He tapped his turn signal, lifting his eyebrows to glance at me while we waited for the light to turn green. “I think you should sleep with me, and then decide.”
“Ha.” My hands clamped together like industrial-sized magnets. “Funny.”
“Funny, like interesting theory? Or funny, like clown?”
“This conversation is over.”
“You’ll have to help me with the road, I can’t remember which one it is,” he leaned forward slightly in his seat, peering out the window.
I didn’t want to admit I’d driven past his house at least a dozen times in the past few months. Once, I saw a truck parked in the overgrown driveway with a splashy detail across the door that read Erie Property Management. Obviously, West had had the forethought to maintain his property for an extended period of time…
Or forever.
“Left up here.”
He pulled off the road and turned, crawling up the driveway. “Someone’s taking care of the place?”
“I think it’s a property management company.”
“Then, he knew he’d be gone for a while.” Logan put the car into park, turning to look at me in the darkness. “He knew you’d be left here… alone.”
“Or he thought we’d be together,” I snapped, opening the car door and stepping into a half an inch of new snow. “Knock it off.”
Walking to the front door, I easily slipped the key into the lock and turned. Logan moved in front of me. “Let me go in first. Just in case.”
“I can defend myself,” I retorted. “Just because your arms are huge doesn’t mean you know how to fight.”
“They are getting pretty big, aren’t they?” He flexed obnoxiously, winking. I rolled my eyes, shaking my head.
“Just move.”
A flip of the switch by the front door told me the electric bill was being settled each month. The temperature was cool but not cold. “Utilities are on. He planned that, too, I guess?” He looked at me expectantly. I shrugged.
“I don’t know anything about his finances.” That was a lie; I knew he had a lot of money- enough to bring a surgeon to his house to correct my eyesight, purchase forged visas, secure plane tickets to Russia… and order a large-scale bombing on a historical fountain.
“Well, I think we should “borrow” enough to make us comfortable. And maybe even to splurge for some new pants for you.”
I covered the waist of my jeans indignantly. “Hey.”
He crossed the entryway to me, closing the gap between us. “You’re showing, Cam. You need to be comfortable.”
Tilting my face to look up at him, I held my breath. “I’m never comfortable. I’m always sad… or scared. Both, really.”
“I can change that.”
“I can’t be what you want me to be anymore, Logan. He will always be between us.”
My quiet words, coupled with my slightly-protruding abdomen separating us, darkened his eyes. “I guess you’re right.”
He walked through kitchen, turning on lights as he went. I followed, taking inventory of the area. Clean, neat, unused. I realized I had been holding out hope that West was here, just hiding out this whole time in his own home. Irrational. Crazy.
“Desk… jackpot.” Logan moved to a small alcove that housed an oak desk and PC. He pulled a drawer open. “Pens…envelopes…stapler…,”
“Don’t just rifle though this stuff,” I admonished, brushing his hands out of the way. “It’s not right.”
“Wait,” he nudged me aside, curling his fingers under the desktop from inside the drawer. “There’s something under here. My parents have a desk like this.”
“Sneaky drawer?”
“Yes,” I heard a click, and the latch dropped to reveal a shelf. A fat, yellow envelope was wedged inside, preventing the shelf from lowering all the way. He pulled on the envelope, jamming it back and forth until it was finally free from the drawer.
There was no mistaking West’s capitalized handwriting. I traced the letters with my fingertip, ignoring Logan’s scowl as I read the word.
ROAM.
“Three checkbooks… with my name on the checks. A debit card and a credit card- in my name. Passports. Keys? A memory card…,”
“You’d think he could have mentioned this. You know, like, ‘Hey, one last thing before you go… I totally set you up financially, so check my desk.’ All those damn weekends working at Strike.”
“I think this was a back-up plan. He really meant for us to be together,” I flipped through the checkbooks. “I need to see what’s on this memory card.” Tucking my hair behind my ears, I pressed the power button on the desktop Dell. The flat-screen monitor occupied most of the desk surface. “Do you see a mouse or keyboard somewhere?”
