Flashbyte (Byte Series - Ellie Conway Book 4)

by Cat Connor

  “Yay, me and the mystery packages.”

  “You are one popular chick.”

  “Tell him we’ll be in Washington late tomorrow. Can he handle it until then?”

  “He can.”

  Lee left.

  Kurt smiled. “You sounded like you again.”

  I shook my head. “Anything with Sam and Lee feels okay. Like I know where I am with them. History, it’s … safe.”

  Kurt nodded. “And me?”

  My eyes met his and a blast of honesty followed. “I remember every time our paths crossed. There is this overriding mystification surrounding you and me. We’re a team, we work well together, and we mesh. I trust you with my life and the lives of the rest of my team. But there is something else happening and I don’t know if it’s real.”

  His eyes never left mine. “You mean this?” He pointed between us.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Is it?”

  “It’s always been there.”

  “Did we ever …?”

  “Act on it?”

  I nodded.

  “No. Been friends, been colleagues. Relied on each other, taken care of each other, and no, we’ve never acted on it.”

  “Why?”

  “You had Mac, and then you married him. After his death, you shut down. You needed friends, not someone hitting on you. Then I joined your team and you met Rowan.”

  “You dated though?”

  It occurred to me that if I hadn’t forgotten some significant things this may never have been aired, or maybe I knew this and had forgotten. The jury was out as to whether that was good or bad. So far it didn’t feel like I was destroying team relationships.

  “I dated briefly over the last few years. Don’t think women liked the competition, not just with my job. One look at you and they spiraled into insecurity.”

  “Because of me?” It seemed ridiculous. Me? I’m a freaking wreck.

  “Because they couldn’t compete with you. If we’re being totally honest here …?”

  “We are.”

  “You’re a threat. I have a hard time concentrating on anyone else when you are around. Women pick up on that sort of thing.”

  I knew I was smiling. It was funny. Me. I was a threat. How the hell does that work? Laughter bubbled up.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Words choked me as laughter became hysteria. I couldn’t breathe. My ribs hurt. Nothing would stop the crazy laughter. Everything was funny. Strong hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me forward. Arms wrapped around me. Laughter dissolved into tears. At first they were tears from too much laughing but they became gut-wrenching sobs. I was all over the place and nothing made much sense.

  Kurt held me. I knew it was him. I wanted it to be him. My life flashed before my eyes. How did I miss this? Kurt spoke but it wasn’t to me. Lee must’ve come to see what was going on. Kurt’s shoulder was saturated with tears.

  Time stood still.

  Strangled sobs replaced all-out bawling and I started to feel better.

  “Hey, okay?” Kurt whispered, holding me close.

  “Yeah.” Everything paused while those dreaded words formed. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For this ... for the bruises on your face ... for being a major pain in the ass ... for your wet shirt.”

  I took a breath. Damn it hurt.

  “I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through.”

  “Ellie,” his breath felt hot in my ear, “I could’ve walked away anytime. My choice was to stay.” He pulled tissues from a box and crammed them into my hand. I wiped my dripping nose. So attractive.

  “Why didn’t you?” As I said it I realized it was one of those questions you should never ask unless you were ready for the answer. I wasn’t ready for anything, except a straitjacket.

  “This is where I belong.”

  “Some kind of evil penance for being bad in a former life?” Maybe he was into self-flagellation. He’d swapped the whip for life near me.

  “Maybe.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He held me at arm’s length and smiled at me. “You want to have that shower?”

  I nodded. My head hurt, my ribs ached, but on the plus side my heart felt lighter. I needed help in the shower, or at least with my clothes.

  “I don’t think I can …”

  “It’s okay. I’m here.”

  And that made it all right. God, my life was a mess. Pear-shaped didn’t quite cover it now.

  A quote popped into my head.

  The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937), The Call of Cthulhu.

  All I needed now was a song. What would top this off perfectly? Matchbox Twenty exploded from within. ‘Unwell’. I couldn’t guarantee the sentiment was true. I may very well be crazy.

  Okay, I don’t make friends with the shadows on the wall, but a ghost in the mirror, or a ghost in a Messenger window, and I’m all over it.

  Twenty-Six

  Heaven Can Wait

  Kurt drove his car. Lee followed us in his. Our black SUV convoy headed out of Lexington. I watched the scenery, enjoying a sense of the familiar the closer we got to Mauryville.

  I asked Kurt to stop outside the bookstore on Main Street. Lee pulled in behind us. I stepped out of the car and stood in front of the store. Suddenly I was bombarded by images. A woman with wild blonde hair smiling and talking, hands animated. My best friend Holly. I saw her serving a customer, then pouring coffee for a uniformed police officer.

  I opened the door and an old-fashioned bell jangled. Standing in the store the world flickered. Time slipped backward and stopped.

  Eyes bored through the glass and into my back as I grinned at Holly who stood behind the polished wooden counter.

  “All day?” I asked, indicating the man outside.

  “Yes. The last five hours.”

  That did make it all day, so far.

  “No Kevin?”

