Logan and I were on the snowy roads within ten minutes. He adjusted the temperature on his dash, tapping the knob on the passenger’s side. “Turn it down if it gets too hot.”
“I’m freezing, keep it coming,” I chattered, brushing my hands together.
After long minutes of silence, he glanced at me. “You’re shaking. Are you still cold?”
I shook my head, picturing the inside of West’s house in my mind. It was an elaborate log cabin with vaulted ceilings, stone and oak walls, and massive windows. Everything about the house that he had built had his personal, masculine touch.
I wondered if his bed was still unmade from our hasty departure to North Carolina.
“I’m just nervous,” I said finally, shivering.
Logan glanced at me, and then back at the road. “It’s just a house.”
“I know.”
He sighed deeply. “He really means that much to you,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “What convinced you? What made you fall so hard? The dreams? It couldn’t have been the week you spent with him. You’re not that impulsive.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know, Logan. Maybe it started with the dreams. But I love him, and I can’t change it.”
“Did you ever think that maybe… it’s the sex? It’s new for you, and you might be confusing lust and love?”
I flushed, turning to look out the window.
“Hmm, tell me more about my diagnosis, Dr. Rush,” I said, covering my stomach defensively.
He tapped his turn signal, lifting his eyebrows to glance at me while we waited for the light to turn green.
“I think you should sleep with me, and then decide.”
My flush took over my entire body, and I exhaled shakily.
“Logan.” My hands clamped together like industrial-sized magnets. “Funny.”
“Funny, like interesting theory that you’d like to explore? Or funny, like clown?”
I narrowed my eyes. “This conversation is over.”
He looked away from me and focused on the windshield. “You’ll have to help me with finding the road, I can’t remember which one it is.” He leaned forward slightly in his seat, peering out the window.
I didn’t want to admit I’d driven past his house at least a dozen times in the past few months. Once, I saw a truck parked in the overgrown driveway with a splashy detail across the door that read Erie Property Management. Obviously, West had had the forethought to maintain his property for an extended period of time.
Or forever.
“Make a left up here.”
He pulled off the road and turned, crawling up the driveway. “Someone’s taking care of the place?”
“I think it’s a property management company.”
“Then, he knew he’d be gone for a while.” Logan put the car into park, turning to look at me in the darkness. “He knew you’d be left here alone.”
“Or he thought we’d be together,” I snapped, opening the car door and stepping into a half an inch of new snow. “Knock it off.”
I walked to the front door, slipped the key into the lock, and turned.
Logan moved in front of me. “Let me go in first. Just in case.”
“I can defend myself,” I retorted. “Just because your arms are huge doesn’t mean you know how to fight.”
“They are getting pretty big, aren’t they?” He flexed obnoxiously, winking my way. I rolled my eyes, shaking my head.
“Just move.”
A flip of the switch by the front door told me the electric bill was being settled each month. The temperature was cool but not cold. “Utilities are on. He planned that, too, I guess?” He looked at me expectantly, and I shrugged.
“I don’t know anything about his finances.”
That was a lie. I knew he had a lot of money… enough to bring a surgeon to his house to correct my eyesight, purchase forged visas, secure plane tickets to Russia…
And order a large-scale bombing on a historical fountain.
“Well, I think we should “borrow” enough to make us comfortable. And maybe even to splurge for some new pants for you.”
His eyes fell on my stomach, and I covered the waist of my jeans indignantly. “Hey.”
He crossed the entryway to me, closing the gap between us. “You’re showing a little, Cam. You need to be comfortable.”
Tilting my face to look up at him, I held my breath. “I’m never comfortable. I’m always sad… or scared. Both, really.”
He lowered his voice to a hum, so close that I could feel his breath on my mouth. “I can change that. I’m not him, but I can make you laugh. I’ve always been able to make you laugh,” he murmured. “Let me take care of you, Roam.”
