Blind Trust
Page 9
“Where have you been?” She grabbed her hair with her hands. “You have any idea what could have happened?” She gripped me by the arms then stalked into the living room. “I couldn’t leave Zack, I couldn’t come and find you.” She spun around, walked over to me, and slapped me clean across the cheek. “You could have been hurt!”
I blinked a couple of times and touched my hand to my stinging cheek. It wasn’t as though she’d landed me with a right hook or anything but more the fact that she’d raised her hand in the first place that shocked me. She put her hands over her mouth as she registered her assault and the tears bubbled over and down her cheeks.
“Aeron, oh God, I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .” She reached out for me but I was still kinda dumbstruck.
She’d hit me.
“I was so worried, you could have . . . I was so scared . . .”
Then I saw it. Above her head was a dark swirling mass, not like the leaches that I saw above some people but dangerous all the same.
Fear.
You see, there’s one thing that I have learned since I left the institution and that is fear is the greatest enemy of all. It stops you seeing what is really there and making a decision based on logic. Fear likes to distort your thinking, distort the world around you until all you can see is black and hopelessness.
Well, I cared too much about Renee to let that cloud suck her soul from her.
I walked to her and wrapped her up in the biggest hug I could manage. Unlike afflictions or leeches or any kind of nasty wounds that the world could inflict on a person, fear was not something I could displace or heal just by touching. No, fear was a personal monster that each one of us had to face and conquer but it didn’t mean that I was gonna leave her to fight it alone.
“I’m here,” I told her. “Joyce was out in the road and I needed to help her get back to Charlie.”
Renee burst into sobs. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I kept my decision on the CIG to myself but my heart wanted me to tell her that I’d follow her anywhere should she need me. A dumb notion that was nothing but lip service and no matter how much she needed me to lie, I wasn’t going to.
“I’m not exactly small,” I told her. “You can’t miss me.”
Renee buried herself into my shoulder, her pain and worry hitting me like I was tied to a rock in a storm. “I wish I could go back to Oppidum with you,” she whispered. “I wish I could just live by the river.”
Oh, did that dig a knife into my heart. One minute she was pretending she pretty much despised the sight of me and now she wanted to tend fields and make wheat. My own confusion started to muddy my determined focus to stay in St. Jude’s.
“But you can’t,” I told her. “You have people to save.”
Her eyes met mine as she looked up at me. “You were serious about leaving CIG, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, hating the pain in her eyes. “We both know that I ain’t cut out for lying and hiding and all the yes sir and no ma’am stuff.”
“It’s not lying,” Renee said. “We are protecting people.”
“And I guess my view of protecting people is that when you’re honest, there’s a lot more trust.”
She sighed as she clung to me. “Aeron. What if I had told you who I was and what I knew in the beginning. Would you have believed me?” She raised her eyebrows. “Would you have sat back and let me do my job?”
“No. I would have thought you were crazy.” I held up a finger to stop her speaking. “But, I would have trusted you a lot quicker.”
“And what if you had been the killer?” Renee said, something flickering across her eyes. “What if the next person that I protect is actually the monster I’m trying to stop. What then, Aeron?”
What the heck was I supposed to say to that? “I would guess it would freak them out and their inner lunatic would be revealed. Would make the whole process a lot quicker.”
Renee frowned. “Or they could hurt me . . . or someone else.”
There was a hidden truth peaking its way through her words, her aura shimmered with her honesty.
“That’s what happened, didn’t it?” I asked, gripping her to stop her from turning away. “You trusted someone and they turned out to be the bad guy.”
Renee tried to look away but I grabbed her by the chin.
“The scars you fight, they’re from back then.”
She tried to fight it. Her energy was a screaming tangle of desperation. The real her inside threw herself against the barrier she’d erected all around her for protection. She was determined to hold on but the barrier shuddered. I kept staring into her eyes. I wasn’t letting her go. The real her hurled everything she had at the wall. The barrier shook and rumbled, then buckled under the weight of the truth.
“Yes.”
The release of the word was like an opening door. Glitter pulsing from her lips.
“They hurt you?”
“Not just me.” She buried her head in my shoulder. Her voice lost and scared. “Please, don’t make me go back there.”
I held onto her as she sobbed and felt a need to shield her. Whoever she had tried to help had torn her inside in more ways than I would ever understand. So where was my place now?
Did I just leave Renee to wander around in life and lose herself bit by bit or did I abandon a kid who needed my help before he gave up completely. What was I supposed to do?
“Keep on keeping on,” a voice whispered through the air, faint enough that I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it or if Nan really had spoken.
Renee cried herself to sleep and I put her into bed. I felt restless and frustrated. So I did the one thing that I knew would help me to forget everything for a while, the one thing that seemed the most constant thing in my life. I sat on the weight bench and got ready to go through my usual routine.
Blob came and sat on the edge of the treadmill. “Aren’t you big enough already?” he asked in his normal bored-sounding tone.
“I got to do something,” I said. “Besides, I can’t sleep.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m over-tired. If I sleep now, I’ll get visions.” I gripped hold of the handles, getting the right feel before starting my set. “I really don’t want visions.”
