“We didn’t discuss work much,” Sharon said as she diluted her coffee with cream, then drowned it in sugar, making Annette cringe. “She worked in the labs, and I’m a receptionist. You might try Abe Bennett from Hematology. She and Abe had been talking a lot recently, but it wasn’t a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. Or you could search through her laptop. Had dragons all over it. She dragged that around with her everywhere.”
Annette choked on her coffee, spilling it as she smacked the cup on the table. Aragon immediately grabbed her arm, tensing as he shot his gaze about the diner, looking for the trouble.
“I’m fine,” she told him calmly. “Went down the wrong pipe.” Inside she was screaming as loud as the blood rushing past her ears. What laptop? This was the first she’d heard of one. There hadn’t been a laptop in any of Stefanie’s belongings. She drew a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. It wouldn’t do to set off alarm bells with Sharon and have rumors flying before Annette could ask questions herself. And if she remembered right, Rob Rankin worked in Hematology. “What about personal relationships? Are there other friends I can ask to see if Stef mentioned anything to them?”
Sharon shook her head. “I’ll think about it, but she was pretty reclusive. Preferred writing her stories over wasting time elsewhere, is what she used to say. I mean, she wouldn’t even come and get her hair and nails done.” Sharon looked as if that was the ultimate sin.
“I heard you arranged a date for her with Nick Sinclair. Do you know him well?”
Sharon drew a deep breath, as if she had to brace herself to speak. “Not as well as I thought I did.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what Stef was like. More interested in creating these humanoid creatures and writing stories about them than actually dating a real man. I don’t think she’d been out since your parents were killed. Nick was supposed to show her that sharing dinner and a movie with a flesh-and-blood guy on occasion would be a good thing.”
“He didn’t?”
She shrugged. “You want the truth?” She glanced at Aragon again. “It’s, uh, not pretty.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Nick wang-banged Stef that night until she couldn’t see straight. I know he had to have urged her into it, because she was all about emotion in relationships, and this was just raw sex. It was too much too soon, and she regretted it. That had her all tied up in knots and sent her on a tailspin of reconnecting with her true spirit, which, I think, had her going to the Sacred Stones early Saturday morning before meeting everyone for the hike. So in a way, I kind of blame him and myself for what might have happened to her. At first I even wondered if she’d just decided to go somewhere to ‘find’ herself, but then I realized she wouldn’t have left her sketchbooks behind. Her creatures were too much a part of her.” Sharon’s eyes welled up with tears again, and Annette realized how much the woman blamed herself for Stefanie’s disappearance.
Coffee forgotten, Annette patted Sharon’s hand and tried to digest Sharon’s revelations. Nick had intimated that he’d only shared a simple meal and movie with Stef. Why had he misled her? Him having sex with Stefanie wasn’t really any of her business, but in Annette’s mind that constituted more than just a “no big deal” date.
Either he wasn’t a kiss-and-tell guy—or he had something to hide.
“She lied,” Aragon said after Sharon Wills left.
Annette swallowed the lump in her throat. Here she thought she’d finally come up with something solid to follow.
“When she said the part about trying to move past your sister, she lied. Everything else seemed to be true.”
“If that’s the case, then we’ve got some work to do. Maybe those medical files I have will look a little more interesting.” Interviews over and bill paid, she led Aragon out of the diner and into her car.
“What’s wang-banged?” Aragon asked as she was getting into the car. “I am unfamiliar with the word.”
Her head snapped up and hit the roof. Did the man have a GPS when it came to sex? He always seemed to hone in on it. Cranking the engine, she shoved the car into drive and had crossed the parking lot before she could think of the right answer. “Sex without…love,” she finally said as she pulled out onto the highway.
“And this is harmful to a mortal?”
How could she answer that question?
“Yes…in some ways…it’s complicated.”
Her cell phone rang. Emerald’s number popped up.
