Kat’s eyes fluttered closed as she saw scene after scene unfolding in her head. The older man with kind eyes grinning at the tow-headed boy who clumsily hammered a small nail into the roof of a birdhouse. The two of them paddling an aluminum canoe through perfectly still water, fishing poles and a creel at their feet. Gentle hands teaching the boy how to tie his shoes.
“It was a perfect day. They went to a small theme park somewhere in the mountains. He fed the reindeer, rode the carousel. Ate popcorn and cotton candy. And he laughed—they laughed.”
Tears streamed down her face.
“Such joy, his little heart was full. But, it didn’t last. Something happened. The bad man came back.”
Zack started to ask a question but she held up a hand to stop him.
“They hurt him—his parents. Used him as a pawn between them.”
None of this was surprising to Zack; there were records, once he’d known where to look, of Logan’s abusive childhood. Records that made him feel sorry for the child living in such painful circumstances but he could not let sympathy cloud the facts of the case. Plenty of people used their abusive history as a springboard for doing good, Logan had chosen the opposite route.
When the spirit made itself known to Kat, Amethyst saw the aura but nothing more, Zack saw nothing but felt a stir in the air; a breeze no stronger than a sigh.
“He’s here,” Kat breathed, then opening her eyes, focused them on that nothing and began a one-sided conversation. It gave Zack the heebie jeebies which surprised him after having met Estelle and Julius.
He’d faced off against a thug holding a gun and not felt as uncomfortable as he did right now. Half of him wanted to ask who was here, the other wouldn’t utter that question on pain of death.
“His name is Bert, he was Logan’s grandfather. Mother’s side, I think.”
No way had she pulled that out of thin air. He remembered the name, Bertrand Goddard.
“Bert says he took the boy in for a few months. Logan came to him hungry and covered in bruises. It took several weeks before he felt safe enough to stop hoarding food in his room. Longer still before he stopped flinching at every loud noise.”
Zack watched the play of emotions across Kat’s face as she relayed Bert’s message.
“He’s sorry for what Logan has become, sorry he didn’t fight hard enough to hold on to the boy when his father came back around. Thornton laid it on thick, said he had changed his ways and was ready to provide a better home for his son. Bert was taken in like so many others and Logan paid the price.”
More images scrolled though Kat’s head. She saw Bert watching as Logan twisted in the seat to watch, one hand on the window glass, tears of utter sadness as the one person who had ever shown him true love and kindness stood waving. Two hearts had been broken that day and neither had ever recovered.
“Use the coin,” Bert’s final words to Kat echoed back as he began to fade away. “It’s his touchstone.”
Compassion for the boy Logan had once been and for the grandfather who had tried his best went to war with Kat’s need to see the man pay for the things he had done.
Justice won.
***
Burned.
Logan pulled the red baseball cap down to hide his face as he strolled casually past the storage unit. Somehow the cop from that podunk little town had tracked him here. Everything in the unit was burned. Even the—he tried not to think about the loss of the one item he had carried with him all these years. It was gone now, along with everything else.
With Billy pulled back for the time being, there was enough Logan left to mourn the loss of an item so important he had carried it with him for twenty years. The last remnants of the little boy were not strong enough to influence regret in the grown man for the things he had done, but then, he had stopped lamenting the loss of his innocence a long, long time ago.
The boy who left his grandfather’s house that day had shattered to leave his soul in pieces behind the car like a trail of breadcrumbs he would never follow home.
Those days of safety, the last of his childhood, would go from being cherished memories to being the impetus for a belief that he deserved everything, whether he had earned it or not. Someone had done the earning and that was a good enough excuse for taking whatever he could and never counting the cost.
After all, Logan had been trained by the best. Even in his tender youth, he knew Thornton was piling it on thick with his story of how he had changed, how he had a safe place to live, and money for food.
None of it was true and the little boy could not understand how his grandfather had been deceived. To his mind, the old man had betrayed him. It didn’t matter whether Bert had no legal standing to force Thornton’s hand. He had let Logan go without a fight.
Before that year was out, Thornton had trained his son, by liberal use of the flat of his hand, to be the perfect shill. First with easy things like selling religious booklets to farmer’s wives, then, moving up to selling higher ticket items to farmer’s themselves. Their most lucrative con had been taking half the down payment on a new tractor then disappearing with the money.
Logan knew what he was doing was wrong, that Burt would not approve—and whatever had twisted in his mind made Burt’s displeasure into his biggest motivation to succeed. Logan never understood that his biggest con was when he deluded himself into thinking he was making Burt pay for abandoning him to this life.
***
Zack saw the sorrow in her eyes but without the visual replay of history, he only knew the details from the outside. To him, this man who had hurt his sister and tried to hurt Kat was not worth her tears. Her compassion for the slimeball got under his skin.
So what if Ellis had a rough childhood. He wasn’t the only one. Plenty of kids survived abuse to grow up productive citizens. If Ellis was one of the exceptions, it was through his own choices.
