Authors: Jordan Dane
San Bernardino National Forest
1:20 a.m.
When Ryker neared the site where Lily’s body had been discovered, Lucinda kept her eyes on him as much as she did the eerie surroundings. He had stopped walking and stared down at the flattened grasses that had been the butchered girl’s deathbed. As Lucinda gazed at his face, caught under the moon’s pale blue haze, his eyes were closed and his chest heaved for air as if he were drowning.
“What’s happening, Ryker? Talk to me,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer, not even when he dropped to his knees and his body moved to a swaying rhythm as if he were in the throes of a conjured vision.
“Who you gonna call?”
Thanks to Ryker, Lucinda endured the annoying ear worm of the Ghost Busters theme song playing incessantly in her head. In truth, the damned thing kept her calm.
When she heard a twig snap, she shifted her gun toward the sound and peered through the shadows. She held her breath and took aim.
“I heard something. We have company,” she hissed. “Ryker?”
He didn’t answer, but she couldn’t leave him. He would be in no condition to respond to a threat. Lucinda gripped her weapon tighter. When the silhouettes of trees took shape and tall grasses heaved in the wind with a menacing rustle, her eyes and mind played tricks on her.
What the hell?
If the UNSUB lurked in the pine trees and watched them, she could deal with it. With a bad guy, she could aim her weapon at a tangible and real threat. But in Ryker’s world, what went bump in the night may not always have a pulse. A gun would be useless against imagined monsters. Lucinda had no idea how Ryker dealt with his gift.
“Ryker, talk to me. Something isn’t right.”
As her heart punished her ribcage, she heard the pounding of her pulse inside her ears. She couldn’t slow it down. Her body reacted to something more than a rush of adrenaline and her skin prickled with a rippling shock she’d never felt before. The odd sensation skittered down her arms and legs like tiny spiders crawling all over her.
When she stepped closer to Ryker, a chill cut her to the bone—as if a door had been opened to another reality and its cold wind breathed on her neck.
“Lucinda?”
Oh, God.
She jumped.
Ryker’s strange disembodied voice came from behind her. It didn’t sound like him. Slowly she turned her head until she caught a glimpse of him.
“Yes, Ryker? What’s happening?” she asked.
“We’re not alone.”
***
Ryker Townsend
I’d lost track of time. The minute I stepped into the clearing where I first saw Lily, it felt as if I’d stepped through a curtain in my mind and darkness sucked me into a pitch-black vacuum. This had never happened to me before, not while I’d been awake. The utter silence made my ears throb with a dull ache.
But I sensed I had been here before—when I dreamed.
The gnashing of jittery teeth grates on my nerves. I hate the incessant noise. It never wavers. Somewhere, far too close, a carnivorous beast chews on gristle and growls as it feeds. I try to move, to search for the animal, but when I don’t see or feel my body, I am forced to focus on my other senses.
A dank odor of soil and the clammy chill of being beneath the earth close in on me. I panic. An old memory of a never-ending tunnel rises like bile in my stomach. The stench of violent death and blood smother me and I fight to breathe until my lungs burn.
In the distance, a large bell clangs and a man calls out, but I can’t make out his words. I struggle to hear him, but nothing comes until he’s upon me. When his warm breath touches my ear, I cringe with the intimacy.
“Help me look for my puppy.” He sounds kind, but a dark undertone to his voice repulses me.
“What’s his name?” A little girl’s voice.
No. Don’t go near him
, I want to scream, but I can’t speak. I can only listen. I thrash to warn the child. I need to break loose from the hell that holds me. Nothing works.
The man’s voice returns.
“His name is Sade. What’s yours, little one?”
I sense a mounting evil, a malevolence that squeezes my throat. I gasp for air and writhe, helpless to stop what will happen to the little girl as the bell gets louder and plucks at my nerves. Even before she answers the man, I know what her answer will be.
“My name is Avery.”
Her name punches me, hard. Nothing can stop what will happen to her. I sense my body tumbling through the darkness—deeper into the tunnel—and I can’t stop.
Avery! Don’t go with him
, I cry out, but no words come.
Where’s Sam, Avery? Go find your brother.
The steady beat of a heart starts as a dull thud until it grows louder and louder. The thumping gets faster and clashes with the bell, an abrasive echo.
Make it stop! Please!
