Chapter 23: Someone Else
awesome banner by dampersnspoons
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A/N: Spike's big secret is revealed! (But it's not his deepest darkest secret. All in time, my pretties, all in time...)
A/N#2: Many thanks again to dampersnspoons for the soundboarding. The Dynasty line is dampers-inspired. AND, she made the pretty story banner! Soon she will be taking over my central nervous system and moving my arms and legs. Which is good, because frankly I'm tired of it.
"I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" lyrics © 1937 Irving Berlin
"You've been quiet, Buffy," Lindsey said in the middle of a case discussion at the kitchen counter. "What do you think?"
"Yes, Buffy," Lilah condescended, "What do you think?"
Up until that moment, Buffy was thinking about covering her tracks. Now she was thinking, I think I want to punch you in the face. "I think," she said, opening Darla's folder, "we have to be especially careful with our assumptions."
"Oh really?" Lilah caught her drift, but didn't believe Buffy had thought that statement through. "How so?"
"The judge will need solid proof that this was a forgery, not an error."
"Of course it wasn't an error," Lilah argued. "His bank account suddenly quadrupled; there's a pattern across the board of lost and altered evidence--"
"You of all people should know coincidence doesn't fly in court! We need the coroner's entire career record, character witnesses, everything we can to show that he wouldn't make a mistake in determining cause of death."
"That's a good point," Lindsey said, picking up the one remaining police photo of the car wreck. "I didn't even think of that."
In your face. "Thank you, Lindsey."
"Anything else you want me to do to stall an investigation? Scour the city dump for the murder weapon? Search the ocean floor for Darla's scattered ashes? Count all the stars in the goddamned sky?"
"I'm not trying to stall this, Lilah--"
"So let Lindsey make his move already! He's been waiting ten years."
"Let him?" Buffy scoffed. "I don't control him, he can do whatever he wants!" She waited for corroboration. "Chime in any time, now, Linds."
"She wanted to be buried in Texas," he said, still lost in the same photo. Buffy and Lilah were hushed by his grief. "Under an old oak tree near my house. I was so mad at him when he..." He returned to the present. "Yeah. We gotta do this right."
Buffy rubbed his shoulder, leaned her cheek there. He touched her hair.
"It's late," Lilah said, uncomfortable. "I'll keep in touch."
* * *
Lilah was watching them. Instead of devils on the wall, there were three Lilahs with green skin.
"It wasn't me," Spike said in two voices, one of them female, as Buffy struggled to breathe. "I'm someone else tonight."
Buffy's eyes flew open and she sat up in bed, clutching her neck.
It wasn't me. Even her subconscious was trying to pardon him. She looked down at Lindsey, fast asleep beside her, and thought about the other change in her recurring dream: the voices that blended together, one high, one low. "Harmony."
Maybe her subconscious was actually onto something.
Quietly, she crept to the living room.
As she scanned the evidence for clues, a scenario bloomed in her mind: Darla and Spike have their usual 'I hate you' tryst that includes asphyxiation fun, this time with a strap. He leaves the room. Harmony enters, looking for her husband, and finds Darla asleep in his bed. Consumed by jealousy, Harmony takes the strap that is still around her neck and twists...
Spike returns to the room, sees what she's done. Ever the cold-blooded calculator, he spins the tragedy to his advantage: he'll cover up the murder if Pratt Enterprises can buy her family's lucrative business for next to nothing. The deal goes through, they sign confidentiality agreements and ultimately part ways.
And yet... Why won't you talk to me? His shaky supplications haunted her, forcing her to remember that he had real human feelings. Would he have let Harmony get away with that?
"Babe?" Lindsey asked from the hallway, voice hoarse from sleep. "What are you doing out here? It's four in the morning."
His presence made her theory seem ludicrous. "I dreamt that Harmony did it."
Lindsey paused for a second, then chuckled. "She didn't do it."
Buffy countered with a defensive shrug, "Anything's possible. Jealousy can make you do wacky things."
"No, I--" He sighed, scratching his neck. "Harm was terrified of my mom. She wouldn't go near her. Ever." Gently, he pried the folder out of her hand. "C'mon. Come back to bed."
Buffy relented. She had to accept, once and for all, that the man she'd risked her marriage for was a murderer.
And she would do whatever it took to help her husband prove it.
