Keeper of the Peace (Graveyard Guardians #2) Read online

  He couldn’t even speak. He felt his mouth open to say her name and nothing came out. The last person he had expected to run into here was his ex-girlfriend. Those words, ex-girlfriend didn’t even come close to describing Hannah. A better description would be, the only woman he had ever loved.

  She held some kind of sharp pointy tool loosely in her fingers, but the moment her eyes settled on him, she squeezed the tool so hard that her knuckles turned white. “Wha ... what are you doing here?”

  He was just as surprised to see her as she was to see him. He knew that he would eventually run into her if he was spending much time in Summer Hollow, but he had wanted to be more prepared for their first encounter.

  Shit, who the hell was he kidding? He had replayed what he was going to say to her over and over in his mind for the last twelve years. And what do ya know, it was all lost to him the moment he set eyes on her.

  “Hannah.”

  A thick silence filled the air for about half a minute and then he took a step toward her. She balked and backed up, away from him. “Don’t.” Her eyes flashed with pain. “Don’t come near me.”

  “Hannah, I didn’t expect to see you here, but…”

  “No.” She cut him off before he could apologize or say any of the words he had rehearsed for so long. “You don’t speak to me. All those years you didn’t speak to me and now shouldn’t be any different.” She glanced over at the body. “I will be done with the report in a little bit. You can wait out in the hall if you want.”

  “Can you give me two minutes to explain?”

  She shook her head. “You already explained. I don’t need to hear it again.”

  “Please, Hannah.”

  “Get out of here, David.” She pointed that glittering, sharp tool at him.

  He stepped back a few paces and lowered his voice. “You know that we can’t avoid this forever.”

  A bitter chuckle escaped her lips. “Why not, you’ve managed to avoid it all this time. What’s another twelve years?”

  She had every right to be pissed at him. He had known that when he finally saw her it wouldn’t be easy, she was after all, Hannah Estmond, but maybe this wasn’t the right time. “Fine, I’ll leave you alone. But I’m waiting out there for the report.” He pointed at the door.

  “Good.” She held her position, waiting for him to leave.

  His inner voices fought for control. The little angel told him to bid her a polite goodbye and leave the room quietly. But that damn little devil was whispering that he should force her to listen, that he had the right to have his say.

  In the end, he opted for a combo of both. He headed for the door, but when his fingers wrapped around the cool metal of the knob, he turned back and faced her again. “Listen, we are going to talk soon. I need to apologize to you. I know that you don’t owe me anything, but it’s something I have to do.”

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “You’re right, I don’t owe you anything. But you … you owe me a new fucking heart, cause you broke the last one into so many pieces it was impossible to put it back together again.”

  Good lord. He had ruined her life only to make his better. What kind of an asshole does that? Unable to look at her anymore, he pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway where he let out a long, uneven breath.

  There were several chairs lined up along the wall beside the door to the morgue, so he flopped down into one of them and pulled out his phone. Hopefully he didn’t have to sit out here too long. It was agony knowing that Hannah was on the other side of the wall and she didn’t want to talk to him.

  He swiped the lock on his phone, opened the app for the camera and pulled up the pictures he had taken at the scene. He squinted at the photos, trying to get a better look at them. Sometimes he wished he had a bigger phone, just for this reason.

  Judging from the look of the handprints, they wouldn’t be able to get a good print from them. But, the hands were small, indicating it was a woman’s hand. Same with the footprints, they were small. The more he looked at the prints, the more he was convinced it was a woman who had killed the victim.

  He swiped it over to the next picture. “What is that?” he whispered, enlarging the photo so that he could get a better look. The tread of the footprint was smeared in the mud, so he couldn’t see the exact detail of the tread, but in the heel area of the tread he could just make out a slight indent. The mark was not consistent with the rest of the print.

  He continued to stare at the picture. Maybe a pebble or something had lodged up into the tread of the shoe. It was hard to tell just yet, he was going to have to run these through a computer so that he could blow them up and get a better look.

  With a sigh, he closed out the camera and clicked off his phone. The hallways outside the morgue weren’t as busy as the rest of the hospital so he couldn’t even pass the time people watching, which only left sitting out in the hall like a child who was being punished.

  He knew it would be a while until she finished with the paperwork, but he didn’t want to chance leaving for a cup of coffee or anything, so he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

  His thoughts should have been revolving around the case, but the only thing he could think of was Hannah. What would life have been like if he hadn’t left Summer Hollow? He was fairly certain that they would have eventually gotten married and probably even had a kid or two.

  He would have joined the Summer Hollow Police Department, since being a cop was what he had wanted to do since he was thirteen years old.

  They would have bought their own little house outside of town and their kids would have gone to the Summer Hollow school, just as they had. On Sunday afternoons they would go over to the Estmond house for family dinner and their kids would play with their cousins.

  Wait, did any of Hannah’s brothers or sisters even have any kids yet?