I closed my eyes, looking down at the carpet. My heart hammered in my chest, and I wished his words away. “I can’t be what you want me to be anymore, Logan.” The air was thick as I tried to breathe evenly. “He will always be between us.”
My quiet tone, coupled with my slightly protruding abdomen separating us, darkened his eyes.
After a moment, his eyes raked over me, and he backed away.
“I guess you’re right.”
He left me standing in the living room and walked through kitchen, turning on lights as he went. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore than I already had, and as much as I longed to give in to the easiness of his offer to take care of me, I couldn’t.
I loved him too much to take advantage of him like that.
Following him, I took inventory of the area. Clean, neat, unused.
I realized that I had been holding out hope that West was there, just hiding out the whole time in his own home.
“His desk. Jackpot,” Logan said, moving to a small alcove that housed an oak desk and computer. He pulled a drawer open, fishing around inside. “Pens, envelopes, stapler-”
“Don’t just search though this stuff,” I admonished, brushing his hands out of the way. “It’s not right.”
“Wait.” He nudged me aside, curling his fingers under the desktop from inside the drawer. “There’s something under here. My parents have a desk like this.”
“A hidden drawer?”
“Yes.” I heard a click, and the latch dropped to reveal a shelf. A fat, yellow envelope was wedged inside, preventing the shelf from lowering all the way. He pulled on the envelope, jerking it back and forth until it was finally free from the drawer.
There was no mistaking West’s handwriting. I traced the letters with my fingertip, ignoring Logan’s scowl as I read the word.
ROAM.
“Three checkbooks… with my name on the checks. A debit card and a credit card in my name. Passports. Keys? A jump drive...”
Logan shook his head. “You’d think he could have mentioned this. You know, like, ‘hey, one last thing before you go… I totally set you up financially, so check my desk.’ All those damn weekends working at Strike.”
I pressed my fingers together, shaking my head. “No. No, Logan, I think this was a back-up plan. He really meant for us to be together.” I flipped through the checkbooks, imagining him ordering checks in my name. “I need to see what’s on this jump drive.” Tucking my hair behind my ear, I pressed the power button on the computer. The flat-screen monitor occupied most of the desk surface. “Do you see a mouse or keyboard somewhere?”
“Got it.” He retrieved them from the hardwood floor next to the tower. “Hope there’s no password.”
There was. I typed PASSWORD, hoping for an easy entry. An incorrect password edit appeared.
He tucked his laced fingers behind his neck, glancing up at the ceiling. “Try your name.”
Quickly, I typed ROAM. West’s desktop icons appeared in a second.
“Stalker,” Logan muttered, shook his head, shoving the jump drive into the USB port.
“Stop it.”
“Okay, here we go. Open.” Logan squatted next to me. “Pictures. Documents… wait, open this one.” He pointed to the screen, and I res
isted the urge to wipe his fingerprint off the monitor.
“Passports… for West and me,” I murmured, spinning the dial on the mouse. “For 1977… 1955… 1912?”
“They’re here.” He gestured to the passports in the envelope. “What about cash?”
“Bank account.” I clicked on another file, opening a spreadsheet. Online accounts for banks, including web links, user ID and password information, all detailed the screen. “Safety deposit box. The keys must be for the box.”
Logan dug at his eyes tiredly. “So, this was easy. Let’s go see the movie.”
I stood up, scanning the room for a printer. “I hope you’re kidding. We have so much work to do. I have to get everything together, prepare the wallet, and pack-”
“There’s no passport for me, Roam.”
“I know. We’ll figure it out, we just have to make something. They didn’t have biometric passports back then, so it won’t be difficult-”
“Hey.” He wrapped his fingers around my wrist gently, tugging me toward him. I lifted my eyes to his. “I’m going to do everything that I can to find him. But Roam,” he urged, sliding his fingers through my hair and lifting my face to meet his. “You have to start to come to terms with the possibility that he’s gone. Forever gone. You know that, right?”
