Pressed to the trunk of the massive shagbark, breath held tight inside his chest … enraptured … he watched. Though she was close, perilously close, she did not know it was his place she wept upon.
Above them, clouds bunched together like suckling pups vying for a teat. He smelled the coming rain, heard the skittering of creatures taking shelter in the forest floor. Another storm, lightning bolts of pain to sear his eyes. He could not get back without her seeing.
But he wanted her to see. Wanted and dreaded it. Wanted her tearful eyes to rest on him, and if she screamed her fear would have to satisfy him. Hunger twisted, but not his stomach’s hunger. Hunger for a glance. One glance from her. He wanted and feared it, aching as her tears soaked the ground before the coming rain.
He would make her look, make her see him. He squinted through the stormy half light into the field where she hunched. He would go to her, soothe and comfort her. He wanted to. Wanted and he would.
But before he could, the other one did. No, no, no. Rage rose up, rage he hadn’t felt in so long, rage he couldn’t control, rage that could hurt, that could …
“Tessa.” Smith crouched beside her. He should not have left her alone. He should have told Danae to leave, should have told her he cared about someone else. He should have realized Tessa would take it to the extreme. “Tess, I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t you.” She sat back on her heels. “It’s me. I keep trying and trying to find what’s missing, but I can’t. I don’t know where else to look.”
Stunned by her distress and its apparent lack of connection to him, he sat back on his heels. “Tess, you’re searching for some mysterious God when what you need is the Father who loves you.”
She jerked her face up. “The Father who loves me?”
“God’s not a cosmic force. He’s a true being who wants you to know and love him, as he knows and loves you.”
“You don’t understand.” Her breath had jagged edges. “Fathers disappear and never come back. Fathers leave their children to the monsters.”
He shook his head. “God isn’t like that. He vanquishes monsters. And he wants to give you everything you need.”
“I needed my daddy, Smith. I wanted my mother to live. I want to sleep without fear, to live without a psychiatrist on speed dial. But none of that is going to happen. If God is a father”—she gripped the vine and yanked—“then he’s run off too.”
“God is faithful, even when we’re not.”
“How am I not?” Her eyes flashed.
“I don’t mean you. I didn’t mean it personally, only that—”
“Never mind, Smith. It doesn’t matter. ”
“It matters.”
She shook her head. Fury rose from her like heat as she jerked and tugged the vine, then staggered back.
Thunder rumbled overhead, but neither looked up from the filigreed metal disk just visible beneath the tangle.
“What’s that?” He bent over.
“I don’t know.” She knelt and shoved away the leafy vines that had covered but not rooted over the disk. “The Chartres labyrinth had a disk in the center that was surrendered in the revolution. Maybe this is a copy.” She and Smith ripped back more vines. Approximately three feet in diameter, the disk appeared to be bronze like the gate.
“Something used to be attached.” He pointed to brackets in the center.
“A cross, maybe. In your documents the labyrinth’s creator mentioned a cross at the center. I thought it might be symbolic, but it could be here.” She pulled at the vine once more.
Smith straightened and searched the lowering sky. “We’ll have to come back to it.”
“I want to look.”
Lightning split the sky. “Tess, really.” Thunder rumbled. Smith caught her arm. “If it’s under there, it’ll be there tomorrow—and the next day.”
Wind tossed her hair. “What if he takes it?”
“Who?”
“The monster. What if he finds it?”
“He’ll likely leave it on the doorstep and save us hauling it.”
Lightning flashed again.
“Come on. I don’t want to be barbecued where we stand.”
She scowled up at the sky as rain rushed upon them like water tipped from a garden pitcher.
Smith held out his hands with a wry look. “Satisfied?”
She lurched up and screamed, “Smith!”
He spun. The creature was no ghost. Lightning flashed on the blade he held, the blade he plunged.
The scream had scarcely left her throat when the monster reared up from Smith and grabbed at her, his gruesome face a twisted mask. Teeth bared. Eyes pale. She stumbled on the uprooted vines and fell back with a cry, prying at the hands that squeezed her throat. Smith!
