Dream Huntress

by Michelle Sharp

  “Shhh, it’s going to be okay, baby girl,” her dad whispered, tucking her hair behind her ear.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m here to help you,” he said. “I’ll keep you warm until he finds you. I love you, baby girl. Always have.”

  Jordan struggled awake and upright. She’d take death, wasn’t scared of it. But she damn sure wasn’t taking help from the man who had cost her everything. Why did he keep coming back? Night after night. Dream after dream. Go away, she thought. Please just go, and don’t come back. She tried to scream the words, cry them out, but her lungs wouldn’t allow it. Pain sliced through her chest, trapping her breath.

  When the air surged back, she drank it in, swallowed it, wanted to stockpile it for the next suffocating moment.

  Bitter coldness pierced her.

  Dizzy now, so very dizzy, she lay back and inched as close to the broken-down shed as she could get. Its dilapidated walls eased the strength of the wind. Inside would be better, but she couldn’t move any more. She closed her eyes and tumbled in and out of the abyss of her mind.

  Years of police work and snapshots of her personal life flickered like old silent movies.

  Katy’s giggle. Her mom baking in the kitchen.

  Peaceful.

  Soothing.

  That’s what she needed. Good things. Good thoughts. Precious memories to hold onto. Ty.

  Always Ty. Forever it would be Ty.

  His beautiful cocky face. Eyes that shimmered with humor and seduction. The strong jaw that clenched when he was angry. Nothing bad could ever touch her when his arms wrapped her up.

  Oh, God, Ty. Where are you? I need you.

  It wasn’t Ty who came to her. It was the beautiful girl. She was back, swinging behind her house, and the boy was with her. He pushed her swing. Handed her a beer. Threw his jacket and football gear in his trunk.

  “Tara.”

  He called her Tara. Her name was Tara. The jacket, the football gear. It looped again and again and again. It meant something. But the pain and the sickness and the blood kept interfering.

  Jordan fought herself awake, but her eyelids were unbearably heavy. Truth be told, the vision was no longer more frightening than reality. For the first time, she wanted to escape back into a dream instead of away from it. She felt herself drift again, decided to find Tara and tell her that she was sorry.

  Sorry because she hadn’t found the boy. Sorry for leaving Ty behind. Sorry because of the decisions she’d made.

  She closed her eyes. She was done.

  “I’m ready. Mom. Katy. Somebody please come. I just want to be with you again.”

  “Not tonight, baby.”

  Jordan used her last bit of strength to blink her eyes open.

  Her dad was the one that appeared. “You’re not ready. You won’t be going to where Katy and Mom are. Not yet.” He kneeled beside her, stroked her hair. “Your life won’t end tonight, I won’t let it. You have too many people to help.”

  Her eyes fell closed. She would have laughed had there been any air in her lungs. “I can’t even help myself right now.”

  Her dad chuckled. “Then you’re lucky you don’t have to. I know of a young man who’s perfectly willing to walk across fire to help you. All you have to do is let him.” The humor in his voice turned somber. “Let someone help, Jordan. Let someone in your life.”

  Anger burned like vicious little fires surrounding her heart. She hated that she didn’t even have the strength to raise her eyelids and level a nasty look at him. “Is that why you haunt me year after year? Dream after dream? To offer me your words of wisdom? Just a little hypocritical coming from you, isn’t it? The one person who ensured I was left completely alone.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I don’t haunt you, I try to guide you. To keep you from making the same mistakes I did.”

  How dare he? She was nothing—nothing—like him. “Newsflash, Daddy. I’m not a drug dealer. Mission accomplished. I’m nothing like you.”

  “You’re exactly me.” The soothing cadence of his voice turned harsh. “The mistakes I’m talking about are not the ones you think. Yes, I messed up, Jordan. Horribly. My mistakes cost our family everything, and the one’s I’m sorriest for are the ones I made with you. Secrets destroy much more powerfully than the truth ever will. I lost everything learning that. If you don’t change, you’ll learn it, too.”

  “Baby girl,” his voice cracked with emotion now. “Be better than me. Be stronger. Let people love you. All of you. They will if you let them.”

