by Lyla Payne
Given what I suspect, that probably specifically means no Travis.
I dig the bag of things from her house out from under my bed and toss them on my blankets. This whole thing could be a ploy to get me out of here so that she can search the house and reclaim her things. I’m going to hide them before I go. At the library, I think.
The note to Millie is harder than I think it will be. Takes longer. It feels a little bit like saying goodbye, even though I know that’s melodramatic.
Or maybe I’m just procrastinating.
Once it’s finished, I leave it on my bed where she’ll see it if she comes to check on me. I know she won’t, not if I tell her that I’m heading to Travis’s a little bit early for our phone calls. Ideally, she’ll never read the note, because ideally I’ll be home safe and sound later tonight. With information. Something I have far too little of currently.
I sling the bag over my shoulder and then head down the hall to the nursery. Amelia’s there, lying on the floor reading a book while Jack vibrates in his favorite chair, his eyes open but starting to droop.
“Hey.”
She looks up, her own eyes a little sleepy. “Hey.”
“I’m heading over to Travis’s.”
“Now?” Her forehead wrinkles. “Did I fall asleep on the floor again?”
“Not today.” I smile, a catch in my throat. “I’m anxious. Can’t sit around anymore.”
“Okay, well, I hope you find out something useful.” She pauses. “And you should tell him what Daria suggested as far as Lavinia. Maybe he could help you decide, since he’s got his own ghostly abilities.”
“I will.” I swallow. It’s like choking on nails. “I’ll see you later.”
“Yep.” She rolls back onto her belly, blissfully unaware that I’m freaking out all the way to the tips of my toes.
I want to tell her that I love her, or go over to kiss Jack, but I feel like either thing would tip her off that something is wrong.
And nothing’s wrong.
Go ahead and keep lying to yourself, one of my devils hisses.
You’re an expert by now, his friend chimes in.
And it’s worked out so well for you this far.
I frown and turn around without saying anything else. Whether I’m lying to myself or not, I refuse to worry her. Besides, I’m meeting a middle-aged woman who’s clearly sick. I have my mace, and we’re going to be in the park. There’s no reason to think she could overpower me, or that I’ll be in any real danger.
Unless she’s crazy, one of the devils points out. You believe she’s crazy, but you still don’t think she’d shoot you in broad daylight.
A fair point, perhaps, but I ignore him all the same. Back to lying to myself, I suppose, but my logic is stronger than theirs. They’re make-believe.
I take my purse off the table in the foyer and dig out my keys, then remember at the last minute that my car is in the garage, where I’ve been parking since it got colder. I head through the laundry room, which connects to the garage, and pull open the door, remembering to twist the switch in the knob so that it will lock behind me. We didn’t install new locks here the way we did with the exterior doors, given that the garage door is secure, but Amelia is a bit of a fanatic about keeping it locked anyway. This house is secured in a way that our grandparents would never have dreamed of doing.
Different times, I suppose.
And, you know, no one ever tried to kill my grandparents, or broke in and trashed their house. That I know about, anyway.
I press the button to open the garage door, and sunlight slips into the dark space as the door starts to roll upward. I walk around the front of my car, brushing past the workbench and snagging a tool loose in the process. It’s not until I bend over, intent on putting it back in its place, that I hear the shuffle of footsteps behind me.
There’s not even time to turn around, or to ask the idiotic, horror-movie question who’s there?, before something hard and heavy connects with the back of my head.
Stars explode in my vision, and I slump to my knees on the hard floor, a grunt escaping from my chest in the process. The world goes blurry. Pain throbs at the base of my skull, and as hard as I try to move, there’s just no way my legs are listening to my struggling brain.
I’m not sure if I pass out, or if my aching head has just stolen my ability to account for the passing of time. All I know is that the garage door is closed again, and my car is running. Exhaust fumes burn my eyes and my throat. Tears slip down my cheeks as I stare at the door that leads into the house.