* * *
Buffy transcribed the codes from the Cartier watch Lindsey had rescued from the trash and put aside for donation. She wasn't sure what she was going to do with them yet, but there were two things in that mansion that might prove their case: the footage of Darla and the existence of that secret room.
Would she go so far as to try to copy the DVD? Take photographs of the dungeon? Pray he wouldn't catch her in the act and strangle her to death?
Probably not. But she tucked the codes into her wallet anyway.
Bzzzzzt.
She'd come to dread the sound of her phone. Yet another message from "Will". Like the others she'd gotten at work that day and all the days since he'd sent the surveillance photos, she immediately deleted it.
Before she could give herself any more time to think, she went to the kitchen to focus on a detailed, organized list for the grocery store.
* * *
The night was unexpectedly cold and rainy. Buffy didn't bring a coat, and she'd parked way at the end of the once-busy lot.
Like her mother used to do in bad weather, she sang softly to herself en route to her car, "Why do I care how much it may storm / I've got my love to keep me warm..."
My heart's on fire... the flame grows higher, so I will weather the storm...
She popped the trunk and began to load it with grocery bags, wondering if her heart was still on fire for Lindsey. So much had changed, gone completely wrong... A car pulled in to the space beside hers, but she didn't think anything of it. "Why do I care..."
"I never heard you sing," he said, making her gasp.
She spun around, hand on her pounding heart.
"Please." Spike smiled at her, picking up one of her grocery bags. "Don't stop on my account."
"What are you...?" She glanced at his car. "Are you following me?"
"Course not. I always shop here at..." he inspected the bag, "Whole Foods."
His playfulness in this context only made him more sinister. "Put that down," Buffy said measuredly, "and get away from me. I mean it. I'll call the police."
"The police? Wh..." He squinted, trying to read her. "You think I would hurt you?"
"Back off!"
He put her bag down and held his hands up. "Buffy. I know that room was startling, but you..." He breathed out, nostrils flaring. "I would never hurt you."
"Oh yeah? Is that what you told her?"
"Who?"
Heart pounding in her throat now, she accused through clenched teeth, "Darla."
A look of genuine confusion. "Darla?"
She kept her eyes firmly on his, waiting to see the guilt shine through. All she got was returned suspicion.
"What's happened, Buffy? What do you know about Darla?"
"I know everything, Spike," she spat, disgusted with his lies.
"Such as," he said guardedly.
"Such as you killed her and made it look like an accident!"
Features contorting in disbelief, Spike reacted as if that was the most shocking accusation he'd ever heard. But then he seemed to piece things together -- a tight, bitter grin had So that's what Lindsey's been up to written all over it. "Get in the car."
"Oh, you're out of your mind if you think I'd even--"
He clamped a gloved hand over her mouth and held her fast. "Get in the bloody car, right now, or I will drag you there myself."
She thrashed against him, yelped into his glove, but he easily overtook her, wrangled her into his back seat and shut the door.
Buffy fought for her life, kicking, biting, scratching. She was not letting this happen to her, she would kill him first--
"Stop it, stop it, stop it," he snarled, holding her down. "I didn't kill anyone! She's not dead, all right? Darla is alive."
Buffy stopped struggling. "What?"
"Or a close facsimile, anyway," he said scornfully.
Thunderstruck, Buffy could only breathe, "Wh..."
Releasing her, Spike sat up, straightened his coat and pressed the intercom button. "Would you get that last bag and lock her car, please?"
"I saw her coroner's report," Buffy said, watching him warily. "Her death certificate."
"And yet she lives on," he said with an inconvenienced sigh, flipping open his phone.
Darla wasn't dead? It couldn't be. It didn't make any sense. What kind of Dynasty shit was this? "I don't believe you."
"You don't have to." Phone at his ear, he muttered, "Just gotta find out what fleabag she's inhabiting this week, and we'll be on our merry way."
It took Buffy a moment to register his intent. "Wait. What are you doing?"
"Proving to you that I'm not a murderer."
WTF? OMG! TBC.
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A NOTE ABOUT PLAGIARISM: Don't do it. Call me crazy, but I don't like finding my hard work pasted into other people's stories. If I find out you've plagiarized me or any other author, I will make sure everyone knows it. If you're not clear on what 'plagiarism' means, the definition is here.