He was with her. She could feel him standing over her as if he were staring at her face. Concern and uncertainty seemed to radiate from him. The hairs at her temples tingled like he was brushing his fingertips across her brow. His voice was in her ear. Help…help like I couldn’t…I need you…
She answered him out loud before she could stop herself with a whisper, no more than a murmur. “I don’t know how to help you.”
He was too strong. I wasn’t. I wasn’t. You are. You can help me, can help her. Her. Her.
Madison squeezed her eyes tighter. What did it mean? “Ben…who are you talking about?”
Madison. He sounded drained, his voice growing fainter with each syllable. Her. I can’t. Too late…I was too late…
Her eyes fluttered open. She could still hear him, but his voice was too far away to understand his words. He was talking, rambling almost as if he was telling the whole story to her, yet she still couldn’t hear him. She still couldn’t hear him.
A familiar white Jeep Wrangler stopped in the traffic on Steinwher Street, turn signal blinking in the direction of the hotel lot. Mike. She felt her lips spread into a ridiculously wide smile. For a while, at least, she could focus on something other than the dead. Sorry, Ben.
“Hey, Maddy girl.” He leaned his head out the window. “Ready?”
“I’m beyond ready.” She jumped up from the bench and crossed the sidewalk to the Jeep. He’d leaned across the seats and opened her door. “It’s been a strange afternoon.”
“Maybe I can help improve your evening.”
“I need it improved.”
“He came back, didn’t he?” Mike circled the Jeep around the parking lot and pulled out onto the street. “The Spangler Farm…thing.”
“Yeah, we’ve really been getting to know each other today, he and I. His name’s Ben. He may have watched me take a shower this afternoon.” She shuddered. “He’s very persistent.”
“Did he tell you why he’s so bent on contacting you?”
“No. No, that’s the one thing he hasn’t gotten around to telling me yet. He’s frantic. I think he saw something he couldn’t stop, but other than that, he still just repeats ‘her’ over and over again. I don’t know if I’m ‘her’ or if someone else is and, even if I did, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that information.” She sighed. “I saw him, though. Plain as day, right there in my hotel room.”
“Does he scare you?”
“No. He frustrates me.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He seemed relaxed, his arm propped up on the open window and his fingers bobbling with the movement of the car. “How do you feel about séances?”
“I think if Abraham Lincoln endorsed Mary Todd’s séances in the White House, I can endorse yours.”
“How do you feel about breaking onto the Spangler Farm and trying glass divination in the summer kitchen?”
“I think,” —He slowed to a stop at an intersection and leaned over, pressing his lips to her cheek — “you should stop thinking about it.”
“Are you offering to distract me?”
“I’m offering to do my best. That’s why I’m taking you to one of the best places in the park.”
“I hope they serve alcohol.”
“Naughty girl.” He turned the Jeep onto a battlefield road. “It’s better than that. Well, I think it is; you might end up seeing some kind of ghost regiment and we’ll have to go back to the hotel.”
“Tell me again why that’s a bad thing?” She hesitated. “You know what scares me the most is that it’s just in my head. All of it, that there’s no one watching me or trying to tell me something.”
“That palm reader seemed to pick up on it, so why couldn’t it be true?” He shrugged, turning the Jeep into a thickly wooded area. The terrain was hillier than before, the setting sun nearly obscured by thick overgrowth. “I don’t think it’s hard to believe. Tragedy never leaves a place, it leaves a mark. And…I can tell you from experience, that mark doesn’t go away. Ever.”
“I just wish I knew why he picked me.”
“Who wouldn’t pick you?” The hill crested and he pulled the Jeep into a parking area on the left side of the road. “You caught my attention from the moment you stepped out of Brad’s truck.”
He didn’t give her time to respond, instead climbing out of the Jeep and circling around the vehicle to open her door. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
“Little Round Top?”
“It’s the best place in the park to watch the sunset.” He laced his fingers around hers and led her up a steep paved path. Enormous boulders—one topped with a brass statue of a man overlooking the valley below—bordered the winding trail to the crest. “I used to come up here in the fall, just to think. It’s too loud up here in the summer, too many bus tours and people, but in the late fall it’s usually pretty deserted.”
In the distance, she could see the enormous rocky outline of Devil’s Den. The hillside itself was covered in fallen rocks and thick weeds. “I can’t imagine trying to take this hill.”
“The soldier in me can’t comprehend it either. Trying to charge this hill, scramble over these rocks, while the Union soldiers here were firing down on them? It’s suicide.”
“It’s beautiful now.” She could hear chatter behind her, mumblings she knew came from the dead. …Hazlett’s dead…right flank is weak… She tried to tune them out. “But sad. I can’t imagine what it took to see death staring you down, to know chances were good you were going to die, and still make the decision to march forward anyway.”
He climbed onto a boulder and pulled her up after him, then sank down to a seated position. “It’s not all that different from now. You’re one of a group, you’re marching together. Somehow that takes away part of the trepidation.”
“Do you think your military experience gives you different perspective on archeology?”