  He slid next to her and pulled her onto his lap. He held her, kissed her, rocked her. And she let him. Because in his arms, she didn’t hurt anymore. Surprisingly, not her body or her heart. Opening her eyes hurt and made her sick.

  “Are you leaving now?”

  “I’m never leaving, not as long as you need me.”

  If he let go, it would be the end. Even so, she let the hostile words roll from her tongue. “I don’t need anyone.”

  “You’ve got to stop this,” he demanded, even as he softly touched her cheek. “It’s been long enough. You’ve shut down so completely no one can get through, living or dead. Whether you like it or not, you have to make connections. Spirits need you to help those left behind. The living need you to bring them closure. What you have is a gift to help and to heal. If you’re not going to use it, you might as well join Katy and Mom.”

  Finally, she broke. “I let my whole family die,” she sobbed. “What if I screw up again?”

  The soft comfort of his embrace turned fierce and rigid. “If you hear nothing else tonight, hear this—nothing that happened the night of the murder was your fault. It was all mine.”

  Stunned at his harsh tone, Jordan managed to open her eyes and not just look, but really see him, all of him. The sadness, the sorrow, even the hope. She nodded, took a breath, and realized the struggle for air was a bit easier now. “I’m so cold.”

  “I’ll keep you warm until he comes. Now shush and go to sleep.” He kissed her forehead and wrapped his arms tighter around her. “Ty loves you, and he’s already searching.”

  Chapter 15

  Ty found Theodore K. Bahan through the St. Louis field office.

  He’d been patched through to the special agent’s cellphone. If he stood any chance of saving Jordan, Bahan was the only logical choice to help him. They arranged a meeting in the parking lot of Jed’s Gas Mart for thirty minutes later. In fifteen, he was sandwiched between two scruffy Neanderthals in the back seat of a sedan. If these guys were FBI, they’d missed the memo about the standard dark suit and tie.

  Jordan told him Bahan was arriving the day after Thanksgiving. Apparently he’d already been in Titus when Ty placed the call.

  After two goons searched him, cuffed him, and threw him in a backseat, a third guy behind the wheel peeled out of Jed’s and punched it. “I’m Bahan,” he said. “Talk. Now.”

  They’d purposely been intimidating and rough, but every second was critical. Ty already figured he wasn’t going to get a warm welcome, so he gave a clear, concise report. Most of it was true. He tweaked the personal part a bit, basically omitting it. He had a feeling the Fed was smart enough to read between the lines.

  Bahan wheeled into an empty parking lot, did a one-eighty before screeching to a stop. He looked in the rear-view mirror and said, “Tommy, find her. Start by tracing her phone.” Then he twisted around to the other guy. “When he finds her location, get ’em there. Ground, air, K-9. No sirens. Step out, please.”

  The two guys on either side of Ty opened the doors, got out, and continued working from the parking lot.

  “You slept with her.”

  It didn’t sound like a question, so Ty didn’t answer. It wasn’t relevant. “Does it matter?”

  “I’ve known the woman ten years. Never known her to screw up, not like this. You’ve known her ten minutes, and she’s missing.” Bahan leveled a look at him in the mirror. “Or she’s dead. Trust me, it’s going t
o matter.”

  “You’re wasting time,” Ty argued. “Time she may not have.”

  “I don’t think you want to screw with me right now. If I’m going to find her I need to know exact—”

  “Yes. All right, yes. We’re working together and...yes.” It was Bahan’s ballgame. Ty would have confessed to anything to get one step closer to Jordan. “Is that what you needed to hear to hang me? You want to charge me with something? Lock me up? Blame me for everything, I don’t give a fuck. Just do it after you find her.”

  “I don’t like you, and I don’t trust you.” Bahan turned to look Ty in the eyes. “But I trust Jordan. I don’t know what it is, but her instincts are never wrong. If she told you things, worked with you, there was a reason for it. But you’re on a very short leash with me. Make no mistake, if you get in my way or at any moment hinder instead of help, I’ll put a bullet in you and won’t even pause as I step over you.”

