Dark Prism

by Cherry Adair

  Her belly clenched. “Clean, anyway.” She opened her door and got out. “We could split up, cover more ground.”

  “We stay together. Get your badge out.”

  Chapter Seven

  Inside, the station smelled of urine and industrial cleaner, heavy on the ammonia, a combination that made Sara’s eyes water. But the old, intricate blue-and-green mosaic tile on the floor was worth a second glance.

  Jack rested his hand possessively on the small of her back. Electricity shot through Sara’s bones and lodged in her chest. Unaffected, he kept her walking forward. “You’re not measuring the place for carpeting. You’re a cop, remember?”

  He dropped his hand as they reached the front desk. The guy behind the desk wasn’t the least bit reticent about telling the norteamericano policía about the last few weeks’ worth of prisoner intakes. There’d been no reports of anyone losing his or her mind or behaving out of the ordinary. He suggested checking the hospitals.

  Jack gave him his card and asked him to call if anyone meeting that description showed up. The man nodded vaguely and went back to his dog-eared girlie magazine, muttering under his breath that all Americans were loco.

  The next two police stations had pretty much the same smell, the same uninterested, overweight cop at the front desk, and the same answer. The trips to the hospitals were just as unproductive, and the smell wasn’t much better. Sara hated hospitals and was glad to get out as quickly as possible.

  Hot and thirsty, they stopped at a sidewalk café where she ordered a papelón con limón, a refreshing drink made from sugarcane juice and lemon, while Jack had one of the local beers.

  There had been a small outdoor café near their house in Tahoe where they used to sit, holding hands, sipping coffee and talking about everything under the sun. Now they sat on opposite sides of the table. No hand-holding. No talking. In the last meaningful conversation they’d had, things were said that had forever driven a wedge between them. Nothing was going to change that.

  Sara focused instead on her tart, icy drink and people-watched. Office workers were starting their commutes home, and the local bars and outdoor cafés were filling up. A young couple, clearly very much in love, sat at a nearby table with a tiny baby in a stroller tucked between their chairs.

  Sara’s heart slammed into her rib cage. The young mother lifted the infant out of the stroller and held her in her arms as she and the young man cooed to the baby.

  Sara’s chest hurt, and she couldn’t drag in a breath. Seeing babies was always traumatic for her. Seeing an infant while she was with Jack was the equivalent of a body slam to her heart. She struggled to drag in a sip of air.

  “We’ll hit that last police station before heading home,” Jack said, clearly unaffected by the happy tableau just feet away. He hadn’t even noticed the baby. She was all Sara could see.

  The late-afternoon sun beat down on the bright yellow umbrella over the table, but she didn’t feel the warmth. Traffic passed within a few feet of them, but she didn’t hear it. Pushing away from the small metal table on legs that barely held her, she snatched her purse off the chair next to her.

  “Be right back.” All she could think about was putting one foot in front of the other as she went through the open French doors and made her way between the mostly empty tables inside the café. Taking her sunglasses off with fingers that shook, she searched frantically for the sign to the restroom. The pain in her chest made breathing almost impossible.

  “Dónde está el baño, por favor?” she demanded urgently of the bartender lazily wiping the counter.

  Once inside the empty women’s restroom, Sara braced her palms on the chipped tiles around the sink and struggled to choke back the dry sobs ripping up her throat. There were no tears. There never were tears. The grief was so vast, so intense, that weeping was impossible. Sinking to her haunches, she squeezed her eyes closed and bowed her head. Pressing her folded arms against her waist, she rocked soundlessly as emotions twisted and clawed through her.

  Through the blood pounding in her ears, she heard the echo of Jack’s last words to her: “You selfish, coldhearted bitch. You didn’t want him and you didn’t give me the opportunity to have him. You killed our baby. I’ll never fucking forgive you for this, Sara. Never.” Through dazed eyes she’d caught a glimpse of the anguish on his face. Then he’d walked away without a backward glance.

