“I lost somebody close to me once . . . I blamed myself until it
tightened a noose ’round my whole life.”
I wasn’t a doctor but I hoped that how I’d scraped through it
could help him.
“Thing is, nothin’ can bring your buddy back. You can stand there
and watch him die until it drives you crazy but it changes nothin’.”
“Should have been me,” Simon said. “I should have been where he
was . . . Should have made sure he had his lifeline attached. It was my job but
he said he’d go.”
“Then maybe you owe him enough to stop drowning in liquor and take
the chance you’ve been given?”
He glared at me first and I got that I was being blunt but I’ve
learned that deep pain makes folks, and that includes me, blind to everything
but its suffocating walls. Pain, doubt, fear in my eyes are the dark that tries
to suck the light right out of their victim like vampires. I prayed I was
throwing the guy a lifesaver and socking one to the dark at the same time.
“Maybe,” he mumbled and squeezed himself tighter. “I can’t go
back.”
“That why you won’t go up against Brad?”
Simon nodded.
“He giving you money or somethin’?”
His shoulders slumped as he let go of the secrets that were eating
him from the inside out. “He owes me money from back when we were dumb kids . .
. bailed him out . . . I called in the favor.”
“He paying up?”
Simon met my eyes and he didn’t need to tell me “no” out loud.
“Tell you what,” I said. “How ’bout we just shake on it and you
don’t have to tell me nothin’. That way you ain’t betraying Brad.”
“I was next to the wall on the left,” he said. “I was over from
the other two ’cause I was trying to tie my damn shoe lace.”
He laughed through his memory.
“I was so hungover that it took me a couple of minutes. Mark and
Brad didn’t even notice.”
I pointed to the breakfast bar but Simon shook his head. I thought
he wanted to say his piece and go but I didn’t want him to think I was throwing
him out.
“The guy your friend shot looked up at her . .
. His eyes were so cold, you know?” He rubbed his arms. “He called her
something . . . I saw his mouth move but I couldn’t hear.” Frowning, he stared
down at the floor. “Next thing I know there’s a load of brick dust flying at my
head.”
“Brick dust?”
Simon shoved his hands in his pockets. “Second time I nearly got
killed . . . freaked me out . . . you know?”
My heart was way ahead of my brain and was booming away in my
chest before I made the connection. “You think he shot at you?”
“No,” Simon said. “I think he shot at
her
but she was
faster.”
“Can I touch you?” I asked and Simon’s eyebrows disappeared up
into his hair almost. “I mean . . . Look . . . I . . .”
“You one of those people who sees things, like Joyce.”
I opened and closed my mouth. “Joyce?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Woman told me not to go back to sea . . . didn’t
listen . . . she’s always right.”
“Joyce . . .” My brain had overtaken my heart and both of them
seemed to be competing in a sprint. “Two shots . . . she
saw
it!”
“Most probably,” he said. “You aren’t as manic as her.”
I shrugged. “I had a lot of help.” Had I? Sure Renee had been
there and Nan had left me her letters and visited but why wasn’t I as wired as
she was?
“I don’t see the future,” I told him. “But I can see what happened
if you let me . . . I could help stop the guy . . . save her . . . if you help
me.”
He held out his hand. “Least I can do.”
“Mark, You coming?” Hope so . . . Maybe you can talk some sense
into Brad. I just want my money . . . I need the damn money!
“Nah, heading to the café though.”
I got my reasons for drinking . . . why can’t you see that. Oh
God, there’s Joyce . . . I can’t face her . . .
“Gotta tie my shoelace.” Just try not to look
at her, at Charlie. I’d give anything to bring him back. Wish I could make it
alright. Wish I could have swapped places. Joyce was right . . . why didn’t I
listen. Every mother has a right to protect their child. My fault . . . all my
fault.
“Hey, Ice Queen . . .”
Who is that guy, what is he saying. Is that French? “Lady, I think
you should get inside—”
Bang.
Bang.
Shit, the guy nearly took my head off . . .
“Down!”
Whoa, she hit him . . . She had a gun.
“You okay?” Come on, up, that’s it . . . gotta get you inside.
“Charlie!”
“Coming! Out of the way, Hal!”
“Told you she was a lunatic . . . Screw loose.”
Come on, you gotta move, the guy could get back up. “Are you
hurt?” No blood. Thank God there’s no blood. “Let’s get you inside.”
