that name, too, don't you?"
Jeff's jaw worked.
"Well, who is it, Dad?" Scott asked.
"Scott, see if you can find Paul Drake, and get Abe Maddox out of bed."
"On it."
"Jeff, what's going on?" Mel asked, growing frustrated. "What do you know that I don't?"
He just looked at her.
"Dammit, I'm right here! I can help!"
"Melody, as much as you've told us about what your great-aunt used to do—"
"Leave her out of this! None of this is about Aunt Jess! It's about Meor! I know this town, I know these people! I've known Sheriff Lazslo since the summer after my junior year at the University of Maine!" Mel got to her feet, paced away from the vidphone and then whirled on it. "Look, it's my fault he's locked up. We've got the beginnings of what they're predicting is going to be the worst winter storm to hit this state in sixty-four years. You're way the hell out in the middle of the South Pacific, and even if your Drake and Maddox, whoever they are, were in Bangor, they wouldn't be able to get here the way these roads are going to be by morning!"
Jeff seemed to be studying her in the silence of the seconds that followed. Finally he scrubbed a hand down his face. "Paul Drake the Third is a private investigator who's helped us out a lot over the years," he explained. "Abe Maddox is the head of my New York legal team."
"Where's this Drake located?"
"Los Angeles. Maddox is in Manhattan."
"So neither of those people Scott's calling right now is going to be able to do anything other than make phone calls."
"That's all they'll have to do, Mel. Trust me, Kyrano will be out of jail before you can shower and dress."
"Please," Mel begged, returning to her seat on the bed and leaning forward to get her face as close to Jeff's as possible. "I'm one of your agents now, Jeff. I know your secret, and I keep it. I am also fully aware that as well as I know Meor, as much as I..." She looked away, swallowed hard, and then turned back to face him. "As much as I love him, I don't know nearly as much about him as you do." She took a deep, shaky breath. "But it's because I love him that I can't just sit here on my thumbs waiting for a magic spell to free him."
Jeff gave her a small smile. "No, I suppose you can't."
"Then will you please tell me how it is you and Kyrano know this Cibrian who was killed tonight?"
Jeff turned to his left. "Scott, John, the rest of you, make sure you're close enough to hear this. I'm not going to repeat it."
One by one each of Jeff's earthbound sons, Tin-Tin and Brains all gathered behind Jeff. Most of them were looking right at her, and when she caught Tin-Tin's eyes, she could tell the young woman had been crying. Mel hated herself right now for bringing Kyrano here. She'd been right last night when she'd told him it felt like she'd tried to transplant an exotic creature from his natural habitat to a zoo. If not for him coming to Cabot Cove, he'd be safe and sound back on Tracy Island, not having a thing in the world to worry about.
"I'm not going to tell you too much, because Kyrano's past is up to him to divulge," Jeff began, pulling Mel from her thoughts. "As you know, Kyrano is a botanist, a genius with plant life. He's spent most of his career on the development of plants that can grow in space, as well as underwater. He and Gordon do a lot of work together here in our underwater biosphere, and he has several experiments running on Thunderbird Five."
Mel nodded. "Yes, he told me about some of his work. He met you at NASA while he was working there with a Dr. Cho on some of the earliest experiments growing nutritious seaweed-like plants in Zero G."
"That's right," Jeff confirmed. "Shortly after we met, I was knee-deep in Tracy Aerospace's first Moon Colony contract. I decided to bring Kyrano on board to oversee the design of a biosphere to be used on the Moon."
"Wait, I know about this," Mel said. "I saw something on the internet a few months ago about a biosphere on the Moon that had its protective wall breached by an asteroid. Two men died before the automatic sealant kicked in." As Jeff nodded, she continued, "It became a huge deal for the Citizens Against Space – they started using that incident as proof that their campaign against space travel and colonization was right on target. There were boycotts, strike lines, you name it. They really kicked up a fuss."
"That's right. It took a while for it to blow over, helped along by the fact that we managed to put a failsafe into place within a month of that happening."
"A second layer, like a skin, over the biosphere. One that could be hit by a mile-wide asteroid at full-speed without so much as a crack appearing."
"Exactly."
"But what's all this got to do with Dwayne Cibrian?"
Jeff turned to look at Scott, then back to Mel. "Dr. Dwayne Cibrian was the scientist Kyrano worked with in developing that biosphere," he explained. "His twin, Dr. Dwight Cibrian, was one of the two men killed when the hull failed."
"Oh, my," Mel breathed. "Do you think Dwayne was here on purpose? That he'd somehow learned Kyrano was going to be in Cabot Cove?"
"I don't know how," Scott spoke up. "Dad flew you and Kyrano to Los Angeles, where you went directly from our private hangar at LAX to the commercial flight to Bangor. Then you took a cab all the way out to Cabot Cove. How could Cibrian have known anything about Kyrano's whereabouts?"
"Good question," Mel said. "But either way, if he had some sort of misguided revenge planned for his brother's death, why didn't he just kill Kyrano when he was alone behind the hardware store? Instead, he knocked him down, stole the bag I'd left with him, and then ran across the park."
"Where there was another man waiting," John finished for her. "But you say they can't find any trace that there even was another man there."
"Not according to Gabe, although I'm willing to bet there's plenty he's not telling me." Mel thought for a moment as something new occurred to her. "You know, there's one other thing I don't get. Gabe told us he'd sent the gloves Kyrano was wearing at the time, as well as the gun we found at the base of the statue, to the county lab for tests. There's no way they could've found GSR on those gloves, let alone test them yet. I saw Kyrano fall on the slippery grass. The gun was fired while he was still face-down in the snow."
"Which means whatever your sheriff has to build a case on is flimsy at best. But he could've uncovered the connection between Cibrian and Kyrano. After all, references to the project are still hanging around on the internet," Jeff said, face grim. "Unfortunately, it never occurred to me that his days on those projects could have dire consequences for him."
In the background on Tracy Island, Mel heard a computer beep. John abruptly left the group, with everyone else turning their backs on her to see what he was doing.
"What is it, John?"
"Not good, Dad," came John's disembodied voice. "I just got into the Cabot Cove files."
"And?" Mel asked expectantly.
"And," John said, "according to their notes on the case, they have an eyewitness who saw Kyrano shoot Cibrian, then toss the gun on the ground."
"That's impossible!" Mel cried. "That wasn't what happened!"
"That's not all," John continued.
"What else?" That had been Tin-Tin.
"Lazslo says they traced the weapon's serial number, and the gun...Dad, it says it was registered to Kyrano."
"What?" Jeff breathed. "Kyrano doesn't own a gun. I can barely get him hit the range for practice!"
"That's what this is saying. They know about Cibrian's connection to Kyrano, and their hypothesis is that Cibrian followed Kyrano to Cabot Cove, waited until he was alone, and confronted him. One thing led to another and Kyrano shot Cibrian, is their conclusion."
"But...no," Mel whispered, despair creeping into her heart. She turned pleading eyes to Jeff. "How could anyone think he's capable of murder? He couldn't even kill his half-brother when your life was threatened!"
So closely was she watching him, that Melody noticed the change in Jeff's demeanor upon hearing her words. He set his jaw, and his eyes seemed to close themselves off to her, as though she were watching a shield slide into place to hide his thoughts.
"Jeff?"
He swallowed but said nothing.
"Oh, no," she breathed, hand moving to cover her mouth. "He did kill him, didn't he." It wasn't a question. She felt her heart slow to a crawl, disbelief settling into every cell of her body.
Jeff glanced to the side. Soon Tin-Tin appeared next to him. "Yes," she said, finally giving Mel the answer she'd been dreading. She looked away, tears filling her eyes. "Jeff knew it would kill my father if he found out, so he performed CPR and brought my half-uncle back to life."
"And lied to Kyrano to spare him," Mel concluded.
Tin-Tin nodded.
"Oh, my God."
"Please, Melody, don't tell him. If he ever finds out…" Tin-Tin's voice trailed off. "He wouldn't be able to live with the knowledge that he was capable of killing even someone as evil as that man. For his sake, please keep the secret."
She understood completely, and nodded as she replied, "Of course I won't tell him."
"Thank you," Tin-Tin whispered, then moved out of camera range.
Jeff turned back to face Mel, clearing his throat. "From what the weather report's showing, my men won't be able to get to you until that storm's passed."
"Then let me help. Please."
"I'll get Drake's and Maddox's people on it from where they are, but in the meantime, Melody, it looks like I have no choice but to let you."
She smiled gratefully at him. The only thing worse than Meor being locked up for a crime he didn't commit, would've been Jeff ordering her to stand down.
"All right. Then at first light, I'm going back to the park where this all happened."
"They're saying you have two inches of ice on the ground already," Tin-Tin noted from the back of the crowd that had gathered behind Jeff. The men parted so she and Mel could make eye contact. "What in the world do you think you'll find, even if you do manage to make it there in one piece?"
"I don't know, Tin-Tin. But I sure as hell am not going to sit here and do nothing. I'll check back in with you at, say, nine my time. Okay?"
Jeff nodded. "Every resource I have access to is at your disposal."
"Dad, what if she loses communications capabilities?" Scott asked. "The only communicator that'll work if ice takes all their lines down, if the cell towers become unable to transmit signals, is Kyrano's watch."
"And he was wearing it when they arrested him," Mel said. "Don't worry. If even my cell phone stops working, I'll find a way to get my hands on his watch so I can still get hold of you."
"Don't do anything illegal, Mel," Jeff warned. "Kyrano wouldn't want you to jeopardize your freedom for his sake."
"Of course not," she replied, and as soon as the call had been disconnected, continued, "It's not whether I'll do anything illegal to save him, it's whether I'll get caught."
Dressed in layers, from underwear and long johns to thick corduroy pants, turtleneck, sweater and Arctic insulated and waterproof coat, Mel slipped a thick ski mask over her face, pulled the hood of her coat up over her head and tied it tightly beneath her chin. Next came a pair of gloves even thicker than the ones she'd worn out and about Cabot Cove yesterday. The wind was screaming outside, and ice still continued to pelt her house. She was surprised her power was still on, but figured by the time she got back home that probably wouldn't be the case.
She knew that in this kind of weather, there wouldn't be a single solitary soul venturing out of their homes. She was pretty sure none of the stores would be open, and that the Hill House restaurant would only be open to feed its own guests staying at the lodge.
The first thing she was going to do was try to convince whichever man was watching the sheriff's station to let her see Meor. She simply had to speak to him, to let him know that Jeff had people working on this, and to ask him some questions of her own.
Not only that, but just to see for herself that he was okay.
Worry firmly etched into her mind, Melody sat down on a kitchen chair and strapped her steel hiking crampons onto her boots. Then she turned to the backpack sitting on the kitchen table, and checked its contents once more. Bottled water, energy bars, warm clothes and boots for Kyrano and various and sundry other things she thought might come in handy over the course of the day, made it so full she could barely zip it closed.