“Got it,” he retrieved them from the hardwood floor next to the tower. “Hope there’s no password.”
There was. I typed PASSWORD, hoping for an easy entry. An incorrect password edit appeared.
He tucked his laced fingers behind his neck, glancing up at the ceiling. “Try your name.”
Quickly, I typed ROAM. West’s desktop icons appeared in a second.
“Stalker.” Logan shook his head, popping the memory card into the tower.
“Stop it.”
“Okay, SD card… here we go. Open.” Logan squatted next to me. “Pictures. Documents… wait, open this one,” he pointed to the screen, and I resisted the urge to wipe his fingerprint off the monitor.
“Passports… for West and me,” I murmured, spinning the dial on the mouse. “For 1977… 1955… 1912?”
“They’re here,” he gestured to the passports in the envelope. “What about cash?”
“Bank account,” I clicked on another file, opening a spread sheet. Online accounts for banks, including web links, user ID and password information, detailed the screen. “Safety deposit box… the keys are for the box.”
“So, this was easy.” Logan dug his eyes tiredly. “Let’s go see the movie.”
I stood up, scanning the room for a printer. “I hope you’re kidding. We have so much work to do… I have to get everything together, prepare the wallet, and pack…,”
“There’s no passport for me, Roam.”
“I know- we’ll figure it out, we’ll just have to… make something. They didn’t have biometric passports back then, so it won’t be difficult…,”
“Hey,” he took my wrist gently, tugging me toward him. I lifted my eyes to his. “I’m going to do everything I can to find him. But you have to start to come to terms with the possibility that he’s gone… forever gone. You know that, right?”
My insides tumbled; I nodded, unable to form a coherent word.
“And if we don’t find him, we have to come home. Here. We can’t search forever.” I allowed him to pull me into his arms.
“Okay.” I breathed into his shirt.
“Okay,” he echoed, his lips pressing against my hair. “We are going to have to wait until Friday to leave. The banks are closed tomorrow for Thanksgiving, and we need cash from the safety deposit boxes. Friday,” he repeated firmly when I stiffened. “Between now and then, we prepare… and you relax. We have to protect this baby,” he whispered. “This baby is our last chance to kill Troy. I just don’t want him trapped. I want him dead. Roam, the baby has to live. You have to live.”
I pressed my face into his chest until my cheekbone hurt. He gripped me securely, his mouth still against my hair. “I know,” I whispered, lifting my face to his.
“Oh, and I’m bringing a gun.” He added a perfunctory kiss to my lips before releasing me.
“Wait- what?”
“I’m bringing your dad’s Glock. We’ll… borrow it.”
“Logan…,”
“Just get over it. I know how to use it, and I’m not going in without some way to defend you- or myself.”
“But Troy is immortal.”
“A hole in his head will buy us some time.”
I shuddered, glancing at the stairs. He has
a point. “Fine. I’m going upstairs for a few minutes. Wait here, okay?”
“No.”
I stopped in midstride, taken aback. “What?”
“I said no. You’re not going upstairs. I’m not letting you go crawl in his bed and roll around crying. Get your boots on, we’re leaving.” He grabbed the envelope and tucked it under his arm.
Staring at him, I struggled with my thoughts. Was that my plan? Maybe not, but that was the inevitable outcome. Finally, I looked down at the floor. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Now, I’m going to explain why Red Dawn is a better choice for this evening than Anna Corona. Just hear me out.”
I exhaled a laugh that caught me by surprise. “Karenina,” I slipped my feet into my boots. He turned off the computer and the lights as I reached for my jacket.
Chapter Six
Logan’s intentions in the packed movie theater were clear; divert and distract. The movie was every-action-packed-thing I thought it would be and more, though Morgan’s favorite actor reminded me a little too much of West at times. During all three trips to the restroom, Logan insisted on going with me and waiting. After the movie he somehow talked me into admitting I was hungry, so we settled into a booth at a twenty-four hour restaurant near the theater.
