Exhaustion pulled at his body and he stretched out on the bed, too tired to undress or even slip beneath the covers.
He needed to sleep, to come up with a surefire plan to lure Faith back to the kids. So far his urging and prodding weren’t doing a bit of good, and time was running out. He had all of a week and a half left. Then he’d either be here for a lifetime more, or finding forgiveness and gaining peace. He had every intention of doing the latter. If only Faith wasn’t so damned stubborn.
He closed his eyes and saw her sitting in the darkness, holding Jane, and his heart twisted in his chest. His hands trembled, the feel of smooth silk tickling his palms. He’d felt Jane’s smooth hair, absorbed every shudder, as if he’d been Faith herself.
He had been. For those few moments, they’d been one. He’d been inside her, his arms tightening reflexively around the girl’s small body, her tears splashing against his hand. Jane had fit against him so well, as if he’d held her before, her voice oddly familiar, tugging at feelings he’d always kept so deeply buried.
But of course the little girl was familiar—to Faith. Jesse had been inside Faith’s head, feeling her feelings, hearing what she heard. It was all familiar because she’d held the girl night after night, soothed her, wiped away her tears.
Linked. Connected.
He shook away the thoughts, concentrating on the future. Tomorrow. Faith had to overcome her fears, and Jesse had to help her.
How?
The dilemma beat at his brain, making him toss and turn until he could no more sleep than he could force her image from his mind. He threw his legs over the side of the bed and strode to the window, staring out over the darkened front yard of Faith’s House and beyond.
Faith. The word whispered through his head, and Jesse closed his eyes, feeling the weight on his shoulders, the burden so heavy, driving him to his knees.
The grooves in the hardwood floor bit through his jeans, but he didn’t feel the discomfort. He felt only urgency, desperation. He threw his head back and stared at the ceiling, but his gaze went beyond, to the black velvet sky overhead, and farther yet.
A pinpoint of light twinkled, expanded, growing in diameter like a door opening in the blackness. A bright white beam plunged through the velvety blackness, searching for him. The light appeared to him like the first ray of the sun breaking through a stormy sky. Heat sizzled over his skin, soothing and warm, chasing away his fears and insecurities, leaving nothing but serenity. Peace. A small taste of the peace to come.
Eternity waits for you, the voice whispered around him, inside him. No more pain, no more guilt.
The light swirled around him like the strong arms of a comforting embrace; then it narrowed, disappearing into a dot that soon vanished, leaving Jesse cold and alone.
And determined. He wanted more than a taste. He wanted freedom from his own pain, and he meant to have it.
Faith Jansen was coming back to the land of the living, whether she liked it or not. As much as Jesse sympathized with her, he wasn’t about to let her screw up his chance at eternity.
For all Jesse’s determination, sleep still didn’t come. Wide eyed, he found himself staring at the ceiling. Oddly enough, it wasn’t Faith’s image that haunted the dark corners of his mind.
Instead, it was the vision of a young girl with dirt-smudged cheeks who strummed a battered guitar. Trudy’s haunting melody filled his head, and a shiver rippled through him. He could see her as clearly as Faith’s crystalline tears, her tiny form huddled in the corner of the abandoned apartment.
Goose bumps danced along his arms. The smell of rotten garbage and tepid water filled his nostrils, as if he were actually the one in the corner. Scared. Alone. Hungry.
No, he was none of the three, but he had been, once. Many times. In his childhood he’d been the poor neglected kid with two alcoholic parents; then as an adult he’d met other kids, seen their hard luck, cursed it, and tried to help.
But things were different now. He couldn’t afford to go back there. The place stirred too many demons, too many distractions to keep him from his mission.
“No,” he muttered, all the while swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He fought the guilt, the pull, but it was useless.
Finally he gathered up the blanket stretched across the mattress, rummaged around downstairs in the kitchen for the leftovers from that night’s dinner, then headed out the door.
The walk took less than twenty minutes, but it seemed like forever. Like a convicted criminal walking the last few feet to the electric chair. Death waited at the end of the journey.
Or in Jesse’s case, the memory of death.
He walked into the gaping hole that had been the building’s front door. His boots thudded, wood creaked, rats scurried. A chill crept through Jesse as he reached the third-floor landing. This was a mistake. He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t want to be here—
The thought ground to a halt when he saw the young girl. Trudy lay nestled beneath his tattered letterman’s jacket, her knees pulled up under her chin. She looked so small, so lonely, so lost.
Thanks, Jesse. You’re the best big brother in the world.
The soft voice filtered through his head, and his chest tightened. He fought back the memories, but they came anyway, surrounding him, swamping him.
“Do you have to go to work tonight?” Rachel asked.
“There’s a major stakeout tonight. They need every available man.” He walked around the kitchen, gathering up his gun and badge, while his younger sister stood in the doorway, her nightgown trailing past her bare feet, a worried frown on her freshly scrubbed face. “I’ll be back before you wake up in the morning.”
“What about me and Jason?”
“You two will be fine. Jason’s sound asleep, and you’ve got my beeper number if there’s a problem, or you can call the station. You know the routine, honey.”
