by Liliana Hart
“Every detail was right,” she said.
“Is the mask always right when it sends you visions? I don’t mean the alternate-reality visions, I mean the glimpses of the future. Like that one.”
“That was the first—and only—time it showed me the future.”
“Helluva moment for the mask to choose to share. I thought I was losing my mind. And I had a massive erection as I searched this room for clothes for you.”
She pressed her body against him. “And I fantasized about making love with you in the shower.”
“Well, maybe that should be your first fantasy we make come true.” He took her hand and pulled her toward the bathroom.
The phone rang, stopping them both. Sienna huffed out a breath. “I guess we’ve got responsibilities, and sex fantasies will have to wait.”
Rhys nodded and answered the phone.
It was nine in the morning when they ventured out, early for a town whose all-night festival had been cut short with a murder, and the streets were empty as they drove south to the heart of the town to visit Chuck, who’d arrived in Itqaklut and promptly checked himself into the only medical clinic in the area, then called Rhys to let him know he’d left Anchorage without warning.
Rhys was worried about the risk Chuck had taken in leaving the bigger, state-of-the-art hospital, but relieved his cousin had been deemed well enough to travel. When they arrived at the clinic, Chuck was sitting up in his bed, looking robust and full of life—a big difference from his appearance a few days ago.
“Sienna Aubrey?” Chuck asked in his usual booming voice, which held a slight, suspicious edge.
Sienna approached him nervously, but she didn’t know Chuck was more teddy bear than grizzly. Rhys hoped.
His cousin’s broad face split into a warm monster grin. Everything about Chuck was huge—right down to his wide smile and giant front teeth. “Well, now I understand my idiot cousin’s quick decision to invite you to stay at my house. But don’t let his rash act fool you. He’s more prude than player.”
Rhys rolled his eyes. “I’m neither.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Rhys’s eyes burned. He was grateful for the good-natured teasing. Chuck had almost died a week ago, but here he was, his oversized, robust self. Chuck’s mother used to say Chuck was so full of life, he could power two people, but Rhys had always figured that number was too low.
Sienna’s shoulders relaxed. She was smart, resourceful, strong, and his, and he couldn’t help but feel a rush of possessive pride at the thought. “Chuck, be nice and only tell Sienna good things about me, because I really like her and will beat you with a spoon if you scare her off.”
Sienna rolled her beautiful, warm eyes. “He’s totally a player.”
Chuck snorted. “Anyone who can knock the stick out of Rhys’s ass and make him smile instead of being Morose Moose all the time is my friend for life.”
She laughed. “Morose Moose?”
“He started calling me that when I was nine.”
“More like nineteen, when you quit playing college baseball to focus on school and the nightmare you were dating dumped you for a jock.”
Sienna’s grin widened, and she grabbed a visitor’s chair, pulling it close to the hospital bed to park herself at Chuck’s side. “I want to hear more about Morose Moose.”
“No, you don’t.” Rhys dropped a kiss on her forehead, then met his cousin’s gaze. “So how did you convince the doctor to let you travel back here?”
Chuck fidgeted, and his gaze darted around.
“Crap, Chuck. Should you be in Anchorage?”
“No. I made it here fine, and I am better. There’s a chance I won’t need another dialysis treatment, but if I do, it can be handled here. But, yeah, the doc wasn’t thrilled with my leaving Anchorage.”
“Then why did you come?” Rhys asked, more than a little worried.
“I had a dream last night, only…it wasn’t a dream.” Chuck glanced at the open door just as someone in scrubs walked by.
Rhys, suspecting what was coming, crossed the room and closed the door. He leaned against it to prevent anyone from surprising them mid-conversation. “A dream?” he prompted.
“You both need to tell me everything—and I mean everything—about the mask. Starting with how long it’s been haunting you, Sienna.”
In the end, they told Chuck everything. Well, not the details of the sex dream, or the vision of the future they’d both shared, just that both events had occurred. Sienna was uncomfortable at first, but the more it became clear Chuck believed without reservation, the easier the words came.
