Lost Bird

by Tymber Dalton

  “I’ll hit the store on the way home.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Oscar hung up, feeling a thousand times better than he had before the call. He’d only snagged a couple of hours of sleep before going into work. He could have taken the whole day off, but his body didn’t want to remain asleep. Neither did his brain, which insisted on focusing on Sachi and the night before.

  And what Aunt Tammy had suggested to them at dinner that night, that maybe the two of them should date Sachi.

  From talking to Brad the night before, he found out Mandaline was partners with both Brad and with Ellis Fargo, an attorney in town.

  Hell, if they can do it, why couldn’t we?

  He could see how much John liked Sachi. He wouldn’t lose his friendship with John over a relationship, but maybe since Sachi was best friends with Mandaline she might be open to something a little nontraditional.

  He just hoped John would be open to it.

  * * * *

  Sachi made it back to her house about a quarter ’til four and was relieved to find no one there yet. She’d just unlocked her front door when John pulled up in his work van. After turning off the alarm, she stood in the doorway and waited for him to walk up.

  That blue aura of his still held her, like a velvety grip around the back of her neck, irresistible.

  He offered what appeared to be a nervous smile. “Once he gets here, it shouldn’t take him more than a couple of minutes to sign off on it. They’re pretty routine.”

  “No problem. I appreciate you coming out. I hope this wasn’t an inconvenience.”

  “No, not at all.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Listen, I’d like to ask you something, and no pressure or anything. But if you’re not busy tonight, we, Oscar and I, would like to have you over to our place for dinner. With us.”

  Her heart jumped. “Dinner?”

  “Yeah. Nothing fancy, just burgers on the grill. Casual. It’s just, we enjoyed dinner with you the other night, and last night wasn’t exactly a good one for socializing, and—”

  “Yes.” She gave him a smile she hoped would put his mind at ease. Did she want to have dinner with the two hotties?

  Uh, fuck yeah.

  “Oh.” He seemed almost surprised she’d said yes. “Okay. Great.” He flashed another smile, this one backed by more confidence. “Um, you’re not a vegetarian or anything, are you? Because if you are, we can—”

  “I’m a first-class carnivore,” she assured him.

  His smile broadened. “Great.” He nodded. “Good. Um, is seven okay?”

  “Seven sounds great. Can I bring anything?”

  “Desert, if you’d like.”

  “Cool.” She reached out and touched his arm. “Looking forward to it. Text my cell with your address.”

  He was starting to do just that when a pickup truck with the county’s logo on the doors pulled up in front of the house.

  “There’s the inspector, I take it?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He hit send. A brief moment later, her phone buzzed.

  She checked it. “Got it.”

  They were staring at each other when the inspector headed up the walk.

  “Thanks for coming over today,” she said. “And I’m looking forward to tonight.”

  She loved the way his aura pulsed, flowing with relief now that she’d said yes to their invitation.

  John and the inspector quickly took care of doing what they needed to do, and the inspector signed off on the job. Fifteen minutes later, they were alone again.

  It looked like John was about to say something when his phone went off. “That’s work. Sorry, I need to run.”

  “Okay. See you at seven.”

  His grin not only started her pulse racing again, but started her clit throbbing, too. “Seven. Thanks!”

  She closed the front door and rested against it.

  “Julie,” she said out loud, “is this the sign I keep asking for?”

  Her gaze fell upon the curio cabinet they’d set up in the corner of the living room. Maybe she’d spent too much time looking for signs instead of taking action.

  Time to take action.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sachi had headed back to the store, returning home a little before six. Beyond nervous, she changed her mind several different times about what to wear. Yes, John had specifically stated casual, but that could mean anything.

  Shorts? Jeans? She didn’t have a lot of casual choices other than that. Sure she had dresses and skirts she wore for work, but they weren’t exactly backyard barbecue outfits.

  She finally settled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She almost forgot to call her dad to let him know she wouldn’t be there for dinner, and was relieved to find out he already had plans to eat dinner with coworkers. Any guilt she might have had about her last-minute plans disappeared.

  Glad to see he’s settled in so quickly.

  She didn’t mind it, especially since he’d spent so much time focused on her when he first arrived in Florida.

  It’s time he gets out and makes new friends.

  She pulled up the men’s address on the maps feature on her phone and drove out there. The apartment complex just east of Brooksville looked like it had seen far better days. But when she walked up and knocked, carrying the Key lime pie she’d picked up at Publix on her way over, she was relieved to see a smiling Oscar open the front door on a sparse, yet clean and tidy apartment.

  Just in time, too, because the rumbles of thunder that had chased her all the way to their apartment heralded the arrival of a real frog-strangler of a rainstorm.

  “Guess I’m here for the duration, at least,” she said with a smile. “Hope this doesn’t mess up your plans for grilling.”

  He smiled as he took the pie from her and headed over to the small kitchen with it. “We have a backup plan. Aunt Tammy gave us one of those little electric grills for Christmas last year.”

  “Where’s John?”

  “Shower. He had an emergency job to handle. He just got home a few minutes before you arrived.”

