Was it possible? Could he actually communicate with her? The prospect stimulated his perception and sped through him like a P-51 Mustang chasing the sound barrier. His heart felt like it was pounding in his chest again.
Who was this girl? Some kind of demon?
There had been others. Self-proclaimed psychics and spiritual therapists, as she so gallantly called herself. The Air Corps ushered them in like soldiers being inducted into the Army. Their goal—to remove him. None ever could. And neither would she. He was going to have a good time watching her try. This one was a real looker. They didn’t make them like her in his day.
Her chestnut-brown hair had blonde streaks. It was the damnedest thing he’d ever seen. Yet it suited her, bringing out her vivid blue eyes. Jack marveled at how easy he could get lost in their endlessness, reminiscent of the deepest part of the Pacific on a clear day. Her full lips, the color of pomegranate seed, were ripe for kissing. If only….
The intoxicating scent of flowers—what was it? Jasmine, maybe—filled the air. Jack smiled. Either she was invading his world or he was breaking through to hers. Now he smelled her perfume.
This was going to be fun. His resounding laughter echoed through the room and he leaned back in the chair.
Her head jerked sideways, her eyes darting toward him.
Anticipation leaned him forward in the chair. “Can you see me?” He waited, hoping for a positive response.
Nothing.
“Can you hear me?” Jack wouldn’t give up easily. She may not see him or even hear him, but his exorciser sensed his presence. That could prove disastrous for Jack. If she truly knew he was there, then he had to accept the probability that she could also send him to his maker. Not what Jack had in mind.
“I know you’re here,” she muttered. She searched the space around her like she thought he’d appear at any moment. “You might as well show yourself.” He wasn’t surprised when she stopped and her stare holed through him.
Pink fingernails marched a replicated sequence along the desk top and drummed out a song of exasperation. She was as determined to drive him out as he was to stay put. Fascinating.
“In due time, darlin’. In due time.” He chuckled, amused by her resolve.
She tilted her head toward the nearest box and grabbed the top file. “It’s going to be a long night.” She propped her feet on the desk and leaned back in the chair, looked at the front of the folder and yawned. Instead of opening it, she laid it against her chest and folded her arms over it. Her eyes fluttered shut. No doubt, some trick to lure him into a false sense of security.
“Okay, so you can’t hear me, and you don’t see me, but you know I’m here.” Or she knows somebody’s here, crossed Jack’s mind as an afterthought.
He flew across the room and landed on the desk. Looking at her, he cocked his head. Communicating with an exorcist was dangerous and he’d never had the desire. Until now. Making an appearance might be risky, but Jack loved a challenge.
Her head dropped, leaning to one side. He liked the way her curiously-colored hair draped itself alongside her face. She had flawless features, except for a small scar next to her eye. Chicken Pox?
Jack’s failing memories, or the fact that he was dead, didn’t stop him from wanting to make physical contact. He longed to touch her, to feel the softness of her skin. Battling reluctance, he reached up to brush the tresses from her cheek. His fingers slipped through her hair and skimmed the side of her head.
Her eyes shot open. The once clear ocean grew turbulent as her baby-blues intensified.
She released a jagged breath and jumped back. The manila folder fell to the floor and her chair slammed into the wall. “Shit!”
Her brow wrinkled with shock, surprise, then belief. The expression on her face changed, turning pale and patient and somehow pensive, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t.
Contact.
CHAPTER 2
THE EXORCIST had anticipated his manifestation but she wasn’t ready when it happened. Or maybe feigning fright was a tactic. Hmmm, sounds fun.
She hurled him a rigid stare. “Captain Baker?”
Jack pretzeled his arms over his chest and grinned. “At your service.”
Straightening in the chair, her mood changed, turning professional. “Do you know what year it is?”
“I lost count a long time ago.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Well, by the looks of your hair,” he responded with a chortle, “I’d say I’m definitely not in Kansas.”
“Kansas?”
