The cart didn’t start.
Keegan leaned his head back, feeling the pain kicking in. “Battery,” he muttered. “Did you charge it last night?”
She hit the ignition again. Nothing.
Muttering curses, Mariah climbed out. Mountain Man was getting under her skin anyway. “I’ll walk back. There’s water if you need it.”
Her unlaced boot was falling off, and she had the strength of a limp noodle. The sight of that big man sitting in the seat, pale and holding his shoulder, turned her insides to frozen tundra. She wanted to shriek and cry for help and hope the good guys came running and not the bad.
But it was her fault the ancient battery was dead. She should pay the price. Even with her bum knee, she figured she could walk the trail. She could walk it better if she hadn’t been flying with the hawk. She stomped down the hill.
Keegan caught up with her. She’d yell at him, but she didn’t want to waste her energy.
“How far to the farm entrance?” he asked curtly.
“No odometer on a golf cart,” she snapped, slowing her stride, for which her knee was grateful. “I’m guessing less than two miles, easy half hour walk.”
“When we’re not the walking wounded,” he corrected. “But it’s closer than town and vehicles can reach it. There are security guards posted there, are there not?”
“At night.” She shrugged. “We can hope Val is there. I don’t have the strength left to mentally summon Cass. And you’ll probably bleed to death if you don’t lie down.”
“I’ve been worse,” he said grumpily, clomping along. “I need distraction. Tell me your story. I’ve told you mine.”
“All you’ve told me is that you sense molecular structure. That could be a big whopping fairy tale told to earn our trust. I’m not inclined to believe men and certainly not strangers.”
“Then tell me that story.” Dust flew up from his scuffling boots.
She was terrified this very large, brave man would collapse on her watch, but she defiantly hid her concern.
“Why I don’t trust men?” she asked. “It might be more interesting to hear why anyone would blindly believe in anyone else.”
“True. But it’s your turn, and we have a long walk ahead. Give me something.”
“I don’t like talking about it. It’s not my story to tell.” And it was ugly, and she preferred keeping it bottled up inside where she didn’t have to take it out and examine her guilt and failure.
“Change the names to protect the innocent,” he suggested. “Make everyone in it rabbits. Just keep talking.”
She chuckled at the idea of rabbits. “I’m a computer engineer. I don’t do imagination.” She swigged her water and thought about it. “Okay, let’s do it this way. Once, there was a lovely princess from a faraway country. She was smart, ambitious, and worked very hard.”
He was probably thinking this was about her, but she would never in a thousand years describe herself like that. But Adera’s story was too excruciating to be told any other way.
He stayed silent. It must be nearly noon and the sun was damned hot. She wasn’t certain he’d last half an hour. If she had to tell this tale, she wasn’t certain she would either.
“Miss Princess worked in a castle full of trolls.”
He snorted. “It’s usually dwarves.”
“Trolls,” she said with conviction, using her staff as brace. “The filthy-minded, egotistical trolls sat in their castle towers, casting covetous glances on the princesses below, making rude comments on their many or few assets. These trolls thought princesses were objects to be compared like hot cars, then bought, used, and cast aside when they were tired of them.”
Mariah cast the Scot a glance to see if he was still upright. “We are not talking about me. The beautiful foreign princess was a Lamborghini to the trolls, which I am most obviously not.”
“What do you think you are, a VW? Don’t be stupid.”
“A Jeep,” she retorted. “Sturdy and reliable.”
He groaned.
She wasn’t certain in pain or at her story. “You want me to tell this or not?”
“Tell me. I’ll hope there’s a new spin on this old tale.”
There was, but she wasn’t telling him that part. “This kind of tale is always ugly and you asked for it,” she reminded him.
When he saved his breath by not arguing, she continued. “This particular princess had worked long and hard and won many awards and fought many brave battles. But she was still paid worse than the lowliest of trolls. So, one day, she gathered her courage and went to the boss troll and asked for a promotion.”
He said nothing. She continued coldly. “Boss Troll said she could have a raise, along with a new title, and a fancy new office—if she’d be his new play toy.”
Mariah thought Keegan growled under his breath. That he wasn’t defending his sex gave him extra points.
“And this is where you fully understand that I’m not talking about myself. Miss Princess was raised in a country where one does not sell one’s body for anything less than marriage. She had earned that promotion with her hard work. She told the troll where to stuff it and said she would take her complaint to the public and to the Troll of all Trolls, and she slammed out.”
“She should have recorded the creep,” he muttered. “She’d have him on so many charges that she could use him for carpet.”
“But Pious Princesses do not think that way,” Mariah said. “They shouldn’t have to think that way. You want all women to walk around with cameras on our collars like the cops? Although now that I think about it, that might be a good idea in Trolldom.”
“So what did Boss Troll do, fire her?” he asked, staggering slightly on the incline they walked.
Awkwardly shifting her staff, Mariah placed his good arm over her shoulders. She was weak, but she would recover quickly. He would only get worse. And proof of that was that he didn’t drag his arm away but leaned his weight on her. A man smart enough not to play the macho card—she’d have to start liking him if he kept that up.