“Why?” Blob asked again.
“For once,” I said. “I really don’t want to know the future.”
I started my set and let the thoughts fade away. The future meant decisions, the future meant that someone who needed me was going to get hurt. Getting stuck in St. Jude’s had delayed the inevitable. Anything that would delay that was just fine by me. I breathed through the strain, counting the reps as I did so.
As far as I was concerned it could keep snowing . . . indefinitely.
Chapter 12
THE MORNING BROUGHT with it more of the white stuff. After next to no sleep, I found myself on the driveway shoveling long before anyone else had tumbled out of bed. Renee seemed to be one of those people blessed with an internal alarm clock. No matter what situation we were in, come seven o’clock there would be a smell of cooking and the clinking of plates.
I finished up my morning’s work and spread some salt over the top to make doubly sure no tiny paws skidded. I felt Renee’s presence behind me.
“Morning,” I said, enjoying the sounds of a mountain forest in full song.
Renee chuckled and I turned to find her leaning against the doorjamb, two steaming cups in hand.
“It’s funny. I got so used to you knowing I was around that going back to reality . . .” She chuckled again. “People must have thought I was odd.”
“You expecting them to sense you?” I asked.
“Yes and no.” She stepped forward and handed me a cup. “I found it hard readjusting to people not seeing inside me.”
I took the steaming offering and drained it in one gulp. By now Renee was used to this and handed me the second cup. “Maybe that’s ’cause you didn’t want them to?”
“Good thing I ain’t just people then,” I answered, then drained the second cup.
The birds whistled out their calls. The tree tops were lost beneath the white mist. It was so peaceful here.
“You don’t seem as scared as you did last night,” I said, glancing at her. The fear cloud was paler this morning for sure.
“Daylight tends to bring back my sanity,” she said.
Two birds chased each other through the trees, then came to land on the snow and bobbed about. They looked like they didn’t have a care in the world. I smiled down at them, thankful for that reminder of simple joy.
“Aeron . . . the scars . . .” Renee sighed, walked to the banister, and leaned over it. Her gaze locked on the birds, she seemed paler somehow. Like she was attempting, at least mentally, to camouflage herself with the snow. “I can’t let them hurt you too.”
So this was the dark stretch that Nan was talking about. “I don’t know what happened to you.” I went to her side and rested my hip against the wood. “And you don’t have to tell me nothin’—”
“I want to,” she whispered. Again, her intensity shot like firecrackers from her. Her profiled features almost glowed white in the reflected light from the snow. “But what I want and what is best are two different things.” She dropped her chin almost to her chest.
I looked back at the bobbing buddies. They had found the path and were attempting to hack at it with their beaks. I walked to a box next to the wall and pulled out a bag of seeds. I scattered a handful over the pathway before hanging the bag inside the feeder.
Renee watched me as I headed back to her and reached out to touch my arm. “I need you to know that no matter how far I have to separate myself from you . . .”
Her pale grey eyes gazed up at me, the cyan rims caught in the light. I could see her forcing every wall she had down.
“I meant what I said back in Oppidum. I am not playing with you like Sam was and I do care about you.” The truth glistened as it fell from her lips.
Knowing that her words were genuine eased the tension from my muscles and I let out a huge sigh of relief. Renee smiled and squeezed my arm. She did care. She really did care.
I wanted to say something, to tell her that it meant everything. To tell her that I didn’t know how the heck to operate without her being around. They seemed like dumb things to say. Things that, no doubt, she would have guessed and tolerated. There were times when I felt like a six-foot-five puppy dog following her about.
Before I could find a way to look as dumb as I felt, a little face appeared in the doorway.
Renee looked at Zack and smiled at him. “You hungry?”
Zack nodded and looked at me, he wanted a hug or as we sometimes called them back in Oppidum, a cwtch. I went to him and hoisted him up till he was perched on my hip. I carried him into the kitchen as Renee set to work concocting us breakfast.
“Waffles sound good?” she asked as she whipped around the kitchen like some top chef. I would have asked her if she’d ever been a chef during the course of her CIG career but I knew she wouldn’t appreciate too many questions in front of the little guy.
Zack nodded. Then he started to move his hands around like he was rubbing his stomach.
“You okay?” I asked. “You got pain?”
Renee looked up from her task and smiled and flicked her finger out from her nose at him. Now, I ain’t completely simple but I was lost and they both knew it from the laughter that greeted me.
“Zack uses sign language,” Renee explained. She rubbed her stomach in different directions like he had. “This means thank you.” Then she flicked her finger at me. “That’s ‘true’ but is used as a way of saying, ‘You’re welcome.’”
“I suck at things like this,” I confessed to Zack. “I’ll stick to the flashes.”
He beamed at me and Renee raised her eyebrows. “Flashes?” She was only half concentrating on her task and half on me.
“Sure. Zack sends out his thought and I pick up on it.” Before Renee could start her scowling, I lifted my hands up. “It just happened and I needed to know his name.”
