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Lumen Obscura	By : PinkSiamese Category: -Misc TV Shows > Crossovers Views: 1077 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Hannibal or Dexter in any of their incarnations (TV shows, movies, books). I am making no money off this story.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
The bright light is disorienting. Lumen shakes her head. She picks up the jug, takes a long drink.
Another woman leaves the building. She pushes through the doors with one hand, her feet swift. She draws closer to the road and Lumen recognizes her; it’s the long-haired agent in the photograph, and today she is wearing a loose knee-length black skirt and a sleeveless blouse of iridescent plum. Her near-black hair is left down. She, too, is on the phone, it is held up to her ear. On her feet are practical-looking sandals. She pauses, turns, shifts the strap of her purse higher up on her shoulder.
Lumen takes another drink. “I wonder where they’re all going?” She glances at her phone. “It’s a little early to just knock off for the day.”
The dark-haired woman hangs up the phone. She folds her arms, turns toward the doors.
Will Graham walks through them.
“Okay.” Lumen starts the car. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Will turns his head toward the woman. He shades his eyes as he walks. He’s dressed in khakis and white button-up shirt, they look rumpled. The strong sunlight passes through the shirt like a sigh.
The dark-haired woman loosens her stance. She starts to talk, snaps her fingers, shifts her weight to one hip. She tilts her head and folds her arms, it’s apparent to Lumen from her loose shoulders, her relaxed spine, the way she’s tapping her toe that she’s giggling.
The look on Will’s face is both remote and vaguely bewildered. He looks away, starts to smile; he hesitates, the smile flickers in and out, hovers over his face like a bird or some other animal that can’t decide whether or not it wants to alight.
Lumen cranks up the air conditioning. She rolls up all the windows. The air goes from hot to lukewarm, tepid, it blasts through her hair. It gains a cool edge.
Will nods. Speaks. The smile touches down, flashes quick and brilliant. His smile passes over him like the shadow of a raptor.
Lumen holds her breath.
The woman turns her body, gestures toward the parking lot. Will nods again. They move onto the pavement. They walk at arm’s-length distance, out of sync in their steps. They stop. The woman nods. Her hands come out, describe the parameters of something.
They part ways.
Lumen exhales.
The woman walks to a little red car. Will passes her by, waves. He swerves into patches of shade. He looks down. When he comes to a white sedan with dark windows, he pauses. He pulls the keys out of his back pocket. The taillights flash.
Lumen takes hold of the steering wheel. The vents blow ice-cold air into her face. She clenches her teeth, eyes on his back windshield. She tightens her grip, writhes through a full-body shiver.
The white car backs out of the parking space. Lumen looks in the rearview. She glances over her shoulder, pulls away from the curb. Will approaches the road, flicks on his blinker. She flicks on hers. He turns into traffic.
She looks both ways, glances at his license plate, looks both ways again. She eases out into the lane. A low-slung black import slides between them and she taps the brakes.
The white car slows in anticipation of a red light.
Lumen slows a little more. Another car turns into the space between them, this one bottle-green and some kind of hatchback. It rolls to a stop. Lumen does too.
The light changes. Will drifts over into the right-hand turning lane. Lumen bites her lip, waits for the import and the hatchback to pass him before hitting her blinker. She pulls in behind the white car.
“Looks like you’re…okay, okay,” she says, following him into a McDonald’s drive-thru. “Shit. Do I have any money?”
The line slows to a halt. Lumen throws it in park, grabs her purse. She pulls out her wallet, feels for dollars. Her eyes move back and forth between her lap and the shape of Will’s silhouette.
“What can you get for three bucks? I don’t know…coffee?” She tosses the money onto the dash. “One of those gross little burgers?”
The line starts up again. She steadies the wheel, rolls forward. The white car reaches the speaker. Lumen rolls her window down.
“I’ll have a quarter pounder.”
Lumen sees the slope of his nose, the stubble on his chin.
“And a coffee. Iced. Large, please. Some fries too.”
The girl on the other side of the speaker sounds about sixteen. In a light Spanish accent, asks if he wants to make that into a meal.
“I don’t…I don’t know. Sure. I guess. Small. Make it small. I still want the large coffee, though.”
She quotes a total.
“Thank you.” He rolls up the window.
Lumen comes to the speaker.
“Welcome to McDonald’s. What can I get for you today?”
“I’ll have a small iced coffee, please. Vanilla if you’ve got it.”
“We’ve got it. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Okay…does it look right on the screen?”
