The shadows of proof

Chapter five

They returned to Thornwood as winter closed in, the village huddled against storms that seemed personally vengeful. Eleanor moved back into her father's house with a new awareness of its dangers, the surveillance that must exist, the listeners in phone lines, the history embedded in its walls. Daniel had arranged protection, officially for a witness in an ongoing investigation.

Unofficially, they both knew that any security could be compromised, any officer bought or threatened. They trusted only each other, and that trust had become something else during the Salzburg nights, the shared hotel room they'd justified with necessity, the moment when necessity became desire. She found him in the kitchen at 3 AM, reviewing files by laptop light, and sat across from him without speaking. He looked up, saw whatever was in her face, and closed the computer.

" Can't sleep?"

"I keep seeing Brenner. The blood." She wrapped her hands around the tea he'd automatically prepared.

"And I keep thinking of my mother,

She knew what my father was, what his friends were, and she was trying to save me from it. She died trying to save me."

"She succeeded." Daniel's voice was certain. "You're here. You're fighting. You became someone who could finish what she started."

"Did I?" Eleanor set down the cup, her hands unsteady. "Or did I just become someone who runs toward danger because it's easier than feeling anything else?" He was silent for a moment, considering. "When I changed careers, my mother said I was chasing ghosts. That I'd never find peace until I accepted that some things can't be fixed." He reached across the table, finding her hand.

"She was wrong. Not about the ghosts. I chase them every day. But about peace. I've found moments of it. With you, these past weeks. Even knowing what we face, what we might lose." Eleanor looked at their joined hands, the scars on his knuckles, the competence and tenderness in his touch. "I don't know how to want something for myself. Something good. It feels like betrayal of my mother, of justice, of"

"Of the armour you've built?" Daniel rose, moving around the table to kneel beside her chair. "Eleanor, you've spent your life being strong for everyone else. Your clients, your colleagues, the memory of a mother you barely knew. When do you get to be someone who needs to be, who wants,who takes?" She looked down at him, this man who had seen her at her most vulnerable and chosen to stay, to fight beside her.

"I'm afraid," she whispered.

"If I let myself want you, need you, and then"

"Then what?

"I die?

"

You die?

We fail?" He smiled, that transformation she was learning to anticipate. "Those possibilities exist regardless of what we feel. The danger doesn't increase with intimacy. Only the stakes."

"Only the stakes," she repeated and laughed despite herself. "You have a strange approach to romance, Detective Inspector."

"Daniel. When we're alone, when it's just, " He stopped, reconsidering. "I'm not good at this. I spent eight years keeping professional distances, avoiding complications. Then you walked into a crime scene and looked at me like I was another obstacle to overcome."

"You were."

"And now?" Eleanor touched his face, the scar above his eyebrow, the lines of fatigue and concentration. "Now you're the reason I want to survive this. Not just to finish my mother's work. To see what happens after. What we could be, if we allowed ourselves." He turned his head, pressing a kiss to her palm. "Then allow yourself," he murmured.

"Allow us. And tomorrow, we'll continue the fight with something worth protecting." She drew him up into her arms, and for a few hours, the house held only warmth and whispered promises, the temporary victory of life against death.