  “Ah.” As she looked around the small combined living and dining room area, she was pleased to see two full discount store bookcases along one wall. She walked over. “Who’s the reader?”

  “Both of us. He likes mysteries, and I’m more into sci-fi and fantasy.”

  It looked like they had a yard sale coffee table paired with their low-end IKEA sofa and a mismatched thrift store chair.

  She loved it and them. Loved that they weren’t all about fake appearances. It said a lot about them.

  There were a few prints on the wall that looked like they’d been framed with discount store frames, but the digitally created art was gorgeous. Several different themes, from a futuristic spaceship, to a woodland scene, to a beach scene.

  “These are neat.”

  “Thanks. They’re mine.”

  She looked at him. “You did these?”

  “They were projects in college. I don’t get to stretch my chops like that much now. I do ad copy and signs, mostly.” He shrugged. “It’s a living.”

  She stared at the pieces again. “You and Brad should talk. He’s an artist. You probably have a lot in common.”

  “I wouldn’t call myself an artist.”

  She pointed at the prints. “Uh, I would. Doesn’t matter the medium.”

  John emerged from the bathroom, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, hair damp but brushed. “Thank you, Sachi,” he said as he entered the living room. “I keep telling him he’s an artist, but he doesn’t believe me.”

  Oscar shrugged. “It’s a living,” he simply repeated, although he wore a pleased expression.

  She looked from one man to the other. Their auras both bore nervous tension. So much so that she knew she had to get it out in the open and deal with it sooner rather than later.

  “Look, I’m going to say something, and if I’m way out of line, feel free to let me know,” she started. “I like you guys. B
oth of you. I’m not saying that I want to hop right into bed with both of you right this minute. But from the minute I met you guys, I felt something.”

  She took a deep breath. They both stared at her, their full attention on her. “I know my beliefs aren’t exactly what you guys believe. But can you respect me enough to know that I’m letting my instincts guide me here?”

  Both men nodded, but didn’t interrupt.

  She plowed forward, knowing this would make or break what happened next. “If you guys are interested in seeing if something can happen between the three of us, I’m open to that. But I can’t split you two up. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you. To be honest, I’m attracted to both of you. Is that even something you two would be open to, if things…you know, pan out? The three of us together?”

  With smiles growing on their faces, they looked at each other, nodding, before returning their focus to her and nodding even harder.

  They looked so cute.

  “Okay.” She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “And if things don’t work out between us, I’m good with just being friends. It also won’t affect the investigation. Got it?”

  They nodded harder, both of them grinning now.

  “Good. Now that we got that out of the way, we can enjoy our dinner and talk about our options without dancing around the issue all night and wasting time.”

  * * * *

  Oscar had never fainted in his life. But hearing Sachi admit she wanted to explore their relationship options sucked all the oxygen out of his lungs.

  Both of us?

  It was perfect.

  That she was the one to speak it out loud to them only cemented in his mind that it could work.

  And from the look of relief on John’s face, he suspected his friend felt the same way.

  They wouldn’t have to worry that she might choose one over the other.

  He wouldn’t have to worry about losing his friend over it.

  He could have his cake and eat it, too.

  Hell, yeah, I’m good with that.

  He remembered he was supposed to be getting dinner ready. Outside, lightning flashed and more thunder ominously rolled through as ferocious rain beat down on the roof. He left John to talk with Sachi while he got the ground beef mixed together with spices the way he liked to make his burgers before forming the patties.

  John had led her over to the kitchen and was about to offer her a drink when she let out what sounded like a shocked gasp.

  Oscar turned to see her, wide-eyed in horror, staring at the counter.

  Following her gaze, he didn’t see anything there except things he’d picked up to go with dinner, including a jar of cheese dip and a large can of baked beans.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She’d gone white, one hand up and backing away from them until she bumped against the back of the couch.

  He washed his hands and tried to follow her, but now she was warding them off with both hands.

  “Just…give me a minute.” She sounded horrible, like she might be sick.

  John looked at him, then back at the counter.

  * * * *

  Fuck.

  Sachi’s relationship with Tom, as well as lots of therapy, self-work, and hours spent blasting clay birds on the skeet field had helped her overcome a lot of her trauma. It was rare now that something triggered her PTSD this strongly.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the can of baked beans on the counter, the large can, the same brand, the same size…

  She swallowed hard, trying to hold back the nausea threatening to overtake her.

  The guys didn’t know. They didn’t understand. They had no clue.

  “Put it away, please,” she whispered. “Now.”

  “What?” John asked.

  “The beans. The can of beans.” She tried not to scream it, so it came out a whisper instead.

  The men exchanged a puzzled glance before turning. Oscar spotted it first and stepped over, grabbing it and shoving it into a cabinet.

  Once it was out of sight, she sat against the couch, her fingers curled around the top of it, her body trembling as she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.

  The men slowly approached. She felt them rather than saw them.

  “Are you all right?” John said.

  She wanted to scream that no, she was not fucking all right.

  But they hadn’t known.

