He expected an argument, but she lowered her head and trailed behind him, up the stairs and to the bedroom. Although he’d requested a two-bedroom house, Aicil had decided to only furnish the main bedroom, and the guest set wouldn’t arrive until Monday. But, if he was sleeping on the couch, she’d have a hell of a time getting out of the house without him noticing.
He retrieved a t-shirt from the dresser and pulled it over his head, turning to see Kaylyn jerk her gaze away as he tugged it down over his stomach. She was still wearing the clothes she’d worn home from the hospital—the same ones she’d worn to the Teague. “Want a shirt to sleep in?”
Kaylyn looked down. “Sure.”
He tossed her a shirt from the same drawer, “I can get you clean sheets.”
“Don’t bother. At this point, I’m really not worried about sheets.”
“Bathroom’s through there.” He pointed toward a door near the back corner. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”
“Or if I wander off without knowing it?”
He nodded and walked toward the door.
Jonah flipped off the couch when a scream ripped him from sleep. He lifted his face to the ceiling. “What have I really done to deserve this?”
The next scream was louder, sending him up the stairs faster than he thought his sleep deprived body could move. In the bedroom, Kaylyn thrashed under the covers, then stilled with a squeak.
“Kaylyn?” He shook her shoulder, she gasped and clenched her hands around the blanket as she jolted from whatever her brain had conjured.
Still gasping for air, Kaylyn’s eyes darted around the room as if looking for something. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You may have woken up half the state. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Kaylyn flopped onto her side, facing away from him, and pulled her knees toward her chest.
“Does the dream have anything to do with—?”
“No, Jonah,” she said, “it’s just a dream.”
Jonah debated on leaving her, but normal nightmares didn’t cause those kinds of screams, and combined with everything else she’d been experiencing—
“What?” she moaned, rolling to her back.
Jonah shook his head, “Can’t really figure you out.”
“Look who’s talking, Mr. Suddenly Nice and Concerned?”
He leaned forward and chuckled, slaphappy with sleep deprivation. “You think I’m the one acting weird?”
Kaylyn tried to pull the covers over her head, “I think you’re currently the one making my life miserable.”
“You’re currently the one balled up in my bed.” Jonah pulled at the bottom of the covers, hoping to reveal her face again. “I came here to do my job, Kaylyn. Can you at least appreciate that I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt? I wasn’t the one who commenced the investigation on you. I was advised to deal with you immediately, but I chose to make my own decision.”
“At least I’m making a grand impression.”
“Why can’t you let me help? You’re so busy wallowing in pity that you won’t let anyone help.”
“I’m not,” Kaylyn shot up, to face him. “You’re practically a stranger. It’s bad enough that I’m here,” she waved her arms, “why should I discuss my stupid dream with you?”
“It’s not just the dream. Something happened in that hotel. You came here tonight, talking about the hotel. You said something is coming. If your whole problem is discussing it with a stranger, we can drag Cole out of bed, and you can tell her.”
“No.” Kaylyn’s hands dropped, bouncing off the bed next to her. “Maybe I am going mad. I don’t even know how I got here, or how I knew where you lived. You—you and Cole jumped right on board when the doctor said it was all exhaustion.”
“Then, give me a reason to think differently.” Jonah leaned against the bedpost, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Start by telling me about the dream.”
Kaylyn huffed. “Tell me about your tattoo.”
“Which one?” He asked, even though he knew, since she’d been staring at it earlier.
Kaylyn’s lips parted for a second, then she snapped her mouth closed.
“I’m not allowed to have tattoos?”
She shrugged, feigning indifference, but choked on the words when she tried to speak. “You just seemed to embody straight-laced sensibility.”
“I also have a Hog,” he smirked, taking a seat on the bottom corner of the bed. He took a deep breath, preparing to get it all out in one spiel. “The tattoo on my back is a Celtic cross. Mom grew up in Waterford, Ireland; her father worked for an Aicil office there. The symbol was important to her. So, I got the tattoo in college, right after she died in a car accident.”
Kaylyn remained silent, staring at him with wide-eyes that he couldn’t quite read. After allowing her a moment of silence, he reminded her of their deal. “Dream?”
