Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  Eslin had gotten rid of those things, but her mother’s lighter, sans flints and fluid, sat on the coffee table in her living room.

  In the center of the amber ashtray lay several brown, gold-banded cigarette filters. Who in their right mind, she wondered, as she looked up at Gage, would smoke in a straw-filled horse barn?

  He’d settled himself on the uncluttered half of the sofa which faced the desk. Slouched on his spine, he hooked his right knee over the sofa’s arm and stretched his left leg in front of him. His work-faded jeans drew taut across his muscular thighs, and Eslin quickly lowered her gaze to the file.

  For a moment she considered telling him that with the exception of Captain Hargrove, police officers—who were as eager to prove her a fake as to solve cases—rarely allowed her access to official reports. She thought about it, but because the more she learned about the Roundtrees the more they mystified her, she changed her mind and opened the manila folder. The reports inside were dog eared and fingerprinted. Obviously, they’d been read and reread, and she didn’t rely on her clairvoyance to figure out by whom. Since the only physical evidence the sheriff’s department and FBI agents had turned up was the tire tracks in the mud by the front gate, the reports were sketchy at best.

  Although she read the score of typed pages three times, she knew virtually no more about Marco Byrne than she had before she’d opened the file. He was twenty-seven, born on October eleventh, stood five feet nine inches tall, and weighed one hundred sixty pounds. He had no previous criminal record, and no distinguishing features, scars, or birthmarks.

  The most important thing Eslin found in the file was an eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy that showed Byrne holding Ganymede’s lead in the paddock outside the barn. Small, dark, and lithe, he looked younger than she’d expected. He stared soberly at the camera with luminous dark eyes. Smooth and hard as ebony, his eyes captured and held her own….

  When Eslin looked up, blinking slowly sometime later, she saw Gage staring at her.

  “Are you aware that you’ve been sitting there in a trance for the last fifteen minutes?” he asked sharply.

  “Have I? I’m sorry.” She laid the photograph aside and folded her hands on top of the reports. “What I can’t understand is how Byrne managed to load a temperamental thoroughbred stallion into a trailer in the middle of the night and drive off without raising the dead in the process.”

  “That’s just it—he wasn’t loading a temperamental thoroughbred stallion. I never had a dog, I had Ganymede. He’ll go anywhere with anyone, thanks to me. My father used to consider it a miracle that he’d run at all.” One corner of Gage’s mouth twisted as he unhooked his leg from the arm of the sofa, sat up, and bent his elbows on his knees. “Besides, Byrne was his groom. Ganymede was used to him—he trusted him.”

  Gage leaned forward, the movement bowing his head and rounding his shoulders. It’s my fault, his posture said, all my fault. Eslin caught another brief glimpse of his gray and heavy aura, and felt a sudden swell of sympathy for him.

  “The newspapers mentioned that Marco’s father was trainer here at Roundtree until just before his death,” she said quietly. “Would you tell me about Johnny Byrne?”

  “He was caught doping horses, our horses, at Belmont.” Gage raised just his eyes to her face. “He said he was following my father’s orders, but the investigation by the state racing commission exonerated Dad and indicted Johnny. He was barred from racing in New York, then Florida barred him, then California—and then he shot himself.”

  “When was this?”

  “Ten years ago.”

  “If Marco’s father used to work here, why didn’t any of you recognize him?”

  “I’d never laid eyes on him until the day he came to work here as Paul Johnson. Johnny’s wife and son lived in Chico.”

  Something about the flat, only-the-facts-ma’am tone of his voice bothered Eslin. His reply seemed… practiced, and that unsettled her far more than the winsome smile curving one corner of his mouth.

  “I don’t think,” Gage said, “that I’ve ever heard the name Eslin before. It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she said politely, “it’s an old Irish word that means dreamer.”

  “Beautiful dreamer,” he replied, continuing to gaze at her.