  Given the circumstances, Ty figured that was as close to bonding as they were going to get, so he dove head first into an exact account of Jordan’s days. At least as much as he knew and as far as he could remember. Bahan stopped him when he mentioned Thanksgiving.

  “Wait a minute. She went to their house on Thanksgiving?”

  “I wasn’t happy about it, but I couldn’t change her mind,” Ty said. “And trust me, I tried. She told me she was working with the FBI. I assumed someone knew what she was doing.”

  “Unbelievable.” Bahan scrubbed his hands up and down his face. “I mean seriously, what in the name of God was she thinking?”

  Fury bubbled as Ty remembered the mark Warren had put on her neck. “Warren Buck had a thing for her, and she was using it to get closer to both him and Buck.”

  Bahan shook his head.

  “We argued this morning.” Ty closed his eyes and remembered their words, remembered touching her. Prayed it hadn’t been for the last time. “She promised me she’d set him straight today. Tell him she wasn’t interested that way.”

  “Guess he didn’t take it well,” Bahan murmured.

  “That’d be my guess. I don’t think he figured her for a cop. I’m not sure I’d have figured it out except for the way she reacted when I startled her one night. I—” He met Bahan’s eyes and began to remember the couple of times he had grabbed her and pulled her close. Including Thanksgiving night.

  The other two Feds opened the doors. “We got her phone. Location’s about an hour from here.”

  “Get in.” Bahan’s words and the movement of the car barely registered in Ty’s mind. He thought back to Thanksgiving night. He’d kissed her in the parking lot of her apartment. Could someone have seen? He remembered the cars flying by on the road next to the parking lot and how nervous Jordan had been because of it. If one of those cars had been Warren’s, and he’d seen them...

  “Oh, God.” Ty dropped his head in his hands. “This is all my fault.”

  ***

  “We’re close. If she’s anywhere near her phone, we’ll find her.” Bahan picked up the police radio and contacted the K-9 unit again. “Her phone has led us about nine miles east, off Highway P. It’s a gravel and dirt road about a hundred yards past P and Klondike. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it, and hurry up.” Bahan wound his way through the trees, and they traveled slowly down the narrow, dusty road.

  Ty rolled down the back window and looked for a sign that someone had recently been in the area. He also sucked in as much of the cold night air as his lungs could absorb. Every minute that she was missing chipped away at his ability to hold it together.

  “Stop,” he yelled. “Over there.” A spot of weeds and brush next to the road had been flattened with obvious tire marks.

  Bahan stopped, they got out and started searching. It took less than twenty minutes to find Jordan’s purse, phone, and scraps of clothing. It looked as if someone had tossed them as an afterthought. But Jordan was nowhere near her things.

  Bahan moved the car into a clearing at the end of the gravel road and made a makeshift headquarters for the search. “It’s almost one. The darkness is going to complicate things, but we’re still going to have search parties briefed and ready to roll within the hour.”

  Ty grabbed a flashlight and started to walk off.

  “McGee,” Bahan called. “We do this in teams with radios and K-9 units.”

  Ty stopped. Bahan may have been a Fed with a fair amount of contacts, but none of them were familiar with this area. “I want to call my people in. Cops from around here will know this land. I can get twenty guys here in half an hour.”

  “No. The last thing I need is twenty local yokels stomping through my crime scene. This is Jordan’s investigation and mine. If she’s here, I’ll find her. But if I can’t or she’s—” Bahan paused, tossed some equipment from his trunk on the ground. “If she’s dead, I’m going back to that little backwoods town of yours and take out every single one of those motherfuckers one bloody painful kill at a time.”

  “So...what? We don’t get the people we need out here to help, because you’re more interested in preserving the scene than finding her? How many units do you have coming? If she’s hurt, we have to find her. Fast.”

  Bahan exploded. “How stupid are you? Do you think he dumped her here, in the middle of nowhere, alive?”

  Ty lunged. He plowed into Bahan, knocked him flat, and started throwing wild, uncontrolled punches.