Because while the rest of Cabot Cove hibernated, Melody Fletcher vowed not to do anything of the sort until she'd found something to prove the innocence of the man she loved. It was her fault he'd gotten into this mess...and Jeff Tracy's high-powered attorneys and private investigators notwithstanding, she was going to get him out of it.
Chapter Five
Kyrano
The constant barrage of ice against the roof and walls of the sheriff's office offered the perfect white noise backdrop for Kyrano. He sat cross-legged upon his small cot, hands resting comfortably palm-flat on his knees. His eyes were closed as his mind worked and worked, trying to understand how a man from his past had shown up in a place even he hadn't known he was going to be only one week earlier.
He remembered the day the Moon's botany biosphere had ruptured, killing Doctors Cibrian and Wellsley. He'd just been returning from tending to his orchids when Jeff had buzzed him on his watch, and asked him to join him in his private study adjacent to his bedroom suite on the villa's second floor.
Jeff had shown him recordings of several news stories, followed by Tracy Aerospace's own input into the matter. And then Rosemary, Jeff's right-hand woman at Tracy Corporation in Manhattan, had put a direct call to Jeff's personal vidphone line right there in his study. Dr. Dwight Cibrian's brother, Dwayne, with whom Kyrano had worked so closely on the original designs for the Moon biosphere, wanted to talk to Jeff and he wanted to do it now.
So Jeff had Rosemary patch his call through.
And Dwayne had been equal parts furious and accusatory, especially once he'd seen Kyrano over Jeff's shoulder. He'd threatened them both with lawsuits the likes of which they'd never seen, accusing them of shoddy workmanship, claiming it was their fault his twin had been killed. No matter what Jeff had said to the man, he'd continued his verbal attack until at last Jeff had had no choice but to end the call, with instructions to Rosemary to never put Cibrian through to him again.
Jeff had told Kyrano he'd handle Cibrian, and Kyrano hadn't asked how. Jeff had his own way of doing things, and if he felt Kyrano needed to know details, he'd tell him. The last Kyrano had heard on the matter, had been three days before the plane had crashed into Scott's bedroom. Jeff had pulled Kyrano aside and told him it looked like Cibrian wouldn't be filing any lawsuits after all. The attorneys he'd initially engaged to do so, had let Jeff's lawyers know Cibrian was dropping the suits without explanation.
And so while the deaths of the two scientists had weighed heavily upon Kyrano's mind, what had happened on Tracy Island with Scott being crushed by the plane and the subsequent fight against Kyrano's own half-brother, had pretty much made him forget about the incident altogether.
Until a few hours ago, when Sheriff Lazslo had identified Dwayne Cibrian as the man Kyrano had just seen shot to death.
So here he was, doing his best to come up with any information which might prove helpful to his cause. Yet the very premise upon which he'd been arrested didn't fit the facts that he'd borne witness to firsthand. He struggled to recall any detail of the menacing man who had hidden beside the statue. While certain he'd recognize the voice if ever again he heard it, the fact was that in the darkness of night with storm clouds moving in, Kyrano hadn't been able to tell much more than that the man appeared to be taller than him by at least a few inches, and that he'd been slightly built and not wearing the kind of coat or shoes you would expect someone to be wearing when it was only forty degrees.
A foreign sound, one he hadn't heard since the deputy had told him he was going home to check on his wife and would be back within the hour...four hours ago...broke through Kyrano's meditative state. His eyes opened, but he remained still. It was the front door to the sheriff's office being opened and then closed. He assumed at first that it must be Deputy Carrington returning. But within the next few seconds, something told him that's not who it was at all.
Springing to his feet and moving to the bars of his cell, Kyrano grabbed hold of them and turned his head to peer toward the cell block door. A face appeared in the metal door's small square window. It was covered by a ski mask and large winter hood. Yet it didn't occur to him to be afraid, because he knew who was behind that mask.
In short order the clank of the door being unlocked reverberated throughout the cell block, and the door swung wide open. The hood was pulled back and the ski mask quickly yanked off. He smiled when she spoke his name, "Meor?"
"I am here," he said as she approached his, the first cell on the right. He reached for her hands. She shed her gloves and when her hands rose, they faced him palm-flat. Closing his eyes, he pressed his palms to hers, and their fingers interlaced. She gasped softly, as she always did when he projected outward. "And you are here," he whispered.
"I am," she replied, leaning forward and kissing him softly on the lips. "Are you okay? Are you warm enough?"
"Yes, on both counts," he replied, opening his eyes.
"There's nobody else here. Have you been given anything to eat or drink?"
"No. Deputy Carrington was at the reception desk for an hour, then took a phone call and said he had to go home to check on his wife. That was four hours ago."
"Jesus Christ," Melody said with a shake of her head as she pulled away from his hands. "They don't even have the decency to make sure you're okay."
"If they're not here, how did you get in?" Kyrano asked.
"Gabe never locks the door. In Cabot Cove he's never needed to, even in this day and age. And the cell block door lock is no more difficult to pick than your average skeleton keyhole."
"You shouldn't be picking locks," he chided, though his tone wasn't serious.
"And you shouldn't be sitting here on a murder charge," she said. "Meor, I talked to Jeff. He's got someone named Drake from LA, and some attorney...um...Maddox...out of New York. They're working on this."
Kyrano nodded.
"Have you talked to him?"
"Not yet. The deputy said he would let me have my phone call when he returned. I believe he was more concerned with his wife's safety than due process."
"Well all I care about is finding out what really happened in the park. Jeff already explained who Dwayne and Dwight Cibrian are to you. Is there anything more you can tell me?"
Kyrano shook his head. "Other than the fact that Dwayne threatened us with lawsuits over Dwight's death, and then mysteriously dropped them mere weeks later, no."
"Mysteriously dropped them?" Mel repeated. Off his nod, she asked, "Did he say why?"
"We never spoke to him. It was the attorneys he'd hired to sue us who told Abe Maddox. Maddox called Jeff and that was the end of it."
"Until Dwayne Cibrian just happened to show up here at the very same time as you," Mel said. "I don't get it. Scott said there was no way anyone could've known you were coming here. Even if somehow we'd been tracked from LA to Bangor, nobody was following the cab we took from the airport to Cabot Cove; we'd have seen them behind us on those two-lane roads."
"You're right. But I must confess that I don't believe in coincidence."
"Normally, neither do I," she admitted. "Which means only one thing: someone here in Cabot Cove would've somehow had to leak your presence to Cibrian. But who?"
"And why would anyone have eyes and ears looking out for me here in your hometown?" Kyrano asked. "After all, even if they had somehow learned you were related to Ruth Tracy, and even if they'd known you were going to Tracy Island to meet your extended family, nobody knows that's where I live. Discounting the impossibility of those coincidences, I am also certain they would have had no way of knowing I would return to Cabot Cove with you."
Mel folded her arms over her chest and leaned back against the bars of the cell across from his. Shaking her head, she said, "No, none of this makes sense. But worse than that, even if we did figure out how Cibrian's path could've crossed yours here, if he was after you to avenge the death of his twin brother, why didn't he just kill you? Why mow you down, steal my purchases from the hardware store, and take off across the park?"
"It's as if Cibrian didn't even know it was me he tackled," Kyrano pointed out. "His only focus was that brown paper bag."
"That's right," Mel said, pacing to the end of the six-cell-long hall and back again, the metal spikes of her crampons clacking on the finished concrete floor. "If he was watching, he would've known that I'm the one who left that bag at your feet when I went back to the store to tell Kaylie about the storm."
"Which means what? That he thought you'd put something in the bag that he wanted? Do you even know who Cibrian is?"
She shook her head. "I had no idea until Jeff told me," she replied. "I remembered the story about the scientists being killed in the Moon biosphere, but I didn't recall their names."
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I heard something right before he knocked me down. In fact, I heard two somethings."
"Go on," she said, moving forward until she was standing right in front of him.
"I had just finished speaking with Jeff via my wrist communicator," he explained. "I heard the sound of someone running through the slush."
"Do you know which direction they were coming from?"
He shook his head. "I couldn't tell. The sound was echoing off the buildings and trees. But as I was trying to get a fix on their direction, I heard a woman yelling from the opposite side of the building."
Mel snapped her fingers. "Yes. That was Kaylie. I'd just finished talking to her about the coming storm when she got a phone call. It sounded personal, so I decided to rejoin you. I'd barely gotten outside when she came running out, nearly knocking me over, and started yelling at the top of her lungs."
"What was she saying?" Kyrano asked. "I couldn't understand her words."
Mel looked thoughtful for a handful of seconds. "She was yelling, 'Stop! Don't do it, come back!'" Mel's eyes widened. "Oh, my God...she knew. Meor, she knew something was going down. It was because of what she was yelling that I ran around the building to make sure you were okay."
"What made you think her yelling had anything to do with me?" he asked.
"She was turned toward the back of the building, like she was trying to shout over the roof. When I took off around the corner, she began running after me, hollering, "No, don't!" Then I made it back there in time to see you get up and take off after Cibrian. Come to think of it, I have no idea where Kaylie went."
Intrigued, Kyrano motioned for her to continue.
"I saw the guy had a long, dark trenchcoat on, and that he was carrying the brown bag I'd left with you. He was running like his ass was on fire, and the next thing I know you go headlong into that snowdrift and I hear a shot ring out. I saw Cibrian fall, and I saw the man who shot him put the gun to your head. But it was so dark I was straining just to see that."
"They spoke," Kyrano said. "I heard them."
"What? Why didn't you tell Gabe when he was questioning you?"
He shook his head. "I was so tired," he told her. "And cold." He huffed out a small laugh. "I'm not used to this climate, you know."
"I know," she said softly, taking his hands through the bars. "What did they say?"
The running man stopped abruptly, yelling, "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Give it to me," the other voice said menacingly, carrying over the chill of the night air.
"I don't have it."
"That's unfortunate."
And that was when Kyrano realized the shadow – a man – was holding a gun. He tried skidding to a halt, but the slushy snow under his feet made such a move impossible, and he slid, losing his balance and plunging facefirst into a foot-tall snowdrift.
"Who the hell is that?" he heard.
A shot rang out. Kyrano froze, not daring to move. Then he felt the barrel of a gun to his head. "You're the one he took this from," the menacing man said as he retrieved Mel's bag and turned it upside down. On the ground next to Kyrano's head fell a plastic container of long nails, a new furnace filter and a receipt. "And since it's not in here, you must have what I came for."
Kyrano chanced a look up even as he heard Mel calling for him in the distance. "I'm sorry, but I'm a stranger here. I don't know what you're looking for."
"Hey!" Mel called. "What the hell are you doing?"
Please don't come near, please don't come near, Kyrano prayed silently.
"The hell you don't. You have to have been his contact. You were standing in the right place."
"I don't even know who he is," Kyrano said softly, making to use his hands to push himself off the ground.
The gun pressed into the top of his skull, and he stilled. "Don't think this is over. I'll get what I came for."
