From Sky to Sky

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Tiana glanced up from her phone then back down at it. “I’ve seen the current gossip.”

  “Doesn’t matter right now.”

  “We can talk and search simultaneously, you know.”

  “I didn’t want my moment in the spotlight to end like this. That’s all.” He shrugged, but his shoulders felt heavy. “It’s not like it’s an altered pic, you know? I can’t deny I lost my crap in a very public place.”

  “Not for the reasons they’re spreading around.”

  “Ah, what difference does it make? No, it had nothing to do with Marble Canyon, but it was a panic attack.”

  “Well, you’re not doing drugs.”

  “You think they’d believe me if I said so?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  He glanced up from his scrolling. She did?

  Tiana’s head was still bowed over her phone. “Your fans follow you because of you, Zac. Not because you looked sexy in a black T-shirt while conquering obstacle courses on Warrior USA.”

  He chuckled, winced, motioned her to continue when she looked up.

  “I’m just saying, yeah, of course a lot of these followers are into your looks and what you can do with your body. You’re dang attractive and you don’t need anyone to tell you that.”

  “Has David heard you describe me as dang attractive?”

  “Stop that.” Now she did meet his eyes. Hers were darkest brown, like polished walnut wood, and deep with conviction as she dared him to look away. He didn’t. “We’re past that, and you know it. If you don’t want to talk about this, just say so. Don’t smirk at me.”

  “Sorry.” He looked down, scrolled another page, and when he looked back up she was still watching him. “It’s habit, Tiana. Since … well, since before you were born.”

  “Then I’ll be patient while you break it.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Back to my point.” She resumed scrolling. “It’s the video you made eating white chocolate chip cookie dough while answering fan questions. It’s the ways you find to help underdog charities keep their doors open. You treat your fans like human beings, and they see you as one too. I would say the majority of them do. And they’ll listen if you decide to respond to the bookstore pic.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I know, not something you can deal with now. Rachel comes first. Cady and Finn come first.”

  “Yeah.”

  “One more example then. About a year ago, one of your fans asked you to wish her friend a happy birthday, because life had been getting her down. You didn’t just say ‘Happy birthday, Jayde!’ You responded with three posts because you kept running out of characters.”

  “I did?” He had met Jayde a few weeks ago when he was new to town and she still worked for David. But he didn’t remember the post.

  “You told her to keep fighting on through whatever tough things were trying to knock her down. You told her she was worth the fight. She cried. Because that day no one had made her feel seen, all day long, except you.”

  “Me and the friend who tagged me.”

  She smiled. “You see where I’m going with this.”

  “I do. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. And for the record, the most attractive man I know is my boyfriend.”

  This laugh made him groan, but it was worth it.

  “Are you going to keel over?”

  “I promise I’m not,” he said. “Come on, I’m almost to the midway point.”

  “Same. I don’t know if …” She fell silent, leaving the thought to dangle as she focused on the list. For another few minutes neither of them spoke, and then Tiana gasped. “Zac.”

  “What?”

  “Whoa. Look at this.” She tapped a few times, and her lips parted as she read. “Zac, look.”

  She handed him her phone. On her screen was a user named OldSoulPics. The profile picture was a vintage barn. No way. Zac clicked to enlarge it, and his heart began to hammer. The Harbor Vale barn, an exterior shot with the sun peeking around the roof on one side, the grass a fading green that hadn’t died to brown yet but was on its way. A recent picture. The bio was shorter than character limits required.

  Photographer. Old before my time. Or is that after?

  “It’s her,” he whispered.

  “It has to be, doesn’t it? She’s leaving you clues.”

  “It’s her. It’s Rachel.” Her last post was a close-up of flowers. Chrysanthemums mostly, a fall arrangement in orange and rust and brick red, the leaves a vibrant dark green. But the foreground filled only half the shot. In the blurred background was a sign. Zac clicked on it, zoomed in, stared at the fuzzy letters until his eyes watered.

  “Bed-and-breakfast,” he said. “What’s that other word?” He handed the phone back to Tiana.

  “Oh!” With only a glance at the picture, she looked up at him, eyes alight. “I don’t even have to read it. I’ve seen the place. It’s in Leahy, north up the pinky finger. Maybe an hour and a half with traffic.”

  “Pinky finger? Oh, right.” Michiganders and their mitten-hand directions. He checked the posting time. Yesterday at 1:17 p.m. His breath grew short. “What if she’s waiting for me to come? It’s been twenty-four hours, Tiana. I’ve ignored her all this time.”

  “You were incapacitated.”

  “She doesn’t know that.”

  “She did see you fall, right?”

  His chest squeezed. He couldn’t help seeing Rachel lying on a generic bed in a generic room, a needle puncture in the crook of her elbow and her skin gone gray as her hair. Her heartbeat silent and her memories gone from the world.

  “Zac.” Tiana’s hand rubbed a circle on his back. “Calm down, okay? She left a trail. She wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t want us to find her.”

  He tried to remember everything Rachel had ever said to him. Every clue she might have spoken. Maybe the post meant nothing. Maybe it was her final post.

