Dangerous Lover

by Maggie Shayne

  “Selene?”

  He was looking at her now, rather than toward whatever discovery he’d made. She blinked and tried to shake away her distraction. “Sorry. I was just…thinking.”

  “About Tessa?”

  “In a way. She and Chet wasted a lot of time. And it turned out to be time they didn’t have.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She shook her head. “It’s important not to waste time, don’t you think? I mean, none of us know how much we have. We should be milking every second of life for every drop of happiness we can. Shouldn’t we?”

  “Yeah. Unless killers are after us and our lives depend on finding out what’s going on. In which case, milking life for a bucket of joy gets second billing.”

  She thinned her lips, lowered her head. “What is it you see?”

  “Tire tracks. There, look.”

  She looked. There were curving marks in the road where a car had apparently lost control. She frowned, moving closer. “Tire tracks, to here, as he started to lose it, then skid marks from here on.”

  He nodded in agreement as the two of them walked the length of the tracks, bent over and squinting at the road. “The car ended up over here—look at this.”

  She saw the broken brush, berry briars and saplings crushed, and tire tracks in the soft earth. There were places closer to the road that were all dug up, and there were clear drag marks. There was also a set of neat tire tracks a few yards behind the spot where the first car must have veered off the road. As if someone had pulled over behind it.

  “The car was here, but it looks like someone pulled it out,” she said.

  “Could be the police found it and towed it in.”

  “I can find out later. Come on.” She reached for his hand and when he closed it around hers, she shivered for a minute. Goddess, that the man could make her shiver just by touching her. It was freaking unreal.

  “Where we going?” he asked.

  “Look, are you putting this together? What are you seeing here?”

  “A car went off the road. Someone pulled it out.”

  “A car went off the road. Another car was behind it, can’t tell how far, but when it went off the road, the second car pulled over here.” She pointed. “And that looks to me like a footprint. Whoever was in the second car got out and headed into the woods.”

  He was getting it now, she could see it in his face. “Going after whoever was in the first car?”

  “Let’s check.” They stepped over and around brush, to where the tracks of the first car ended in a rutted spot. “Looks like he spun the tires here, and just dug himself in deeper,” she said.

  “Yeah, and then he got out of the car.” He was bending near where she guessed the driver’s door would have been. “I’ve got footprints over here.”

  She knelt beside him. “Cory?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Stand up.”

  He did. She nodded. “Now, take two steps backward.” He frowned at her, but she said, “Just do it. Trust me.” So he did. And then she bent close to the footprint he’d left in the moist forest floor, and crooked a finger at him for him to come join her. He did. “Take a look,” she said. “This is the footprint made by whoever was driving that car. And this is the one you just made.”

  He looked from one to the other. “They’re the same.”

  “Yeah. You were driving the car that went off the road. And I’m betting the killer or killers were behind you even then, which is why you got out and ran into the woods.” She straightened.

  So did he, and as she moved across the flattened grass where the car had once rested, looking for clues, he stood there, staring in the woods. The strain on his face was clear. He was trying to force a memory.

  Then she glanced down, and sucked in a breath. “Cory?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You weren’t alone.”

  “I know. I was being chased, apparently.”

  “I mean in the car. You weren’t alone in the car. You had a passenger. He got out and ran, too.”

  “What?” He joined her where she was, knelt and saw the second set of footprints, very similar to those he’d made, though smaller than his own shoe. Then he rose fast, and stared into the woods. “There was someone else with me. Did he get away? Or is he—”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the police found him by now, or maybe he got away on his own. But we’ll find out.”

  “Yeah, listen, you head this way, I’ll go east. We’ll make a loop, about fifty yards wide, then close it in slowly until we pick up a trail.” He tipped his head up. “I hope we have enough daylight left.”

  “We do. Because I have a faster way.”

  He shifted his gaze to hers. She went up to a tree, touched its trunk, spoke to it silently, and then snapped a small forked branch from a larger limb.

  “What’s that for?”

  “It’s a dousing rod. You’ve heard of them?”

  His brows arched. She loved watching the expressions as they moved across his face. He was so incredibly attractive to her. “Isn’t that what some old-timers use to find water?” he asked.

  “Or oil or minerals. Or anything else you can think of. You want to find something, you just feel for its energy with a little help from nature. It’s all the same.”

  “Oh, come on, Selene. This is no time for your Witchcraft stuff. Let’s just start searching.”

  She tried to stifle the hurt. Told herself he was upset, being back here—it was probably stirring things up in his subconscious. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  Frustrated, he sighed, and headed deeper in the woods. She rolled her eyes, thought it was probably a good thing she was seeing that the man actually did have a few flaws. Everyone had flaws, and it wasn’t healthy to see him as flawless. Hell, she already cared far more about him than he did about her, putting her in a position she’d sworn she would never be in. Almost at his mercy, craving any crumb of affection he might drop.

  This was a step in the right direction. She might as well identify his flaws and figure out how tough they would be to live with, before she got herself too entangled. He might be her soul mate, the man she was destined to be with. But there was still free choice. She could turn away.

