by B. T. Alive
“They’re not going to attack us both, face to face, for no reason,” Tina said. “They’re clearly the sneaky type. Besides, I doubt they’re here now. We’re looking for evidence. A shred of cloth, a footprint, or whatever it is they were doing out here.”
“This is a hiking trail, on public land,” I said. “Did you consider… hiking?”
“The feeling was secretive,” Tina said. “Like they knew they could get in trouble.”
“Great,” I said. “We’re following a sneaky, secretive killer into a forest with so much dense undergrowth that the visibility’s about ten feet.”
“Summer, relax,” Tina said. “It’s just a forest. It’s nature.”
“I’m a city girl, Tina,” I said. “Trees are for hiding axe-murderers.”
Tina laughed. “I hike these paths all the time. I’d be more worried you might slip up ahead and fall down the cliff.”
“Are you joking?” I said. “You’re not joking.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “The view is spectacular. We can take a nice rest from hunting our killer. Seriously, Summer, I need to get you out more in nature—”
“What was that?” I snapped.
Tina looked confused. “I didn’t hear—”
“Quiet!”
I stopped walking, and I stood with my aching thighs and calves angled to stay steady on the rocky slope. I strained to listen, but all I could hear was my own panting.
“What did it sound like?” Tina murmured, almost in a whisper.
“Not sure,” I murmured back. “A voice?”
“Could be hikers. Or even the wind.”
“Just listen,” I hissed.
We stood on the slope in silence. Above us, behind us, around us, and everywhere, the leaves and branches rustled their secret opinion of our presence.
Finally, Tina said, “I’m really not hearing anything.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe it was the wind.”
“No worries,” Tina said, and then she shrieked like she’d been stabbed.
Her scream gashed through the stillness, and as it echoed, she clutched her side and collapsed against a tree. Her face was contorted and draining white.
“Tina!” I said. “Oh my God, what—”
“It’s… close…” she rasped. She was grinding her teeth, the veins throbbing all over her skull. “Hurry…”
“I won’t leave you!”
“Catch… whoever… no!” She screamed again, her jaw distended wide and her eyes bulging with horror, and she tumbled back from the tree. I lunged to save her head from all the rocks on the ground, but when I caught her, my Touch zapped hard, and I tripped and together we crashed.
I could instantly feel bruises from where I’d mashed my back into a root knob and my thigh into a jutting rock. But all I cared about was Tina. “Tina!” I said. “Tina, wake up!”
I struggled to prop her up. Her head lolled back on her neck as I set her against a tree. But she was breathing steadily, and her color was returning, and her eyelids fluttered and opened.
“Summer?” she said. She winced and felt her back. “I can’t tell if that’s me or you,” she groaned.
“Probably both.”
“Where are we?” she said. She looked around. “What happened?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I think you felt something… really bad. You were grabbing at your chest and screaming and then you just flipped backward. I had to catch you… do you remember any of that?”
“Not sure…” She furrowed her brows, but she still looked dazed. “Oh, right… this is the park, we came out here because I got that feeling… Summer!” She grabbed my (clothed) shoulder. “Someone must be hurt. Come on.” She staggered up.
“What about you?” I said. “Are you okay? What was that?”
“Just sore,” she said. She tried to hustle up the slope, but she was still panting and unsteady.
I climbed after her. “Shouldn’t we call someone?”
“There’s no signal out here,” she said. “I know basic first aid, enough to keep them alive until we can get real help.”
“Yeah, if we stay alive,” I muttered. But I kept climbing.
The path got more and more rocky as we climbed higher, and Tina was struggling to regain her strength. Usually her empathic waves passed quickly, but whatever this was had worn her to near-exhaustion. Still, her gaze flitted non-stop across the dense underbrush, and she turned her head at the faintest noise that might be a moan for help.
Then we came to the clearing.
It was a round plateau of gravelly pebbles, with a wide stretch of blue sky and not a single tree. To the left, the path wound on up back into the forest, but to the right, the plateau curved and ended in a steep edge.
Tina tensed. Then, with slow, steady steps, she walked across toward the edge.
“Tina?” I said. “Hold up, you said that’s a cliff!”
I went after her, hustling at first but then slowing down as the view of the other mountains began to yawn beneath me, and I realized just how far below the bottom might be. The strange thing was how lovely it all was, the sky utterly flawless in eternal blue, and the waves of mountains somehow close, as if part of you truly believed that you could leap from the precipice and be caught and cradled in that soft, soft green.
Tina got there first. I still haven’t quite forgiven myself for that. The noise she made… I still hear it sometimes in my worst dreams.
I forced myself the last few steps and looked over the edge.
At the bottom of the cliff, at least fifty feet below, lay the body of Paris Stirling.
Part V
Chapter 35
When we’d climbed the back stairs at the police station and hammered on the sheriff’s door, the first thing we smelled was soup.
Fragrant, seasoned, heavenly soup. The smell alone was nourishing.
Tina, who’d recovered most of her color but had still needed lots of breaks on the long walk back, took a deep, lingering breath.
“I know this soup!” she cried. She walked right in through the sheriff’s front door. “Grandma!”
