Authors: L.L. Muir
“Clever boy.”
“You think so?”
“We won't need a ladder to clear the fence, we can just use the ropes.”
“Clear the fence?” He looked at the wall of boards behind him. “What are you talking about?”
“We aren't going into the cornfield?”
He looked genuinely shocked at the idea.
“What for?”
Oh, she was getting very good at blushing, even in the dark.
“To be...um.”
“Alone?” He was grinning. “No. I had a better idea, actually.” He looked up into the darkness. “Ever been inside a real bona fide tree house before?”
He was expecting her to be afraid. Of course a mortal girl might be, so she’d play the part.
“Are you kidding? Do you know how high up that thing is?” Actually, she'd been dying to see the clubhouse since Lucas and Jonathan had spent an afternoon talking about it. They seemed to think it was pretty safe in spite of its age. The climb up sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, for mortals anyway.
“Is Miss Somerled afraid?” Jamison taunted, swinging the end of a rope in a circle.
“Yes, she is. Unless you have an elevator, I'm not going up there, let alone in the dark.”
“Your wish is my command, Miss.” He walked behind the tree and carried out a wood pallet. Ropes were tied to each corner then jumbled together where the end of one rope led up into the sky. “If you sit right in the center and keep yourself balanced, this is your very high-tech elevator.”
She laughed.
“Oh, come on. Try it. I've used it, just this morning, to take up wood for the windows. Lucas helped me.”
“He did?” What was Lucas up to? Why had he not mentioned it to her?
“Yeah. We made a very efficient team.”
“Lucas is nothing if not efficient.”
“So, will you try it?”
“Can't we wait until daylight, Jamison? What if I fall?”
“I'll tell you what. If you haven't got the hang of it by the time I get you four feet off the ground, I'll lower you back down and take you to your car.”
Skye didn't like the sound of that. Either she’d master his contraption, or he'd take her back to her car and be done with her.
She didn't want him to be done with her. Not yet. Not until he asked for more than she wanted, or was capable of giving. She wanted to be wanted, even if she couldn’t be had.
“Fine. But if I fall and die, I'll kill you.”
“It's a deal.”
A few moments and a few artful squeals later, she was seated calmly in the center of the pallet, gripping ropes above her head and being hauled up into the darkness.
“Okay, hold tight. Don't try to climb off, all right?”
“Okay.” She added a whimper for good measure.
“I'm locking the gears, then I'm going to climb up and help you off.”
The pallet jolted, then held firm. Sounds of Jamison climbing to her rescue gave her a little thrill, and she wondered if he could tell she was smiling in the inky shadows beneath the canopy of leaves. He slipped and cursed, then the shuffle of shoe on bark resumed.
“Just about there. Are you okay?”
“Yes. Be careful. I've decided to let you live until you get me on the ground again.”
“Oh, now. You've gotten all the way up here, it would be a shame to not take a look around before going back downstairs, don't you think?”
“Stairs. What a perfectly lovely idea. Maybe I'll stay up here while you build some.”
“Fine by me.”
He was there, steadying her flying carpet.
“Skye?”
“Yeah?”
“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
She’d clamped them shut and gripped the ropes while she’d concentrated on NOT letting Lucas or Jonathan into her head. The last thing she wanted was for this night to be scrutinized and analyzed with her sitting between two Somerleds like a motor being disassembled and the malfunction being identified.
“How do I get off?”
Jamison showed her the branch she could grasp and use to pull herself onto the tree. While she hadn't noticed many footholds along the trunk, there were plenty of thick boards to stand on just below the structure, probably used by the people building the house. A couple of rungs led up to the bottom, but the opening looked to be boarded up.
“How do we get in?”
“Through the door. Watch.” Jamison removed a metal bar from a line of rings and he carefully lowered the door, then tossed the heavy bar up inside, where it landed with a muffled clank. The boards across the door had only been for show. “I'll go up and pull you in after me.”
“Whatever you say.”
His legs disappeared.