  Yeah, like I could stop breathing. Just as easy.

  She could decide to be with someone else, someone easier but less perfect for her.

  As if I could ever want anyone else like this. I know damn well I’ll never feel for any other man the way I feel for him.

  Or she could decide to be with no one at all.

  Yeah, that’s more likely. It’s him or no one. Because he’s the only one I’ll ever want.

  Either way, she might as well have all the information before making the call.

  He was a skeptic. He didn’t believe in her powers, not really. Why did that hurt so much? How had she let him gain the power to hurt her so very, very deeply?

  Still, it was good to know all of that up front.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then drew energy up from the Earth, feeling it filling her body, her arms, her hands, and the branch in her hands. She held the forked end, one slender length in each palm. The two formed a V, meeting and blending into a single length of wood that pointed away from her body.

  “I am your sister, beautiful tree of apple, and I ask for your help. Find what needs to be found. Guide me, let me feel through you. Feel the energy. Find what needs to be found.”

  She stood there, silent, and attentive. But she felt nothing. So she turned, holding the branch loosely in her hands, so that the pointed end swung a bit and pointed mostly groundward. But as she turned further, her hands began to grow warm. And the end of the branch twitched, and then pulled. The single end rose, slowly, pointing her in the right direction.

  “Thank you sister apple tree. Just a little more.”

  Selene began moving in that direction. Then she stopped at the spatter she saw dotting leaves and grass, and t
he feeling on the air and the scent of human blood.

  “Cory!” she called.

  There was a pause, then he came crashing through the brush to where she stood, still holding her stick, her focus on it. “There’s blood here,” she said without looking away from the stick.

  “Holy—”

  “It might be your own,” she warned. “But—”

  “No. My tracks go off in another direction. Look, there’s a print. Too small to be mine.”

  She nodded, gazing at the branch she held. “Where is he?” she asked the stick.

  “Sister apple, help me find him.” As she spoke she turned, slightly left, then slightly right, then a little farther, and then she stopped as the single end of the branch rose on its own, pointing her in a clear direction.

  “Crap,” Cory went on. “Did that thing just move all by itself?”

  “Energy moved it.” She traipsed through the brush and briars and amid the saplings and trees, heading in the direction her stick had pointed.

  “What energy?” he asked, following her.

  She stopped, and stood staring at the body on the ground. She could see why the police hadn’t found him. He was deep in the woods, and there was brush surrounding him. “His,” she said.

  It was a young man, his dirty-blond hair cropped short; as short as Cory’s. And that wasn’t, she realized slowly, where the resemblance ended. He had a blood-soaked shirt over his chest, and he was deathly white and deadly still.

  “Oh my God.” Cory fell to his knees, hands going to the body’s shoulders as he stared at its deathlike face. “Oh my God, Casey!”

  Selene frowned. “You know—you remember him?”

  He looked up, his eyes wet and utterly stricken. “He’s my kid brother.”

  “You…you do remember.”

  “Just that. Nothing more. That and—that I promised our mother I’d take care of him. And damn, look at this. Just look at his. Casey….”

  She knelt beside him as he lowered his head, probably to hide the tears that were streaming down it now, or to try his best to silence the sobs racking his glorious back and shoulders with every breath he drew.

  “I’m sorry, Cory. I’m so—” As she spoke, she touched the face of the young man on the ground, and then she went still. “Casey?” she asked.

  Cory stopped sobbing and lifted his head. “Selene, what—?”

  “He’s still warm.” She was moving her hand now, sliding her fingers over his throat, and then bending to press her ear to his chest. She sat up fast. “He’s alive, Cory.”

  Even as he scrambled closer to his brother, Selene was yanking one of the walkie-talkies from the backpack he wore. She switched it on, switched the channels.

  “Channel nine,” he muttered as he bent over his brother, noting the blood-soaked shirt Casey wore. “Police monitor that one.” He tore the shirt open. “I think he’s been shot, Selene.”

  She was keying the mike as he spoke. “This is an emergency transmission. Can anyone hear me?”

  It wasn’t long before a familiar voice—Jimmy’s voice—came back, loud and clear over the speaker. “Is this who I think it is?”

  “No names. We don’t know who might be listening in. Listen, I’ve got a badly injured man, looks like a gunshot wound, just inside the falls woods, off North Road where I assume you guys already found the car. Am I right on that?”

  “Affirmative. But we searched those woods.”

  “He’s pretty well hidden. I’m going to mark the spot with a strips of white cloth. You’ll need advanced life support, EMTs and you’re going to want to comb the area for trace evidence.”

  “We’ll be there in five. Wait for us.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Your family—”

  “I’m switching off, Jimmy. Hurry, okay?”

  Before he could reply she switched off the power. Then her hand was closing on Cory’s arm. “Come on. They’ll be here soon.”

  “I can’t leave him.” He had shrugged off his borrowed jacket, draped it over his brother’s torso. And as she tugged at him, he was lifting Casey’s feet up, elevating them with help from a nearby fallen log.