Chuck Vaughan was a giant of a man, or he would be, if he weren’t confined to a bed. It was hard to guess his height lying down, but she guessed he was taller than Rhys and built like a linebacker. He was so robust—in size and energy—it was hard to believe he was sick, and that he belonged in a hospital bed.
After they finished their story, Chuck was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “What I don’t get is why the mask saved you both—but it didn’t save my Jana.” At that, his wide, warm face crumpled, the man whose smile could power a room extinguished with grief.
“What do you mean?” Rhys asked. “The crash that killed Jana wasn’t an accident?”
With a swipe of a beefy fist, Chuck shoved aside the wheeled tray that loomed at his bedside. It crashed into the far wall. He flopped back against his pillows and swiped his thick fingers across his face. “I saw it all in my dream that wasn’t a dream. I was Jana. I entered the storage facility and caught those asshole Pelligrew brothers with the mask. They grabbed me, covered my mouth and nose until I passed out. I came to as they put me on the snow machine, turned it on, and shoved me over the embankment. Jana died because of that damn mask, and it didn’t do a damn thing to save her.”
Sienna felt a hum in her bones that could only be the mask. It was frantic to tell Chuck something, but it wasn’t able to share thoughts with him. “Chuck,” Sienna said, her throat dry. “How did you know about the mask—that it was haunting me? What you described was Jana’s memory. The mask was there, but how did you know the mask has a spirit?”
Chuck frowned. “After I—Jana—died in my dream, the mask became the focal point—my point of view into the world. I got glimpses of the box I was shipped to Washington in. Then I saw you, in the museum, when you opened the box, and later arguing with the curator. And then I saw Rhys, in my office, pretending to be me.”
Sienna nodded. That was the only time the mask had been outside the box in Rhys’s presence. “You might think I’m crazy—well, hell, everything about this is crazy—but I think the mask is telling me… Jana is telling me… the mask couldn’t save her, because Jana is the mask. When she died, her spirit went into the mask.”
Chapter Thirteen
A vacuum of silence descended as Sienna’s last sentence echoed in Rhys’s mind. Slowly, Chuck’s face turned from his natural olive hue to a pale, sickly white that reminded Rhys of how ill he’d been just days ago.
He cleared his throat. “We have to get the mask back.” His voice was husky. Pained.
“We will,” Rhys said, hating that Helvig had gotten the mask but knowing there was nothing they could have done. Jana had blocked them, and in so doing, saved Rhys’s life.
Chuck looked up at the ceiling as he again rubbed his massive hand across his face. To Sienna, he said, “Is she trapped?”
She closed her eyes. Finally she answered, “No. I don’t think so. I can’t talk to her directly, but…” She paused again, her brow furrowed and mouth twisted as she seemed to be deciphering messages. She opened her eyes again. “I don’t think she’s trapped so much as clinging. Her grip on the mask—her portal to this side—is weak. The orca isn’t her totem. It belongs to a shaman, which makes her connection fragile. I think the shaman is helping her, somehow, trying to keep her connected to this world. When she shows us a vision, it drains her further. She was nearly pulled to the other side l
ast night. If she crosses, she won’t be able to come back.”
“Where is the mask now?” Rhys asked.
Again, Sienna closed her eyes, but the answer came more quickly this time. “The Pelligrews have it. Not sure where. It’s in a dark space. I don’t think it’s in the cedar box anymore.”
“Why can she communicate with you but not with me?” Chuck asked.
“My sense is she’s had months in my head and has learned her way around. After she pulled Rhys into the dream, communication with him opened somewhat, but it’s not the same two-way flow she’s developed with me. Maybe distance kept her from communicating with you these past months? Fifteen or twenty miles doesn’t seem to matter, but I definitely feel the connection more strongly when I’m closer to the mask. Itqaklut to Tacoma is a long way.”
“But she sent me a dream when I was in Anchorage. Now I’m here, and I can’t feel her at all.”
