The Silkie's Call

by Laura Browning

  Chapter 14

  “Where the hell is she?” It was Taylor Stokes who yelled at him, but it could just as easily have been Cayden, who stood right next to Annabel’s brother. Both young men faced Carrick that night in his study aboard the Skerry, their anger radiating out from them in waves. Carrick looked from one furious face to the other.

  “I must assume you mean Annabel?”

  “Where is she, father?” Cayden snarled.

  “You dropped her off at Barton’s Point this morning. I have been gone on the ski boat all day. I am hardly her keeper, Cayden. She’s a grown woman who makes her own decisions.”

  Cayden took a step forward, his fists clenched threateningly at his sides. “If you have done anything to harm her…”

  Carrick snorted. “I owe her my gratitude. I would do nothing to harm her. I might not like the fact that you were together, but I would do nothing to harm her.”

  Taylor studied him with cold, assessing blue eyes. Cayden couldn’t get past his anger and fear for Annabel at the moment, but her brother had already moved into logically assessing the situation, and Carrick knew Taylor was the one around whom he would need to be cautious. That young man flung a piece of paper down onto Carrick’s desk, and he saw it was a letter.

  “She says she’s left. That she’s not coming back. She had to have had help Mr. Clifton. Poppy can’t drive. She wouldn’t have been able to get her suitcases or her other belongings loaded without help.”

  Carrick leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I think you both underestimate her. She managed to move a raft full of supplies to shore. She managed to drag Cayden up a beach and clean and bandage his wounds. That is hardly a picture of a helpless invalid.”

  ****

  Cayden glared at his father. His fury was so great that right now he allowed himself no room for the hurt. That would come later. But he also knew in looking at his father, that neither he nor Taylor would get anything out of the older man. He turned away in disgust, still clutching the note that Taylor had given him. He looked at it one more time.

  Dear Cay,

  Please don’t hate me for what I’m doing. I could bear almost anything, but that. I cannot stay with you. I will not stay with you. This incident with Ciaran showed me more plainly than anything that I can never be the wife you need. I would always be a burden to you and your family, a burden that could end up getting you killed some day because of all the things I can’t do on my own. You need someone whole and strong. I have to go away. Please don’t try to find me. I will always love you, and it’s because I do love you so much that I must go.

  I’m sorry.

  Bell

  Couldn’t be the wife he needed? But she was the only wife he wanted.

  “Come on, Taylor. You won’t get anything out of him. Even if he knows something.” Cayden turned back to his father. “I’m leaving with Taylor. I can’t stay here.”

  “Cayden!” At last Carrick showed some reaction. “Son! Please stay, if not for me then for your mother!”

  Catriona appeared in the doorway. Her beautiful face was pale and her dark green eyes seemed to glow as she stared at her husband. “If you have nothing to hide, Carrick, then open your mind to me.”

  He stared at his wife, at the disappointment he saw in her face. She turned her gaze on Cayden and Taylor.

  “Go,” she commanded them. “I will deal with this right now. There is nothing to be done tonight anyway.”

  Taylor looked at Cayden who nodded his head once, stiffly, and then they were gone, the door shutting quietly behind them.

  ****

  Catriona Clifton stared at her husband and began to slowly shake her head.

  “You have gone too far this time, my love,” she scolded him quietly. “Their love makes even ours pale in comparison. If you would but open your eyes and your heart you would see. They are two halves to a whole, and I don’t know that one can survive without the other. Try to remember what we were like Carrick!”

  Carrick looked at his wife, his expression shuttered and remote. “I have done nothing that I was not asked to do.”

  “By whom?” she demanded. “By the Council? By whom?”

  “By Annabel.”

  She took a step back, her eyes widening. “I don’t believe you. She would never do that.”

  Carrick gazed steadily at her. “On my honor as your husband, Cat, and the love that we share, I did nothing that Annabel Barton did not ask me to do. I owe her a debt and I will not betray her.”

  She stared at him and shook her head. “You are both misguided in this then.”