  She pressed her fists between her breasts. Would this pain never go away? She’d lost the baby, and she’d lost Jack the same day. Nothing she’d said had convinced him that she hadn’t had an abortion. He’d claimed he had proof. So she was not only a monster for killing her own child—she was a bald-faced liar as well.

  Sara had been stunned, hurt to the depths of her soul that he would entertain for even a second the idea that she could—would—do such a thing. She’d only been pregnant for seven weeks. Then—not. Loved. Then—not.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the arc of their relationship. They’d lived together—that had apparently been enough for Jack. They’d rarely argued at the start. But months before she discovered she was pregnant, they’d started bickering. Mostly about her long hours working for Grant. Her friendship with Grant. Grant, in any form, had pissed Jack off in small and large ways. They’d fought and made up, but soon they’d stayed mad longer, and the fights had become more and more hurtful.

  She’d desperately wanted to fix it. She’d talked to Grant, who had—as usual—supported her. He’d even given her the number of a couples counselor he’d dated, so that she and Jack could try to work things out. But then, in quick succession, she’d realized she was pregnant then lost the baby. She’d entered a waking nightmare. How could she ever, ever forget Jack’s chilling accusation that she’d aborted their child? And how could she ever, ever forgive him for believing for even a nanosecond that she was capable of doing so?

  Months after their breakup, when she’d recovered somewhat from the miscarriage and the horrific scene with Jack, she’d wanted to confront him about it, but Grant had talked her out of it. If Jack genuinely loved her, he would have known it was a miscarriage, Grant pointed out. Wouldn’t a man in love trust that the woman he loved wouldn’t intentionally do such a thing?

  Grant had been right. He was an excellent judge of character, and he’d hinted gently for months beforehand that Jack wasn’t the kind of man who’d settle down. It was all coming back to her now, whether she wanted it to or not, just like Jack.

  “Don’t g-go there,” she warned herself brokenly. She wished she could cry. It might lighten the impossibly heavy weight she carried in her heart. Maybe one day she’d be able to. But even now, two years later, the pain of Jack’s accusations made the relief of crying impossible. The grief was a hard pain lodged in her chest where her heart used to be.

  When she was capable of breathing again, Sara pulled herself to her feet and looked in the mirror over the sink. It always shocked her to see how normal she looked when inside were only the broken remains of who she used to be. She ran some cold water onto a towel and held it to her dry, burning eyes for a few moments, then looked again.

  Taking out her makeup bag, she quickly repaired her face, adding a little extra blush and a slick of glossy, fuck-you red lipstick to her mouth. A couple strokes with her comb and her hair was subdued, if only temporarily. If you didn’t look closely enough to see the stark pain in her eyes, she was just fine. Just fine.

  Stabbing on her sunglasses, she stood up straight, squared her shoulders as if she were heading into battle, and strode back outside.

  “Parate o detente,” the police officer called as they turned to leave the last station.

  “Sí?” Sara walked back to his desk. He spoke to her rapidly in Spanish, gesturing freely, but his attention kept flickering to Jack directly behind her. She suspected that the officer didn’t want her to understand what he was saying—sometimes these Latin men didn’t take a woman seriously. She didn’t have time to argue her case.
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br />   She hated to ask Jack for anything, but the local dialect frequently tripped her up, and Jack had always been terrific at languages. “Something about a girl. … Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  It took a few minutes before Jack shook the guy’s hand and ushered Sara out of the building into the afternoon heat. She looked up at him as they walked. “I got the part about a girl and not much else.”

  “Couple of local girls have disappeared in the last month. They suspect foul play.”

  “Nothing to do with what we’re investigating, then.”

  “Nope. Here, give me the keys. I’ll drive again.”

  Wordlessly, Sara handed over the keys. It wasn’t just Latin men who were overbearing in their maleness. Since she had the keys to the helicopter, she let him have the ones to the car.

  “YOU’RE A BETTER PILOT than a driver.”