Mel stared at him as he finished. "Are you certain the man with the gun said 'you have to have been his contact'?"
Kyrano nodded. "The words are burned into my brain."
"So whoever the gunman was, he thought someone was meeting Cibrian in the park. That Cibrian was going to get something from that contact, something that the gunman wanted to get his hands on. Something important enough that he was willing to kill for it."
"But he hadn't gotten it yet when he killed him."
"He must've thought whatever it was, was in the bag. He dumped it out on the ground next to you, and when he didn't find it, believed that meant you still had it."
"But what could it be?" Kyrano asked, perplexed as ever.
"Lemme think," Mel said, beginning to pace again. "I went into the hardware store. I bought a couple of innocuous things for the house, then brought the bag out to you, went back to talk to Kaylie about Jeff's storm warning, and she got a phone call. Then she started yelling. Stop. Don't do it. Come back."
"Do you think the phone call she received had something to do with Cibrian?"
"Or the gunman," Mel agreed. "John hacked into Gabe's files here, Kyrano. He said there was an eyewitness who saw you kill Cibrian, then drop the gun behind the statue."
"What? Who?"
"I don't think the witness was named in the report, or John would've told me."
"If Cibrian was supposed to meet someone in the park, a contact, perhaps the person claiming to be the eyewitness was the contact."
"Yes," Mel nodded, "that's where my mind was going. If that person was supposed to hand something off to Cibrian, but saw the gunman kill him, he would've feared for his life."
"And not knowing who I am, or whether I was associated with the gunman, it would behoove him to lie that I'd been the one to shoot Cibrian, while the real gunman got away."
"But that doesn't make sense," Mel countered. "If the witness was supposed to hand something to Cibrian, wouldn't he rather have the gunman stand accused of his murder than you? After all, the gunman's the one who wanted whatever it was. The real contact would've seen what went down, and would've been an idiot not to realize you were an innocent bystander."
"So why lie?"
"To put you behind bars."
"To what end?"
She chewed on her lower lip. "There's something you know...either because you knew Cibrian or because you saw something last night when this all went down...something the real contact doesn't want you sharing."
Kyrano shook his head, totally at a loss, and retreated to the cot. He sank slowly down upon the thin mattress. "But I don't know anything other than the fact that the dead man is someone I worked with for over two years more than two decades ago. I was simply mistaken by Cibrian for whoever his true contact was."
Mel's face lit up. "That's it!"
"What's it?"
"What if the eyewitness, Cibrian's true contact...what if he didn't put you behind bars to actually see to it that you went to trial for murder? What if he heard the threats the gunman made to you, and wanted to put you behind bars to keep you safe?"
Kyrano's eyes widened. He hadn't thought of that at all. "Then he feared the gunman would make good on his promise, and lied to Sheriff Lazslo to...help me?"
"That's a theory that holds a little more water," Mel said. "Call me crazy, but Cibrian's presence in Cabot Cove at the same time you were here may just be a coincidence."
"Given our history, that doesn't seem possible."
"Then tell me: how could he have known you were here?"
"He would have to have been monitoring flight manifests throughout the entirety of the US," Kyrano replied. "I don't very often travel commercially, but given that you had found out about International Rescue, and that Jeff was concerned that we not draw attention to ourselves by arriving in a Tracy jet in such a small place as Bangor, we decided the best thing for us to do was fly like normal people for this trip. Under the radar."
"Okay, let's see if we can reconstruct what happened under this new theory," Mel said, chewing on her lower lip a moment before continuing to pace. "Cibrian's supposed to meet John Doe, his contact, in the Cabot Cove Historical Park. Now, if that's the case, chances are he wouldn't have mowed his contact down and stolen some bag he was holding. He would've talked to the man, gotten whatever he was supposed to get, and left."
"Which means he couldn't have mistaken me for his contact, or he would've approached me rather than knock me over."
"Right. Meor, what if Dwayne had been back there watching, waiting for his contact to show...and had seen your face, either in the fading light or when you were talking to Jeff via your watch? If he'd been close enough, the light from that transmission could've lit your face enough for him to make out your features."
"Then why knock me down and take the bag?"
"To protect you, maybe? He probably knew the real contact was near; either that or he didn't know, but knew the situation was dangerous enough that when he recognized an old acquaintance, he wanted to put you out of action so you wouldn't get caught in the middle of whatever was about to go down."
"So he pretended to be a thief, and meant to escape across the park."
"When the gunman stepped out and brought him up short."
Kyrano nodded, rising to his feet and doing his own small bit of pacing in the ten-by-ten cell. "I don't know if that works, Mel. Cibrian was threatening Jeff and I both with violence before suddenly dropping the lawsuit. But whatever his motivation in what he did to me, I agree with your assessment that the gunman mistakenly thought I was Cibrian's contact. When he didn't find what he wanted in the bag, he assumed that meant I still had it."
"Yes, exactly. He killed Cibrian thinking he'd just grab what he wanted from the bag and go. He kept you from looking up at him by putting the barrel of the gun against your head."
"Then you yelled for me, came running toward us."
"And that scared the guy off because I had my phone out calling 911 at the time."
"He couldn't take the chance of killing me, because he was convinced I still had what he wanted."
"So he threatened you and made his escape."
"All with the true contact watching from behind a tree or statue."
"Okay," Mel breathed, taking her long hair out of its ponytail, carding her fingers haphazardly through it, and re-tying it high on the back of her head. "Okay. So Cibrian wasn't here to come after you. It really was a coincidence. Now, if Gabe got the contact's statement as an eyewitness, then he has that contact's name. I need that information. I need to talk to Gabe and I need to find out from Kaylie what her phone call was about and why she was yelling. If we can figure out who that man was, we might get a step closer to finding out what the gunman was lying in wait for Cibrian to pick up."
"Do you really think the sheriff will tell you that information?"
"No. Maybe it's time to call the others and let them know what our working theory is."
But just as Mel was unzipping her coat to reach in and grab her cell phone, they heard the front door open.
"Oh, crap," Mel breathed.
"What the—?" they heard from the main room. Then Lazslo was standing in the cell block doorway. "What the hell are you doing here, Mel?"
"I came to make sure you weren't mistreating him. Which," Mel said sternly as she picked her gloves and ski mask up off the floor, "you were. He was all alone here, no protection, not a single soul to give him food, water, nothing."
"And you think it's okay to break into a sheriff's office?" Lazslo asked, face very nearly turning purple. "You wanna sit in the jail cell across from him?"
"No," Mel said, voice solid and allowing for no arguments. "What I want is for you tell me why you're so sure Kyrano killed Dwayne Cibrian."
"You get the hell out of here, and I mean now, Mel."
"He hasn't had his phone call yet," Melody said, standing her ground as she finally got her cell phone out of the inner pocket of her coat. She backed toward Kyrano's cell and held the phone out to him. "You can at least give him that much."
"Only if I can listen. Prisoners aren't allowed to speak to anyone alone other than their attorney."
"Well, then," Mel said, snatching the phone back from Kyrano's outstretched hand. "Tell you what: I'll phone his attorney for him, and hand him the phone, and then we can leave him here alone to talk to him."
"Look, Mel..."
"Don't you 'look' me, Gabe. I know what his rights are as well as you do, and holding him here for over five hours without his phone call is enough for you to be brought up on charges."
"You wouldn't dare."
She raised an eyebrow at him as she hit one of the contacts in her phone's list, and put the phone to her ear. Kyrano watched with keen interest, wondering who Mel was actually calling...because surely it wasn't truly Abe Maddox.
"Where the hell is Carrington? Why the hell didn't he give him his phone call?" Lazslo asked.
"He went to check on his wife," Melody whispered. Off Lazslo's WTF look, she just shrugged, then into the phone, said, "Yes, this is Melody Fletcher, calling on behalf of Meor Kyrano," she said into the phone.
Kyrano kept his face placid, but there was only one person she could be talking to where she would use his given name, and he knew it.
"Yes, that's right. Your client's been held for over five hours now in the Cabot Cove sheriff's office, without his phone call and without having been given any food or water. In fact, he was left completely alone in this building during an ice storm." Mel listened intently, then nodded, even as Lazslo looked like he might grab the phone from her and throw it against the concrete block wall. "Oh, that's interesting, you've been trying to contact Sheriff Lazslo for the past four hours?"
Kyrano watched Lazslo's face twitch.
"Yes, that would be why you weren't getting an answer, sir." Melody listened for a moment. "Well, there's probably no need to file a suit right now, but I figured you might want to have a word with Mr. Kyrano. Once you're done, I'll give you to the sheriff."
Mel turned toward Kyrano, her back to Lazslo, and mouthed the word 'Jeff' at him as she handed over the phone. "Thank you," he said, taking it and retreating to the cot.
"Now," Mel said, marching toward where Lazslo still blocked the doorway. She stretched her hand out toward the main part of the office. "He needs privacy with his lawyer."
"You," Kyrano heard Lazslo say as the two of them exited, "are the most frustrating, stubborn woman I have ever met."
"That," she replied, "is only because you never met my Aunt Jess."
When the door closed behind them, Kyrano turned his attention to the phone. "Jeff?" he said quietly.
"Was she just blowing smoke for someone's benefit or was what she said true?" Jeff asked.
"I'm afraid what she said was true. But I'm fine, Jeff."
"Fine, my ass. You're being held in a jail cell and not being properly looked after. They've closed down half the airports on the East Coast, and all the flights into major airports have been canceled. I can't get Maddox or Drake there, never mind us, until after that storm has passed."
"Don't worry. Everything will be okay."
"How can you be so blasé? This is a murder charge we're talking about. I'm thinking about sending Alan in One."
"Please don't. With the size of the storm that's hitting the East Coast, your equipment may be required to save lives." He smiled fondly as Jeff harrumphed his displeasure. "Besides, I am innocent. With you and Melody on my side, that will be proven."
"I sure hope so, Kyrano. I feel completely helpless."
"You are not," he said softly. "Mel and I have a theory about what happened last night. I'll tell you, and perhaps you may find a way forward from what I say."
"All right," Jeff said, "John, Brains, Scott and Tin-Tin are here."
"Oh, Father," Tin-Tin said, her voice strong but laced with fear.
"My daughter," he breathed, closing his eyes and cherishing the moment. "Okay, everyone, here is what we've determined so far."
Chapter Six
Melody
"Gabe, I want some answers and I want them now."
"You'll get nothing of the sort. You are a civilian, period. End of story."
Mel suddenly became aware of the fact that they weren't alone. She looked across the room and saw an elderly man seated at Gabe's desk. "What's your father doing here?"
"Power went out at his place. Since I had to come to the office to check on my prisoner, I figured I'd bring him here. We've got a backup generator. It's probably the safest, warmest place he can be."
Melody shook her head. "How you can be so caring about some people and yet so blatantly disregard the needs of others is beyond me."
"It is the needs of others I'm considering, Mel! For crying out loud, you bring a stranger to town and inside a week a man he used to work with, a man whose twin brother was killed by something this guy helped create is murdered! What the hell am I supposed to think? I have a town full of people expecting me to not let a murderer go running around!"