He hadn’t moved. As she fought, he lay motionless in the rain with the knife in his chest. Groaning, she heaved the monster off, groped toward Smith, shook him. No response.
The monster seized her wrist. She landed a kick, but he didn’t let go. Shoving her free hand into her pocket, she seized the canister. There was no distance between them, and it might not work in the rain, but it was all she had. She twisted the lock and raised it to the monster’s face. Holding her breath, she depressed the nozzle.
He screamed and collapsed to the ground, clawing his eyes and choking. She staggered back, coughing and crying as well. Smith lay still as death, eyes closed as rain pooled in the sockets. With a moan, she turned and ran. She could hardly see, hardly breathe. She stumbled and fell, pushed herself up and ran.
Her heart pumped; her lungs burned. Gasping, she fell into the trailer, grabbed her purse, and found her phone. She staggered back out the door, eyes blinking against the burning spray. She pulled open the car door and slid inside, dialing 9-1-1 as she started the ignition. He hadn’t followed. But he would. Monsters always did.
He rolled in agony. Nothing had ever hurt so much. Choking, crying, gagging, he dragged himself to the body and pulled out his knife. They would come. They would search. He couldn’t let them see what he had done. No, no, no. No one could know.
He pawed the man’s chest where the knife had gone in. There should be more blood. His heart should have gushed, yet this wound hardly bled. He couldn’t think about that now. He blinked through streaming eyes and dragged himself to the disk.
Gripping the center bracket, he pushed the heavy metal aside. His throat burned. His nose streamed. His eyes screamed. Crawling back to the body, he got to his feet and dragged. No one could find it. No one could know. He rolled the body into the hole, then followed as lightning seared the sky.
CHAPTER
27
Tessa had poured out the story in detail, told Sheriff Thomas what had happened and watched him grow more and more skeptical. How could he not believe her? How could he think she had killed Smith? Everything had spun out of control.
Had she truly lost her mind? Dr. Brenner believed her delusional. She wished, oh, she wished she were.
But she had seen Smith stabbed, fought off his killer. Unless …
Could she have imagined that very first call, conjured up the whole job? How likely was it that her old college crush had found an ancient labyrinth and wanted her to build it? Maybe he’d been “on-site” because she’d imagined him there, given him a companion to round out the scene, a whole cast of characters with whom he interacted in the fabric of her mind.
How real were Rumer Gaston and Petra Sorenson? Katy and Ellie. She swallowed the lump of dread in her throat. The day she’d arrived Smith had appeared out of nowhere in the woods, shown her the trailer. Was it some deserted hulk she had holed up in to live out her delusion? Maybe the nightmares weren’t breaking through; maybe her whole reality was a nightmare.
She moved her head in a slow rejection of that thought. This was real, terrible in its reality, but real. Smith had come between her and the monster. Theseus had defeated Minotaur, but Smith had not been prepared to fight. She curled up on the bed, hurting worse than
she could bear. Guilt crushed her, and inside the guilt, the monster’s words reverberated.
“You won’t say a word, will you. Not a word.”
But she had.
“I’ll find you. Just the way I did tonight.”
She had told Smith, and the monster had killed him. No tears could wash away the awful truth. They could not ease the pain. Smith was gone. Dr. Brenner had betrayed her. She had no one, nowhere to turn.
“God wants to give you what you need.” Smith’s words penetrated, but they weren’t true.
“God vanquishes monsters.”
No. She shook her head. Smith had trusted God and died. She had tried to tell him fathers could not be trusted. He’d been so sure she was wrong.
Now there was no escape. No help anywhere. She closed her eyes, sick to death of running, of hiding. No matter what she did, the monster would find her. For so long she had struggled to survive. Now she welcomed an end to it.
