Protector With A Past
Page 3
She dragged in a shallow, shuddering breath, her lashes dipping briefly to her cheekbones. "I can't help you," she said dully. "I just can't help you."
He put a hand out to support her as she swayed. "What happened?" he asked harshly. His glance narrowed, searching her face intently. "What the hell happened during your last month at work? Sheila wrote and told me you'd resigned like you'd said you would, but she didn't go into any details. What in God's name went wrong, Julia?"
She'd never been able to tell him everything, not even when the bond between them had seemed unbreakable. She'd always held back, and now was no different.
"I don't want the responsibility anymore, that's all." It was almost too tempting to let herself lean against him, to let him take the full weight of her. She was so weary, Julia thought bleakly. She was so damned tired of being alone and fighting the demons single-handed. But it was her fight—hers and no one else's. She stood straighter, and his hand fell away.
"You should get some sleep yourself, Cord. You're going to need—"
Just then there was a sharp pain at her ankle, and she gave a startled little cry. Looking down in shock, she saw King, his tail tucked between his legs in abject apology but his stance defiant and stubborn. He barked once as he met her eyes, and then trotted a few steps in the direction of the hallway.
"He nipped me!" Everything else was temporarily forgotten in her shock at the shepherd's unprecedented behavior. "He's never done anything like that before!"
"Did he break the skin?" Cord bent down swiftly, and she felt his hand circle her ankle to inspect it. His touch should have felt impersonal, but instead it sent a shiver of sensation up her leg, as if instead of merely examining her ankle he'd taken it much farther … as if he'd stroked her calf, the back of her knee, her inner thigh, with those strong capable fingers that had once known every inch of her.
Hastily she put her foot down, her face faintly flushed. "He didn't hurt me. But that's not like him. He's usually the most gentle—"
King barked again, a sharp, urgent sound. Once again he trotted to the hallway and looked back at them, and suddenly Julia felt a terrible foreboding.
"Lizbet! My God—he's trying to tell us something's wrong with Lizbet!"
Her appalled gaze met Cord's, and the next moment she was running behind him down the hallway after King. The dog bounded ahead of them into the spare bedroom and then stood in the middle of the dark room, barking wildly. As they reached the doorway Cord felt for the light switch on the wall and snapped it on. Looking past him Julia realized that her worst nightmare had finally come true.
The bed was empty. The cushioned pad on the window seat that Davey had sat on for hours so long ago, enthralled with the collie stories of Albert Payson Terhune, had slipped onto the floor.
Lizbet was gone.
The corner of the screen at the low window had been pushed outward. It was small comfort, she thought numbly, but it was proof that the child hadn't been abducted by someone breaking into the room.
"She can't have gotten far. I'll check around the house and meet you down at the dock." His mouth was set in a grim line. "If she hasn't turned up by then we'll have to start searching the shoreline until sunrise, and then we'll take the boat out. While it's still dark we're going to have to try to locate her by sound, and I don't want a motor running until we can do a visual search."
"She heard me telling you she couldn't stay here." Julia's fist was knuckled against her mouth, her other hand splayed against the door frame behind her. "Why else would she have run away? I'm responsible for this, Cord." Her teeth started to chatter, and the shaking spread to the rest of her body as her unfocused stare darted wildly around the empty room. "I told you I'd put her in danger, and I have. This is my fault. It's my fault!" Her voice rose to a thin whimper that bordered on the edge of hysteria and then she felt strong hands on her shoulders, shaking her roughly.
"You're the one who's going to save her, dammit! You used to be able to get inside a child's head with some kind of sixth sense that no one else had, Julia! Whatever you say, you still have that ability—it's part of you. Use it, for God's sake! Find her."
She tried to avert her gaze from his, but those black eyes seemed to draw her in until she felt as if everything nonessential was being stripped away and only her spirit remained—battered, bleeding and worn almost past endurance.
But not completely defeated.
The trembling stopped. Slowly but powerfully, like a current changing direction far beneath the surface of a river, an almost forgotten strength began to surge through her limbs, and Julia felt a moment's fear as she let herself be swept into its flow. If she let it, it could take her over. There had always been that danger, and she was doubly vulnerable now. But she had no choice. Deliberately, she let the last instinctive shred of resistance fall from her, and almost immediately the night outside seemed to grow darker, the wind in the trees more threatening.
She pressed her lips together and nodded tightly, a restrained gesture totally at variance with the near hysteria she'd shown a few seconds ago.
"There's a flashlight in the cupboard above the stove. Take King with you—I can't let anything distract me right now.
She saw the hesitation on his face. "Go," she said hoarsely, her posture rigid and tense. "You know how I work, Cord."
He reached out and brushed his thumb lightly against the corner of her mouth. "I know," he said. "I just never thought I'd see the miracle again." He held her gaze for a single moment, and in that second their lives together raced through her mind as if she was drowning—a blur of frozen images like a stack of photographs being shuffled swiftly before her eyes. Then he was gone, the dog a shadow behind him.