Bleeding hearts never wanted criminals punished for their crimes and while Zack knew that everyone had the potential for rehabilitation, it never came without some type of a wakeup call followed by a personal decision. He doubted Logan Ellis had the guts for that kind of change.
Chapter Thirteen
When Zack offered to drive Kat home, Amethyst who was standing out of his line of sight shot her an exaggerated eyebrow waggle that was returned by a glare that if looks really could kill would have leveled a city block. Kat never even got chance to weigh in before Amethyst suddenly remembered a pressing errand that would take her in the opposite direction and be so incredibly boring that Kat would be much better off accepting Zack’s kind offer. The next thing she knew, it was a done deal.
“Subtle,” Kat observed dryly as she watched her friend walk away so quickly you’d think her shoes were on fire. Then she grinned up at Zack, “You up for a visit with Kane and Molly? My treat as a thank you for the ride.”
“I keep telling Molly there must be something illegal in that meatloaf because it’s habit-forming. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could opt for the Guinea pig special.”
“Tell me it’s not really Guinea pig.” Kat shuddered at the thought.
“What? No, it’s whatever dish they’re experimenting with that day but you’re not allowed to ask what’s in it before you order.”
“Sounds like a crapshoot, what’s their track record like?”
“Pretty good. There was lobster aspic that went way wrong once. Ended up looking like Jabba the Hutt and tasted like feet, but mostly Kane does okay. He’s the one who comes up with the recipes and then Molly handles the day to day menus, runs the kitchen. They make a good team.”
“Jabba the Hutt, a visual reference I can actually remember.”
“Star Wars fan?”
“I was a sci-fi geek before I lost my sight. Some movies you can listen to and get a good idea of what’s happening but a good space epic is so visual, I limited my exposure to reading only.” No self-pity, just the bare facts.
“Favorite book?”
; “Ender’s Game. No question.”
“You know they made it into a movie, right?”
“I’d heard and it’s on my list of ones I’m sad not to have seen at the cinema. It won’t be the same on my teeny tiny television set.”
“What if I told you I have a copy of the movie with extra features and a 70 inch flat screen?”
“I guess I’d say ‘beam me up’.”
“Wrong franchise. And speaking of—you’ll need to watch the new Star Treks and then the Marvel movies and then there’s…I’ll make you a list.” He felt the faintest flutter of nerves as he asked, “So we’ll have Molly cook us up some food and then hit my place for the movie?”
For a second he was afraid she might say yes to the food, no to the movie. It surprised him how much he was already looking forward to sharing the experience with her, at how he could feel so comfortable around her while there was still that heart-pumping, stomach-jumping feeling of attraction running deeper than any he’d known before.
The woman had guts, no question. He admired that about her. She also had skin that looked soft as the petals on a daisy and those eyes—every time they turned his way, it was like falling off a cliff.
On the other side of the car, Kat’s thoughts were running along similar lines. Zack was the perfect combination of safe and dangerous. Every accidental touch sent waves of delicious electricity tingling through her. It was that same feeling she’d had on her first roller coaster ride in the days before her life had turned into one.
Sitting next to her cousin, Sue and screaming with both laughter and fear, they had learned dread during the long climb, then plunged down that first hill and gotten a taste of how it felt to have adrenaline coursing through their veins. Heady stuff, not unlike sitting next Zack in a car small enough to have his arm brushing against hers at every turn.
Her face flamed red as she let herself think about what the full ride with him might be like. Maybe tonight she would finally let herself find out. Virginity at her age was more of an embarrassment than a virtue. At this point, she was torn between waiting for the right man, even for marriage and just getting it over with.
Zack looked like the type of guy who could help her out on that score. But what if he didn’t think of her that way? What if she was nothing more than his sister’s friend and this was a pity movie? She chided herself for letting her thoughts stray down that particular path.
Kat’s shoulders hunched as though expecting a blow as she tried with a sideways look to figure out what he might be thinking. The look on his face was open, friendly, hard to gauge.
She was still trying to parse out his level of emotion when he pulled into the tiny lot behind the pub. Before he could make his way around the car to open her door, she’d already scrambled out so he hit the locks, swung the door shut with a thunk then reached for her hand as they walked toward the rear entrance.
The contact did nothing to quiet her chaotic thoughts.
“You’ve gone awfully quiet,” he stated in a low voice, “second thoughts?”
“No, just things on my mind.” If he only knew.
An hour later, she was sliding back into his car with a smile on her face and a belly full of good food. She’d gone with the delectably flaky beer battered fish this time.
“An extra hour of running tomorrow but totally worth it.”
Molly’s teasing had lightened Kat’s mood. When Zack pulled up next to a narrow, two-storied brick building that should have been flanked by others of its kind but now stood alone; the last remaining relic of Brinford’s town center.
“What’s this place?” She leaned across to get a better look.
“Home. Come see.”
He unlocked the thick security door set into the left side of the front of the building and led her into what had once been Brinford Bank. It hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening years.