Inside. If I can just get inside, or over to the car to turn it off… The clicker to the garage door, the one that will lift it and let in fresh air, looks comically high on the wall.
I reach out an arm, groaning as my head swims. My stomach wrenches, and I vomit on the floor. Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I search for my purse, for the keys that should be within reach.
Except there’s nothing there.
No purse. No keys. The bag of Gillian’s things is gone, too.
And that’s when I know the phone call was a ruse. That she’d wanted to catch me on my way out so she could take back her things, which she must have realized contained some seriously creepy, incriminating stuff.
I lay my head down without realizing it. My brain screams at my body to move, to get out of the garage, but without the keys, there’s no way back into the house I locked up tight. No way to drive my car. No way to reach the garage door clicker without crossing the space. Standing up.
No way out.
It’s the last thought in my head before there’s nothing left but fumes. And darkness.
I wake up to a shrill shriek, an impossible pain in my head and neck, and lungs that feel as if they’ve been set on fire. Of all of that, the most amazing thing to me is that I wake up.
It takes a second—only one—for what happened in the garage to come back to me. I try to sit up, but the effort’s enough to make me sick again. Groaning, I lay back down.
“Grace. Grace! Oh my god, you’re awake, you’re alive. Thank god.” Amelia falls to her knees at my side, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “Will? She’s okay. I mean, she’s awake. Okay. Okay.”
“Will?” I croak.
She hangs up the phone and drops it, snatching up my hands. “Are you okay? Can you breathe?”
The garage door is wide open, sending sunlight and cool January air flowing through the space. My car is off, and the exhaust fumes have been sucked out into the afternoon. Based on the sun, it doesn’t seem like much time has passed.
“I’m okay. I think.” I sound like someone who has chain-smoked cigarettes for thirty years, not a girl who had the occasional social smoke in college but hasn’t touched one in over five years. “How…you saved me.”
Her lips press into a line. My cousin’s eyes are dry but red-rimmed, and black streaks mar her peachy cheeks. “The carbon monoxide detector in the house went off.”
“It’s still going off,” I observe. The beeping isn’t doing much to help with my whole head situation.
“It should stop once the air is clear.”
“Where’s Jack?”
“He’s in the kitchen. I put his chair by the back door, bundled him up, and left the door cracked.”
I struggle to sit up, managing to do so this time with her help. I don’t even barf again. “Go get him. Get his carseat, too. We’ll get out of here, go to the hospital or the police station or wherever, but don’t leave him alone.”
Panic rips through me at the thought that Gillian Harvey could still be lurking around. That she might take Jack as leverage if she figures out her third attempt on my life hadn’t worked.
Amelia doesn’t ask a single question; she just takes off, running for her kid. I work hard to get to my feet, which I manage with some serious support from the workbench just as Cade Walters ducks into the garage.
Seriously?
“Graciela, are you okay? What’s that noise?” he says
.
Despite the fact that he was right about the woman lurking around the house—hell, maybe he even saw her camping out in the garage earlier today—it annoys me that he has been watching us so closely. Again.
Are you sure he was right? Maybe he’s been watching to make sure his little plan worked out.
A frown tugs at my lips at the whisper from the back of my mind. Am I sure it was Gillian Harvey who knocked me over my head and left me for dead? Couldn’t it have been Cade? Or anyone, really?
My main reason for suspecting her is the fact that the bag of her things is missing. But is that enough?
“I’m okay,” I tell him, because he’s waiting for a response.
He looks taken aback by my cold tone. “Well, okay…”
His graze trails to the door into the house when Millie reappears, a covered carseat hooked over her arm. She frowns at Cade, then shifts her attention to me. “You ready?”
I nod, licking my lips and sidling toward her, still using the workbench to steady my gait. “Thanks for stopping by, Cade. We were just on our way out.”