She was all alone. She was looking for a ghost to lead her to a child in danger.
Flicking the light switch off, Julia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, deliberately freeing her mind from everything around it and letting it reach out into the darkness.
The child—save the child…
* * *
Chapter 3
«^»
The lake had been bluer, the summers so much longer back then…
And Davey had been the center of her world—at nine years old the big brother whose word was the final say on any question, the infinitely wiser and stronger being that a five-year-old little sister could only hero-worship and try to emulate.
Sometimes, if she was really lucky, she could tag along after him—like now.
Her job had been to sneak down to the boathouse after dinner the night before and hide the life jackets under the front seat of the little Sunfish so everything would be ready the next morning. She'd felt important that he'd trusted her with that. The life jackets were bright orange. Davey had told her that was so people could see you floating in the water if you had an accident and they were looking for you. He hadn't known why they smelled like wet dog, though, but they did, Julia had thought as she put them carefully in the little compartment under the boat seat.
They smelled the way King, Davey's old German shepherd who'd died last winter, had smelled after he'd been playing in the lake with them, before his fur had dried off in the hot sun. Now it was the next morning and she was in the Sunfish, and pieces of fog that looked like rags were blowing off the top of the water as Davey cast off and jumped from the dock to the boat. Watching him, Julia shivered, but she was careful not to let him see. What if one day he was too late, and he didn't make it back into the boat in time? What if he untied the ropes and pushed off and then stood there on the dock while she floated out into the lake alone? It was too scary to think about. Besides, Davey would find a way to get to her. He wouldn't ever leave her.
They really weren't supposed to be out here by themselves at all, but it wasn't the first time Davey had taken the boat out in the early morning. He was a born sailor, Dad had told the other fathers at the yacht club that day he'd taken them there. He'd ruffled Davey's hair proudly and bought him a white sailing cap
with the club's crest on it, but there hadn't been any small enough to fit Julia. She hadn't minded. It had been enough just to be out with them, away from her mother's sad silences.
And right now it was enough to be here on the lake with Davey, even though he was kind of mad at her. She was wearing the fat orange life belt that jammed up under her chin so high when she was sitting down that she had to keep tugging on it to keep it from touching her mouth. It tasted like wet dog, too. But Davey wasn't wearing anything over his striped T-shirt, and that was her fault. Julia felt the heavy orange canvas creeping up her chin to her mouth again and pulled it down. She was sure she'd put both life jackets under the seat last night, she thought miserably. But when they'd gotten out onto the lake and Davey had told her to take them out, she'd only found one.
One of the very best things about having him for a big brother was that he didn't stay mad long, though. He was already smiling at her again, pointing at a blue heron flying low across the lake. His best friend Cord knew all about the birds and the animals that lived around the lake because his ancestors had always been here, not like their family, who only came here for the summers and then went back to their big house on Long Island for the rest of the year.
Cord was just as good a sailor as Davey was, but when Julia had asked him if his father belonged to the yacht club he'd scowled. Then one corner of his mouth had gone up in a funny kind of a smile and he'd pulled at her pigtails and told her that his dad didn't have time to belong to clubs. Afterward Davey had told her not to ask dumb questions, and if she had to ask him first. But she'd known that Cord hadn't really been angry with her, because he'd found a perfectly round stone later that day, and he'd given it to her for good luck.
They were changing direction. Davey had told her it was called tacking, and Julia had thought at first he'd said attacking because when it happened the boom came across the boat and if you weren't careful it could hit you. She looked out across the water to where their house was, big and white, with the lawn that Cord's dad had mowed yesterday looking like green velvet.
Just then the heron circled back, maybe to have another look at them. Davey glanced up as the wide-winged shadow passed over him.
And the boom attacked him.
It was like watching one of the movies that Dad had taken the year Davey learned to dive off the high board. Dad had sat in the dark in their living room, running the movie over and over again, backward and forward and slowing it down so he could show Davey all the things he was doing wrong. After that, Davey had practiced and practiced until the instructor at the swim club had told him he wanted to put him on the diving team. But when his dive was finally perfect and he'd shown Dad, he'd never gone back to the pool again.
It looked just like the movie when Dad slowed it down, Julia thought, sitting scrunched up on the hard wooden seat and watching Davey with her eyes opened so wide they hurt. The boom swung over like it was going through molasses and then it hit Davey's head with a solid thunk just as he started to duck. Slowly she saw his neck snap sideways. Slowly the rope he'd been holding fell from his fingers, but it didn't hit the deck right away. It seemed to hang in the air at the level of his waist, and then it was down by his knees, and then it was tangled around his feet.
But Davey's feet were moving, too, rising up into the air with the same kind of slow motion that everything around her seemed to have, the toes of his shoes touching each other in a V shape as he started to fall over the side of the boat. He looked like a seesaw, Julia thought. His hip was on the edge of the boat and his feet were still sliding up through the thick air in that weird and frightening way but his head was already touching the water.