  She turned and left, shutting the door behind her with a decisive click.

  Carrick stared at the closed door, a frown furrowing his brow. He would not let any doubt in. Separating them was what was best. It was what Annabel wanted. Cayden would adjust eventually. He reached in his pocket and pulled out Cayden’s leather anklet. No Silkie gave up his pelt. It was like giving up your life.

  He had been willing to do that for Cat. Why should he think Cayden would be so different?

  ****

  Ciaran stood in the shadows, disappearing into their dark depths as he listened to what transpired in his father’s study. A small smile was all the satisfaction he allowed himself. So Carrick had taken the human somewhere, he mused, and wouldn’t reveal the location. As he slipped back into the dark waters of the bay, Ciaran turned over in his mind all the possibilities for where Carrick could have taken her.

  His father might unknowingly have handed him the perfect revenge. If he could find Annabel and get rid of her, it would turn Cayden against Carrick for good. He could make her death look like an accident. Make it look like he wasn’t involved in any way. Then once Cayden was out of the way, his father would have no choice, he would have to make Ciaran his heir.

  He swam with new purpose now, following the scent of the ski boat and the whiff of Carrick that also clung to it. While his telepathic skills weren’t nearly as sharp as his mother’s or brother’s, he had always had the keenest sense of smell, and it served him well now. It was hours later when he finally emerged, surfacing in a quiet cove and gazing at the new ramp that led from the dock to a house that he remembered well. It was the home of his childhood, and there was a light in the living room window. Even as he watched, he saw a shadow glide in front of the window. Ciaran smiled.

  “Thank you, blessed Neptune,” he murmured.

  Chapter 15

  The house was too quiet, or maybe it was just that the emotions screaming inside her head were too loud. Annabel could find no peace here, at least not right now. There were too many memories, too many things to remind her of Cayden. She rolled restlessly from room to room, occupying herself for part of the day by rearranging the refrigerator so that she could reach what she needed, and then beginning work on the kitchen cabinets. She longed to work herself to exhaustion, but she knew she dared not do that. There would be no Taylor or no Cayden to help work out cramps if she overexerted herself to the point of developing muscle spasms.

  She had tried to go to sleep, but to no avail. And so it was that in the wee hours of the morning, she still moved around in the living room. A noise outside broke the stillness of the night, but Annabel ignored it as normal sounds that only seemed strange due to her newness to the house. She was sure as she grew accustomed to the house, her nerves would ease.

  She rolled the wheelchair to the table where she had left her father’s journal and picked it up to read once again the final entry in which he described her as a fighter. She didn’t feel much like one right now. In fact, at the moment, it was almost impossible to imagine her life stretching in front of her endlessly with no Cayden. She could not imagine anything that would be closer to hell on earth. And the silence of everything around her mocked her.

  It seemed to her that all she and Cayden had ever had were mere moments stolen out of time. Youth and summer’s end had separated them when they were children. Her accident and their parents had
assumed that role when they were teenagers. Now she was the one putting a halt to what they had. The question now was where she went from here.

  She flipped through that final journal, and stopped once more at an entry that had puzzled her ever since the first time she read it.

  Dear Em,

  I haven’t been entirely truthful with you, either before our marriage or in the years since while I wrote to you here. You have always been my greatest love, and I look forward to seeing you when we meet again. But I have come back once more to visit my other love, obsession really, the sea.

  I laughed at my father years ago when he told me eventually I would not be able to deny my ties to it, but I had to, you see. The ocean took his life even before he perished in the storm. I would see how he was pulled by the water. I saw the craving in him to be out there hunting and simply being what he was. I satisfied it for years by sailing, but that was never quite enough. The pull has become so much stronger since your death, and since Poppy went away.

  Part of me longs to find my own, but in my heart I think that time has passed for me. I can’t recapture what I once denied. And more than that, I can’t face the truth that I may be at once more and less human than I ever thought. Now I can only hope my truth is one that will die with me.