"And what must you think of me, that I would bring someone to this town who's capable of killing?"
"Everyone's capable of killing, Mel. You, me. Your friend."
She narrowed her eyes. "Why do you say it like that?"
"Oh, come on. I saw you at the restaurant together. Hell, everyone's seen you two all over town touching, kissing and hugging in ways that are much more than friendly."
"And what business is that of yours?"
"It's my business because your judgment about his guilt is clouded by the fact that you're sleeping with him! Who the hell is he, Mel? Why did you bring him here?"
"He's someone I grew very close to when I was away," Mel said, fighting to keep her voice even. "And whether or not I'm sleeping with him has nothing to do with my opinion about his innocence." His eyes flashed and she took a step closer to him, carefully watching his face. "Does the fact that you believe I'm sleeping with him have something to do with why you think he's not innocent?"
"Oh, come on," Lazslo said, taking his hat off and slamming it down on the reception counter. "I am an officer of the law. Whether or not someone I've known for over fifteen years has bad judgment in men isn't something personal. It's something that makes me have to take every word you say about him with a grain of salt."
"Listen to me, Gabe. What happened in the park last night had nothing to do with Kyrano. Whoever the gunman was who shot Cibrian is still on the loose. You've got the wrong man locked up. Don't you care that a killer's running around here and you're doing nothing to find him?"
Immovable as a mountain, was how Gabe looked to her right now. She shook her head, deciding she had to force his hand.
"I know you have an eyewitness who told you they saw Kyrano shoot Cibrian, then drop the gun behind the statue."
"Who told you that?"
"I also know that there's no way there was any gunshot residue on Kyrano's gloves, because I stood right there and watched him fall face-first into the snow, five feet behind Cibrian! While Cibrian was being shot, Kyrano was flat-out on the ground!"
"So you say."
She glared at him. "Who is this eyewitness? Why are you so willing to believe him and not me? I've known you, as you said, for over fifteen years, Gabe! Whose word are you taking over mine?"
"He's a goddamn undercover agent, all right?" Gabe blurted out, realized what he'd done, clapped his hand over his mouth, and then pounded his fist on the reception counter. "Shit."
"Undercover agent? Oh, my God, of course! That explains why he lied!"
"Are you accusing an FBI agent of lying to me about what he saw?"
Melody's mind raced. This fit her and Kyrano's theory perfectly. If the eyewitness, the contact Cibrian was supposed to meet, was an undercover FBI agent, that man would've known Kyrano was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And in order to keep him safe from the gunman, of course he would've lied to the sheriff so he'd lock Kyrano up! To keep him safe.
"Yes, that's it!" Mel crowed, turning and throwing open the cell block door.
"Hey, get—what the...Mel!"
She ran to Kyrano's cell, his voice stopping mid-sentence as he took her in. "What is it?" he asked.
Holding out her hand, she wiggled her fingers. He rose, crossed his cell and handed her the phone, which she put to her ear. "Jeff, it's Mel. Listen, this is way bigger than we thought."
"Jeff?" Lazslo repeated. "Wait, you said he worked for...is that Jeff Tracy?"
Melody ignored him. "The eyewitness who identified Kyrano as the shooter...he's an undercover FBI agent!"
"Which fits the theory you and Kyrano came up with about why he lied."
"Exactly!"
"Look, I don't care if you two are best friends with the present of the United States! You are out of line, Mel! I'm about two seconds away from arresting you!"
She turned and glared at him.
"Alan on the satellite is patching Abe Maddox through on this line right now. Hand the phone to Sheriff Lazslo."
And so she did.
She could pretty much tell exactly where the conversation was headed just from listening to Gabe's end of it. When Gabe outright refused to release Kyrano, saying he'd gotten his phone call in spades by this point considering it was only supposed to have been ten minutes long, and citing the fact that they were in the midst of a deadly storm as his own get out of jail free card.
In the end, by the time Gabe hung up, he was looking none too happy.
"You know," he said, turning from where he was seated at Deputy Carrington's desk, "I'm real glad you wound up with someone who's got as much clout behind him as Tracy." He rose to his feet and moved to check on his father, who'd fallen asleep in his chair. "But just because this Kyrano guy's rich doesn't mean he's above the law. And you can't sit here and tell me an undercover FBI agent lied to me."
"Did you question Kaylie Mackenzie?"
"Kaylie? Why the hell would I question her?"
"Have you ever worked a murder case, Gabe?"
"Twice, early on in my career in Portland."
"Well, then you've got some learning to do." He began to sputter, but she held up her hand. "I told you when you were first questioning us right after the murder, that I had bought something from the hardware store, and that Kaylie was on shift then."
"So?"
"The murder happened in the park behind the store, Gabe! That's where Kyrano was first knocked down; where the bag containing what I'd bought from Kaylie was stolen from him by Dwayne Cibrian!"
"That's a coincidence. Kaylie's worked at the hardware store for six years, and she wasn't anywhere near the park where your Kyrano and Cibrian were."
"No, but she was yelling over the roof for them to stop."
He narrowed his eyes. "You never told me that."
"You never gave me a chance! Kyrano was freezing to death; you refused to allow him to change clothes before you questioned him! I was worried about him; he's not used to this kind of cold, I didn't want him getting sick!"
"So you left out important information involving a member of this community in favor of getting your boyfriend home to bed."
Mel closed her eyes and shook her head. Boyfriend? God, Kyrano was...he was so much more than a mere boyfriend. In ways she couldn't ever hope to explain to anyone outside the Tracy family.
"What the hell is your problem with him?"
"He's different, all right?"
"Different?" she asked, jaw dropping in disbelief. "What do you mean by that? What, because he's not white? Are you actually a bigot?"
"Jesus, Mel!"
"Well then tell me what the hell you mean by 'different'!"
"He just..." Gabe shook his head and looked away. "I'm not witch hunting him, okay?"
She took a deep breath, pulled her ponytail out of its elastic again and ran her hands through her hair. "Look, things were chaotic last night. I did tell you that Kaylie about ran me over barreling out of her store yelling, right after she got a phone call. You just never took it seriously enough to even ask her if she'd seen anything. If she knows anything."
"All right," Gabe said, putting his hands up in a gesture of defeat. "All right, all right. I won't have it be said that this sheriff of Cabot Cove is as thick-headed as Tupper or Metzger were. I don't need a damn Fletcher to solve my cases."
Mel half-grinned, shaking her head. "I know Kyrano's a stranger to you. And yes, he is different. But that difference is precisely how I know he couldn't have killed Cibrian. No matter what, he isn't capable of killing," she finished, mind firmly on what Tin-Tin had told her. But this was different, she knew it was.
"Well, right now," Gabe said, pulling Mel from her thoughts, "we're in the middle of one bitch of an ice storm, and it's only going to get worse." He looked at where his elderly father was snoring softly in his chair. "What say we get over to Hill House and grab enough food for the four of us? Then we can talk about what happened to Dwayne Cibrian."
"How'd you manage to get here to begin with? The ice was already pretty thick when I was headed here from home."
"Put chains on my wheels."
"Isn't that illegal?" she asked.
He cocked his head at her. "So's breaking into a sheriff's station."
"Touché," she grinned. "Hey, listen, do you have Kyrano's personal effects?"
He rolled his eyes.
"No, no, it's just...he was holding all my cash in his coat. I want to grab it before we head out."
"Woman, you will be the death of me," Gabe groused as he moved to a locker in the back corner of the room. He unlocked it, reached in and pulled out a manila envelope. "Here."
"Thanks," Mel grinned. She turned to dump the folder out on the desk, and saw what had to be several hundred dollars in a money clip. She made great show of picking it up and showing it to him, and then turned to begin putting the rest of the items back in the envelope.
One of which was Kyrano's gold Rolex. She turned just enough to note that Gabe was grabbing a blanket from one of the lockers, and quickly pocketed the watch. Then she offered him the envelope back. He took it, returned it to the evidence locker, and locked it.
"I'm just going to tell Kyrano we'll be back soon," she said.
"No funny business."
She grinned cheekily and winked at him. He rolled his eyes as she opened the door to the cell block and pulled it closed behind her.
"What's happening?" Kyrano asked. "I heard a lot of yelling."
"I've pretty much convinced Gabe to take a second look at Cibrian's murder," she said, pulling her backpack off as she spoke. "I brought your boots and some warm clothes, and a coat that belonged to my dad. Gabe's got your coat as part of your belongings, but I think Dad's will fit you." She pulled everything she'd mentioned out of the backpack, handing each item through the bars one by one. "Just put them on, Meor, in case the power goes out. You can't sit here in your pajamas, and that little blanket won't help you for very long in this cold."
"Thank you," he said, taking each item as it came. "Where are you going?"
"Gabe and I are going to Hill House to get us all some food. I'm going to try to convince him to go by Kaylie's place first, though, so we can ask her some questions. Something tells me she's involved in this whole thing."
He nodded. "And how are you getting around?"
"Gabe's got chains on his tires," she replied, and then sing-songed, "Oh, Meor."
"Hm?" He turned and looked up from where he'd been placing the clothes she'd given him on the cot.
"I also managed to snag this." She reached into her left coat pocket and pulled out his watch.
"You know, much of what you do borders on illegal."
She grinned. "You should see me when I'm doing research for one of my books."
He laughed as he took the proffered watch. "Perhaps it's better that I don't know." He slipped the watch onto his wrist, then reached out to her.
She took his hands in hers.
"Thank you for all you're doing," he whispered.
Mel's heart swelled. She leaned forward and kissed him through the bars. "I'll have you sprung in no time," she said. "I promise. Just sit tight, okay? We'll be back before you know it."
He nodded and with one last look his way, Melody left the cell block.
Chapter Seven
Kyrano
The first thing Kyrano did was call Jeff via the wrist communicator.
"How'd you manage to get your hands on that?"
Kyrano smiled, "Mel has her ways."
"I'm beginning to see that. Maddox told Lazslo he had to release you immediately because they hadn't given you due process, but he argued the point, so Maddox was going to file an injunction. Problem is, the courthouse he'd have to file it with is closed due to weather."
"I'm safer here, Jeff."
"Because of what you and Mel now think is going on. She said this so-called eyewitness is an FBI agent?"
Kyrano nodded. "I'm assuming the sheriff told her. They've gone to get us all some food."
"How the hell are they traveling? Last reports here say there's over four inches of ice covering your region and it just keeps coming."
"The sheriff has chains on his tires."
Jeff nodded, turned away from his watch for a moment, and then leaned in close. "Kyrano, how are you holding up? I mean, really?"
He half-shrugged. "Mel brought me warm clothes and boots in case the power goes ou—" As if in cue, the lights in the station blinked off. "It would appear that eventuality has come to pass."
"You won't be warm enough."
"Jeff, stop worrying. You are worse than your mother!"
