Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1

by Jasmine Haynes

  Hitching the bolt cutter over his shoulder, he continued the climb. It was after four o’clock by the time he made it to the top. He thought about calling Livie. Her seminar would have ended by now. But she’d ask where he was. He didn’t want to lie. Instead, he’d call her when he was back on the road.

  The lock fell away with one snap of the bolt cutter. He hauled up the ancient, rusted tin doors. Thicker and heavier than he’d imagined, they rested back on their chains like a pair of open wings. Fetid air wafted up at him.

  He’d mastered his unease of small spaces. He rode crowded elevators with barely a twinge. But his entire body tensed as he stood at the top of those cement stairs. The sunlight streamed down only so far, then the steps disappeared into the darkness.

  His mouth was dry. His ears started to ring. He unzipped his pocket and pulled out the flashlight. Its light revealed six steep stone steps and a half moon of dirt floor.

  Get on with it.

  He marched down like a man with a mission, bending his head to pass beneath the underside of the wall. It was cold. It was damp. It smelled like death. Bern shivered. But he made it to the bottom.

  In the flashlight beam, the room was small, only about ten by ten, but it was larger than the prison of his dreams. There had been no stairs in his nightmare, just a dirt floor and a metal door. Rotted wood shelving covered the stone walls, all except the back one. That was bare and constructed of brick.

  He could hear that scrape-slap-smack, over and over and over. Like bricks being laid.

  He should examine the wall, but for long moments he couldn’t move. The dank cellar was too small, the air rotten. Bile rose in his throat. He felt the sun at his back, its light barely penetrating the darkness. And he wanted to scream. He wanted to run.

  Yet he gritted his teeth, took three steps deeper into the cellar, and shone the flashlight on the brick wall.

  It was a poor job. The spacing wasn’t even, and the mortar between the bricks was crumbling. It hadn’t been mixed properly. He hacked at the center of the wall with the metal end of the bolt cutter. Mortar showered down. Setting the flashlight on the steps, he aimed the beam at the wall. Then he went at it with both hands on the bolt cutter, chopping, hacking.

  In fifteen minutes, bricks and crumbled mortar were scattered at his feet, and he’d forged a two-foot gap in the wall. Beyond it, he found a metal door. Shaking with effort, fear crawled between his shoulder blades like spiders. He knew what lay beyond that door, a room within a room, much smaller, dark, no way out.

  Jesus, he needed a few breaths of clean air, sun on his face. Water, too, except that he’d forgotten to bring a bottle. Just a few minutes, then he could tackle the hole again.

  Turning to sunlight, he climbed the stairs, rising up into it, and as he took the last step, he closed his eyes to let his body drink in the fresh air and light.

  Instead, he was met with blinding pain, his head exploding with it. Then he was falling back down into the darkness.

  * * * * *

  It was seven and Bern hadn’t called yet. There was no way his meeting had run that long. Livie had left three messages on his phone. It rang several times before sending her to voice mail. Was he having a business dinner with Wade and forgot to call her? But he still would have answered his phone.

  Livie sat at her desk in the empty office. She’d come back after the seminar to catch up on anything she’d missed during the day. Everyone had gone home. Bern hadn’t said exactly what time he’d call, just that he’d be home between eight and nine. It was only seven, she told herself, no big deal. But she couldn’t help worrying. In the silence, she could hear the clocks ticking. Like a warning. Time was running out. It was irrational, but when you didn’t have anyone around to talk you out of it...

  She tried looking up Wade’s phone number. He was unlisted. Jake was unlisted. Their mother was unlisted. Everyone in the whole damn world was unlisted. She looked at the traffic reports on the Internet. There were no trouble spots, certainly nothing that would have kept him from answering.

  She thought about calling hospitals. But where? She couldn’t call every one between here and Freedom.