  “Gee, Jack. Thanks for the backhanded compliment.” Her soft lips twitched, because the driving thing had always been a running gag with them. God, he missed the ease they used to have.

  Jack missed a shitload of things, but he missed the friendship they’d shared almost as much as he missed the incredible sex.

  He’d been raised by his father after his mother died. Jackson Slater Sr. had been a hard-ass, humorless asshole. Emotion was not tolerated. He didn’t want to hear Jack’s problems, large or small. They were Aequitas. Higher in stature than mere wizards. Superior in every way. The warriors of wizards.

  As far back as he could remember, his father had expected his son to study and perfect magic as diligently as he did his other subjects and brooked nothing less than straight A’s. There’d been no such thing as a pat on the back for a job well done. No such thing as fear. Jack had learned to suck it up. Hell, he’d learned to shut it out. To keep to himself, his nose down.

  And then he’d met this woman who laughed and showed her joy without restraint. Sara had practically been an alien life form. And slowly, so slowly he barely noticed, he opened up. Shared himself with this amazing woman, until she held his life in her two small hands.

  He should’ve fucking listened when she’d told him she wasn’t ready to start a family. Should have heard.

  Without discussion, she’d aborted their child and walked away.

  “If you look down on your side, you’ll see a village I think we should visit tomorrow,” Sara said through the headset, oblivious to his train of thought.

  If she could behave as if they’d never had anything between them, then so could he. “There are several small native villages within a fifty-mile radius of the compound. I think they all have wizards living in or near them. We should check to see if they’ve had any unusual events.”

  “Good idea.” The last rays of the sun shone golden over the dense treetops below as they neared the hacienda. The house and outbuildings seemed to glow amber, the windows flashing like beacons. “And you’ll be happy to know we’ll have to teleport to most of them, becau—tighten your seat belt, Jack.” Sara’s voice was completely calm, but her hand was white-knuckled as she pulled up on the collective lever.

  Wind buffeted the helicopter as they flew directly into the misty white of a cloud. They went from clear, sunset skies to zero visibility between one breath and the next.

  “This normal?”

  “Not even close.”

  He didn’t miss the faint thread of fear in her voice. “We in trouble?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “What do you need?” Jack said into his mic.

  “What does the wind gauge read?”

  “Head wind. Fifty knots, gusting at almost sixty,” he read off the indicators on the dash. “Five hundred feet. Visibility—obvious.” He glanced at the gyrostabilizer. The little plane there danced about sickeningly. Gale-force winds buffeted the small chopper, tossing it about like a leaf in a high wind while enormous drops of rain hit the Plexi with the force and percussion of hail.

  As Sara fought for control, Jack took a nanosecond, debating teleporting them both to safety.

  “Don’t! I mean it, Jack. I can do this. If you want to teleport—go for it. I’m not leaving my three-million-dollar baby without a—hang on!” The chopper bounced violently, then threw them sideways. “Fight!”

  The rock and roll of the chopper had nothing to do with Sara’s ability to handle her craft. She was fighting it for all she was worth. Jack magically tightened their shoulder and lap harnesses, and braced himself as the torque of both engines dropped simultaneously to near zero. They started spiraling toward the tree canopy—fast.

  It was fucking poetic justice that she would literally kill him after all.

  “Can you do an instrument landing?”

  Sara’s muscles flexed as she struggled to bring the nose of the chopper up, fighting the downward pull of the spiral.

  “Only if I see something to land on. And finding that right about now would make me very, very happy. Damn this fog. Open your window a crack,” Sara instructed, “and tell me if you can see anything.” By pure willpower, it seemed, she pulled the chopper almost level. “Why aren’t you dissipating this mess, Jack?”

  “Because it’s not fog. Try burning it off.” Sara’s power to call, when she chose to do so, was fire.

  “I tried that a second ago. If it isn’t a cloud, then what is it?”

  Not fog. Not liquid in any form. Just … white. “I have no fucking idea,” Jack said grimly.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Sara said tightly, “Find me somewhere flat. Now.”

