Six months later, standing near a boulder atop a hill overlooking a field of heather, they were married.
One, in simple black trousers with a peasant shirt of white waited nervously for her bride to arrive. Fidgeting with the sleeves of her blouse, it wasn’t until Toni saw the steely glare of her best man that she stilled and waited like all the others for Laura to appear.
He had been the man who had saved her life, and now he protected in his hand bands of gold that would be exchanged in only a few minutes. Giving Toni a quick wink, Stephen looked to the family and friends seated in white folding chairs a few feet away. Locking eyes with his wife, he mouthed the words “I love you” and then glanced at their infant son, Anthony, cradled in her arms. The child began to whimper as if on cue, and Stephen rolled his eyes, chuckling under his breath as he turned back to the woman standing next to him. Seeing the look in Toni’s eyes, Stephen followed her gaze, and he couldn’t stop himself from uttering, “Wow.”
Wearing a flowing white dress and holding a bouquet of roses and thistle close to her bosom, arm-in-arm with her father, Laura slowly made her way up the hill. In her shoe was a sixpence, put there by her father as was the Scottish tradition, and over her shoulder was a sash of MacLeod tartan. She kept her eyes on Toni, never once looking to make sure her footing was sound, and without one stumble, Laura came to a stop a few feet away from the woman she loved.
Bill gazed at his daughter for a moment before leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. Breathing deep, he took Laura’s hand and placed it in Toni’s. “I give to you my daughter’s hand, and she gives to you her heart.” Taking the sash from Laura, he said, “These are our colors...our tartan, and now, they are yours.”
Draping it over Toni’s shoulder, Bill placed a soft kiss on her cheek, and taking a ragged breath, he stepped back.
They had agreed upon a simple service, and after the pastor had spoken his words, it was time for them to speak their own. Smiling softly at the nervousness she saw in Toni’s eyes, Laura gave her hand a squeeze, silently asking permission to go against plan and speak first, and seeing Toni nod, Laura took a ring from Stephen’s open hand and placed it on Toni’s finger.
“With this ring, I pledge to you my love…forever and always. I promise to be your wife, your lover and your friend. I promise to be there for you in sickness and in health, through steps forward and backward, through nerves and nightmares, through insecurities and fears. I will never falter in my love for you, for you complete me, Antoinette…and you are the reason I breathe.”
Toni blinked back her tears as Laura slipped the ring on her finger. She knew her knees were trembling badly, and even though she had practiced a hundred times the words she wanted to say, when Toni looked into Laura’s eyes, her mind went blank.
Toni took a deep breath and quickly followed it by another as her heart began to race, but when she glanced at the wedding ring on her finger, her anxieties disappeared. Even though most of the words still escaped her, she smiled at Stephen, and when he opened his hand, Toni plucked the ring from his palm. Slipping it on Laura’s finger, she said, “With this ring, I give you my love, my heart and my soul…for as long as we both shall live. I promise to be your wife, your lover, your friend, and the mother to your children no matter how many you decide we should have.” Toni paused for a moment, and offering Laura a weak grin, she said, “I had a lot of things I wanted to say here today, but it seems that I’ve forgotten most of them.”
“That’s okay, sweet—”
“Darling...I’m not through,” Toni said softly.
Laura blushed hearing a titter roll through the guests like a wave. Biting her lip, she silently apologized to her soon-to-be wife with a roll of her eyes.
After giving Laura’s hand a reassuring squeeze, Toni said, “No one really knows the reasons why things happen, but if I were asked to go back and repeat my past, I would do it in a heartbeat because it led me here to you. Like I said, I’ve forgotten most of what I wanted to say, but there’s one thing I need you to know. A few months ago, I lay dead in the snow...and you are the reason I came back.”
Tears flowed freely from family and friends alike as the two women kissed. Although protocol dictated that their first kiss be chaste, Laura couldn’t resist taking it one step further. When they finally came up for air, they were greeted by loud whistles and applause, and joining hands, they walked toward their guests, both wearing smiles that bested the brilliance of the sun.