  “We won’t leave him. We’ll hide nearby, close enough to keep an eye on him until he’s safely in the ambulance.”

  He spun around to face her. “And then what? Leave him in the hospital so this asshole can sneak in and finish him off, just like he tried to do to me? No way.”

  “They know these guys are going to try that, now, Cory. They’ll take precautions. He’ll be safe.”

  “And what if he’s not?” He was glaring at her, snapping, almost shouting. He didn’t realize it until he glimpsed the wounded look in her eyes.

  She didn’t snap back, though. Instead she put a hand on his shoulder. “What else are we gonna do, Cory? We can’t fix a gunshot wound. Not even me. We can’t pack him out of here on our backs. It would take too long, and he’s already been out here almost twenty-four hours. He needs help, more help than we can give him. You’ve done everything you can for him for right now. He’s warm, his legs are elevated, he’s not bleeding. They’ll be here soon, I promise.”

  “Couldn’t you—you know, do that Reiki stuff on him?”

  “I can. And I can do it from a distance.”

  “You can?”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Cory. There’s a symbol specifically for distance healing. Trust me.”

  He lowered his eyes.

  “This is his best chance, Cory. If it were one of my sisters lying there, I swear to you, this is what I would do for her.”

  Blinking away hot tears, he lifted his gaze to hers again, nodded once. “I know you’re right.”

  “Okay. Now, don’t bite my head off, but before we duck into some nearby cover, we need to go through his pockets.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Well, you remember him enough to know he’s your brother, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Enough to know what the two of you were doing out here in this forest? Who was after you, or why?”

  He closed his eyes, shook his head side to side. “No.”

  “Then maybe something in his pockets will tell us.”

  He refocused, staring down at his fallen brother, who was breathing so shallowly it was barely visible.

  “I’ll do it.” She shouldered past him, and bent over his brother, carefully going through his pockets. “No wallet, same as you,” she said aloud. But there were a set of keys, some nail clippers, loose change, and a pocket-sized planning calendar. “Not a big haul, but—”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Listen.”

  She listened; he could see she heard sirens in the distance, getting louder, closer. “Damn, that was fast. Come on, this way. And try to step lightly. We don’t want to leave them a clear trail.”

  He went where she led, confident in her ability and her knowledge of these woods. Amazed that he was so sure of it, when he was sure of nothing else. But he was, and he wasn’t proven wrong. She led them no more than fifty yards away, into the shadow of the root plate of an upturned tree. Tangled roots, soil and weeds formed a natural cave, and they crawled into it, pulling brush behind them until he was sure they were invisible.

  “You spend a lot of time in the woods, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yeah. And so do you.”

  “You think?”

  She nodded. “You walk without breaking twigs or crushing plants as if it’s an automatic thing. You probably don’t even know you’re doing it. And you don’t grab onto trees and saplings as you pass, the way less experienced people would. Why is that?”

  “You leave scent wherever you touch. Any animal that regularly passes this way would change his course. We don’t want to interfere with them like that.”

  “We?”

  He blinked, then frowned. “I don’t know, Selene. You’re right, that meant something, but I don’t know. It just came out.”

  “Yeah, like something
you’ve talked about before.”

  “Here they come.”

  They crouched there, side by side. When the sirens stopped, and the men fanned into the forest, he could hear them in the distance, crashing through the undergrowth. Closer, he could hear only her breathing. Gentle, shallow breaths, designed he was certain for silence. In and out and in again. She was sitting on her knees, bent slightly forward, straining to watch. He was sitting flat, knees bent up in front of him, watching via an opening in the brush as men surrounded his kid brother.

  He did remember some things. Kid things. Swinging from a rope and dropping into a water hole. He could see Casey clear as day, skinny and freckled in cut-off denim shorts, with a blood blister under one toenail. He could hear, just as if the voice were real and present, his mother telling him over and over, You take care of your baby brother, Cory. I’m counting on you.

  I will, Mom.

  Selene sent him a sharp look, then a questioning one.

  He hadn’t been aware he’d spoken the words aloud. But he knew they meant something. He knew by the contracting of his heart and the way his stomach was knotting up. “I promised our mother I’d take care of him,” he whispered, because it was too much to keep in. It refused to stay in.

  Her brows rose, and then she was kissing him. Her arms sliding around his neck, her mouth caressing his with a gentleness that seemed designed to heal. Or comfort. If a kiss could do either of those things, and at the moment he rather thought it could.

  Then she released him, and sat back on her heels to dip into a pocket. He didn’t even dare to think what she might be doing. Knowing her, she was going to pull out a magic wand or something, give it a flick and send a spiral of pink glitter wafting out to Casey, at which point he’d spring to his feet and dance a jig.

  No. She pulled out a chain with a crystal prism hanging from one end. Holding it carefully, she brought it close to her, kissed it, and then whispered to it, “Tell me if Casey is going to survive this. Yes or no?”

  “How can I tell you something like that when I—”