  He heard the hint of desperation in her voice. “I can’t see any better than you can,” he answered over his own rising concern.

  He considered the options. Teleport them the hell out of the helicopter and leave it to crash? That would give Sara—what?—seconds before she fell to the jungle several hundred feet below. Did he have time to check out where they were and get back to her? Or did he stay where he was, waiting for the split second when she realized they had to teleport or die?

  The woman always was stubborn.

  Wind howled through the cabin the moment the window slid down. He thrust a hand out the window: nothing but the updraft. Cloud, a light rain, fog would be wet. But the air felt warm and completely dry. Yet only moments before it had rained.

  He wouldn’t teleport until the last second, if that’s what she wanted, but he reserved the right not to have to kiss either of their asses good-bye. In the meantime, Jack cast a protective shield around her, his eyes on the dials. “Four hundred feet.”

  Sara increased the collective again, but the chopper continued its rapid descent.

  “Three-fifty. Twenty. Three hundred …” Heart in his throat, Jack saw the red transmission oil light blink on. “Engine/rotor rpm below one hundred.” Time to take charge of this clusterfuck and teleport—

  “What’s that?” He leaned forward, eyes narrowed, as a red blur shimmered just beyond the veil of white. “Sara! Two o’clock. Aren’t those the red trees beside the house?”

  “Yes!” Her voice was filled with relief as she battled for control, turning the chopper’s nose toward the compound. She increased the collective, fighting to maintain a normal approach profile, her arms shaking with the strain of keeping the craft airborne.

  He reached over and lightly touched the back of her neck. “You can do this.”

  Jack braced for the inevitable crash landing and the split-second timing he’d need to avert a tragedy.

  The sprawling hacienda emerged from the mist and trees, bathed in the amber glow of the sunset and approaching much too fast. The thick, blinding whiteness vanished as if it had never been.

  “Hang on. We’re in for a bumpy ride. And do not freaking teleport me, Jackson.”

  He made no promises.

  image

  GRANT YANKED HER DOOR open, his fair hair blowing in the vortex of the still-moving blades overhead. “Sara, Jesus, sweetheart, are you all right?” He was shouting to be heard over the noise, but Sa
ra had to lip-read since she still had on her headset. Taking it off, she unclipped her belt, then sucked in a shaky breath.

  Pia and half the household staff clustered behind Grant on the edge of the helipad. They’d all witnessed the hard landing.

  By some miracle, nothing was broken, not herself, Jack, or the Bell. But it had been damn close. Sara’s heart was still galloping, and her entire body felt clammy as Grant reached up and lifted her out before she realized what he intended. He set her down on wobbly legs, an arm around her shoulders.

  “My God, that was the most amazing piece of flying I’ve ever witnessed.” Still in a crouch to dodge the buffeting of the spinning blades, he led her out of the way, then grabbed her in a bear hug. After a few seconds, he held her at arm’s length, his pale blue eyes filled with worry. “Are you hurt, baby? Any bumps and bruises?”

  “No. I’m fine.” Other than her knees feeling like rubber, and her stomach still anticipating trashing three million dollars’ worth of beautiful machinery. Even though Sara had known she and Jack wouldn’t die—they’d have teleported before a crash landing—adrenaline still coursed through her body at the speed of terror. “The chopper’s fine too.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the damned helicopter! I’m going to have José’s ass. He signed off on the maintenance two days ago. What happened?”

  “Engine cut out. I do—”

  “How about if she goes inside and takes a breath before she gets the third degree?” Jack suggested, coming up behind her. He slid his arm around her waist, and Sara somehow found herself in Jack’s arms instead of Grant’s.

  Grant slung his arm around her shoulders and gave a little tug. She was the filling in a testosterone cookie. Deftly, Sara stepped out from between the two men. She was no dog bone.

  Grant held on a second longer than Jack did. She threw him a warning look. She loved him for being protective, but she didn’t need help with Jack.