***
Running his finger down his face, he traced the scars again. It was now a habit for they were a reminder of his one mistake. He had been so careful, or so he thought, but a heavyset woman with a penchant for bright colors and tabloid newspapers had been his undoing, and he was now paying the price.
Preferring to draw the attention of their readers to economy woes, politicians caught with their pants down and the latest celebrity to overdose on drugs, most publishers had buried the articles about murdered prostitutes in the bowels of their newspapers. Crimes against the dregs of society, as far as they were concerned, were a waste of good ink...but the editors of The Weekly Sun felt differently.
Built on sensationalism and gossip, their pages were filled with out-of-focus photographs of celebrities at their worst, reports of aliens, and articles about unsolved mysteries, both new and old. The murders of prostitutes were still not worthy of headlines, but the gory details of the crimes had been enough to warrant a column or two not far from the front page. With their no-holds-barred approach and a plethora of anonymous tipsters, even though photographs of the corpses were never released, their writers had managed with mere words to keep more than one reader from falling asleep at night. From the horrific conditions of the bodies, to the way the murder weapon had left three almost identical marks across the skin of the victims, no detail, no matter how horrid, had been left out. Quotes from experts stating that the victims appeared to have been brutally raped before and after their demise had been printed in bold and italics, and it was suggested to the women who worked the streets in and around Glasgow that they dye their hair blonde…for he liked it dark.
When the first body was found, swollen and misshapen in an abandoned building, the police had labeled it a random killing. Four months later, the skeletal remains of another woman were discovered in a deserted warehouse, and the same conclusion was reached. Unnamed, unclaimed and unidentifiable, both had been buried in pauper’s graves on the edge of town, but when Jane Doe number three turned up, the police realized the killings were not random...they were serial.
A small task force was formed to work the case, but all the murders had taken place in sections of the city where people made it a habit of looking the other way. With no witnesses or clues, other than the strange, triple-track wounds on the victims’ bodies, after months of investigation the police reached a dead end. But a few days before Christmas, in the wee hours of the morning, a call came into the London Road police station in Glasgow from a woman stating she knew the identity of the man The Weekly Sun had labeled “The Red Light Slasher.”
Believing that the woman had consumed a bit too much Christmas cheer, at first the police simply jotted down a few notes. Ever so politely, they smiled into the phone and listened to her story, but when she made mention of a belt, its buckle fashioned with three prongs on the back...the police stopped smiling.
Undaunted by the weather, even though it took the two Detective Inspectors nearly four hours to travel to Nancy Shaw’s home, it was time well spent. Lying on the floor in her lounge was a weapon covered in the blood of a man who more than once had left his DNA on a brutalized victim.
It took nearly two weeks to find him, but when they did, he wasn’t what they had expected. Courteous and polite, Cameron went with them willingly. He was smart enough to know the beast could not be seen, so keeping it hidden behind compliance and a gentlemanly air, he moved through the months of remand, trial and imprisonment with not so much as a harsh word entered into his file.
It was the way it had to be. He was smart. Bide his time and conduct himself properly and his sentence could be reduced, and so far time had been on his side. There had been ten, but only four had been discovered before the ravages of exposure and rodents had erased the scars of a buckle and the semen of a monster.
Sentenced to life, all believed he would live out his days behind stone and steel, listening to men bellow about their aches, their pains and their victims, but he had other plans. Yes, he would spend years behind bars, but that would give him the time he needed to control the beast...and to think about her.
Black hair and eyes of cinnamon were not easily forgotten, and if he had his way, he would see those eyes again.
The End
***
Thank you for reading Give Me A Reason. As an Independent author, I have no publicity department to depend on to spread the word about my books, so if you liked Give Me A Reason, I hope you can find a few minutes to return to where you purchased it and leave a comment or a review. If you want to contact me personally, please drop me a line at Lyng227@gmail.com and check out my author's page on Smashwords for blog and website information.
Lyn