Another figure distracted him for a split second. Colonel Grove—his eyes wide as he took in the scene.
“Get the cops,” Caleb shouted. “Hurry.”
As Auger lunged, Caleb danced back, then went into street fighting mode. He got in a couple of punches before Auger chopped at him. The blow was intended to break his neck, he was sure. But he managed to deflect it with his arm.
He held his own—more or less. But he had no illusions that he could win.
Auger bolted for the door. But Caleb caught him by the shoulders, just as two security guards charged into the room.
“Hold it right there,” one of them ordered.
Auger immediately started talking—fast. “Thank God you’re here. This guy and his aunt were trying to kill Miranda. They hatched a plot to get back at the family.”
“You liar!” Aunt Edith shouted.
“They were pouring water down her throat,” Auger continued, edging toward the door.
But Frederick came up and put a large hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think so,” he growled.
Miranda lay in the bed, unable to move. Unable to speak.
She wanted to scream, to flail. But she was trapped in her body. Then something was different. She could feel the bed under her, the sheet on top of her. And she could feel something else—the hard metal of Caleb’s ring circling her finger. He had given it to her in the dream. And she still had it!
Making a tremendous effort, she closed her fist around the gold band—and broke through the barrier that had kept her away from the world.
A scream burst from her lips as her eyes snapped open. And she saw that everybody in the room had turned to stare at her.
“Dustin is lying,” she gasped out, hearing the raspy sound of her own voice.
Her eyes met Caleb’s. She knew from the mixture of raw emotions on his face that he wanted to leap to her side. “No! We have to sort this out.”
He gave a small nod as she tried to gather her energy. She was pretty sure that most people who woke up from a coma didn’t emerge in fully functioning shape. But she hadn’t been in a normal coma. Aunt Edith had kept her there.
She pushed herself up against the pillows, her gaze swinging from her father to the guards. She was weak, but she had to make them understand that she was in control of her mind. “Dustin is lying,” she said again, speaking slowly and clearly. “He and Aunt Edith were in here—pouring water down my throat—and cursing each other while they did it.”
“No!” Dustin shot back. “She’s wrong. She was unconscious.”
She fixed him with a piercing look. “Don’t you know that when a person is unconscious, the sense of hearing is the first to return?”
He blanched, but said nothing.
She swung her gaze toward her father. “I think Edith found out you’d started up your illegal business with Dustin again. I think she was blackmailing him for years. They were afraid I was going to call the cops, so he ran me off the road. Only I didn’t die. So they had to try again.”
Miranda looked toward the nearest security guard. “Dustin and Edith were the ones tying to kill me,” she said again, wishing she was stronger. But she had used up all her energy, and she flopped back against the pillow, exhausted.
“Tell them, Aunt Edith,” Caleb growled. “Tell them how Dustin forced her car off the road and you pushed her into a coma with your mental powers.”
“Mental powers,” the guard muttered.
“She made her living as a fortune-teller for years,” Frederick growled. “And she was good at it. She knew people’s secrets.”
Caleb looked at his aunt. “Is my mother in on this?” he asked.
The blood drained from her face. “No! Don’t blame her. She didn’t know anything about my blackmailing Auger. I put a protective charm around her to keep Auger away. And Frederick, too.” She sighed. “I thought you were safe, because you broke up with Miranda. So don’t blame your mother for any of this. She just came along to the hospital to persuade you to mind your own business. She was afraid you’d get hurt.”
Caleb breathed out a sigh, relief sweeping over his face when he realized his mother wasn’t in on anything immoral or illegal.
His aunt’s eyes filled with tears. “Caleb, I’m so sorry. But I knew for years that Miranda Grove was no good for you. I was glad when the colonel chased you away.”
The lead guard had pulled out his walkie-talkie. “I have a situation in Intensive Care. I need police assistance,” he said.
Uniformed officers arrived ten minutes later. After the guard related the past few minutes of conversation, the cops clicked handcuffs onto Dustin and Edith. But when they started hustling everyone away, Miranda roused herself again.