A stir of voices erupts from the endless din, growing louder. Bodies close in and surround me until I’m sweltering in their stew. They reek of rotting flesh and fear.
Stay back! Don’t come near me. I can’t breathe.
I tumble through the darkness, spinning out of control, but the bodies cling to me, the sheer weight of their numbers chokes off my air. Death is everywhere.
“Yes, Ryker? What’s happening?” I heard Lucinda’s voice through my mind fog and it yanked me from the precipice of the dream world I had spiraled into.
I gasped for air, and when I looked up to see the moon, it reflected through the many shadows of bodies that stood around us. I searched the faces and recognized each one from the files I’d memorized.
“We’re not alone,” I said to Lucinda.
Little Avery pushed through the circle of the dead. Lily stood at her side, holding her hand. It moved me to see them both and a lump of abject sorrow wedged in my throat. When a tear trickled down my cheek, Avery reached out to wipe it away. Her tiny finger on my face touched something inside me that I would never forget.
When the bulrush grasses whispered in the breeze off the mountains, the bodies broke apart into dust that carried on the wind. Avery and Lily were the last to go. In stunned silence, I watched them disappear. I must’ve collapsed onto the ground, because I found myself on my knees.
“I felt something, Ryker.” Lucinda lowered her weapon and she choked on a sob. “Whatever that was, it was…beautiful.”
I’d have to process what I’d heard and felt and saw in my dream. Clues were never easy to decipher and I’d been wrong before, but I was more certain than ever that Avery Reed would be the key to everything. She touched me for a reason and planted a seed in me.
But most of all I wondered how I could miss someone I’d never met.
***
Outside San Bernardino National Forest
2:20 am
The FBI agents had come to the trailhead at an odd hour and he’d tracked their movements. He followed the agents into the clearing, as far as he dared, but what he saw made no sense. With his binoculars, he watched them from a safe distance as they climbed into their Chevy Tahoe.
“What do you suppose they were up to?” he whispered.
When the SUV made the turn back to the Travelodge motel, he headed for his vehicle to follow, but not before he called out.
“Sade, come.”
The dog came running.
***
Travelodge
Big Bear Lake, California
3:00 a.m.
Lucinda should’ve been tired at this hour, but after the rush she’d experienced in the San Bernardino National Forest with Ryker, sleep would not come easy.
His ability constantly surprised her—and scared the hell out of her—but tonight his gift had touched her in a profound way. She opened her mind to his vision, not enough to see what he saw, but enough to feel something physically. His gift gave her hope that a life beyond this world existed—and that human souls were palpable and real.
But to look at him, no one would’ve imagined his gift had conjured such an extraordinary vision. For him it would be back to business as usual. Another man—someone with more ego—might’ve flaunted his gift or used it for personal gain, but not Ryker.
Lucinda shook her head and smiled to herself, watching him park the Chevy Tahoe in the motel parking lot. She got out of the rental vehicle and walked with him toward his room. Her door was only two down.
“I could get used to this mountain air,” she said, with gravel crunching under her boots. “It’s beautiful here.”
“If Reynolds asks, tell her you didn’t notice much about our little slice of heaven.”
“Good point.” She smiled at him and resisted the urge to hold his hand. “How hard was it to convince her we should stay another day or two?”
“She gave me the usual litany of questions, but I made my request legit,” he said. “She authorized anything I’d need. I guess we’ll see if I’m right.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I pray you’re wrong, but the families of any victims we may find, at least they can get closure. That’s something.”
When Lucinda gazed at Ryker, her eyes trailed down his clothes. Normally he dressed well and the subtle cologne he wore teased her senses in a good way. But after their ordeal tonight, he looked enticingly rumpled, like a lazy Sunday morning in bed. Lucinda wanted to run her fingers through his tousled hair and kiss his full lips, but she wouldn’t risk a public display, not outside his motel room.
His gift had brought them together out of necessity. Someone on his team had to cover for him as back up without questioning his motives, but their private pact had made them closer than she’d ever dreamed possible.
There were nights after he’d awaken, screaming in a cold sweat from a nightmare, that she would hold him until he knew where he was. Or times he trusted her with everything and shared his worst fears in quiet conversation by the fireplace in his loft. Most days he broke her heart with how he became the voice for the dead, when no one else could. He’d sacrificed a great deal to become an extraordinary man.