  Eslin looked down at the photograph to hide the blush she felt creeping up her neck. Byrne had been seventeen the year his father died. So had she. Sliding the photograph aside, she reread the page-long biographical report. Magdalena Byrne had died nine months after her husband. Of natural causes, it said, but Eslin, who’d watched Granny Rose will herself to die after her mother’s death, knew better. Magdalena Byrne had died of grief.

  She picked up the photograph again, stared at Marco Byrne’s shiny, almost glittery dark eyes, and knew exactly how that slight, delicate-looking youth had felt—abandoned, betrayed, vengeful. There was something else in his steady gaze, something that she couldn’t quite read, but it sent a shiver of foreboding crawling up her back.

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear to look at the photo anymore, and as she slid it behind the reports and started to close the file, her gaze caught on the date of Johnny Byrne’s death. A frown wrinkling her forehead, she picked up a stubby pencil and did a calculation on the inside cover.

  Looking up at Gage, she said, “Ganymede was stolen on the tenth anniversary of Johnny Byrne’s death.”

  “Very astute,” he replied slowly, his smile gone. “It took the police two days to figure that out.”

  Closing the file then, Eslin sighed, leaning her elbows on the blotter and resting her chin in her hands. A dull throb pulsed in her temples and she shut her eyes. Vengeance, retribution… they were ugly words that sent another shiver prickling along her spine as Marco Byrne’s luminous, dark eyes shimmered in her mind.

  “Maybe you can do it,” Gage said quietly. “Maybe you really can find Ganymede.”

  Startled by the proximity of his voice, Eslin quickly lifted her chin from her hands and opened her eyes. Gage stood in front of her, his hands spread on the manila files stacked on the edge of the desk. Gray and hard as flint, his eyes threatened to strike a flame at any second.

  “What makes you think so all of a sudden?” she asked sharply, unnerved by the intensity radiating from him in almost visible waves. “Because I can add two and two quicker than the police?”

  “Partially,” he admitted with a thin smile, “but mostly because I want Ganymede back more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life—even more than I want you.”

  You should’ve run, Eslin’s little voice said, while you had the chance.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” she told him stiffly, as she kicked back her chair and rose behind the desk. “I came here to help you find Ganymede, and that’s all.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I know exactly what you thought,” Eslin cut him off icily. “I’m clairvoyant, remember?”

  “Eslin, wait—”

  Gage reached for her arm but missed it as she darted around the corner of the desk and made a beeline for the office door. As she reached for the knob, the door jerked open from the outside, and a tall, elderly man with wispy, windblown white hair stepped over the threshold. He wore an unzipped powder-blue golf jacket over a striped shirt, and beige trousers, and held a lit cigarette with a gold-banded brown filter in his left hand.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, as he backed away and his eyes lifted past the top of her head. “Hello, Gage.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  The hostility in his voice made the question more than rude, it made it a challenge, almost a dare. Eslin looked over her shoulder and saw Gage standing no more than two feet behind her, the expression on his face as contemptuous as his voice.

  “I spoke with Rachel on the phone last night,” the man replied. As Eslin turned around, he smiled and offered her his hand. “She told me Ethan had hired a psychic. How do you do, Miss Hillary? I’m Blain
e Aldridge, a friend of Gage’s father. If there’s anything I can do to help—”

  “Thank you.” Eslin smiled as she shook his hand. “But there really isn’t—”

  “I think,” Gage cut in furiously, “that you’ve already done enough, Blaine.”

  The smile on the man’s face vanished as he looked past the top of Eslin’s head again. “Please, Gage. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Go right ahead, I was just leaving,” she said quickly, as she slid past him through the door. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Aldridge.”

  Throwing a hasty smile over her shoulder, Eslin bolted down the corridor. The wind tore the door out of her grasp and slammed it against the barn with a resounding whack. She ignored it and headed up the road toward the house.

  Silver-rimmed storm clouds skidded across the bruised-looking sky, driven by the wind that streamed Eslin’s dark hair behind her and swelled the tears in her eyes. Anger, she told herself firmly, always made her cry.

  An engine sputtered to life behind her, and she dragged one sleeve across her eyes and slackened her pace as she heard it roar up the road toward her. As the Jeep squealed to a halt beside her, she turned around.

