The Keystone: Finding Home

by Seren Goode

  I lost track of who was shouting at who as I tried to breathe through my nose and slow down the pain. Shim’s gaze was glued to the street behind the bus, waiting for a black car to appear or someone to race out of the woods behind us. The bus took off with a lurch. We had made it. I pushed my face into my good arm that was braced on the seat in front me. My breathing was shaky from the adrenaline rush, and I kept my injured arm cradled against my stomach. I felt Shim slide into the seat next to me. He was breathing hard. When I finally looked up, the twins and Jaxon had found seats behind us. We all sat in stunned silence for the trip back to downtown Portland. The noise of the city and the automatic inhalations and exhalations of the bus as it let people on and off muted as we got lost in our thoughts.

  Chapter 24

  On the Run, Again

  The bus dropped us off after the Steel Bridge on the west bank of the Willamette River. We walked around for a while so we could check for tails. Shim kept trying to get me to stop so he could check my arm. Since I didn’t feel the need to throw up anymore, I told him it was getting better; the throbbing was nonstop, but the pain only radiated through my body when I moved.

  Shim pulled me down an alley and behind a building.

  Handing off our bags to Jaxon, he turned to me and demanded, “Take off your top.”

  I arched a brow at him. “Excuse me? A bit forward.” I tried for a laugh, but it came out more as whimper.

  Shim flushed. “I need to look at your shoulder joint. I’ve dislocated my arm twice. Jaxon’s done it once. If that’s what happened, it needs to be treated.”

  “No way.” I stepped back.

  “Raise your arm above your head, Grace.” He put his hands on his hips and waited with fake patience.

  I blew out an exasperated breath and stretched up my arm all the way, gritting my teeth. It raised two inches. “Arghhhh. Oh…” I gasped, and tears burned out of my tightly clenched eyes as I clutched my arm to my chest. Stars above, that hurt, and it hadn’t worked out as I had hoped.

  “Now that you’ve proven you’re not fine—take off your shirt.”

  I was panting and trying not to pass out. I managed to say through clenched teeth, “Even if I wanted to, I can’t.” Beads of sweat had broken out on my forehead.

  “I can help,” Breeze volunteered. “Grace, you have that button up shirt you wore yesterday in your bag?” At my weak nod, she instructed Skylar, “Pull out the scissors from the first aid kit.”

  “Might was well grab tape, the ace, and an ice pack too,” Shim added, his concerned eyes staying fixed on my face as he took the items without looking and handed them off to Jaxon.

  Breeze cut my shirt from neck to arm, then on each side, then she held the modified halter top in place while Shim took over, probing my shoulder and elbow and checking the joints and red welts on my wrist. I squeaked and shrilled at each touch like a cat caught under a rocker.

  “Well, doc”—I panted, the pain sharp now—“how is it…owwwwie.” I cringed and tried not to completely break down like a baby as he probed a tender spot.

  “Not a doctor.” He looked grim. “Just going off my own experience, I think it’s very badly bruised but not dislocated. The joints seem okay, but you are starting to swell up. Do you think if I tape it you can keep going?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll be fine. Tape it up, coach. I’ll be good to go.” I bragged like an injured sports hero and managed to muster a weak smile, not sure if it was convincing.

  Shim gave me a measured look—one I was starting to associate with him trying to read my mind—then he nodded. He reviewed the selection Skylar had found in the kit and picked up a roll of blue tape. He took the scissors from Breeze and proceeded to cut several lengths. He had Skylar help me move my arm as he applied the tape in a complicated pattern across my arm, shoulder, and down my side. Then he took the white roll and taped the ice pack to my shoulder and used the ace to immobilize the injured arm to my side. Instead of feeling trapped, my injured arm felt supported, and I immediately felt some relief from the pain.

  Breeze had the guys turn away again and she helped me get my one good arm into a new button-up shirt and my jacket. With the empty sleeve flapping around, I looked ridiculous, like I was smuggling something under my shirt on one side, but having it taped and iced helped the pain, and the other arm was a fully functional, so it would have to do.