My heart hollowed, and I met his eyes, pleading silently.
“He can’t be,” I whispered, refusing to break into tears.
“He might be,” Logan corrected softly, bowing to press his forehead to mine. “You know that.”
I nodded, unable to form a coherent word.
“If we don’t find him, we have to come home. Here. We can’t search forever.” He pulled me into his arms, and I pressed my face to his shoulder. “This baby will need you.”
I exhaled into his shirt, gasping and fighting away the budding tears. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoed, his lips pressing against my hair in a soft kiss. “We are going to have to wait until Friday to leave. The banks are closed tomorrow for Thanksgiving, and we need cash from the safety deposit boxes. Friday,” he repeated firmly when I stiffened.
“You’re right. We have things to do,” I agreed.
He nodded. “Between now and then, we prepare, and you relax. We have to protect this baby,” he whispered. “This baby is our last chance to kill Troy. I just don’t want him trapped. I want him dead. Roam, the baby has to live. You have to live.”
I pressed my face into his chest until my cheekbone hurt. He gripped me securely, his mouth still against my hair. “I know,” I whispered, lifting my face to his.
“Oh, and I’m bringing a gun.” He added a perfunctory kiss to my lips before releasing me.
“Wait, what?”
“I’m bringing your dad’s Glock. We’ll… borrow it.”
“Logan…”
“Just get over it. I know how to use it, and I’m not going in without some way to defend ourselves.”
“But Troy is immortal.”
“A hole in his head will slow him down.”
I shuddered, glancing at the stairs. He has a point. “Fine. I’m going upstairs for a few minutes. Wait here, okay?”
He met my eyes, tightening his hold on me. “No, Cam.”
I stilled, taken aback as I lifted my face to his. “What do you mean, no?”
“I said no. You’re not going upstairs. I’m not letting you go crawl in his bed and roll around crying. Get your boots on, we’re leaving.” He hugged me once before grabbing the envelope and tucking it under his arm.
Staring at him, I struggled with my thoughts. Was that my plan?
Maybe not, but that is the inevitable outcome.
Finally, I looked down at the floor. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Now, I’m going to explain why Red Dawn is a better choice for this evening than Anna Corona. Just hear me out.”
I exhaled a laugh that caught me by surprise. “Karenina.” I slipped my feet into my boots. He turned off the computer and the lights as I reached for my jacket.
Chapter Six
Logan’s intentions in the packed movie theater were clearly to divert and distract. The movie was every-action-packed-thing that I thought it would be and more, though Morgan’s favorite actor reminded me a little too much of West at times.
During all three trips to the restroom, Logan insisted on going with me and waiting. After the movie he somehow talked me into admitting that I was hungry, so we both settled into a booth at a restaurant near the theater.
Halfway through my burger, I was finished. I watched the late-night customers while waiting for Logan. “I had a weird dream last night,” Logan said suddenly, taking a sip of his Coke. “It wasn’t like the other nightmares. You and Troy were sitting on… thrones or something. In a castle-”
“And it was cold?” I interrupted, my mouth going dry. “And I was wearing blue?”
“You dreamt it, too?”
The chilled sweat hit me suddenly. I swallowed hard, grasping the table. Logan slid out of the booth and grabbed me before I slumped forward. “Roam. Breathe.”
“The other world… where he is king.” I searched the aisle desperately. “I feel sick-”
“Come on.” He nearly carried me to the restroom. I struggled to keep the food down, pacing my thoughts. “I’ll pay, just-”
“I’m okay,” I said, forcing myself to calm down. He’s not here, he can’t hurt me. “Let’s just get in the car.” I let him handle the bill before we hurried to his Camry. A new layer of snow had covered his car, so he started the engine and began scraping the windshield.
He finished clearing the windows and tossed the window scraper into the back seat, brushing his hands together rapidly. “You think these are dreams of another world? One that we were both in?”
