The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series

by Cole, LaDonna

  Tara shifted on the log, her face burning and her eyes even hotter as she glared at Trip. He glanced at Corey and saw the agony of betrayal return to him.

  “We were about to come back when Corey and Tara found us.”

  “They had company,” Tara spat.

  “Hundreds of these jackal things attacked us,” Corey said softly.

  Alarm registered on Pinky’s face and her shoulders stiffened. “Corey, where is Kate?” Sadness rang in her tone. Already knowing the answer, she moved to Corey.

  Trip couldn’t bear for him to have to tell them. “She, she’s gone,” he muttered.

  “Gone?” Dirk crossed his arms over his massive chest.

  “She’s dead,” Trip cracked out.

  Everyone converged on Corey, except Dirk. He walked over to Trip and put his arm on his shoulder. He knew how Trip felt about Kate. He saw them in the tornado jump when she chose Trip.

  When they were together. Happy. Before Corey and Tara came back and things went off kilter.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he murmured.

  Trip nodded.

  “Where did you leave her? Do we need to do anything with, you know, the body?”

  “No, it dragged her into the tar pit,” Trip lamented.

  Dirk shook his head, taking in the sight of his tar-splotched clothes.

  They looked over to the others, the two-century group. They were all so tight, a family. No they were more than a family. They had been a community for 200 years. They had been through sorrow, grief, loss, joy, everything over and over together, through lifetimes. They had seen each other fall in love, have babies, grandbabies, great grandbabies and held each other through the loss of them all. Trip didn’t think there existed a tighter bond on any planet.

  That is probably what drew Trip, Kate, and Dirk together, other than the tornado experience and grief for the kid that they lost on their common jump. They were the others, babes compared to them, separate and apart. Not part of the family. The three of them hung back when they sat around the campfire telling stories of the good ol’ days. Sometimes Kate and Trip would wander off and take long walks to get away from the alienation that they felt.

  Often they found themselves in each other’s arms. They weren’t proud of it, but some unknown force drew them together. Trip didn’t want to fight it. He loved her. She loved him. Yeah, they loved Tara and Corey, too, but Kate did things to Trip that no one else could do. He never felt as strong or as needed as he did when she wrapped around him, tiny, frail, and so easily broken.

  It hit him like a ton of bricks. He would never feel her in his arms again. He staggered. Dirk helped him sit down, and he went to light the campfire with the firewood that the others had gathered.

  They huddled around the light as darkness settled over them. Mel served rations and campfire coffee.

  “What will we do without Kate?” Pinky asked. “She was the team leader.”

  “We still have Corey,” Tara answered and put her hand on Corey’s leg. “He’s a team leader too.”

  “We still have Kate,” Corey said and chucked his coffee dregs into the fire. It sputtered emphasizing his words.

  “What?” Dirk looked up, nonplussed.

  “Corey, I know what I saw.” Trip begged him to stop this nonsense.

  “Trip, I know what I feel.” He pinned Trip with his intense glare.

  “What, Corey, what do you feel?” Pinky leaned toward him.

  “She’s alive, Eunavae. I know it.”

  Pinky gasped. “Are you sure?’

  “Completely and totally sure,” he said.

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go get her.” Donnie and Mel jumped up.

  “Sit down!” Dirk growled. “What are you talking about, Corey? Trip said he saw her dragged into the tar pit.”

  Mel and Donnie did not sit down. They glared at Dirk mutinously.

  “I did. I would go back and pluck my eyes out not to have seen it! But I did. She’s dead. She hung limp, lifeless from his jaws even before he dragged her into that cesspool.” Trip hurled his cup at a tree, and it pinged off into the woods.

  “I know she isn’t dead. I can still hear her.”

  They considered Corey with varied expressions. The old fogies seemed convinced. Dirk and Trip were the only sane ones left.

