By dint of sheer will David followed Gary as far as the gates of the resort. But his otherworldly senses were fading, the colorless mist of limbo closing around him again. Through a fog he saw Gary snap the lock on the gate with a heavy clipper, push the gate open with a violent kick.
Then David’s sight deserted him completely, and his hearing, every last connection to the earthly plane. He screamed denial in his mind, and knew he’d lost.
Where the idea came to him he didn’t know. As he tumbled into a brilliant tunnel of white light, he shaped his shout of defiance into an invocation. A prayer. A bargain offered to those who guarded the way between life and death.
Let me go back to her, he pleaded, infusing the appeal with all the humility and sincerity and heartfelt emotion he had so lacked in life. Listen to me. If you let me protect her, I’ll return to limbo forever. I’ll pay any price to be real and whole for a few more hours. Any price. Every life I would have lived, for eternity. My soul. Do you hear me?
There was no answer. The radiant tunnel drew him deeper.
Don’t you understand? he cried. I love her. Nothing else matters. I love—
The white light exploded into a thousand fragments.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jesse couldn’t remember how she’d come to the resort.
She found herself kneeling in the dirt just outside her mother’s cabin, her hands full of earth as if she’d been clawing the ground. Her face was stiff with dried tears, and as she felt her body again the sorrow came back, bending her double and drawing a moan from her raw throat.
David was gone.
That was the first, the unthinkable, the most unbearable certainty. David was gone, and she’d sent him away.
No. She’d set him free. For all the bitterness in her heart, the full knowledge of his deception and betrayal in this life and the last, she had given him what he wanted. Though she had raged at him, still something of her love for him had remained true, and now, in the numb after-shock of his revelations, in the wake of Sophie’s memories relived, she understood.
She had hated him. She—Sophie—the soul they shared, had hated him. But more powerful than the hate was the love.
Here, in this place, she’d told David she loved him. She’d sworn to herself that nothing could weaken that love. She’d said that nothing David had done would change it.
She was right. How strange to realize that there was such a thing as unshakable love, that the stubborn core of it persisted even when the trappings had been burned away in a storm of fire and anguish.
Like the soul that went on, whatever outer shape it wore.
David was gone. He was free. She should be glad. She should rejoice for him. That he’d never loved her didn’t make any difference. There was so much good in him, so much that deserved to go on and live and learn and find the love that eluded him.
And she had her own life, better than it had been before he came. That Sophie still existed somewhere within her was a matter she’d have to deal with. She could deal with it, now that she knew the truth.
She could live with the truth. She could learn to live without David. For Megan’s sake. And because David had made her understand just how precious life was.
Jesse gathered her legs under her and stood, waiting until her knees stopped quivering, and glanced around the resort. It didn’t frighten her anymore. She no longer feared the specter of childhood mental illness that hadn’t been illness at all, but soul-deep memory triggered by her mother’s death.
Her thoughts wandered at random, sorting themselves into logical patterns again. She could feel emotion waiting to erupt below the surface, a tempest ready for the right catalyst. But she forced it down under a layer of frigid calm, as she’d learned to do when feelings were too strong.
It wouldn’t last, this numb self-possession. But there was a reason to hang on, now more than ever. One problem yet to be resolved, the final chapter of a book that must be read and put away. Then she, too, could begin to be free.
She felt under the collar of her shirt for her mother’s letter, guarded against her heart. She was where she needed to be; she still had to find the tags Mom had hidden, and the grave in the woods.
Sophie stirred inside her: He will pay. Jesse didn’t try to silence that vow. She wouldn’t let Sophie’s memories rule her, but in this they were united. Sophie would have her vengeance, and then be laid to rest forever.
Jesse started away from the cabin, moving her arms and legs as if they belonged to someone else. When she heard the crack of a twig behind her, she believed, for a miraculous instant, that David had come back.
But the smiling, handsome figure was dressed in a modern suit, and his brown eyes were narrowed in unholy satisfaction.
“I saw your truck out front,” Gary said. “Lucky guess that you’d be here. But then I’ve always been lucky.”
There was a frozen span of time in which Jesse was incapable of reacting. She was plunged back into childhood, remembering her attack on a younger Gary Emerson, screaming the same words over and over: “You killed me. You killed me.”
And at the same time she was Sophie, choking on smoke but still alive to scream when the first flames touched sheets, nightrail, flesh. Carrying with her into death hatred for the two men who had betrayed her.
Sophie’s eyes superimposed another shape on Gary’s: shorter, less handsome, with a pinched and bitter face. He wore an antique suit, scrupulously neat and sober. His hair was darker, his eyes a muddy black and filled with malice.
“Avery,” she whispered.
Gary’s expression flickered and settled into its smug, familiar planes again. “I knew I’d find you sooner or later,” he said. “But this is very convenient. No observers to interfere with our discussion.”
Jesse snapped back to the present, and icy self-control returned to replace the momentary panic. It was all so clear; she knew that Gary would have been driven to face her eventually. She sensed the karmic connection between them as if it were a physical tie, and wondered how much he knew. If he remembered, or was compelled by impulses he would never understand.