“Sometimes, if it’s trying to understand why things are where we find them.” He pulled her down next to him so she was leaning against his chest. “Archeology is just one big game of Russian roulette. You dig a quarter of an inch in the wrong direction and you never find what’s buried. That’s what’s going to happen at the Spangler Farm, you watch. We put our test pits in random places to ‘preserve’ the integrity of the site, but it seems too haphazard.”
The movement of his lips tickled loose strands of her hair. She shivered.
“Are you cold?” He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her closer to him. “I have a sweatshirt in the Jeep if you want it. I can’t guarantee it’s clean, but it’s there.”
“I’d rather you keep me warm.”
“I can do that.”
She held her hand up to the sky. “I once saw on a survival television show you can measure how much daylight is left with your hand. You put your hand up to the horizon and each finger represents fifteen minutes. So, basing my guess entirely on that assumption, I’ll wager there’s about half an hour to go.”
“Do you plan on being put in a survival situation where you’d need that kind of logic?” He tightened his arms around her waist. It seemed like such a casual movement, like they’d been together for years.
“No, but even paper archeologists theoretically could end up with their backs against the wall.”
“What if I had your back pressed up against the wall?”
“Why don’t you try it and find out? I’m fairly sure you won’t hear me complaining.”
He chuckled. “Don’t you want to watch the sunset? It’s beautiful, it’s romantic. How many opportunities do you get to be here, on Little Round Top, watching the sunset over the battlefield?”
“Unless something catastrophic happens with my archeological career, I’m assuming tomorrow would be the next opportunity.” She sighed. “I guess I should say something more catastrophic. My alcoholic reputation precedes me.”
“I think you’ll be fine.” He paused. “Because, you know, I’m the poster child of a
rcheologists without problems.”
“They almost threw me out of school.”
“Eh, I remember a time in my younger days when I got wasted at my annual training with the Army. I was so hung over I was lying under a five-ton truck puking my guts out. ‘They’ told me I’d never amount to anything. And ‘they’ eventually promoted me to lieutenant. So, see. Idle threats.”
“I guess I don’t technically need my doctorate. I mean, worst case scenario.” She leaned her head back against him and looked up at the sky. He was right, the golden hues of daylight melting down into the horizon was pretty.
“You don’t even need to have a masters. I have mine because the Army paid for it, but I had my job right out of school. Granted, that was because I knew Brad, but still.” He paused. “Brad doesn’t even have his doctorate.”
“It’s just always been my plan: go to school, get good grades and my degree. Then the real world hits and I meet Cianna, an archeologist who doesn’t even have a degree related to the field and still has more experience than me.”
“I wouldn’t compare you to her. She doesn’t even measure close.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. His breath was hot on her neck and, as much as she wanted to try and enjoy the beauty of the setting sun, he distracted her. It was a sunset. It looked like every other sunset she’d ever seen. People wandered around the path next to them. She occasionally heard a faint whisper she couldn’t explain, but her focus was on him. The way his lips brushed against her neck. The way she seemed to fit perfectly in his arms and the way he smelled like musky cologne; forget the battlefield and the sunset and voices from the dead. Forget Normandy. Hell, forget it all.
He brushed her hair away from her neck and pressed his lips to her skin. “So…you want to go check out some monuments?”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“We have to head in that direction anyway.” He stood, pulling her up after him, and led her back to the Jeep. “Might as well show you my favorite.”
He pulled the Jeep back onto the main road, circling around the craggy formations of Devils Den and around sharps turns leading into the woods. The road dipped and wound around more sharp bends, the headlights reflecting off marble monuments in unexpected bursts of light. Each stark white explosion was like a new terror, as if the headlights were reflecting off the glow of the dead.
She tapped her fingers against the passenger’s seat. “The sunset was nice, by the way.”
“It was my feeble attempt to impress you.”
“I was already impressed, but you scored points for romantic thematic elements.”
He slowed the Jeep and eased it to the side of the road, stopping in front of a monument tucked into a thick overgrowth of trees. Madison’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and, in the glow of the headlights, she could see the marble was fashioned into Celtic cross. A stone wolfhound was stretched out at the base of the cross, his head tucked solemnly between his front paws.
“It’s to the Irish Brigade.” He tapped his fingertips against the steering wheel, craning his head to better see out his window. “Call me sentimental, but it’s my favorite. Over thirteen hundred monuments and memorials in the whole park, and this one gets me every time.”
“Did you have ancestors in the Irish Brigade?”
He nodded. “Jacob Bowser, he was in the 63rd New York Infantry.”
“That’s really cool. I have a few ancestors who fought in the Western Theater, but my family was too new to this country for the most part. We were still slumming around Germany until the turn of the century.”
“It’s another one of my quirks, I guess you could say.” He shrugged and opened the driver’s side door. “I got a free trial period to one of the family history databases online and conveniently forgot to cancel before they started charging my credit card. By that point, I had to get my money’s worth and spent ‘you don’t want to know’ how many hours researching my family tree.”
She waited as he circled the Jeep and opened her door for her. “As quirks go, that’s not a bad one. I like to read science fiction and eat cheese. It could be worse.”