“No. Let Caleb stay with me,” she pleaded.
Her father turned to the cops, his face a mixture of pain and resignation. He had always been strong and in charge. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the past few days.
His shoulders sagged in defeat. “Let Mancuso stay. He’s the only one standing who doesn’t deserve any blame. He was just trying to help my daughter.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “I was on my way down the hall when I saw him heading for the intensive care unit. I didn’t see Dustin or Edith come in. There’s only one entrance, so they had to be in Miranda’s room when he arrived.”
Miranda looked gratefully at her father. “Thank you,” she whispered, fighting the tears that blurred her vision. Pulling herself together, she spoke to the cops. “I was in a coma. And my fiancé was worried about me. I hope you’ll let him stay with me now, because, you know, I could have been separated from him forever.”
“Fiancé. That’s a lie!” Dustin shouted.
“I have his ring,” she said, holding up her hand to show the opal sparkling on her finger. “Our names are engraved inside.”
She saw Caleb’s eyes widen, saw her father press his lips together and the cops exchange glances.
“I guess we know where to find you if we have any questions,” one of them said to Caleb in a gruff voice.
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be right here. With Miranda.”
She thought she would be alone with Caleb now. But a doctor and nurse had been waiting outside the door. They spent twenty minutes asking questions and doing an examination before they told Caleb he could have ten minutes with her before he had to clear out.
When they finally had some privacy, the questioning look on his face made her breath catch.
“Your fiancé?” he asked.
“I . . . thought that would convince the cops to let you stay,” she murmured.
“It did.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, then released it. “Maybe I spoke too quickly.”
“I’m glad you did. That is—if it saves me from the hell of wondering whether you’ll say yes when I ask you to marry me.”
She gave him a tremulous look. “If you’ll take me back, I’m yours.”
He bent down and gathered her into his embrace, being careful not to disturb the IV drip that was still attached to her arm.
“Miranda, I never stopped loving you.’
Tears glistened in her eyes. “Caleb, I love you so much. I’ve always loved you. Since we were kids.”
He held her more tightly. “As soon as you get out of here, I want to get a marriage license. We’ve wasted enough time.”
“Yes,” she answered, moving her lips against his shoulder. She was so happy to be back in the real world, so happy to be back with Caleb again. But worry marred her happiness, and she knew Caleb sensed it.
“You’re thinking about your father, aren’t you?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes.”
“He may do time for drug smuggling. But not for attempted murder.”
“That’s something.”
“More than I can say about my aunt.”
She nodded again. “Why did she do it?”
His voice turned hard. “She and my mom went t
hrough some hard times. I guess somewhere along the line, money became more important to her than anything else. The worst part is—I would have supported her, the way I support my mom, if I’d thought she needed me. But she told me she was fine. I guess she liked taking Dustin’s money. Maybe she took other people’s money, too.”
Miranda squeezed his hand. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not going to let that spoil our reunion.”
“Good.”
He pressed his lips against her cheek, still marveling at the joy of knowing she was his again.
“Your psychic powers brought us back together,” she whispered.
“Psychic powers. Yeah. I tried to push them aside.”
“Because of me.”
“I should have . . .”
“No. Stop. Eight years ago we were both too young to fight my father. Now we have to put all that behind us—and go on with our lives. Together.”
He held her tighter, thinking he’d tried to run from his destiny. The irony was that the Iron Colonel had seen the psychic ability in him—and kept him away from Miranda because of it.
“Can your magic powers get me out of here faster?” she murmured.
“Maybe.” He closed his eyes, focusing on healing and love, as he sent his strength to her.
“Um . . . I feel that. It’s like a nice hot sun beating down on me.”
“Good. Just wait until I get you home. I believe I can make you feel a good deal hotter,” he said, then grinned as happiness surged inside him.
“Oh, I’m sure you can.” She grinned back, then closed her eyes. “I’m tired.”
