by L. L. Muir
“And she didn’t wake it up to find out?”
Ash winced. “She was afraid of what she’d find. If the whole story was there, then she hadn’t moved from her desk. She wants to hang on to the possibility that he is real. Out there. Somewhere.”
“Which only solidifies the probability that—”
Ash exhaled violently in surrender. “She’s crazy.”
Cindy nodded. “Absolutely batshit. But you have to make her do it. She has to turn on the computer and look.” She shrugged. “I don’t see how you can give her a happily ever after unless he’s some kind of vampire or something, planting romantic memories in her head so when he shows up at her window, she welcomes him inside.”
Ash shook her head. “I’ll read Vampires, but I’m not going to write them.”
Cindy took a bite of her green beans, coughed, then spit them into her napkin. “Oh my gosh! I’ve got it!”
Ash’s heart started pounding. “What?”
“What if she opens the document and starts writing again. Only, instead of stepping back into the story, she just writes a killer romance where the characters live happily ever after, and in the end, we find out that it was one of her previous lives. And that’s why she was so drawn to the hero in the first place!”
Ash felt the air leave her sails—then watched her ship of hope go up in flames before sinking into the sea. “So, finish the story.”
“Yeah. Finish the story. And if she’s crazy enough, maybe she will get sucked into it. You never know.”
“Right. You never know.” But Ashlynn did know, and it left her treading water with not even a barrel to hold onto.
She’d known from the moment she found herself back at her desk that, if she honestly tried to get back to Alexander and failed, she might never get over it. But she had to…
Or the insane-writer scenario would end up being non-fiction.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two nights later, Ashlynn had just finished grocery shopping when her phone rang. It was her editor.
“Hold on just a minute.” She closed the back of her Jeep and got behind the wheel. Hanging around in a parking lot at midnight would be stupid, no matter how important the call was. “Sorry about that. How you doing, Angela? Isn’t it a little late for you?”
“I waited until I knew you’d be up. And I’m not okay. I’m concerned. Since when do you text me? You haven’t decided to take a vacation instead of starting that book, have you?”
Oh, she’d started something all right, but nothing she’d be sharing with the world.
“No. I haven’t gone anywhere. My computer crashed.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Actually, it is pretty serious. I’ve sent it off to a company that can supposedly retrieve anything the FBI can.”
“Ashlynn.”
“Yes?”
“You already used that excuse—on the September book last year.”
Crap! “I did?”
“You did. You really need to keep track, honey.”
She was mortified. “I’ll do better.”
“At keeping your deadlines? Or keeping track of your excuses?”
“Uh…both?”
“Good. Now. When can I have a synopsis? I need something to take to Acquisitions.”
“Ummm…”
“The end of the week, Angela,” her editor said in an airy voice.
Ash sighed audibly. “The end of the week, Angela.”
“Great. Now, go turn on your computer, back up your files, and get to work.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I prefer Sergeant.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
~ ~ ~
Wolfgang growled to complain that she was slamming cupboards. Ashlynn hadn’t realized.
“Oh. Sorry.” She looked around the kitchen to see if there was anything else that needed tidying, but nothing was out of place. It was 12:56. Too early to go to bed if she didn’t want to mess up her body clock. And if she hurried, she could start working on a round number.
Four minutes.
That gave her two more minutes to procrastinate, so she went to the bathroom. In the back of her mind, she was thinking that she’d better empty her bladder just in case she ended up Somewhere, where bathrooms wouldn’t be marked with obvious signs. But in the front of her mind, she insisted she always peed before she started working.
The computer was a cold black box without so much as a power light on.
The clock read 12:59.
A nice round number was seconds away.
She pushed the power button. The fan lights inside the clear panel lit up blue. Ten short seconds later, the screen asked for her password.
A glance at the clock… 1:00 am. Perfect.
She typed in her password, went to her files, and clicked on the one named “Work In Progress.”
Come on, Alexander. Be real.
Thanks to her fast computer, the document opened in seconds. A little box to the far right asked if she wanted to pick up where she’d left off.
“Oh, yes please.”
She hovered the cursor over it for a few seconds, took a deep breath, then clicked left. The pages zipped by and stopped abruptly at the end of the file. On a line all by themselves were the words, But it was too late.
And though she didn’t remember typing a word after she read that line, there was more…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Ash Lynn! Come back!”
Nothing but that snippet of dialogue lay beneath her own words. Not a dialogue tag, naming the speaker. Not an action tag, describing what the speaker was doing when he’d said them.
But who, other than Alexander, would have called her Ash Lynn?
“Okay. This isn’t funny,” she said aloud.
Wolfgang whined and fled the room. Clearly, a doggy bag full of bones only paid enough to get him back in the room, not to stay. Apparently, there was a higher price for his unwavering loyalty.
She called after him. “No more bones for you!”
He didn’t worry. Probably because he heard it all the time and still wound up with a bone now and then.
She turned back to the screen. The cursor blinked on a new, blank paragraph. Waiting.