Skye had nothing to fear. If she fell off the branches, she'd land gently on the ground; gravity had minimal effect on her. But she’d given a superb performance. In fact, the entire night she'd been just a bit too into the character.
She had to knock it off.
After
tonight
.
“Skye!” Jamison sounded worried.
“I'm here.”
“Good. Come on. Climb up as far as you can, then I'll lift you the rest of the way.” He still sounded worried.
She moved under the hole and grabbed onto the sides of the opening, then climbed up the last two rungs, finding herself seated on the floor of the clubhouse without needing any help from Jamison.
Although the only light came from the gap around her knees, Jamison moved around the pitch black room without bumping into much. Then he was next to her, nudging her to move away from the hole, pulling the door up and sliding the metal rod through something on the top of the door.
“What happened to the windows?”
“You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
He moved behind her and she waited for a flashlight to come on. Her eyes were straining to find some pinpoint of light, some shape a bit darker than the rest, but there was nothing.
His head lowered to her shoulder.
“Do you trust me?”
“No.”
He laughed. “Why not?”
“Because you’ve been acting funny all night, and now you won’t turn on a light.”
“I will if you’ll promise to trust me.”
“I can’t make that promise.”
“Are you always so honest?”
“Always.” After all, acting the simpering damsel wasn’t lying, technically. If it had been a sin, she surely wouldn’t have been able to do it.
“Excellent.” He pecked her shoulder. “Well, can you at least pretend to trust me for a minute?”
“Okay. I can pretend.”
“Wonderful. Now, keep pretending.”
He kissed her behind her ear and his mouth moved down the slope of her neck. She was waiting for his hands to head somewhere they shouldn’t, but they didn’t touch her.
“Skye?”
“Um hm.”
“I have your scarf here. Do you want it now?”
“Yes.”
“Reach back and take it.”
“I’m not going to fall for something so lame, Jamison. Hand it to me.”
“Take it. You can’t have it unless you take it.”
She reached behind her with both hands, felt her scarf dangling from around his neck and started to pull. Her right hand was pulled back and a bracelet was snapped onto her wrist. Before she could register anything else but the scarf in her other hand, he’d snapped a bracelet on that wrist as well.
She turned to face him, both hands trapped behind her. There was only blackness. His mouth brushed hers, and when she began to protest, a wad of cloth was stuffed between her teeth. Not rough, but insistent. While her mind reeled at what perversions Jamison might have planned for her, the scarf was taken from her hand and its length draped around her gag then tied behind her head. Her hair got caught in the knot.
He stepped away from her then. Every noise was amplified. A hand sliding over wood. The squeak of a hinge. Small things sprinkled across the floor.
There was a loud scratch; a match flared, a cloud of sulfur rose to the ceiling. Kneeling in front of a long wood box, Jamison lit a single candle, then carefully slid a glass cylinder over it. He turned toward her as he stood.
She dreaded seeing him smile over his little success, but he wasn’t smiling, and he was looking at her as serious as death.
The flame shook, but not from some disturbance in the air—his hands were shaking violently. He watched his shadow quiver on the wall while he moved to a low stool and sat the candle holder back down. Little white sticks seemed to dance on the floor, in unison with the candlelight. He’d spilled the matches.
Skye was very afraid; she was afraid for Jamison.
When he straightened and rubbed his face with both hands, it reminded her she couldn’t do the same.
“Thanks for pretending to trust me.” He looked at her then. And his mind yawned wide open...
Precious Heaven!
He remembered everything.
“I know you won't believe this, but I'll tell you first that I'm sorry.” Jamison walked toward her slowly, his hands out, like he was trying not to spook a horse. “I’m going to put you over there, then I won’t touch you. I promise.”
Skye glared, but allowed him to move her over to the long box. If he tried to put her inside, she wasn't about to cooperate.
“Sit.” He stepped back and waited for her to obey, then he moved a red and white Indian blanket from another box on the opposite wall and sat down, holding it. He didn't relax, she noticed, but sat on the edge, ready to spring to his feet if she tried anything.
“I'm sorry this was necessary, but I couldn't think of anything better.”