“Rest. I’ll be right here.”
She relaxed against the pillow. Then her eyes snapped open again.
“Don’t be afraid to sleep,” he murmured. “You’re safe now.”
“Because of you,” she answered. “Only because of you.”
The Road of Adventure
Robin D. Owens
One
He was the ugliest cat Jake had ever seen. The black-and-white tom had an aura of maleness surrounding him, even as he licked his paw and eyed Jake with disdain. One of Jake’s ex-girlfriends had used that aura-of-maleness phrase to describe him, and he’d thought it was crap—now he knew what she’d meant.
The cat set down his paw and sniffed. “I knew you’d come here.”
Jake must be dreaming. Cats sure as hell didn’t talk. The surroundings hadn’t tipped Jake off. He spent a lot of time in the gym locker room. He shifted. The bench seemed solid and hard for a dream.
He looked back at the cat and choked. Now it sat on what looked to be a small, ancient Greek pillar, like Jake had seen while watching the Olympics. Behind the cat wasn’t the opposite wall of gym lockers, but a temple that showed bright blue sky between fluted pillars.
Jake swallowed. Definitely a dream, though since he’d never had a cat, he wondered what the thing was doing in his dream. He narrowed his eyes. That cat! The battered tom looked familiar. Didn’t he have a run-in or two . . .
“I am not a thing or an it.”
Great, now the cat was reading Jake’s mind. He wouldn’t let a cat correct him. “You got balls?” Pretty sure the tom didn’t.
The cat lifted a pink nose with a black spot and sent Jake an icy stare. Jake’s cop instincts rang loud and clear that something was very, very wrong. But what could be too wrong in a dream? He looked down. Yep, fully clothed. He wouldn’t walk into the captain’s office naked.
The cat hissed, “My name is Borisssssssss.”
“Huh,” said Jake. He stood and stretched; all his muscles worked fine. Some called him an endorphinadrenaline junkie, but he just liked the way his body felt when he was in shape. Though he was thirty-two, he wasn’t slowing down at all. Looking around his side of the room, everything was comfortingly familiar, the dull green lockers, the bench, the tile floor. But it changed in the middle of the room, becoming marble slabs.
“Boris, huh?” Jake tested reality by strolling over to the cat and looking down on him. This side of the room remained a Greek temple. Jake could sneer, too. “I think we’ve met.”
He stepped back as the pillar grew until it loomed over him.
“You don’t remember Me?” Boris hunkered down, his already horizontal ears flattened even more.
How the cat could speak and growl at the same time eluded Jake. He shrugged. He was dreaming.
Boris stretched out a paw and sharp, curved claws sprang out. Oh, yeah. Jake remembered those claws. He’d tangled with the tom on the front porch of a house and gotten scratched. Badly enough that he’d had to get a tetanus shot, and that made his arm ache so he couldn’t work out for a day. Yeah, the cat had cost him. Hadn’t it also pissed . . .
His stare latched on to the cat’s paw where a bloody spot marked the side of the cat’s white foreleg, like where a vein had been opened or a needle inserted. . . . Jake’s heart started to pound in his ears.
“No,” said the cat. “Your heart . . .” He sheathed his claws and tapped Jake’s chest.
Jake saw it now, the big, dark stain on the chest of his uniform. Fear lanced through him. Woozy, he retreated to the locker room bench. He didn’t want to think about stains. He wanted to wake up. Now!
Nothing happened except the cat lifted its leg to groom. Jake was right. Boris had been fixed.
Boris growled.
Jake couldn’t help rubbing his hand up and down over a stiff, dark spot, hoping it would go away. If it didn’t . . . Out, out damned spot! What was that from? Bugs Bunny?
“Shakespeare, his play Macbeth.” The cat smirked.
Jake could really dislike this cat.
A door opened on his left. Jake blinked. There wasn’t a door there in the locker room. Oh, yeah, he had a really bad feeling about this.
