a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure)

by Charles, L. j.

  And then Mitch’s arms closed around me.

  Compared to what else had been going on in my life, it wasn’t a big deal. A client gone wrong. Stalking me. It had happened before, then blown over. No one had ever followed me across an ocean before, but still.

  It wasn’t a big deal when I asked the team to keep an eye out for a sick bastard who was handsome in a craggy way with blond hair and muddy hazel eyes.

  It wasn’t a big deal when all four of them reacted with their personal version of the super spy-firefighter-best friend-lover-overprotective response. It was in character for them. Normal.

  It wasn’t a big deal until Pierce cornered Annie on his side of our connecting door, and I listened when I shouldn’t have. But my feet were glued to the floor.

  "It was Williams, no question. Your ex, A.J., so your plan. What do you need?"

  Nineteen

  There was no point in pretending I didn’t hear Pierce’s question, so I yanked the door open and waited, my stomach relocating to somewhere around my throat. Annie’s past had never been a topic of discussion between us because most of it had been categorized by the government as top secret. And I’d respected that. Never asked. Never tried to touch my way into her secrets. I moved my hands behind my back, a clear signal that it was her choice what to tell me.

  She nodded, and the silent thank you was clear in her eyes. "I was married to Brody Williams. We met in the Army. I was in sniper school. He was in IT. He’s always had a way with computers, like his mind had been created from bits and bytes."

  All those left out, scary feelings I’d been storing up zapped me. Moved front and center in my head and carved out a special place to call home, and then made their way through my body—throat, chest, stomach—not bothering to spare a single organ.

  I searched for words. "But I asked if you knew him, and you said no."

  She nodded. "I wanted to deal with it on my own. Finish it before the wedding without making it a big deal. And I didn’t want anything from my past to touch the beauty of what Sean and I have."

  The old feelings of betrayal replaced common sense with a surge of anger. But Annie and I had been through this before, back when she had to hide a lot of information to protect me from a crazy killer.

  And from hanging around with her and Pierce, I knew the training they’d had had toasted their brain cells into being automatically secretive. Irritating. Pissed me off, but I understood it. So I pulled out my psychologist persona to mask my temper. "Denial is one hell of an effective defensive mechanism. So, is it true you left Brody all those years ago to protect him?"

  I needed to sit for this, and slid to the floor, tucking my legs into a crossed position. My movement started a chain reaction. Pierce had backed against the nearest wall. Sean moved behind Annie and pulled her tight against him. Mitch hunkered down next to me. "What the hell?" he asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question.

  Annie smiled, the barest wisp of movement. "Looks like my past has caught up with me."

  "You talking about Williams, Annie J.?" Sean asked.

  She nodded, the back of her head butting against his chest.

  He held her tight, not letting go when she started to squirm. "He’s our problem now, not just yours, and we aren’t going to allow anyone to threaten us."

  "How do you want to handle this, A.J.?" Pierce asked, cutting right to the end game.

  "I need to confront him. There has to be some reason he’s picked now to intrude in my life again. I’m good with computers, good enough that I thought I’d blocked every attempt he’s made to find me. But I didn’t think…" Her voice caught, the words fumbling for purchase. "I didn’t think he’d go after you, El. I protected my parents with my Violet James identity for a long time, and of course Adam can take care of himself."

  Her gaze pleaded with me.

  "No biggie. You know I’ve had crazy clients before. True, Williams is acting certifiably insane, but compared to the current situation with my family and the formula for the toxin, he’s barely worth our time."

  Annie shook her head. "You don’t understand what I’m saying. He’s probably been following you for a long time, watching every keystroke on your computer, possibly monitoring your phone calls. If he was curious enough, he’d have hacked into your mobile provider’s accounts to track the numbers you’ve called. He would do whatever it took to threaten me, and he knows the one sure way to get to me is through the people I love."

  I started to ask if Sean knew about Annie’s first marriage, but realized he was too calm and supportive for it to have been a surprise. That left me as the only one out of the loop. And maybe Mitch. I squeezed his hand. "You don’t have any marriages you’ve forgotten to tell me about, do you?"

