I still couldn’t see Victor. He expected this move. All of it or just the part where the she-bitch followed us? How did it get out of control this fast? Okay Callanport, open your mouth and deal with this. I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off Masters.
Not yet.
Then the unthinkable happened, and despite my proximity, it sounded like a million miles away. A gun roared, followed quickly by another and another. I hit the ground as two bodies collided with mine and slammed me into the Earth.
The breath escaped my body with a violent whoosh. I found myself crushed under the weight of two men struggling with a gun between them. A misplaced elbow slammed into the side of my head and black spots danced merrily in my vision. I started kicking and heard a few rewarding oofs as I fought my way free of the fray. The gun in question suddenly skittered across the Earth, and as I followed its progress, I saw a foot come down on top of it, bringing its momentum to a full halt.
Twenty Five
I’ve never thought of myself as an action movie star. I certainly never imagined myself in an action movie sequence, but watching that gun spin across the ground took on a Matrix-like special effect. I watched it travel past, frame-by-frame. First, the foot came down atop the gun, halting the spinning motion. Next, my gaze traveled from the foot to the leg attached to it.
I followed the line of the body until I reached the face that glared down at me. I should have known. He was there, always lurking in her eyes, staring at me. Oakes’ empty, dead eyes kicked me into motion. I rolled hard to the left and kept rolling until the corn closed around me. Bullets peppered after me. I was on my feet in seconds.
Fight grappled with flight. Desperation for escape won. Running, legs pumping, bitter adrenaline surging into my mouth.
Footsteps crashed through the corn behind me. A bullet whizzed past, too close for comfort. My eyes closed and I called to the Earth. She answered my need. My mind meshed with the ground below. I kept an arm up, blocking the leaves from my face. The faster I ran, the more likely I would get cut.
The sense of me doubled. I didn’t focus on that image. However, the dangerous presence at my back gained on me. I veered left and slid down a small embankment trusting Jaime's shared knowledge. The area was rife with rain-fed runs. Icy water sloshed against my jeans, and the Earth beckoned me across the shallower parts.
Roots found their way into my hands, and I used them to haul myself up the far side. Another bullet fired, and I felt the Earth recoil as it struck a tree. My breath hissed faster, burning in my lungs.
Hide. I needed to hide.
The land responded to my need, and my arms sank into the mud around the roots. The vines began to grow. They twined around my body like a lover’s embrace. Like Mom kissing it better, the Earth’s protective embrace calmed my raw fear. The depression sank further and the vines grew thicker. I kept my eyes closed and controlled my breathing, keeping it shallow and light. The vines thickened, and I felt the leaves sprout forth, creating a dense shield.
Vines crept out to hinder my pursuer's progress, wrapping around his legs and dragging him down. I heard him swearing as he found the creek I’d splashed through. The birds went silent and the invectives grew fierce.
“I know you’re out there, Chance,” Randall Oakes called. “Do you hear me?”
Breathe, I ordered. Breathe. The Earth tightened Her grasp around me, cradling me as though I lay in the palm of Her hand. I forced my mind to relax and let the land shield me. She would keep me safe as I kept Her safe.
“You can’t hide forever. You’re wanted now.” The voice crept closer. “I know how to find you now! You know that, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My connection extended deeper into the Earth, pushing my fear down with it. The Earth protected me, I reminded myself fiercely. She shielded me from the eyes I couldn’t stand to see again.
“Soon, Chance. Very. Very. Soon.”
The footsteps moved away. I didn’t sigh with relief. I waited. My breath remained shallow. My fear leaked down the connection, trickling away with the patience only the Earth possessed.
Jack!
Following the thought that leapt to mind, the pathways in the Earth opened up. I searched through the brush until I located him. He was near the cars, holding Robert down, handcuffed, pinned under Jack’s greater weight. Jaime roamed through the woods— paralleling my path and trying to catch up. I didn't dare reach out—not with Oakes so close.
Jack was safe amidst several other agents. Pain tingled along my skin. Billy. Where is Billy?
Blood.
