The Venus Fix Read Online Free PDF Page B

lovingly over the piano’s black-lacquer top. Even though he’d only published a few dozen songs over the years, they’d sold well and afforded him some extras. His apartment was beyond the reach of a detective’s salary, as were the antiques and artwork. These things were indulgences, but he appreciated each and every one of them. Like the whiskey, they smoothed away some of the rougher edges of his job.
    Noah took a drink, put the glass down and started to play. It took almost fifteen minutes for him to slip into the zone where he was no longer conscious of his fingers flying over the keys, or the day he’d had, or the problems waiting for him at the precinct house. There was just music. And he was sailing on it.
    Being a detective was part of him. It was what his dad did. What he always wanted to do. But he played piano from inside. He needed it for balance, for beauty. For the sliver of soul he still had intact. That’s what the music had salvaged.
    The music.
    It had always come through for him the way nothing else had. When his father died, when his long-term relationship had broken up, when a case burned its images into his head and held him captive in its gruesomeness, only the music offered consolation.
    It had been too long since he’d felt the first thrill of the birth of a new jazz piece. He needed to hear one now, so he stayed at it long after the whiskey was gone, longer than he should have, considering how many hours he’d been awake.
    The sounds that rose up soothed him even when they made his listeners want to weep, but there was no one there to hear him that night. That mattered. But not that much. The music mattered more. It was his faith. As long as he could write it, and as long as a few people showed up to listen to him play it on Saturday nights at the jazz bar around the corner, he could take the darkness when it came.
    Inside of him, that darkness churned. Until he’d met Morgan he’d never tried to explain it to anyone. But she’d understood. Because she was insightful and listened to him with her heart as hard as she listened with her head. She did everything like that.
    But it was more than that. Morgan had understood because she had that same darkness inside of her.
    Morgan.
    He pounded the keys.
    Morgan.
    Morgan of the fathomless brown eyes brimming with compassion. Morgan of the skin that felt too soft for his callusedfingers. He closed his eyes. Notes poured out. He could almost feel her head on his chest, her tears wetting his skin.
    You let me cry and it doesn’t scare you,
she’d said to him once.
And that’s practically some kind of miracle. If only I believed in miracles.
    It was the same for him, too. Because of their professions, they were both confronted with proof of too much depravity. Evidence of too much evil shoved in their faces, twenty-four hours a day. They had no choice but to focus on it. You couldn’t just shake off the darkness when you got home. Couldn’t just drown it in a drink, though God knows how many of his fellow officers tried.
    He liked the idea that what he was writing would be Morgan’s song. Then he smiled at the utter romanticism of the thought.
    Noah worked on it for a while longer, wanting to get it down and smoothed out before he saw her again.
    They hadn’t gotten off to a good start when they’d first met. They clashed as much as they connected. And now they didn’t see each other often enough. Unlike so many people who fell into being together all the time, they hadn’t. The old-fashioned pacing was foreign to him, reminding him of a time and place he’d never experienced. It made him that much more aware of how tenuous their connection still was.
    The song was complicated: an enigma for a few bars that turned suddenly, revealing a hint of sensuality. It was uneasy. Edgy. And exciting.
    Parts of Morgan were closed down so tight that he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to pry them open. For the present, he wasn’t trying. When she