Despite the heat and their sweat, he smelled like temptation, so she stuck to her story. “Oh no, trolls like to play games. He told everyone that he had slept with her, that she was easy, so all the trolls started hitting on her. That just made Miss Princess furious. She might have been raised differently, but she was still smart. So she started rumors about him.”
“Some office you worked in,” he said grudgingly. “Nothing better to do than gossip?”
“We’re talking trolls here. They don’t know how to communicate normally. It’s like living in a frat house where farting is hilarious, getting high is normal, and civil discourse nonexistent. Geniuses but no social skills. They live in caves.”
“Even princesses?” he asked with what almost sounded like interest.
“To some extent, yup, which is why Miss Princess lowered herself to their level. She didn’t have the skill to retaliate any better. She did hire a lawyer, though. He told her that without proof, she had no case. If she’d been fired, then they would have more than he said, she said. So making fun of the troll’s dick was her way of using his crap against him and getting fired.”
“I’m no lawyer, but that doesn’t sound feasible.”
She shrugged, and he gripped her shoulder harder. It was like hauling a Buick around. “Miss Princess liked her job. There were very few places where she could do what she did best. She followed all the procedures in the employee manual and nothing worked against Boss Troll. He was male and had power. She was nothing. The rumor war escalated—until the day another princess brought our heroine evidence of fraud in Boss Troll’s corner of the kingdom.”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered.
She ignored him. “Our heroine princess gave the evidence to her lawyer, sent copies of her complaints to every official in Trolldom and in the kingdom beyond. What neither princess quite realized is that trolls like games. If one has a big sword, the other gleefully finds a bi
gger ax. If one has a posse of three, the other summons four stooges and a hellhound to do the dirty work.”
“This sounds like a video game,” he muttered.
Mariah would pat his hand in approval, but it was all she could do to stay balanced between her bad knee and his weight. “They can’t sell video games as graphic as this one gets. Boss Troll took his posse to Miss Princess’s apartment. They raped her. Repeatedly. And took videos doing so.”
His fingers nearly crushed her shoulder. “I don’t like this story. Tell me again that you’re not talking about yourself.”
“I am most assuredly not talking about myself. I would have shot them. I use sex the way other women use a glass of wine—to unwind. But Miss Princess was a virgin. And she was my friend. I don’t have many friends. They took her from me. Not just the trolls, but her family as well.”
This was where the knife twisted in Mariah’s guts. She should have understood what would happen when she’d offered Adera an opportunity for revenge. She should have revealed the fraud on her own. Instead, she’d destroyed Adera instead of helping her.
And in her rage and grief, she’d gone even further, destroying herself and everyone around her. That part, he didn’t need to hear.
“Her family?” he asked, apparently still not getting it.
“The videos were posted all over the internet. She had dishonored the family name, and they disowned her. She got in her car one night, and the next morning, she was found in a ravine. The cops called it an accident. I call it murder.”
Sixteen
July 10: Tuesday, mid-day
Sick to his heart and soul at her story, and staggering from loss of blood, Keegan didn’t have to be persuaded when Mariah simply plopped down in the shade of a pine at the farm entrance.
No security vehicles waited—a pretty good sign no one was around. Mariah chugged her water. Keegan lay back, resting his head on his good arm. The other ached like hell, and blood seeped through the shirt bandage.
Her story bled worse.
His gut gnawed, and he wanted vengeance for Mariah and her friend. He knew that was ridiculous. He couldn’t even have vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to his family. That was what the law was for.
“Tell me the pricks went to jail for something,” he growled.
“Oh, they’ll go to jail, all right, even if not for murder.” She almost purred with satisfaction. “The feds are currently crawling all over them for multiple examples of trollish wrongdoing. The company’s board of directors fired the lot of them and appointed a princess as CEO. They’re facing serious jail time and fines that ought to bankrupt them. They’ll never work again.” She finished off her water and crushed the plastic bottle. “Nothing brings back Miss Princess.”
“The world can be a horrible place,” he concluded, too weak to run through news stories of the past few years to match against her fairy tale. Working in remote areas, he was often out of touch. “Hiding out in Hillvale almost makes sense.”
“Which brings us to why you’re really here. Your journals have been missing for decades or more. So why look for them now?” She poked at his bandage and frowned.
“The adult equivalent of needing to get out of the house,” he suggested, wincing. “Curiosity, restlessness, inability to do anything while lawyers and authorities tear my family apart. Distance was required.”
“So, you trotted half way around the globe to look at old pots and hunt for missing books? Why do I find that hard to believe?”
“Because you’re a cynic who rightfully doesn’t believe any man,” he suggested, trying to hold on to consciousness.
“Look, we need to get you to the hospital, which is half an hour away from Hillvale. It could take me another half hour just to stumble down to town, and even longer before an ambulance arrives. You could bleed to death in those hours. But if I can sit and rest and regain my strength, I can attempt to reach Cass. She could call for help, and we’ll be in good hands within the half hour. Tell me your story while I recover.”