Where’s Charlie? “She’s unharmed. You got it?”
“I got the gun, Simon . . . Sheriff . . . you coming?”
SIMON LEFT WITHOUT another word as I paced around in a crazy
circle until Blob got so mad that he pushed a stool over, and I jumped and squealed
like a little girl.
“What you do that for?” I barked, but judging by how dizzy I was
when I tried to glare at him, he’d done me a favor.
“I can see the guy’s face,” I told Blob. “I can see his mouth
moving but I can’t hear what he said.” I ran my hand through my hair. “He shot
at her though . . . What do I do with that?”
Blob sat on the breakfast counter beside me. “
Find out who I
am?”
I felt a wave of guilt add to the growing tide of frustration and
panic, all of which sent me to do one thing.
“You spend a lot of time doing that,”
Blob remarked as I
headed to the bench.
“Why?”
“Helps me think.” I wasn’t even in workout clothes but I didn’t
care. “McKinley is the guy we think killed you, right?”
“Right.”
An idea formed in my head and it made me smile. “You’d like to
scare the living daylights out of a guy like the one who killed you?”
“You don’t know who it was.”
I started my reps. “No, but I know the type . . . bullying people
. . . hurting people.”
Blob was now floating in front of me.
“I’m listening.”
“Thought you might. There’s a boy called Seth who really needs to
be . . . enlightened.”
Blob was well and truly on my side and I told him my plan. He
vanished with a pop. I lay back on the weight bench in between sets and my
eyelids grew heavy and the last thing I heard was my own snoring somewhere in
the distance.
Chapter 21
YOU OPEN YOUR eyes to the dimly lit room. A young woman leans over
you, tending to your arm. You sneer at her enough to make her back away from
you. How dare she touch you? How dare she even look at you? You’re so much
cleverer, so much more evolved than her.
She offers you water, discounting the truth in your eyes when your
mask slides back down into place. A fox lurking among the hens, they will
never, never suspect . . . until you want them to.
People are so pathetic, feelings, emotions, pathetic. Even the
pain in your arm, it is nothing. You are superior to it and everything else.
You hold the power. You hold the control. They are nothing compared to you.
“I’ll fetch the doctor,” she tells you.
You look around. She is alone with you. Your arm is better. You
reach out for her hand, you feign fear.
“Where am I?” you ask. “What happened?”
So easy to fool her.
She comes closer, prey to be taken.
“Where is the doctor?” you ask.
“Downstairs,” she says. “I’ll go get him.”
Your smile masks the fact that you have a glass in your hand,
raised above her head.
“Why don’t you just stay here,” you tell her.
Too easy.
THE WALLS SMUDGE into view, stale, industrial. Mechanical whir of
an engine idling, the paper pinned to the corkboards flutters as the door
opens.
“You are nobody. You only have this badge ’cause they felt sorry
for you.”
Slamming, fighting, ripping of material.
“You need to learn your place . . .”
Screams, shouts, the dull thud of a head meeting a wall.
“You killed him! Oh, God . . . You killed him.”
Laughter swirls, the vision fades, the deputy’s badge clutched in
unmoving fingers.
I sat bolt upright narrowly avoiding concussion on the weights.
Now, there were three kinds of visions that I seemed to have. The flashes, they
were like watching a minute of a blockbuster movie in 3D. They seemed to be
like a warning beacon. A feeling so intense that it rippled through the area
like an aftershock. I had one with the avalanche and I was fast beginning to
learn that they were the most common of the three.
Then, there were the dreams. The kind that got me up close and
personal. I lived through all the sights and smells and feelings like I was
actually there. I found it really hard to figure out if it was something I was
going through or a vision. The dreams were another’s experience, as it was
happening. Somehow, I was living the event with the person, experiencing what
they’d experienced. They normally happened just after or during the event that
was taking place.
Then, the last, the prophetic ones. Like I said before, I hated
them. All fire and fury and strange symbolic things that I didn’t have the
faintest idea how to decipher. The prophetic were clearly what
could
be,
or
will
be or
may
be . . . I didn’t know . . . Either way they
freaked me out and I hated them.
This dream was close to prophetic and there was only once in my
life that I saw the future in a dream as clear. Back in the institution I had a
friend called Yasmin, I dreamt that she was leaving, I dreamt that she would
end up in a body bag . . . It had come true.