Kaylyn took a deep breath, “Fine, but it has nothing to do with the hotel. It’s about my parents. I’m a kid in the dream. I’m standing in the hallway in our old house. Everything is dark, but I hear popping noises coming from my parents’ room. There were orange flicks of light under the door and…
“I know what I’m going to see, every time. I tell myself to stop, but my body keeps moving forward and I open the door. My parents are in bed, asleep as if everything is fine, until a dark shadow moves toward them. The shadow morphs into a woman with long brown hair. She looks at me, and then another dark mass takes over the bed. Then, it was like all of the air was sucked out of the room. By the end of the dream, I feel like I’m suffocating.”
“But your parents—”
“Are alive and well, and living half an hour away—not together, but… you know…” She shrugged and settled back against the headboard.
“How long have you been having the dream?”
“About two months. It’s slightly different every time.” Kaylyn fiddled with the blanket, avoiding his gaze.
“Is that what happened with your boyfriend? Cole said he left, and that’s when you began acting weird.”
“How nice of her. Wouldn’t want the new boss to be left out of the loop.” She moaned, and snuggled down into the bed. “It was bad enough that I couldn’t explain anything I did at work. When I couldn’t explain why I woke up every night screaming, crying, or gasping for air, it was too much.”
“Have you told Cole about any of this?”
“What? That every night I dream about our parents dying? No.”
That would be enough to throw anyone off their game. Jonah considered pressing the issue, trying to make her see that she needed help, but the fuzzy blanket of exhaustion was too tempting for his brain. “Are you going to be okay alone?”
Kaylyn’s silence said more than any verbal reaction she could have given him.
“I can grab a blanket and camp out on the floor.”
“You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“Look, Kaylyn, I’m so exhausted I could sleep on the stairs.”
Kaylyn moaned and sunk into the covers, but before Jonah could step away to fix a makeshift bed she said, “I’m not going to sleep here while you’re crashing on the floor. This is the biggest bed I’ve ever slept in. We can manage not to kill each other for one night.”
Jonah was really too tired to complain and too concerned to leave her alone, so he quietly slipped under the covers on the far side of the bed.
Kaylyn
Early the next morning, a buzzing sound infiltrated Kaylyn’s sleep. She moaned as a body moved over her and grabbed something from the nightstand near her head. Behind her, Jonah whispered, “Hello.” Then, the bed shifted again, and Jonah disappeared into the hallway.
Just as she began to doze off again, she heard his footsteps reenter and cross the room.
“You awake?” he whispered from somewhere past the foot of the bed.
Kaylyn moaned and squeezed her eyes closed.
“I
have to take care of something. I’ll be back in a few hours, and then I’ll take you to get your spare key. Kitchen is a mess, but stocked. Make yourself at home.”
She moaned again, turning over and pulling the blanket up to her neck. The closet door clicked as Jonah turned the knob, followed by small scratches and tings, and rustling of clothes. Then, in the silence, Kaylyn drifted off again.
Being told to make yourself at home and actually being able to do it are drastically different, especially when stuck in the home of a boss you barely know. By the afternoon, however, she couldn’t relegate herself to the couch any longer and broke down to raid the kitchen, which wasn’t as much a “mess” as Jonah had promised. Avoiding the unopened boxes, she settled for a ham sandwich. As she cleared away the mess of crumbs on the counter, she heard a car pull into the driveway.
She leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched him walk in and directly to the couch where he collapsed.
“I take it whatever you went to take care of didn’t go well?”
Jonah rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Good guess.” He let his head relax against the back of the couch and closed his eyes.
“How about I fix you a sandwich? I’m not a great cook, but a sandwich, I can manage.”
Jonah’s chest shook briefly as he chuckled, but he didn’t really move, “I’m not going to ask you to wait on me.”
“You’re hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Then, don’t complain.” She pulled together two more ham sandwiches, plopped them on a paper towel—since she hadn’t felt nosey enough to look for plates—and delivered them to the living room.
She considered making a snarky comment as he took the stack of sandwiches, but there was something redemptive about their momentary civility, even though she still had the burning desire to call him an asshole. She took a seat on the opposite side of the couch and turned her attention back to the television while Jonah ate.