I burst out of camouflaged safety, Virginia clay and fertilized earth clinging to my clothes. Spitting the dirt from my mouth, I slid back down the embankment and splashed across the water. My body followed the line of thought my mind held. I tracked the blood. The Earth’s memories hovered so close to the surface I knew the event just occurred. A corn stalk slashed my face as I burst from the field.
Billy lay three feet in front of me. I fell to my knees and pressed a hand over the darkening red stain on his side. “Hold on, Billy. Just hold on.” My vision remained doubled, the connection to the Earth pulsing full force. I didn’t usually act in the physical and metaphysical at the same time, but I needed to now.
I jerked my head up at the approaching footsteps. Not Oakes—Jaime had Oakes scent. Jack rounded a tree and rushed toward me.
“He’s been shot!” Blood soaked my hands, staining them crimson where it seeped between my fingers.
Jack pulled a hand radio from his hip and spoke into it. “Agent down! I repeat, agent down! I need a Med-Evac to our location immediately!” He skidded to the ground next to me. He shrugged out of his jacket and pushed it under my hands. I used it to create pressure. Billy’s head began to move from side to side. He tried to speak.
“Shhh,” I ordered him. “Don’t say anything. You need to lie still.” Blood seemed to gush from the injury. The bullet must have nicked an artery or major vein. That would explain the heavy blood loss.
I didn’t want Billy to die.
“Five minutes. Evac ETA is five minutes. Hold on, Boss.” Jack's team planned for disaster—a chopper waited on standby just in case this went south. God bless the anal retention of the FBI. Jack was a haven of calm professionalism. He trained for this kind of thing. His composure bolstered my own. I felt his hands covering mine, adding to the pressure. If we couldn’t stop the bleeding, we needed to slow it down.
“Billy, we need to slow you down.” I leaned my face very close to his ear. “Listen to me Billy. Remember what I told you at the apartment?”
“Chance, what are…”
“Jack, shut up. Remember what I said, Billy? I want you to listen to me. We have to slow you down.” Oakes’ face swam up to flood my internal vision. He’s not here. He’s not attacking right now. He’s not trying to kill. Focus on Billy. Just Billy. The Earth, so closely intertwined with me, sensed my need. My heart slowed to the Earth’s natural rhythm, ageless and without definition in human understanding.
The human heart beats an average of seventy-two beats per minute. My hand pressed deeper against Billy’s injury. I felt the wet blood sticking to my hand, creating suction over the wound. The heart pumps ten liters of blood per minute.
My heart rate slowed, and I felt and sensed Billy’s breathing slowing. Somewhere on the edge of my awareness, Jack hovered. His heartbeat thundered loudly in contrast to ours. The human heart beats seventy-two times a minute.
I slowed us down.
Sixty beats.
Fifty beats.
Forty beats.
Help arrived.
Voices shouted. Hands reached out for the burden I’d attached myself to.
Thirty beats.
“Heart rate is dropping, blood pressure steady,” a voice said from faraway and yet nearby. “Start the oxygen. Let’s get him stabilized before we move.” The men moved efficiently, starting an IV and sliding a backboard beneath him. I was only barel
y aware of their actions, trusting Jack to handle the external world for the moment.
Holding at thirty beats. The world dimmed.
“BP holding steady. Bleeding is slowing. We can move him.”
“Ma’am, you have to let him go.”
“Ma’am.”
Thirty beats.
“On my count, one–two–lift!”
Thirty beats.
“All right, lift your hands and we’ve got him. Do you understand me, ma’am?”
I nodded.
Thirty beats.
Forty beats.
Fifty beats.
“BP holding steady. It’s now or never.”
“Ma’am, you have to let him go.”
I withdrew my hands. The flight medics moved Billy quickly toward the helicopter sitting twenty yards away. The blades fanned the Indian grass as I counted their rotation.
Sixty beats.
“Chance?”
“Why can’t you believe me, Jack?”
“I do believe you.”
Seventy-two beats.
