Finger prints in the room? No. The perp wore gloves. Cement castings revealed nothing other than a size 13 boot. The message? Handwriting experts disagreed as to whether the perp was joking or dangerously serious. Shane and Carmen’s finances have been frozen in the event that they left town. Protocol, I knew it happen. They weren’t going to like it. I ran the idea by Armstrong about The Moon Lights. He thought it was a waste of our time and resources. Being the senior agent I overrode him. They were both in a Alabama prison not too far from here. It wouldn’t hurt to check.

Still no call from the kidnapper. Trace program run on John Mills’s cell phone revealed that the call came from Alaska….which meant the signal was bounced from a different source. I asked Armstrong to arrange transport to the prison to have a talk with The Moon Lights.

He mentioned that none of the neighbors saw anyone of note or out of the ordinary. I was tired and distracted by Shane and Carmen and my clear line of sight into their bedroom. The killer, the killing kidnapper must have seen into their room from this same spot………

Armstrong was gone to make the calls.

Shane and Carmen lay in bed facing each other. They were talking slow very quiet their lips barely moving. Shane is smoothing Carmen’s hair behind her ear, kissing her lips, her closed eyes, and her nose. I couldn’t look away but I did checking to see if anyone was around. No one but that news van and we kept them away. Someone was going to have to tell them to keep those curtain closed.

Carmen turns around her back to Shane. Shane kisses her throat, her neck. Carmen reaches back to grab Shane’s hair and tugs on it. The sheets were covering what I wanted to see the most. Carmen’s eyes clenched shut her mouth open slightly. I felt myself getting warm. They moved like a dance no movement wasted. I try to match my breathing to how I imagined theirs to be.

Shane has her lips to Carmen’s ear. What was she whispering? Something about love? Something about not leaving her? Something about how wonderful she felt from the inside?

Watching them. Wanting to feel what they are feeling. Wanting something that intense. I get up to leave them in their final moment when I see Shane. Her eyes angry….her mind focused on her lover but her eyes were on me…..like a wolf in the wilderness not wanting to give it’s position away….but not forgetting this transgression into it’s territory…..her teeth bared and kissing Carmen violent, marking her….

I knew I was wrong. I should have looked away respecting their privacy. It wasn’t the act that I was obsessed with. It wasn’t any kind of want to be there with them. It wasn’t a perverse need to explore my sexuality through them. It was how devoted to each other they were. The need in them to feel close when the world was stacked against them. It was the love that ebbed from every fiber of their being. The way they couldn’t be apart. The way they kissed each other.

I didn’t know that two people. Two human beings could feel so much……..I guess in all truth and honesty it was a perverse sense of jealousy……I think.

Either way I left them to finish and called in my progress report to Bette. Her voice like melted caramel on the other line.

TBC….