  He suddenly realized that he didn’t know very much about the life Hannah was living now. Maybe she had gotten married and already had children. He left and she had to go on. Why would he think that a woman like Hannah would still be single, never mind pining for him all these years.

  To his right, he heard a click as the door to the morgue opened. He heard footsteps lightly make their way over to him and then stop beside him. “Here’s your report, Detective.” He opened his eyes just as a folder landed in his lap. “Have a lovely afternoon.”

  “Hannah.” He whispered her name as she was turning to go back through the morgue door.

  “Yes, Detective.”

  He rolled his eyes and stood, grasping the folder in one hand. “Stop calling me that.”

  Her spine straightened and she squared her shoulders before she turned to fully face him. “You are a detective, aren’t you?”

  Good grief, she was going to make this so hard. He felt the tickle of anger flare up inside him. He knew that she didn’t owe him a damn thing, but she should at least talk to him, dammit. He tucked the folder underneath his arm and marched toward her. “You know damn well that I am. Now do you have a minute to talk to me?”

  Her eyes widened as she recognized the old David come out a little bit. For a second he thought that maybe she would give a little, but instead she shook her head and opened the door. She looked in and then back at him. “I’m sorry, I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

  “Hannah …”

  “Sorry, Detective.” With those last words, and tears welling in the corners of her eyes, she stepped over the threshold shutting the door behind her.

  God damn, those words hurt. She couldn’t even say his fucking name. This moment was probably one of the only times in his life that he resented his title of detective.

  With nothing left to do but stare at the door she had just shut in his face, he spun and hurried out through the deserted hallway, not stopping until he was seated in the stifling hot interior of his car.

  For a moment, he just sat there, staring out at the parking lot and thinking about how that could not have g
one any worse if he had tried to fuck it up. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got with himself. “Shit!” He curled his fingers into his palm and then slammed his fist into the steering wheel.

  He hit the wheel again and again until he finally realized that beating the shit out of his car wasn’t going to fix anything. He had to make this up to Hannah, he had to at least try to make up for some of the pain he had put her though. Only problem was he had no clue on how he was going to do that.

  CHAPTER

  5

  HANNAH

  “Oh, God.” Hannah released a sob as soon as David had gone into the hallway, shutting the door softly behind him.

  She moved back over to the body and set the scalpel down on the tray. Of all the people … of all the things that could happen after the previous events of the day, this was what was chosen to top it off.

  She took a deep breath in through her nose and released it slowly from between her lips. Her whole body was shaking, there was no way she could work on that body until she calmed down. But, how in the hell was she supposed to calm down. The only guy she had ever loved just walked back into her life and he was investigating the murder she had committed.

  Awesome. Just, awesome.

  God, he looked amazing. His hair, his clothes, his eyes. Dammit, everything about him made her want to jump into his arms and tell him how much she missed him. But, at the same time, she could never forget how he broke her heart.

  He had just left her. Left for Los Angeles never to be heard from again.

  As the memory flashed through her mind she felt the tears falling down over her cheeks. With a gloved hand she swiped at the unwanted proof that he had hurt her so bad that she could still cry over him twelve years later.

  Fuck that.

  Fuck him.

  She had to shove this to the back of her mind and deal with it later. This body had to get done and out of here. Sniffing loudly, she ripped the rubber gloves off her hands and tossed them in the trash. With a yank, she extracted another two gloves from the box on the table and pulled them over her hands.

  It only took a few minutes for her to compose herself enough to get back to work on the body, and it took just that long for thoughts of David to consume her as well.

  Not a day went by that she didn’t think of him. After he left to L.A., she had gone to school and tried to move on. She had always planned to be a medical examiner, but that didn’t mean she had to leave the area like he did.

  Aside from her mother’s death, getting over him was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. Even then, at least with her mom dying, she had closure.

  School was lonely and hard. All she did was sleep, eat and study. It did help take her mind off of David though, so at least there was that. But it took her a long time to get to a place where she didn’t hope for him to come back.

  That last night after the dance, they had gone up to their spot at The Springs and he ruined the perfect day with the news that he would be leaving.

  They were on the bridge, which overlooked stone pools that filled with water when they released the dam in the spring. In the winter they drained the water back into the creek. She and David were both sitting with their shoes off and their legs hanging over the moonlit water.

  “Hannah, I have to tell you something.”

  She turned and looked up at him. “What is it?”

  He didn’t say anything right away. “What? David, what’s going on?”

  Still, he kept silent and couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Now I know this is bad.” She reached up and turned his head toward her so that she could see his eyes. “Seriously, what is it?”

  She stared into his deep blue eyes and saw that he was holding something back. Instead of asking him what was wrong again, she took his hand and laced her fingers between his.

  “I’m leaving Summer Hollow.”

  She felt her heart sink. That was not what she had expected. There were a million other things that could have made David act this way, with all the crap that went on with his parents, but she didn’t think he would ever just pick up and leave.

