by Aimee Laine
Ian wrote ‘Are you sure?’ on the paper, adding, ‘because you told me not to talk and, apparently, I do everything you ask.’
The glare Tripp gave Ian had a smile brewing on Taylor’s lips. The two couldn’t have looked different, yet they acted like brothers.
Tripp wrote back, ‘Yes, you idiot.’
“What … is it?” Taylor asked. “What is this, Ian?” She pitched her voice low, pointing to her finger. “Why do you have one?”
After a long while, Ian said, “I’ve had this on my finger forever, too. Since birth. It wasn’t an add-on.” He swiped a hand over his head.
Not a tattoo. Taylor’s breath caught.
“It’s called the branches of life.”
Taylor lowered to her seat again, her body shaking with the fact that the man she’d thought of so much in the previous months sat in front of her with an insignia like her own.
“It comes from the tree of life, an interconnection between all life on the planet.”
She’d heard of that. “I thought that was depicted as a real tree, though.”
Ian nodded. “That’s why I said sorta.” He reached for Taylor’s hand, but Tripp stopped him. With a frustrated sigh, Ian held out his own finger and pointed to the markings. “There are four circles going around my finger. Four distinct patterns.”
Taylor brought hers closer to her face. As Ian pointed to the outer part and traced it inside, around and back, she did the same on hers. “It’s a closed loop, but it breaks and jumps over to another one.”
He continued on, following the second line. It, too, completed a circle, ending on a line that moved it to a third. The third did the same. At the fourth, it stopped midway around.
“Mine does the same.” Taylor traced her own. Her entire body, her entire being resisted what stared at her. The breaks matched without a millimeter of error. They stop at the same point. “Why doesn’t it reconnect?”
Ian’s gaze didn’t shift from Taylor’s. “According to the guy who translated this for me, it’s a cycle of four. Lives, that is. Each of the three previous has ended before something happened that would allow it to reconnect with the other side.”
“What did?”
“He couldn’t tell me. Rather, he said it was unique to every individual. Like snowflakes. All of them. But … according to him, and he said he was an expert on this stuff, this is the last chance to rectify whatever happened the other three times.”
“Why do we both have this?” Taylor asked.
Ian shrugged.
“There’s no way this is coincidence,” Taylor said.
“And, there’s no way this is related to you being in jail, so, why don’t the two of you finish your conversation, I’ll play secretary, and we can all go home,” Ian said.
A pang hit Taylor. She couldn’t go home right then, and of all times, she wanted to, just so she could do some research. “When can I get out of here?”
“They’ve got you on the docket in twenty-four hours,” Tripp said.
“Another day?” She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. A pull back of her feet and her leg restraints caused a clank against the floor.
“Seems there was a full moon last night, and with that came a whole host of crimes and a plate so full, the justice system is backed up further than normal.”
“Lovely.” Sarcasm riddled her tone.
Tripp tapped on the table, sending an empty, metallic echo through the room. “The police are continuing their investigation.”
“How can they keep me while they do that? Don’t they have to have proof?” She spat out the words as anger replaced frustration.
“They had a warrant, which I’m waiting for a copy of. My guess is they’ve got their claws in some piece of information and are hanging on to it by a thread.”
Taylor jumped forward. “Riley.”
“Riley?” Tripp asked as Ian leaned back in his chair, a scowl growing on his face.
“He’s … a friend. On the police force. Just got a promotion. He’ll help if I ask. Can I? I mean—”
“No.” Tripp shook his head. “Just leave this to me.”
An inner war began within Taylor. Riley would help her with anything. “So, what happens next?”
“We get in front of the judge tomorrow. We plead not guilty, get bail, get you out and figure it out from there. Or, I find a way to convince them you had nothing to do with this and get you off completely.”
• • •
“How the hell can we have matching symbols on our fingers?” Ian asked as he slipped into Tripp’s Jaguar.
“I told ya,” Tripp started, “when you first looked up those lines. I told you it was going to lead to a woman.”