“I’ll try to ask.” Sienna closed her eyes again. She frowned, then eventually met Chuck’s gaze. “There was a rift last night, it opened a path in which distance and time didn’t matter. She used it to send you the dream, but the same rift is what almost sent her to the other side.”
“What caused the rift?”
This time, the moment Sienna closed her eyes, she jolted, her head jerking to the side, as if she’d taken a blow. Her face went pale. “Adam was holding the mask when he was shot by Nick Pelligrew at midnight. The bullet went through the mask, creating the rift.”
“Did you just witness Adam Helvig’s murder?” Chuck asked.
“No.” She looked down and rubbed her forehead. “I—uh—felt it.”
Rhys jolted away from the door and swore. He’d guessed from her physical reaction, but knowing she’d taken a bullet to the head for the second time in less than a day was too much. “No more questions. We can’t keep putting Sienna through this, and it sounds like it’s hard for Jana too.”
Chuck nodded.
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
Rhys stood before her and pulled her to her feet. He hated seeing her suffer and would take the pain if he could. Too bad Jana couldn’t communicate directly with him.
Behind him, Chuck said, “Jana was always a matchmaker. And matching you, Rhys, was the Holy Grail for her. Half the single women at our wedding were invited so they could meet my best man.”
Rhys stared into Sienna’s eyes. He’d known Jana’s matchmaking proclivities—and he’d been amused even if sometimes annoyed by it. But not anymore. Jana had succeeded, and now he was worried about the safety of the woman Jana had chosen for him. “After the FBI gets here and we’re interviewed, you’re getting on the next flight back to Seattle,” he said to Sienna.
She nodded. “As long as the Pelligrews are here, we’re all in danger. But, dammit, we can’t tell the FBI we know who shot Adam. We can’t tell them we know Adam stole the mask.” She turned to Chuck. “The cops don’t know Jana was murdered and didn’t believe you were deliberately poisoned.” She returned her gaze to Rhys. “Are they going to be able to catch these guys?”
“Doug and Nick Pelligrew aren’t smart enough rob a blind man and get away with it,” Rhys said. “They’ll be caught.”
Her lips tightened with frustration. “But we can’t even tell them that the mask has a bullet hole in it now.”
“When the FBI recovers the mask, it will be a direct connection between the Pelligrews and Adam Helvig’s murder. Mask fragments will be in Helvig’s body.”
Rhys felt a strange flash of cold and heat on his hands. The heat intensified into a burn, sharp. Painful. He glanced at Sienna. She flushed a deep sunburn red—face, throat, and shoulders. She winced, then seemed to hold her breath.
Her gaze swung to Rhys’s. Her mouth was pinched and her face had paled, even as her hands turned cherry red. She let out a slow, hissing breath. “You feel it too?”
He nodded. His hands throbbed, but he suspected it was worse for her.
“Feel what?” Chuck asked. “What’s going on?”
“My hands are burning.” To Sienna, Rhys asked, “Is Jana telling you what it means?”
Her eyes widened. “The mask is going to burn, and you and I will burn with it.”
They left a tired, frustrated, and worried Chuck in the clinic and headed back toward Chuck’s house. “You’re packing your bag and flying back to Seattle,” Rhys said.
She shook her head, feeling drained, knowing they were about to have an argument and not exactly thrilled at the prospect. “I don’t have anything to pack. And I’m not leaving without you.”
“I can’t leave Chuck here, not with the Pelligrews on the loose.”
“Then I guess I’m not leaving.”
“Sienna, you saw how beat he looked at the end. He shouldn’t have flown here, but now that he has, he can’t travel again. At least not today.”
“I know that, Rhys. And I understand why you need to stay with him. But I’m not leaving without you. We don’t even know if my leaving would change anything. So far the mask has never lied to us. The only vision of the future it sent happened exactly as we saw it.”
“This wasn’t a vision. This was burning hands.”