“Was he injured?” she asked.
“Don’t think so,” I said. “Why?”
Renee went back to her task of cooking, and I could see her thoughts whirring around. “It’s like when you really need something from me and you think it.”
She froze and I rolled my eyes in Zack’s direction. “I freak her out.”
He nodded.
“Need something?” She wasn’t facing me but the careful, considered tone gave away that she was panicking about something. She gave me a stomach ache just watching her sometimes.
“Like now, you really want me to tell you I can’t read you at all.” I leaned on the counter.
Her shoulders slumped.
“It’s only when you want me to read it,” I reassured her. Not that I knew that for a fact.
If it was anyone else I’d find it real easy to delve into their thoughts if I wanted to. Most folks’ thoughts were connected to their feelings but there were some, like Renee, who could block my prying. Not that I ever pried voluntarily, I had enough junk in my own head.
“So what am I thinking now?” she asked, again that careful tone, that cautious timber.
“Your aura is all pink and wavy,” I told her. “Apart from that, I ain’t got a clue.”
Renee mumbled something under her breath too quiet for me to understand and I looked at Zack who had been closer.
He shot her words into my head. “Can’t see anything to do with herself.”
“Nope,” I answered, shooting Zack a grin. “But then I told you that already.”
Shocked, she turned around, nearly knocking the waffles on the floor.
“How did you—?” She looked at Zack and put her hands on her hips. “I guess I know whose side you are on.”
Her chastising was playful but Zack bolted toward me and attached himself, limpet-like, to me.
With her looking at me for an explanation, I cuddled Zack and lowered my voice. “He had some nasty things happen in front of him.”
Renee walked to Zack and took his hands. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said, her tone as soft as I’d ever heard it. “I’ll never hurt you, okay?”
“She’s a hero,” I told him, grinning. “She should even have her own cloak.”
Renee put her hands on her hips. She could be a lot like Nan sometimes. “Aeron—”
“She saved me once from a really bad person . . . she just sweeps in and—”
“Aeron!” Renee snapped and I stopped my babbling.
“What?”
I heard Martha opening the door behind me and swallowed hard. “Uh . . . lucky escape, huh?”
Instead of being mad at me like I was expecting, Renee’s eyes twinkled and she winked at Zack before heading back to rescue the waffles. Zack hugged me tighter and I almost heard his sweet voice in my head.
“She’s a hero like you,” he said and his face set with steely determination. “I like her.”
“Wait till you taste her cooking,” I mumbled. “Then you’ll really be a goner.”
Chapter 13
THE MORNING MOVED quicker than I had expected after we dropped off Zack to Martha and headed with the rescue team back down to the avalanche scene. Sheriff McKinley led most of the operations now that he was all fixed up but it was a thankless task. Most of the folks who had been in the vehicles had been swept from the road down the steep cliff side.
By the afternoon we had started rappelling down the snowy drop, searching what areas we could reach. I didn’t hold out high hopes for survivors as the hollowness of lost lives hung so thick in the air that I was sure even the least sensitive soul was aware of it.
Renee marshaled the afternoon by whisp
ering at me until I was pretty sure that her voice was a constant track replaying over and over. It got to the point where Mark asked me if I wanted a hot drink and I stood waiting for Renee to give me the answer. It took a while for me to notice that both he and Renee were looking at me and by that time there was no way I could get out of the situation without seeming deaf, crazy, or just plain dumb.
“I . . . sure. Thanks,” I answered, making a show of staring down the snowy slopes.
“We did the best we could,” he said and I felt a hand squeeze my shoulder. “We all appreciate that you guys are working with us.” He cleared his throat as he stood next to me. “Not a lot of people would spend so much time trying to help strangers.”
“I think you’d be surprised there.” I smiled at Renee and my words brought a flush of color to her cheeks. “You see, some folks will put their life’s dream on the line for someone, even when the odds say that it’s a hopeless case.”
Mark raised his eyebrows and the skeptical glazing of his eyes made me smile. “Can’t imagine anyone doing that for me. But then, I can’t imagine doing that for anyone.”
“Some folks are just heroes,” I said.
Renee fiddled with her coat sleeve.
“I just hope someday I can be like her,” I whispered, more a thought to myself than out loud. Renee had given me freedom from a place I thought I’d never be released from, she’d stuck by me and the minute she was going through hell, what was I doing?
“You’re more hero than I am,” Renee whispered as Mark wandered back to the group. I guessed he was confused by my mutterings.
“Uh uh,” I said. “I can’t shoot like you. I can’t protect people like you and I sure as heck can’t organize a rescue operation like you.”
“I spent my life in training to do it,” Renee said, nudging me to tell me to keep my voice down. “With training you’d be better.”
“You think I’m going anywhere near a gun?”
Renee smiled. “Maybe not the sharp-shooting—”
“Maybe nothin’,” I said. “I ain’t touching the things.”
I expected some kind of protest, some reason why I should. I was prepared for some explanation that, with the right amount of cajoling by some stern-looking shooting coach, I’d be as good as she was or as willing.