She really didn’t want this necklace.
And she really didn’t want to believe there was anything weird about it. She couldn’t even put the words together to say what she was thinking. But the words were forming all on their own and she was terrified.
Anything can happen in Haven…. And probably will.
Anything like…A necklace that was possessed?
Jake probably already thought she was nuts, the way she was behaving.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” His gaze turned on her, worried, intense.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “Jake, what’s happening?”
Chapter 13
Keely looked close to a nervous breakdown. And cold. Freezing cold. Her lips were nearly blue and she was shaking.
“I don’t know.” He hated the helpless feeling inside him. He took his leather jacket, wrapped it around her and pulled her into his arms, held her, and still she shook.
The necklace.
He watched it over Keely’s shoulder. “Make it go away,” she whispered, her teeth chattering through the words. She turned in his arms, stared back at the piece of jewelry, then back to him. “Put it back in the box.”
Stepping around her, he closed the distance to the box, scooping the necklace back inside it in one quick move. He went to the kitchen, grabbed tape out of a drawer, came back and taped the hell out of the box. Keely stood there, looking like she was ready to freak out. He remembered how the box had tumbled toward her out of the rubble. The red lights they’d seen as the quake struck. The voice of Shara Shannon.
Conditions last night, low pressure and dense moisture, combined with an earthquake of that particular magnitude, form the perfect storm.
He’d told Keely he believed anything was possible, but he hadn’t taken it that seriously. Now…
“Those red lights—” Keely breathed. She was thinking it, too. She was thinking the same thing he was. “Foundational movement.” He saw her throat move. “Foundational movement for paranormal activity, that’s what she said. No, that’s insane.”
Jake didn’t know what to tell her. He wrapped his arms around her, held her tightly.
“It’s possessed, Jake.” She lifted her head, her dark, terror-filled eyes searching his, searching for sanity. “I didn’t put it on! It came to me, somehow, in my sleep. Anything can happen in Haven now. Anything. That’s what she said.”
The mere idea that the necklace held some kind of life of its own was crazy. It shook the very core of everything Jake knew to be true about the natural world.
But this wasn’t natural. If what she said was true, this was supernatural.
Keely lifted her face to him.
“Tell me you believe me,” she whispered. “Tell me I’m not imagining this. Tell me I’m not losing my mind!”
“No.” He couldn’t believe what was happening, but he knew she needed him to believe her. Could she have put the necklace on in her sleep? All he knew was what she believed and that she needed him to believe her, too. She said she felt strange when she held the necklace, and she was clearly and quite oddly freezing cold. Could she be getting sick? He could find other explanations if he tried…. But he didn’t believe them any more than Keely did and that shocked him. Something about that dream of hers seemed too strange when he put it together with the skull she’d found in her garden. “You’re not crazy. Or at least if you are, you aren’t going crazy alone.”
Her world had been taken over by the unbelievable. From the moment Jake had arrived on her doorstep and the quake had struck, nothing had been the same. Ray had been involved in a murder. And he’d left her this necklace.
And maybe the two of them were connected.
“Sit down,” Jake said. “Before you fall down. Come on. You’re freezing. We’ve got to get you warmed up.”
He’d become her rock in her world gone mad and she wanted to cling to him when he moved away, adjusted the thermostat again. She sat on the couch. He came back, pulled the blanket up around her. Even with the jacket and the blanket she was shivering.
“That dream,” Jake said. “You woke and found the necklace on.”
She nodded, swallowed hard. “Why me? Why is the necklace after me?” It lay in the box now, taped up, still, as if content that they weren’t trying to get rid of it, or leave the house. Not till it got what it wanted.
What did it want?
“Ray gave the necklace to you,” Jake said slowly. “It’s yours now.”
“I don’t want it!” she cried.
Silence beat heavy. “I don’t think you have a choice.”
Events beyond her control were taking over her life. Again. She felt anger twine with the relentless fear drumming through her blood.
“What if the necklace is connected to the skull you found?” Jake suggested again. “What if the necklace had been on the body? It belonged to the victim. Somebody killed her—Assuming it was a woman.”
The necklace suggested he was correct about the sex of the victim. If there was a victim. If there was even a murder.
“Why would Ray give it to me?”
She wondered if Jake was patronizing her, trying to calm her down by pretending to take her seriously. But the grim light in his eyes belied that thought. He trusted her, and almost as unbelievable as what was happening now, she trusted him.
“Guilt?” he theorized. “He was cheap? It was a convenient gift? Who knows. He got rid of it, wrapped it up like a birthday present. Maybe he didn’t even plan on giving it to you, maybe he was just stashing it away and the best way to make sure you didn’t poke around in the box if you happened on it was to make it look like a birthday present. You certainly weren’t going to open it right away, you’d wait for your birthday and maybe by then he was going to do something else with it. Who knows. He didn’t plan on dying. All we know is that Ray got the necklace, and let’s assume he got it off the body. We know there was a body and we know he was digging around in your garden last fall. Tell me about your dream again.”