“It’s a joke, see. You know, The Wizard of Oz.”
“Oh, yeah.” She paused and a sentimental smile curled on her lips. “It’s a classic.”
“Classic, huh?” God, he felt old. “Then I must be ancient.”
“That depends on what you consider ancient.”
“Why do you ask so many questions?”
She cupped a hand across her mouth then pointed a finger at him. “You just asked a question.”
“It wasn’t a real question.”
“Okay, ask me a real question.”
“Say, what happened to you to make your hair two different colors anyway?” he asked, aiming for distraction.
And he got it.
“Hey...what’s the matter with my hair?” She jostled her two-toned locks and raked her fingers through it several times.
“Nothing. It’s just kind of different, that’s all.” Jack liked the way insecurity crowded her demeanor. It softened her, made her seem less hardhearted.
She leaned forward and scooped up the folder. “You don’t get out much, do you?” She tried to hide it, but the beginnings of a smile tipped on the corners of her mouth.
“Not much, no. Do you think you could do me a favor?”
“Depends.”
He didn’t say anything more until she raised her gaze to meet his. “I just want you to tell me how I died, see.”
“I was told you were killed during a training accident. The details are supposed to be in here.” She latched onto one of the files. Her mouth quivered shut. Her hands began to tremble. Her face paled with a dejected, given-up look. The folder fell into her lap, her hands sailed to her head and wrenched her hair back in tight fists.
That must have hurt.
Was she bothered by his death?
The previous exorcists hadn’t exhibited a pinch of sympathy. They charged in, all under false pretenses, making phony claims to pilfer money from the US Government. None of them really knew Jack was there or cared about his plight. But she did.
She was bothered by his death.
Her compassion touched something inside him. The girl almost had him remembering what it felt like to endure remorse.
She opened the folder and her cheeks brightened. Something otherworldly, cold and unseen, hung in the air between them. He glanced at the file, wondering what had cheered her up, and saw a black and white eight-by-ten of himself.
No wonder she had a high success rate. He was ready to do anything she asked. All because of the way she’d looked at his picture.
Whoa, take it easy. He coached himself, realizing she had him one foot out the supernatural door—a place he did not want to go. His first thought was to stop her, but his better judgment told him to keep quiet. He didn’t want to make her mad, not before she told him the facts surrounding his death.
He stretched across the desk, leaned in closer and tried to read the upside-down documents. Catching a whiff of her perfume again, he closed his eyes and tried to draw a deep breath. Images of intimate relations between a man and a woman knocked at his thoughts, but fell short.
Jack had been dead a long time and didn’t remember much, but during his life he didn’t think a woman’s scent had ever affected him with such profound longing.
Humph. He hopped off the desk and drifted to the door, propped his hands on his hips and grinned before taking a seat in the nearby chair.
“What?�
�� she asked.
I know what you’re trying to do. He managed to contain the words to just a thought. If he wasn’t careful, she’d have him out by sunrise. “Whatever they’re paying you, you’re worth every penny.”
“And that has what to do with anything?” She looked at the file instead of him.
“What is the going rate to exorcise demons?”
“You hardly look like a demon to me.”
“I’ve heard looks can be deceiving.” Even as he’d said it, he wondered when and where he’d heard that.
“Well, that’s true.” She spoke as if chatting with a friend rather than a spirit she had plans to evict.
“Do you have a plausible explanation for why I’m still here?” He might as well find out what he could while he could.
“Hold on there, hotshot.” Raising a hand, she continued to study the documents. “One question at a time.”
The girl had moxie. Her gutsy strength wrangled his latent resolve, roped and tied it and shoved it toward the back of his mind. Jack realized the girl’s immediate threat, she was making him feel again. Emotions began to trickle in. Emotions he’d forgotten. Fear and humiliation, irritation and joy, hope and despair, anger and desire. Most of all, desire.
He knew what dropping his guard would do. It teetered, ready to crumble at the slightest tremor. He disregarded her bid for control, couldn’t stop himself from dallying with disaster.