If she were still the Jesse she’d been before David, before the memories, she might have taken the sensible path. She could have played ignorant, or simply afraid, and maybe he’d let her go. The police could handle the rest.
But this had been building for more than a single lifetime. She no longer cared about her own safety.
“I expected this,” she said coldly. “I’m ready for you, Gary.”
He barked a laugh. “You couldn’t let it go, could you? I warned you, and you had to keep digging. Coming back here. Making trouble for me. I knew you wouldn’t shut up.”
Jesse held his gaze. “You’re right. I always knew you had some part in my mother’s death. Now I have the facts. And all the proof I need to expose you for what you are.”
Gary’s facade of confident menace began to slip. “Proof? Don’t give me that shit.”
“But you thought I might have something on you. You gave yourself away, Gary. You sent a flunky to search my house. You threatened me. You were the one who made me realize there was something to find, and I did.”
“I never touched your mother—”
“Oh, you touched her. You treated her like dirt. It took me a while to remember that. I know you drove her to kill herself, even if you didn’t push her in the water with your own hands.”
If she’d believed it possible, she would have thought she saw guilt in his eyes. “You’re bluffing. She was a lush who jumped in the river—”
“Because of what she’d discovered. Your former ‘business partner.’ Remember him, Gary? There was a lot of money involved. He wasn’t welcome, so you disposed of him. And my mother found out. She wrote it all down for me.”
The color drained from Gary’s face. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Seventeen years is a long time,” Jesse said. “It must be convenient to be able t
o pretend it never happened.” She took a step toward him, and his body jerked. “Where did you get that money, Gary? Robbery, or something subtler like extortion or blackmail? That would be just about your style. But maybe you would have gotten away with it if you hadn’t resorted to murder.”
She saw when it hit him: that she knew, that she wasn’t bluffing, that she might truly be able to hurt him. “Your mother was a drunk,” he spat. “No one would believe her, or you.”
“They might believe when they find the body, or the dog tags my mother hid. They might start an investigation, and then where is your great political career?” Jesse felt righteous anger well up, a heady brew that made it impossible to be afraid. “It won’t take much, Gary. Just a few doubts and questions and talk …”
“You bitch.” He reached into his jacket. Jesse stiffened, but he only removed a dented cigarette pack. He produced a gold-plated lighter and lit a cigarette.
“You know, they do this in movies,” he said in an oddly conversational tone. “The idiot who threatens the villain that she’s going to expose him, when they’re alone in some dark alley.” He expelled a plume of smoke on a laugh. “Thought you were crazy, but not stupid.”
“I have copies of my mother’s letter,” she lied. “And I’ve left instructions about finding the other proof if anything happens to me.”
Gary took another drag and let out the smoke slowly. He flipped the burning cigarette into the pine needles mounded near the cabin wall. “I always get what I want, Jesse. No one stops me.”
She recognized in his very serenity something abnormal, as if he’d lost any judgment of the consequences of his actions. Things had come full circle. Now he was the one who’d gone crazy. He couldn’t kill her and get away with it—and she knew nothing less would satisfy him. Just like before.
“I finally have everything I worked for,” he said, turning to watch the first delicate fingers of smoke curl up from the clump of bone-dry needles. “I won’t let you take it from me.”
Jesse heard in his voice the echoes of that other life, words spoken by another man who shared Gary’s soul. A man who’d feared that she—the child she carried—would steal his one chance at the power and status that should have been his save for an accident of birth.
“When does it end, Gary?” she asked. “When do you stop killing to get what you think you want?”
He only stared at the growing column of smoke, the tiny licks of fire igniting the desiccated pile.
Fire. The acrid smell filled Jesse’s nostrils as if it were already a raging inferno. Fire that burned and killed. Within her, Sophie wailed and screamed.
Jesse could have stamped out the flame with one foot. She couldn’t move. The flame grew larger, split into two tongues that moved with surprising speed toward the cabin wall. In such hot and arid conditions, a fire could spread stunningly fast.
Her training was stronger than Sophie’s terror. She made a move toward the mound, foot positioned to scatter and bury the flames. In an instant Gary had a gun pointed at her chest.
“This place isn’t much good to anyone,” he said. “No one would miss it if it burned to the ground.”
“You can’t hide the evidence that way,” Jesse said, keeping her voice level. “You can’t hide from your own evil.”
“Oh. Very dramatic.” He smiled. “You should have been writing speeches.”
Fire sent exploratory fingers up the side of the wall, finding it dry and ripe for conquest.
“Who was the first person you murdered?” she asked. “Or do you even remember?”
His face lost all expression. “Only that bastard—” He caught himself. “No more tricks.” He gestured with his gun. “Go on. Into the cabin.”
Jesse understood then. “You think that this will solve your problems. But it keeps repeating itself, Gary … there is no escape.”
He stepped toward her. “Go.”
“Did you think it was just my mother, Gary? There’s more between us than what you did to her. You set another fire, in another life. You killed me before. But I’m back to face you. You didn’t succeed. You never will.”