Was someone gaslighting her? Trying to make her believe she was losing her mind?
No one had forced her to write herself into that story. No one but Cindy even knew about it—unless someone had gained root access to her computer. If they had, they could have read everything she’d written. They would know what to write that would send her over the edge.
But who would do such a thing?
No one could get into her house with Wolfgang there. But maybe when she took the dog up the canyon?
It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t Nora Roberts or Stephen King. Stealing her manuscripts wouldn’t make anyone rich. LaMont’s obsessive letters had stopped coming two years ago, so she was hopeful he’d moved on. And the only people left who might have an issue with her were Uncle Dewey’s kids. They were still miffed that he left the house to her. But honestly, they weren’t that upset about it.
When they left home for colleges Dewey paid for, they never came back to visit. So, even though they weren’t happy the cabin was left to her, they hadn’t been surprised. Maybe the only thing they’d regretted was the wasted trip out, for the funeral and the reading of the will.
Dewey had so deserved better kids. But no. They wouldn’t have bothered to harass her.
Cindy wouldn’t have done it. She wrote Romantic Suspense novels set in western towns, and she was successful enough that she had no time for pranks. All she needed from Ash was a fresh set of eyes to look at a story problem, and someone to go to lunch with who spoke the same language.
That meant there were only two other people who could have written those words… Alexander—who couldn’t be real. And herself—or rather, another self.
She shook her head and just kept shaking it.
That reall
y would be a Stephen King novel. She was pretty sure it was called The Window, or something like that. Johnny Depp played the writer whose personality split and he sabotaged himself. But that wasn’t A. L. Woods, it was a writer with issues.
She didn’t have issues. Deadlines, yes, but no issues. Was she a little bit lonely? Yes. But if she wanted to do something about that, she could stop running away from handsome men at the gas station. She would go to Sawtooth Club and hang out at the bar instead of dark corner tables, facing the wall.
Hell, she hadn’t even tried... Hadn’t spoken to strangers since…a few nights ago. In Regency England.
There. At least that was proof she could search out and enjoy a little human interaction if she wanted to. In fact, it had been going incredibly well until her bladder had sabotaged...
No, no! Not her! She wasn’t going crazy. She hadn’t run from Alexander as much as she’d been running into the woods, to pee and get right back to him.
She’d made him promise not to move. And when she hadn’t come back? He must have shouted.
And her computer heard him.
Ash Lynn, come back!
Oh, sure. Maybe a voice recognition program had just kicked in all by itself and started taking dictation—from her brain!
Yeah. And if that were true, she’d never have to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome again.
Her eyes got tired of staring at those words, so she closed them. She could almost imagine his voice, could remember just what he looked like, what that wooden horse looked like, with its forelegs swinging slightly with the movement of the stage after she’d jumped to the ground.
She remembered the smell of the cool dark grass as she’d sprinted toward the sheltering line of tall bushes. She remembered the leg holes of her underwear, staring up at her from the dark ground like two big eyes, just before she kicked them out of the way. Could almost feel the bark of that tree at her back.
“Take me back,” she whispered. “Alexander, help me.”
She heard the grind of metal that might be the creak of a certain carousel. And while she prayed silently, she opened her eyes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The light of a single lamp came from the right and Ash turned to see the lampshade of her bedside table teasing her from the corner of the room. Her screen had gone to sleep. The little power light winked at her, but she clearly hadn’t gone anywhere, even in her mind.
The metal grinding sounded again and she realized it was just Wolfgang. She’d heard the same grating noise a hundred times. His bowl must have slid under the old-fashioned barstool again, and he was pushing it along the Formica floor with his head, trying to get to his food.
“Damn that dog.”
If she was ever going to see Alexander again, without interruption, she was going to have to do something with her four-legged nemesis. She couldn’t expect a lord to wait on that merry-go-round forever, and she’d already wasted too much time worrying that she would never find her way back.
“Just do it already!”
Now that she thought about it—had she actually tried?
“If at first you don’t succeed, you need more faith.” She marched into the kitchen. “Come on, Wolfgang. You’re going outside. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and I can’t just leave you locked up to starve, right?”
The fence in the backyard was six feet high, but he could jump it if he needed to.
The dog trotted out like he understood perfectly. If she doesn’t let me back in tomorrow, I can go on a rampage and eat anything and anyone I like. Got it.
She went to the fridge and stuffed her face with two rolled up pieces of ham and a few bites of store-bought potato salad. Then she washed it down with orange soda that had gone flat. But what did she expect when she couldn’t remember when she’d bought it?
Next, she used the bathroom, stripped, and put that nightgown on again. She had a dress coat she kept in case of funerals, so she put that on too. No matter where she was headed, she wasn’t going to fit in. But at least she wouldn’t be mistaken for a man. She pulled on a pair of leather boots, just in case she had to hunt Alexander down, and her flimsy Walmart slippers wouldn’t protect her feet for long.