He’d been there when she’d called Cass and brought Walker to the bunker after the intruder. He didn’t know if he believed Mariah had used mental telepathy or whatever, but Keegan supposed she deserved recompense for tearing out her heart and revealing the bleeding remains. He couldn’t call her a fraud after her painful honesty.
“I can’t get my story straight even when I’m coherent,” he grumbled. “I’ve twisted it every which way and none of it makes sense.”
She sat cross-legged, with her staff across her knees, looking like a native princess despite the tank top. The feathers in her braid fluttered in the breeze. “Mutter, then. I just need time. I may not even hear you, but your voice helps stimulate the part of my brain that needs it.”
“You say things like that and it confuses me even more.” He propped himself up enough to finish off his water before lying back down again. Facing him, she had her big brown eyes closed, so he thought he might be able to do this. He could just watch her breasts lift as she breathed and pretend she was asleep, and he was talking to himself.
“My home is a small town like this one,” he said, looking for a starting place. “My family has been in mining forever, possibly because some of my ancestors had my ability to detect mineral structures. My brother didn’t inherit the ability, so he runs the company office, along with my father, who’s tired of traipsing around the globe. Traipsing is my job.”
She didn’t move, but the wind stirred a little more, blowing dust devils up the road. Keegan worked to formulate his thoughts. If nothing else, he’d like to remain conscious.
“My ex-fiancée’s parents once worked for our company too. Brianna’s mother died in an accident when we were kids, so her dad often left Bri with my mother. We grew up together, much like brother and sister. She loved exploring our library, the one with all the journals.”
It hurt remembering golden-haired Bri climbing on the furniture to reach the highest volumes, the winter sun beaming through the medieval windows to illuminate her like a fairy from one of the storybooks. He hadn’t been interested in cryptic scribbling in ancient books. He’d been reading through his father’s geology texts at the time. Bri had been the laughing sprite to his nerdy. . . Keegan sighed. He was pretty much a troll in fantasy nomenclature—a large, mountain-dwelling humanoid, not the internet kind.
Mariah still breathed. Keegan couldn’t tell if she was listening. Her hands were relaxed, palms up, soaking in the sun.
He skipped all the parts about university and youth and travel and coming home to Bri and deciding it was time to marry because his parents were getting old and wanted grandkids. No women of his acquaintance would want to live in that tiny cold town. Bri thrived on it. Decision made.
“Bri and I got engaged last year. I was working on a project in South Africa. She was working on the wedding. She has a business degree and works in the company too.” Her enthusiasm and interest in his job had been another deciding factor.
Maybe that’s why Mariah’s disinterest in his occupation intrigued him—she was everything Bri was not. He couldn’t imagine Mariah coveting diamonds and gold. He watched her expression, but she wore none.
“While I was out of the country, a computer hacker dumped boatloads of information on the internet, providing evidence of fraud, theft, and hidden bank accounts on dozens of large corporations. Our firm was one of them.”
Keegan thought Mariah blinked, but she didn’t move otherwise. His concentration was fading, so he stuck to gathering his thoughts. “It’s taken me a while to piece together how our company could be involved. Bri had always insisted that we could do more than make fertilizer with minerals. But I had more work than I could handle and didn’t listen. Apparently after she gave up persuading me to use my gift to hunt for diamonds, she told someone about the Malcolm journals.”
Mariah’s eyelids lifted. The color was starting to return to her cheeks, and she watched him wordlessly. Keegan figured he’d gon
e this far, he might as well finish. “One of our scientists apparently listened. My theory is that he used an old formula to create synthetic diamonds. I don’t understand how the rest went down. But the records show that the company sold the synthetics as genuine and funneled the proceeds through my family’s bank accounts using company invoices, and then into offshore accounts. My father and brother are currently being indicted for fraud, money laundering, and I’m not sure what else. And I know they are as bewildered as I am. I can only hope the lawyers come up with the paperwork to prove their innocence. But I need to find the real villain.”
“And Bri?” she asked, finally breaking the silence.
He would have shrugged but his shoulder hurt too much. “She obviously profited from the proceeds, but she’s just an office clerk who handled the invoices and claims my family told her to. They’re still compiling evidence against my father. I feel as if I need to be doing something, anything, to make things right. Maybe the missing journals hold formulas that can be used for good. Maybe crystals can reveal truth. I don’t know. I just want to smash everything open and see what falls out.”
Mariah muttered a crude expletive, squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her staff, and—disappeared, just as she had earlier.
She was there, but she wasn’t. Fascinated, Keegan watched her breasts stop moving. He didn’t dare touch her to test her pulse. He could see her color fading again. If he’d been fully conscious, her stillness probably would have terrified him. But as long as she breathed, he didn’t react.
She returned faster this time, taking a deep breath and flexing her fingers before opening her eyes. “Cass will send help. She’s not fond of strangers, so it may only be Brenda or a truck instead of an ambulance, but it shouldn’t be long.”
Keegan nodded. “If someone shows up as you say, that’s pretty creepy. Once could be a coincidence. Twice is hard to believe.”
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