At the sheriff’s stove, Grandma was stirring a veritable cauldron. She turned, strode toward us, and hugged us both. Grandma’s hugs are infrequent, but they have a stern, revitalizing quality. Like hugging a bear that you know would attack a horde of lions to keep you safe.
“Imelda told us you called,” Grandma said.
Tina nodded. “We waited on the path until the state troopers got there. To make sure they’d… find it.”
“And that no hikers would get there first,” I said.
“Tina!” the sheriff called from his bedroom. “Summer! Come on back!”
“Wait a minute!” Grandma called. She clasped Tina’s shoulder and studied her face. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” Tina said, with a smile. “Give me some of that soup, and I’ll be downright peachy.”
“That was too close,” Grandma said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Grandma frowned. “An empath can experience another’s pain. If the damage is too great… or even fatal…”
“Wait, what?” I said. “You mean if Tina was too close to somebody getting killed—”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Tina said. “Distance matters a lot. Especially for amateurs like me.”
“Paris certainly ended up at a… distance,” I said.
“All the same,” Grandma said. “I want you to tell me exactly what happened. Every last detail.”
“That’ll be Summer, then,” Tina said. “She had to catch me, and the zap wiped my memory.”
“You fell?” Grandma demanded. She turned to me with narrowed eyes. “Tell me,” she said. “Every detail.”
I told her everything, while she scooped out her shimmering, golden-brown concoction of chicken, stew beef, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, handmade noodles, and leeks, to name only a few ingredients. And tha
t’s not even mentioning the secret spices. It was fortunate that I’d nearly finished my story before I ate my first spoonful, because between all the hiking and the shocks of the day, that taste awakened a craving that was pretty much ravenous. I was onto my second bowl before I’d even sat down.
Tina was wolfing it down with almost equally unladylike abandon. That high metabolism can be a liability. On my lesser days, I might feel a twist of envy to see her scarf down a second muffin, but just then, I was happy and grateful and relieved to see the glow return to her cheeks.
“What is this, Grandma?” I said. “What did you put in this soup?”
Grandma was watching Tina with a brooding air, and she only answered me with a dismissive wave. “It’s an old family recipe,” she muttered.
“Ladies?” the sheriff called from the bedroom. He sounded plaintive. “Imelda barely told me what happened out there! I need your full report. You’re welcome to bring those bowls back here.”
“And you’re welcome to get off your lazy behind!” Grandma called back.
“Grandma,” Tina admonished, with a stifled giggle. “Coming, Sheriff!” she called, and she rose from the kitchen chair and went back to his room.
I got up to follow, but Grandma said, “Summer.”
“What is it, Grandma?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s more a question of what’s right,” she said, and her perfectly made-up lips crinkled in a tiny smile. “From what you told me, sweet pea, you might have saved Tina’s life.”
“What?” I said. “How? She might have hit her head if she’d fallen, but—”
“She’s an empath, child. That woman was killed. You broke the connection.”
“My… Touch?” I said. My skin was prickling with dread and wonder. “It can prevent empathy?”
“It disrupts Tuning. Connecting to morphic fields,” she said. “For most people, the immediate effect is losing touch with their recent memories.”
“What do memories have to do with morphic fields?” I said. “Aren’t memories in your brain?”
She smiled. “Not like you think. But for those with certain gifts, that disruption extends… further.”
“So you’re saying, the pain that Tina was picking up could have killed her? And I saved her? I basically shielded her?”
“Shielding is different, but, basically, yes. I believe you did,” Grandma said. She nodded. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would do without that girl. Or you.”
Suddenly I felt the urge to cry, hot in my eyes and digging into my throat. This was starting to happen way too often.
I managed to hold it back. But Grandma placed a warm hand on my long-sleeved arm.
“Sweet pea,” she said. “Don’t be afraid of your better nature.”
I laughed, with only a tiny catch in it. “You’re assuming I have one,” I said. “Come on. I’d better get in there with Tina before the sheriff starts whining again.”
And I scuttled off to the bedroom.
Sheriff Jake was still in bed, but he was sitting up, his back against the headboard, and talking with Tina with animation and zest. He didn’t look one hundred percent (did he ever?) but Grandma’s ministrations had pulled him back from the brink.
A wave of relief washed through my chest… way, way more than I would ever have expected. Oh no… was I starting to care about Sheriff Jake too? Maybe I was just feeling Tina’s relief. Wait, no, that would be backward…
“It’s got to be that niece, Jamie Graves,” said Sheriff Jake. “That woman’s fortune just doubled.”
Tina and I had had a long walk home to chat about it, and though we hadn’t said much, we’d come to the same conclusion. Well, I had.
“Tina, did you tell him about the argument?” I said. “How they were fighting about the land?”
Tina nodded. “But isn’t it all too obvious?” she said. “I mean, Jamie is already a millionaire. Why would she risk destroying her life to get a second million?”
“You don’t know the mindset,” said Sheriff Jake. “Some people can never get enough.”
Grandma, who had come in behind me, nodded. “And I understand she has an added interest in the orchard for… personal reasons.”