I hit the button for the garage door, and it begins its downward slide, forcing Cade out of the house and back into the driveway. Amelia retreats into the laundry room and I follow her, neither of us speaking until the door is shut and locked.
“What was that all about?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, but it creeps me out how he’s always watching.”
“Agreed.”
We head out the front door, which we also lock. I keep an eye out while Amelia straps Jack into the backseat, my stomach tight from nerves and still roiling from exposure to the gas. My brain hasn’t started working again. Hasn’t started processing what happened, and my head throbs.
Someone tried to kill me. Again.
If it was Gillian…
A thought slams into place so hard, I grip the door of Amelia’s SUV to keep from falling. In my mind’s eye, I see those burnt pages from Gillian’s fireplace. My name wasn’t the only one listed.
“Travis.”
“What? What about him?” Confusion twists Amelia’s pretty features.
“We have to warn him.”
If Gillian came here to try to kill me, it makes sense that Travis would be next on her list. The address she had for me was an old one, but she clearly managed to find me. My brother isn’t hard to find, either. I curse myself for not calling him earlier, not warning him the way I’d considered doing.
I would try now, but my phone is in my purse. Now missing.
“Grace,” she says as she secures the baby’s carseat, “you need to go to the hospital.”
I shake my head and climb into the front seat, buckling up and pressing my lips into a grim line. “No. After.”
I had been so focused on finding out what Gillian Harvey wanted that I hadn’t taken care with my own brother’s life. Stupid.
Tears fill my eyes as Amelia puts the car in reverse and starts her way through town, looking unhappy but probably knowing better than to argue with me.
My heart climbs into my throat as we twist our way through Heron Creek, which all of a sudden feels impossibly large. I jump out of the car as soon as the gravel of Travis’s driveway pings the undercarriage. It hasn’t even stopped moving yet.
“Travis!” I yell, racing toward the front porch.
The place looks quiet and empty, but his car is in the driveway. So is another one, a station wagon that looks like it was dropped in from another decade.
Maybe he went for a walk. Maybe he’s driving the police cruiser.
But my fervent, wishful thoughts come to a screeching halt when the sound of one gunshot, then another, shatters the silent afternoon.
Chapter Twenty
I reach for the front door and twist the knob even as Amelia shouts for me to stop. The handle’s locked, and it goes nowhere. There’s not a single noise from inside—not a wheeze, not a cry for help. Nothing.
“Travis!” I yell again, choking on a sob. “It’s Gracie and Amelia! Can you let us in?”
The air stales in my scratchy lungs. Amelia’s hand wraps around mine and holds on tight. I hadn’t even realized she’d left the car. After a moment, I hear scratching sounds. Movement. Maybe footsteps?
But no one comes to the door.
My chest squeezes at the realization that my brother could be bleeding to death. Dying. We have to find a way to get inside, locked door be damned.
I pick up a wooden rocking chair on the porch. “Back up.”
“What are you going to do?” Amelia hisses, even as her gaze goes back and forth between the chair and the big front window.
“Break the window, now watch out.”
She does as I ask, moving backward off the steps as I lift up the heavy chair and heave it at the window. The glass cracks but doesn’t shatter, so I whip off my hoodie and wrap it around my fist. I use my somewhat shielded hand to shove the pieces inward. They litter the carpet in the dining room, and when I step inside a moment later, they crunch under my shoes.
“You stay out here with Jack,” I say over my shoulder to Amelia. I hate leaving her, at least until I know what’s happened—for all I know, Gillian Harvey might come barreling out the front door any minute—but inside seems like a worse choice.
It’s a bad choice for me, too, without a weapon. But Travis could be in trouble, and I could have warned him hours ago.
Amelia listens to me and I creep over the glass, wincing with every loud, obvious footstep I make. Travis’s name is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it again and again as I move through the house, getting close enough to peer into the living room. Then the kitchen.
The place looks deserted until I spot a pair of jean-clad legs splayed out in the doorway leading to the back porch. I quicken my steps.