  He found David and Simon in the living room. He thrust Tiana’s phone into Simon’s hand. “We found her. Tiana says this place is about ninety minutes away.”

  “Let’s go,” David said.

  “Just give me a minute.”

  Zac stepped out onto the front porch. Finn sat on the stoop, his hands dangling between his knees, his unfocused gaze directed at the street. His mouth tightened when he spotted Zac.

  “Where’s Cady?”

  Finn shrugged. “Took off around the block.”

  “We’ve located Rachel.”

  “Okay.”

  Certainty fell on Zac’s shoulders as if from a great height. “You two want to leave.”

  “There’s no reason for us to stay here while you go after her.”

  “We think she’s only an hour or two away.”

  “Go ahead. Maybe we’ll meet up again later, when this stuff isn’t so …” He shrugged.

  They needed a Life Buoy. “One of us will stay.”

  “What for?”

  “For whatever we can do. Even if it’s just bringing takeout to your hotel.”

  Finn scrutinized him as if Zac had offered him a million-dollar check they both knew was forged.

  “Look, Cady told me you talked about family.”

  A cautious nod.

  “So this is me agreeing with your conclusion. And trying to live up to it.”

  A long moment of stillness before he nodded again. “Good enough for me. I’ll let Cady know when she gets back.”

  Zac returned to the living room and motioned David to one side. “I need a favor.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I’ll not be a liability to you or to Rachel. My perception is clear. I know our priorities.”

  “That’s not why I’m asking,” Zac said.

  “Why then? Speak plainly, man.”

  “Cady and Finn shouldn’t be left right now. One of us should be with them.”

  David frowned. Zac relayed the words he’d had from Finn, and the frown deepened.

  “We
can’t stop them if they wish to leave.”

  “They wish to leave because we’re choosing Rachel. All of us. Unless someone stays here to show them otherwise.”

  “Have you asked Tiana?”

  Zac shoved his fingers through his hair. “One of us, David. From their perspective, Tiana’s not one of us.”

  “I don’t see why it must be me.”

  “You’ll have wisdom and scripture for them, and you know how to avoid wielding either like a club.”

  Zac couldn’t keep him here short of hogtying the man, which wouldn’t help Cady and Finn anyway. The stubborn, straitlaced imbecile clenched his hands and walked to the window to stare outside as if the matter held no urgency.

  Something stirred within Zac with a wordless prodding sensation, something he was missing, something in front of his face. He was trying to see Rachel. Trying to see Cady and Finn. He was not trying to see David.

  Well, the guy was slowing him down for no reason.

  And he was a friend.

  Okay. See David.

  “Can we accelerate this at least?” Zac said.

  David turned from the window. “What?”

  “Tell me why you won’t stay here and trust Simon and me to bring back the …” There it was. The clearest vision of David Galloway. “You don’t trust us.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I get it now.” Zac held up a hand. “You’ve been on your own twice as long as you’ve had someone to trust. When you wanted something, needed something, you did it yourself.”

  David crossed the room to sink onto the edge of a couch cushion, fisted hands between his knees. “Aye. I did.”

  “And this matters to you too much to let someone else deal with it. Even fellow longevites.”

  David’s mouth twitched at the name. “You could be right.”

  “Well, do you want to live like that for another century, or do you want to give us a chance to prove ourselves?”

  He bowed his head over his clenched hands, and slowly they opened. In the silence, his prayer seemed to pour through the room like light. When he looked up, his face still held turmoil that dug furrows around his eyes and mouth. But he nodded.

  “I’m not at rest about it. But perhaps I won’t be until I’ve learned again how to do it.”

  He pushed to his feet. On impulse Zac thrust his hand out, and David lifted his eyebrows as he shook it.

  “You are coming back,” he said, more an order than a question.

  “With the information to make you mortal again, if it exists.” And with a woman who needed a family.

  “Very well.” His shoulders squared, and he gripped Zac’s hand one last time before releasing it. “I’ll remain here. And as I’m able, I’ll minister to the others.”

  David would be able, Zac knew down to his gut. The question was whether Zac would be equally so for the task set before him.

  Simon was sitting on the hood of Zac’s car, feet flat to the metal, watching traffic through the wrought-iron fence that, along with a low hill, separated the complex’s parking lot from the main road. Drizzle pattered his black jacket and bits of sleet collected in his hair, but he seemed unbothered. He glanced away from the passing cars as Zac approached.

  “No third man?”

  “I told him to try trusting someone besides himself for a change.”

  Simon grunted and slid off the hood. “Guess it’s a big change for him, after all that time.”

  “Yeah, but he has to learn.”

  “Impressed he’s willing to.”

  They nearly collided on the driver’s side of the vehicle. Simon held out one hand, palm up.

  “Oh, right.” Zac tossed the keys underhanded, and his ribs seemed to shift. He pressed his lips tight.

  Simon pretended not to see as he slid in behind the wheel, and Zac walked around the front end to the passenger side as upright as he could manage. Simon entered the Leahy Bed-and-Breakfast into his phone and silenced the voice directions.

  As they began the drive, Zac woke his phone and opened Rachel’s profile. “I should message her.”

  “Okay.”

