The Complete Lost Children Series

by Krista Street

  I frowned at how stupid I’d been. I needed to find someone older, who’d been alive longer than a decade, who would recognize me and could tell me where my family lived. I spun around and searched for another employee.

  Not spotting anyone, I wandered through the store, dipping between racks of outdoor jackets and peering around walls of biking equipment. At the back of the store, a sales assistant stocked tent bags into cubby holes. Gray hair peppered his head. He also had glasses. Failing eyesight was a good sign.

  “Um, excuse me.” I tapped his shoulder.

  He turned and smiled pleasantly. The movement lifted his bushy mustache. I waited for recognition to spring into his eyes, but he maintained the same bland expression. “Yes, can I help you?”

  “Um, I just wondered, if . . . you . . . recognized me?”

  He frowned and pushed his falling glasses up his nose. “Sorry, no. Should I know you?” His wrinkles deepened into a frown.

  Perhaps I’d gone too far in the opposite direction. Maybe he had Alzheimer’s, so didn’t recognize himself in the morning. I paused. I knew I was being ridiculous. The guy couldn’t be older than sixty. He obviously didn’t know me, and he obviously didn’t have Alzheimer’s.

  “No. I thought I recognized you. My mistake,” I replied.

  He smiled again and turned back to the shelf he was organizing.

  I didn’t move. Surely he would know something. I waited a moment and then tapped his shoulder again.

  He turned. “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you something else?” I asked bluntly. “This is a small town, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where everyone knows everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t recognize me?”

  He shook his head warily.

  “And nobody has gone missing here?”

  He shook his head again. “No. Miss, what are you talking about?”

  I could tell he was trying to stay polite. “So nobody that meets my description went missing about four months ago?”

  “No, not that I know of.”

  “No? Are you sure?”

  “I’m fairly sure.”

  I paused for a minute. No? Really?

  “Miss, are you okay?” His voice took on a concerned note. He stepped closer.

  I forced a smile and backed up before I made a bigger fool of myself. “I’m sorry. I’ll let you get back to work.”

  I turned, ran to the front, and out the door. The morning air hit me with cool force. I inhaled a few deep breaths and told myself that maybe the sales assistants at this store were new to town. Maybe they weren’t from here despite what they claimed. That had to be it.

  I waited on the sidewalk and tapped my foot on the ground. Surely someone would know me. I knew this place held something. It had to.

  I just had to find it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  An hour later, I stopped asking people if they knew me. I’d wandered into coffee shops, restaurants and other stores, intersecting dozens of people, some tourists. I only talked to the locals. They all claimed to not know me.

  I’d kept trying regardless, hoping those I asked had simply forgotten me. However, when I practically scared the socks off an elderly woman, who claimed she’d been born in this town, had never left it, and didn’t recognize me or anyone who looked remotely like me, I gave up. Apparently, my anxiety was starting to show. People took one look at me and hurried away.

  Fresh air carried in the morning breeze as I stood on the sidewalk. Biting my lip, I considered my options. Maybe Little Raven didn’t hold people I knew. Maybe something else waited here. Perhaps an object that I was supposed to find?

  My shoulders slumped as a pang of remorse struck me. I had hoped for something else entirely, something much more precious.

  I had hoped my family lived here.

  I buried that longing as deep as it would go. Another sharp stab rocked my core. I ignored it.

  It had to be mid-morning by now. Across the road, shop assistants dragged patio furniture outside, propped doors open, and arranged sidewalk signs. Chatter from people talking within the stores filtered out. With each second, the foot traffic increased as the touristy town grew more alive.

  Taking a deep breath, I focused. So if it was an object I was supposed to find, the only way I could possibly locate it was through the instinct—that subtle feeling that had led me hundreds of miles from Rapid City to here. I could only hope it would lead me to whatever I was supposed to find.

  Closing my eyes, I waited for that hum to resonate.

  It didn’t.

  I concentrated harder, searching for something, anything that would lead me in the right direction.

  Nothing happened.

  A car honked. My eyes snapped open, and I jumped back. I’d almost wandered into an intersection. I hurried back to the sidewalk and retreated into an alleyway by a brick building. Pungent scents from a nearby dumpster filled the air. I wrinkled my nose but stayed put.

  Away from the commotion, I closed my eyes. This time I retreated to that calm place within. The place that always made the instinct hum to life.

  Breathe in, breathe out. It’s got to be in here somewhere.

  Nothing.

  Clenching my hands into fists, I took another deep breath. Hyperventilating wouldn’t help. I tried again.

  Still nothing.

  “No!” I whispered.

  I dropped my backpack and sank to the ground. Gasping breaths shook me. I huddled on the pavement against the brick building. The ground was cold through my jeans as I drew my knees up. I didn’t care.

  Where was the instinct? Did Little Raven hold nothing for me? Had the instinct been wrong? Had I been wrong? Had there ever been an instinct? Or was it something I made up to give me purpose?

  Tears sprang into my eyes as I cradled my head in my hands. This time, I couldn’t stop them. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had counted on finding something here, feeling something, or at least recognizing something, but nothing like that had happened.