  "Ours will be my first and only."

  My heart thumped, stealing blood from my brain. It should have worked the other way. It should have pushed all kinds of red cells into my brain so I could think better, faster. But no. My thoughts hiccupped. Holy Mamma Mia. We’d sort of talked about forever, but not in front of anyone. That made it almost official. The color drained from my face. I knew it did because all my blood had to have shifted downward to support the ferocious pounding of my heart.

  Pierce elbowed away from the wall with barely leashed impatience. "Back on task, people. Two things need to happen before we get to Williams. I’m taking Hunt and Gray for a chat with Kahuna Aukele, see if we can’t squeeze some information out of him. A.J., you take Martin to Makani Maliu’s house to start the arson investigation. We’ll meet at Haleiwa Joe’s to compare notes. Let’s roll."

  Mitch stood, then pulled me up next to him, my mind busy putting Martin and Sean together. It had been a while since I heard his last name. I twitched. Marriage. Last names. Would I…? "Are you going to take Sean’s name, Annie?"

  "Yes. I want to leave all of my other lives behind."

  Mitch stepped into the bathroom, and Sean had grabbed his backpack and was rummaging through it, probably checking the equipment he’d need to start the arson investigation. Pierce headed for the door, but turned his head looking back at Annie and me, his gaze steady.

  She bent to my ear. "I think it’s hard for him, watching you and Mitch together. He cares about you, and I honestly never thought I’d say that about any woman and Tynan Pierce."

  My heart flipped. "I care about him, too. But Mitch and I are…we just are. Pierce is dangerous and wild. I have a grandfather to care for and a family mess that will haunt me forever. Forever isn’t part of Pierce’s vocabulary."

  "Move it, ladies." Pierce held the door for us, and for the first time in a long while, he didn’t touch me when I slid past him.

  My heart did another bothersome flip.

  By the time Pierce merged onto H2 heading toward the North Shore, the three of us had settled into a no-reason-to-talk silence. The Wai‘anae Mountains were our constant companion along the left side of the road, and they kept catching my attention. Not only because of the verdant shades of green and blue, but because when the clouds chased each other across the sky they left fascinating patterns against the hills. I wanted to live in Hawaii, wanted to hold my family close. Annie was as much family as my grandfather, and I didn’t want to let either of them go.

  I slid my arm toward the back seat, reaching for Mitch. He caught my hand and I twisted to face him, glad that Pierce had only put the doors on the Jeep, and left the top off. The wind blowing around us made conversation almost impossible. We had a lot to talk about, but not in front of Pierce. And it was bordering on uncomfortable with all their testosterone blowing around in the Jeep.

  I heaved a mental sigh of relief when Pierce pulled onto Kahuna Aukele’s street. He parked around the corner from the house, pulled the key from the ignition, and vaulted over the door. Guess he was in a hurry to escape the confines of the Jeep, too.

  My grandfather waited on his stoop, his gaze moving from one to the other of us. "Aloha. Welcome." He touched my shoulder. "They know of our relationship."r />
  I nodded, pulling up the images in my mind of the scenes where I’d told Pierce and Mitch about finding him, so he could see what happened—a kind of mind reading, only not. There was no need for words. A warm wash of love flowed from him into my heart.

  The three of us slipped our shoes off and trailed into the house behind Aukele. He motioned us toward the pillows. "I prepared fresh mango juice this morning," he said, heading toward the kitchen.

  I licked my lips, tasting guilt. Annie wasn’t the only one who’d been keeping secrets, and the time had come to share mine. Grandpa handed around colorful glasses of juice, then eased onto the pillow next to me. I took a sip of the fragrant, rosy yellow liquid, letting the tangy flavor clear my throat. "I saw something the first day Pierce and I visited my grandmother’s homestead."

  Mitch raised his eyebrows, Pierce glared, and my grandfather patted my hand. "She left many images there for you to find."