  “Why are you crying?” Gage asked, leaning his left elbow out the lowered window.

  “I’m not,” Eslin denied thickly, “it’s the wind.”

  “This isn’t just the wind, it’s the Santa Anas. There’ve been warnings up all day. You’d better let me drive you back.”

  “What about Mr. Aldridge?”

  “He’ll wait.”

  The last thing Eslin wanted was to sit beside him—the next to the last thing she wanted was to be blown to Sacramento by the near gale-force winds that rip up the California coast each winter. Reluctantly, she walked around the Jeep and got in. Sitting close to the door, she kept her eyes fixed on a wide, jagged split in the dashboard as Gage ground the gears and they rocketed up the hill. Her fingers were already on the door handle when the Jeep shimmied to a halt in front of the hitching post, and she nearly jumped out of her jeans when he tossed the Byrne dossier in her lap.

  “I thought you might need that,” he said simply.

  Eslin continued to stare at the torn dash. “I haven’t said I’d take the case,” she reminded him.

  “Oh, I think you will,” he answered quietly, as raindrops struck the windshield and the plastic side-windows.

  “You’re awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Eslin turned her head toward him, her bottom lip trembling from anger.

  “Not as sure as I am about you.” His smile met icy, indignant silence. “Look,” he tried again, as he raised his right hand from the steering wheel and reached for her. “I’m sorry—”

  “No, you’re not. You’re just used to getting what you want.” With a quick jerk on the handle Eslin swung her legs out the door and glared at him defiantly over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t be so cocksure about things if I were you.”

  “Does that mean you won’t take the case?”

  “It means I wouldn’t bet on it,” she hissed at him, and jumped out of the Jeep.

  Fatigue coursed through Eslin’s body as she clutched the file to her chest and dashed through the rain toward the garden wall. I will not sleep, she told herself, resisting the inexorable, subliminal pull on her consciousness. I will not, she maintained as she yanked open the gate… even though she knew she really didn’t have a choice.

  Chapter 4

  When the gate clanged shut behind her, Gage sucked a sharp breath through his teeth and smacked his fist against his forehead. God in heaven, what had he done?

  Wishing for the first time in his life that he’d been born with Ethan’s silver tongue, he dragged the heel of his fist down the length of his nose and tapped it repeatedly on his chin as he stared unseeing at the gate.

  How could he have been so wrong? He’d been so sure when she’d blushed after he’d called her beautiful dreamer, when he’d remembered that she’d blushed when he’d laid his finger on the Lovers card, and again when he’d offered to carry her suitcase to his room. It had hit him then like a bolt out of the blue that she was attracted to him, not Ethan—or at least he’d thought she was.

  In retrospect he knew it was the wonder of that realization, the swell of ego and the burst of triumph that had caused him to blurt out that he wanted her. Gage the Gauche, Ethan often called him, and henceforth, he reflected, if Eslin Hillary ever called him anything, it would probably be long distance.

  A grumbling roll of thunder and a strong gust of wind buffeted a curtain of rain across the Jeep. The thunder, the wind, and the chill in the air told him it was raining. He heard it, he saw it, he felt it. The storm was a tangible reality.

  Hunches and intuitions were intangible, unverifiable. He couldn’t always trust his, but he couldn’t deny them either. They were inaccurate and unreliable, their existence couldn’t be proven physically, yet they were sometimes—right or wrong—more overpoweringly real to him than something he saw or heard, touched, tasted, or smelled. And they scared the hell out of him.

  For all his mother’s claims of possessing psychic powers, she’d never once perceived that his skepticism of the paranormal sprang from years of squelching the very same sensitivities she claimed to possess. He wondered if Eslin had guessed, if she knew. Perhaps that was what she’d meant when she’d told him that if Byrne had destroyed Ganymede he’d know… perhaps that’s why she’d asked him why he felt threatened by psychic phenomena.