She murmured, hoping he might want to know what she had to say badly enough to remove her gag.
“I guess you'll just have to listen for a while, huh?”
He took a deep shaky breath, like he'd come to the end of a long day and needed to rest a while.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.
“Don't do that!” He was suddenly in front of her, grabbing her head, forcing her to look at him. “Don't call them. I know you can do things. That they can do things with their minds, but I promise you, if they come for you they'll wish they hadn't. We'll all wish they hadn't.”
He let go and moved back, letting the candlelight reach her face.
“Do you understand?”
She nodded. She hadn't intended to call the others...yet. She wanted to see if the evening could end without anyone else knowing that Jamison had become a threat again. Depending on what he planned to do, she might not have a choice.
The whole world knew what a teenage boy was capable of if he was pushed too far or thought he had no options. Usually those troubled boys didn't come from loving families, or even loving-but-flawed families. But she did understand the stress Jamison was under, with Kenneth dying. And she couldn't get to those memories of Texas. Only he knew what had happened there.
One unknown. Sometimes that was all it took to make the rest irrelevant.
He finally returned to his seat and started folding the blanket. If she was a mortal, she'd be getting a little cold, wouldn't she? Did he really not care?
She checked her internal temperature. It was fine. The room must be warmer than she thought. Looking around, she found a miniature radiator in the corner to her right.
“I wouldn't let you freeze.” He pointed to the box she was sitting on. “And there's food and water in the boxes, so we really have all the time in the world.”
She murmured again.
“Not yet. I can't trust you...not to scream...yet.”
She tried to promise.
“Sorry. Not yet.” He folded his arms and tucked his hands in his armpits. “I guess I could have taken you to the old Latimer place, or somewhere on the other side of town, but I didn't want to leave you alone very long. This way, they can see that I'm home. If I went missing along with you, that wouldn't be good.”
What disturbed Skye the most was the planning that had gone into getting her up there. Just how long did he think to keep her?
She tried to promise again, with her muted speech and then her eyes.
He looked away and eventually she wondered if he'd forgotten she was there.
“All right. I'll take it off. But if you scream, it goes back on. Got it?”
Jamison couldn't mean it. He couldn't. But all night she'd felt like she no longer knew him, hadn't she?
She nodded, almost reluctant to give him a reason to step close to her.
Delicately, he untied the knot, then pulled out the large white handkerchief he’d stuffed between her teeth.
Kenneth! What would he think if she didn't go see him tomorrow? Or for a few days? She wanted to ask Jamison just that, but she'd hold on to the question and use it when he didn't seem so...dangerous.
“I didn’t want to have to scare you like this, but I’d be a coward if I didn’t do something.” He wrapped the scarf around his neck and resumed his seat, then folded the hanky and put it in the pouch pocket of his dark sweatshirt. “Are you afraid?”
“No.”
“Liar. I thought you were always honest.” He sneered.
“I am. Why would I be afraid? You've been kissing me all night. Or was that just to get me up here?”
His gaze dropped. “Let's just call that a series of good-bye kisses.”
Skye shut her eyes. “Why? Did Lucas tell you I'll be leaving?”
Jamison’s head snapped up. “No!” Something on his wrist stole his attention. “When?” His voice broke and he started again. “When are you supposed to leave?”
He was hurt. He did care! Everything was going to be fine.
She kept a sober face. “Two weeks. Maybe sooner.”
“Permanently?”
“Yeah.”
His foot started tapping. “Where to?”
“Another compound.”
He opened his phone and the little blue screen lit up his frown. He jumped up, so quickly it affected the candle. He went to the door in the floor and slid out the bolt. Looking back as he was lowering himself through, he said, “Don't make a sound, Skye. Please. We have a lot of talking to do. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I believe you.”
The door closed again and she heard him slide the bolt through the loops on the bottom.
Maybe his mother had come home. Maybe Lucas or the others had sensed her distress and were looking for her. Maybe she was too shocked to pick up on anything.
She forced her mind to settle, to avoid reaching out for anyone's thoughts.