“Hold on,” she told him as she answered, listened to Emerald’s plan, and hung up. “They’ll meet us at my cabin. The trucks aren’t all loaded yet, but Nick thinks it’s close, and Sam wants to map out the best place for the roadblock. And there isn’t any need for you to cross the spirit barrier. Nick is going to keep tabs on the truck from the LifeFlight helicopter. If any emergency calls come in for it, we’ll figure it out from there.”
Aragon sucked in a deep breath, looking as if he’d been punched in the gut. “It is time then.”
Annette nodded and swallowed the emotion gathering in her throat. No more waiting. Not that she’d sat around as it was. She’d made progress this morning in looking for Stef, but she somehow felt as if she’d missed some precious moments with Aragon.
“What’s that darkness?” he asked, leaning down to peer through her windshield. At six-five, he seemed to have barely any room between his head and the roof of her car.
The mountaintops across from the wide valley where Twilight made its home were the highest peaks in this part of Tennessee, and mists often covered them, especially Hades Mountain. But today, whether from a strange fluke in the weather or because other clouds were obscuring the sun at just the right angle, the mist over Hades Mountain was inky black. “Must be a storm or a trick of the light,” she told Aragon.
“Has it ever been that dark before?”
“Not since I’ve been here.”
Aragon grunted, but kept studying the distant peaks.
“Is something wrong?”
He shook his head as if he wasn’t sure. They turned a bend in the road, and the mist-shrouded mountains fell behind them. He didn’t turn to look at them and was quiet the rest of the way back to her place. She let the conversation lull as she tried to figure out the right answer to give him about love, and decide what she would do with the information they’d learned from Dr. Steven Bryers and Sharon Wills. She had to do something. She also tried not to think about how confused her sister must have been after her date with Nick. How she might have really needed to talk the night she’d called. The painful knife of guilt twisted a little deeper into her heart.
They arrived at her cabin before the others. The moment they exited the car, he swung her around to face him. “This love that you speak of is different for mortals than spirit beings, I think. I need to know more.”
Reaching up, she slid her thumb along the cleft of his stubbled chin and ran her hand up his jaw to brush his shoulder-length hair back from his face. His eyes were intent, worried, as if the universe rested on his shoulders. The sun lit ebony fire in the dark of his hair, warming them both with its mid-morning heat. “I didn’t mean to leave you hanging. Love is many things. Between a man and a woman it’s feeling, understanding, a promise to care and revere, and some make a commitment to each other to honor and to cherish forever.”
He returned her touch, brushing his fingers over her cheek and across her lips as if memorizing every detail. Then he dipped his hand down and pulled gently on the chain around her neck until he’d brought his amulet into the light, where it glittered a rich, iridescent gold in his palm.
“Love, then, is like an oath a warrior makes?”
“A little,” she said, searching for the right words.
He leaned down and breathed deeply of the amulet. “It bears your scent,” he said softly. “I would make an oath to you, then,” he said, sliding the amulet over her head and holding it out between them.
“With al
l that I am, as unworthy as I am, I pledge to find your sister and to do all within my power to keep you safe from Pathos.”
He leaned down, and she fell into his kiss, her heart thudding from the strength of the emotion flooding through her. Tears bit into her eyes, and her mouth trembled beneath the gentleness of his lips. This was different from anything she’d ever known, and the reverence of the experience awed her, left her speechless and hopelessly drowning.
He pulled back, his dark gaze hungrily searching hers. She thought he would kiss her again, this time with the heated passion that seemed to burn away anything but the desire between them. He didn’t. He moved back, holding his amulet clutched tightly in his fist.
She frowned, suddenly sensing what he was going to do.
“Aragon!” she cried, reaching for him. “You can’t.”
He jumped back. “I must,” he whispered, his expression both pained and remote. “I promise I will not fail you. Believe in me!”
“No! Don’t go. There are other ways—” She threw herself at him, but he leapt into the air and vanished, leaving only the echo of a loud sucking sound behind and the stench of burned cotton as a puff of smoke filled the air. All that was left when it cleared were a few pieces of black cloth on the ground.
She couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t have just up and left her like this! Her insides twisted painfully, and it seemed as if her breath was frozen in her lungs.
“Aragon! Damn it! Come back!” She shut her eyes and called out to him with her whole spirit, determined to reach him somehow. She pictured him in her mind, trying to make him reappear. Nothing happened. He was gone.
She clenched her fists and pressed them hard against her chest to hold herself aloof from the hurt, the anger, and the tears flooding. Damn it! He didn’t have to do this! There were other ways to follow the trucks. And he didn’t need to go out there looking for Stef; she was finally making the first real progress in finding out what happened to her sister.
“Come back!” she screamed at him. But nothing happened.
She hadn’t thought the well of grief she’d carried since her sister disappeared could deepen. She had been wrong.
Chapter Thirteen
H ANDS CLENCHING THE X-files printouts and her stomach in knots, Annette tried to make her eyes focus on the medical case in front of her. So far, all of the women she’d read about had been marked as deceased. But there was very little information as to why they’d died, or why they were being seen for the medical study in the first place. The files so far were a compilation of patient history, physical findings from exams—but no labs were included. The diagnosis was a numerical code that neither Annette, nor Erin, nor Emerald recognized.
It was like trying to put pieces of a puzzle together with no picture on the box. She knew only one thing—it was bad. All of the women had been between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six, and all were deceased. A stomach-turning revelation itself, but when it was combined with her worry for Aragon, she thought she’d be seriously sick to her stomach.
Emerald sat calmly across the room, reading her stack, and Erin lounged on the sheepskin rug by the fireplace where Aragon had made…
Hell. Annette swallowed another choking lump of grief and sucked in deep breaths, but it didn’t help. She had to get out of the cabin. She didn’t care what Sam and Jared said about sitting tight until their return. She’d go nuts if she had to stay here. Aragon’s scent was everywhere.
She had to get out. Squaring her shoulders, she looked at Erin, then Emerald. “For two women who had their panties in a wad last night, thinking that the men had left you in the investigation dust, you seem awfully content right now.”
“Thongs don’t wad, luv,” Emerald said. “Besides, this is different. We know where Sam and Jared are now and what they are doing. We didn’t last night. And this is important.” She tapped the medical file.
“Yes, but I’m afraid we’re wasting our time if we do just this and turn up nothing. I think we need to find Abe Bennett and see if there is anyone else we can question. We can even stop at my neighbor’s house. I think Rob works in the Hematology Department.”
“Jared will have a fit,” Erin said, packing up her things. “But come to think of it, Annette is right. They’re seeing all of the action, and we’re licking our thumbs, reading files.”
“And it’s bleedin’ time Sam realizes he isn’t the only capable being on the planet. We’ll kill two birds at the same time,” Emerald said.
“Stone,” Erin corrected. “It’s kill two birds with one stone.”
“However do you do that?”
“With damn good aim,” Annette suggested. “Let’s go hunting.” She didn’t have to say anything else before the women were out the door and piling into her BMW. When Annette pulled out of her driveway, she darted across the road and up the Rankins’ drive. But the house looked silent, and no cars were in the drive, so she circled around and headed for the highway.
“Hey, did Stef have the chickenpox at age two?” Erin asked, deep into a file.
“I’m not sure,” Annette said. “She had them sometime when I was in my mid-teens. Why?”
“I’ve got a file with a birth date that matches Stefanie’s.”
Oh, God. Annette squeezed her eyes shut. As much as Annette wanted to find out something about her sister, she didn’t want it to be a medical file with the word “Deceased’” written at the bottom.
“Nette!” Emerald yelled. “Watch out!”
Popping her eyes open, Annette saw that a car had made a late turn onto the road. Now it was crossing the center line and about to hit them head on. She steered onto the shoulder, catching sight of Celeste’s horrified expression behind the wheel as they narrowly missed colliding.