  “Hear her.” Trip broiled with anger. “HEAR HER!” He erupted from his camp chair. “What the hell, Corey? Are you insane? You aren’t the only one who loved her! We all loved her! I loved her! Why can’t we hear her? I know you don’t want to accept it and if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t either! I’m sorry that you saw us…right before…I’m sorry that you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye…like…but…” Trip choked on his words. Slamming his mouth shut, he stopped. Wrong. It’s just digging deeper into Corey’s pain. He didn’t want that.

  Trip respected Corey, a lot, like a brother. He had this pure heart that Trip couldn’t understand. He never seemed jealous when Kate and Trip would go off together. Trip caught glimpses of his sadness, but he acted like he wanted Kate to explore her feelings. As though he wanted her to get Trip out of her system, so he tolerated her attachment to him. Or, maybe Corey cared more about her safety than his own feelings. Weirdly devoted to her that way, Corey loved without expecting it in return. Trip couldn’t grasp that. Though he had no right, he burned with jealousy every time Kate and Corey touched.

  “She’s gone, Corey.” Trip collapsed back into place, the fight gone out of him.

  “Trip.” Corey scorched Trip with his charisma. “I know you’re grieving. I know you think you saw her die. Your heart is broken right now, but I need you and Dirk to try to listen to me.”

  Donnie squatted down beside the fire and added another log to it. He looked at Trip and Dirk. “We know Corey. We lived with him for one hundred and fifty years. Our spiritual leader and most trusted advisor, he knew things. He proved himself to us over and over.” He leaned toward Dirk. “He is the most accurate team leader I have ever seen.”

  This seemed to get Dirk’s attention. Team Leaders were chosen in the Scriptorium. Each jump team descended into the caverns in the middle of the lake at Heartwork Village and team leaders were chosen to enter first. Historically, they were chosen because of their unique intuition and ability to sense things on the jumps. Kate and Corey had been chosen as team leaders and they had proven to be uncannily accurate in their direction of the jumps.

  “I spent another fifty years with Corey as the Cianti Todura,” Pinky added. “If he says Kate is alive, then I believe him.”

  Trip turned to Dirk. Surely he didn’t buy into this bull crap notion of Corey as this psychic guru. His expression spoke otherwise.

  Trip split the air open with a string of curses that would embarrass a sailor and stormed off into the woods.

  QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TRIP CARSON

  Trip hankered for a fight. Punching someone in the face would feel really good. Anger hadn’t consumed him like this since Kate released him from his self-hatred in his jump. Obviously not gone, here it raised its ugly head again.

  I lost her! I failed again. One more time I had been too late, too weak, too slow, and too inadequate to save the one I loved. First my sister, I hadn’t been able to protect her from my stepdad until too late. Then Kate had been manipulated by that stinkin’ dragon cat, and I almost lost her then. Gregory, I couldn’t hold onto him when he had been snatched away, swallowed up in the tornado. Finally, Kate, the girl I needed, the girl I loved, the girl who opened herself up to me in ways that no one else ever did, I lost her, too.

  “Auuugggggghhhhh!” he bellowed and slammed his fist into the nearest tree. His knuckles shattered, and he welcomed the pain. Anything would be better than this gaping wound in his chest. It didn’t dull the grief, just increased the misery.

  He couldn’t even grieve her properly for fear that he would step on Corey’s toes. “He’s not even grieving her!” Trip shouted.

  “No, Tri
p, I’m not.” Corey stepped into the clearing behind him.

  The bright moon glinted off of his white blond hair, giving a halo effect.

  “Corey, man, don’t mess with me right now.” Trip held out his palm. He wanted to break something, and Corey’s face looked like the perfect target for his anger.

  “Trip.” Corey stepped toward him. “I know you love her. She loves you. I have never stood in the way of that.”

  Trip just stared at him. What could he say? True. All of it. Anger puddled at his feet. Corey had that effect on people. Just so pure hearted, he made it impossible to stay angry at him for long.

  “She told me about the tornado jump. She told me that you convinced Dirk to listen to her because of her position as the team leader.”

  Trip nodded.

  “She was right, wasn’t she?”

  “She was always right,” Trip whispered.