Every day her love for him had grown. Lucinda craved his mind and body. She ached to feel him inside her and to give in to his insatiable needs. For a guy so clueless with women, his sexual nature had surprised her—something she never complained about.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve got enough adrenaline pumping through me that I could use a good workout to let it go.”
Ryker glanced at his watch with an endearing look of confusion on his handsome face.
“I saw a bike path down by the lake. We could get in a nice run before—”
“That’s not the kind of workout I had in mind, Townsend.” She raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Your room. Fifteen minutes.”
Lucinda headed for her door, but not before glancing over her shoulder to see him staring at her. His crooked smile told her that he’d completely understood her meaning all along. She fought a grin as she slipped into her room to brush her teeth and pack an overnight bag.
She always loved yanking Ryker’s chain. The guy seriously didn’t know his effect on the opposite sex. Women flirted with him all the time and he would be oblivious. She’d had a crush on him, ever since the first day she met him as her boss. It wasn’t until he nearly lost his life to a diabolical killer last year that he’d confided his secret, the reason he’d always lived his life alone.
With overnight bag in hand, Lucinda returned to Ryker’s doorway and raised her hand to knock when she heard the distinct sound of a footstep on gravel. She turned and searched the shadows beyond the lights.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
No answer. When she heard a dog whine, she couldn’t tell where the sound came from. She took a step toward the shadows and peered into the darkness.
“I’m a federal agent. Identify yourself.”
Silence.
But Lucinda knew she wasn’t alone.
Travelodge
Big Bear Lake, California
3:10 a.m
.
Lucinda sensed someone in the dark, watching her. Pure reaction, she reached for the weapon she normally carried in a holster, but she wasn’t armed. She had her handcuffs in her overnight bag, something she had planned for Ryker, but she hadn’t expected to need her gun—until now.
She knocked on Ryker’s door and kept her eyes searching the darkness behind her. After Ryker opened his door, she pushed by him with her heart on red line and tossed her bag on his bed.
“Maybe I’ve still got a case of the heebie-jeebies from witnessing you doing your ‘thing’ earlier, but I had the distinct impression someone was watching me out there, just now.”
“Is this your idea of foreplay?”
“No, I’m serious. Whoever it was, they had a dog with them.”
Ryker reached for his Glock and chambered a round before he headed out the door as Lucinda stood at the threshold. Shadows swallowed him until he melded into the darkness, a vague shape moving in the gloom.
“Anything?” she called out.
“Nothing, but I smelled cigarette smoke,” he said after he returned and closed the door behind him. “Maybe it was only someone grabbing a cancer stick, or their dog had to go.”
“Yeah, but why didn’t they answer me when I called out to them?”
“This time of night, you might’ve scared them.”
Lucinda latched the door and let it go, but next time she’d be armed.
***
Ryker Townsend
I craved the intimacy Lucinda and I shared, especially tonight. The sadness over the deaths of Avery and Lily had burrowed into my heart and I could not forget their faces. I needed sleep, but I had my doubts it would come, not after what happened in the clearing. I felt the weight of expectation from a world beyond my own, the faces of the dead would hold me accountable.
Lucinda took the gun I held in my hand and set it down on a nightstand. Without saying a word, she kissed my neck and nuzzled into my body. I hugged her close and took comfort in her warmth.
“I needed this, especially after—”
I couldn’t shake the faces of the dead, not even in her arms. There were times in my life that I wondered if my gift would slowly fray my mind. Could it be possible that the more I succumbed to my visions, the more damage would take root and eat away at my sanity?
Would I forget which side of the dream I belonged?
“I know. Me too,” she whispered.
Without another word, Lucinda pulled away from me and slipped her fingers into my pants, to unbutton and unzip me. Normally I was the aggressor, but tonight, all I wanted to do was surrender—to her.
She tugged down my pants until they dropped at my feet and I yanked off my FBI polo shirt. After she slid her fingers into the waistband of my boxers, she pulled them down my thighs, touching my skin all the way. My body reacted and she smiled when she noticed.
“Go run the shower. Make it steamy,” she said.
Billows of steam fogged the mirror of the bathroom by the time she joined me. I pulled her naked body into mine and held her. I wanted and needed sex and Lucinda knew how to push my buttons.