“We’re kind of nerdy, you and I.”
“Nerds are cool.” She stood on her tip toes to better see the wolfhound. “It’s a beautiful monument.”
“The wolfhound is life size.” He trailed his fingertips across an inscription below the dog’s paws. “That’s what it says here, anyway. At the dedication ceremony in 1888, Father Corby called the cross an ‘emblem of Ireland’. They were decimated at Antietam and Frederickburg and barely had enough for two companies each once they got here, but they still fought like hell back at the Wheatfield.”
“You’ll have to bring me back here in the daytime to see it better. Honestly, I can’t see much of anything right now.”
“I know.” He turned and caught her in his arms, pressing her gently against the base of the monument. Cupping the side of her face with his hand, he trailed his fingertips down her cheek and along her jawbone. “I had ulterior motives.”
“Oh, really?” The corners of her lips tugged up into a smile.
“I have a confession.” He cradled her in his arms, his lips impossibly close to hers. “I’m…I’m falling in love with you.”
“I think it goes without saying that the attraction is mutual.” Her pulse raced like she’d just gotten the acceptance letter into graduate school, except, she knew she wanted Mike more. “Just as long as you don’t think I’m easy.”
“You don’t seem like the type of girl who looks back.” He tilted her chin down and brushed his lips against hers. “But, I didn’t want to lead you on. Incase…you know…you didn’t feel the same way—”
“You had me at Pennsylvania bank barn.” She rose up onto her tip toes and kissed him, letting her teeth nibble on his lower lip. “If you’d played your cards right, you could have had me in the Pennsylvania bank barn.”
“I could take you back to your hotel room.” He kissed her again, flicking his tongue against hers, taunting her by pulling away instead of kissing her deeper.
“Yes, you should.”
“You have your key, right?”
“I’m fairly sure I do.” She pulled him back to the Jeep and they both climbed inside. “And if I don’t, you can just fuck me in the parking lot.”
He laughed, swerving the vehicle back onto the main road. His hand slid to her knee, his fingertips lightly trailing down the inside of her leg.
Her breath caught in her throat. “If you’re going to do that, you’re going to need to drive faster.”
“I’m incapable of breaking the speed limit in a national park. I physically cannot shift out of second gear and tempt fate.” He chuckled. “I probably shouldn’t even be out of first gear, but I’ll admit you push me into second gear, baby.”
“That’s oddly complementary.”
“Well, you know, I’m still trying to woo you.”
He parked the Jeep in a public parking lot a short ways from the hotel, looking somewhat apologetic. “I’m a stickler for free parking.”
“Free parking and second gear?” She raised her eyebrow quizzically. “I knew you were an old soul, but I didn’t think you were actually an old man.”
He circled around the vehicle and opened her door, pulling her out of the seat and into his arms. “Says the girl who never remembers her room key.”
“I have many more redeeming qualities.”
She led him across the street and up the two flights of stairs to her room and, with much satisfaction, produced the room key from her pocket. “You’ll have to excuse the mess. I’m…well, frankly, I’m a slob. And I left in a hurry.”
“I’ll try not to openly judge you.”
She hesitated as she opened the door, sliding her hand in the room to switch on the light before strolling inside. The room was, of course, empty—but she wasn’t convinced he was gone. Please, just leave me alone for like, fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. With my luck it’ll be
ten.
Mike closed the door behind them and caught her wrist, pulling her back to him. He brushed his lips against hers. “So…nine tattoos. If I can find them all, what kind of reward do I get?”
“You can have me.”
“Can’t I have you anyway?”
“Well, yeah. But making you work for it makes me seem less easy.”
“I don’t think you’re easy.” He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. “I mean, it’s not like we just met. We just met a week ago.”
“I bided my time.” She kicked off her flip flops. “Such a lady.”
He pulled her wrist to his lips and kissed the fleur de lis tattoo. “One.”
“Too easy.”
He pushed up the legs of her jeans away from her ankles and studied two large watercolor tattoos stretching from the base of her toes to well above her ankles. A magpie was etched on the top of each foot, surrounded by a tangle of faded greenery and dull blue and purple flowers. He pressed his lips to each ankle. “Two and three.”
“One for sorrow, two for joy.” She was blabbering and she knew it. “It’s from an eighteenth century nursery rhyme.”
“I’m not surprised.” He crawled up on the bed beside her and unfastened her jeans, sliding them down her hips and off her legs. Large, black centered red poppies were tattooed from her right knee, to well above her hip bone, the vibrant color a stark contrast to the faded, watercolor style on her feet and ankles. He trailed his lips from her knee to the edge of her underwear. “Four.”
He eased her shirt up and over her head to unveil an orange and yellow phoenix on her right side. “Five.”
Latin underneath her left collarbone. Alis volat propriis; she flies with her own wings. “Six.”
Black lace and filigree on the top of her left shoulder. “Seven.”
Song lyrics in between her shoulder blades, but the fighter still remains. “Eight.”
With Me Now Page 12