  “I am asking you to think of it this way. If it were me you saw dragged into the tar pit, and Kate insisted that I still lived, would you believe her?”

  “Of course,” Trip sighed. “Yes, I would believe her.”

  “Then I am begging you, believe me. Hang onto hope just a bit longer, Trip. She is alive and we cannot abandon her to those creatures.”

  Trip jerked his head up. Kate still needs me?

  “I need you to help me rescue her. She needs you, Trip.”

  Trip studied him. He seriously believed she still lived. Confidence poured off of the man like stench from a cow patty. Trip couldn’t abandon her to those animals.

  Trip nodded and when Corey shook his hand, he winced. Corey assessed Trip’s swollen knuckles and sighed. He reached up, tore his other sleeve off, and wrapped Trip’s hand tightly. It felt better almost immediately.

  “Thanks,” Trip muttered.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  They trekked back to the camp in silence. Donnie, Mel, and Dirk were head to head discussing plans to rescue Kate. Corey joined the planning session. Trip needed to face another challenge and this one he dreaded above all others. He leaned against a tree and watched Tara as Pinky ministered to her wounds.

  The firelight danced across Tara’s perfectly golden skin and sent Trip’s mind back into the arena when they would slather her in gold dust, drape a thong around her and send her out to fight mostly naked. Of course Trip fought in the same garb, but Tara’s perfect body, spinning around in the arena, barely escaping death and injury, drove the crowd into a frenzy.

  I am an idiot. Even then, in the arena I knew how she felt about me. So blinded by my need to rescue Kate, I refused to let myself feel what I felt for Tara. No man in his right mind could resist her perfection, more evidence that I’m not in my right mind. Here I am doing it again. Drawn into Kate’s neediness over and over, I’ve been unfaithful to the feelings I have for Tara. I cheated on her repeatedly with my best friend’s wife. When did I become such a monster?

  Trip watched the woman of his dreams as she brushed her long golden hair. Her lean muscles rippled in perfection, meticulously cut each one. He had to make things right. For her. For Corey. For Kate.

  “The theory of the multiverse says there are infinite parallel universes containing every possible situation. It makes me happy because I know, somewhere, you love me back.” ~ Unknown

  QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TARA JOHNSON

  Tara ran a brush through her hair like she did every night. She had taken off her jacket and cut her pants legs off into shorts, and Eunavae rubbed some bactericidal ointment into the bite marks on her leg.

  Sensing someone watching her, she focused on the shadows. Trip leaned against a tree at the perimeter of camp, face drawn into forlorn angles. A pain stabbed her heart, temporarily stealing her breath. With shaking hands, she returned to brushing her hair and refused to be drawn into his pity party. I’m not going to let this one pass.

  When Eunavae finished her first aid and moved over to the planning session, Trip strode over to Tara and sat down beside her. She stiffened but didn’t turn away.

  “Can we talk?” he asked.

  Schooling her expression into frozen apathy, she gave a terse nod.

  “I won’t disrespect you with lies or excuses.”

  She raised a brow and studied him. Is he playing me? For the first time ever, she and Trip were on opposite sides of a battle. She hated sizing him up as she would an enemy, but that is where he had placed himself, across enemy lines.

  He gulped. “I’ve been unfaithful. You, you know.”

  She just pierced him with the same unwavering gaze she had given many opponents in the arena and in Jewel City.

  “Not just today. I let myself get distracted by Kate’s needs. I’ve ignored yours.” He slumped his shoulders, seemingly defeated before the fight even started. “I don’t deserve you.”

  “No, you don’t.” Her heart wrenched out of place. She straightened her spine and squeezed the hair brush so tightly she heard it snap.

  “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” His voice cracked out of him like a squeaky screen door. Tara kept her eyes glued to his, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how deeply his apology affected her. Regret scored his face. Her heart broke all over again, but she squeezed her fingers together, refusing them permission to reach out in forgiveness.

  She sighed. Why did she fight herself? She couldn’t deny her feelings, but she could maintain her dignity.