Keely’s heart thumped. Was she dreaming. No, not dreaming, seeing murder? “I was on a road. It was dark. Lights were coming at me. I knew I was going to be run down. I knew I was going to die.”
She knew it like she was there. Like she was seeing it with her own eyes. And she was cold like she was…Dead.
Horror burned through her again. She was seeing a murder and she’d woken with that silver-and-garnet heart around her neck.
“Somebody killed her,” she gasped. “Somebody ran over her. And they buried her in my garden?” Somebody. Ray. Her heart thumped harder. “The police. We should call the police.” The uselessness of that idea hit her immediately. Call the police and tell them what? That her dead husband had left her a demonic necklace? Then they could put her in the crazy bin.
The grim light in Jake’s eyes told her he was thinking the same thing. She stared hopelessly at him. “Then what are we going to do?”
“Maybe tomorrow they’ll find something more out at your farm,” he said. “Maybe those prints they took at your apartment will match up to someone.”
“We could be completely offtrack,” she said, her mind racing. “Maybe it was just animal bones, like they said. Maybe the break-in at my apartment was random. Maybe—”
“Maybe that necklace didn’t jump onto your throat?” Jake held her eyes. “You didn’t put it on.”
That he believed her was just about the only thing keeping her sanity holding on by a bare thread.
“So what do we do?” she repeated.
He put his hand on hers. “We get through the night.” He squeezed her hand, his warmth seeping into her. “We keep you warm.”
She swallowed hard. She needed to pull herself together. He put his arms around her, pulling her closer, touching her shoulders, her hair, her face. He was trembling, she realized, as much as she. She wanted him to tell her he could make all this go away.
But he held her and said nothing. He was there for her, that
was all he could do for now.
She gazed up at him desperately. “I’m scared of going to sleep again.”
He shook his head, his grim eyes shining through the low-lit room. “I won’t leave you alone.”
Their faces were only inches apart.
This was madness, on some level she knew that. She shouldn’t make love to him again. But was it any more mad tonight than it had been last night? She needed him tonight, just as she had before. Only now there was no fooling herself that her heart wouldn’t be on the table and that she could get hurt. His gaze was hungry, like hers, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. She was, she realized, his rock in this strange new world, too. With him, she felt warm and alive, not cold and dead.
Then he kissed her and it didn’t matter how she would feel later. It only mattered how she felt now.
His fingers ran through her hair, his hands streamed down her back, her body pressed against him. When at last his lips left hers, his eyes gazed into hers, haunted and crackling with a desire that she saw rocked him the way it rocked her. She felt that energy humming between them.
“Make love to me,” she whispered, kissing him again. His response was clear from the intensity of his answering kiss. Her shivers fell away, replaced by a deep, hot quivering that shook her just as much.
He pulled back just slightly and the heat of his gaze seared straight through the haunting chill in her bones.
“You’ll regret this,” he said. “And maybe I will, too, but you will and I can’t live with that, Keely.”
He was telling her this was just another one-night stand. Okay, two-night stand. He wasn’t looking for a permanent relationship, at least not in Haven, maybe not anywhere, anytime.
“I’m not asking for promises,” she told him simply. “I’m just asking for tonight.”
Rain beat down outside. Wind rattled the small frame of the house. His heartbeat thudded against her own and she knew this was destiny, somehow, some way.
This was wrong, so wrong, but for the life of him Jake couldn’t recall why. He’d given up hope since the day he’d watched Brian die. It wasn’t just his partner that had blown up in his face. His life had blown up, too. He’d become a machine, a living, breathing machine that couldn’t feel, wouldn’t let himself feel. Maybe he’d been headed that way for a long time beforehand, too.
And as crazy as the situation was in which he’d found Keely, she was breathing life into him again. Hope and passion and hunger. And he wanted it like he couldn’t remember wanting anything before.
She was hurting and scared, but it wasn’t just him comforting her—she comforted him, too. He stood there, barely able to breathe, his heart banging so hard against the wall of his chest. He scooped her into his arms, barged through the open door that connected to his bedroom, leaving everything behind—his fears, hers, that damned necklace.
It hit him that the necklace was what had drawn them together, tonight, and maybe last night, too. Was it an accident they’d been trapped in that cellar or part of some supernatural plan he couldn’t yet see? Then the thought was lost as he tumbled onto the bed with her and when she reached up to him, there were no more questions. Her hands moved down his back, pulling him closer and she moaned low in her throat as he reached between them to touch his hand to her breast through her shirt.
She pulled back just enough to tear the jacket and shirt off her, baring her taut nipples to his touch. There was no light in the room except for the flashes of lightning coming through the thinly shrouded windows. Greedily, he claimed one tight peak, then another, and she writhed beneath him, those sexy moans driving him wild. Then she was tearing at his clothes, fumbling at his zipper, pushing at his shirt. He helped her rip them off, then she sat up, tugged at her own jeans, leaving nothing but scant panties he could barely see. He dipped his fingers along the sides and pulled them down and off and then she was there, on her back, her skin so smooth and naked and waiting for him.
