“Like a bullet,” Lara said, gently touching the healing scar on Jack’s shoulder, where stitches had recently been removed.
“Or like your hand,” he said, took her cast, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. “The way Starr’s father had worked it, he could molest, beat and abuse with no consequences, because no evidence of his crimes would be left once the twin disappeared. Though Starr’s scratches on the inside of the box lid would still be there to show police, none of her DNA would. I had nothing. Plus, bringing in the authorities would be dangerous for the Society. You can’t expect Lost Ones to care about the consequences of exposing their gift or the Society to the world.”
“So, what did you do?” Lara said.
“I locked the box up again, had the mother send the kids to bed, and sat down and had a talk with her. She told me her husband believed she and her daughter were inhabited by Satan. The twins were really the devil taking on forms familiar to the father to use in corrupting him. He’d told her that the only way to purge the wife and Starr of their evil was to punish the twins. His repertoire included a variety of creative tortures that would have given your Grey Man a run for his money, all of them excruciating. Having them swallow caustic substances was one of his favorites. Not enough to kill the twin or damage the true body, but enough to make them violently ill. His goal was to extinguish the twins forever. Beat the ability out of them so that they could never run again.”
“This was your first solo mission as a finder?” Lara said, incredulous.
“I’ve had worse in the years since.”
“Really? I can’t imagine.”
Jack sat up a little straighter, pulling her up with him so that they were sitting against the headboard now, rather than lying in bed. He looked at Lara and shook his head. “You’re incredible, Lara. You know that? You blow me away with who you are. I’m telling you a horrific story from my past, while your equally, if not more horrific reality is right here in the present.”
“But that’s just me.”
“Just you?”
“Not some poor abused family.”
Jack let her protests slide, saying nothing more for the moment.
“What happened to them? You still haven’t told me,” Lara said.
“I went back in my true body to fetch them and take them to a women’s shelter,” he said. “Thankfully, they lived in a town only an hour away from my safe house, and the shelter I had in mind, run by a fellow Society member, was only half a day’s drive. This sort of family dynamic was way beyond anything I could handle, especially at that age. I knew taking them to the shelter was the best solution. Get them help, while at the same time mental health experts could examine and evaluate them to see if the mother and daughter would ever be suitable for membership.
“I arranged to pick them up while the father was away on a business trip. All three were ready and waiting just inside the front door when I drove up. We got everyone loaded into the car and then hit the road. About two hours in, the mom asked me if we could stop for a bathroom break. She was nervous and obviously afraid. This had been a big step for her. Like a child, she told me she’d forgotten to go before leaving home.
“We pulled in at a gas station and the mom got out. The kids were in the back seat. Starr was asleep, and Jamie very drowsy, so neither needed to use the restroom. It was just the mom. She was in there for a long time, several more minutes than I thought she needed. I was debating starting the car and moving it along side the station so that it would be right next to the restroom doors, when Jamie unbuckled herself and reached over the front seat.
“ ‘Hey, Sweet Pea,’ I said. ‘What do you need?’
“ ‘Here,’ she said.”
Jack released Lara, climbed out of bed, found his jeans tossed over a chair and dug in a pocket. The gold coin. He handed it to her. It was a child’s version of royal bullion, with the picture of a princess on one side, and another of a castle in a magical landscape on the other. Lara turned it over and over in her fingers, observing how worn it had become over the years from Jack’s handling.
“She gave me that,” he said. “ ‘What’s this?’ I asked her.
“ ‘Knights get rewards,’ Jaime said, very earnest. The regal princess was back. She kissed me. A feathery little peck on my cheek from tiny lips.
“The next thing I knew, the front passenger door opened and a man with a gun slid in to take the mom’s seat. The father. He hadn’t gone on a business trip after all. He’d been following us. Courtesy of the mom. She’d told him our plans and had agreed she would ask me to pull over somewhere along the way. I later found out he’d killed her in the gas station bathroom.
“ ‘Drive,’ the man said.
“I don’t remember exactly what I started to say to defuse the situation and get him to calm down, but he cut me off instantly.
“ ‘Just shut up and drive,” he said.
“We returned to the Interstate. Starr had woken the moment she’d heard her father’s voice and by this time both girls were crying. He pointed the gun at them. ‘No, Daddy, please,’ Starr said. He shot her in the face. Jamie screamed. I jammed the brakes and grabbed his arm, trying to wrestle the gun away, but it all happened so fast. We flew off the highway, the car flipping and rolling six times until we crashed into some trees. When I opened my eyes again, Starr was dead, the father was dead, and my face…” Jack paused and ran two fingers along his slightly deformed cheekbone. “…my face was impaled on a piece of the engine that had joined us in the front seat. My head was turned just so. I had a perfect view of Jaime in the back. She hadn’t been ejected during the accident. In fact, she’d had the presence of mind to buckle herself back in, even after her father had taken control. It didn’t matter. Her neck had snapped. Her head lay unnaturally to one side.”
Lara hissed in shock at the image.
“They were all dead,” Jack said.