The sheriff grunted. “That’s all Cade needs,” he said, brooding. “Another doomed relationship.”
“Excuse me?” I demanded.
“Oh, did I say that out loud?” he said, rousing himself and apparently sincere. “I apologize. Pardon me. It must be these blasted meds.”
“You refuse to take your meds,” Grandma put in.
“What do you mean doomed?” I said.
“It’s nothing,” he said. He bit his mustache. “It’s not you personally.”
“That’s worse!” I said.
“Can we please stay on task?” Grandma said. “Now, if this young woman Jamie is your prime suspect, Jake, do you intend to apprehend her yourself? Or are you handing this off to the state troopers while you take yourself a cozy little nap?”
Sheriff Jake grimaced. “They’re already managing this new crime scene, aren’t they?”
“At the bottom of a cliff,” Grandma scoffed. “Do you truly intend to use that as an excuse to sleep the day away while this Jamie roams my town, scot-free?”
The sheriff glared, and a low growl rumbled in his throat. Personally, I felt a slight disinclination to stick around for the duration of this cage match.
But Tina was grinning, her eyes gleaming with amusement. So I figured that no one was going to get permanently injured. Probably.
WHOOSH.
I don’t know what other word to use for “a human nose breathing in way harder than it should be able to without breaking something”, but that’s what happened next. Sheriff Jake closed his eyes and inhaled, flaring his nostrils so wide that I thought his skin might crack.
“That Jamie woman is close,” he grunted. “Let’s go.”
Grandma shooed us out into the living room, and a few minutes later, he emerged from his bedroom and greeted the three of us, once more resplendent in his sheriff regalia.
Grandma gave a curt nod of approval. “Now this time, make sure you get extra rest.”
“You were just lambasting me for taking it easy!” he bellowed.
“I didn’t say not to do your job,” she snapped. “But I don’t want to have to play nursemaid again in the near future just because you won’t act your age.”
“My age?” he said. “Do you have any idea what my biology’s capable of?”
“Careful, Sheriff,” Tina said. “She’s been known to slap a man if he gets fresh.”
“Tina,” snapped pretty much all the rest of us, especially me. Tina smothered a giggle and tried to look contrite.
“Come on,” he said. “Before I lose the scent.”
He took another huge whiff… but this time, he coughed, and his nose jerked wrong, and tiny patches of fur shimmered in the crevices of his face.
“Sweet Lord,” Grandma murmured. “Jake, I take it back. You’re in no condition—”
“I’m fine,” he growled, as his face blinked back to normal. He stomped to his door.
I hustled after Sheriff Jake, following him down the stairs. Tina clattered right behind me. When we reached the porch, he strode toward the sidewalk, but at the steps, he paused. He inhaled another whiff, though this time he kept it more gentle, which seemed to help, because he didn’t cough or transmogrify his facial structure. Then he turned on his boot heel and pushed inside through the front door.
“The police station?” I said, as I followed him in. “But…”
But nothing. Standing at the bars of Cade’s cell, looking fabulous as always, was Jamie Graves.
Cade saw me and buried his face in his hands.
“Again?” I said. “How long has she been here?”
“Over an hour!” said both Cade and Jamie, with equal frustration.
“Really?” I said. I glared at Cade. “Don’t let us interrupt your quality
time with a freaking murderer!”
Beside me, Tina said, “Ah, Summer….?”
“I was telling her no,” Cade snapped.
“You were?” I said.
“What do you think?” Jamie snapped. She glared at Cade, and then she tossed her hair and turned to go. “Whatever. You know what Wonder Springs needs more than some lame orchard? A parking lot.”
“You wouldn’t,” Cade said.
“She can’t,” I said. “You’re under arrest for murder, girlfriend.”
Jamie scoffed, but her gaze darted to Tina and the sheriff. “That’s not funny,” she said.
“Neither was shoving your Aunt Paris off a cliff,” I said.
“What?” Cade said.
Jamie gasped and clasped both hands over her mouth. Her eyes filmed with tears. “Oh god,” she choked out. “Oh god… no…”
“Oh, please,” I said. “You can drop the act.”
“Summer,” Tina insisted, poking me in the side.
“What?” I snapped. “Do we really have to watch this? Pretending to grieve for the aunt she killed herself?”
“Oh my god, she’s dead,” Jamie wailed. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
“Paris too?” Cade said dully. “I don’t believe it.” He reached through the bars and put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. She turned and clasped him back, shaking, with her forehead pressed between the bars against his shoulder.
“Seriously, Cade?” I said. “Jamie killed her.”
“No, she didn’t,” said Sheriff Jake, solemn. “She couldn’t have.”
“What? I can’t believe you’re falling for this—”
“Because she was here the whole time,” he said. “An hour, at least. With Cade as a witness.”
“More than an hour,” Imelda called from her desk in the front room.
“I was trying to tell you,” Tina said. “Jamie has to be innocent.”
Over Jamie’s trembling shoulder, Cade glared at me through the bars.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, crud.”
Chapter 36
“Okay, I apologize,” I said, to Jamie’s back. “That was probably a little brusque.”