“What’s your name, doll?”
“My name...”
The man was charming and distracting. He’d probably mastered charisma easily during his short lifetime. She envisioned him perfecting his smile in front of a bathroom mirror, and later using it to charm the girls out of their virtue. As if his dark hair and smoldering eyes weren’t enough to render a girl senseless, when he flashed that smile of his—even in death—Izzy’s knees weakened and her heart pumped a little faster.
“You do have a name, don’t you?” His seduction-smothered voice heated her face.
Her head dizzied. “My name?” She chased it around her mind, trying to recall it. “Izzy. Izzy Miller.”
“That’s an interesting name.”
“Family heirloom.”
“Intriguing. A little odd, but intriguing.”
“It’s short for Isabelle.”
“Isabelle.” Her name rolled off his tongue like a slow, smooth shot of Crown Royal, its effects long-lasting and powerful.
“But everybody calls me Izzy.”
“I guess things have changed a little since my day.”
“That’s an understatement.” She snorted, and then realized he was doing it again. Taking over. She squared her shoulders and tried on her no-nonsense face. “You are Captain Baker, right?”
“Yes, I’m Jack Baker.” He stuck his hand out as if she could shake it, and then laughed. “You can call me Jack.”
“Jack.” She paused, glanced away and let the question find its way to the front of her mind. When it did, she turned back to him. “So, how old are you...were you?” The records indicated his birth year as 1919, but she didn’t know when he died.
“On my last birthday, that I recall, I turned twenty-seven.” His eyes whispered the confusion that his shrug tried to hide. Izzy wondered if the birthday he remembered was the last one he’d celebrated before he died.
Twenty-seven. Regardless of its potential accuracy, the age smashed through her thoughts like a wrecking ball. Twenty-seven was too young to die.
Okay, Izzy. She issued a silent reprimand. You cannot change a life that’s already been lived. That reality pricked her heart like a thousand tiny pins piercing a pin cushion. Her poignant mood spilled over into regret.
The reason she was there fluttered into her thoughts. Izzy returned to Captain Baker’s records to search for an inkling of what had happened to him. Her eyes grew wide and her breath caught in her throat. She uttered a soft, regretful sigh.
“What...what is it?” Jack straightened his stance, went through the motion of drawing a breath and held it for a moment. “Did you find it? Do you know what happened to me?”
Her gaze locked with his and regret fogged her mind. “No.” Shaking her head, she glanced at the papers. “I just saw the info on your parents. It reminded me of my own. They died when I was ten.”
His face skewed with an arrested expression and Jack began to fade in and out.
No...wait...don’t go. Instinct lunged her toward him. The World War II Ace disappeared, leaving her grasping at nothing. It was too late. “Don’t go...” she said in a suffocated whisper and slumped back in the chair.
A sense of isolation crowded her logic and tried to force it into desertion. She fought it with a heavy sigh but it didn’t help. Her heart flip-flopped against her chest, unable to handle or contain her thoughts and fears and wishes. Solitude had never been an issue. She’d spent most of her time alone. Typically, she liked it that way. But this separation from Jack bothered her.
With each passing moment that Jack stayed away, anxiety thrived inside Izzy and twisted into knots. A spirit’s talent for materializing was harder to achieve than vanishing. She doubted Jack had had much practice in the last thirty years that the base had been abandoned. Given the circumstances, she didn’t hold out hope for his speedy return.
She avoided the boxes on the desk. Jack wanted to know what was in them, maybe more than she did. He wanted the information in those files. Why?
Izzy had heard about forgetful spirits but she’d never met one. Then again, she’d never met one as old as Jack, either.
Still, she couldn’t let him read over her shoulder incognito. Not if she wanted to unearth his weaknesses, something she couldn’t do while he was cloaked.
She waited for his reemergence by listening to the sweet sounds of The Eagles on her iPod, reading two chapters of Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’, and then began making mental notes, strategies she could use against her target.