  She had no idea what he meant. Had he been confused by all the drugs? There had been a veritable pharmacy of them both in the apartment and at the house on the point. It had told her more clearly than words how desperate and disturbed he had become. She couldn’t let herself get that way. Couldn’t bear the thought of years of the kind of mental anguish she had seen in her father’s journals.

  Never doubt I love you. She sent the thought out to Cayden, hoping that somehow he might actually hear her. There was a wealth of despair in it, the despair of a soul so tortured that she could see no light. Not for her, and she could no longer hide it because there was nothing and no one to hide behind. She held the bottle of valium in her hand and looked at it as if she were in a trance. Could it really be this simple? Would it have been this easy for her father if he hadn’t been trying to hold out for her? Not allowing herself to think anymore, she undid the cap on the bottle and shook the pills into her hand.

  ****

  When Cayden and Taylor left Carrick’s study, Taylor laid a hand on Cayden’s shoulder.

  “Come to the house with me, man. If we both work on it, we’re bound to come up with something. Between the two of us, nobody knows Poppy better than we do.”

  Cayden looked at him as if he hardly heard him, but he went with Taylor anyway. More than anything else, he knew he had to get off the Skerry. He had to get away from his father. Before he completely lost it. In light of his father’s refusal to admit his role in Bell’s disappearance, Cayden knew that all of the other times he’d thought himself angry at Carrick were nothing compared to now. He was afraid if he stayed, they would end up in a fight to the death either as humans or seals.

  They took the launch over to the dock. Taylor jumped out to tie the boat and then waited for Cayden. “Come on, man. Come up to the house. We’ll crack open a couple of beers and figure this thing out.”

  They sat in the kitchen for a long time. Everywhere Cayden looked were reminders of her. As his anger with his father abated, his anger against Bell grew. Did she trust their love so little that she felt she had to leave? What did that say about their relationship? What did it say about him that she didn’t think he could handle her exactly as she was? He’d never wanted perfection, only her. Ever since he’d first seen her when she was seven.

  He couldn’t believe that she had actually left him, and despite his father’s insistence, he knew Carrick was involved in some way. He knew no one else but Carrick had helped her. Fuck! He. Knew. It.

  “Let’s go about this logically,” Taylor said as he popped the cap on his second beer. “I can say pretty positively the places I know she won’t be. She won’t be with my mother or my sister Sydney, and she won’t be in the city. She sold the apartment there and swore she would never go back.”

  “What about school? Would she head back there?”

  Taylor took a swallow from his beer. “Doubtful. She had decided to sit out a year and I’m pretty sure she didn’t renew her lease. On my end, Cayden, I don’t know of any place right off hand she might have gone. What about you?”

  Cayden toyed with his beer. “I’m pretty sure my father helped her, so I’ve been trying to think of places he might have taken her. Hotels would be too easy to trace. I figure it’s someplace he could adapt to her use, and that leaves only a couple of spots. We keep an apartment in the city, although we rarely use it, and then we also have a home along the Connecticut shore. We haven’t used that in years; not since we were boys, but I’m pretty sure my father never sold it. There’s an old couple who looks out for the place.”

  Taylor finished his bottle of beer. “Those sound like the best possibilities we have. Now, how do we want to go about checking them out?”

  Cayden tilted the beer back and took a swig. “Well, you know the city, so it would be a simple matter to give you the address to the apartment and a key. I can call the concierge and let him know you’re coming. I’ll take the Connecticut house since I know where it is.”

  “What time do you want to leave?”

  “First thing in the morning.” Cayden parked the beer on the counter. “I am completely wiped and there’s just no fucking way I’m going back to the Skerry right now. Can I crash here?”

  Taylor’s blue eyes, so like Bell’s, shone with sympathy. “No prob, my man. Bell’s room’s right through there, or if that’s too much for you, you can stretch it out on the couch, but you’re probably a little tall for that.”

  “I’ll use Bell’s room. Who knows, it might help me tune in to her.”