She brought her car to a stop, but Celeste kept going. Emerald launched into a diatribe about fooking idiot drivers, and Annette shook her head. Not stopping was so unlike Celeste. She started to defend her neighbor but then decided to let it go and return to the file Erin had found.
“What else is in the file?” Annette asked, praying that the woman was from Timbuktu as she pulled back onto the highway, deciding she’d try and see Celeste later. Her neighbor was obviously upset at the moment.
“Let’s see. There’s a note that this woman worked for Sno-Med.”
Annette’s mouth went dry.
“She began working for Sno-Med five years ago, and—”
“That’s two years before Stefanie did,” she said in a rush as the air trapped in her lungs escaped. It wasn’t Stef. It wasn’t Stef.
“This woman is the first not to have ‘Deceased’ written on the bottom of the page. There is a note that she was transferred last October to…Anyone ever hear of St. Anjeles in Nashville?”
“Holy hell. We finally have something solid to go on?” Annette pulled onto the side of the road, dug up her cell phone, and dialed information. “Bingo,” she said as the operator punched her through to St. Anjeles. “Let me see the file,” she said to Erin.
“We care for those you love when you can’t,” said a woman who answered the phone. “This is Melanie. May I help you?”
“Yes, Melanie. I’m hoping you can. I’m Dr. Batista. I’ve recently taken over a position at Sno-Med’s research center in Arcadia, and my predecessor left rather abruptly. I’ve a number of files on my desk that I need to work through.”
“Dear Lord, I heard about the fire. Dr. Helms has been trying to contact Dr. Cinatas all day.”
Annette shivered as if someone had walked over her grave. Cinatas was a powerful man with connections everywhere, and only time and investigation would reveal which of those connections were evil and which were, like her and Erin, unsuspecting.
“It was awful,” Annette told the woman truthfully. “Because of the damage to the building and the files, I’m afraid that something is going to fall between the cracks, and that someone will suffer.”
“Yes, of course. What can I do? I owe Sno-Med a lot. Th
ey’re giving my kids the best care at a price I can afford.”
Annette gritted her teeth. “I have a record of a Sno-Med employee, a woman being transferred to St. Anjeles last October, but I don’t have her name, just her Sno-Med file number.”
“We don’t get many Sno-Med employees here, so I know who you’re talking about. Consuela Torres. A terrible shame to see such a beautiful woman waste away like this. But they say there’s nothing there, the stroke turned her brain to mush. With no family, the staff has sort of adopted her. Do you need Dr. Helms to contact you?”
Stroke. The word left Annette with a very bad feeling. “Actually, I’ll call Dr. Helms back later after I finish going through these files. But you have been a tremendous help, Melanie. What is your last name?”
“Dresher.”
“Great. Thanks. I’ll be talking to you again soon.” Annette disconnected the phone and wrote down Melanie’s name, St. Anjeles’s phone number, and Dr. Helms’s name. She’d have to do some more digging about the doctor. And somehow she’d have to get Melanie to take her kids somewhere besides Sno-Med for treatment. But all of that would have to wait. She didn’t like what these patient files were suggesting. Deaths and a stroke. What sort of study or treatment had these women been involved in?
“It’s a real honor to finally meet you, Dr. Cinatas. You have no idea how much your research has inspired us all. A cure for any cancer is just a miracle, and you are a god.”
Pathos watched Dr. Steven Bryers nearly trip in his enthusiasm to shake Cinatas’s hand.
Cinatas nodded his head as if receiving a small measure of his due.
“And I want you to know I didn’t tell the detectives anything negative at all. Not that there was anything negative to say, but they seemed determined to come up with something wrong with all of their questions.”
“Detectives?” The mask Cinatas wore didn’t quite follow along with the deepness of the frown Cinatas must have been expressing, and it gave his face a surreal appearance. Pathos would have to tell him to keep his expressions neutral, especially for the news conference. Having that show up on television where people could replay and examine the footage wouldn’t be good.
The Lure of the Wolf Page 17