Nearly twice as deep as it was wide, the whole place had a definite hallway feel to it because the interior was divided neatly in half. The former customer area on the left boasted a high ceiling that arched up the full two stories. The business side on the right featured a loft area where the main offices had been located. Below that was the counter area where the tellers once counted money.
That area had been turned into a galley kitchen. Some clever artisan figured out a way to incorporate the barred teller windows into the cabinet fronts to maintain the feel of the original space.
Glancing up, Kat saw the glass fronts where the offices had been but could not tell what use Zack was making of those rooms from where she stood.
The front lobby area was now his main living space. Between heavily curtained windows hung the huge flat screen television he had told her about. It faced a long sectional sofa set that looked inviting and was currently home to a fat black cat who appeared bored but whose green eyes never left the new guest in the room.
“Wow.” Kat moved farther into the room to take a closer look and noticed the gleaming vault door at the end of the room. “May I?” He waved her ahead and she stepped up to the doorway to peek inside.
Most of the vault interior consisted of safety deposit doors and shelves all in a dull brass finish. The only furniture in the room was the bed. For everything else, he had cleverly converted what was already there. He’d pulled out and braced safety deposit boxes, drilled holes into the sides, and used them to hold clothes bars as a makeshift closet.
Beside the bed, more drawers were braced into place and topped with simple planks to create bedside tables. Another set of them formed a bench softened with a brightly patterned cushion.
It was a unique setup and oddly homey but it was the two large scale canvases on either side of the windows in his living space that made Kat suck in a breath. Painted with precise, slashing strokes the paintings completed a gritty urban diptych that immediately made her feel the energy of the city.
The artist had captured the skyline against lowering storm clouds with great detail. One spear of sunlight broke through to illuminate a small figure in the foreground, a little boy shown from the back dangling a teddy bear in one tiny hand. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was alone and scared; it was all there in the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head.
Powerful and emotional.
She looked at the signature then turned to him with a stunned expression. “You?”
He nodded. “It’s a hobby.”
“A hobby? With talent like this?”
“The second evil.”
“Do they know you can paint like this?”
“They do.” Zack changed the subject. “Ready for that movie?”
Kat relaxed onto the sofa and idly reached out to pet the great lump of black fur who rewarded her with a mighty yawn then settled, purring into her lap. “Bring it, geek boy.”
“That’s geek man to you.”
“Nice uniform.” She took in his snug jeans and the navy sweater that played nicely off his brown eyes, and got a smirk in exchange as he settled in beside her. Close.
Close enough that his thigh brushed against hers and sent that shocking tingle up her spine.
Then the movie started and she quickly became so engrossed in the action she almost forgot he was there. It was a skill she’d had for as long as she could remember. Whether reading or watching a good story, she could tune out the entire world.
Yet, she knew the moment Zack’s warm hand closed over her own, felt each delicious movement as he turned her hand in his to thread his fingers with hers, enjoyed the fluttering low in her belly as he stroked his thumb absently across her skin.
If he could make her feel like this with a simple touch, what would it feel like to kiss him? She snuggled closer and hoped to find out.
***
When he felt her settle closer, Zack lost track of the film and turned all of his attention on Kat. Shifting slightly, he loosed the hand he was holding and slid an arm around her. The cat, sensing he was in the way, slithered to the floor
to find another comfortable spot.
Zack flexed his arm to pull her closer; he had to know, to taste.
And his phone shrilled out the tone that signaled an emergency.
Half tempted to ignore it, he swore and levered himself off the sofa. Grabbing the phone, he punched the answer button with savage force.
“Roman.” He barked and heard the wince on the other end as the dispatcher, a very nice young woman named Dannisha spoke excitedly into his ear, “Sir, there’s a disturbance at your sister’s house. Her alarm system was triggered. I’ve already sent a car but I knew you would want to know.”
“Thanks, Danni.” He clicked off the phone just as Estelle shivered into view.
“It’s Logan. Finn and the little girl are with her, Julius stayed behind to keep watch. Hurry.”
By the time Zack had retrieved his service weapon, Kat was already waiting for him at the door and the pair of them, interlude forgotten, raced to check on Gustavia.
The silence during the short ride was made of worry and rose up like a miasma between them.
***
“…do the right thing. I know it’s in you. Where’s that little boy I knew who had such sweetness, such heart…do the right thing…” Bert continued his litany even though he knew Logan’s heart was probably closed to him forever. But if there were a chance, no matter how slim that his words would sink in and find purchase on some shard of decency no matter how deeply that shard might be buried, he would keep whispering into the boy’s ear.
Do the right thing. Do the right thing.
Logan didn’t know where the words were coming from only that they kept repeating through his mind like a hammer on a nail. Endlessly sinking, piercing through until they touched the last vestige of humanity left to him by Billy or by Thornton. The vision of him beating Gustavia, throwing her into the back of a car played across his memory.
Do the right thing. Do the right thing.
He’d felt the devil inside him already, was this the angel come to sit on his shoulder now?
Wherever She Goes (The Psychic Seasons Series Book 4) Page 10