But tonight I needed more.
“I love you, Lucinda.”
I caressed her and let the hot spray sluice down our skin as I buried my face in her neck and kissed her. Lucinda knew my secret and accepted me the way I was. She didn’t judge me as a freak.
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “Just hold me for a little while, okay?”
As hot water rushed down our bodies, I closed my eyes and cradled her in my arms. It scared me, sometimes, how much I needed her.
***
Travelodge
Big Bear Lake
6:20 a.m.
Ryker Townsend
A loud knock on my motel room door jolted me awake.
“What the hell—?”
I sat bolt upright in bed, still in the fog of twilight sleep. Through the murky shadows I found the digital clock on my nightstand—twenty past too damned early. I looked for Lucinda. She wasn’t in my bed or in my bathroom. Before I went for the door, I searched for any note she might’ve left me and found one on my nightstand.
She’d slipped out of my room before dawn, but she’d been thoughtful enough to leave her perfume on my pillow and the scent of her lingered. That made my body react with a half-mast salute, but when my door rattled on its hinges from another pounding fist, any thought of making love to Lucinda wilted.
“Just a minute. I’m coming.”
I ran a hand through my hair and grabbed my boxers off the floor, the ones Lucinda had tossed there from last night, and put on a fresh pair. After I flipped on lights, I saw the handcuffs dangling from a bedpost, and I tossed a blanket over them before I looked through the peephole. It took only a minute to place the face on the other side of the door. Sinead Royce, my research wrangler, had provided me the man’s dossier.
Well, this should be interesting
, I thought, as I opened the door. Before I uttered a word, my early morning visitor got down to business.
“My name’s Sam Reed, but everyone calls me Mozart.” A tall man, dressed in khaki BDU pants and a black T-shirt, carried a box of Starbucks coffee and a stack of disposable cups. “Are you Ryker Townsend, FBI?”
“Yeah, today I am.
“Don’t expect an apology for the early morning wake-up call. I brought coffee instead.” He held out his peace offering.
“That works. Thanks.”
I took the coffee and cups from his hands and shut the door on him. Apparently I was in one of my moods.
“Very funny, smart ass.” Reed yelled through the door. “Open up. We have to talk.”
“Sorry. I mistook you for room service.” I opened the door and waved him in. “You care for some coffee?”
Mozart Reed grabbed the Starbucks coffee from my hands and put it on the table in my room. He poured us both a steaming cup and handed me one, before he took a seat.
“Thanks.” I had a sip and set the cup down. “Do you mind if I put some clothes on? I don’t want to intimidate you.”
Mozart cocked his head but didn’t crack a smile. I worked out as a distance runner. The exhaustion of a long run settled my mind, especially after a particularly wicked nightmare. But Navy SEAL Mozart would force any man back into the gym. I slid into a pair of jeans and pulled on a fresh FBI polo shirt before I grabbed my coffee and settled on the edge of my bed.
“You found me. Talk,” I said.
I’d read about Reed in his dossier and knew he would’ve driven from his home in Riverton, an eight-hour trip. To make the trek, he’d probably left behind Summer and April, his wife and baby girl. Whatever he came to say, I needed to listen. No more payback games for the early morning rousting.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Big Bear Lake isn’t the big city. Summer and I still have friends here. They watch our six. What does your investigation have to do with my sister, Avery? Her case is closed.”
“Not any more. My team is here investigating another murder, but something came up that could link to your sister’s case.”
That ‘something’ was Avery herself, but I couldn’t tell
him
that.
“What do you mean the FBI is reopening her case? Hurst is dead. End of story.”
“I’m not at liberty to talk about this investigation, but since you’re here, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Avery.”
“Not so fast, fed. You can’t shut me out. She’s
my
family. I’m not exactly an outsider. I have a right to know what’s going on.”
Mozart bristled as he stood and approached me with an unrelenting stare. I reacted and stood too. Anyone else might have been intimidated by his physical presence—especially given the angry scar on his face—but I knew plenty about him. Any outer scars he had were nothing compared to the ones he would always carry inside. The gaping internal wounds in his life would never truly heal—something we had in common.
At my height of six-foot five, I rarely had opportunities to look another man or woman in the eye, but when Mozart stared back at me in hurtful silence, I sensed the maelstrom of conflicting emotions in the fifteen-year-old boy who had lost a beloved sister to violence. Life changing trauma at a young age always created arrested development in anyone, trapping the man in the shocked and grief-stricken boy forever.