My gorge rises at the sight of a middle-aged woman lying across the threshold of the open door. Her head is twisted to one side and blood spills out of a gaping wound on her neck. I look away after meeting her glassy, dead blue eyes and suck in several deep breaths through my nose. It helps me keep it together, and knowing that Gillian Harvey isn’t going to reach up and grab me, at least, makes it somewhat easier to step over her body.
That’s when I spot Travis. He’s sitting up, leaning against a wooden bench at the back of his fire pit, and it comes as a relief that he’s mostly conscious.
“Travis. Are you okay?” The sleeve of his flannel shirt is soaked in blood, so the question is clearly ridiculous.
When I drop to my knees in the grass, I notice streaks of red trailing from Gillian’s body to his.
“She…shot me.”
“Did you call anyone?”
He shakes his head. His face is pale and his eyes roll back in his head.
My hands shake as I tie my sweatshirt, which is still clutched in my hand, tight around his bicep. Then I pick up Travis’s phone from where it tumbled from his hand and call 911, hit the speakerphone option and then toss the phone in the grass. A paranoid glance back at the body in the doorway reveals Gillian is still dead. Thank goodness.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
Maybe I should have called Will. Oh well. Too late, now.
“Um…” I glance at Gillian again, then back at Travis. “My brother’s been shot.”
“Address, please.”
I look helplessly at Travis, who manages to give it to the woman, barely.
“Okay, someone is on the way. Put pressure on the wound, and stay on the line.”
“Stay with me, okay?” I say, giving Travis’s good arm a little shake. “Okay?”
“You’re…okay,” he says, managing a slight smile. “Said she killed you.”
“She tried,” I reply grimly.
The second time I glance backward, I notice a gun gleaming in the brown grass. A shudder goes down my spine. She’d had it with her the whole time.
I use the phone again to text Amelia, tell her we’re okay: No more danger.
/>
“Killed Frank.” Travis grimaces again, his eyes rolling further back in his head. A shudder wracks his body.
The sound of footsteps behind me has me whirling around, fear tightening my chest, but it’s only Amelia. Her eyes grow wide and frightened as she takes in the carnage.
“Is he okay?” she asks, hurrying to my side. Her hand tightens on Jack’s carseat.
I’m supremely glad that he’s all covered up. He wouldn’t understand what happened here, but I still don’t want him exposed to it. I’m not sure the vibes from a scene like this go away.
“He’s alive. It’s bleeding, but it doesn’t look like it hit anything important.”
“Easy for you to say,” Travis jokes. Or tries to. It dissolves into a weak cough.
I hush him as the wail of sirens approaches, and a minute later, the Ryans arrive, along with three paramedics and some firemen I would totally have flirted with if I wasn’t too busy saying thankful prayers that both Travis and I had survived the day.
They take off my sweatshirt, then his shirt, revealing that even though quite a lot of blood has pumped out of my brother’s body, my assessment wasn’t far off. The bullet grazed his bicep, leaving a gash a good half an inch deep, but it didn’t embed itself in his body.
“We’ll get you cleaned up and give you some more blood. You’re going to be okay, Mr. Travis,” one of the paramedics says.
Despite the relative mildness of the wound, Travis keeps passing out, his head lolling to the side. The paramedics leave with him. Through it all, Amelia just stands next to me with the baby, offering me her silent support.
Time has started to pass in a funny way, so I’m not sure how much of it has gone by when Will shows up, racing straight over to me and grabbing me by the arms.
“Graciela, holy shit. Why do you keep doing this to me? I’m going to have my first heart attack before I’m thirty!” He shakes me slightly, his eyes wild. “I went to your house, and Cade Walters tells me you almost died. Then I found out that Travis had been shot and you called it in. Christ. Christ.”
He lets go of me and bends over, resting his hands on his knees. I put a hand on the back of his head, my body a jumbled mass of adrenaline and confusion and pure love.