“I’ve had suspicions for a very long time. But I’m not in a position to act on them.”
“Two questions.” I pitched my voice conversationally as shoppers idled past, stowing their packages and heading toward the parking lots. “When did you first suspect and why aren’t you in a position?”
“I suspected after Melissa Hauser and Ashley Wilson. But I wasn’t sure until Tara Zimmerman.”
I knew Tara Zimmerman was victim number five. While heartburn and anger slowly simmered their way up from my belly, I latched down any reaction. Listen first, Chance. Listen first, react later.
“I’ve worked for Project Aegis since the beginning. Some of the information is deemed classified. When I suspected the targets, I tried to monitor the situation, but I wasn’t that successful. Eventually, I was assigned to the case, specifically.”
“When was that?”
“After your attack.”
“That was nearly two years later!” Un-freaking-believable!
“You broke the pattern. Masters wanted answers.”
I chewed on the inside of my lower lip. I had no way of knowing whether he told the truth or if this was all some giant set up.
“You have no idea whether to believe me or not.” Victor sighed and we both fell silent as a woman juggling two children and a stroller made her way past us. I glanced at the ground and studied his shoes while he watched the family amble away at an agonizingly slow pace. “I don’t know what to say to reassure you.”
“Go talk to Billy Jamison.” I looked back up and met his gaze. “Give him the same information you gave me.”
“I can’t. It’s on a need to know.”
“He’s the primary in charge of the investigation. He needs to know.”
“Of the standard investigation, yes. I’m the primary in charge of Aegis’ investigation.” His tone indicated he wasn’t going to budge on this. “Chance, there’s a reason I gave you that folder.”
I stared at him, waiting for the answer and not trusting myself to speak. The absurdity of standing in the middle of a strip mall discussing a private case with an agent of a secret organization conducting a clandestine investigation bugged me. I didn’t know whether to laugh, to cry or to scream. The trouble was I had this feeling if I opened my mouth, I’d probably say a few things I’d regret.
He saved me from asking by holding up a placating hand. He didn’t touch me though. Smart man.
“Five years ago, I woke up from a dream so powerful and so vivid I couldn’t shake it. You were in that dream. You and Randall Oakes. At first, I thought it was just a nightmare. I’d been organizing some of my files for a move and Oakes’ file was one of them. But over the next several days, the dream repeated itself whether I was awake or asleep. That’s when I put all the information together and I wrote the letter.”
I stared at him, confused and disbelieving. “Why didn’t you try to contact me?”
“Five years ago, Randall Oakes was dead.” Victor let out another long breath. “And you were living your life. What good would it have done?”
“You’re a precog. Maybe the dream was telling you Oakes wasn’t dead.”
“I’m a precog, but that doesn’t mean I have absolute clairvoyance that allows me to witness the future. I knew what I needed to know. If Randall Oakes showed up again, I would need you. I put that information together for just such an occasion. I didn’t honestly think it was going to happen.”
“What the hell do you need me for?”
“I don’t know.”
Oh, that was a big help. I unhooked my thumbs and ran my hands over my face. I wish this all was some bad dream and I could just wake up and find my life wasn’t some interrupted horror story waiting to start up again, about to unfold to its grisly end.
“I’m sorry, Chance…” He took a step toward me but halted when I backed away immediately and put a hand up.
“Keep your distance. I’m still not sure what the hell is going on and whether I believe this whole line of mumbo jumbo you just fed me.” At some distant point in the future, the fact I just echoed Jack so clearly would probably amuse me. Currently, I drowned in a confusing morass of fury, fear and frustration.
“I’m sorry.” As he apologized again, for a moment, I glimpsed regret paining his features, but that too was quickly gone. “I just want to help.”
“You want to help? You go see Billy Jamison and you tell him the truth.”
“Are you going to tell them?” He challenged me, and that was the crux of it. I didn’t know the answer to the question, so rather than coming up with some lame response, I turned my back and walked away. I didn’t know what I expected him to do when I did that. A part of me half feared hearing running feet coming up behind me, or perhaps the painful tackle of a larger body slamming into mine. I imagined the concrete impacting with my face and leaving some of my flesh behind.
None of that occurred, and I didn’t feel anyone close to me through the mild vibrations of the Earth below. I didn’t stop to look back until I reached my car in the parking lot. When I did, there was no sign of him. I stood there for a long moment staring into the darkness as night settled itself fully and the lights from the shops dimmed.
I slid into the car and shut the door, locking it out of habit. Starting the engine, I listened to the distant sound of rolling thunder echo across the sky and turned up the CD player so Sarah McLachlan could sing away my blues.
I knew I wasn’t driving home when I pulled out of the parking lot, and as soon as I was on the Greenway, I knew where I headed. I forced my mind to go blank and concentrated on the music.
Seventeen
The Bug zipped along the Greenway at a respectable seventy miles an hour. The speed limit read sixty-five, but like most people in the county, I just chucked it up to seventy and kept on going. Concentrating on driving let my mind wander away from what was truly plaguing it, which in this case was probably for the best. I’ve done some lame-brained things in my time, but this would probably be the lamest.