  As he entered the room he realized he could at least inhale her scent. But after turning restlessly in the bed, he began to question his thinking. He couldn’t get her out of his head, but it wasn’t because he was truly getting any feel for where she’d gone. He just couldn’t seem to get to sleep. After tossing and turning for a few more minutes, he finally got to that drowsy point right between waking and sleeping where everything is possible, and both everything and nothing are completely real.

  Never doubt I love you .

  The thought intruded and he immediately jerked back to full wakefulness. It had happened before, that he’d heard Bell’s thoughts, but only at a time when she was in deep emotional distress. He sat up in alarm, unable to shake the feelings that had accompanied the thought more than the thought itself. Despair. Dark and deep. Jesus!

  “Taylor!” Cayden shouted, jumped out of the bed, pulling on his pants and shirt as quickly as he could. Bell’s brother already hurtled down the stairs.

  “What’s up?” Taylor demanded as he ran his fingers through his hair to scrape it off his face.

  “Don’t think I’m losing it, but I swear I just heard Bell in my fucking head.”

  Taylor scrunched his eyes shut for a moment. “Cayden, I’m long past the point where I think anything is impossible when it comes to you and your family. What did she say?”

  “It wasn’t what she said as much as the feelings that went along with it. It was so hopeless, so filled with despair.”

  “Damn! I didn’t even consider that. And she has all those meds!”

  “Consider what, Taylor?”

  When Taylor simply stared at him, Cayden snapped, “What, Taylor? What the fuck are you not telling me?”

  “Did she tell you how Uncle…our dad died?”

  “No. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I didn’t ask.”

  “He O.D.’d, man. It was a suicide.”

  Shit! Cayden hesitated only a second. “Come on! We’re going back to the Skerry.”

  “Right now?”

  “Damn. Right. I’ll make my dad tell me where he took her. He has to!”

  They raced down to the launch. Taylor just bare
ly managed to get the boat untied and jump on board before Cayden was pushing the throttle forward and banking the small vessel into a sharp turn away from the dock. When they reached the Skerry, Cayden shouted for his mother as he leapt aboard the ship. Catriona came out on deck from her private office. Carrick peered over from the deck above, but he ignored his father for the time being.

  “What is it, Cayden?” Catriona asked in concern.

  “I want you to try to open your mind to Bell, Momma! Your telepathy is stronger than mine. See if you can hear her thoughts, and even if you can’t, try to speak to her with yours! Tell her,” he paused and his voice became choked. “Tell her not to do it, Momma. Please!”

  “Not to do what?” Carrick asked from above, his voice suddenly clipped and cold, every inch the Silkie Lord.

  Cayden ignored his father.

  “Tell her… Not. To kill. Herself,” he whispered hoarsely. His hands were knotted into fists at his side as he gritted his teeth against the vision that involuntarily sprang into his mind.

  Taylor’s eyes widened as Carrick suddenly vaulted down from the deck above and landed nimbly on his feet. He grabbed Cayden by the arms. “This is not funny, Cayden, nor is it worthy of you. Is this some kind of a joke? Some sort of ploy to get me to tell you where she is?”

  Cayden’s eyes were still on his mother. “Please, Momma.”

  Catriona shook her head. “It’s no joke, Carrick. Cayden you know how weak human telepathy is. I need something of hers or I need to be in her room so I can immerse myself in her scent.”

  “As much as I want to go with you Cay,” Taylor said, “I can be more help here. I’ll take you to the house,” he told Catriona quietly. “You’ll find what you need in her room. That’s probably why Cayden heard her.”

  Catriona didn’t even hesitate. She ran with Taylor back to the launch and in a moment he’d gunned the motor and sped toward Barton’s Point.

  Cayden faced his father in desperation, doing something he never thought he would do. He knelt in front of him, his head bowed, and spoke in the old tongue. “I beg you, father. Tell me where she is or take me to her. There is no time to lose! As your son and your heir, I humbly beseech you.”