He scowled and harrumphed. Kyrano couldn't help but smile at the way his friend showed concern.
"There is nothing you can do for me. I trust that Mel will clear me; she's already told me the sheriff is going to re-look at the incident. Upon their return, I have a feeling things will change dramatically."
"I don't like not being able to take care of my own," Jeff growled.
"Your own?" Kyrano repeated, grinning at his friend. "I am honored."
"Oh, shut up."
He laughed. But the laugh was quickly quelled when an ominous feeling overcame him. His head snapped up. He jumped off the cot and raced to the bars of his cell, grabbing them and looking in the direction of the cell block door.
"What's going on? You hear something?"
"Not exactly," Kyrano replied in hushed tones. "It's more a…feeling."
"About?"
Kyrano shook his head, knowing full well that at this very moment, Jeff could only see the left wall of his cell. Something like an electrostatic shock poured into Kyrano from the crown of his head, filling him with a vibration that made his heart skip several beats.
"Kyrano, talk to me!"
He moved the watch so Jeff's face was visible. "I believe I am in danger," he whispered.
The front door was being kicked in. One…two…three kicks and then a loud crack that said the intruder had succeeded. Every hair on his head stood on end. Then the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Kyrano hopped back from the front edge of his cell as Jeff asked, "Was that—?"
Kyrano nodded and placed his finger over his lips. The next sounds that came to him were like something metal was being kicked, punched, manhandled. And then the unmistakable feeling that someone was dying.
But who'd been shot? Kyrano knew both Mel and the sheriff weren't there. Had someone else entered with the shooter?
"I must see if all is well," Kyrano whispered into the watch face. "Call Mel's phone. Tell her a shot was fired in the office."
"Scott! Get on to Mel, now!" Jeff yelled. To Kyrano, he continued, "Be careful, for God's sake."
Nodding, Kyrano moved to his cell door, placing his hands over the lock…one on the inside and one on the outside. He closed his eyes and envisioned the interior of the lock, then projected from his mind to his heart, and his heart through his arms to his hands. He heard the clank of the lock releasing, opened his eyes and pushed the cell door wide open.
"How the hell?" Jeff breathed.
Wearing nothing but socks, his pajamas and his Rolex, Kyrano crept to the cell block door and peeked through the small, square window. What he saw made his heart beat faster. An elderly man was seated at one of the desks opposite the room from him, but there was blood on his upper left chest, and he was slumped unconscious in the chair.
Just behind him, a man was rifling through one of four tall metal lockers. Kyrano could tell by the way the door was bent that it'd been forced open. But what made his mouth go dry was that he recognized the shape of the man doing the rifling. He would've bet his life this was the same gunman who'd killed Dwayne Cibrian. The elderly man was dying; Kyrano could feel his life force ebbing slowly into the ether. And he had a feeling that whatever the gunman was looking for, if he didn't find it, he'd soon be headed Kyrano's way.
Quickly, Kyrano placed his hands over the cell block door lock. Once again he closed his eyes and felt the buildup of energy pulling into his body. From his mind he pushed it to his heart. From his heart he forced it through his arms into his hands. With nothing more than a soft snick, the door was unlocked. He opened his eyes and peered out the window. The gunman's weapon was visible in his right jacket pocket. He turned to look at the elderly man, and then his eyes moved across the way to the very window Kyrano was looking through. Shrinking back against the small bit of wall between his cell and the door, Kyrano waited silently. Thankfully, Jeff, too, remained silent.
He felt the gunman draw nearer, wholly tuned in on his energy signature now. He waited until he was certain the man's hand on was on the cell block door, a gentle rattling of the handle giving away the killer's intentions. Then another sound, this one from outside. It was so muffled Kyrano couldn't be certain what it had been, but clearly it got the gunman's attention as the door handle rattled again when he released it.
"Damn," he heard the man curse, and then quick footfalls retreating.
Kyrano hesitated for only a couple of seconds, then cautiously opened the cell block door. As he'd suspected, the gunman was nowhere to be seen…but the elderly man's life was nearly gone. Racing toward the opposite side of the room, Kyrano sailed over the low wall in one smooth move, and was by the man's side in an instant. He felt for a pulse, but found it so weak it was barely there.
There was only one thing he could do to save this man's life, and he knew there'd be no way for him to explain it to Lazslo. Quickly he lifted the thin man into his arms, leapt over the low wall, and laid him on the long black runner carpet on the floor in front of the reception desk. Closing his eyes, he placed his hands palm-down toward the man's chest, the tips of his index fingers touching and the tips of his thumbs touching, so that between his two hands was left the shape of a triangle. He concentrated on feeling the man's heartbeat, and visualized the bullet that must surely be lodged in his chest.
Within seconds he'd located the bullet. Slowly he positioned the triangle over the part of his chest where that bullet was, and began to lift upward. In his mind he was pulling the bullet out, and he visualized the muscle, tissue, vessels and arteries healing as the bullet inched nearer and nearer to the surface of the man's skin.
Not one minute after he'd begun his work, the bullet shot out of the man's chest, slapping into Kyrano's right palm and then clattering to the floor. He opened his eyes and looked down to find the white-haired man's dark brown eyes boring into his own. Moving his hands over the entire area of the man's body where he'd been shot, Kyrano knew that while there was still damage that needed to heal, the man would now live.
He relaxed his posture, still kneeling next to the man as gnarled hands grasped Kyrano's firmly. "You saved my life," he croaked.
Kyrano pulled one hand away and placed it on the man's forehead. "You will be all right. Help is coming."
"How did you do that?" the man asked.
But Kyrano merely smiled at him, leaned down and kissed his forehead. "You're protected for your journey," he whispered as the sound of ice being forcefully crunched reached his ears. Gently extracting his hand from the old man's, he got to his feet and moved to the cell block door.
"Dad!" he heard a voice yell from outside, then two vehicle doors slammed closed.
Quickly he yanked open the cell block door, ran inside to his own cell and closed that door. As he worked to re-lock his cell, the cell block door swung slowly closed. A clank told Kyrano his cell was once again locked.
"What did you just do?" came from his watch.
But Kyrano couldn't risk being seen with the watch, or he'd give away the fact that Mel had taken it from his personal effects. So he whispered, "Later," to Jeff, deactivated the line and shoved the watch under the pile of clothes on his cot.
Melody
"Dad!" Lazslo cried out, tearing into the office through the busted-in front door and sinking to his feet by his father's side. "What the…" He looked down and saw a bullet lying on the floor between his father and the reception desk. He noted all the blood on his dad's shirt and sweater, and quickly pulled them away. Mel reached them just in time to witness exactly what was there in the elder Mr. Lazslo's skin: a very well-healed bullet wound. "How is this possible?" Lazslo whispered in disbelief.
"He saved me, son," Travis Lazslo said, a broad grin on his face.
"Who?"
"The man all in black. Gold dragon on his breast pocket," Travis replied.
Mel's eyes widened as they moved to the cell block door.
"That's impossible, Dad. He's a prisoner locked in his cell. You have to have been seeing things."
"I'm old, but I don't have dementia yet," Travis protested. "I was awake enough to tell you he had smartly cut salt-and-pepper hair and was Asian of some sort, but darker skinned that you'd expect. His eyes…they were brown. Soft and kind. And he felt…oh, Gabriel, he felt like Heaven must feel. He pulled the bullet from me with nothing…nothing but his hands!"
Mel swallowed hard, got to her feet and tried the cell block door…it was unlocked. Gabe was hot on her heels as she moved to stand in front of Kyrano's cell.
He was seated on the cot, and looked up as the two of them entered. Mel knew…she knew from the look in his eyes, that he had indeed gotten out of the cell and cell block. That he'd gone into the main office and saved Travis's life.
Gabe pulled on the cell door, but it was locked tightly. It didn't even rattle when he tried shaking it. His eyes moved to Kyrano's clothing, then up to his face and finally looked at his hair before returning to meet his gaze. "How did you get out of here?" he asked, voice dripping with a mixture of disbelief and awe. "Did whoever shot my father let you out?"
"Ah, he's your father," Kyrano stated. "I thought I noticed a resemblance."
"Who shot him?" Mel asked, both to actually get the answer, and to divert Gabe's attention from Kyrano's display of his rather unique abilities.
Kyrano looked directly at her. "I'm quite certain it was the same man who killed Dwayne," he replied. "I heard the shot, and then the man went through several of your cabinets and lockers."
"And let you out," Gabe said.
Meeting his gaze calmly, Kyrano said nothing.
"My father swears you saved his life," the sheriff breathed. "But I don't know how you could've gotten out of your cell unless someone broke you out, and I sure as hell don't know how you could've gotten a bullet out of my father's chest without a single medical instrument."
Rising to his feet, Kyrano approached the sheriff. "He requires hospitalization," he said softly. "I believe he will live, but that is the best place for him."
Lazslo stared at him for long moments, then turned to look down at Mel. She smiled and gently pushed him toward the office. "Go," she said, "take him to the hospital."
"What if the man who shot my father is Kyrano's accomplice?" Gabe asked…although Mel noted there was no heat behind the words. In fact, it was the most half-hearted argument she'd ever heard the man make.
"He's not, Gabe. Please, your father needs the care of a doctor now," Mel urged. "Go."
"But if you can get out," Gabe asked, turning his attention back to Kyrano, "then why didn't you run?"
"I have no reason to run," Kyrano replied, splaying his hands before him as though it were the simplest answer in the world. "I am innocent."
"Go, Gabe, go!" Mel said, pushing the man toward the cell block door. As the sheriff worried about getting his father warmly bundled and out to his SUV squad car, Mel rushed back into the cell block. "You unlocked both these doors, and used your abilities to pull the bullet out of Travis's chest," she said, moving forward and grasping the cell bars tightly. She shook her head as though even she didn't quite believe it. "Didn't you."
He nodded once. Mel let a breath whoosh out of her lungs, turned and leaned her back against the cell bars. "How the hell do you do those things?" She turned back to face him. "Meor, you could be out of here helping me try to find out who the gunman is, and why he thinks you're the contact! Why are you staying here when you don't have to?"
"But I do have to," he countered, moving to her and taking her hands in his. "An innocent man does not break out of prison," he explained. "Besides, there's your reputation to think of."
"My reputation? I don't get it."
"How would it look if the man you brought into the midst of this small, quiet town, was not only arrested for murder, but then escaped from custody and went on the run? When my innocence of the murder is proven, I will still have committed a felony crime." He shook his head, a small smile gracing his features. "It's better for both you and me that I remain here."
"Except when someone's life is in danger," she clarified.
He nodded, his smile widening.
"Okay, look…you're sure the man who shot Travis was the same man who killed Cibrian?"
"As certain as I am that you are standing here before me. It was in the way he moved; in the shape of him."
She nodded, pulled away, and paced the cell block hall. "I got Gabe to take us to Kaylie's so we could question her," she revealed. "That's where we were when Scott called and told me a shot had been fired here." Stopping in front of him, she continued, "But Kyrano, apparently what Gabe said about the eyewitness being an undercover FBI agent is true. Because Kaylie's husband David, whom I'd never met before…Kyrano, he's the eyewitness. And…he was our cab driver from Bangor."