Jack was going to kill me, and he’d be perfectly within his rights. I should just get off at the next exit and swing back around to head home. Or call him…
The plaintive thought held appeal, but I couldn’t.
My neck tightened, threatening a tension headache, and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth. I needed to relax and I needed to stop working myself up over this. It’d been eight years. What happened then was not going to happen tonight. And I'm a hell of a lot stronger than I was then…
I’d changed, thanks Randall Oakes for that. I took a deep breath and flipped from the CD to a radio station. The local DJ chatted. His soothing voice poured like cool water over my fraying nerves. The drive to Georgetown was about fifty minutes, give or take.
“I can do this,” I chanted out loud, and my voice sounded unnaturally loud in the confines of the car. “I can do this.”
By the time I arrived at the Georgetown campus, my shirt stuck to my back with perspiration. Sweat ran in slow rivulets down the back of my neck. I hesitated at the parking lot entrance. My hands gripped the steering wheel, and I told myself I could just turn the car around. It would take an hour, but I could just go home. A glass of wine and everything would be far better.
Run…
No, I had to do this. I had to drive into that parking lot and walk toward that building.
I had to.
I can do this.
The parking lot was exactly the way I remembered it. Cars parked sparsely here and there. Students were probably still here for late classes, studying or off partying—having left their vehicles behind for the evening. Nothing seemed terribly unusual. I parked in a free spot. Strategically placed lights illuminated the darkened lot, the pools of yellow waxing poetic in the sea of darkness.
I turned the key, shutting off the ignition, and pulled it free. Closing my eyes, I forced my breathing to slow and my heart to calm down. Rolling the keys from my right hand to my left, I reached over to the
glove box and popped it open. Tucked beneath the registration paperwork and old mail was a thirty-eight caliber pistol. My fingers slipped around the grip and pulled it out slowly. It felt awkward in my hand, and I looked at the piece of deadly metal
I might be better off just leaving it in the car. I was spooking at the shadows of ghosts at the moment. I’m really not an indecisive person, but this paralyzing sense of fear welling up every time I thought about Georgetown and that night refused to go away.
It always refused to go away, and until I faced it, it never would.
I slid the .38 out and tucked it into the waistband of my pants. It was damned uncomfortable there, and I had this awful feeling like I was going to end up shooting myself rather than anyone else. I don’t care how sexy it looks in the movies. There’s nothing sexy about a gun tucked into your pants pointed somewhere in the vicinity of your unmentionables.
Before fear sucked me in again, I wrenched open the car door and stepped out into the humid night air. The sky lit up with a brief but dazzling display of lightening. The storm was imminent. The sudden drop in the barometric pressure might account for the intensity of my nerves. Oddly, that was a soothing thought.
“Chance?” Jack said my name quizzically.
I yelped and nearly fell on my ass. I have to knock off the tunnel vision. Tiredness isn’t an excuse for sloppy observation. Slamming the door, I whirled around. He stood five paces away. His face hidden in the shadow, and another flash of lightning illuminated the anger in his expression and regret blossomed inside of me like a roman candle igniting.
“You scared the crap out of me.” I panted, pressing a hand over my heart in an attempt to keep it from frantically beating its way out of my chest.
“Good,” Jack snarled as he cleared the three strides between us easily. He dropped his hand to my waistband and yanked out the pistol. “And do you have a license for this?”
“Yes.” A hundred pithy remarks died a swift death under his glare, and I felt like a child caught in a terrible lie. “I’m licensed to carry in Virginia.”
“You’re. Not. In.Virginia.” It was amazing how clearly the words came out from between his harshly clenched teeth, and I tried to will up a small smile.
“Well…no. But I wasn’t planning on shooting anyone, either.” Okay, that was lame.
Jack pressed a hand to the side of the car. Whiteness pulled around his knuckles, and it didn’t take a psychic to tell there was a definite air of hostility rolling off him. “I know,” he began slowly, his jaw still clenched. “I’m going to regret asking this. But what the hell are you doing driving around in the middle of the night?”
“You were following me, weren’t you?” When he didn’t respond to my defiance and the lightning flashed to illuminate the tight lines at the corners of his mouth, I sighed and leaned back against my car. “Of course, you were following me. I just came to see if I could figure out a few things.”
“Alone?”
“It was spontaneous.”
“And the trip to the mall?”
I hoped he didn't know about that. I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell him or even if I should tell him. There was no reason in the world to keep trotting out all these small facts about me he didn’t like, but then I wasn’t exactly being fair to Jack.
“Chance?”
“The trip to the mall was sorta spontaneous.”
“Sorta?” Sarcasm and skepticism collided in his tone.
“I went to meet Callanport.”
Jack went deathly still, and I stole a look at his stunned—and yes I'll admit it, hurt—expression as the lightning pierced the sky, followed quickly by an explosion of thunder. Under any other circumstances, my train of thought might have made me laugh, but this was definitely not the time. Jack’s hand clenched and he took a half a step away then slammed his fist down on the roof of the car. Definitely not the time.
I winced in sympathy for my car.
