Chapter 14
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets—Paul Tournier
A primal scream shocked Chett out of a dream in which Big Joe had backed Prudence against a tree outside in deep snow, lifted her heavy woolen skirts, and was shoving his dick into warm, wet heaven.
He opened his eyes to find himself blind in the pitch-dark bedroom. The scream faded under the weight of heavy, wall-shaking barking that flattened him to the mattress. His heart slammed into his ribs like a battering ram.
Oh, wait. That was 100 pounds of dog slamming against the flimsy bedroom door. Chett scooted backwards until his head hit the headboard. The only other exit, a window, was located beside the doorway to hell. He was trapped!
"No, not the girls!"
Catrina's anguished cry soared above Titan's frenzied barking, a feat of lung power he attributed to her years of yelling orders at criminals.
"What girls? Where?" Confusion pierced Chett's great fear of becoming the beast's midnight snack.
For an answer, a fist whizzed by his knee and landed a solid punch on the mattress.
In that moment Chett realized Catrina was immersed in a nightmare, lost to the real world, to any conscious awareness of her actions, to him. He turned on the bedside lamp and gasped to the beat of pounding thumps against the door. A panic attack would not serve either of them.
Chett reined in his natural desire to hide in the closet or under the bed, safe from the threat of being eaten alive by a berserk dog. There was method to the dog's madness. Titan wasn't targeting him. He wanted to reach Catrina.
The certainty of that fact did not slow Chett's racing pulse. He vigorously shook Catrina's shoulder. "Wake up, sweetheart. You're here with me. Safe."
All he got for his humanitarian effort was a powerful two-handed shove that sent him flying off the bed to the floor on his hands and knees. Holy Cat, she's strong. Luckily only his ego was bruised. Apparently the normal route wasn't the way to bring her out of the hell she was reliving.
Meanwhile Catrina writhed on the bed. The hands cradling her face were slick with tears. He recalled that, after falling asleep in his arms at Jenna's place, Cat had woken up agitated and insisted on going home to her dog. He didn't understand then, but his poor excuse for a brain finally got the message. Catrina needed her dog more than she needed him.
Titan again slammed his full body weight against the door. Wood splintered. The next charge, and he'd be through. Chett sprang upright and plastered his back to the farthest wall. Terror slipped the bounds of willful control. Survival. That's all that mattered. His muscles geared for flight.
Options. What are my options?
He forced his brain to think, damn it! Cold logic chiseled through overwhelming fear. The canine jaws of steel that clamped on escaping criminals could also nudge a little girl to safety. He'd witnessed it with his own eyes. Catrina was not in danger from Titan. Her demons resided in haunting memories.
Chett gulped and made the only decision any terrified human would do. He unlocked the door and hid behind it. Titan shot through the opening faster than a speeding bullet and skidded to a halt on Cat's side of the bed.
Titan's deafening barks ricocheted off walls, the ceiling, the hardwood floor. Chett clamped his palms to his ears and kept an eye on the dog. Its massive snout nudged Catrina's shoulder. Calming in the presence of his mistress, Titan's barks slowed, lowered in volume, became insistent as if following a well-practiced script.
Finally Catrina extended a trembling arm and wrapped it around Titan's head. "Good boy. Good boy," she soothed in a raspy, raw voice that sawed Chett's rusty heartstrings.
"Catrina, are you okay?" he called from the doorway.
"Do you realize you're naked?" She forced a snicker.
He looked down in surprise. Goosebumps pebbled his bare skin. He discovered he was freezing. "Don't change the subject."
He took a step to be with her, comfort her, but the formidable guard dog's evil eyes and warning woof persuaded him to rethink that plan. Catrina levered herself up on her elbows. She seemed... rational. He held out his hands, palms up. "Tell Titan it wasn't my fault."
Catrina swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for a robe hanging from a hook. "He'll relax when I give him a treat." She shook her head. "Better yet, you do it. Meet me in the kitchen."
She waited while Chett hurried to his side of the bed, and left the room with the dog at her heels.
Chett grabbed his jeans and shirt from the floor. Questions rolled out one after the other. Questions that pushed his relationship with Cat across the line from fun and games to something dark and, frankly, frightening. What was that nightmare all about? Is this Cat's life? What have I gotten myself into?
In the kitchen Catrina handed him a dog biscuit shaped like a bone, then turned her back on him to fiddle with the coffee machine on the counter.