Confusion warped his mouth into an ugly grimace. “You’re still insane.” But the strangeness in his eyes told her that he was disturbed by her words. The gun shook in his hand. Jesse gauged the distance, how quickly she could reach him and knock the weapon from his hand.
But he wasn’t confused enough. His jaw hardened and he pushed the muzzle of the gun into her stomach.
“Funny,” he said. “I’m actually sorry I have to do this. If only you’d kept quiet—”
Sophie’s will surged to the fore, her bitterness and hatred joined with Jesse’s own. “You’ll pay, Gary,” she said. “You’ll never be free of me—”
With a grunt of fury he shoved her back, pinned her to the wall with the gun while he fumbled for the cabin door. The fire had caught on the wall now, inching toward the nearest cracked window, and it was only a matter of time until it reached the highly flammable curtains and furniture.
Jesse tried to dodge as he herded her into the cabin. He snatched her arm and nearly wrenched it from its socket.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, as if he meant it. He struck her a glancing blow across the temple with the butt of the pistol, and she fell, red darkness dimming her sight. Then even that was gone.
She woke to find herself prone on the dusty floorboards, half blind, smelling the growing pall of smoke as it drove the clean air from her lungs.
The fire had spread rapidly in the time she’d been out. It had found its way inside and caught on the window drapes and furniture and the other walls. In minutes it would engulf the cabin. The door was shut between her and freedom.
Gary had trapped her. He would let her burn to death—
The part of her that was Sophie screamed in hopeless terror. Sophie had died in her bed, unable—unwilling to fight for her life. She’d died in hatred, succumbed to the despair that had become her whole existence.
She’d wanted to die, to punish the men who’d failed and tormented her. She would let the same thing happen now.
But Jesse didn’t know how to give up. She stretched flat on the floor and reached out with her hands, feeling ahead through a maze of drifting smoke. Every inch of progress was a victory. Her consciousness wavered, and she formed an image in her mind: David, opening the door, arms outstretched to enfold her.
The vision was incredibly real, so real that she imagined David bursting into the room, sweeping her up like a swashbuckler hero, carrying her into sunlight and air she could breathe.
She coughed the smoke from her lungs and saw blue sky through a film of haze, the cabin wall a solid sheet of flame. And David was still there, his hands cupping her cheeks.
“Jesse,” he said. Only that, but she knew then that he wasn’t a figment of her desperate imagination. He had come back to save her. He had come back.
She lifted her hand to touch his anxious face, smooth the deeply etched lines that bracketed his mouth and furrowed his brow. “I’m all right,” she whispered. “Gary—”
“Can you walk? Can you get to safety?”
Jesse didn’t have to guess what he intended. She strained to look past him, at Gary who was on his knees on the dirt, dangerously close to the burning cabin. His gun was just out of reach, as if he’d fallen. Or been knocked to the ground.
Even as she stared, Gary looked up, and his eyes focused directly on David.
Gary saw him.
“No,” Jesse said, struggling to rise. “David—”
But Gary had scrambled sideways for his gun, and there was no more point in protesting. David was already on his feet and charging Gary with deadly purpose.
David had expected the hatred to come back.
When his bargain had been accepted and he’d found himself at the resort, he’d felt only the reckless urgency of his mission. When he’d first knocked Gary out of the way, he hadn’t had time to think of anything but savin
g the woman he loved. His heart still drummed from the closeness of that rescue, and he’d believed that finding her so near death was enough to justify any action he took against Gary, even the most lethal.
Hatred and vengeance would make his course clear, the decision easy. He’d tried to stop Gary before, and lost his resolve. This was his last chance. His only chance.
At the inn Gary hadn’t been able to see or recognize the nature of his tormentor. But Gary saw David now, and they were on equal ground at last, acting out the final meeting David had been denied in that other life. It should have been a moment of triumph.
But as David raced across the clearing and met his enemy’s terrified gaze, he knew that everything was different.
He skidded to a halt in front of Gary as if an invisible hand had cut the smoky air between them, and realization seized his bartered soul.
What he’d expected to find within himself wasn’t there. He felt no bitterness, no need for vengeance. The face staring at him in mingled panic and defiance wasn’t Gary’s. David could see beneath the mask, layer upon layer, and what he discovered he could no longer hate.
Where rage should have been was sorrow; pity instead of contempt. And the most profound insight David had ever experienced except in his love for Jesse.
Jesse’s love had lifted the veil from his sight. He had looked into the very depths of his own flawed soul, and he could not pass judgment on the man who’d been his brother. The failure, the defect, the transgression was his own.
Slow acceptance left him defenseless as Gary leveled his pistol at David’s chest. He glanced down at the weapon’s dull muzzle and raised his eyes to Gary’s.
There was only one way to prevent the inevitable tragedy from recurring. Only one hope.
“Avery,” he said. “I know you can hear me.”
The pistol twitched in Gary’s grip. He stared at David, mouth working. “You,” he said. “You aren’t real.”
“You know me,” David said. “You remember.”
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