I shrugged, pressing my cool palms to my cheeks. “Troy’s angry. He hates me so much. There has to be a reason why. I can’t stop thinking about that look in his eyes when he attached me in the pool. This is personal. He’s not just a madman driven by a prophecy.” I slipped into the car, allowing the still-cool air from the heater to blast me in the face. “I think Troy and I were… married… in this other world. I think that you and West are part of the reason why he wants to kill me.”
Logan listened intently as he backed out of the parking space. “In my dream, he called you Roam. Not any other name, for a change.”
“He called me by my name in my dream, too. In all my dreams of him, actually,” I realized, thinking back over the disturbing nightmares that haunted my mind before I was pregnant.
The first nightmare was of West in a hotel room in the seventies. Troy wasn’t there. The second dream was in France in 1412.
“Roam.” He reached for my hand, wrapping his fingers around mine. “I’m right here, okay?”
I nodded thankfully, squeezing his hand. “In France, he asked, ‘who is holding you, Roam?’ In the dungeon, in England… you called me Roam. In my dream today, in the cold castle, he called me by my name.”
Logan narrowed his eyes. “West seemed like he had no idea what Troy was talking about when he mentioned the other universe, or the prophecy.”
“He would have told me if he knew something about it. But he doesn’t.” I refused to speak in past tense about him, pressing my fingers against the hot vents on the dashboard. “I’m just so tired. I wish none of this was real.”
“Even West?” he asked, glancing at me quickly.
“Except West,” I corrected, turning to gaze out the window.
He was silent for a while. Finally, he let go of my hand and cleared his throat. “Where do prophecies come from? What guy waved his magic wand and said, ‘listen up, the four of you, your destiny is… blah blah blah?’”
I toyed with the zipper on my jacket. “Well, they come from… Gods, usually. Or magic…dark magic. In literature, anyway.” My mind ran laps around a specific thought that refused to piece itself together. Watching the snow fall on the highway, I held my harde
ned stomach beneath the seatbelt.
Our child will save the world.
“West said something…” I thought back to our talk at Paine Falls, trying to remember every detail of what he’d told me about our history and the prophecy.
I went into hiding until my twenty-seventh birthday. On that date, I met you.
I continued, remembering his words. “He was born in 1348, and survived the plague as an infant, even though his entire family died of it. A man named Henry Asher took him in, intrigued by the fact that West survived. Asher was an alchemist. He was trying to discover eternal life. West said that I told him about the prophecy. On his twenty-seventh birthday. In 1375. And he stopped aging.”
“Wait.” His face whipped to mine. “Twenty-seven? Are you kidding me?” I felt his foot hit the brake slightly. “He’s ten years older than you? I knew he was older, but… Jesus,” he hissed, shaking his head disgustedly.
“Actually, he’s six-hundred and seventy-four years older than me,” I pointed out, cracking the window for some fresh air as a heated flush spread over my face. “I thought you were aware that he was immortal.”
“You’re going to star in To Catch a Predator.”
“Stop it,” I protested, cringing. “That’s serious. So many girls and boys are hurt each year-”
He lowered his voice to sound like a formal interviewer. “Hello, Mr. Perry, I see that you are six-hundred-years old and you have this bag of condoms and Twizzlers. What were your intentions?”
I bit back an involuntary grin. “Logan.”
“Oh, well, we were just going to watch The History Channel… and I thought she was forty!”
“West doesn’t sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Knock it off. That’s just not right.”
“Preaching to the choir.” He fell silent for a few moments, and his tone turned almost irritated. “You’re right, not accurate. No condoms. ‘I’m immortal baby, let’s get it on’ is a way stronger pitch.”
I exhaled sharply, glaring at him. “Don’t talk to me.”
Logan’s glance was skeptical as he rolled his eyes. “This baby is sucking the sense of humor right out of you.” He puffed air from his lips, scoffing. “So, West’s only memory of his origin was from this guy Asher?”
Fall (Roam Series, Book Two) Page 5