  Trying to make eye contact with Simon only worked when he wanted it to, and right now he was focused on the road with absurd doggedness. Something was brewing in his head. Well, whatever. He could stew for the next ninety minutes if he so chose.

  Zac opened the app’s messenger tab. If he didn’t message her, and she was waiting … but if he did message her, and she saw it and ran again … He paused. Stilled himself. Thought. A message confirmed he’d found her profile, which he was pretty sure she wanted him to do.

  Okay.

  RACHEL, I KNOW THIS IS YOU. LET ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY.

  Without context he sounded rather like a stalker, but he sent it anyway. Depending on her response, he’d decide whether to tell her he was on his way to her location. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

  Less than five minutes passed, and then Simon gave a grunt.

  “What?” Zac didn’t open his eyes.

  “Oh, nothing. You just lounge away. Never mind I was the one up all night searching and rescuing.”

  Zac gave half a smirk with his eyes still closed. “Rib fractures. I win.”

  Another grunt. A long quiet. Then Simon’s voice, oddly hushed. “Was thinking about that solitary camping trip when I got rained out and fell in the mudslide and broke my leg.”

  “I remember.”

  “Yeah.” His voice gained normal volume, plunging them into the retelling. “I was remembering it for other reasons, but then I got to thinking … must have been tough for you. The mud was awful. I remember it was all over us by the time we got back.”

  Zac sat up. “You mean as a trigger.”

  “Right.” Simon kept his eyes on the road.

  “It wasn’t too bad as long as I kept moving.” No masks. “But yeah, I was glad to get out of it.” He grinned. “Man, I kept thinking I’d drop you. You’re a heavy cuss.”

  “Nothing but muscle, brother.”

  “And poor Moira, holding you down while I set that leg. Kept her eyes closed the whole time, and you weren’t even bleeding.”

  “‘How have you boys lived so long and still not learned self-preservation?’” Simon’s inflection and raised pitch sounded fairly like her.

  Zac gave a truncated laugh, and then his eyes were burning. He pressed his thumbs into them. “Shoot, man. What’ll we do without her?”

  “It’s been less than a month.”

  “But what’s happening to her? You know? Where is she, how’s she getting by?”

  “She’s getting by in style and effortlessly, and you know it. You’re not worried about her physical safety. You’re worried about her state of mind.”

  Simon willing to talk about someone’s state of mind. What was the world coming to? “What if she’s never the same again?”

  “She won’t be.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘none of us will’ crap. I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Well, now what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Zac blinked at him, but he kept his eyes on the road. Those three words sounded as foreign from Simon as modern slang would sound from David.

  “I protect people. I get justice for them. The aftermath, road to healing stuff—that’s never been my expertise.”

  Zac nodded. All true. He hadn’t thought of himself as needing to heal, though. More like needing to process. To get past it. To learn from it. Of course Colm had hurt Moira, but the idea he’d also hurt Zac … it felt itchy. Wrong to dwell on, dangerous to touch.

  A subject change was in order.

  “Why were you thinking about a camping trip from over forty years ago?”

  Simon huffed. “Tables turning and all. This time it was me out looking for your stranded butt.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Literal payback.”

  “Yeah. And thanks. In case I didn’t say
it before.”

  “You did. Of course you did. The second you were clear of the debris, you thanked Cady and me.”

  “Okay.”

  The quiet held a strange new edge. Beside him, Simon seemed tight and strained, the seams of him overfull of something that wanted escape. Zac sat up again and watched Simon drive.

  “You don’t even remember, do you?” The edge had entered Simon’s voice. Something hard and brittle.

  “Nope.”

  “It took me a year to thank you. A year. I couldn’t say it at first because I’m a proud old fool, and then I forgot to say it. And then one day you noticed the limp was gone, and I realized—I still had never said it.”

  “Well, did you say it then?” Zac wanted to laugh. Had this been bothering Simon for forty years?

  “Yep, I did, and you said, ‘You would’ve done it for me.’ Just casual like that. Like it wasn’t anything.”

  “It wasn’t, Simon. It was just what we do. Like you coming here this week and declaring a Life Buoy on me.”

  “But what if you were wrong?”

  “About what?”

  The car sped up at least five mph. Simon merged into the left lane and passed a few cars. “That I would’ve gone after you. That I would’ve pulled you out of the mud and carried you home on my back while reliving a war.”

  He made the thing sound heroic, which was ridiculous. “Look, man, you would have come for me. Heck, you did. Yesterday.”

  A long sigh poured out of Simon, a partial release of the tension in the car. “I know what Colm said to you, the night you brought me back.”

  Colm. Again. “Which part?”

  “Moira said you asked him for help, and he refused. Told you I shouldn’t have been out there if I couldn’t handle a storm on my own.”

  “Well?”

  “I told Moira he had a fair point, and you could have listened to him. And she said, ‘If Zac had listened to him, you’d still be out there in the dark, in the rain, with a broken leg.’”

  The man had to be going somewhere with this. He didn’t draw out a story, didn’t include details without meaning something.

  Simon smacked his palm against the steering wheel. “Don’t you get it? I as much as told her Colm’s reaction made more sense than yours. I sided with the serial killer.”