  It was hopeless. Why hadn’t she gotten his family’s phone numbers? But she’d never dreamed she’d need them. And really, this was stupid. Men forgot the time when they were talking business. She’d punch him when he got home. She’d—

  Her phone rang. Livie almost screamed, then jumped on it.

  But it was Toni. Livie felt sick. “Hi, hon.” She tried to sound normal.

  “You know, we didn’t talk about our Wednesday dinner, if we were going to meet.” It sounded like she was driving, her Bluetooth on.

  “Oh no. I’m still at work.” She hadn’t given a single thought to Toni.

  “Okay, that’s fine. Just checking.”

  “Next week, okay?” She wanted to get off the phone. In case Bern called.

  “Yeah. Sounds great. Bye then.”

  Livie hugged the phone to her chest. Call, please call.

  Then she didn’t care that her worry was idiotic because it was only seven o’clock. She didn’t care that men often forgot the time. Something was wrong. She felt it in her bones.

  She hit Bern’s speed dial one more time, waited for the message beep. “Look, I don’t know where you are or why you’re not calling me back, but I’m worried and I’m driving up to your brother Wade’s house to find out what’s happened. So if you’re fine”—there was a definite edge in her voice—“then I’ll turn around and come home when you call me back.”

  She knew he wasn’t going to call.

  * * * * *

  Perfect, perfect, perfect.

  Toni smiled. Livie hadn’t asked where she was. Of course, Toni would have lied. She was such a good actress. Maybe she should move to Hollywood and start a new career.

  Toni changed lanes to get around a ridiculously slow driver. Someone honked, and behind her, a car swerved, then straightened. “Shouldn’t have been in my blind spot, bud,” she muttered.

  On the car seat beside her, Bern’s cell phone began to ring.

  She picked it up. Livie again.

  “He’s not going to answer,” she singsonged and let the call go to voice mail.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “I’m enlisting. And when this war is done, I’m not coming back to you.” He shoved clothes in a duffle. He didn’t care what he took.

  Beside the bed, she leaned heavily on her cane, her breath a wheeze. Sometimes he wondered if it was all an act, a way to tie him to her. Because for all her ill health, her whining, her moaning, her self-pity, she managed to snarl at him with the strength of a she-wolf. “I know you’ve been screwing her. My own sister.”

  He hadn’t realized she’d even heard the word used in that context before. “I screwed you,” he snapped. “I made love to her.”

  He wasn’t going to lie or sneak around anymore. Life had turned on a dime two days ago when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. He was enlisting. And when he came back, he’d come back for her, not the bitch he’d married.

  I love you. He said the words in his mind, hoping she could hear them across the miles.

  He’d leave a letter in their secret place, the little hollow in the rock. He’d explain. If she hadn’t gone to San Francisco for a week...but she’d had to get away from the bitch’s constant demands and constant belittling. He couldn’t wait for her to return. He had to go now.

  “You can’t leave me,” the bitch screamed. “Everything you have belongs to me. You don’t have a cent.”

  “Where I’m going, I won’t need one.”

  He’d been living in hell for three years. Now was his chance to get out. He yanked open the armoire, but wondered why he bothered taking anything at all. All he needed was the picture he’d tucked in his shirt pocket close to his heart. It would have to carry him through.

  He closed his eyes, saw her in his mind. Then the world exploded in a blinding flash and he wondered how
the hell the Japs could have made it to the West Coast. And God help him, she was in San Francisco, so far away. Helpless

  Then his world went dark.

  It was black as pitch. His head pounded, and his stomach threatened to rebel. Jesus, he was going to be sick. His fingers found dirt and tiny rocks, and he slowly rolled to his stomach, pushed himself up, tried to stand. That set the world spinning. He belly-flopped, breathed deep trying to keep everything from rising up his throat. The smell was rank and set his stomach roiling all over again. But he knew where he was even without the light. The cellar. How had the bitch gotten him down here? Of course. Her cane, her pitiful calls for help, all lies to keep him tied to her, to bind him with guilt. Lust as he’d suspected.