It hadn’t just been burning hands for her, but Rhys didn’t know that, and she had no intention of telling him the truth. “Well, our hands weren’t on fire, so it must have been a vision. A weak one. Maybe Jana is slipping. Moving away. We know who killed her and why. She can go to the other side now. Maybe she’s already gone.”
“Bullshit!” Rhys pulled off onto a gravel-lined turnout on the twisty, narrow road that cut through the green marsh and wound around arctic lakes. He threw the SUV in Park and faced her. “Why are you lying to me?”
She couldn’t answer that.
“Is Jana gone?”
“No.”
“Don’t ever make a claim like that unless it’s true.”
He was right. “I’m sorry, Rhys. I shouldn’t have said that. I won’t do it again.”
His deep blue eyes bore into hers. “There is a reason she sent us the burns. It was a warning.”
“I honestly don’t know what it was. The mask—Jana—she’s never done anything like that before.” She was still getting used to the idea the mask had a name. She’d seen the woman’s pictures. Had even met her in the dream that later turned into something more.
“It was a warning, Sienna. I know it in my gut. And my gut says you need to leave.”
She stared down at her hands, her legs, her feet. No longer red. No longer in agony. The flash of burning pain had been head to toe, and excruciating. And, even scarier, she’d felt flames lick along her cheeks and burn her hair.
She met his gaze. Those incredible blue eyes—the very first thing she’d noticed about him. “I don’t want to leave you, Rhys.”
“Yeah, well I don’t want you to stay. Not anymore.”
She flinched. The way he’d said it wasn’t I care about you and can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt. No, it was more I’m pretty much done with you now. Especially because you just lied to me. She didn’t believe he felt that way, but still, the painful words made a home deep in her insecurities and settled there, where they would live unhappily ever after.
Had he guessed where she was heading in saying she didn’t want to leave him? Smart of him to cut her off before she did something stupid, like telling him she was falling in love with him.
Yeah. Deep in her heart, she knew that was exactly what he’d done. She’d lied to him, and now he was done, so he’d seized on the first opportunity to get rid of her, before she became a clingy mess. That was how players worked, after all.
She cleared her suddenly dry throat. “Fine. Take me to the airport. Now.”
He cocked his head, looking at her in confusion. Then he frowned and said, “Good.” He made a quick U-turn, and they were headed toward the small airport.
With luck, she’d be on a flight within the hour.
It ha
d taken Rhys a moment to realize why she’d so suddenly capitulated. She’d misinterpreted his words—taking them in the worst possible light. Part of him was pissed that she was so ready to believe him that shallow, when his reason for wanting her to leave was blatantly obvious.
For a nanosecond, he considered correcting her rotten assumption. Except, he had what he wanted—her agreement to leave. Did it matter how they got there?
Not really, if it kept her safe.
But what if she was right and she couldn’t escape the flames?
All he knew was, they’d both felt the burning, but it seemed to be worse for her. She had to leave.
But what if the flames were inevitable? She’d suffer in addition to believing the worst about Rhys and his feelings for her.
Silence stretched between them on the short drive to the airport. Should he walk her into the terminal? Could he say good-bye to her without telling her how he felt? If she didn’t believe the worst of him, he had a feeling she wouldn’t leave.
He parked the SUV and turned to face her. It was clear from the hurt in her eyes she’d worked herself up into a painful lather. When he returned to Washington, they’d have to work on her insecurities. He imagined several different techniques he could use to convince her he was crazy about her. It would be a long, arduous process, but he was pretty sure he’d be up to the challenge.
He just wished he knew how long he’d need to stay in Itqaklut before he could return home and make it clear exactly how much he wanted her.
“Well then,” she said, her voice flat. “See you around.” She grabbed her purse, jumped out of the SUV, slammed the door, and headed toward the tiny terminal with her head down.
Okay, then. Mission accomplished. Not the good-bye he’d have hoped for, but still.
The moment she stepped off the curb, it hit him: her sharp reaction and maddening belief in his utter callousness had been sent by the mask. Jana had taken her known insecurities and magnified them by about a thousand.
