Free The Hidden Man by Anthony Flacco

I can get married. Or be a spinster schoolteacher. Or a spinster librarian. Or maybe even a spinster retail clerk! Isn’t that wonderful?”
    “Vignette!” he was loud, nearly shouting. Randall never shouted at her. It immediately got her attention. When she finally raised her eyes to meet his gaze, she was surprised to see more pain in him than she felt herself.
    “I have to be able to trust you, Vignette.”
    “But…You can, though. You still can. Regardless.”
    “Police training?”
    “Sometimes I could explode, Randall! I swear I could! None of the roads ahead of me are going to anywhere that I need to be. Not even anywhere I can stand to think of being.”
    “Regardless. The three of us only have each other as long as there is that trust.”
    “You and Shane can trust me.”
    “We can. Except when you decide that you need to do something like this.”
    Vignette sighed, dropped her head into her hands, and silently rocked from side to side.
    “I know you have to live on your own terms. But I hate to see you rely on your money like that.”
    “Randall, if I keep my life simple, I can live off of that investment for years and years. And all of that time, I won’t have to cram myself into somebody else’s little world.”
    “That’s good. But what I’m afraid of is that at some point the money runs out or the investment goes bad, and if that happens, you’ll be stuck out there on your own without any decent skills.”
    “I can do all kinds of things, as far as working at a job, Randall. I just can’t stomach the way that they’ll treat me. And I don’t care if it’s the same way that they treat the other women. Those damned women seem like a herd of cows to me.”
    “So it’s not a pointless job that you’re afraid of having to endure?”
    “Hell no. It’s that I’ll be expected to endure it without getting into fights with morons. How am I supposed to do that?”
    He chuckled. “Yeah, well, when you put it that way…”
    “How much did they tell you about me?”
    “Just whatever they found out when the tip came in. They only got it late this morning. What did you do about your hair?”
    Vignette removed the wig. Her hair was shorter than Shane’s. Still, he could hardly believe that this face had deceived so many men through several days of testing. It seemed to him that her pixie features were accented by the short hair. She must have clinched the male illusion with sheer attitude.
    Blackburn had not lived with this person for the past nine years without learning something about how to coexist with a young female. This one was an actress, first of all. He knew the proper response.
    “Well I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a woman wear her hair that short, but you know, you really make it look good.”
    She stared at him with a faint smile. Finally, she stood up and walked over to him, put her arms around him, and then just stayed there.
    “I’m sorry, Randall,” she finally said, her voice muffled by his shoulder. “I never thought it through. I was in it before I knew it. And then it just seemed like I had to keep it up. It was like being caught in fast water.”
    “All right, then. I’m thankful you didn’t get hurt.”
    “Hurt somebody else, you mean.” She gave him a tiny grin.
    He laughed. “Just let me trust you. From now on, Vignette. Please.”
    She looked up and squarely met his gaze, then hugged him again, nodding. Suddenly it frightened her to think how close she had come to setting off a real disaster for both of them. A wave of guilt overwhelmed her. She was glad that Shane was not there to see this.
    “I’m sorry.”
    They stood hugging for another quiet moment, before Vignette stiffened slightly and pulled back to look at him. “When did you say they found out?”
    “Late this morning. Somebody had a couple of officers deliver a note to Chief White. I guess it wasn’t too long before he had my captain summoned to a meeting and really chewed him