Halfway through my burger, I was finished. I watched the late-night customers while waiting for Logan. “I had a weird dream last night,” Logan said suddenly, taking a sip of his Coke. “It wasn’t like the other nightmares. You and Troy were sitting on… thrones or something. In a castle…,”
“And it was cold?” I interrupted. My mouth went dry. “And I was wearing blue?”
“You dreamt it, too?”
A chilled sweat hit me suddenly. I swallowed hard, grasping the table. Logan slid out of the booth and grabbed me before I slumped forward. “Roam!”
“The other world… where he is king,” I searched the aisle desperately. “I feel sick…,”
“Come on,” he nearly carried me to the restroom. I struggled to keep the food down, pacing my thoughts. “I’ll pay, just…,”
“I’m okay. Let’s just get in the car,” I let him handle the bill before we hurried to his Camry. A new layer of snow covered his car, so he started the engine and began scraping the windshield.
“You think these are dreams of another world? One we were both in?” He tossed the window scraper into the back seat, brushing his hands together rapidly.
“He’s angry. He hates me so much. There has to be a reason why. I can’t stop thinking of the look in his eyes, his voice in the pool… this is personal. He’s not just a madman driven by a prophecy.” I slipped into the car, allowing the still-cool air from the heater to blast me in the face. “I think Troy and I were… married… in this other world. I think you and West are part of the reason he wants to kill me.”
Logan listened intently as he backed out of the parking space. “In my dream, he called you “Roam.” Not any other name- for a change.”
“He called me by my name- Roam- in my dream, too. In all of my dreams of him, actually,” I realized, thinking back over the disturbing nightmares that haunted my mind before I was pregnant. The first nightmare was of West in a hotel room in the seventies; Troy wasn’t there. The second dream was in France in 1412. “In France, he said, ‘Who is holding you, Roam?’ In the… dungeon, in England… you called me ‘Roam.’ In my dream today, in the cold castle, he called me by my name.”
“West seemed like he had no idea what Troy was talking about when he mentioned the other universe… or the prophecy.”
“He would have told me if he knew anything about it. But he doesn’t… didn’t.” I pressed my fingers against the hot vents on the dashboard. “I’m just so tired… I wish none of this was real.”
“Even West?” He asked, glancing at me quickly.
“Except West,” I corrected, turning to gaze out the window.
He was silent for a while. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Where do prophecies come from? What guy waved his magic wand and said, ‘Listen up, the four of you, your destiny is… blah blah blah?’”
I toyed with the zipper on my jacket. “Well, they come from… Gods, usually. Or magic…dark magic. In literature, anyway.” My mind ran laps around a thought that refused to piece itself together. Watching the snow fall on the highway, I held my hardened stomach beneath the seatbelt.
Our child will save the world.
“West… he said something…,” I thought back to our talk at Paine Falls, trying to remember every detail of what he’d told me about our history and the prophecy.
I went into hiding until my twenty-seventh birthday. On that date, I met you.
“He was born in 1348, and survived the plague as an infant, even though his entire family died of it. A man named Henry Asher took him in, intrigued by the fact that West survived. Asher was an alchemist. He was trying to discover… eternal life. West said that I told him about the prophecy. On his twenty-seventh birthday. In 1375. And he stopped aging.”
“Wait- twenty-seven? Are you kidding me?” I felt his foot hit the brake slightly. “He’s ten years older than you? Jesus,” he hissed, shaking his head disgustedly.
“Actually, he’s six-hundred and seventy-four years older than me,” I pointed out, cracking the window for some fresh air as a heated flush spread over my face. “I thought you were aware that he was immortal.”
“You’re going to star in To Catch a Predator.”
“Stop it,” I cringed, narrowing my eyes. “That’s serious. So many girls- and boys- are hurt each year…,”
“Hello, Mr. Perry, I see that you are six-hundred-years old and you have this bag of condoms and Twizzlers. What were your intentions?” He lowered his voice to sound like a formal interviewer, and I bit back an involuntary grin.