  "Yes, I know." There was no reason for me to describe every image, so I went right to the one they were waiting for. The one I'd been keeping a secret. "When Grandma left the house she was wearing a distinctive dress, one that was featured in the Nordstrom catalogue when they opened their store in Ala Moana. Two years ago, I think."

  Aukele tilted his head as though listening to something no one else could hear. "Makani was fond of the dress. It reminded her of the sea, and it was the image she wanted you to have of her."

  Pierce tapped his glass. "Point, Belisama."

  "Millie, um…" I turned to Mitch. "I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about this a long time ago."

  "Better spit it out then." His words were brusque, and some of the color had drained from his face.

  I tightened my hold on his hand. "Millie is my housekeeper. At my parent’s house. My childhood home."

  Kahuna Aukele tipped his chin. "Yes. I know of Millie and her husband, Harlan. He cares for the property, yes?"

  "Yes. They’ve been taking care of the house since I was a child. Anyway, Millie had the Nordstrom catalog on the kitchen counter, opened to the page with that dress, the corner turned down. It wasn’t a dress Millie would ever wear, and I think there must be a connection."

  "Of course, Keiki, the dress was a gift from Millie to Makani."

  "They knew each other?"

  "They were dear friends as children, long before Millie and Harlan moved to North Carolina to care for Loyria and James."

  His tone was matter-of-fact.

  My stomach took a dive.

  "Why didn’t my parents tell me? Or Millie and Harlan? No one ever said anything about them being friends."

  A shrill edge touched my words. It must have shouted my level of anxiety because Pierce blinked at me. I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the peace of my grandfather’s home.

  Mitch tugged his hand free. "You’re saying you own the house where you grew up, that there are caretakers living there who were friends with your grandmother."

  Another breath, shakier than the first one. "I didn’t tell anyone. Annie doesn’t know—"

  Mitch spun toward Pierce. "You knew."

  "Background check. Took me a week to find the connection." More matter-of-fact words, like Pierce knew there was a cache of emotion on the verge of detonation.

  Defuse this, Everly. Now.

  I grabbed Mitch’s hand and held on tight. "I’ve never told anyone. For a long time there was no one I trusted enough to tell. And after I’d known Annie for a while, I couldn’t figure out how to tell her, so when I went there to escape and think, I referred to it as going on retreat. I let everyone think I went to a spa. I guess you know that part."

  Pierce drained his glass and set it on the floor with a loud thunk. "Missing the point here. Why is this important?"

  I didn’t bother to turn away from Mitch when I answered. "Millie might know something about the toxin. Correction. Now that I know she was a childhood friend of my grandmother’s, and they kept in touch, she must know something."

  Silence.

  I twisted to face my grandfather. "Do you know anything about the toxin or an antidote? Pierce’s team was ambushed last night and they’re in critical condition…"

  "Millie cannot help you. I have some knowledge, but not enough to prepare an antidote. There was more than one form of the substance that Loyria discovered. All became lethal after a given amount of time, but some variations killed instantaneously. Your mother hid the components in different places, hoping they would never be brought together."

  My mind jumped to Parker Steele. "They were able to create an antidote for Parker."

  Mitch nodded toward Aukele. "Only because it was a single component of the toxin and they were able to lift some of the powder from the photograph Steele touched."

  "Hold up." Pierce jabbed a finger toward Kahuna Aukele. "Scientists keep records, notes, to document shit. Gotta be someplace."

  "The only record was in her mind." Waves of tranquility flowed from my grandfather.

  It was probably his way of controlling Pierce, and probably was something I should learn how to do. Later. Right now I had bigger problems to deal with.

  I struggled to organize my thoughts. "You’re saying no one has a clue how to fight this poison? Or where to find any of the components so we can do our own research?"

  My grandfather settled deeper into his floor pillow. He’d done the same thing the first time I visited him, when he’d slipped into his teaching persona. "It is available, but Loyria hid different forms and titrations separately so they would not be easily accessible to anyone."