  A police cruiser skidded to a stop. “Break it up,” the cop yelled out his window.

  Ty looked toward the K-9 unit. It was just enough of a distraction to allow Bahan to land a punch and throw Ty off. But Bahan apparently had a quick change of heart. He got up, swiped at the blood rolling down his lip, and then bent to Ty and extended a hand. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. I’m not giving up on her.”

  Things started moving quickly once the two K-9 units started to track. They scented the dogs from the scraps of Jordan’s clothing and split into two teams. Bahan went with one team, sent Ty with the other. It was only minutes before one of the dogs found the spot where she’d been dumped.

  “Team two is on scent,” Bahan said across the radio.

  “Please let her be alive.” Ty repeated it over and over in a chant. Maybe if he said it enough times it would be true.

  Ty saw two more cop cars and an ambulance pull down the gravel road as he raced to where Linx, the German shepherd, was tracking. Nose down, ears back, the dog barreled forward. Shining his flashlight ahead for Linx, Ty saw it—the small shed and the figure on the ground next to it.

  Relief and horror simultaneously gripped him. He ran to the shed and fell to his knees.

  Her face was black and blue and swollen. Her clothes were in tatters. Her hair was bloody and matted. She had no color, and if Ty hadn’t known her body so well, he may have been able to convince himself it wasn’t Jordan.

  “We need paramedics,” Bahan ordered, running up to them.

  Ty dropped the flashlight and bent over her, swept her hair back from her face, and gently touched his cheek against hers. Chaos buzzed in the dark night, but for Ty, the world shrank to a small bubble around the two of them. Her skin was frigid. Emotions swamped him. He couldn’t be sure if she was alive or not, and he was terrified to put his finger up to her freezing neck to feel for a pulse.

  “Ty.” She whispered so quietly he didn’t know if he had actually heard her or just imagined that he did.

  He pulled back to study her. One eye barely opened, but it was enough to know she was in there. And enough to know he needed to let the paramedics get her somewhere quickly.

  “Don’t. Please don’t let go.” She made a horrible, almost inhuman screech as he tried to ease back enough for the paramedics to start working on her. “Keep holding me. Daddy said you’d hold me now.”

  “Give her something,” he yelled. “She’s in pain.”

  Everything limped by in a slow devastating blur, but at least she was alive. He didn’t understand the medical jargon, b
ut he picked up a few key words like broken ribs and head trauma. The vicious punch that broke him was the call for the helicopter that was needed to get her airlifted back to St. Louis in time.

  “In time for what?” Ty fisted his hands in Bahan’s jacket and shook him hard, slammed him up against a large tree next to the shed.

  Ted Bahan never laid a hand on him and even waved off the two cops stepping forward to intervene.

  Ty took a deep breath, looked around at everyone staring at him. He’d lost it. And it was pity he saw on every one of their faces. He’d seen it before. He’d been here before.

  Déjà vu slammed into him. Rage and pain and sickness all over again. Standing in the middle of nowhere watching someone he loved being carried away, hurt and lifeless because of Warren and Arlo Buck.

  It’d end different this time, though. Jordan wouldn’t leave him. He didn’t know how he was so certain, but she’d hang on because she’d know, understand, he didn’t have a life without her. It would end differently this time.

  He repeated the words, fighting for sanity. Then he blinked. Ted Bahan was still pinned against the tree, with Ty’s hands clutching his jacket. Even more cops and Feds surrounded them. Still, Bahan held them off.

  “We’re airlifting her to St. Louis,” Bahan said. He talked slow and clear, as though he were speaking to a child unable to comprehend. “They’ll probably only let one of us go with her. I need to do it, McGee. I have all her medical information, and I know how to contact the right people.”

  Bahan squinted and leaned his head against the tree, as if preparing for a blow. Ty dropped his hands and stepped back.

  “Are we good?” Bahan asked.

  Ty swallowed and eventually nodded.

  The Fed waved off his goons, and Ty reached past his own grief and studied Bahan. The guy obviously cared for Jordan. “You’ll stay with her, all the way? And keep in contact with me?”