Lumen glances at it. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Okay. That’ll be two eighty-nine, please drive around.”
“Thank you.”
Lumen’s phone buzzes. She looks down. Her purse is still in her lap. She reaches inside, feels around. She watches Will’s hand pass money.
She grabs her phone, turns it over.
As it so happens, my life is taking me to Miami tonight. I am unsure as to how long I will be in town, but I would love to take you up on your offer of breakfast. Or would you perhaps prefer dinner?
Her mouth drops open, her eyebrows shoot up; she shakes her head in a set of forceful, exaggerated motions. Her eyes roll heavenward. She first flaps, then surrenders her hands. She rests them on the wheel. She takes deep breaths. She blinks several times. She rolls up to the window.
“Two eighty-nine.”
Lumen hands over the cash. The girl passes her a clear plastic cup packed full of ice. It swirls with momentum; the coffee itself is the milky golden color of caramel.
“Thank you. Eleven cents. Have a nice day!”
“I will try, thank you.”
The white car pulls up to the exit. Lumen dumps the coffee in the cup holder, tosses the napkins and straw into the passenger seat.
The traffic is heavy. His turn signal winks on. Lumen’s car emerges into the sun. She rolls up her window. She pulls up behind him.
Lumen grips the steering wheel, bares her teeth, thrashes herself against it in a violent burst of pique. She pretends to scream.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Of all the…”
The white car rolls across traffic, turns against the flow.
“Goddammit.” She hits the gas, jerks to a stop. She slaps her blinker on. “Shitty fucking timing, Hannibal. Like…the shittiest. You don’t even know.”
A break in traffic shows itself and she stomps the gas. She glimpses Will’s back bumper, now five cars ahead of her. She sits up, sees the long string of traffic lights ahead, one every half-mile as they flash through their colors. None of them are in sync. They cut the traffic into segments, shuffle them in and out of order.
It takes twenty minutes for the lights to shave down the distance between them.
“If I had to guess,” she murmurs, turning onto a causeway, “we’re going to the beach.”
The land falls back, gives itself over to sheets of pale glittering water. Low-growing palms line both sides of the road, their fan-shaped leaves forming deep green globes. A haze on the horizon shrouds a scattering of silver high-rises.
The concrete lifts away from the ground. Lumen speeds over the water, the sensation of acceleration building in her belly, her thighs. The white car leaps ahead of her as the bridge reaches its apex. The horizon has a skyline on one side, is fashioned out of low scrubby greenery on the other. She stomps down on the gas. Railings blur past.
I have already been this way once today. In the morning, the light so much whiter than this, the green of the short trees like a fit, a spasm of aggressive color. The long white strand was empty, stretching away. Its high-tide line was snarled, thick with clumps of brown seaweed…except for one place, it’s quite a walk to get to it, it’s amazing that the police and the FBI would not have had to work so hard to keep the lookie-loos away. There, the seaweed is gone. The heavy wind has not quite raked the footfalls out of the sand. It’s a disturbed place, a broken line. No one there but pelicans, sandpipers, broken shells and the incessant sound of the water, the wind, smoothing everything back into place.
Will drives deeper into the wild scrubland, through spotty shade. The branches have the thin look of having grown close to the sea, twisted in the narrow places by constant wind, the leaves sheared into immature shapes.
They are the only two cars on the road.
Lumen glances at her coffee. She grabs the straw off the passenger seat, bites the paper off it, pulls it loose with her teeth. She spits it onto the dash. She picks up the cup. With her mouth, she aims and slides the straw down through the plastic lid.
“I don’t even like coffee,” she says, taking a suck.
The white car slows. It turns into a long parking lot. Lumen passes him. He parks beside a sandy pathway. She puts six empty spaces between them, pulls into the spindly, lacy shade of a clump of coconut palms and kills the engine.
Will climbs out of the car. He carries his paper bag with him, coffee balanced in his other hand. The wind lifts his hair, tosses it against his cheeks. It ripples through his shirt.
Lumen watches him disappear. She takes another drink, the ice has half-melted, diluting the bitter bite of the brew. The coffee cup sweats into her hand. The vanilla flavoring is sticky and sweet; the scent makes her think of oleanders.
She rolls down the windows. The wind tumbles in, smells of salt and hot pavement. It has a cool edge, soft, it blows the heat off her skin and combs the sweat out of her hair. She drinks more coffee. It tingles on her tongue, the caffeine rushing to her head. She dumps it back in the cup holder. She wipes her mouth, pulls her phone out of her purse.