  They didn’t have the memory of the dented can, slick with Jacob Clary’s blood, falling from her hand and rolling across the floor after she’d bashed his skull in with it trying to get him to quit killing her mother.

  After a few more deep breaths, she forced her eyes open. Both men looked worried, their auras dark with it now. Worry for her.

  For her.

  It was times like this she thanked the Goddess for her ability to see auras.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes…I trigger. That’s a massive trigger.”

  “I’m sorry,” they parroted, not taking their focus off her.

  That made her smile and broke the spell completely. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out again. “I guess we really need to talk. There’s a lot you need to know about me before you guys can decide if you even want to have someone like me in your lives.”

  * * * *

  John didn’t know what had just happened, but he felt both guilty as hell over inadvertently causing Sachi’s reaction, and pissed off beyond belief at the events in her past that had triggered it.

  Pissed off that he couldn’t reach into the past and wipe those events away for her, make it better for her.

  Protect her from that kind of emotional trauma.

  He suspected it was related to what had happened to her years ago, and something she was about to detail to them. He knew it would be best to let her reveal to them what she wanted, in her way.

  After getting her a glass of iced tea, he and Oscar settled on the couch while she took the chair. Dinner was forgotten, their focus on her.

  For a moment her blue eyes stared at the floor before she met their gazes and softly started.

  “I guess you both know I kind of got famous around here a few weeks back.”

  They both nodded, but neither of them interrupted.

  “The guy who shot me was Jackson Clary. His son, Jacob Clary, raped me and killed my mom when I was fifteen.” Her focus dropped to the floor again as she held the glass with both hands, her shoulders rounded, elbows resting on her thighs as if trying to make herself small so the past couldn’t see her sitting there and telling the story.

  “It was out in Montana. My dad moved us out there from New Jersey when I was thirteen. I went to school with Jacob. He was older than me and on the junior skeet team I joined. I was younger than him and half-Japanese and half-Jewish in a hick town where people were either nice or assholes. I also outshot him at a state juniors competition only six months after joining the team. My dad made better money as an airplane mechanic than Jacob’s dad did as a deputy who had aspirations on running for sheriff. My dad bought me the best gun and reloader he could afford, and my popularity went up with kids who no longer wanted to give Jacob, who was usually a jerk on the best of days anyway, the time of day.

  “I was home alone when he showed up. When I tried to run, he caught me in the dining room and was…” She took a swallow of tea. “Mom came in, bags of groceries in her arms, at the end of it.”

  She sniffled. “Mom was a little shorter than me. Tiny woman. Jacob was on the football team, healthy Montana farmstock kind of dude. She dropped the groceries and started screaming and beating on him, trying to get him off me. He shoved her against the wall and started hitting her, choking her.”

  Sachi drew in a long, ragged breath. “I was in shock. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t think about going for my gun. I grabbed the first thing I could put my hands on.” She stared at them again and John spotted the tears in her eyes. “A can of baked b
eans. It had rolled out of a bag of groceries. That size can, that brand. I hit him until he finally let go of Mom and fell over. Then I called 911.” She let go of the glass with her right hand, staring at it as she flexed her fingers. “I only dropped it because it was so slick with his blood that I couldn’t hold on to it.”

  Her cynical laugh sounded more like a sob. “Lucky me, Jackson Clary was the responding officer. Jacob wasn’t dead, but apparently he snapped my mom’s neck when he attacked her. The ambulance crew was the one who pulled Jackson off me. He’d almost strangled me to death. Fifteen more seconds and I would have been dead, too.”

  “Shit,” Oscar muttered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Jackson was convicted of attempted murder and other stuff. Jacob spent four weeks on life support before his mom finally had the plug pulled. Then she went home later that afternoon and committed suicide with vodka, Valium, and a razor blade in the bathtub.”

  “Jesus,” John said.

  “Dad got my name changed to protect me and we moved over to Idaho. He was afraid some of Jackson Clary’s friends might try to hurt me. I left home the day I turned eighteen. Dad gave me Mom’s insurance money, and I had money from a lawsuit we filed and settled against the county there for what Jackson did to me. I drove until I hit Florida and settled here. Made a new life. I never went back, and I spent my life looking over my shoulder, afraid one of Jackson Clary’s friends might come after me.”

  She let out a snort. “They let Jackson Clary out of jail on a ‘compassionate release’ for inoperable cancer nearly eight months ago. Apparently he blamed me for his woes. When the media went batshit over Julie’s murder, I guess coverage made it out to Montana, and he must have seen me on TV. We had paparazzi falling out our assholes, it felt like. Steven Corey was hugely famous. The fact that he’d snapped and raped and murdered Julie, and attacked his wife and best friend, was front page news.”

  The men nodded. John knew all about that. Brooksville had been crawling with international media for days after the events.

  “Mandaline and I went to Ellis and Brad’s house, and Jackson followed us there from the store. Well, I should add that the reason I have an alarm at my house now is because we think he tried to break into it before that happened, but I wasn’t home and my neighbor saw it and called it in. Then Mandaline and her guys had me stay there at the store with them, in the apartment upstairs. So Jackson’s next attempt was when he followed us that night.”