Eyes widening, Kyrano asked, "Are you sure?"
"One hundred percent. In fact, he was the one who opened the door. The last name on the card he gave us was fake, but his first name is David, he is an undercover FBI agent who masquerades as a cab driver for anyone he can catch going to or from Cabot Cove, and not only that, but Kaylie isn't actually his wife."
"Let me guess," Kyrano concluded, "she's his partner."
"Bingo," Mel said, her index finger ticking off some invisible score sheet in the air. "They first came to town six years ago. I remembered Kaylie's first days here clearly, but she said her husband worked out of Bangor and so wouldn't be around much. We never gave it a lot of thought. She got a job at the Bennett family's hardware store and became a member of the community pretty quickly."
"But why were they watching Cabot Cove so closely?" Kyrano asked.
"We didn't get a chance to find out. Scott called about the gunshot just as Gabe asked them that very question, and we took off to get back here as fast as possible. It's hell out there; there's at least five inches of ice coating everything. Several large tree limbs have already fallen; the one road out of Cabot Cove is completely blocked just inside town. Gabe's going to have a helluva time moving it to get Travis to the hospital."
"Did David tell you why he was meeting Dwayne?"
Mel nodded. "It looks like your friend Cibrian had a good reason for canceling his lawsuits against you and Jeff for his brother Dwight's death."
Kyrano cocked his head at her.
"When Dwight died, Dwayne went on a rampage…I don't mean killing or beating anyone up, I mean a rampage of drugs and alcohol."
"He was never into those things," Kyrano said, a frown creasing his brow.
"Well, something in him snapped and he wound up owing a shitload of money to one of the largest drug cartels operating in the US," she explained, backing her way to the cell opposite his and leaning against the bars. "The only way he could pay them back what he owed, was by helping them smuggle the raw materials in from Nova Scotia, which he was then working to turn into a more addictive form of street drug than anything out there today."
"Nova Scotia," Kyrano said. "That's southeast of Maine, beneath New Brunswick."
"Exactly," Mel nodded. "They'd managed to set it up so they could get a boat from St. Mary's Bay on the northwest coast of Nova Scotia, across the Gulf of Maine and into the sheltered coves of Cabot Cove. Winter was trickier because of the cold and the lack of people around to blend into. But the cartel forced Cibrian to take deliveries and work at perfecting what they were calling 'Kismet.' All to repay what he owed them."
"So his presence here truly was nothing more than a coincidence?" Kyrano asked, disbelief dripping from his voice.
"No," she said, shaking her head as she approached him again. "I don't think so at all. I think in the grand scheme of things, you were right here when he was right here, for a reason."
"That gunman would've killed him anyway," Kyrano said, "but his murder would have gone unsolved."
"That's what I think," Mel agreed, "and all because David and Kaylie wouldn't have been able to break cover to tell the sheriff the truth. David did lie about seeing you with the gun, specifically to have you kept safe here in jail."
Kyrano barked out a laugh. "Somehow I don't believe myself to be as safe here as he thought I would be."
"Unfortunately, that's true enough," Mel said with a nod. "Meor, tell me about the gunman you saw here through the window. Was he wearing crampons like mine?" she asked, lifting a foot to indicate the metal spikes strapped to her snow boots.
Kyrano shook his head. "I don't know how he got here, whether by vehicle or on foot. But I didn't notice the sound crampons make on the concrete floor when he was moving around. Dark hair, dark eyes, and his face and hands looked tanned."
"Like he was a beach bum?" she queried.
"No, more a nationality than a tan."
"Latino?"
"Perhaps."
"Meor, the drug cartel that Dwayne Cibrian got sucked into is Colombian, so the gunman could very well be a member of their gang."
"Sent to kill Cibrian?"
"I think so, and so does David. In fact, he was supposed to have that meeting with Cibrian last night in the park to discuss the terms of him turning federal witness against Rodríguez and his top five men. Cibrian was turning over some still photos he'd taken of the most recent shipment, as well as the lab they set him up in."
"Yet nothing has been mentioned of film or photos being found on Dwayne's person."
"No," Mel said, shaking her head. "And I'd say since our shooter broke in here today, he was assuming you had the photos he was ordered to get off Cibrian. It was probably why he broke into the locker where your personal effects are."
"And he shot Travis to eliminate a witness," Kyrano said.
"I'm afraid so."
"But if Dwayne didn't have the photos on him, and I don't have them, then who does?"
"Wait, wait, wait…" Mel said, then ran from the cell block to the other side of the office. She saw Kyrano's winter coat hanging in one of the three lockers the gunman had pried open. Grabbing it, she ran back to stand in front of Kyrano's cell. "It has to be here," she mumbled, shoving her hand into every pocket she could find. "It has to be!"
"What does?" Kyrano asked, hands once more grabbing the bars of his cell.
Mel felt her fingertips touch it and crowed, "I knew it!" as she pulled it out of the right in-seam pocket on the outside of Kyrano's insulated coat. "Look," she breathed, dropping his coat to the floor and bringing the small square she held between her right thumb and forefinger front and center.
"That's for digital photos," Kyrano said. "A memory card."
"That's exactly what it is," Mel said. "Oh, my God, now it all makes sense!"
"What makes sense?"
"Don't you see? Dwayne must have known a member of the Rodríguez cartel was there to catch him meeting with David. In his effort to rid himself of the evidence he was going to hand over to the FBI, to make sure Rodríguez never got his hands on the photos, he knocked you down, slid this memory card into the pocket of your coat, then snatched the hardware store bag to make it seem like it was nothing more than robbery."
"And when the gunman didn't find anything in the bag, he assumed that meant I had it."
"Which you did," Mel said with a nod at the memory card. "Only you didn't know it. With these photos, David said Cibrian told him they'd be able to take down the entire top level of that cartel. It was in Rodríguez's best interests to get rid of this, no matter how many bodies it took to do it."
"And the phone call Kaylie received while you were in the hardware store?"
"She told us one of their handlers had just discovered that a Rodríguez heavy had flown to Portland under an assumed name. Now I get why she was yelling. She ran outside to try and stop David and Dwayne from going through with the meet, knowing there had to be a shooter out there to take one or both of them out."
Kyrano nodded. "But by that time, Cibrian had already set things into motion by pushing me down and putting the memory card into my pocket."
"That's it exactly. The only thing I don't know, was how they got the serial number on the gun he used to kill Cibrian, to show registered to you."
Kyrano frowned. "Registered to me?"
Mel nodded. "John found that in the case file, too. Jeff said you didn't own a gun."
Kyrano shook his head. "I don't."
Melody shrugged. "I suppose we can figure that out later…it probably got doctored somewhere between the lab and here, probably by one of the Rodríguez's men."
"I suppose it's possible."
Mel nodded once. "I think the only problem we have now, is finding that gunman before he comes back to try to get his hands on these photos."
"I think you'd better leave that to the sheriff."
"Are you kidding?" she asked, stuffing the memory card into an inside coat pocket. "Meor, Lazslo could be at the hospital with his father for hours. The power's gone out here; the backup generator hasn't even kicked in. You and I don't have any way of defending ourselves if that man returns. In fact, he could be outside right now!"
"Yes," came a menacing voice from the reception area, "he could."
Mel's eyes met Kyrano's.
"Now, if you would be so kind," the gunman said as Mel turned to look at him, "I'll take those photos now." His gun was pointed directly at her face.
Chapter Eight
Kyrano
He had to do something. The question was what.
At that very moment, where he saw nothing but a gun pointed at Melody's head, the photos Dwayne Cibrian had died trying to deliver to the FBI meant nothing to him. Hand over the memory card, he silently projected, wondering if Mel would actually be able to hear him through the strange connection they shared.
But she didn't so much as flinch, as she stood there staring at the gunman who, now that Kyrano could better see him, most definitely looked like he could be Colombian. Slowly Kyrano brought his hands down so that both rested in front of the lock to his cell. He closed his eyes, knowing he had to get out, but also fully aware that the unlocking of the door would be audible. He could only pray the Colombian didn't have an itchy trigger finger.
"Who are you?" Mel asked, her voice as steady as could be.
"No es importante," the man replied.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I said, it's not important," the man ground out. "What is important, is that you will give me the photos now."
"What photos? What are you talking about?"
"Don't play games with me," he growled, slowly advancing until he was blocking the doorway. "I know one of the two of you must have them. You were the only others in the park that night."
Kyrano felt the energy build within him once more, and as he projected it down through his arms to his hands, he also allowed a bit of it to release directly from his heart…thrusting it toward Mel as strongly as he could.
Her reaction, when it came, could not have been better timed. Just as the cell door lock clanked, Melody cried out and fell to her knees, clutching both hands over her heart. She fisted her coat as the menacing man barked, "What is this? What's wrong with you?"
Before Kyrano could move, the gunman reached out and grabbed Mel by the arm. He hauled her to her feet, then using one hand, hiked her over his shoulder. Quickly, Kyrano shoved the cell door open and moved to the center of the small hallway.
"Stay back," the gunman said, weapon now trained at Kyrano's head. "I'll let her live as soon as I find the memory card."
Swallowing hard, Kyrano moved a step closer. "She gave it to me," he stated evenly.
The Colombian narrowed his eyes. "Then produce it!"
He pointed toward the cot in his cell. "It's in there, among my clothing."
"Then get it."
Kyrano didn't move.
"Now, or I'm putting a bullet in her pretty little ass," the man spat, shoving the gun hard against Mel's rear end.
Kyrano turned to move back into the cell, knowing he had to do something to distract the man. But Mel had other ideas. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw her raise her elbow and bring it down hard on the back of the gunman's neck. The man cried out as he simultaneously dropped her and fired his weapon.
He felt the bullet hit, a searing and unimaginable pain through his right shoulder. Crying out, Kyrano staggered against the bars even as the gunman ripped Mel's coat right off her body, turned and ran out the still-busted front door of the office.
"Meor!" she cried, scrambling over to where he'd dropped to his knees. His right hand held tightly to one of the bars as his left hand pressed against the bullet wound. "Oh, my God," she breathed when she saw blood leak through his fingers.
"I'll be all right," he panted, willing his mind to overcome the pain.
"I've got to go after him," Mel said. "I can't let him get away."
"No!" Kyrano barked, bloodied hand reaching out to grasp her arm. "It's too dangerous."
"Meor, he killed Cibrian, he shot you. He could very well be on his way to kill Kaylie and David. And he's got the pictures!"
"Catching him is not worth your life, cinta saya."
Mel looked toward the open office door, then back at Kyrano. She darted into his cell, grabbed the sweater and long underwear top she'd brought him, and shoved them all balled up against his wound. "Hold that tightly. Stay there. I'll call Gabe."
As she sprinted into the office, Kyrano breathed through the burning pain, fully expecting to hear Mel's voice wafting in as she made that call.