I’ve got a lot of free time at the moment. Breakfast or dinner? I’ll leave that choice to you.
She tucks the phone into her pocket, gets out of the car. The wind whips around her, pushes her hair back from her face. It passes through the thin knit material of her tank top. Grains of sand rattle against her bare shins. She takes her purse out of the car, loops it over her shoulder. She takes the jug of water.
As she walks down the path, she touches her back pocket. She’s wearing old cutoffs, the denim a faded blue rubbed thin by years of washings.
I remember that night, how I released that pig-fucker’s blood and Dexter used it to find me. The pig-fucker got the knife away from me, he kicked it away. Big blood drops almost black in the moonlight. Its handle was mother-of-pearl; it glowed white in the moonlight. My first knife.
Here, the beach is narrow. Lumen walks down to the water’s edge, turns her back on the point. She looks down.
I wanted it back.
Lumen walks, swigging from her jug of water; the immensity of the ocean is distracting, it pulls her gaze away from the sand, onto itself, shows off its hues that are like all the moods of the sky, its clarity, and its lazy rhythm. Her feet slow down. She takes off her sandals, carries them looped over the fingers of one hand. The long golden light of afternoon slants over the tiny waves. It chips flakes of hot metal off the water’s surface, scatters them.
She pulls her gaze away from the indistinct horizon. She sees him. Though there are three others on the beach, one is in a lounger, the other two asleep on towels, she knows Will by his stance, the carton of French fries in his hands and the way his pants are rolled up past his calves so he can stand in the water. He has taken his shirt off, tied it low around his waist. The khaki bunches around his knees is darkened.
He stands facing what remains of the crime scene, its fingerprint on the landscape. He tosses French fries to the seagulls and they screech, wheeling, scrabbling in circles. The birds joust with each other, pluck them free of the hot sand.
Lumen leaves her sandals and her jug at the tide line. She walks out into the water, it’s warm close to the edge, where it sits on top of the sand. She wades in deeper. It stays tepid, gentle. Her shadow stretches toward the horizon, dappled on the sea bottom with scintillating light. She goes out until the water climbs up past her thighs. She looks back. She moves her purse higher across her shoulder. The water’s subtle rhythmic weight tugs at her knees.
He’s still there, ankle-deep, the empty French fry carton stuffed into his back pocket. The sun shows the beginnings of a tan on his forearms. The rest of him is white, smooth, freckled across the shoulder blades from past summers. The nape of his neck and the small of his back gleam with sweat.
She takes her phone out of her pocket. She pulls her purse around to her front, unzips it. She turns her back on the land, moves to tuck the phone inside. She glances at the screen instead.
Why not both?
Lumen shrugs a shoulder, turns the phone sideways. Her thumbs tap the screen. “Why not indeed?”
Breakfast in the morning, then?
She squints at the letters, scrutinizing them. She hits send. The phone buzzes.
Supper thoughts?
“No, Dex,” she murmurs, tapping out a reply. “No supper thoughts.”
Fingers dig into the back of her waistband. Lumen freezes. Her body goes numb and then the adrenaline comes, blooming hot, swelling the pulse of her blood, crashing it up into her face. Everything is too bright; the pale sky, the water, the haze that holds the white horizon in its grip. Her eyes sting.
The hand rolls into a hard fist. Lumen’s fingers clamp down on her phone.
Will brings his mouth to her ear. “Why are you following me?”
The blade of her knife rests on her belly, between her shorts and her tank top, along the narrow strip of rising and falling skin.
“I don’t know you,” Lumen pants.
The edge of the blade grazes her skin, sends gooseflesh cascading down her back. Lumen’s breath catches, her spine arches. She gasps. He sets his grip on the hilt.
“I’ve never seen you before. I-I…I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Shhhhhhh shh shh shh,” he breathes, lowering his voice. “Yes. You do.”
“I-I don’t…” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I-I… don’t,” she whispers.
His voice is low and confidential. “I know who you are.” His breath touches her ear. “Your name is Lumen Ann Pierce. Your date of birth is February tenth, nineteen seventy-nine. Place of birth, Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
Lumen’s mouth opens. Her breath comes quick and short.
“And your last known address,” he says, speaking slowly, “was eight sixty-five Rock River Road, Argonne, Minnesota. Your driving record is remarkably pristine. Your criminal background check comes back clean.”
Her hands tremble.
“Why are you following me?” He shakes his head, enunciates. “I can’t figure it out.”