I took a deep breath. It hurt as the air filled my flexing lungs. My double vision focused on Jack where he knelt in front of me. “I do believe you. It’s a long story, and I can… I will explain everything to you. I promise. I’m…”
Oakes.
My head snapped around and my gaze elongated, taking in the entire landscape as the Earth spread her arms wide.
“We have to go.”
“I know. I want to take you to the hos—”
“No. We do this my way.” My voice filled with power. Oakes shook Jaime somewhere—he was too distant for me to make out if he was alive or dead. Enough. I'm done. I would not compel Jack, but I would impress upon him my seriousness.
“Chance…fine. Your way.”
“We leave. Now.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
I looked into Jack’s eyes. My grip on the Earth relaxed, but only fractionally. I wanted to see his eyes, not the Earth’s loose translation.
“Believe me,” I whispered.
He reached out his bloodied hand and took mine, and I felt his fingers tighten.
“Let’s go.”
Seventy-two beats per minute and a little thing like faith is all it takes to keep a body going. Between fear for Jack, adrenaline for Billy, and worry about Oakes, my heart raced along much faster than that.
Twenty Six
Jack’s cabin squatted amidst the trees and green growth of the surrounding foliage. It nestled in the woods as though grown there itself. To some, it might seem lonely or forgotten. He tended to the façade very well. I knew this place, like so many others I’ve seen in my life, but I knew this one intimately.
This cabin housed all of Jack’s privacy and loneliness. He’d inherited it from his grandfather. It served as both a retreat and a sanctuary. When Nancy died, Jack fled to this cabin. We would walk in the woods and over the hills, talking or saying nothing, it didn’t matter when we were together. The cabin, along with the land around it, remained a remote lodging that Jack refused to sell.
We said nothing throughout the drive to the cabin. The number of switches and changes in the route Jack took told me he planned to avoid any unwanted tagalongs. I don’t know what he said to the others or why he didn’t have to stay. I didn’t care. Thirty minutes into the drive, safe with Jack, I went to sleep.
He woke me with a simple shake of my shoulder. I stumbled in the darkness up the familiar wooden steps. Jack’s hand on my arm was quick to steady me. Still groggy from sleep, the warm night air with its perfume of honeysuckle and pine reminded me of our location. Large patches of wildflowers decorated the area. The darkness reminded me of true night, a night without the false light of city streets, with only the moon and stars for companions. Dark, solitary and waiting, it fit the mood.
Jack moved around the cabin, lighting kerosene lamps, and offered to pull some water from the well. He busied himself at the wood stove, answering a primitive need in both of us for the comfort of a fire. We moved like strangers, the thick, coppery smell of Billy’s blood clinging to both of us.
Only after we washed, stripped out of our blood soaked clothes and swapped them for comfortable, but well-worn sweats did we settle in together on the overstuffed sofa, feet touching in a show of solidarity and comfort. Jack handed over a fat, black mug with a chip on the handle, tempting me with the steaming coffee. A whiff of the rum-spiked brew promised a boost of liquid courage. One swallow of the good stuff and I felt the smooth fire burn through my chest. A second swallow eased the tension in my throat and a third forced some of the cramping in my stomach to ease.
Even then, the words came with difficulty.
“Randall Oakes was in those woods tonight. I think that’s who shot Billy.” Exhausted, I didn't know how to tell him… How could I prove my words? I knew no proof existed, save my belief and my experiences. They would have to be enough.
Jack let out a breath. I knew his cell phone sat a few feet away. The FBI agent in him must have wanted to pick up the phone and start dialing to call in the troops.
“You won’t catch him, Jack. You can’t.”
“But you can?” No malice sounded in his tone, only concern and I think a degree of hurt.
“I don’t know.” I wanted to be honest even if I secretly wished Jack could wrap me up in the safety of his arms and promise me that everything would be okay. At this point, I’d swallow a false promise as well as the real thing. “I was two feet away from him tonight and I hid.” The confession cost me. I’ve always wondered what I would have done if I’d been more prepared that night, when he attacked me. If I’d been ripe in my strengths and understood my gifts better. Would I have been able to fight off my attacker?