  “Okay, let’s talk about the call Cambridge was making,” Shim said, first handing me two pain killers from the kit, then the water to wash them down. In between swallows, I recounted the part of the phone conversation I had heard. Shim had caught the bits of it I’d missed, and we were able to piece together a pretty clear picture. Actually, it was a muddy, foggy, completely incomprehensible picture.

  “So, we know Cambridge recognized the stone and reported us to someone at Helios,” Jaxon summarized, and my blood ran cold at hearing the name tied to my mother’s death.

  “And he is working with at least two people, Dawes and Smith, and he is meeting them in a place called Gypsum on Friday,” Shim added.

  “He called the rocks keystones.” Breeze looked thoughtful as she fingered the cuff Skylar had brought out of his bag. “That’s the same word Waters used.”

  I didn’t know what it meant that Cambridge used the same name, but it wasn’t good.

  “I bet Cambridge or Stringham stole a piece of the stone from our parents,” Jaxon proposed, holding perfectly still as Breeze continued to finger the cuff on his wrist.

  “Or our parents stole the stones from Cambridge and Stringham. Maybe that is why they were being chased.” Shim flipped the statement around, and it was an unpleasant thought.

  “That doesn’t sound like my mom at all,” I protested.

  “What do we have in our pockets now? Stolen journal, rocks, and an ancient artifact. What if the professors had already collected that old necklace and the stones, and our parents snatched the stones and made them into jewelry?” Shim replied.

  Oh, Stars.

  “Listen,” Jaxon demanded. “I don’t know why we are debating this when the important bit of the conversation was where Cambridge was ordering that we be caught or killed. Did you somehow miss that?”

  Yes, that part we had all heard, and it added an even greater sense of urgency to find out what on Earth our parents were up to. But that wasn’t the most important bit to me.

  “No, the most important bit was that this Smith woman has my mother’s diary. The Helios has the diary. And if they have that, then they killed Lincoln.”

  The grim conclusion was unsettling and prioritized our next actions. First, stay alive. Second, find Gypsum.

  Jaxon didn’t believe in downtime, so he had used the time Shim was wrapping my arm to hop online and look up the location of Gypsum. At this point, we were only using the burner phones for internet searches and the stones for confidential conversations. He found one place in Nevada called Gypsum Cave and another place called Gypsum in Colorado.

  “Let’s try Nevada first since its closer. We have resources in Vegas.”

  “Your da– Logan?” I quickly switched at Shim’s wince.

  “Yeah, we can stay at his place. He’s gone on business all summer.” I thought it odd the brothers hadn’t thought to call Logan O’Connell earlier for help. I mean, he is their dad, and I mentioned as much.

  “No, we might be in trouble now, but Logan is trouble.”

  “Calling Dad would be like calling in a volcano to fight off a tiger. He doesn’t care about collateral damage,” Jaxon agreed without looking at us, his eyes glued to the screen. Jaxon perked up. “There is a bus every morning and evening. We just need to get our stuff and another burner phone, then we can head out in the morning.”

  We had the essentials with us. The twins had their backpacks with Duchess tucked away in the third one that Jaxon was wearing. He said it was to hold
his board, but he didn’t like it when someone else carried Duchess. Jaxon also had my messenger bag strung across his shoulders and hanging in front.

  With a goal in mind, the twins lead us as we headed to the room we were staying in. Shim positioned himself on my side by the swinging empty sleeve, and Jaxon brought up the rear.

  We had covered most of the distance to the room when a huge man with gold-rimmed sunglasses, a Euro-style blue suit, and a yellow tie stepped out of an alley a few yards ahead of us. He couldn’t have looked more out of place on the Portland streets. A few seconds later, I spotted another one in a charcoal grey suit with a messy do that spoke of hours in front of a mirror. Both had tattoos creeping out from their shirt collars. My gut started to churn.