At the last second, she remembered a bottle of antibiotics she’d never been able to throw out, just in case. She stuffed the little orange bottle into an inside pocket.
Seated at the desk again, a little white canister caught her eye.
Of course!
She hugged the lid off and poured the contents into her deep front pocket and wondered if Alexander would be disgusted or impressed with M&M’s.
Wondering what else she might be missing, she searched her desk. Fingernail clippers and a mini flashlight went into another pocket. Then she made a mental note.
My underwear is hot pink tonight.
Out of habit, she reached for her blue tumbler, but it was empty. She had two large glasses of ice still in the freezer, but they were too old now. If she wanted to impress Alexander and take one last glass of nugget ice with her, she had to go to the gas station.
She waivered.
It wasn’t far.
She imagined the look on his face when she presented him with yet another feat of magic. “Hang on, Alexander. I’ll hurry.”
~ ~ ~
The graveyard shift at Maverik were unfamiliar to Ashlynn. And thankfully, they were unfamiliar with her. Her long coat, nightgown, and boots made just about everyone do a double-take, but they weren’t looking at her face, wondering if they knew her from somewhere. And no one tried to pick up on her.
She’d avoided the place since the last time she’d come for ice. In fact, she’d avoided too much of her regular routine since that night. But not anymore. It was her regular routine that got her to Alexander in the first place. There was no sense avoiding it if it helped get her back to him in the second place.
Though she knew she wouldn’t use it all, she got her usual three cups of ice but skipped the cinnamon roll since Jenny wasn’t around. She tried to pay, but the guy just waved her off. Probably because he thought she was a nut case and wanted her out of there before she pulled a weapon from her raincoat.
He thought she was crazy? Boy, if he only knew.
She hugged two cups against her while she laughed her way to the Jeep but dropped her smile when she realized someone stood between herself and the driver’s door. She held up one of the cups of ice, like she could use it as a weapon if she wanted to.
“Hello again,” the man said. He was far too cheerful for the middle of the night. He was probably drunk. “Please don’t freak out.” He held up his hands. “I’m not some creepy stalker or anything. I just want to talk to you for a minute.” He never looked away from her face, like he was studying it for a test.
She recognized him as the guy who had tried to catch her in the parking lot. She also remembered hitting the gas and veering around him, hoping that he peed his pants.
Well, the joke had been on her. That was the same night she’d found Alexander. And if this guy was part of some ritual that worked, she was happy to nearly side-swipe him again.
“Get away from my Jeep.”
He leaned back and crossed his feet. “It’s funny the way Jeep owners never call their Jeeps cars.”
“That’s what you have to say to me? You’re high, aren’t you?” Her heart was beating so loud in her ears, her own voice sounded distant.
He shook his head and straightened away from the door, but didn’t go anywhere. “I am not high. I am not dangerous. I just needed to talk to you, to see who you are.”
Her arm was getting tired fast, even though the cup weighed nothing, so she lowered it. “Why do you need to see who I am?”
“Because…because you’re kind of a household name in my family.”
“You’re looking for an autograph.”
“I don’t have a book for you to sign, but thanks anyway.” He laughed, proving he wasn’t an idiot. He knew she wasn’t really off
ering him anything. “When my sister said you actually showed up for her interview, I couldn’t believe it. But here you are, in Ketchum, Idaho.”
Though the world was opening up beneath her, Ash was determined to hang on. She was done living in fear. With Alexander, she’d had a taste of what it might be like to live a carefree life, and if she could stand up to a stalker in the middle of the night, in a temporarily empty parking lot, she might taste that life again.
“She said her brother was twenty. You’re not twenty.”
He shrugged. “I guess both of you lied that day.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ashlynn kept her mouth shut. Some questions give more information than they get, so it was better to let him do the talking.
“Husband and kids, huh? I don’t think so.”
Her chest began to tighten. That same old fear threatened to turn her into a helpless victim again. The victim she’d never stopped being. So, instead of waiting for the paralysis, she fought it, because that was the battle she had to win before she could deal with the man standing between herself and freedom.
She took a deep breath and the fear binding her chest loosened, then fell away. Next, she dealt with her wild thoughts.
There was no use worrying how he’d gotten his information. He knew. Who cared? The only thing that mattered was what he intended to do to her, and how she was going to prevent that from happening.
She coolly scanned the parking lot again, looking for anyone who could help her. The guy at the gas pump wasn’t making eye contact. She couldn’t even see the guys inside the store. All she could do was scream for someone to call the police and hope that someone would do it, and in the meantime, fight like hell.
How to hurt a man was something she’d learned over the years, but first, she was going to give the guy a chance to walk away.
“Okay,” she said. “You’ve seen me. Twice. What more do you want?”
He sighed. “Look. I’m sorry. I’m tired. I’ve been watching this place for days, hoping you’d come back.” He pointed to a truck parked across the street in another sadly empty lot. It was dark—maybe the same blue truck that had followed her as far as Stanley. “I was just about to give up when you pulled in.”