Today, I answered that question. The answer was a humbling, if resounding, no.
“Two feet away from him?” Jack’s face paled. I saw the muscle working in his jaw. I looked down at the black coffee in my hand. My muscles felt tired. My eyes felt tired. Everything felt tired.
“Yes.”
“Good God!” Jack swore. He rose jerkily from the seat,
agitation swirling around him. “Chance, he could have killed you.”
“Correction. I think he would have. But he couldn’t find me.”
“How?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that question?” We needed this out in the open. The gulf that divided us hurt too much to keep it all bottled up.
“Yes.” Jack returned to the sofa and sat close enough that our knees touched. “Yes, I do want to know. Chance, don’t you understand? I don’t know whom to trust at the Bureau, not anymore. I said those things to Billy at the hospital because I needed others to think I didn’t believe you. I needed to keep you out of the line of fire.”
“You called me a delusional lunatic to protect me?” My annoyance danced with my disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Sweetheart, I may not like this weird, supernatural stuff you do, and I admit I really don’t understand it.” Jack leaned forward and put his hand on my face. His eyes were earnest and I wanted so desperately to believe him. “But you’ve proven it to me a thousand times now, you aren’t lying or delusional. That makes you dangerous.”
I closed my eyes. This sounded so much better in person than in every imagining of it I’d played for myself. I felt the warmth of his hand touch my face. No deceit colored his tone. The only deceit he concealed was a real belief in me.
“Why? Why didn’t you say anything that night when I threw you out?” I frowned, feeling miserable.
“Because I had no idea you’d heard me, and when you confronted me like that I didn’t know what to say. I thought you would trust me more, and I know I should have trusted you.” Sorrow and regret filled his gaze. He stroked my cheek again before leaning back and letting out a very deep sigh. “Of course, the tongue lashing Betty delivered didn’t help matters.”
“Betty is very protective of me.”
&n
bsp; “I know she is. I’m glad she is. You two are very good for each other. But she also told me if she were ten years younger she’d blister my backside for being so dense.” Jack smiled wryly. “I couldn’t respond to that. It also occurred to me my distance might lure out Oakes. I wasn’t expecting Callanport. I didn’t think he and Oakes would be in league.”
“Well, they aren’t.” I drained the last of the coffee. The rum worked its magic, making my limbs lighter and more relaxed. The last thing I needed was to be drunk but this truth needed something in the way of fortification. Even contemplating the possibilities made me ache for a bottle of Jack Daniels and a straw.
“Then why did Callanport take you to him?”
“He didn’t. Well, not immediately. Callanport is trying to trap Oakes, too. We went there to hook up with Jaime. Who’d have thunk it?”
“Walks with Beer is back?” Jack's tone sharpened and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wait, start at the beginning. Okay, I remember him, but vaguely. Just start at the beginning.” He held up his hand. “I promise I’ll try to keep the interruptions to a minimum.”
So, I explained the whole string of events to him. I explained about Callanport’s offer. I revealed that he’d given me the case files, and I saw his eyes narrow when I mentioned that. I even told him about Callanport’s dream premonition about Oakes and that Callanport would need me if Oakes showed up again.
“Where are these files now?”
“I left them secured at Betty’s. Something to fall back on, I guess. In theory, between Jaime and I, we would be able to track Oakes and capture him. I guess Callanport has his own paranormal contacts on the side that he didn’t share with the Bureau.”
“In theory?”
“Well yeah, because we didn’t have time to do anything before your cavalry arrived.” I hadn't heard from Jaime since either. I kept faith—he was out there—somewhere. I stood and held out my hand for his cup. “Refill?”
“Yeah.” He handed me the mug and sat there silently while I padded through the small cabin to the wood stove. The crackle of fire consuming the wood and releasing trapped air hissed a welcoming treat. The scent of burning cedar tickled my nostrils. The heat was pleasant despite the warmth of the evening. Any other time, this would be a moment that begged for dark chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers.
Earth Witches Aren't Easy Page 19