“But you didn’t say a criminal.”
“She’s not.” Tripp drove them from jail and onto the freeway toward home.
“Yet, we were the ones to walk out of that jail and oh! Oh! She stayed. So that puts her on the wrong side of the law.” Ian leaned his head against the window.
“So pessimistic.” Tripp chuckled. “Lexi will be so disappointed you think that way when she tells you what she found.”
6
Ian slouched against the back of Tripp’s favorite chair, sat up, leaned elbows on knees and relaxed again. He couldn’t get comfortable. They’d spent over three hours with Taylor but had no real plan, no next steps as far as he could tell. Ian had itched to touch her, to make a physical connection with her, until the moment he’d seen the lines—the bands—the symbol.
On top of that, criminals, whether proven or not, did not fit into his future.
Tripp plopped next to his wife on the couch, sneaking an arm around her shoulders. Lexi’s black hair fell over his arm as she snuggled into the crook.
A desire for the same hit Ian. A picture formed in his mind of him and Taylor sitting much the same way. He shook it off. “Okay, Lex, tell me what you know about Taylor Marsh.”
Emma, Lexi’s twin, though her complete opposite in every way, with her ultra-bright, blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, snagged a beanbag. “Ooh. What do you know about Taylor? I would love some good gossip.”
“She’s in jail, Em,” Lexi said. “No gossiping allowed.”
Emma stuck out her tongue. “You’re no fun.”
Tripp coughed over a laugh. “So … I didn’t tell Taylor this … but we already got some intel from a source.”
“You mean, Riley?” Emma asked.
Ian raised an eyebrow. “What happened to my question?”
“What?” Emma shrugged. “They’ve been friends for years. He’s on the force. I can put two and two together really fast.” She tapped her temple.
Lexi pulled her hair into a tail and stood. “You guys keep going. I’ll be right back.”
I’m never going to get an answer.
“So …” Tripp tilted his head toward Emma. “My … source … says the bones are beneath the surface, by a couple feet, and at a semi-angular tilt—head up. Whatever the hell that means. They have to dig around the entire area where that shed was. Seems they need to cull through an eight by four by three foot section to get to everything and won’t let anyone touch anything until they have it all mapped out. They got a judge to agree to the arrest, and according to my source, it’s legit. Again, how, I haven’t a clue. Worse, it’s probably going to take a week to find, catalogue and validate that they have all the bones and do their search of her home … everything.”
“Bones are bones, right?” Ian asked. “Have them date ‘em, for fuck’s sake. How hard can that be?” Ian rolled his eyes, closing them for a second. “Or, has innocent until proven guilty been forgotten?”
Emma’s gaze strayed his way with a discernible tilt to her head and furrowed brows. Ian mirrored her look. Tripp gave him a similar one.
“What?” Ian asked.
Tripp leaned forward, elbows on knees. “An hour ago you were complaining that she was a criminal, now you’re advocating for justice?”
/> Lexi returned with a small pint of ice cream in her hand. She stopped, turned to Tripp, to Ian, Emma and back to Tripp. “I’m sensing some emotional upheaval.”
With a smirk, Tripp said, “Ian’s in love and doesn’t like it.”
“I am not!” Ian stood and stormed to the sliding glass door, facing out where a spring thunderstorm brewed.
“Ian’s in love?” Emma asked. “With who?”
“Taylor Marsh,” Lexi said.
Ian spun. “Son of a bitch! What is up with you three?”
They all smiled.
“Well, that explains three things,” Emma said. “The moodiness. The half-pissed off, half-smart-ass, half-rockin’ attitude.”
“That’s two point five, Em.” Lexi sat with Tripp again. “Or four, depending on how you count.” She turned toward her husband. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“And ruin all this fun?” Tripp chuckled. “Not on your life.”
“Will someone please—” Ian began.
Lexi patted the seat next to her. “Come on, Ian. I’ll tell you.”
He flopped back into his original spot.
“When Taylor called me—” Tripp started.