  He touched the back of his head, and it came away wet the way he’d known it would. It wasn’t Jap bombs; it was the bitch’s cane. He hated her, knew she was evil, but he’d never suspected she was capable of murder.

  He would not die down here. He’d get out even if he had to scratch through the walls.

  Once again, he tried to rise. He made it to his hands and knees. Then he retched.

  When he had breath again, he spoke aloud. “I will not let you beat me.”

  His arms shook, his legs quaked, but he grunted and pushed and strained, and finally made it to his feet.

  “I will have vengeance on you, bitch.” His voice felt stronger now, but he swayed in the darkness, his head spinning, the pain an incessant throb. He didn’t call out; there’d be no use in that. There was only the bitch, and she was waiting for him to die down here.

  He put out his hands, shuffled forward, his shoe hitting something solid. Not the wall. Raising his foot slowly, he followed the solid line of the object. Until he realized it was a step. He reached out to find the edge of the stairwell. He wasn’t in the old wine cellar. He was outside it, in the main root cellar.

  Then he knew it all. He wasn’t George. He wasn’t married to the bitch. He wasn’t going off to war. And he wasn’t dying. At least not yet.

  That all had been...a dream. No. Not a dream. A memory. His memory from another lifetime. Myra. He suddenly knew it was the name that had been on the tip of his tongue in that first moment he’d seen Livie. Myra from a past life.

  But in this lifetime, he was still trapped.

  Unlike George, he could make a simple phone call. He slid a hand down to his pocket. The cell wasn’t there. He’d zipped the pocket, hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. His keys were there, but nothing else.

  He squatted on the dirt floor, passed his hand over the broken bits of brick, mortar, and rock. The phone wasn’t there.

  He knew it wasn’t anywhere down here.

  He returned to the stairs. Leaning forward, he tested with his hands, found another step, then another, slowly climbed them until his head brushed the old tin doors. He pushed. They moved barely an inch then flopped back down with a thud. He used both hands, but the angle was bad and he couldn’t lift them. They couldn’t be locked. He’d cut the lock.

  Turning, he put his back into it, straining until the pain seemed to explode inside his head. He retched over the side of the stairs. But the doors had shifted only slightly more than they had before. He slumped down, exhausted and weak, breathing deeply a few moments.

  Then he tried again, shoving, pushing, straining, until suddenly his foot slipped over a few pebbles on the stair. He tumbled down the steep steps, scraping his hands as he tried to catch himself. His head hit something with a crack, and he fell down into the darkness with one last thought: Jesus. She’s killed me twice. In the very same place.

  * * * * *

  You don’t pay attention to every twist and turn when someone else is doing the driving. And Livie made several wrong turns trying to get to his brother’s house. Once she’d gone five miles down a road before realizing it was the wrong one. She couldn’t remember the name of Wade’s street. If she had, she could have mapped it on the Internet. As it was, she’d printed a map to get her to Freedom, then winged it after that. Finally, in desperation, she stopped at a gas station and asked the minimarket’s attendant if he had any clue where Wade Daniels’ house was, a farmhouse at the end of a road that was near the old quarry. Bern had admitted he’d done his fair share of necking there, and thank God he had because though the pimply-faced boy didn’t know Wade, he knew that quarry.

  She almost cried when she finally saw the house, lights on in a couple of second-floor windows and over the front door. It was a little before ten when she shut off the car engine. Almost tripping on the steps in her haste, she stumbled across the wooden porch and put her finger to the bell. The chime rippled through the house. She pushed again, just to be sure.

  Wade finally answered. He still wore a white shirt and black suit pants.

  The sight of her rendered him speechless.

  “I can’t find Bern.”

  He stared at her. There was a resemblance to Bern, of course, but Wade had far fewer lines at his mouth, as if he found little to smile about.

  “What time did he leave?” she prompted.