He possessed her with his hands, his mouth, and she responded with her body arching into him. The smell, the touch, the taste of her wiped everything else away. He claimed her mouth with all the fevered need raging in his soul. Reaching between them, he felt the hot, wet need of her.
Hot, not cold now, as if his heat transferred to her, not just emotionally but physically, warming her to the very core. He felt her release in the way she cried out against his mouth and her body surged against his hand, then she reached for him, desperate, shaking, guiding him inside her.
Take it slow, he told himself. God, he wanted this to be slow. He wanted this to last forever.
The shock of that thought jammed hard into his chest, then she rocked into him, sweeping him away in the gut-wrenching sweetness of her cries. He swallowed them with his mouth, plunging deeper inside her, as deep as he could go. They rocked together and he came hard and fast and they lay panting, clinging together as if for survival “I can’t get enough of you, Keely,” he breathed raspily against her ear. She pulled over top of him, straddling him, clinging to him still, clinging to his heat, and he couldn’t believe how quickly he was ready for her again. She sheathed him inside her, ready, too, and he thrust upward, softer, gentler, longer, the rhythmic pattern taking them higher, every breath a whimper, a low moan of perfect pleasure, until they climbed the stars together.
She collapsed, damp and sweet and warm, in the crook of his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Nothing was going to happen to her tonight.
Light laced through the thin curtains barely veiling the morning fingers of dawn. She was…In Jake’s house. In Jake’s bed.
In Jake’s arms.
Turning her head, she saw him beside her, sleeping soundly. He looked wonderful naked, all powerful shoulders and bare, sculpted chest tapering to a lean waist, and lower…. Remembered desire drummed through her. He stole her senses and probably he’d steal her peace of mind for a good, long time to come. And yet she felt some odd peace anyway. He’d shown her that she could live again. She didn’t have to hold herself alone forever just because Ray hadn’t been the man she’d needed.
And if she needed Jake and he didn’t choose to be that man…She would survive. She felt the first pang of heartbreak. She’d thought one night was enough, but now she knew two was not enough, either.
Their clothes were scattered on the floor. His handgun lay on the nightstand beside him, ready. He was ready to protect her, ready for anything.
She shut her eyes suddenly against the flash of renewed fear, the puzzlelike pieces of the night before ramming into her then scattering in a kaleidoscope of colors, unsolved. The skull, the strange white truck bursting out of her barn, the break-in at her apartment, the necklace…
None of it made sense. Ray had left her this nightmare. But at least Jake was by her side to solve it.
They had to solve it. The possessed necklace was possessing her. They could hardly take a nightmare and a crazy tale of a supernatural piece of jewelry to the police. The necklace belonged to her now, had been given to her. The necklace wanted her to find the truth. Justice, maybe?
The chill from last night crept into her again as she sat up in the bed. The heaviness around her neck seeped into her consciousness. Something hard and cold, a cold that she felt even now seeping down deep inside her, hung between her breasts. She reached up her hand, grasped the silver-and-garnet heart and gasped. It was hanging around her neck. Hanging. The chain had repaired itself. And the necklace had come to her again.
Jake opened his eyes as she swung her gaze to his, and held it for a horror-stretched beat.
“It’s back,” she whispered.
Chapter 14
The stark, haunted light of her eyes tore Jake’s heart out. She held herself very still, as if afraid to move. But she was moving, involuntarily. She was starting to shiver. Last night, he’d warmed her up. But this morning, the necklace was back and it was freezing her again.
“I’m going to take it off you,” he sai
d slowly, steadily, knowing she was so scared right now, any sudden move could frighten her more. He wanted to protect her, and he didn’t know how because he didn’t know what he was protecting her from.
He reached for the chain and she turned her head, pulling at the thick gold-spun hair to move it out of his way. The nape of her neck was ice to his touch. He unclasped the necklace, reaching around to let it fall into his palm.
Her skin was smooth and pale, naked. The bedsheet twisted at her waist, her breasts falling heavy and beautiful against her chest.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Take the blanket.” He shrugged the sheet from him along with the blanket, tucking it all around her. She scrunched eagerly into it, still shivering.
He stared down at the necklace in his hand. He hadn’t examined it closely the night before. The silver was slightly tarnished, as she’d mentioned, as if it had been cleaned, perhaps by Ray, but not with attention to detail. There were five little garnets encrusted into the silver. They were small, not worth much, he guessed, though he was no connoisseur of jewels. It looked harmless in the dawn sun, but it held secrets. What did the necklace want from them, from Keely?
Turning the heart over, he saw the initials I.L.K.
“What is it?” Keely asked.
He shifted the back of the heart toward her so that she could see it in the light. “Initials. I.L.K.” He raised his gaze to her. “Know anyone with those initials?”
She shook her head.
He ran his fingers over the heart, looking for a clue, anything that would tell them more—
A thin ridge rode all along the sides, clear around the heart. His finger stopped on a tiny indentation.
“It’s a locket,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“It’s a locket.” His pulse pounded. The heart was so slim, so flat, that hadn’t occurred to him. He dipped the edge of his nail, pressed hard against the indentation, and the heart sprang open.
Secrets Rising Page 12