Emma sat bolt upright. “You already looked!” She slapped her palm on her knee. “What about your ‘I don’t use my superpowers on people’ deal?”
Lexi licked her spoon clean and waved it at her sister. “This is my story, Em, so zip it. But, yes.”
Ian leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, as interested as Emma seemed excited.
“So, as I was saying …” Tripp pointed at both Emma and Ian. “Stay quiet for a minute, and we’ll explain.”
“Fine,” Emma and Ian both said.
“When Taylor called me and told me she’d been arrested on suspicion of murder, I asked Lexi if she’d be willing to check out the stor—”
“And I said ‘no way in hell’.” Lexi’s body trembled—Ian assumed from the question and not brain freeze from the giant mouthful of ice cream she spoke around.
“That’s my girl.” Emma giggled. “Stick to those principles you and no one else in the world still uphold.”
Lexi rolled her eyes. “I don’t use my gift on people for a reason, Em. You know that. And, we don’t know that this person was murdered. All it is is a pile of bones. For all we know, that was a cemetery plot.” Lexi drew in a deep breath. “But, because said person is dead and gone and thus can’t ask anything of me … I decided to bend my rules a little and simply search for who they were. That’s all. Just ‘who’, and if that would give Tripp an answer, he could figure out the rest.”
Emma’s lips curved down. “I thought your gift let you find tangible stuff, like rings and purses, paintings, and people who’re alive and kickin’. Not … ones who don’t exist.”
“I thought that, too, Em, and, well … I didn’t exactly get an answer.” Lexi’s shoulders fell. “Instead, I got a picture … that is, a photograph came to mind.”
“A photograph? Of what?” Emma asked as Tripp grinned.
“Of who is the better question.” Lexi scooped up a big spoonful of ice cream. “What’s weirder is that the photo was very clearly hanging on the wall of this house before we bought it. You know, the ones that were up there.” Lexi pointed to the fireplace across from where she sat—one that had once been decorated in a pea green, flowered, peeling wallpaper half a year before Taylor had renovated it, had had her hands in the work, had touched the walls and wood, floors and ceiling, doors and every inch of the place.
“So, this picture. Who was it?” Emma broke Ian’s reaching thoughts.
“It was old. Faded. Black and white. And … I’d have sworn, I mean hand on the Bible kind of swearing, that it was Ian and—”
“Me?” He shot a glance toward the mantel as if the picture would magically appear.
“And Taylor,” Lexi said.
Dumbstruck, Ian said nothing.
“It had to be a hundred years old by the look of the clothes and the horse-pulled buggy thing, though, so it couldn’t have been either of you. But Taylor has roots here, so, like I said, that leads me to believe those bones are probably an ancestor of hers.”
“So, a cemetery, then.” Ian eyed Tripp. “So, you said you believed Taylor because Lex imagined some bones, which neither of you have seen, and they pointed you to a picture that doesn’t exist anymore?” He knuckled his temple. “How does that make any sense?”
“I’m never wrong when it comes to finding this stuff.” Lexi paused and took a breath, laying a hand on her stomach. “So, what this proves is that Taylor couldn’t have killed that person because she wouldn’t have even been born when they lived.”
“We’re talking a hundred years old, at least,” Tripp said.
“All we have to do, then, is prove those bones are one of her ancestor’s?” Emma’s head cocked to the side.
“Yeah.” Tripp turned toward Lexi, one of his eyebrows up higher than the other. “Want a little adventure tonight?”
She ran her hand up his chest as a yawn broke. “With you? Always.”
She’s tired at two p.m.? “So, you two have the bone acquisition part of our adventure taken care of.”
“I want this off the books, too,” Tripp said. “We’ll find out what we want to find out and then figure out how to legitimize it. I want you to look into Tanner Meadows, Ian.”
For the second time, Ian thought the name held a familiarity not unlike the photos on the wall that Lexi had found in her mental missing persons search. Not only for Taylor, but to satisfy his own ridiculous curiosity, Ian said, “I can do that.” Research had always been his forte; he only hoped he could find out more about the tattoo on his finger.