  The bus had dropped us off on Glisan Street. After Shim bandaged me up, we had headed south. We had planned to spend the night going through the material we had found and, after a good night’s sleep, catch a bus to Las Vegas.

  But those plans changed quickly.

  When the third fitted suit turned up, I whispered to Shim, “Either we have wandered into a European fashion show, or these suits are following us.” Shim gave a barely imperceptible nod.

  “Jax, get ready to grab BZ and Sky.”

  We turned a corner, out of view of the suits, and took off at a run. Jaxon snagged the twins by their arms and pulled them along as he filled them in.

  “I thought it was starting to trend Italian,” Skylar huffed out as he was dragged along.

  After a quick dash down a side alley and two more streets, we ducked into a dark shadow beside a dumpster. Cold dread settled into my stomach as a shiny black car crawled by. Behind dark glasses, the driver scanned the crowd.

  “We’re being chased by the Matrix.” Breeze panted as she bent over, hands on her knees, catching her breath.

  We abandoned the idea of returning to the room—everything there was disposable—

  and decided to take the bus out tonight. We just had to kill a few hours and not get nabbed in the process.

  A man walking backwards near us caught my attention. He had a microphone and was telling the history of the area to a group of camera-wielding tourists that followed.

  “Come on.” I grabbed Shim with my good arm, and we all merged into the middle of the group of tourists. Perfect. Ten minutes later, when it started to mist, the tour members opened up umbrellas. Even better! Nothing says “I’m not local” like an umbrella in Portland.

  The group entered a building, and each person waited their turn to descend a flight of stairs to the basement. There was another group at the entry of the building and a third already underground. In the jostle of people, cameras, and bags, I tried not to slip on the wet concrete floor. Shim gently tucked an arm around my waist, being careful not to bang into my injured arm. At the bottom of the stairs, we followed our group through a basement as the tour guide went on about underground Portland’s Shanghai tunnels. It was only as the people thinned that we realized we had lost the twins and Jaxon.

  There was a moment of panic as we covertly searched the group, trying not to tip off anyone that we weren’t supposed to be there.

  “He isn’t here.” Shim’s voice was tense, the way he always got when he lost Jaxon.

  “I’m sure they are together, and he and the twins will turn up at the Greyhound station in two hours.”

  It was early afternoon, but it had been a busy day: being lied to, breaking and entering, almost getting shot at, being man-handled—or was that girl-handled?—chased, and the whole topless in an alley thing—in front of Shim. Yeah, except for all that, the tour would have been extremely interesting. But the adrenaline spike I had been running on crashed down around me in the dark, and suddenly, I was exhausted. We moved slower and slower until we finally fell to the back of the group.

  “Do you think we could just stop and rest for a bit?” I asked. I could see Shim in the light from the small penlight he had pulled from his pocket.

  “Sure, might as well kill those two hours here. It’s cold but dry.” He pulled us away from the group and into a side room. As the light of the group got farther away, the darkness closed in, and I could only see what the penlight illuminated. “Here, sit down.” He shined the light on a low crumbling concrete ledge in front of a wall. After he helped me sit down, I heard the sound of fabric sliding next to me. Suddenly, arms pulled me back until I landed on muscle. Shim had slid until his back was against the wall and pulled me against him. Cushioned, it only took a minute before my eyes started to close. “This okay?” he asked. I nodded against his shirt, struggling to keep my eyes open, but the fatigue from the pain and the dark won over, and I drifted off.

  I woke up sometime later in the dark with that disorienting sense of being lost in time and space. My nose was cold. Some cloth, a jacket, was draped over my shoulders, and the soft cushion under me was warm. “Where am I?”

  I felt a rumble under my ear and smelled mint. More importantly, how had I ended up sleeping on Shim?