Lumen sucks in a breath. “Why are you following me?”
“I’m not.”
“Bullshit,” she whispers.
Will lets go of her jeans. He tosses the knife into the water.
Lumen whips around. She takes big ungainly steps back and the combination of water and shifty sand knocks her off-balance. Her arms wheel, hands flapping; her hips twist as she scrambles to regain her footing. She watches him, shoves her phone into her purse.
Will stands, arms loose at his sides. He looks at her. His cheekbones and the tops of his shoulders are flushed with the sun, his khakis soaked halfway up the thighs. Wind blows his hair off his forehead. “Now I suppose you’re going to lie to my face.”
Lumen hugs herself. “No.”
“Good.” He shades his eyes.
“That was a little dramatic,” she says, folding her arms. “You could have just…you know, walked up to me and asked.”
“Maybe you’re more dangerous than you look.”
Lumen lifts her chin. “Maybe.”
“Or maybe not.” He turns his palms up. “I don’t know, do I?”
She shifts her weight. “No.”
He swallows. “I…uh…I ran your plates in Minnesota. After…after I pulled over.” He looks at the horizon. “When I saw you, there on the side of the road.” He glances at her. “I couldn’t tell.”
“It’s fine.”
Will nods. “Okay.”
“I…I only knew you were in town, um…because my…” Lumen hooks hair behind her ears. “My friend, well, the person I’m staying with. He works for Miami Metro.” She pushes at the sand with her toes, watches it swirl. “I recognized you.” She glances at him. “From Tattlecrime.”
“Oh.” His eyebrows lift and he nods, a corner of his mouth twitching. He looks away, rubs the back of his neck. “I see.”
“I followed the case a little,” she says. “But only a little.”
Will moves a hand over his face. “Uh huh.”
“You know…for what it’s worth, I think Freddie Lounds is full of shit.” Lumen shrugs a shoulder, looks at him sidelong. “For what it’s worth.”
“Yeah, for what it’s worth.” He nods, then shakes his head. “Uh huh.”
“She’s a little prone to hyperbole.”
He snorts. “Slightly.”
“So…” Lumen leans to one side. She tilts her head, lifts her chin at him. “Where’s your gun?”
He looks down the beach. “I left it in the car.”
“Not very smart, huh? Considering I could be more dangerous than I look.”
He looks at her. Blinks. “I don’t need one.”
Her eyebrows go up. “Oh?”
Will tilts his head. “Not always.”
She runs a hand across her mouth. She lifts an eyebrow. “I see.”
He folds his arms. “Am I…am I going to see you again?”
“Why would you?”
“I mean…I mean like this,” he says, gesturing at their surroundings. “Behind me on the highway, across the street from the Miami FBI field office.” He smiles a little. “In the McDonald’s drive-thru.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He rocks from foot to foot, watches the surface of the water. He lifts his eyebrows, glances at her from beneath his eyelashes. “That’s not very convincing.”
“Um, okay. Well…why would I? To use your logic,” she says, gesturing at him, “I don’t have any reason to.”
“That is true.”
Lumen peers at the seafloor, stretches out with her foot. She curls her toes around the knife’s hilt. “Am I going to see you again?”
“No.”
She balances on one leg, pulls the knife up enough to grab it. She rinses it, shakes the water off. She folds it up. “Even if you just happen to see me pulled over on the side of the road?”
“Yes.” He blushes and nods, rubs his chin. He shakes his head. “Even if I see you on the shoulder, all four tires blown out, black smoke billowing out from beneath your crashed and dented and popped hood, I will not pull over.”
Lumen puts the knife in her front pocket. She struggles not to grin. “Promise?”
He nods once, glances away from her face. “Yes.”
“Okay.” She backs up.
“Okay.”
She turns, hugs her purse to her chest. The space behind her fills in with wind, brings itself in close; in its brush against her skin she feels her departure the way she would feel someone take their warmth, their heat, with them as they leave a room. She walks toward the shore.
The dry sand is white beneath the sun. The sound of the waves wraps around her; it seems loud, overpowering. She looks up. She scans the beach. The others have gone, left only footprints behind.
Lumen bends over. She snatches up her jug. The water inside has clouded the plastic with condensation. She brushes sand off the bottom. She picks up her sandals. She looks back, over her shoulder.
Will’s back is to the sea. The water is still up past his knees. He braces himself against the low waves, shades his eyes with the flat of his hand.
- 9
- 10
- 11
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Lumen Obscura