But he didn't hear her voice at all. In fact, there was nothing but silence.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he knew what that meant and it made his heart sink. "No," he whispered. "Mel, no."
It took everything he had to crawl back into his cell and find his watch among the few items of clothing Mel had left on the cot. He whispered, "Jeff," and within seconds the watch face lit up with his friend's countenance.
"My God, what happened?"
"The man…shot me…he ran…Jeff, she's gone after him. You must…" Feeling so light-headed that he knew he had precious few moments left before he lost consciousness, Kyrano ignored Jeff's questions about his health, about where Mel was, and said, "Please…I love her."
Then he knew only darkness.
Melody
She could hear her cell phone ringing, but couldn't take the time to stop and answer it. She'd noted as she'd hung upside-down along the gunman's back, that not only was he not wearing any type of winter gear whatsoever, but that his shoes had nothing on them to keep him from slipping on the ice out here. So she knew he couldn't have gotten very far; there'd been no sound of a vehicle engine, nothing to indicate he had any way to escape but on foot.
Mel noted, as ice pelted her now coatless and hatless body, that it seemed to have gotten warmer, to the point where her crampon-clad boots were actually sinking through the crust of ice with every step she took.
Which was why, less than a minute after exiting the sheriff's station, she found the gunman's footprints. "Gotcha," she whispered, noting that they led across the street and down the bluff to the steep cliffs opposite the station. She took off at a dead run, unable to see the gunman, but knowing he had to be up ahead of her somewhere.
The cold was getting to her quickly; ice pellets melting from her body heat soaked her sweater, shirt, pants and hair. But she was resolved to catch this killer, not only because a man like that should be behind bars, but to give her the final proof she needed to clear Meor of Cibrian's murder once and for all.
She couldn't be sure how long she'd been running but it seemed like at least fifteen or twenty minutes by the time the footprints actually left the side of the road. She peered over the edge of the slippery bluff, noting that the gunman had lost his footing, creating a clear path in the snow and melting ice that told of him sliding at least ten feet before he managed to regain his footing.
All Mel could hear was the sound of her own labored breathing. Her chest was beginning to ache; her mind was filled with visions of Kyrano with blood seeping between his fingers. She went down over the side of the bluff that for a good hundred feet ran at an almost perfect forty-five degree angle down to a plateau which wasn't more than a hundred feet wide itself. Beyond that there lay only steep rock cliffs and the frigid, unforgiving Atlantic.
Her hands were nearly numb by the time she made it beyond the point at which the killer had gotten back to his feet. Just to her right, she saw something she knew would probably come in handy: a rock roughtly the size of a softball, unlodged from the ground by the killer's slide down. She grabbed it, looked at the footprints, and continued following them down to the ledge. When she reached it, however, she saw nothing but snow and ice in both directions. The killer had been wearing a maroon jacket and blue jeans; there was no way he could hide from her here surrounded by all the white!
Where had he gone?
Kyrano
He heard a familiar voice saying his name over and over and over. It was insistent. It was nonstop. It was "Jeff?"
"Kyrano!"
Moaning softly, Kyrano struggled to open his eyes as Jeff called out to him again. The watch was somewhere on the floor near his head. The pain in his shoulder was making little starbursts of light flash before his eyes even as he managed to open them.
"Mel," he whispered.
"Kyrano, stay with me, come on, stay awake."
He took in a long, deep breath; it felt like a knife was slicing through the entire right side of his chest as he used his left hand to grip the bottom of the metal cot and haul himself to an upright position. He exhaled that breath through clenched teeth, tears leaking from his eyes as he looked down to find most of his pajama top covered in sticky, drying blood.
"We called everyone in that area we can think of," Jeff advised, "but they can't get emergency vehicles on the road because of the ice storm."
Kyrano grunted in reply.
"Where's Mel?" Jeff asked.
"She…ohhhhhhggggggah…I told you before I lost consciousness, she went after the killer!"
"I couldn't understand most of what you were saying, Kyrano. Wait…she went after him? By herself?"
He nodded, turned and used the cot to push himself to his feet, crying out at the movement.
"Father!"
"My Tin-Tin," he whispered, dropping to sit on the edge of the cot. "Have you…Jeff, did you send…?"
"Yes. John's on his way. Scott's hopping mad, but he's in no condition to fly One yet and he knows it."
Nodding gratefully, Kyrano looked down at the clothing strewn next to him. There was a pair of long underwear pants hanging halfway to the floor. Slowly he grabbed them with his left hand and began to fashion a sling to keep his right arm against his body.
"Kyrano, don't move anymore, you'll lose too much blood!"
But it was taking all the concentration he had to do this one-handed, so he didn't answer for long minutes until at last the two legs of the long underwear were looped under one another over his right shoulder, with the crotch of them cradling his arm. He turned his head, grabbed one of the ankles with his teeth, and used his left hand to pull one direction as his mouth pulled the other.
It effectively tightened the sling so that he could relax his arm into the fabric. Then he used his teeth and left hand to pull the two pantlegs into a second knot over the first, to ensure it stayed in place. A bit more jostling and the sling was as secure as he figured it could get.
He bent down and grabbed his watch from the floor, managed to slide it onto his wrist and use the fingers of his right hand to close the clasp. Those tasks complete, he pushed himself to his feet.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't…Jeff, she's in danger."
"We're doing everything we can, Kyrano. John will be there in just under fifteen minutes."
As Kyrano opened his mouth to reply that fifteen minutes may just be too late, a feeling of complete dread overtook him. His heart began to race, pulsating at his throat like it may just leap from there at any moment. He felt a brief bout of dizziness and then pure, unadulterated fear.
"She's in danger," he breathed.
"You already said that."
"No," he shook his head. "I mean, I can feel it!"
Without a second thought, Kyrano turned, pulled on the corduroy pants Mel had brought him, and managed to slide her father's coat over one arm, pull it around, and zip it up over his bad arm and shoulder. He toed into his boots, leaving the straps that would tighten them against his shins undone.
"Kyrano, you can't go after her! You're in no condition!"
"I have to try," he said, voice shaking with the effort of putting one foot in front of the other. "Jeff, I can't let her die."
Amid the sounds of his best friend's protests, Kyrano felt resolve fill his being. No matter that he was in pain from having been shot. No matter that he was seeing two to three of everything he looked at. Mel was in trouble, and there was no one else to help.
Images slammed into his consciousness of her lifeless body splayed in the snow with arms spread like the wings of an angel and ice pelting her face, melting into tears dotting her cheeks. Her fiery red hair fanned out in all directions like a halo even as the snow beneath her turned red with her blood.
Adrenaline began coursing through Kyrano's veins as he shoved the horrible picture from his mind. He picked up speed, made it through the door and found just what he was looking for: two distinct sets of footprints sunken into the ice-encrusted snow. They led across the two-lane road. And so, Jeff's voice a backdrop giving him the last bit of strength he need to stay his course, Kyrano followed.
Chapter Nine
Melody
After scurrying first to her left and then backtracking to the right, Mel could see no footprints on the plateau that indicated the killer had run either way. Nearer where she'd tracked him down the bluff, there wasn't anywhere she could see that he could go. Granted, the temperature seemed to have fallen a little again, meaning it was possible he simply wasn't making footprints on what was down here. With the wind blowing as fiercely as it was, it would be colder here than on the higher ground anyway, which would also explain it.
And yet as logical as she was trying to be about where the man could've gone, that's how much the cold, slowly freezing her from the outside in, was numbing her ability to think at all. "Come on," she groused at herself, "he has to be here!"
A shot rang out. Mel instantly dropped to her belly. The bullet had missed her, if it'd even been intended for her. She chanced raising her head to look around and…there. Sonofabitch, a hand holding a gun was disappearing over the cliff not ten feet southwest of where she lay.
"How the hell did he miss me?" she whispered. But the answer became apparent when she tried getting her arms and legs to cooperate. She remembered the guy wasn't at all dressed for this weather. And while she was missing her heavy coat, gloves and ski mask, her legs and feet were still much more prepared than his, and even she was having trouble moving.
He was probably going hypothermic, she reasoned, sliding across the ice on her belly until she was close enough to peer over the edge of the cliff. There, four feet below her and crouched on an outcropping that couldn't be more than eight feet by six was the killer. He was shivering so violently she could see it even through the continually falling ice that threatened to freeze her eyelashes together.
"Melody!"
"Meor?" she breathed, turning to look toward the top of the bluff. She saw him, then, clad in her father's forest green-colored coat with one arm not in its sleeve, and wearing the pants and boots she'd brought him. "Meor!" she called out.
That turned out to be a mistake.
Suddenly an arm came around her neck from behind, squeezing so hard she struggled just to take in a single, ragged breath. She tried clawing at the maroon jacket sleeve, but her fingers were so numb she couldn't move them to save her life.
"Hey!" came another voice through the wind. It was Gabe!
"They take one more step, you get a bullet in your head," the killer whispered through chattering teeth.
"Well…how am I…supposed to tell them that…if you're choking me?" she squeaked, clawing at his arm.
He loosened his grip just a bit. "Tell them."
"Don't!" she yelled up to where Gabe was now standing right next to Kyrano. "Stay there!" She took a few deep breaths, then asked, "And where the hell are you going to go from here?"
"With you as my hostage," he spat, "anywhere I wish."
"Don't count on it," Melody said, watching as Kyrano began to move ever-so-slowly toward the edge of the bluff. "My boyfriend's a fucking ninja."
Kyrano
There was little time. Even from this distance, Kyrano could read the desperation in the killer's posture. Yet he felt no fear coming from Melody, and wondered how it was that she could be so calm.
Because you're here, his mind supplied.
But what could he do? The sheriff was standing there barking all sorts of questions to him about what was going on, what had happened to him, what he was doing out of jail. But Kyrano simply couldn't concentrate on both Mel and Lazslo. So he focused all his attention, all his energy, every bit of his concentration, on the woman lying down there a hair's breadth from death. The brave, intelligent mystery writer that he knew to the very core of his soul was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
He'd never practiced this on such a large scale before. Always the use of his abilities had been limited to the confines of his meditation room. Before that, he'd only used them for small things, such as helping himself remain conscious while being tortured by his brother during his days as one of Belah's slaves. Or mesmerizing the guards so he could escape. Fogging the minds of those he and Tin-Tin had to hide from just enough to let them escape.
Out here, with his body growing colder and the pain of his gunshot wound growing more insistent…with the ice pummeling his skin like thousands of miniature knives and a loss of blood that was making it difficult for him to focus…could he save the woman he loved from certain death?
As Lazslo grew tired of getting no response from Kyrano, he pulled out his gun and hollered, "Put it down!"
Kyrano heard a vehicle pull up nearby, the chains on its tires busting through the ice that coated the street behind them.
"Kaylie?" Lazslo said. "What the…?"
"We're here to help. A man named John Tracy got hold of David on his cell."