“I know.” She shook her head and cast troubled eyes on him. “I don’t like it here. I wish we could go back home.”
“This is home now, Rachel.”
“Things are different here. People are different. Jason’s new friends …” She gave him a pointed, wide-eyed stare. “I really think you should stay here tonight. It’s just one night.”
“One night I can’t possibly miss.” He paused in buckling on his holster. “What is it about Jason’s new friends that’s got you so wound up?”
She looked undecided for a long moment, then shook her head. “Never mind. You go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The urge to go to her, pull her into his arms and reassure her nearly overwhelmed him. But a lifetime of hiding his emotions, holding himself in check, always being the silent pillar of strength—a position forced on him by circumstance and a mother who neither loved nor wanted him—won out over the softness his little sister stirred. “I’ll be back soon. I know this graveyard shift is hard on everybody, but it’s just for a little while, until I make detective. That’s why we came here. So I could move up the ranks. A few more months walking the night beat and then we’ll have enough money set aside to get a better place. A nicer neighborhood. It’ll be better than Restoration. You’ll see.”
She gave him a smile, but the worry never left her eyes.
“Be careful.”
“Sleep tight, sis….”
Her troubled eyes had followed Jesse all the way to the station and on his shift that night. He’d been right in the middle of a raid on a crackhouse when he’d felt the twist in his gut, the dead certainty that something was wrong—
Paper rustled, breaking his train of thought, and his gaze shifted to Trudy. She sighed and snuggled deeper into his jacket.
He spread a blanket around her, tucking in the edges. Then he placed the bundle of food near her guitar and pulled a note from his pocket.
If you need help, he scrawled in big black letters, along with the address for Faith’s House.
“Hey—” Trudy’s startled voice came up short as she scrambled
backward. “Oh, geez, you scared the crap out of me!” She clutched the blanket around her. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might be hungry.” He picked up the bundle of food and handed it to her.
She gave him a wary look that quickly disintegrated as she stared into his eyes. Then she peeled back the plastic wrap and sank her teeth into a cold piece of fried chicken.
“So what’s the catch?” she said in between mouthfuls. “I mean …” She chewed some more and swallowed. “There’s always a catch. You didn’t just bring me this stuff free of charge.” She waved the chicken leg at him. “So what do you want?”
“For you to consider leaving this place. I can hook you up with someone who could help you.”
“Shit!” She threw the chicken bone at him and he ducked. “I knew it! I knew you were too nice to be real. You’re a pimp. A damned, dirty pimp. Look here, I ain’t into that, you hear?” She started to scramble free of the blanket. “You can take your stuff back and stick it where the sun don’t shine—”
“I’m talking about a shelter.” Her movements instantly stilled. “I’m not a pimp. I work at a place called Faith’s House. It’s a shelter for kids like you.”
“You might as well be a pimp, ’cause I hold shelters in about the same regard, and I ain’t going to one. I like it fine right here.” At his pointed look, she added, “Okay, it’s not all that great, but it’s not bad either.”
“It’s a filthy hole in the wall. You said as much yourself the last time I saw you.”
“Things have changed. This is my place now. I even cleaned up.” She pointed to a broom leaning against the far wall. The bristles were grizzled, half of them missing, but he could see where she’d swept the floor.
“People were murdered up here,” he reminded her. “One of them right there.” He pointed to the familiar stain and then the spot just to the right where Jason had taken his last breath.
“Maybe … I mean, I know what went down, but it don’t seem creepy to me.” To emphasize her point, she pulled out a small switchblade. “I can take care of myself. I ain’t afraid of nothing.”
“I’m not talking about a physical threat. This place”—he looked around him—“it’s a bad memory. It feels bad.”
“Not to me.” She grew quiet for a long moment. “I know it ought to scare me, but it don’t. I feel sort of, I don’t know, protected, I guess. I been alone most of my life, but here, it feels different. Like I got company.” She stared at him. “You believe in ghosts, like friendly ones?”
“Like a guardian ghost?”
She nodded. “I never bought into any of that crap, but since I been staying up here … It’s like I feel a presence, you know?” She pointed to the bloodstained floor, all that was left of Jesse’s old life. “When I’m in that spot right there, it’s like I can feel that guy. Like his ghost is here watching over me or something.”
He laughed, a bitter sound that made him grimace. “There’s no ghost up here. And if there were such a thing, the guy that died right there wouldn’t be anybody’s guardian; I can guarantee that.”
She leaned forward. “Did you know him? Is that why you came here the other night?”
He stared into the darkness, his gaze fixed on the broken window, where cool air whistled in, flapping the plastic covering that someone had tried to tape in place.
“Yeah,” he said after a long moment. “I knew him, and trust me, he wouldn’t be anybody’s guardian.”
She settled into her corner, tucked the knife against her chest, and pulled the blanket up around her. “Tell me about him.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause I want to know. I feel like I already know him in a way. Sometimes when I’m sitting here, I look across the room and I swear I can see someone. Just the faint outline, but it’s there. Like somebody’s watching me.”