In her mind, she lay down beside Smith on the soaked and streaming ground. Why had she left him? Why had she run? She wrapped her arms around him as the monster charged, flames blowing from his nostrils, bearing down on her, but before he reached her, he became the creature in the field—pale eyes, pale skin like death, knife flashing.
Her breath came in shallow gasps as the monster changed again—now neither the monster from her dreams nor the creature she’d fought in the field.
His broad man’s face came close, protruding eyes beneath dense brows, fleshy, deeply indented upper lip, square bluish jaw. His breath smelled sharp, metallic. Sweat pearled his forehead, sheening his cheeks. He squatted, shining the light into her face.
“I see you.”
Her throat cleaved.
“You’re not afraid, are you?”
Her head made slow arcs side to side.
“Did you see something you shouldn’t have?”
She shook her head, even though she’d seen it all. Sobs climbed her chest.
“You won’t say a word, will you? Not a word.”
She couldn’t if she tried.
“Because I’ll find you, just the way I did tonight.”
He would. She knew it. The monster would find her.
Her phone rang and she jolted up. “Hello?”
“Tessa. Bair here. Sorry, but I haven’t been able to reach Smith, and—”
She collapsed on the bed, sobbing.
“Tessa? What’s the matter!”
“He’s dead, Bair. The monster killed him.”
“What!”
“He attacked us and stabbed Smith, but no one believes me and they can’t find him.”
His stunned silence silenced her too. Then he rasped, “Who can’t they find?”
“Smith. Or the monster. They don’t believe me, Bair. You have to help me find him.” She started crying harder.
“Calm down, Tessa. Let me … how did …” His heavy breaths came across the line. “Where are you?”
“The inn. The sheriff won’t let me leave the area, even though he doesn’t believe me. It’s raining and he won’t look for Smith and I never should have left him.”
“All right. Hold on. I’m coming.”
The thought brought a flicker of relief. Bair should be part of this. His friendship with Smith had spanned years, and their falling out was nothing compared to the companionship she’d seen.
When he knocked some time later, she let him in, feeling grateful and relieved and miserable at once.
He stared hard into her face. “You were serious.”
She gulped back tears.
His features twisted. “Driving down here, I told myself you’d said it so I’d bring Katy back where she belonged. I thought that if I returned her, I’d find Smith all right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I …” Bair dropped to the wing chair. “I can’t believe it.”
“No one else does either.”
“I don’t mean— I just can’t take it in.” He clenched his hands on his thighs. The rims of his eyes reddened. “I should’ve … told him I was happy for you.”
She sat down and put her arms around his big shoulders. He was real; he was solid, and that made everything else real. She pressed her face to his sleeve. “It hurts so much.”
They grieved together, hardly speaking. Finally she said, “We can’t leave him out there.”
Bair nodded. “They’re not even looking? What’s wrong with them?”
“They won’t take me seriously. My therapist told them I’m having a psychotic break.”
“Are you?”
She didn’t begrudge his hopeful tone. “I wish I were. But look.” She held up her purpled arm, the grip marks clearly visible. She had only started to feel it.
“How did they explain that?” He ran his fingers over the bruise.
“They didn’t, just sedated me and said I need help.”
He heaved a sigh. “Let’s go have a look.”
She shook as she rode beside Bair to the scene she’d escaped— was it only last night? If Bair were not there, strong and solid, she might convince herself Smith had never called, never come back into her life, never made something happen between them she hadn’t dared hope for. She wasn’t sure she could have imagined the last part, but she wanted to believe it so badly.
Grimly, Bair drove up to the gate, plodded over to open it, then drove to the trailer and parked. He got out and stared, unable, it seemed, to take a step into the empty office. She touched his arm, and he unlocked the door and walked the trailer from end to end. “Were you attacked in here?”
“In the meadow. At the center of the labyrinth.”
He turned and plodded to the door. She ached at the stoop in his shoulders, the way his freckles spread starkly over his skin. He didn’t want this to be true, maybe blamed himself for not being there. “Where exactly?” He stepped out into the lingering drizzle.