  “Trip, I do forgive you. I know how it is with you and Kate. You just can’t seem to help yourself around her.” She flipped a strand of hair over her shoulders, and felt his scrutiny follow her movements. Hope lifted his brows and he stared at her lips. She wavered, drawing a hitched breath. Best to rip this bandage off now.

  “You need to know something, though.”

  Now he flinched at the steel in her resolve.

  “I am not Corey. I don’t have his patience, and I will not be your consolation prize. Whatever we had, is over.”

  Trip’s mouth fell open. Shocked as though she had run him through with her spear, he huffed.

  “We will go back to being battle partners. Only.”

  “Tara, I love you.”

  “No you don’t,” she snapped and leaned away from him. “You have never loved me. You took me as your girlfriend only because Kate chose Corey.” She huffed an incredulous laugh, and hated the sound of it. “I see that so clearly now. Blind, so blind by my feelings for you before, even though I suspected you and Kate were—” Her voice deepened as she repressed tears. Clamping her lips together, she turned her face so he couldn’t see.

  “Tara,” Trip reached for her but she jerked away.

  “When I saw you wrapped around each other today, I knew you had never gotten over her.” Her brow crumpled. “The insane thing is that I knew it before. I have watched you make a fool of yourself over her. I suspected something more existed between you. Today when I saw how you kissed her, how you looked at her, it just confirmed what I had known all along.”

  Her whole body shuddered. Losing it, she needed to get away.

  “Now, whether she is dead or alive, I would hate myself if I ever let you touch me again.” She slowly lifted her doleful eyes to his. “I won’t go there. Ever.”

  She stood and hobbled to the tent without turning back.

  QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TRIP CARSON

  Her words landed like a kick in the groin. Trip had never seen Tara so vulnerable before. He hated himself for being the one to break her indomitable spirit.

  Sitting in the moonlight, crushed and grief stricken, he cursed himself. “I lost her,” he whispered, unsure which girl he spoke about.

  The planning session continued late into the night and the Keepers finally drifted off to sleep curled around the fire. When morning broke, Trip stretched and sat up on his pallet. The girls, already dressed, prepared breakfast. The smell of camp coffee and bacon nudged everyone awake. Corey sat against a tree at the edge of camp staring straight ahead, deep
in thought.

  Dirk and Donnie stirred, stretched, and shuffled to the breakfast area. Donnie settled Mel into her camp chair with a cup of coffee and took over her job of slicing pineapple.

  The jumps had vastly improved since they started bringing supplies along. They had tents for shelter, pots and pans for cooking, matches, weapons, and even toiletries. If Dirk could have found a way to pack a shower in a knapsack, they would have that too. An amazing jump commander with over six years of jump experiences, Dirk led well. Donnie and Mel became jump consultants and were happy to relinquish the commander title to Dirk.

  Dirk had never lost a jumper until Gregory in the tornado city, and the powers that be didn’t even count that as a loss since they had no record of a Gregory Matthews in the system. Dirk counted it, though. Kate and Trip counted it. Gregory counted to them.

  The Keepers packed up the supplies and left the campsite as though no one had been there, something Tara insisted on at each jump. Retracing their steps back to the tar pit, Trip ran the prior day over in his mind, wondering if he could have done anything differently. When he pivoted right instead of left? When he protected Tara instead of guarding Kate? When he held Corey back to throw the spear? If he had changed any of those decisions, would it have brought about a different outcome for Kate? He pounded himself, thoroughly, over every possible mistake.

  “This is it.” He pointed to the marks on the ground where Kate’s body had been dragged in and the splotches beside it where he dragged himself out.

  Donnie knelt down next to the ridge. “Were these here yesterday?” He pointed in the dirt at several paw prints headed to the edge of the tar pit.

  “I’m not sure.” Trip looked curiously at the paw prints and wondered if he had missed something. Pinky and Mel traced back along the ridge wall while Dirk and Corey produced a virtual science lab and began analyzing the tar. They’re wasting their time. Hey, if it makes Corey feel better and somehow come to terms with the loss of Kate, then go for it.