I clambered off the weight bench, grabbed my coat, and hurried out
of the cabin but I was pretty sure that I’d left my sanity behind. I was shivering
and chattering by the time I found Joyce and Charlie’s house. It would have
helped if I’d dug my hat and gloves out of the pocket. Dumb. As I belatedly
pulled them out, I looked at the quaint house. It wasn’t anywhere near the
luxury of those I’d seen so far in St. Jude’s but it was well looked after.
Somebody had lavished love on it and even though the snow covered up the
garden, I couldn’t miss that it was neat and, no doubt, bloomed in the summer.
Finding the place hadn’t taken too long as her “gift,” now I had stopped being
so blind to it, radiated from the place like something on the Las Vegas strip.
Let’s hope they didn’t do Elvis impressions.
“Hey, Aeron!”
I turned at the sound of Evan’s voice. He hurried over, his breath
puffing behind him. I offered him a smile as he hurried up the path I’d made in
the snow. He was a great kid but I had to speak to Charlie.
“How’s Duke?” I asked, trying to avoid the swirling crackle of
energy over his head.
“Fine,” he mumbled. “I gotta tell you something. I didn’t think it
meant anything but it could help.”
“Hit me with it.” I hoped he wasn’t going to tell me Duke thought
I was crazy or offer me more invitations to drink at his folk’s place. I was
starting to worry about him.
“The guy who got . . . well . . .” He shrugged. “He was asking
’bout someone. I overheard him asking Brad. He had a picture.” Evan shoved his
hands in his pockets. “I didn’t hear anything else though but I could of sworn
it was her in the picture.”
“You saw it?” I guessed he meant Renee. His energy was distracting
me too much. He was so nervous just talking to me for some reason.
Evan shook his head. “Well . . . sort of . . . I’m not sure.
That’s why I didn’t say anything before.”
“Evan?” His mother’s voice rippled through the night air. “Evan,
you out there?”
He sighed. “I gotta go. I was just letting Duke out to go before
bed.”
He went to leave but I pulled him around by the arm and gave him a
bear hug. I was getting way too mushy but the kid was cute. “Thanks. You get
inside and stay safe.”
I’d never seen so many shades of crimson on one guy’s face before
but he mumbled something I couldn’t understand and sauntered off. His aura
danced around like he’d scored a touchdown. Maybe the snow had made him crazy.
After watching him hurry off, I took a deep breath and turned back
to the door. Here went nothing. I hammered on it, hoping they were up as late
as Evan.
“Charlie?” I was sure it was after midnight but I had no sense of
time. There were two deputies in town. If he was at home, then I needed him to
stay there so I could go rescue Hal.
“Charlie!”
“Coming.” I heard the locks clink on the other side. There were an
awful lot considering that he was law enforcement. I got the feeling it was
more for Joyce when he was on nights. “What happened?”
Charlie was in his boxers. Boxers with little sheep on them. I
nearly forgot why I was there at the sight.
“Aeron?” he asked, stopping me mid-chuckle.
“Right,” I said. Focus. “Joyce . . . Is Joyce in?”
He looked at me like he didn’t know whether to panic or punch me.
“She’s in the kitchen.”
“I need you to get dressed,” I told him and he looked at me as
though he would chastise me for bossing him. “Look, it’s an emergency but I
think your wife holds information I need . . .
Please
.”
Charlie nodded, beckoned me in, and shut the door behind me.
“Joyce, Aeron is here to see you.”
He headed off to the left and pointed me in the direction of the
kitchen.
I had to work fast. I strode into the tiny kitchen. The
overwhelming ache of heartbreak and grief soaked the room. I clutched my chest,
fighting not to break into sobs. Joyce was looking at a picture. The boy she’d
lost at sea, Simon’s friend.
“He’d be thirty three next month,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she
was talking to me or herself. “Grew up together . . . played together. He
always followed Simon around.” She stroked the picture. “Saw it . . . saw it
before it happened and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.”
“And now you’ve seen something else, right?” I edged closer, the
pain more unbearable now. I clutched the back of the pine kitchen chair for
comfort.
Joyce looked up at me as though I wasn’t really there, as though
she were talking to her imagination. “I suffered. The guilt, it’s unbearable
but when I saw . . . no . . . no . . . it wouldn’t happen again. I would make
sure it didn’t.”