"I could use some liquid courage." He looked at the fake bone pinched between his thumb and forefinger, looked at Titan sitting expectantly on his haunches a few feet away. The dog's massive head was level with Chett's chest, for crying out loud. Open wide, those jaws would swallow his forearm. He gulped. Sweat ran down his temples.
"There's some red wine left in the living room," she said without turning.
The incentive spurred him to action. He dropped the bone to the floor and used the side of a bare foot to slapshot the biscuit across the tile like a hockey puck on ice.
Titan's conveyor belt of a tongue swept the treat into his cavernous maw. Chett didn't hang around in case the dog wanted seconds. He beat a retreat into the living room and flicked on the gas fireplace to warm the room to a bearable temperature. Crazy Canucks programmed their energy-saving thermostats for frosty breath temperatures every night.
Crazy. Catrina's agonized scream still reverberated in his skull.
With a shaking hand he emptied the dregs of the bottle of Italian wine into his and Catrina's abandoned glasses. He picked up his half-filled glass, sipped, sighed, and slugged it in a single swallow.
"I opened another bottle. French Merlot. My favorite."
Chett jumped at the sound of Catrina's voice behind him. Despite her attempt at a normal tone, in the firelight and weak light from the kitchen she appeared pale, shattered. He took the bottle from her and filled his glass to the brim.
Before he could drain it, she faced him defiantly. "I scared you."
"You both scared me," he corrected. "Our threesome—you, me, Titan—sure has its highs and lows. As well as superior ins and outs." He waggled his brows.
"Don't joke." In the firelight, her eyes glistened with suppressed tears.
He swallowed a mouthful of the wine, reluctantly placed his glass on the coffee table, and sank into the sofa. "Sit with me. Please," he added when she turned away, emotion working her mouth.
She ignored her glass beside his, and complied. He pulled a quilt from the spine of the sofa and tugged her close. Her body felt boneless, as if all the fight inside had taken a hike and wasn't planning on a return trip. He maneuvered her limp upper body across his lap and against his chest under the quilt. It seemed natural to hold Cat with her head nestled in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. He felt her fast heartbeat, sensed the throat tight with explanations she dared not speak. He held her quietly until the beat slowed to a normal rhythm.
"I'm so ashamed," she said into his neck.
"Of what?"
"You saw me like.. like... that."
"Who else knows about your nightmares?"
"No one. I should be strong enough to handle this."
"We all should be a lot of things we aren't," he said equitably. "I can't handle a dog phobia. Why do you expect more of yourself?"
She remained silent.
Long minutes later, he broke the silence. "I don't have the answers, Kitten, but I can listen. Tell me the story."
She rocked her wet cheek against his neck in unspoken refusal. Brad had told him Catrina never spoke to her Port Carson friends about her past. Fear of being judged or pitied or talked about, or something else kept her from exposing her history in the fishbowl community to which she'd fled to build a new life.
"I'm a temporary visitor here, remember. I'm not going to reveal your secrets to the locals. I promise you'll feel better after telling someone. Who better than me? Spill."
She took a shuddering breath. "I was with the Toronto Police Marine Unit for three years before... before moving here. I'm a certified SCUBA diver." Her voice broke. "I can't do it. I don't want to go there."
"Step back a little. Describe the memory as if you're watching a movie." He rubbed her back. "I'm here for you. Trust me."
"I'll try." She tucked one arm around his waist and gripped it hard. "The unit gets a tip on the radio early one summer morning from a fisherman out on Lake Ontario. He's spotted a small oil slick two miles offshore. He gives us the GPS coordinates. It's on the Canadian side of the lake, in our jurisdiction. No boat has been reported missing, no distress signal was received. My sergeant calls the team together anyway, we put on our wet suits, assemble our gear, take the dive boat out."
"Go on."
"It's really choppy. Fifty mile per hour wind gusts. It's lucky the fisherman spotted the slick before it dissipated. There's not much debris floating on the surface to indicate—" A wet sob escaped.
He rubbed her shoulder.
"Me and my partner, we slowly descend one hundred eighty feet, almost our limit. That's about eighteen stories down. It's dark, but we have powerful headlamps and search lights. We spot the mast first, and the sail is furled on the boom. They must have been motoring across in the dead of night to avoid border security. Stupid. We follow the mast to a thirty-five foot sailboat laying on its side. The hull near the engine compartment is blown out by an explosion. It must've sunk within minutes. We search the boat. The lifeboat is gone. The door to the cabin has a steel bar padlocked across it. Our safety diver lowers a crowbar."