Boredom weighted her eyelids like caked-on makeup. The cot in the corner was looking better by the hour. How long it’d been there was a mystery, but the sleeping bags and pillows were new. She’d asked for them when she presented the Air Force with a supply list during contract negotiations.
Taking a nap was a good way to pass the time, and give Jack a chance for revitalization. She gave in to temptation and approached the makeshift bed.
She unfolded the sleeping bag and laid the bedding out with meticulous precision. The soft fabric lulled her. She eased down and stretched out on the cot, wrapping the sleeping bag around her. Speculation over how long it might take Jack to reappear cobwebbed her brain with tangled fatigue.
Her eyelids fluttered shut and visions of Jack Baker flooded her imagination. Suggestive ideas bordering on sinful sent her spirits soaring. The images, sensual and inviting, beckoned her to tempt fate. To ignore the boundaries of time. To forget they were separated by the threads of life and death.
In all her years of talking to the dead, not once had a spirit laid carnal claim to her soul.
Until now.
Jonathon Richards, the last living man she’d chased away, snuck back into her mind. Boredom had set in quickly, just as it had with all the others. Maybe her parents’ deaths when she was so young was the reason for her trust issues. If she didn’t love, it wouldn’t hurt when they left.
Jack Baker was another matter. She didn’t want to let him consume her, but he did. He was also dead. His life, however short it may have been, had already been lived. Figures. A photograph lured her, elicited more desire than any living, breathing man ever had.
Izzy drifted in and out. As the dream world swallowed her up, the last thing she remembered was Jack’s smiling face.
Izzy sat cross-legged on the floor, unaffected by the realm of darkness. Her mother appeared in one corner and Izzy exhaled a long sigh of contentment. She always felt her mother’s presence, but it had been a long time since she’d seen her. Several years.
Cynthia Miller floated past and Izzy forgo
t about the lingering questions she’d been collecting the last few years. Questions she wanted to ask the next time she saw her mother.
A trail glistened behind Cynthia, illuminating a room reminiscent of Izzy’s childhood home. The big rubber plant was still in the corner by the picture window. The god-awful orange sofa was still in front of the console TV playing an episode of ‘Bewitched’. And the urn containing Rebecca’s ashes was still on top of the fireplace.
The little girl inside the now grown-up woman—the one who’d lost her mother at the age of ten—called out, “Mommy?”
Cynthia Miller hadn’t changed much from the image in Izzy’s memories or cherished family photographs. Her blonde hair seemed longer, the style surprisingly modern. She saw something familiar in her mother’s stature. Her long legs, tall frame, and slender build were all reminiscent of the woman Izzy had become. And the eyes, those cobalt eyes—it was like looking into a mirror. Izzy was her mother’s daughter.
Cynthia didn’t say anything, just glided to the other side of the room. An easy smile played at the corners of her mouth. She beckoned Izzy to follow, disappearing behind a curtained doorway.
A blade of loneliness stabbed Izzy in the gut. Her mother couldn’t leave yet. Not now. Not when there was so much to say.
She rushed after her. “Mommy...” she called out, hurrying through the curtains.
Headlights and a blaring horn roared toward Izzy. The speeding car bludgeoned the cool night air against her with disturbing accuracy and veered off, settling in a nearby ditch.
Izzy glanced down at the pavement beneath her. What the hell was she doing in the middle of the road? She tried to wrap her mind around the pale yellow convertible in the ditch. The car looked dated, yet brand new. Where had it come from? Where the hell had she come from?
The driver stepped out of the vehicle, a silhouetted figure of a man who felt both familiar and unknown.
A mist of confusion and forgetfulness rolled through her brain seconds before she collapsed.
A headache ushered in Izzy’s next moment of consciousness. Pain muddled reality. She tried to lay claim to one piece of information, one truth, one fact. All that surfaced was her name, Izzy Miller.
Incredible Dreams Page 2