  “No.”

  “What about the other fine, brave officers who protect and serve?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Cops crawl all over this store grabbing free coffee and eating cookies every day … but today ...”

  I smiled. We didn’t have the biggest police presence. Kevin plus six full-time officers and two part-timers made up the entire Mauryville police department with backup provided by the state police out of Lexington.

  “Typical. Where are they all?”

  “There was some problem out at Parker’s Apiary – so I think they all went.”

  The lure of free honey perhaps, or it was a slow morning and no one wanted to sit on a speed trap.

  “Staties?”

  She shook her head furiously. “They’ll think I’m the crazy book lady, I don’t want state police coming out to a ‘some guy parked in front of my store’ call.”

  That was something I could understand.

  I took my badge from my jacket pocket and clipped it to my belt, then adjusted my jacket to reveal a mere hint of the Glock on my hip.

  “Okay. I’ll go have a word.”

  She smiled. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

  I looked over my shoulder at her as I walked to the door. “You do know this is kinda overkill, right? And Kevin may even be pissed about me interfering in his town.”

  We tossed our heads back and snorted with laughter.

  Lee touched my shoulder.

  “What’s happening?” he asked. “What can you see?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I remember being here, maybe five years ago. Holly owned the store. Someone was parked outside, creeping her out. So she called me.” I didn’t know if Lee knew Holly. “Do you know Holly?”

  “Yes.”

  I turned and looked out the window. “I know when it was. I was on my way home from Richmond. We’d been working on a serial rapist case, and I’d spent a day with mom and dad.”
/>   Another episode of the residual memory swallowed me.

  The bell above the door jangled as I let myself out. The man watched me approach him. I rapped on the window and indicated he should wind it down.

  “Good morning, sir. Can I help you with anything?” I leaned in and scanned the interior of the car then took a sneaky deep breath. Just in case he’d been smoking dope or something.

  I smelled something but it wasn’t dope; it was failure in his personal hygiene. He was overweight, smelly, and the experience was extremely unpleasant.

  His mouth turned up at the edges, more a sneer than a smile.

  “No. I am resting.”

  “Hard day, sir?”

  “Long drive.”

  “And your name is?

  His eyes traveled slowly down my body lingering where they shouldn’t and stopping abruptly at my belt. I felt violated. He oozed creep.

  “I have done nothing to interest a special agent.”

  So he could read, or he at least recognized the shield.

  “How about I decide that? Your name, sir?”

  I noticed the beads of sweat building on his forehead. The weather was mild but not warm enough to cause perspiration like that. Maybe there was an underlying medical condition or he was nervous.

  “You may hand over your license and registration.”

  His hand fingered the key in the ignition.

  “Time for me to move on,” he said with a hint of confidence.

  I knew I was in the store with Kurt and Lee, that I wasn’t in my own past. What I could not understand was how I could smell the horrid troll outside Holly’s book store when he was a memory.

  “What can you see?” Kurt asked.

  “Me, well, not me, because I am me. But I’m talking to someone outside the store.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” The truth. I am okay. The man outside the store is the past, it’s already happened. It doesn’t matter what he does, I’ve already survived it.

  I let the scene envelop me.

  “Take the key out of the ignition and step out of the the car.” I swung his door open. “Now.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” His tone was borderline smarmy, but his eyes portrayed an aversion to authority. Maybe he had trouble with women.

  “Out,” I replied, reaching in and removing his keys. “And then you can give me the relevant paper work, can’t you?”

  He struggled to get his backside off the seat. I bit my lip in an effort to stop a growing smirk. Anyone who can’t get in and out of a car, has no business driving it. The leather squeaked under sufferance as he pried his large denim-clad ass from the seat. After about two minutes of huffing and puffing he stood on the sidewalk.

  Standing in his shabby clothing, he was an unattractive short man. His stomach protruded well past his belt and cast a shadow over his filthy, shoeless feet. He was a good four inches shorter than me and proceeded to puff himself up – in an attempt to look impressive?

  I looked at the car, a 2006 red Corvette bearing Virginia tags.

  Mid-life crisis or stolen?

  I pulled my notebook from my back pocket and wrote down the tag number and a description of the car.

  “License?”

  He reached a fat-fingered hand around his boundless hip.

  “Be very careful,” I cautioned.

  The hand came up empty. He shrugged. “My wallet must have fallen out in the car.”

  I considered it was likely after witnessing the effort involved in hoisting his bulky frame out of the seat. And I might look, but not yet. And not with his piggy, washed-out blue eyes looking me up and down. I felt dirty and sick.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Robert Saville,” he articulated with slow precision.

  He said it as though it should mean something, but it didn’t ring any bells for me. I wrote it down.

  “Date of birth?”

  “September twenty-ninth, nineteen hundred and fifty-five.”

  So, he said everything with deliberation, like it was important. It was a weird way to say the date.

  “And you are in Mauryville for what reason?”