"Tracys again, Jesus," Lazslo breathed.
"That's our man," David said, nodding down toward the ledge. "He's the one who killed Cibrian in the park; I'd stake my badge on it."
"Great. And now he's got Mel."
"What's this guy doing?" Kaylie asked, pointing at Kyrano.
A moment of silence, and then Lazslo said quietly, "I don't know. But he saved my father's life." A few beats. "Maybe he can save Mel's, too."
Kyrano had worked himself into a state of such stillness that he no longer felt the wind cutting through his clothing. He no longer felt the ice stinging his face. He no longer felt the cold, or the bullet in his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and felt himself become as light as a feather. And just as he knew he was no longer standing on solid ground, the three gasps that came from his companions, confirmed it.
Melody
Jaw dropping as she watched Kyrano rise until he was at least a foot off the ground, Mel wondered what the hell he was up to. She could feel the ice cold barrel of a gun pressed into her temple, but the killer was shaking so hard at this point she was pretty sure he was going to shoot her just because he couldn't stop moving.
"¿Qué coño?" the man holding her by the neck breathed.
Suddenly the gun disappeared from her temple. She saw out of her peripheral vision that the gunman had extended his right arm and was aiming his weapon up…directly at Meor. "No!" she exclaimed, using her right arm to knock his away. The gun fired, but Meor was still hovering, so at least the animal hadn't hit his intended target. Skittering across the ice, the gun came to rest about fifteen feet away. Mel tried like hell to loosen the man's grip around her neck, but his arm was immovable.
In a moment of blind panic, she wondered if his arm was frozen in place.
He jerked her back and for a brief moment she was airborne, then she came crashing down back first onto the small ledge the Colombian was standing on.
"Mel!" she heard Kyrano cry out.
The killer glared down at her, reached into his pocket and pulled out the camera memory card. "This," he said, "is worth dying for."
Scooting back as far as she dared, with sixty-plus feet of sheer drop to huge rocks and smashing waves behind her, Mel nodded. "Yes, it is."
With that, she swung her legs, effectively knocking him off balance and into the cliff face. His hand slapped against the rock and he howled in pain as the memory card went flying from his grasp. Mel watched it fall to the ledge, reached out and plucked it from the snow. She shoved it into her pants pocket and turned to find that Kyrano was hovering just behind her…in thin air!
"Holy shit," she breathed. "How—?"
"Put your arms around my neck," he said softly.
She nodded and scrambled to her feet just as the faces of Gabe, Kaylie and David appeared from above.
"Not so fast!" the killer yelled, and in one swift move lunged at them, pushing Mel as hard as he could into Kyrano. It knocked them both off-balance. Both began to plummet to the rocks below as a shot rang out. Mel saw the Colombian take a bullet to his chest. He lost his footing and fell backwards off the edge even as Meor's right arm came around her waist.
Just like that, they stopped falling.
She looked down.
She looked up and back.
"I don't think I have…enough…to get us…back up…" he whispered haltingly.
A great whine like the sound of a gigantic jet engine pierced through the sounds of the waves below and the wind above. Mel looked up to see a rocket-shaped plane appear overhead. David, Gabe and Kaylie backed away from the edge, out of her view, even as the huge plane dropped lower.
Emblazoned just behind her red-tipped nose in large white block letters was TB1. A wave of relief washed over her.
"Help us!" she cried out.
A hatch in the plane's belly opened, and a rope ladder fell toward them, stopping just even enough with where they were that Mel could reach out and grab it.
"Climb onto the ladder!" came John's voice through loudspeakers.
"Meor," Mel whispered, reaching out and using both hands and feet to do just that. He still hovered there, eyes squeezed shut, strain showing in every line on his face. "Come here," she said, pulling his good hand toward her and placing it on the right edge of the rope ladder.
To her relief, he opened his eyes, realized what was going on, and got right behind her on the ladder, placing his feet two rungs below hers, and wrapping his arm around her so he could grip the rope and keep her trapped between him and the ladder.
"Give him…thumbs up," Kyrano said, then his head dropped to the top of hers.
Mel reached out with her right hand, gave the thumbs-up gesture, then held on for dear life as Thunderbird One lifted them beyond the plateau until they were even with the top of the bluff, then inland to the road. John lowered the plane until Mel and Kyrano had their feet on solid ground. Slowly the ladder was pulled back up into One's belly as Kyrano sank to the ice-covered street, clearly with nothing left to give.
Thunderbird One landed some distance down the road. Within minutes, John was right next to them. "You okay?" he asked Mel.
She nodded. "I think so, but Kyrano's been shot in the shoulder. You go; I'll get Gabe to drive me."
With a crisp nod, John lifted Kyrano into his arms and ran for Thunderbird One.
Gabe was already in his squad SUV with the engine going. Mel ran for it and took the front passenger seat, while David and Kaylie followed in their pickup truck.
The ride to the hospital some twenty miles away was slow-going thanks to the continued icing and current road conditions. But Gabe's tire chains kept them from sliding, for which Mel was grateful. He had the heater on full-blast, and slowly Mel started feeling her cheeks, fingers and arms again.
"How'd you get International Rescue to come?" Gabe asked.
Mel gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Just called 911 and got rerouted," she lied.
Several long minutes of silence passed, during which all Melody could do was pray Kyrano was going to be okay.
"What did he do back there?" Gabe finally asked as they passed the sign that said NOW LEAVING CABOT COVE. "Did he…fly?"
Mel looked at him. She wanted to shout from the mountaintops that yes, Kyrano had flown! Yes, he'd saved Travis's life by popping a bullet out of his chest that would otherwise have killed him! Yes, he was that amazing, he was magical, he was all that and so much more!
But she knew that if anyone truly believed Kyrano had abilities like that, he'd become a lab rat for some group of scientists somewhere. Even in their day and age where the supernatural was much more widely accepted, and where science and alchemy had finally begun coming together, the truth was that someone who could do what Kyrano could, would still be considered somewhat of a freak…someone to be studied and dissected under the label of scientific advancement.
No. She wouldn't be confirming any of what Kyrano had done here in Cabot Cove. She couldn't.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," she finally said, only then realizing how tired she really was. She leaned her head against the window as Gabe took each of the road's curves slowly and carefully.
"Dad's going to be okay," he said to her. "The doctors can't figure out what happened. But that was him too, wasn't it? Your Kyrano?"
"I don't know," she whispered, eyes threatening to close.
"You really love him, don't you?"
That got her attention. She looked right at Gabe and nodded. "Yeah. I really do."
He nodded and put his eyes back on the road. "You know, I had no idea…I mean, I never knew you…" Gabe stopped, looked sidelong at her and cleared his throat. "I just gotta know something, Melody."
"What?"
"Would I ever have stood a chance with you?"
Her eyes widened in surprise. Now so much made sense! His behavior toward Kyrano from the very first, for one thing. Kyrano and Gabe were roughly the same age; Kyrano was a stranger to town; he was staying with her at her house; and he was someone Mel was obviously very affectionate toward. Gabe's ire toward him had never had anything to do with the murder…it'd had to do with her. "I'm sorry," she said to him, genuinely meaning the words. "I never thought of you like that, Gabe."
He nodded and went back to his driving. "I just…wanted to know. Thanks."
The rest of the trip was made in silence.
All these years of knowing him and she'd had no clue. Mel shook her head. Poor Gabe.
Epilogue
Kyrano
He stood on the Cliff House patio as the whine of the jet's engines reached his ears. He and Mel had returned to Tracy Island three days after their encounter with the Colombian murderer. They'd later found out he'd been Carlos Rodríguez's right-hand man, sent to stop Dwayne Cibrian from completing his final act before entering the witness protection program.
The Colombian's body had never been found, but all experts agreed he couldn't have survived the fall and that even if he had, the bullet wound would've killed him in short order, especially given that he was probably experiencing hypothermia at the time. Kyrano's shoulder had been properly patched up. He was already out of a sling now, two weeks later, and Mel was leaving them, returning to Cabot Cove to help tie up some loose ends for the sheriff, his deputy (who'd gone off the road trying to get to his wife and been stuck there for hours before anyone found him) and the two FBI agents who'd been in the town's midst for years without any of them knowing it.
It was with a heavy heart that Kyrano watched the jet Jeff had chartered for Mel – because she'd said that she didn't want to spend her entire flight back to Maine in the presence of a Tracy when she was having a hard enough time leaving them as it was – taxi down the runway and lift off into the bright midday sky.
He heard the door swish open. Could tell by the feel of him and the sound of him that it was Jeff approaching.
"She'll be back."
Kyrano turned to look at him. "I can only hope."
"You know, I'm a little confused, Kyrano," Jeff continued, folding his arms over his chest as his eyes focused on the disappearing jet.
"About?"
"Well, right after you were shot, just before you lost consciousness, you begged me to help her. Because you loved her."
He nodded.
"If you love her so much, how can you just let her go like this?"
He smiled softly, turning away from the view of her disappearing. "It is because I love her so much, that I am letting her go."
"You mean, if it's meant to be…"
"…then she will return." He shook his head sadly. "She has a life, Jeff; a whole world beyond Tracy Island that she loves. It's a place I simply cannot exist with her. And it's not fair of me to ask her to stay here in my world, so far from her own."
Jeff opened his mouth to reply, but he never got the chance. The door to the Cliff House opened again and there, framed by the doorway, stood none other than… "Mel."
She smiled through tears that were streaming from her eyes. Shaking her head, she walked slowly into the Cliff House proper even as Kyrano and Jeff moved from the patio into the room.
"Your jet just took off," Jeff stated, hooking a thumb behind him.
Mel nodded, her eyes never leaving Kyrano's. "I know, I…I just…" She took a deep, shaky breath. "I couldn't leave you."
And then she barreled into his arms, clinging to him and crying into his chest. His arms came around her as tears filled his own eyes.
She was staying.
"I can't be without you."
He lifted his head and put a finger under her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. "Then you will never have to be, cinta saya."
She smiled and he returned the gesture.
"I guess this means it's meant to be," Jeff remarked.
Kyrano met his eyes, grin broadening. "I guess so."
"Young lady," Jeff said sharply, causing Mel to look up at him in surprise. "It seems to me that you're following far too closely in your great-aunt's footsteps."
She blinked, wiping away her tears. "I am?"
He nodded, arms folding over his chest. "Someone dies and you solve the mystery, saving an innocent man's life?"
She ducked her head against Kyrano's chest, hair falling to cover her face.
"I suggest that to keep anyone else from dying or being accused of murder, you stay on Tracy Island where I can keep an eye on you."
Looking up at Kyrano, who was sporting a broad grin, Mel then turned to Jeff and, Kyrano assumed, saw the twinkle in his eyes and the twitch of his lips, because she let go of him and hugged Jeff fiercely.
"I'll take you up on that, Jeff. And thank you."
"Don't thank me just yet," he countered as she released him. "If you stay here, I'm putting you to work!"
Kyrano chuckled, and Melody's laughter rang through the air.