  I began crying in earnest, silently at first but then my whole body shook. I was completely lost. Lost with no answers, no home, and no way of knowing what to do next.

  Wrapping my arms around my shins, I laid my head against my knees and sobbed. Cold tears streamed down my cheeks.

  To my left, a shuffle of feet came from the sidewalk, as if someone skidded to a stop. “Thank God,” someone murmured. “Shh. It’s okay.”

  The next thing I knew, strong warm arms encircled me. Before I had a chance to react, I was lifted from the ground. I began to flail and opened my mouth to scream, but the sight that greeted me left me speechless.

  Flint’s dark, bottomless eyes gazed down at me. “You don’t need to say anything.”

  I didn’t comprehend his words. I just saw his eyes and focused on his voice. I needed to. My insides reeled. I had nothing, absolutely nothing and I didn’t see any way it would ever come right.

  Flint carried me to the Suburban parked several blocks away. He placed me in the passenger’s seat. I was like a useless doll in his arms, but he folded my limbs carefully and clicked the seat belt in place before tossing my bag in the back.

  We were already driving through the forest before I realized we’d left town. I didn’t know how long it took us to return to the ranch. The entire journey was a blur. When we arrived at Hideaway Hills, Flint parked the Suburban outside the cabin, and before I knew what was happening, he was carrying me up the front steps.

  I vaguely heard voices around me. A mix of male and female voices with different tones and pitches.

  “Lena, are you okay?”

  “Thank goodness she didn’t get far!”

  “Where’d you find her, Flint?”

  Jacinda appeared in front of me. I tried to smile. She looked so pretty in her pink top. I reached out to touch it. So soft.

  “Silk,” she whispered and winked.

  I was set down on som
ething. It was soft but then something hard pressed against my side. I sank into it. An arm encircled my shoulders and pulled me into the hardness. The next thing I knew, a woman was kneeling in front of me.

  “Can you hear me?” Di asked.

  I nodded.

  “Tell me your name.”

  My name? “Lena,” I mumbled.

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  Slowly, my foggy brain began functioning. The living room looked familiar, and I sat on a couch. When did I get back here? “Um, I’m in the cabin.”

  “What cabin?”

  “The cabin on the ranch.”

  “And what day is it?” she persisted.

  I frowned and slowly the wheels in my mind sped up. “Sometime in August?”

  She seemed happy with that answer and glanced at someone beside me. “It’s time.”

  “Yeah,” a deep voice rumbled. “I know. We should have told her last night, even when she pretended to be sleeping.”

  Whoever had spoken sat right beside me. I slowly became aware that his side pressed against mine, and his warm arm encircled my shoulders. I leaned closer. His scent registered. Spice, wood and tangerines.

  Flint.

  His dark gaze met mine. “Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.” His arm tightened around my shoulders, but for the life of me I didn’t understand what he meant.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Is everyone here?” Di asked.

  Jacinda, Mica, Jet and Jasper scooted closer. They’d moved the furniture to form a half circle around me. When had that happened?

  “Lena?” Di’s dark eyes were so serious. She always seemed serious.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you doing okay?”

  “Sure.” But I wasn’t okay. I was anything but okay. Everything I’d been working toward for the past four months had been for nothing. Absolutely nothing. My throat tightened.

  “You need to focus,” Di said. “This is important. We have something to tell you.”

  “What?”

  She paused. “Let’s start with this, what brought you to Colorado?”

  What brought me to Colorado? Are they really going to start with the questions again? For a moment, I didn’t answer, but Di’s gaze held mine and she eventually raised her dark eyebrows.

  “I dunno. Just traveling around.” I gave her the response I gave all strangers when asked that question. Soon, I’d be saying things like that again. Just as soon as I figured out what to do, or where to go from here. The tightness clenched around my throat again.

  “So, there wasn’t a special reason?” Di persisted.

  I shook my head.

  Her frown deepened. “I know it’s hard to tell the truth. We all felt like you when we met the group. Untrusting. Guarded. Scared of so many unknowns, but there’s something you need to know. We all came here for the same reason as you. To find something.”

  I stiffened. “What did you think you’d find?”

  “Answers that would explain who we are and what happened to us four months ago.”

  I stared at her. Numb shock crept through me.

  “Did you really come out here to travel? Or were you hoping to find something too?”

  I shook my head, the movement clumsy. How does she know?

  “Trust us,” Flint whispered. His scent swam around me. Something in me calmed. The feeling of being completely safe cloaked my skin, and I floated back to the surface of reality.

  “How did you know?” I asked Di.

  She smiled. “Because you’re one of us.”

  “One of you?”

  Di took her watch off. The others did the same. It struck me how this group seemed very concerned with keeping time. They all wore watches on their left wrists.

  “May I see your wrist?” Di asked.

  I held out my left arm. My thin, white limb appeared ghostly beside Di’s olive complexion.

  Di pulled my forearm into her lap and flipped it over. She traced the tattoo on my left inner wrist. The small symbol, a perfect circle divided into quarters, looked like a pie cut into four pieces. I’d had the tattoo since that first morning. Another mystery I couldn’t solve.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked. The tattoo was small, maybe a centimeter in diameter and done in fine print, dark ink.