  He shuffled his hideous feet, inching closer to me. A frightening grin spread across his face revealing several missing teeth. Stale tobacco mingled with his offensive body odor and made me feel nauseous. My eyes flicked to the store window and met Holly’s horrified stare.

  Now I could really see why Holly was antsy about his continued presence outside her store.

  “I didn’t know a person had to have a reason to visit this delightful town.”

  Yeah, but we’re particular about what lurks on our pristine streets. Bare-footed, toothless, sleazy trolls are not welcome.

  I leaned my head on the store window. Proving I was in the store and not in the past. A moment of reality was a welcome relief.

  “How you doing?” Kurt said.

  “Doing all right,” I replied. “How you doing?” Everyone’s got their cross to bear, having one foot in the past, and not being able to remember everything about my present, is mine. But this revisiting of the past must have a purpose.

  “I’d be a liar if I said this situation wasn’t a concern.”

  A smile crossed my lips. “I want you to promise me something.”

  His eyes narrowed as he glanced at me then back to the road. “What?”

  “Promise first.”

  “I promise,” he said. His voice was tight in his throat.

  “If at any point you lose me again … if I go down longer than my brain can survive intact ... do not resuscitate me.”

  Kurt slammed me against the wall next to the window, his arm across my throat. His eyes darkened. If looks could kill, I’d be dead.

  He hit his head on the wall a few times then looked at me again.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  I shrugged. “According to who?”

  “Okay, fair comment. But, the Ellie I know, the woman who fought so hard to get where she is today. is not a quitter. She doesn’t quit anything.”

  “I quit smoking.”

  His head hit the wall again. I fought to keep my smile inside.

  “If anything happens to you, I am disregarding that promise. Just so you know.” He checked out the window then let me go.

  Within minutes I was back in the past and very much alive.

  “And why are you in our town?” I asked, hooking pleasant into my voice and hoping it stuck.

  “I’m passing through and stopped to rest.”

  “Passing through to where? What is it way out here that interests you, Mr. Saville?”

  Color rose in his cheeks. His mouth opened and closed. His fingers fumbled near his shirt pocket. Luckily for him, I could see the pack of cigarettes.

  He pulled the pack from his pocket and placed a cigarette in his mouth. The pack went back into his pocket and he gave me an expectant look.

  I wasn’t about to light his smoke for him.

  “Where was it again, that you were going?”

  He removed the cigarette and began patting his pockets.

  “Just passing through.”

  “To where?” I found my patience gone.

  “I was looking for highway sixty-four.”

  “Guess you missed all those signposts announcing the correct exits on your way here then.”

  He continued patting his pockets and now added grunting noises to the experience. He was sounding very much like a rutting pig.

  Nasty.

  I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. “I’d like you to stay where you are,” I told him and then I moved away toward the door of the bookstore. Standing half inside the store doorway gave me some privacy. He was so busy trying to find a lighter he wasn’t even looking my way.

  I called Comms and spouted everything I’d written down at the lucky person manning the desk.

  In under a minute I had confirmation that Saville owned the car. It had bee
n reported as a suspicious vehicle twenty-four hours earlier in Lexington. He was also wanted for questioning regarding an indecent assault in Lexington. There was a report of a handgun in the vehicle.

  “This is a current case?”

  “Yes, Agent.”

  “I have eyes on Saville. Can you send a picture of Saville to my cell phone please?”

  “Sending the photograph now. Do you need assistance, Agent?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. At twenty-one Main Street, Mauryville in Rockbridge County.”

  “We’ll send the nearest state police unit.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hung up. Holly waited for me to speak. I looked at her.

  “Go inside. The car was red-flagged by Comms and he may have a gun. Staties are on the way.”

  A hand touched my arm. I followed the hand to a familiar muscular arm. Lee spoke, “Ellie, you still with us?”

  “Sure. Who was Robert Saville?” I looked into his eyes. “It seems important, who was he?”

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell. I’ll look it up.”

  I watched him climb back into his car and lift his laptop from the passenger seat.

  Kurt moved closer, he followed my gaze out the door but I don’t think he could see the red Corvette parked by Lee’s car.

  A woman’s voice startled me and I looked at the counter, a dark-haired older lady stood by the till. “Can I help you?”

  Not Holly.

  “I-I used to live out here. My friend owned this store.”

  “I see. I’ve only been here a year. A caretaker of sorts. I manage the store for Holly Conway; she moved north with her husband.”

  I looked at Kurt and whispered, “Conway?”

  “Holly married your brother.”

  “Okay, got it.” I had no fuc’n clue. I thought the memory of Holly was because she was my friend, I had no idea it had anything to do with Aidan. How come I could remember Aidan and not Holly? Damn you, Will Smith. And your flashy thing.

  “Aidan?”

  “Unless you have another brother.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good answer. You want to go outside?” Kurt suggested.

  I nodded.

  Lee called me over to his car.

  “Holly made a complaint about him. You called state police in for backup. Saville was implicated in the disappearance of his twelve-year-old daughter. The daughter was Holly’s best friend. The child went missing from Richmond and he turned up in front of Holly’s store, fourteen years later.”