“Could you have a certain brother do some forensic science magic?” Emma asked.
Ian blinked. “You do know Michael’s going into med school, right? Not morgue work?”
“He’ll have friends who need to pay for med school, right?” Tripp asked.
“Yeah, but—”
“Ooh!” Emma’s eyes brightened. “I just remembered.” Emma pointed toward the wall. “Sherrill has the photos. I’ll give her a call.”
Sherrill. The woman who’s grandparents had lived in Lexi and Tripp’s home before them. The woman who held the key to the beginning of Lexi and Tripp’s relationship—to the unwinnable game that Tripp managed to outwit.
Why does this feel like a lead I don’t want to know about?
• • •
Tripp may have wanted Ian to research Tanner Meadows, but Ian needed to know why, how and what force had tattooed him with a mark that matched the woman who plagued his dreams, his life, his very soul.
At the very least, he needed to detach her since he’d spent countless sums of money trying to get the design off, with no success. He’d tried salt water to fade it. Over the counter removal creams. Even went to a professional laser center, and five thousand dollars later, the lines hadn’t faded a bit. In fact, to Ian’s eye, they’d darkened.
Every search Ian ran pulled up the same information on the markings. No matter the browser, the same sights appeared and reappeared, telling him exactly what he already knew.
Four chances.
He and Taylor seemed to be on the fourth.
The fourth what, though?
Some of the information pointed to success or love. Another article, written by a self-proclaimed psychic, suggested whatever had been the greatest conflict in the life—during the first time phase—would return repeatedly.
Through all of Ian’s life, nothing had happened more than once.
“As they say, lightning doesn’t strike twice in one spot.”
Ian continued his search, having only half-believed the man he’d talked to before, but that niggle in the back of his mind made him want to know if any truth could be hidden between the crazy-assed psychic mumbo-jumbo and reality. Somewhere in there, he’d find the details. He just needed to reach the right person.
&
nbsp; After two hours, he’d come up with nothing new, and a mounting frustration.
• • •
Flat against her mattress again, Taylor stared at the ceiling. She reached out, touched the concrete slab above her and let the pads of her fingertips run across the bumpy texture. As the panic set in, she bit it back, digging her teeth into her lip. Her body tensed. Her stomach curdled. With the exception of the first morning, she had managed to keep the closed-in feeling that came from four people in a room the size of a tin can at bay.
Just a touch of claustrophobia, her pediatrician, family doctor and therapist had all said. There is no rationale to many of the mind’s inner workings, they’d added. Taylor’s list of issues had grown enough that she hadn’t been the girl her mother always dreamed of having. Instead, she’d fought off her problems by diving into a career that kept her busy from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week.
She flipped to her side and heaved a breath. I can get through this. I will get through this.
“You doin’ okay up there?” Tanya’s voice carried in the near silence. With the exception of Tanya, Taylor’s bunk mates had been replaced again.
Murderers, whether suspected or not, seemed to get priority in one area only—not being moved.
“I’m okay. Thanks.” At the edge of the bed, Taylor twisted a loose screw until she tightened it enough that her fingers wouldn’t make it go further. If she didn’t get something useful and productive to do soon, her head would self-combust from pure boredom.
“You know.” Tanya broke the unending silence. “That lawyer of yours is hot.”
Taylor chuckled. She and Tanya had built up a trust in each other, to the point Taylor knew Tanya’s choice to kill her boyfriend, while wrong, seemed justified. That she’d pled guilty kept her in the local facility—though for how long she’d stay, neither Taylor nor Tanya knew. Overcrowding meant moving to other facilities, but Tanya’s sentence had yet to be given.
“My lawyer’s married.”
“She hot like him?”
Another small laugh bubbled up in Taylor. “She’s beautiful.” Taylor worked to secure the screw again.
“When they gettin’ you outta here?” Squeaking came from the bunk below.