  My stomach knotted as I envisioned months of searching ahead of us. "We’ll just have to find everything she’s hidden. I don’t understand why she didn’t destroy the toxic substances, or as many of the components that she could. It would have been the right thing to do."

  My grandfather nodded. "From the time she first discovered the potency of the poison, she searched for a way to destroy it. Any progress she made died with her, but I fear the outcome was inevitable."

  "Are you saying it’s indestructible?" Fear pounded through my veins.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. "I am."

  Twenty

  Indestructible. Fourteen simple letters that turned into a single devastating word—one that settled in the back of my mind with the persistence of an earworm. Pierce, Mitch, and I formed an unhappy trio as we left my grandfather’s house with no useful information.

  Oh, he knew about probable locations of the toxic ingredients—none of them hidden, all of them growing in either public or private gardens. The stuff was right here on Oahu. In plain sight. But he wouldn’t tell us what gardens, where they were located, or what the plants looked like. His way of guaranteeing no one found them. I couldn’t blame him for that, and, oddly enough, Pierce didn’t push for information. Now that gave me a severe case of the twitchies.

  "Indestructible. How are we supposed to work with that?" The sound of defeat rested heavy in my words.

  Pierce yanked his cell from his pocket. "Kahuna Aukele is right. We excavate a bunch of plants, and every sociopath bastard out there will be tearing up gardens." He punched a button on the phone. "Yeah."

  The naturally warm shade of his complexion paled to pasty white. "Send me the report ASAP."

  I reached to touch his arm, thought better of it and jerked my hand back. "What?"

  "My team didn’t make it. No survivors."

  "They were protecting me." The words were wrenched from somewhere deep in psyche, leaving a dull ache behind.

  His gaze landed on me, held. "Their job. One they chose. Eyes open."

  But it was there. Doubt. Guilt. A breach of confidence. Something I hadn’t seen before was buried under the harsh delivery of Pierce’s words. I could almost see his shift of attitude from warrior to killer. And he wasn’t sharing the details behind the shift.

  I ignored the unease creeping along my spine. The roulette wheel in my mind did a convoluted spin, and stopped dead on a
single fact. "It isn’t the ingredients we need to destroy, it’s the formula. By themselves, the individual plants might be poison, but not world-threatening."

  Mitch wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "From what your grandfather said, it didn’t sound like there is a formula. Or if there is, only your mother knew the specifics."

  "Someone knows. The cop who poisoned Parker Steele knows something, I’m sure of it." I slapped the back of my hand against Pierce’s arm, careful to keep my fingertips to myself. I didn’t want to know what images were lurking inside his head. "Can you get to him? Question him?"

  "Yeah." Pierce's gaze sharpened. "About the garden at your parent’s house."

  We’d started walking again, shook me. "My garden? You think my Mom would have grown toxic plants? And then let me dig in the dirt, pick flowers, play with whatever was available? No way. If anything my parents were overprotective of me."

  Mitch’s hand tightened around my shoulder, and he glared at Pierce. "You’ve been to Everly’s childhood home?"

  It was so not the time for macho posturing, and my man was practically quivering with the need to punch Pierce. I could feel it in his muscles where our bodies touched.

  I reached my hand up and twined my fingers with Mitch’s, then sent as much love energy as I could toward him.

  Pierce cocked his head to the side, cool control back in place. "She picked up images about one of my assignments. I had to run immediate damage control."

  Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. It wasn’t much as far as explanations went, but that Pierce offered any information about his work meant he cared enough about me, and my future with Mitch, to squelch Mitch’s jealousy. I gave him my most genuine, from-the-heart smile.

  He nodded. Once. "Any place you weren’t allowed to play?"

  My thoughts drifted back to the garden, and I shook my head. "No. But even if Mom wasn’t growing anything in the garden, and she wasn’t, Harlan might have been aware of what she was researching. If Millie was my grandmother’s friend, then Harlan probably was, too. And it’s kind of odd that my grandfather only mentioned Millie."