I sifted through all the flashes of memories I’d seen, wishing
that I’d taken the time to write them down, make sense of them. Had it been
Hal’s point of view or Earl’s? Either way, she’d been standing over the body.
Joyce had been looking for the gun.
“You took something, didn’t you?” I couldn’t blame her. She was
trying to protect what she had left. Fear and guilt had her in their
parasitical grip.
“No heart there.” She shuddered. “Not a slither. Had to keep him
at bay.”
“Was it a gun?” Who had no heart? Maybe she could see my past like
I saw? I shook that thought away. Joyce’s distracted state of mind was
affecting me. Holding onto the chair, I closed my eyes. I needed to know about
the shooting. I needed to protect myself. I focused on the armor, the armor
from Ephesians.
Belt . . . truth,
breastplate . . . righteousness, feet . . . readiness, shield . . . faith,
helmet . . . salvation, sword . . . spirit.
Each part of the verse
clinked into place. I visualized it glowing, reverberating with solid white
light. The ache faded, the distracted haze cleared and I opened my eyes.
“Did you take a gun from him?”
“Who?” Joyce blinked and focused her eyes on me as if she was
waking up. She smiled as if she’d only just realized I was there. “Aeron, what
can I do for you . . . coffee?”
Charlie came into the room. The panic ignited. I needed answers.
“Did you take a gun?”
“Gun?” Charlie scowled. He was too much like my father. “Joyce,
what is going on?”
Joyce shook her head but she was lying. All of us knew it.
“Joyce, lots of people will be in trouble if you don’t tell the
truth.” I knelt in front of her as she sat at the kitchen table. “Joyce, I’ve
seen the deputy’s badge. I know why you’re scared.”
Joyce shook her head. Her eyes locked onto mine as though she was
desperate to ask me what I’d seen, to hear me say the words that she wasn’t
crazy and she wasn’t alone. Her instinct to protect slammed down the shutters
before I could reach her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Charlie grunted. “What’s the emergency anyway?”
“The guy that Re—Serena shot,” I said. “He shot first.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow and wandered to the coffee pot. He slung
his jacket back over the chair. “You wake me up at eleven o’clock at night for
this?”
“Charlie,” I said, attempting not to grit my teeth or snarl at
him. “I
need
you to listen to me.”
He wasn’t interested. He was tired and I could sense his alert
ready-for-action mood quickly souring into grumpy. He thought I was wasting his
time. I had no more options. Without Charlie, I couldn’t help Renee, and
something told me loud and caterwauling, that I needed her and her skills
against the guy on the ground.
“Charlie,” I said. “Serena’s real name is Commander Renee Black.”
Nothing, he didn’t flinch. Guess the guy didn’t watch the vet
parades. “She’s my boss. We work for the CIG.”
Not even a whistle.
“You’ve heard of them?”
“No,” he said, folding his arms. “But enlighten me.”
Now when a person says those words, they ain’t looking for convincing,
they are short of calling you a looney tune. What did I do now? “It’s military.
We protect people . . . special people.”
Charlie could have rolled his eyes, he looked so unconvinced.
Great, he was a nightmare when woken.
“Renee shot once. I saw her hit a suspect in the kneecaps in
pretty much full darkness with two shots.” I walked to him and leaned over. “If
she had wanted to kill him, she would have.”
“The road’s opening tomorrow morning,” Charlie said, sipping his
coffee. “Guess we’ll see then.”
I didn’t dare touch him, Joyce was eying me like I was a viper and
he would arrest me the second I got near him. “You got a cell phone?”
He nodded. “Sure, it isn’t going to help you with the tower down.”
I pulled out the phone that had been Renee’s. “She always told me
that the card in this would work in any phone.”
“Most do.”
“You’ll get reception. Put it in your phone and look for Lilia or
Ursula . . . please.” I handed him the phone. “Tell them that Renee is in
trouble, tell them what happened. I have to get to the station.”
“Why?” he asked, his disinterest changed to confusion, his frown
deepened.
“Because a deputy is going to get hurt tonight . . . bad . . . and
if you ain’t at the station then Hal is in the firing line.”
“Are you threat—?”
“No.” What was with this guy? Did he go to sleep and all his brain
cells had fallen out? “
Please
. Joyce has the gun that the man dropped.
She has seen, the same as me, that a deputy is in danger. She won’t let the
same thing happen to you as it did to your son.”