  “Chased by suits, underground tunnel, you fell asleep?” Oh, that’s right, I thought as my brain started to wake up, followed by a moment of all-out hyper-awareness as the rest of my senses kicked in. I felt his hand stroking my hair, and hard, warm chest muscles under my check as I curled up on my uninjured side. I squeezed my hand to move—oh crap, I quickly moved it off his thigh.

  “Um, sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”

  “Don’t mind.” Typical Shim, brief and to the point.

  In the silence that followed, he flicked on the penlight. I could see his arm and the side of his chest in the glow from the beam. He had brought one of his feet up onto the concrete ledge, probably to support me better while I slept. My brain exited the post-sleep mush and started to whirl, and words just fell out of my mouth. “I miss my bag. I know Jaxon will take care of it, but, you know how you get used to having something all the time around you, and then when it’s gone, you feel like something is missing?” My brain wasn’t awake, but my mouth was, and I rambled on about the bag, unable to shut off my mouth or my nerves from being this close to Shim. “Have you ever noticed how disorientating it is to wake up in a strange place?” I kept my head on his chest, my cheek rubbing against his soft shirt while I spoke.

  “Grace.” Shim chuckled softly. I stopped speaking. “Grace.” He tugged at my chin, his hand steady as he pulled my face up to look at him. The glow from the flashlight gave a harsh shadow to his features: round cheeks, straight nose, strong jaw. My good arm was trapped under me, or I would have reached up and pushed his dark brown curls aside so I could see if his amber eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dark. With a slight smile, he shook his head, a little bashfully, and the hair fell back. They didn’t, but even in the darkness, I could see the intensity in his eyes.

  “I need to tell…” Before he could finish, I pushed up on my good arm, and my mouth touched his, my breath catching his words. His lips were soft with just the right amount of fullness as I pressed into them. He held back, surprised at first, then surrendered and returned the pressure. I loved the feeling of warmth and the tingle that went through me. He turned his head slightly for a better angle. There was an awkward moment where I tried to find an angle that worked, then we clicked into place with the satisfaction of putting in a lost puzzle piece. His mouth opened on mine and our tongues tangled, tentative, brief, before Shim pulled back.

  Moment of silence, then, “You okay?”

  I bit my lower lip, smiled, and nodded. “Uh huh.” I said, then my lips returned to his. He met me. We were better this time, his sigh vibrating into the friction of our mouths moving against each other. His lips parted, catching my moan and deepening the kiss. I didn’t remember doing it, but my good arm braced on the concrete under me, pushing me closer to him, closer to his lips. Holy Sources, this was a kiss!

  He parted my lips and tugged on the bottom one wi
th his teeth, then licked the spot. I chased his tongue, and we met in a heated open mouth kiss that made something deep in my stomach ache. His hand gently rubbed along my back, sliding up into my hair and cupping the back of my head, pulling me gently closer, before he seemed to remember he had wanted to talk and tried to pull back.

  “Grace, really, I need to tell you…”

  “No.” I shook my head, then snuggled down on his chest. “I’m so done with talking and bad news and chaos.” All the craziness could just go to H-E-double hockey sticks. I wanted one thing in my life to stay simple. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t have to be anything. It just is. No talk.”

  “But…”

  “What did I say?” I challenged, refusing to leave my perch on his chest and look up at him again. I wasn’t hurting. Actually, I felt great. We weren’t being chased, for the moment, and we were alone.

  He snorted a laugh. “Okay.” He leaned back in.

  A while later, it was the sound of shuffling feet and talking that broke us apart. Shim switched off the penlight, and we froze, breathing heavily, and listened. The glow of flashlights coming down into the basement broke the darkness.

  “We really need to go meet the twins and Jaxon. We should join this group,” Shim voiced reluctantly.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “About an hour. I used your necklace to contact Jax. They are safe.” I’m glad he had thought to do that. With the pain in my arm, I had completely forgotten. I was a terrible leader. Good thing I wasn’t in charge. “They are getting food, but we need to get to the station and buy the tickets. How is your arm?”