Any second now the seesaw would come up again. Any second now the movie would start running backward and Davey would slowly tip back into the boat and his feet would go down on the deck and his eyes would open and everything would be the way it was supposed to be and she would laugh and tell him how funny he'd looked and he'd start laughing, too, and then they'd go home together and maybe this afternoon Cord's mom might take them to town for ice creams. Any second now all that would happen.
Except all of a sudden the movie started running really, really fast.
She saw Davey's striped T-shirt sliding under the water and then his legs and his white sneakers, still tangled up in the rope, and the rope started snaking over the side of the boat until it reached the end and it stretched tight from the cleat it was tied to.
It felt like there was something big sitting on her chest, not letting her breathe. Holding onto the edge of the boat, Julia slid off the seat onto her knees. She was too afraid to stand up because the deck was moving up and down, and instead of going in a straight line the Sunfish felt like it was going to tip over onto its side. She bit her lip and scrambled over to where the rope was rubbing the white-painted wood and she tried to pull on it, but it stayed tight and the thing that was sitting on her chest seemed to be getting heavier and heavier and she couldn't get any air into her at all.
Then the wind shifted again and the little Sunfish picked up speed and the rope rolled over her fingers and she started screaming and screaming and far off by the shore she could see Cord Hunter, Davey's very best friend, jumping into his dad's old motorboat and heading out towards her…
* * *
Nothing had been the same after that. Julia stood in the dark bedroom and felt the predawn breeze coming through the pushed-out screen and went deeper into the past.
She was only five, and she was frightened. Her mother al ways had a glass in her hand and fell asleep downstairs with the television all fuzzy late at night, and when her father looked at her it seemed like he couldn't even see her. Sometimes she was scared that if she held out her own hand to look at it she'd be able to see right through it herself.
She needed somewhere dark and safe to hide—somewhere even if she was invisible, it wouldn't matter anyway. Somewhere so dark that everything was invisible and she could just wrap her arms around her legs and sit without making a sound and no one would be able to find her…
She moved like a sleepwalker out of the bedroom and down the hall to the side door that opened onto the garden where her mother had sat and pretended to read all those years ago, and as she passed by the broken redwood chaise that she'd never bothered to remove since she'd come back here to live she thought she smelled Shalimar, her mother's favorite perfume.
She shivered. She kept moving.
Somewhere dark, somewhere that was darker than the night and darker than the woods behind the house. Somewhere a little girl would be able to hide for as long as she wanted. Somewhere small and safe. Somewhere no one would look except another little girl who'd once gone looking for a safe hiding place.
Her feet, still clad in the backless slippers, moved through the wet grass as surely and steadily as if they were following a path they'd worn down themselves. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was shallow.
Find the child. Save the child. Be the child…
She went deeper still, losing herself in the child she'd once been, and then even deeper, searching out the fear and pain of the tiny redhead who'd stared at her with the still blue gaze of a doll. In the silence of her mind she could hear a small, frightened whisper, almost inaudible.
Be the child. She concentrated, and the whisper became clearer…
The boathouse.
Julia stood like a statue on the wet lawn, her mind still operating on two levels and with both levels possessing the knowledge she needed. Only by letting herself become the child she'd once been had she been able to think like the little girl she was searching for, and she was certain now she knew where to find Lizbet. But Lizbet didn't need the help of another child—she needed the adult Julia to protect her. It was time to set aside the fearful little ghost who'd entered her for the last few minutes, time to struggle free from the faded memories that this recent reliving had brought to life once more.
It felt like she was tearing her soul in two.
And even though Julia knew that the frightened little personality was no ghost at all, but merely a long-ago echo of her own self, she felt as if she was turning her back on a real child—a child who had haunted her all her life for some purpose that she'd never been able to understand.
A convulsion ran through her body, and she felt the desperate presence receding into the furthermost corner of her mind with all the other memories that she never allowed herself to examine. She felt as if she'd just run ten miles, and her limbs were shaking with exertion.
"She's nowhere around the house and I checked the woods as far back as the fence line." Cord melted out of the grayness, King—the present King, not the long-gone one from her childhood, Julia thought with a moment of shaky confusion—at his heels. There was just enough light now to make out the tortured expression on his features and the straight, grim line of his mouth, and she put her hand lightly on his arm. Her fingers were still trembling, and her voice was unsteady.
"She's in the old boathouse."
The hope that flared in his eyes was instantly tempered with apprehension, and she forestalled his reply. "I know. She couldn't have picked a more dangerous place—I've been meaning to have it pulled down since I came back here. You're going to have to let me go in alone, Cord. I'm lighter than you are and those rotten floorboards might take my weight long enough for me to get her out of there."
"No. I'll go." His tone brooked no argument, and her hand tightened on his arm.
"She was running from me, Cord! If you bring her back she'll only try again. Don't you see—she has to know that I came for her. She has to know that I want her enough so that I'll never stop looking for her until I find her, and that just won't happen if you deliver her to me like a package. She already trusts you—now I have to prove to her that she can trust me." She hesitated, and then added in an undertone, "Besides, I'm her guardian. She's my responsibility, too."