  “Wade, who is it?” Clare’s voice, drifting down the stairs.

  Then he seemed to shake himself. “The meeting broke up about three. He didn’t hang around.”

  “He never came home. He doesn’t answer his phone.”

  “And you drove all the way up here?”

  “I didn’t have your phone number.”

  “My God, Livie, what are you doing here?” Appearing at Wade’s shoulder, Clare’s face was freshly scrubbed of makeup, her green robe belted at the waist.

  “She’s looking for Bern.”

  “I thought he went home.” Clare echoed what Wade had said.

  Wade fished in his pants pocket, came out with a cell, and hit a number. He held the phone to his ear.

  “He’s not answering. Something’s wrong,” Livie insisted. She could hear the panic rising in her voice.

  When Bern didn’t pick up, Wade stared at the phone. “You think he’s had an accident?”

  Clare’s hand shot to her mouth.

  How to say this so she didn’t sound completely crazy? “When we took that hike on Saturday, up in Red Cliff, we found a house. A rock house.”

  “Rock house.” Nana stood on the stairs, a cream-colored nightie swirling around her bony calves. “That’s what people called it. I forgot that.”

  “Go back to bed, Nana,” Clare said.

  “What about the house?” Wade asked, urging Livie on.

  “I think he went back there.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “It had a cellar. He wanted to find out what was inside.” It sounded ridiculous, and she couldn’t explain why she’d decided Bern had gone back to that house, but Livie absolutely knew he had.

  Clare shook her head, clutching her robe closed at her throat.

  Wade pressed his lips together, nostrils flared, and for a moment, he looked exactly like Bern when he was thinking hard. “Let’s go find him.”

  She almost sagged to her knees with relief. Then she prayed she could find the house again.

  * * * * *

  Wade drove, and they’d picked up Jake on the way. Being a contractor, Jake had several oversized flashlights and torches. Livie rode shotgun so she could watch the highway for the turnoff. She was terrified she’d miss it in the dark, but there it was, off to the left. They bumped along the rutted track.

  They found Bern’s Lexus parked by the gully.

  My God. She’d been right. As she climbed from the car, her heart felt like a big fist was squeezing the blood from it. Jake and Wade followed, exchanging glances over the roof, but neither of them said a word.

  Livie led them up in to the hills by flashlight.

  “Are you sure this is the way, Livie? We should follow the road.” Jake waved his torch over the seemingly nonexistent trail as Livie made a turn and began a slightly steeper ascent.

  “I’m sure.” She could walk it with he
r eyes closed. It was like taking the same route for your daily run. You didn’t have to think, your feet knew. She’d take the time later to wonder how her feet knew a path she’d taken only once.

  She’d put on her tennis shoes before she left the office, and Clare had given her a pair of sweats to wear. The fit was snug and the legs too short, but it was better than wearing her skirt and blazer. The night was cold, but the air was thankfully still. The three-quarter moon drifted across the sky, and a coyote howled in the distance, a lonely, mournful sound, as if he’d lost his pack.

  “What was Bern doing up here?” Wade said behind her. “He didn’t mention anything about it before he left this afternoon.”

  She turned her head to answer as she walked. “He wanted to know what was down in the root cellar.”

  “What the hell for?” Jake’s voice carried from his position as last in line.

  Livie didn’t know. She simply remembered his pale face, his burning stare, and the shudder across his shoulders. “He dreamed about it.”

  No one said anything.

  With her next step, a rock slid out from under her foot, and she stumbled.

  Wade caught her arm. “Careful.”

  She kept climbing. “Thank you for coming with me.” She had to clench her teeth against the sudden need to cry. She couldn’t panic now. She couldn’t let herself go. During the long drive, she hadn’t let herself get hysterical. She wouldn’t now. There was something comforting about having Bern’s two brothers at her back. She still marveled that they’d simply followed her into the dark night. It made her realize that they’d do anything for their brother, no matter how crazy it seemed.