Lara couldn’t say anything for several moments. She could only shake her head slowly from side to side. Finally, she found words, inadequate ones. Hell, what words would ever be adequate?
“God, Jack. I can’t begin to imagine. How horrendous for you.”
“For me? I survived.” Jack’s voice sounded callous.
Lara could see that was precisely what he’d thought of himself all these years for having the audacity to live. As opposed to dying in the wreck.
“And yet you had the strength to go on,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, if you mean I didn’t have the balls to do the Society a favor and give up on finding, or something more sensible like committing suicide, I’ll agree with you.”
“No, Jack. You had the strength to go on and save people. Poppy. Me. And how many other Lost Ones over the years?”
“I don’t count them,” he said.
“Well, you should.”
“Jack it takes a strong person to come back after the abuse that man put you through.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re his fourth victim. Don’t you realize that?”
“No.” Jack made a grimace, shrugging off her suggestion. “He didn’t shoot me.”
“He didn’t have to,” she said. “He left you with that. All of that.” She got to her knees and moved to the edge of the bed. She reached up for him, and he automatically lifted her off the bed to her feet. She touched a finger to his temple. “He left you the horror in there,” she said. “For the rest of your life. You can’t unlive what he made you see, or what he took away from you.”
“Sweet Pea. Starr,” he said.
“Sweet Pea. Starr,” she said. “And the part of you that you gave to them.”
She circled her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers. She kissed him softly. Then afraid it might remind him of Jamie’s peck on the cheek, she kissed him again hard. Deeply. Filling that kiss with as much living, breathing imperfectly human love as she could show him. There were reasons to live and none to die for. Not now.
Not yet. After unburdening himself of a story like that, she wished he could cry the way she had earlier. Just open himself up and let it all go. But this was a man she knew would never cry. Not ever. It was a sad thing, but he was who he was and she loved everything about him.
“The fact you still hold Jamie and Starr in your heart is just one of the reasons you’re amazing to me. It’s why I couldn’t stand it if I lost you,” she ended off the kiss and said.
He looked at her, confused. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you yesterday, but it wasn’t because of you. It was me. I was too afraid to look at my past straight on. You thought we were over?”
Tell him. He can handle it.
“Tell me what?” he asked. “You were just thinking you needed to tell me something.
“Jack…” She let go of him and walked to the window where last night she’d gazed out to discover the place her worst nightmare would unfold.
He came up behind her, but stopped before he could touch her.
“You’re shaking. Lara, what is it?”
She pointed toward the tree in the distance. “In the nightmare, I’m standing under that maple of yours. Bodies litter the ground. At least five buildings are in ruins. Flames snapping and fluttering like bed sheets in a high wind. I hear a voice behind me. It calls my name. I recognize the voice. I don’t want to turn around and look, but it keeps calling, insisting I listen, hear what he has to say. He won’t give up until I turn and hear what he wants to say.”
Jack wrapped his arms around her while she talked. She felt him infusing her with his strength and confidence. He rested his chin on the top of her head. She kept going.
“I turned. I saw him. His arm was outstretched. He reached for me with his last breath. He was dead. But there was just enough of him left to linger in my mind. To exist for that one last moment and say to me, ‘Never forget–’ ”
“I love you,” Jack said.
Lara gasped. “What?”
“It’s what I say to you, isn’t it? ‘Never forget, I love you.’ ”
“Oh, God, you know? It’s you, Jack. You’re the voice I hear calling me. You’re the one I see among the dead. The bombs…while I’m just standing there watching.”
He turned her to face him and, when she wouldn’t meet his eyes, used his index finger to lift her chin.
“Hear me now, little love,” he said. Indigo eyes shone with his belief in the two of them. “The bombs are a long way in the distance still. They aren’t here today, and won’t be next week. We have time. Remember what Gavin said, we aren’t alone. We’ll figure this out. Together we’ll stop them.”
“But Jack–”
“Hush. Death won’t find me, or you, or any of us to take. Your future Jack got it wrong. He should have said, ‘Trust me, Lara. Trust in me. Nothing and no one can take me away, not while I have you to love.’ ”
“I do,” she said, and kissed him again, in the here and now.
Let tomorrow come.
Follow the fate of Lara, Jack, and everyone at The House, as Rafe takes over the search for the missing Taylor March and finds a new Lost One in:
Dreaming for the Dead
from Aileen Harkwood
Due Early 2014
Like your contemporary romance with just a bit of the paranormal? Read a chapter from Wild Gold, first in the Coloma Valley Psychics series, coming Fall 2013 from Aileen Harkwood.
Wild Gold
Chapter 1
Holly wedged the last rock into place to create a low damn for her sluice box and straightened up to take a breather. Chill water rippled over the tops of her white canvas sneakers as she stood ankle deep in the American River.
Her feet might be cold, but everything else was hot in the early October sun. She smiled as she wiped her brow with her forearm and glanced over at the twenty buckets lined up on the gravel bar to her left. Each held five gallons of soil she’d dug, scraped, and coaxed from the tight crevices under and between rocks at the river’s edge.