That suffering fifteen-year-old collided with the man Mozart had become. A Navy SEAL fixed things. They defended their country honorably and protected the safety of people, but today Mozart was a victim, a survivor of a terrible tragedy. Whatever posturing he exhibited with me wasn’t about intimidation. It came from a deep hurt that would never go away. I would give him latitude.
“Sit down, Mozart. Please.”
“You wouldn’t be here asking about Avery unless—” Mozart swallowed, hard, and did as I asked. “Hurst was a killer. We caught him in the act.”
I had read the case file and understood Mozart’s SEAL team rescued two women. Elizabeth Parkins and someone very special to him at the time—his future wife, Summer. The two women would’ve been Hurst’s last victims if Mozart and his team hadn’t intervened. In the process, Ben Hurst was killed. It closed an agonizing book for Mozart, but his sister Avery had appeared to me for a reason. I had to trust her, even if it meant the case was far from closed.
But I’d be treading on thin ice by pursuing a case solely on the merit of a precious and brave little dead girl.
“Hurst was the main suspect in my sister’s murder,” Mozart said. “Detectives swore he was the guy. Are you telling me there’s doubt that he killed Avery?”
His voice cracked when he said the name of his sister.
“You deserve answers,” I said. “Believe me, I understand.”
Mozart clenched his jaw, not backing off. He glared at me as if I were something stuck to the bottom of his boot. I didn’t take it personally.
The day I lost my parents will never stop haunting me. I hadn’t been as young as Mozart when
his
family splintered after the tragedy, but my parent’s car accident—the way it happened and the part my sister and I played in it—shook me to the core.
With my own grief, I had to find a way to endure and make a different life than the one defined by a mother and father’s love. It’d taken a long time to duct tape what had been left of my broken relationship with my sister, Sarah. Blame can be an overwhelming barrier to overcome, whether the accusation came from the only family I had left or from the guy staring back at me in the mirror every morning.
Even now my sister and I have our struggles, centered on my gift and what could’ve happened that day. If she had believed my disturbing vision that foreshadowed their deaths, or if I had found another way to warn them, they may not have died.
The word ‘regret’ doesn’t begin to describe the agony Sarah and I still share. We would never get a ‘do over
.
’ I held kinship with Mozart Reed, but I wouldn’t have time to explore our common ground and work for his trust. The investigator in me had to stay focused.
I sensed a shift in topic might make him curious and garner his cooperation.
“Did Avery ever own a Care Bear?” I asked.
“What kind of question is that?” He grimaced. Eventually his stern expression softened. “Yeah, she did. I bought it for her in fact, one Christmas. Her last Christmas to be exact.”
“Was it a Tenderheart bear, the one with a red heart on its belly?”
Reed narrowed his eyes, his face burdened with suspicion.
“Yeah, it was. I bought it because it reminded me of her. She always had a big heart and kept us in line, like Tenderheart.” Reed slouched in his chair and looked lost. “Why are you dredging this up again? My wife almost died because of Hurst. None of this is easy to—”
He couldn’t finish.
“I understand. Please indulge me. This won’t take long.” I watched him intently. “What happened to her bear? Did Avery do anything special with it?”
“Why are you asking about that damned bear? Are you starting a collection?”
“Tempting, but no.” I forced a smile. “Did she take off the heart belly badge and sew it onto a tank top, maybe attaching the bear’s ears to the heart?”
Mozart’s nostrils flared.
“How in the hell did you know that?” he asked. “That wasn’t released to the papers. Whoever killed her, took it. The local Sheriff’s office thought it was Hurst’s trophy, but—”
“But what?”
“They never found that red heart in his things.” His eyes watered and his expression went slack.
Recrimination brewed behind those eyes. I’d begun to see why Avery wanted to show me her Care Bear. It could be the link to prove who killed her. If we found her bear heart, we could tie her murder to the real killer with physical evidence.
But that heart also held another special connection. Mozart had given it to her on the last Christmas they had together. Little Avery knew I’d have to seek him out for answers—
clever girl
—but I sensed she had unfinished business with her brother. She hadn’t appeared to me solely for the sake of justice.