Under the hand stroking her back, Chett felt her muscles stiffen, a sure signal that whatever she said next wouldn't be good.
"We break open the door. I go in first, shine the light forward into the galley. I see pinpoints of reflected light. Initially I think they're fish eyes. Then I realize the light is reflecting off the corneas of drowned teenage girls. They're floating, long black hair streaming. Arms and legs tangled every which way, filling the cabin." She choked. Violent sobs rattled her lungs.
Chett held on while she cried out the pent-up trauma. Human trafficking had many victims, including his poor Cat. Hot tears dripped off his chin into her hair. His tears. "I'm so sorry," he whispered through a thickened throat.
Long minutes later, she resumed. "I have my mask on, air regulator in my mouth. I can't scream, but I want to scream. We recover twelve undocumented Mexican teens destined for prostitution, most of them under fifteen years old. When the engine exploded and the sailboat started to take on water, the bastards abandoned those kids in the cabin to die. The portholes were too small to allow escape."
Most of Chett's adult life he'd written guns and gore action screenplays involving violence, crime and murder. In the entertainment industry, victims were pawns. Fans of the original Star Trek television series called them "red shirts"—bit players destined to die in the show.
Writers deliberately ensured that viewers made emotional connections with the stars of the movies, not the victims. From the little he'd read about PTSD, he'd learned that emotional reactions often triggered long term trauma in first responders and members of the military. Only a psychopath would indefinitely remain unaffected by tragedy. His movies had no heart, Cat had insisted. She was correct. Action movie screenwriters didn't want the carnage to traumatize viewers. They wanted to stimulate excitement and adrenaline, not heartbreak.
Catrina interrupted his thoughts. "When I close my eyes to try to sleep I see those glowing eyes, the expressions of horror on those pretty girls' faces. I scream at night, I know I do. Titan licks my face, tries to wake me."
He managed to croak past the lump in his throat, "Were the human traffickers captured?"
"No."
She hadn't received closure. Meanwhile she suffered. "Have you received therapy?" In California everyone he knew was in therapy.
"I'll work it out. It takes time." She sat up and scrubbed tears from her cheeks with both fists.
Her pain was palpable, raw. Yet she'd been living in Port Carson for a while. "How long has it been since... the event?"
There was a pause. "Two years."
"Two years is a long time to have nightmares reliving that dive."
"Like I said, it takes time."
He leaned to gently kiss her forehead, then her lips. "You and Titan, both of you trained to serve and protect, yet here you are sitting on the sideline in cottage country. Leaving your job in the Marine Unit didn't solve the problem, did it? My poor darling."
She pushed away from his chest. "I chose how to live my life." Deep-seated pain flashed into defiance.
She swung her legs over and lurched off the sofa. The quilt dropped from her shoulders, and she yanked tight the belt on her robe. Her curvy, statuesque figure backlit by flickering firelight left him breathless.
Better he left her alone to sleep, he chastised himself. He had some thinking to do, and Cat was worn out physically and emotionally. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No," she said in a small voice.
"Let's get some shut-eye," he suggested.
On their way to the bedroom he spied Titan curled on a blanket on the kitchen floor, fast asleep. It dawned on him that he'd completely forgotten about the dog.
At the door to Catrina's room, Chett stopped to inspect the damaged doorframe and useless lock. Shrugging his shoulders, he walked through and left the door wide open.
***
Catrina's smartphone burbled. Groggily she reached for the phone and peered at the screen. Eight o'clock already! Secure in Chett's arms when they returned to bed following the nightmare and its aftermath, she'd slept soundly for the first time in months.
The caller identified himself. Shocked to her toes, she swung rubbery legs over the edge of the bed and straightened to attention. "Yes, sir?"
On the opposite side of the bed Chett grumbled, "Who is it at this hour on a Sunday morning?"
She placed a hand over the phone's microphone. "It's an OPP Sergeant." After a brief one-sided conversation, she said crisply, "I'll be there in thirty minutes."
She disconnected and relayed to Chett the gist of the conversation. "A snowmobile went through lake ice last night. The Underwater Search and Recovery dive team needs my help to recover the body."