  God, yes, he felt threatened. Christ, yes, it terrified him. He should have confessed, should have told her he’d spent half his lifetime convinced he was losing his mind. He’d wanted to, had known as he’d looked across the table at her that here, finally, was someone who’d understand him, but his defenses were too strong, the pattern of denial and rejection too long and well established. Instead he’d lashed out at her, deliberately pushed her away.

  He hadn’t always done that, but he’d always known things: known the telephone was going to ring a half second before it did; known when his mother wanted him and appeared at her side before she’d called him. The night Ganymede had been foaled he’d known his dam was going into labor, known it was going to be a difficult birth, but he hadn’t been able to convince Malachi. He might’ve been able to convince his father, but he hadn’t been able to hold a civil conversation with Edward Roundtree since his twelfth birthday.

  Another clap of thunder sounded and a gust of wind blew a fresh sheet of rain across the Jeep. Gage hunkered down in his jacket, leaned against the door, and tried not to remember. He might as well have tried not to breathe, and as the rain pelted the plastic side-windows, he saw himself as he’d been on his twelfth birthday, a skinny boy sneaking out of the sun-room in the midst of his own party, racing up the stairs to his room, and sliding through the French doors onto the balcony.

  He’d seen Mimi Fitzsimmons leave the party first, had seen her look furtively around before she’d slipped through the sliding glass doors. A few minutes later his father had done the same thing, and Gage, who’d been watching because he’d known about them for some time, had sneaked away from the party to make sure.

  Even in his adolescent ignorance he’d realized what the noises under the acacia trees in the garden meant. He’d knelt by the balcony rail and listened, despising his father and Dr. Fitzsimmons’s ugly, horse-faced wife. He’d been so angry, so filled with hatred, that he hadn’t heard his mother step out on the balcony, hadn’t realized she was there until she’d laid her hand on his shoulder.

  She’d taken him inside, had sat him down on the edge of his bed, and told him that she knew Daddy loved Mrs. Fitzsimmons, that Mrs. Fitzsimmons made him happy, and that as long as Daddy was happy, it was all right with her. Rachel had smiled at him, but Gage had known she was lying, known that she’d been ignorant of the affair until she’d missed him at the party and had come looking for him.

  He’d adored his mother, worshiped her, and he’d wanted to die becau
se he’d hurt her. That’s when he’d started pushing people away and keeping them away, and he had started with his own mother.

  He’d found out sometime later that Mimi Fitzsimmons had been his father’s umpteenth mistress, had since realized that his own intense love for his mother had been nothing more than an Oedipus fixation that he’d gotten over as soon as he’d passed puberty. He’d reasoned this all out, knew intellectually that he wasn’t responsible; still he’d hated his father until the day he’d died, been rude to Mimi every chance he’d gotten—but he’d never laid down the guilt he felt, or the nagging fear that because he’d once hurt someone he loved, he might somehow do it again.

  The simplest way to avoid that, of course, was never to let anyone get close to him.

  He wasn’t sure when he’d decided that, or if it had even been a conscious decision. He had scores of acquaintances but no friends. He’d been to bed with his fair share of women, but he’d never had a lover. All he’d ever really had was Ganymede.

  He’d never realized that before, and as the rain stopped and he swung out of the Jeep, a deep, empty ache swelled up inside him. He was so tired—so goddamn tired of being alone.

  In long strides he crossed the lawn to the gate, knowing only two things for certain. One, Ganymede was alive and he’d get him back; and two, he needed Eslin Hillary more than he wanted her, needed her to help him find Ganymede, to find himself, and to ease the ache that had been so long, so deep, inside him.

  Somehow, he resolved, as he opened the gate and crossed the garden, and as the rain-soaked wind pasted his hair over his eyes, he’d redeem himself with her. How, he wasn’t sure. He only knew that he had to—somehow.

  A second torrential downpour caught him halfway across the courtyard, and though he ran for the sliding glass door, he was drenched when he yanked it open. The sun-room was dark, illuminated only by the flickering reflection of the fire on the red tile floor, and as Gage reached for a lamp, his brother’s low, taut voice made him freeze.