“Logan.”
“Oh, well, we were just going to watch the History Channel… and I thought she was forty!”
“West doesn’t sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Knock it off. That’s just not right.”
“Preaching to the choir.” He was silent for a few moments. “You’re right, not accurate. He forgot the condoms. ‘I’m immortal baby, jump on it’ is a way stronger pitch.”
“Don’t talk to me.”
Logan’s glance was skeptical as he rolled his eyes. “This baby is sucking the sense of humor right out of you.” He puffed air from his lips. “So West’s only memory of his… origin… was from this guy Asher?”
I nodded. “Asher died in a fire.”
“And he meets a girl that looks like you on the road, who tells him everything he knows?”
“That’s what he said. He said I had red, curly hair, and he thought I was a gypsy.”
“That’s impossible.” He pressed the defrost button as the windows began to steam.
I smiled, the irony of his words fueling a genuine giggle. “That’s the impossible part?”
He grinned, sliding his arm over the seat behind me. “Okay, no more for now. From now until tomorrow night, we’re just two seniors enjoying Thanksgiving break. No more talk of prophecies, or mad scientists, or evil immortals.”
“Deal.”
“If I have a nightmare tonight, I’ll tell you about it on the plane to Russia… fifty-seven years ago.”
I smirked, nodding and leaning against his shoulder. “Deal again.”
“And… since you’re being so agreeable… my mother would like to teach you how to make her famous cranberry sauce… so that you will pass the recipe on to her grandchild.”
I released the air from my chest through my pursed lips. “Come on, Rush. That stuff is so disgusting.”
“Deal?” He prodded my shoulder with his elbow as he turned onto our road.
“Ugh- deal,” I agreed, sighing. “Maybe if I pretend I’m really into it, she won’t notice the hole that I kicked in the wall.”
He chuckled. “Too late. But you won the sympathy vote. Apparently my mom threw a lamp at a wall when she was pr
egnant with me.”
Laughing, I unbuckled myself as he pulled into my driveway. The lights were off and Morgan’s car was gone, so I assumed she and Jason were still shopping. I hoped my dad’s car was in the garage. Logan turned the headlights off, darkening the car.
He caught my mouth, still open in a smile, and slid his fingers though my hair. I gasped into his kiss, struggling to back away. He only followed me as I moved, pinning me between the window and his body. “We could have a normal life, Cam,” he murmured against my lips. “I’ll never stop protecting you, or the baby. It’ll be our baby. Please just let him go.”
Tears streamed from my closed eyes before I realized I was crying. Responding to his kiss was tempting; he was familiar, and warm, and everything about him made me feel like home. I reacted as I always did; my mind never stopped working. “You can’t protect me all the way from Parris Island… or Camp Lejuene… or Afghanistan,” I spit the last location disgustedly, flattening my palm against his chest and pushing against him. “As long as Troy lives, no matter where he is, I’ll never be safe.”
He locked his eyes on mine, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. “I won’t go. I won’t enlist if you just stay with me.”
His words were crushing against my lungs. I struggled to keep my heartbeat even. “You’d stay for me?”
“Yes.”
Does that change anything? No… I still love West. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You don’t have to ask.”
I looked down, brushing away the tears. “Let me think. Give me some time.” My betraying words dishonored West in every way. I cringed, gripping my purse. “Let me think,” I repeated.
He nodded, brushing his hand over my hair once more before climbing out of the car. Walking around the front, he opened the door for me. I took his outstretched hand, letting him help me to my feet in the driveway. “Do you want me to come in for a while?”
His words were heavy with silent questions. “It’s really late… I’m tired. Is it okay if I just see you tomorrow?”
“I don’t want you to be alone,” he gestured to the house. “I don’t think your dad is home yet.”
Fall (Roam Series, Book Two) Page 5