“Nobody’s watching you, honey. But they should be. You’re too young to be out on your own.” He settled down on the floor, his back against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. He sat there for several minutes before he finally found his voice, and his courage.
“He was a cop from a little town called Restoration, no more than a couple of thousand people—just on the other side of Fort Worth. The town was small, all of two cops on the entire force, with very little room for advancement, so the guy packed up his brother and sister and moved them here. More money, better opportunities. They’d moved into this neighborhood temporarily until the cop could save up enough money for something better. He was this close to making detective.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “He really wanted that promotion. He’d been looking to buy a little house on the south side, near Channelview. A little place, three bedrooms, a yard.” He stared at her then, their gazes colliding. “Really clean, you know?”
She nodded, as if she could see his dream, or rather, her own. “Yeah. Clean.”
“He was so busy hustling after this promotion, he didn’t spend too much time at home. He never had to worry about his kid sister; she was really smart, an A student, always followed the rules, an all-around good kid. His brother was another story. He was smart, but impulsive, and if there was trouble nearby, he was always neck-deep in it. That’s what happened that night.”
“The night of the murder?”
He nodded. “Restoration was a small, hole-in-the-wall town. No drugs. Very little crime. They moved here, and all of a sudden they were surrounded by scum. The kid brother fell into a bad group of kids who ran drugs for a local dealer. He wanted to fit in, to be liked, to make some of the money he saw his friends flashing around. Anyhow, he started running small amounts of crack for this dealer, and skimming off some of the cash on the side. The dealer came after him. Here.” He glanced around the room, his gaze cutting through the darkness. “The sister was asleep in the other room. The kid brother was right here, having a showdown with the dealer. The cop came home in the middle of the meeting and all hell broke loose.”
This ain’t none of your business, Savage. It’s your brother we want. We got a little lesson to teach him—
“Holy crap.” Trudy’s words shattered the voice that haunted Jesse’s thoughts.
He closed his eyes. “It was all over so fast. The dealer pulled a knife. The cop drew his gun, but he didn’t have a chance to use it. He went down with the first plunge of the blade.”
Jesse winced. His hands started to tremble and a wave of pain washed across him. The voice blared in his head with renewed determination.
You’re home early, cop. Way too early …
“… know so much?”
Jesse shook away the past. “What?”
“How do you know so much?”
“The cop was … my friend.” He ran tense hands through his hair. “We were tight.”
“Hey, that’s tough, man.”
“Yeah.” He climbed to his feet. “There’s the address for the shelter. Think about leaving this place.”
“I ain’t going to no shelter.”
“Think about it.”
“Mind your own business.”
He was halfway to the door when he heard her voice.
“You ain’t gonna call CPS on me, are you? I’ll just take off. I been that route before.”
He shook his head. “I told you before that I wouldn’t.”
“Thanks for the food and the blanket.” Her words followed him out the door.
His legs made quick work of the hallway, then the stairs. With each step, the walls seemed closer, caging him, strangling him, and he struggled for each breath.
You’re home early, cop.
It’s your brother we want.
Your brother …
The words pounded through his head, making him sorry he’d come back here. He didn’t want to remember. To feel the pain again, to hear that damned voice.
To feel the hatred stir to life.
Peace, his soul cried. Peace and forgiveness and Fa
ith.
He didn’t bother walking to the front of the building. Instead he headed for the nearest exit once he reached the ground floor. Wood groaned and cracked as he thrust his weight at the back door. He burst out into the night and leaned over, gasping for air.
Calm, he told himself, but his heart pounded furiously. It was so damned loud. Why hadn’t he listened to Rachel? Why hadn’t he stayed home that night? Why had he moved them from peaceful, crime-free Restoration to this drug-infested city? Why, why, why?
Breathe, he told himself, and he did. Over and over until his lungs relaxed and he managed to straighten up.
His gaze went to the small row of sheds out behind the apartment building. One had a door hanging half-off its hinges; the other had a broken window. The paint was peeling, the wood rotting in most places. His gaze went to the third one. It was shabby like all the rest, but the door was still in place. The windows had been broken out, but they were too high and small to attract vandals, the shed in much too sorry shape to entice anyone.
Walking over, Jesse fingered the padlock on the door. It didn’t budge. Still as sturdy as the day he’d snapped it on. He hunkered down and moved a small rock near the corner of the shed. A hole about two inches wide sat beneath the rock. Jesse shoved his hand just inside the hole. Metal brushed his skin. Bingo.
He slid the key into the padlock. The shed door creaked open. Silence yawned at him and he walked inside.
The motorcycle was still there underneath the tarp, and Jesse couldn’t help but smile. No one in this broken-down neighborhood had ever fathomed what lay hidden inside the rotting shed. Then again, it had been just under a year. Sooner or later someone would have broken in and taken the bike.
He didn’t worry over sooner or laters. He concentrated on the now and his incredible good fortune. His hands trailed over the frame, pushing away the layer of dust that coated the shiny chrome and paint.
“I don’t know anything about motorcycles.” With a critical eye, Jason surveyed the piece of junk Jesse had found at a local salvage yard.
Faithless Angel Page 10