  “What?” She stammered, “wh … why?”

  He turned his head and gazed back out over the water. “I got accepted into the Police Academy for the LAPD.”

  She let go of his hand and held back the tears, unwilling to let them loose before she fully understood. “You’re going to leave, just like that?”

  He raked his fingers through his sandy blond hair. “You could come with me. We will go to L.A. together. It will be an adventure, the start of our new life.”

  Yeah, those damn tears weren’t going to stay put. They spilled over from the corners of her eyes and trailed down her cheeks. “I … I can’t leave. I have school coming up.”

  She told him it was school and that was an honest reason, but she also couldn’t leave her family. Her dad needed help taking care of the kids and the graveyard. If she left, that put more patrols on her dad, Greg and Dan. She needed to be there.

  “Hannah, there are schools in there, bigger and better schools too. You’re so smart, you would get into one of them no problem.”

  She tried to ignore the excitement in his voice and brushed away some of the wetness on her cheek. “It doesn’t work like that, David.”

  For a moment there was silence and his excitement seemed to dissipate as he realized that Hannah truly wouldn’t leave Summer Hollow. “You really don’t want to come with me?” he asked her softly.

  She choked back the lump in her throat and spoke slowly, afraid that she may end up sobbing uncontrollably if she wasn’t careful. “It isn’t that I don’t want to David, I just can’t.”

  He nodded. “I guess I understand that. I shouldn’t expect you to just up and leave your life for me.”

  “Well, I can’t expect you to stay here and not go after what you want because of me. I don’t want to be what holds you back in life.” Her voice had grown thick with sarcasm.

  “You are what I want in life, Hannah. But, I want more than SHPD.”

  “We had plans. How can you just leave?” She scooted back and stood up. “There isn’t anything wrong with being a small-town cop, look what Sheriff Davis did for you! You can help people right here.”

  He also stood, catching her hand as she tried to turn away from him. “Hannah …”

  She let loose a sob and then sniffed back some of the tears. “Don’t!”

  “I have to live my life and make something of myself.”

  She shook her head, trying to wake up from this nightmare. “So, Summer Hollow, me, everything here, isn’t enough for you?”

  He didn’t say anything and when her brown eyes met his blue ones, her lips formed a thin line and she pulled her hands from his. “Seriously?”

  “I love you, Hannah.”

  “If you loved me you wouldn’t leave.”

  He wandered over to the edge of the bridge and stood with his toes over the edge. “I have to go. I want you to understand.”

  “Oh, I understand.” Leaving her shoes, she marched over the wooden planks of the bridge, intending to get to her car and get out of there as fast as possible. But, David was right behind her, he grabbed her arm, trying to spin her around so he could talk to her.

  Without really knowing what came over her, she turned and slapped him. “Don’t touch me!” Her breathing was labored and the lump in her throat was so big that she felt like someone had shoved a hose down there.

  He stepped back and touched his cheek where she had hit him. “Hannah, please …”

  She faced him one final time. “Look, I get why you want to leave. Don’t for one moment think that I don’t understand that. But, don’t think that I can just up and leave my life either. I love you, dammit! I fucking love you and you can have a life here in Summer Hollow … with me.”

  “Han—“

  “No! You just don’t want to try!” With those last words she spun around and bolted for her car, lea
ving David to walk back to his house in the dark.

  Coming back to the present, she shook off the memories and realized that she had finished her work on the body while lost in thought about that last night with David. They were just kids really and she had been in love. Now that she was an adult with real life under her belt, she realized that David had to live for himself, no one else, and that included her.

  She understood this wasn’t some romance novel where one of them sacrifices everything for the other. It was real life and David had a shitty childhood. She really was the only thing that had been keeping him in Summer Hollow. Well, probably the sheriff and his wife too, they were the only real parental figures he had.

  None of this took away the pain though. It was one thing to forgive someone when they aren’t around, but coming face to face with them again after so long brought back all the memories as if they were happening all over again.

  Getting her head back in the game, she checked over the file one more time to make sure that she had filled everything out the way it was supposed to be. God, she could be fired for lying about everything on that report, but if she told the truth they would find her and take her to jail.

  She was probably going to end up in jail anyway. There was no way they wouldn’t be able to find out it was her, not in this day and age. The real kicker was that David was the detective on the case. This had to be the worst day of her entire life.

  Hannah closed her eyes as she thought about this last bit. It was one reason why it probably would have never worked between them anyway. Keepers usually only married other Keepers because their lifestyle was a secret, it was a commitment and it wasn’t something you could just ignore.

  If she and David had stayed together, she would have eventually had to tell him about the Keepers and the Reapers, and then he most likely would have had her put into an institution. She would have never been able to prove it to him either. How did you tell your one true love that you were a Keeper of souls, that you guarded those souls from the Reapers until they crossed over to wherever they go afterward.