She reached for a bottle of green tea and pomegranate juice bobbing in the shallow pool and drank half of if down without pause. After fours hours of backbreaking work in one of her favorite spots inside Lucky Notch County Park, she’d earned it. Visions of a comfortable restaurant booth and a smoky barbecue sandwich with cool, crunchy pickles on the side, floated through her mind. She groaned, knowing the reward wasn’t coming any time soon. Not for hours more. Not until the work was done. If she didn’t come back with at least three grams of gold today, she wouldn’t be able to justify spending money on a meal she paid someone else to make or the luxury of that cozy booth.
The same anxiety that had been with her since midsummer thrummed intensely along her nerves like an underground flood seeking to burst through to the surface. No matter how hard she tried to remain positive and apply herself, desperation had set in.
No, you’re not in trouble. Not yet. You’ll be fine. Back to work.
Holly had long ceased taking life one day at a time. These days one hour at a time was all she could manage.
“Ma’am,” a deep voice called down from somewhere above and behind her.
She jumped in response to the unexpected intrusion, and spun around to locate its source. A male figure towered over her from atop a boulder the size of the local post office. Silhouetted by the sun, all she could make out was that the man was tall and his shoulders…significant.
“Ma’am. You can’t be doing that,” he said, raising his voice over the roar of the nearby rapids.
She squinted into the sun, but still couldn’t make out his face. Alarm spiked inside her. She was alone. Who was this guy? What was he doing here?
She shielded her eyes with her hand, but it wasn’t much help. In addition to the sun, the river charged through a natural chute beside her, throwing up spray into her face and painting a rainbow across the stranger’s black blob of a face.
“Did you hear me?” he repeated. “You can’t do that.”
She shrugged, not understanding. What in the hell was he talking about?
“Can’t do what?” she asked.
“That,” he said. An arm pointed, but to what she couldn’t tell. Her eyes watered at the effort of staring into the sun to try and make out his features.
It was then she noticed the uniform shirt, crisp and taut across a well-muscled chest and the hat, the kind with the silly Dudley Do-Right brim.
Park employee.
She sighed, relieved, and did a poor job of suppressing a nervous laugh. She couldn’t help it. It was the hat. Plus the officious sound of his voice.
“I’m sorry, officer…?” she asked.
“Ranger,” he corrected her.
“Sorry, ranger. I don’t understand. What is it I can’t do?”
“Pan for gold.”
“I’m not panning. I’m sluicing.”
“I don’t care what you call it,” he said, growing testy. Whatever you’re doing with the shovel, the buckets, and that cut off air conditioning vent you’ve got in the water. It’s not allowed.”
Now it was Holly’s turn to feel anger emerge.
“You’re telling me I can’t work this area? Since when?”
“Since I told you.”
Impossible. These were public lands. A park. While nowhere near the size of Coloma, it didn’t have the restrictions on gold mining that the state park enforced. She’d researched and found no prior claims registered on this bend of the American. She couldn’t use dredging equipment since it was outlawed in California, but no one had ever told her she couldn’t use a simple riffle sluice, classifiers and a shovel.
“Your name?” she asked, mood simmering near a boil.
“Donner, ma’am” he said.
“As in the ill-fated Donner party?”
Tragic. Wearing a cartoon hero’s hat, with a last name matching California’s early explorers-slash-cannibals.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me, how long have you
been working for the park?”
“This is my first day, ma’am.”
I swear to God, if he doesn’t stop calling me ma’am, I’m going to scream.
“Well, Ranger Donner, I suggest you get on your walkie-talkie or whatever it is that park people carry and talk to the park office. You obviously haven’t been here long enough to learn the rules.”
“Cell phone.”
“What?”
He pulled a smartphone out of his back pocket and held it up for her to see.
“We use cell phones.”
“Great. That’s terrific,” she said. “Now get on yours and call the office.”
“Don’t have to, ma’am.”
“And why’s that?”
She was getting tired of squeezing her eyes to slits and holding up her hand to block the sun. A headache suddenly pounded into existence centered right between her eyes. They hurt so much she could no longer look directly at the man. What’s more, she had a feeling he knew this and was, in his pompous little heart, enjoying her discomfort.
“They’re the ones who sent me over here.”
“The office.”
“That’s right. You have to stop. I’m asking you, politely, to leave.”
“Like hell you are.”
She turned her back on him, yanked her shovel off the gravel bar, sunk it into the first of her buckets and dumped a spadeful of dirt into the sluice.
“Excuse me?” he said.
Holly knew she’d not only offended the man, but the sensible part of her understood that she’d just crossed the line. She didn’t know if park rangers could arrest people, but she was sure that a sheriff’s deputy could. The other part of her, however, the stubborn, upset, tired and generally fed up part of her, wouldn’t let her stop. She drove the shovel’s tip into the bucket for a second scoop of material.
“This is my third fall working this very spot,” she said. “My third year,” she shouted. “I have a right to be here.”
Dangerous Dreams (A Dreamrunners Society Novel) Page 21