Boris jumped from his pillar and swaggered to the small, balding man in a gray rumpled suit who stepped through the door.
“Hello, Boris,” the guy said. The cat rumbled a purr, then trotted into the next room.
The threshold looked ordinary. The man pinned Jake with eyes as gray as his clothing. Such colorless eyes shouldn’t have had an effect on Jake but he couldn’t move.
He’d faced down plenty of tough customers and won. His guts twisted. He should be the one in charge. He could lift this guy with one hand. He tried to speak and couldn’t.
“Come in, Jake Forbes. You can call me Gray.” The man turned and stepped across the threshold.
Finally Jake found his voice. “Whatever,” he croaked. He wanted to swagger like Boris—Jake could swagger with the best of them—but his feet dragged until he reached the door and looked in.
The office had bare dingy white walls, utilitarian furniture, and gray linoleum. Hell, the captain had a nicer office than this.
Dull inside, but golden sunshine streamed through a window high in the opposite wall. Two doors in that wall framed a scarred wooden desk where Gray sat. Each of the other walls had two doors also. Jake didn’t like the setup. Too many options and potential for danger coming through those doors—or going out through them. A chill feathered down his spine.
Gray raised a thin eyebrow. “Problem?” he asked with just enough patronization to challenge any guy.
Jake sucked in a breath and stepped into the room. Nothing earth-shaking happened.
With a pen the man pointed to a standard wooden office chair with arms. A couple of yellow aspen leaves were on the seat, and Jake brushed them off and sat. One of the chair legs wobbled. Jake cursed under his breath.
Boris sat four feet away, acting as if he were a king, but his seat was a raggedy carpeted post with long hanks of unwoven rug hanging around it. It was pink.
Jake grinned.
Boris looked supremely uncaring. Of course, cats couldn’t see colors, probably not even in dreams. The cat batted a twig of yellow aspen leaves.
The man squared a stack of papers on his desk and placed his pen at an exact angle. He folded his hands and shot Ja
ke another look. “This isn’t a dream, Jake. Accept that and it will make all our decisions quicker and easier. You’re dead. Boris is dead.” He waved a boney hand around the room. “Consider this the atrium to a change, a new existence.”
Breath whooshed from Jake’s chest. He felt his heart beating, his lungs working—the guy couldn’t be right. Jake hooked his thumbs into the loops of his jeans and angled his head. He wanted to tilt the chair back, but didn’t trust the wobbly leg. “So, you’re what? An angel?”
Gray pinched the skin above his nose. “A facilitator.”
“Yeah, right.” Jake curled one side of his mouth.
“Jake, you’re a jerk. Look at yourself.”
Gray’s words punched Jake. Jake the jerk. Jake the jerk. More than one of his father’s “ladies” had called him that—and more than one of his mother’s men. Even his ma—he nipped the thought, as always. Heat rose from his feet to his face; a flush reddened his neck along the line of his T-shirt. He’d worked hard to make sure no one ever called him that again. Developed a smooth and charming manner. Jake the jerk.
T-shirt. Jeans. He looked down at himself. The police uniform he’d taken so much pride in had vanished. He was in his off-duty clothes of white T-shirt and jeans. The T-shirt had a hole over his heart and a red stain. Pure shock froze him.
“Boris,” the facilitator said sharply. “You failed in your mission in this life. You were to bring Jake and Shauna together. The opportunities were there and you refused them.”
A cat shrug rippled down Boris’s back. “Not time yet,” he said.
“Untrue. The truth is that you wanted no other male”—Gray glanced at Jake—“no male of superior strength in Shauna’s life. You wanted to be the male of the house. You wanted to be the only male she loved. You knew she’d love and bond with Jake more than she could ever love and bond with you.”
Boris sniffed. “He’s human and ugly. I’m beautiful. I know this and Shauna said so. She is human and ugly, too, but she is Mine.”
Boris had serious problems. He was ugly even for a cat.
What Dreams May Come (Berkley Sensation) Page 14