“Jack…”
He held up a finger to stifle any further discussion, unloaded the thirty-eight, and put it in his pocket. I folded my arms and watched him warily. A far more troubling sensation replaced my earlier fear.
Guilt.
“Let’s go.” The thunder began to roll across the sky, lightning flashes punctuating the sound for emphasis.
“Where?”
“To wherever the hell you were going when you came out here in the first place.”
“I was just…well—I was just going to retrace…” My hands fluttered about like drunk birds as I stuttered. I wanted Jack to yell at me, but the silent fume on his face told me he wasn’t interested a whole hell of a lot in what I wanted.
“I got that, let’s go.” He pulled the keys out of my numb fingers, and the Bug beeped as he secured the locks. He put one hand on my elbow and steered me firmly toward the row of buildings at the end of the lot.
“Jack?”
“Not now, Chance.”
“I’m…”
His fingers bit into my arm and I sighed inside. “I said, not now.”
Eighteen
A fat drop of rain splattered against my face as we walked through the parking lot. Jack’s fingers were still digging into my arm, but I didn’t dare say anything to him about it. He was furious with me, and if I were an adult about it, he was perfectly within his rights to be so angry. I was supposed to be in his care and his protection, and I’d agreed to that.
All right, so I agreed reluctantly, but I still agreed. I knew I should have told him what I was doing, but I was too busy making excuses for not telling him. His steps slowed as we reached the sidewalk. Directly in front of us stood the building that housed the class I’d attended the night of the attack. Wow, that was fast.
I stared at it, startled, my own steps slowing to a halt. More rain splashed against my upturned face. The building seemed smaller for some reason. I’m sure the building was the same, and if any alterations had been made to it, they were probably made to increase the structure, not decrease it. Yet, it still appeared smaller than I remembered it.
As we stood silently regarding this edifice of education, Jack’s fingers fell away from my arm. I rubbed at the spot where they’d been, still feeling the burning imprint of his grip.
He looked at me, his expression inscrutable. The storm was a perfect metaphor for his barely constrained emotion. The thunder rolled in nearly continuous sound now and was interspersed with bright flashes and smaller forks of lightening. The storm, wherever it blew in from, held the promise of being a doozy.
The rain spatters gained speed. I forced my gaze away from the sky and returned it to the building. The Earth around me was sluggish, but the nearly instantaneous grip it seized me with when I sent out a questing tendril seemed to yank me off my feet.
~ * ~
I was walking across the parking lot and suddenly Oakes was just there, in front of me. I nearly plowed right into him.
“Hello, Chance.”
My heart stopped. He knew my name. He’d said my name.
He knew me.
The look in Oakes’ eyes was unnerving. They were dead. There was nothing in there. No soul. No feeling. He moved with menace and projected fear ahead of him.
Oh, my God. Fear. Run. I had to get away.
The rain poured over me as I ran, but it wasn’t raining the night of the attack. I heard him coming and I ran harder, I had to get away.
Run.
Flee.
Death.
Oakes hit me. I went down. My head bounced off the pavement and it hurt, everything hurt. He yanked me upward.
No…not again…
~ * ~
“Chance! Dammit!” Jack’s face swam into view. He shook me violently. We were in the middle of the parking lot, the rain pounding around us fiercely. My hair clung to my face and my clothes were soaked.
My eyes dropped, to where hot blood must be spilling out of me, but it was only rain soaking my shirt.
“Baby, you there?”
Jack’s voice was gentler now, and he put his hands to my chin, urging me to look upward. I saw his eyes searching mine, and my tears started falling before I could stop them.
“He knew my name,” I choked out. “He knew my name.”
Jack said nothing, just pulled me close and held me tightly as the sobs started shaking me. I was hot. I was cold. I was terrified. I clung to Jack.
“He knew my name, Jack.” I sobbed brokenly. My chest hurt with every breath I took, and I was certain if I looked below my shirt those old, scars would be ablaze, freshly reopened wounds. “He knew me. I was his target. He wanted me dead.”
“Shhh.” Jack rocked me back and forth. His hand brushed over my hair. “Shhh. Take a deep breath, calm down. I want to get you out of this rain.” The thunder nearly drowned out his voice, and I held onto him even tighter.
My mind kept replaying the episode. I was too close the epicenter. I was bonded in blood to this place. It knew me, and it remembered more vividly than even I did what had happened here eight years before.
A blinding light filled my eyes and I winced away from it.
“Agent Harker?”
“It’s all right, guys,” Jack declared reassuringly. “I’ve got her. Get her car and follow us back, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on, baby.” Jack coaxed me to stand, and I think I managed to move more because he lifted me than because my legs were cooperating. As we walked back across the rain-drenched pavement, I started to get my sobs under control. I climbed obediently into the passenger side of the Beamer and shivered uncontrollably as Jack seemed to take forever before climbing into the driver’s side.
“You’re in shock, Chance.” He stretched behind him to pull a blanket from the backseat. “Put this over you, come on. Just take deep breaths and lean your head back.” A blast of hot air hit my icy skin.
I grasped the blanket feebly and did what Jack told me to do, wrapping it over my wet, cold frame.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in a voice I barely recognized.
Earth Witches Aren't Easy Page 14