“Out past the Bobcat. I’ll show you.”
Her feet squelched in the wet grass and old leaves as they walked back to the place where Smith had fallen. Were they inviting the monster to strike again? Smith had stood between her and whatever he was, a person—but with so many things wrong that when she had tried to describe him the sheriff thought she was lying.
She pressed closer to Bair, aware for the first time that he must be as tall as Smith, though his broad build disguised it. As they neared the meadow, her breath caught on a sob. Bair squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll find him.”
But after scouring the field and forest edges and returning to the place they’d started, Bair dropped his hands to his sides. “I don’t know where else to look. No way we can cover the woods, just the two of us.”
Tessa clutched her soaked sweater, drizzle running down the back of her neck. “We can’t give up. This is right where he fell. That’s the vine I pulled. That’s the disk we found. Smith has to be here.”
Bair’s face showed more than frustration. It showed doubt and distrust.
“Where else would he be, Bair? If what I’m saying isn’t true, where is he? Why won’t he answer when I—or you—call?”
Bair looked around. “Maybe he wasn’t killed. Maybe he crawled off somewhere.”
Her chest constricted. Had she left Smith wounded and dying? “Wouldn’t he call for help?”
“He might have lost his phone. It could be anywhere in this vine.”
She gripped his arm. “Call it.”
Bair speed-dialed Smith.
Tessa tensed. “Did you hear it?”
Bair searched the ground. “I don’t know. It was faint if …”
“Call again.” She couldn’t say for sure that she’d heard anything more than her own wishing. The second time neither of them heard anything. She wrapped herself in her arms, aching from lost hope. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to see the sheriff.” Bair turned back, moving purposefully now.
She hurried beside him back toward the trailer, afraid to hope he
would succeed where she had failed. Would anything in Bair’s personal history disqualify him? He had issues with alcohol and aggression, but as far as she knew, no psychiatrist calling him crazy. They’d have to listen.
She followed him into the trailer. She had never seen him so grim, so self-contained. He pulled the air-conditioner out of the window and locked it, then turned. “I want you to stay here, Tessa. Keep the door locked and stay out of sight unless you hear Smith.”
She nodded, tears springing to her eyes. Bair couldn’t believe him dead. He hadn’t seen the knife in his chest, hadn’t seen him lying unmoving in the rain.
“I’ll bring the sheriff back, but it might take a while to organize a search. You have to be here in case Smith gets this far, especially if he’s in bad shape.”
She gulped. “Okay.” He didn’t say it, but they both knew it would be better for Bair to see the sheriff without her.
“If you need a weapon, use whatever you can find to protect yourself—whatever it takes. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “I will.”
“You have my number.”
“Go, Bair.”
He looked at her hard, then grabbed her into a clutch and released her.
She sniffed. “Don’t let him say no.”
“I won’t.”
Then he was gone, and she had to face her deep and terrible failure alone. If she hadn’t been so messed up, would the sheriff have believed her? Would Smith already be found? She should have been calm, coherent, convincing. But she’d fallen apart. She’d been as worthless to Smith as she’d been to her daddy. What? She gripped the chair back.
Images pushed in, though she couldn’t tell if they were real or not. It had started in her room at the inn, the man’s face, the bulk of him squatting before her, his calm, evil words. “Did you see something you shouldn’t have?”
Yes! A wail pierced her control. She pressed her hands to her temples, seeing a shadowed violence she did not want clarified. With everything in her, she locked up the vision like a monster in her mind’s maze, but it lurked there, on the edge of recall, terrifying and tormenting her.
She sank to the floor, clutching the sweatshirt her dad had worn in the mornings, and unlocked a good memory instead. Daddy stoking the wood-burning stove, catching sight of her over his shoulder. “Come here, kitten. Come get warm.” And she’d run to him and piled onto his back like a cub. He’d stood up so tall and trotted around the room, bouncing her until her laughter brought Mom to the doorway, an amused smile on her lips.
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