  “Um, I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’ve always just had it.”

  “I’ve got one too.” She flipped her left wrist over, the one she always wore a watch on.

  Her left, inner wrist revealed a different symbol. It was also done in the same fine print ink and about a centimeter in diameter. Hers was different. Instead of a circle divided into quarters, it was a full circle with a cross attached to the outside circle’s perimeter.

  “You have one too?” I asked incredulously. “Isn’t that the symbol for a female?”

  “It is.”

  “And I’ve got the symbol for a male.” Flint flipped his left arm over, revealing a tattoo like Di’s, but instead of the cross attached to the circle, there was an arrow.

  “When did you get those?” I asked.

  “We’ve always had them,” Di said.

  One by one, Jacinda, Mica, Jasper and Jet flipped their wrists over. I leaned forward, shaking my head. They all had tattoos. Tattoos similar in size and ink to mine.

  “Mine’s pretty intricate.” Jacinda leaned closer. She had two brackets, back to back, connected by a cross—the cross had a small circle at the bottom of it. Unlike Di and Flint’s, I didn’t recognize hers.

  Jet and Jasper had similar symbols. Jasper’s was a curly shaped 4, and Jet’s was a curly shaped lowercase H, except the vertical line in the h had a horizontal bar through the top. I didn’t recognize theirs either.

  Mica’s shining brown eyes met mine when I studied her symbol. It was a U with an upside down cross slashed through it vertically.

  “Do you see what I’m trying to tell you?” Di said. “You’re one of us. We’re just like you. We all woke up four months ago in various cities around the U.S. with no memory of who we are or where we came from, and we all had these tattoos. Isn’t that what happened to you?”

  My eyes widened.

  “You felt the pull too, didn’t you? The desire to search for something, ever since that first morning?”

  I sat numbly, too shocked to speak. The pull? Was she talking about the instinct?

  “We all felt that pull to travel here and search for answers. That’s what brought us here,” Di continued.

  I paused and stared at her warily. Was it possible this wasn’t a game? That what she said was true? I glanced at Flint.

  His dark, solemn eyes regarded me steadily, and I knew, knew to the deepest part of my soul, that he wouldn’t lie to me. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did. What Di had said was real.

  “But how does that make any sense?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t,” she said. “We were hoping to find answers here too, but so far, we haven’t found anything.”

  I shook my head. “Wait a minute. How did you all find each other? How come I’ve been alone all these months but none of you have been?”

  Di put her watch back on. “We were alone too, at first. When we woke up we were hundreds of miles away from one another, but then we found each other.”

  “How?”

  “Is there something you can do, that makes you different from everyone else?” she asked, ignoring my question.

  “What do you mean?”

  She waved her hand. “Like an ability? Or a gift? Something that’s unique to you, that only you can do?”

  I knew what she was asking. I thought about what I could do, the thing that made me different.

  I let my gaze go fuzzy. Colorful clouds appeared around all six of them. I snapped my vision back to normal. “How do you know about that?”

  “We all have special abilities, gifts, as I’ve started to call them. It only makes sense that you have one too.”

&nbs
p; “So, what can you do?” I asked warily.

  “I can see the future.”

  “What?”

  “I know, I can’t explain it either, but it’s true. I saw you coming here. Do you understand? I saw you. I’ve been seeing you for months, and I knew that you’d be coming to us, here, in Colorado.” She paused. “I thought we’d find you in Little Raven. Yesterday, when we picked you up on the road, it was sheer luck we found you. If Flint hadn’t suggested we drive around, it may have been weeks before I’d been able to pinpoint a location on you again.”

  My mouth dropped. The image of their Suburban driving on the county road flashed through my mind. That hadn’t been a coincidence?

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  Di shrugged. “How is anything possible?”

  “And the rest of you can do other things?”

  Jacinda nodded. “For me it’s hearing. I could hear this conversation up at the house if I wanted to.”

  “You could?”

  “Or I could ignore it. I can turn it on and off.”

  “Really? What can you hear now?”

  She closed her eyes, her long lashes resting on her cheeks. “There’s a scratching sound under the front porch. It’s small, maybe a mouse.” She cocked her head. “Several conversations in the cabins across the driveway. They’re talking about tomorrow. A humming sound in the distance, it’s a bird flying—”

  “She could go on all day,” Mica interrupted.

  Jacinda’s eyes flashed open. She shrugged and smiled.

  “For me, it’s sight!” Mica pulled my attention to her. “I can see better than any other human.” She grinned.

  “How well can you see?”

  “I can read twelve point font from three hundred yards.”

  I gaped.

  Mica grinned broader. “We tried it.”

  “If it’s Courier she can read it at three hundred and ten yards,” Jet stated in a bored tone. “But if it’s Perpetua, it’s only two hundred and eighty.”

  “And I can see in the dark,” Mica added.

  “And you two?” I asked the twins.

  “Jet and I are telepathic,” Jasper said.

  “Telepathic?”

  “Yeah, we can read each other’s minds,” Jet explained.