“You feeling better today?” he asked in between sandwiches.
“Sleep can do wonderful things. Speaking of which, you could use some.” Kaylyn nodded in his direction, but tried to avoid eye contact.
“That would be easier without a caseload as long as my arm, a dissatisfied Council watching everything I do, and crazy employees, one of whom showed up pounding on my door in the middle of the night.”
Kaylyn sucked in a breath. She hadn’t missed the tone of humor in his voice, but part of her was jonesing for a release. “How’d you get put in charge here, anyway? You’re what, three years older than me? Slight case of nepotism?”
“I earned my place.” He sat forward, balling up the empty paper towel in his hand. “Yes, my father works for the Council. I’ve been involved with Aicil long before I formally started working for the organization seven years ago. It’s not like I asked to be sent here.”
Well, that raised a lot more questions than it answered, Kaylyn thought. Then, the guilt hit. Jonah was tired, and she played a big part in that, only to thank his effort by baiting him. Sucking down her pride, it was time make nice again. “Your dad works in Alberta, right? So, you grew up there?”
“We moved there when I was eleven. I was actually born in Minnesota.” He finished the sentence imitating the thick accent of his childhood. Half of his mouth pressed upward into a smile.
Kaylyn laughed. At least he doesn’t hold a grudge. With the tension eased, once again, she finally turned to face him. “And you ended up in Ohio, of all places? At least you’re used to snow, right?”
Jonah nodded, his eyes looked ready to flutter shut. “I left Alberta to go to school in Texas, then I worked in the Maryland office. I spent the last two years working in Paris, but they called me back to Maryland a couple of months ago, and last week, I found out they were sending me here.”
“Paris to northern Ohio, that’s a blow. Also explains why you talk funny.” Kaylyn relaxed, realizing that as much as she didn’t want him taking over, he wasn’t entirely in control of the situation either. “So, you’re not a power-hungry tyrant, bent on taking over our office.”
“No, I was given orders… and I’ve broken a few of them already.”
Kaylyn squeezed her lips between her teeth. “And I haven’t made things easier with my tendency to pop off at the mouth—”
“Which is odd, because it’s nearly impossible to get you to talk about anything substantive.”
Kaylyn jammed her fingers through her hair, turning to hide her face from Jonah.
“I know you don’t consider me the ideal person to discuss this with, or even to talk to at all,” Jonah exhaled, turning his body so that his left knee was propped on the couch. “But I’m trying.”
Kaylyn swallowed and shook her head, barely moving enough to be detectable.
“You’re a control freak, Kaylyn. You don’t like any change that you don’t have a say over.”
Kaylyn grunted and clenched at the armrest, only barely resisting the urge to try to rip the material away.
“But you’re losing control, over your own body. You’ve blacked out at least twice since I’ve known you. You’re having out of control nightmares, and you’re barely functioning. You need help.”
“Right, maybe I should be committed.”
“Do you always have to jump on the train to the worst possible conclusion? I didn’t say anything like that, but maybe something is trying to tell you that you can’t take this on alone. You showed up here last night for a reason.”
“Will you just take me back to my place to get my key?”
“Will you answer one question honestly?”
This wasn’t going to be good, but she already knew Jonah wasn’t one to compromise. The sooner she answered his damn question, the quicker she could get away from him. Taking a deep breath, she tried not to fidget when she answered. “Fine.”
“How many times have you blacked out?”
Her body went numb as her brain spent all of its power trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t get her into more trouble. He’d see through a lie—even if she had it in her to lie with conviction. “Three,” she whispered.
Since he’d only asked how many, she didn’t feel the need to elaborate further, but she avoided his gaze, just in case.
“So, last night, at the hotel, and...”
She waited for him to ask another question, to which she could smugly respond that she’d only agreed to one, but he continued—
“…at the historical society, when we were looking for the medallion.”
While she tried to remember how to breathe, she finally managed to look at him. “If you knew—”
“I didn’t, until last night.” He tossed the balled up paper towel onto the coffee table and stood. “Damn it, Kaylyn.”
“I know. I thought it was just a fluke. If I would have—”
He shook his head and started toward the door. “Let’s get you back to your house, so you can get your spare key.”
Kaylyn directed him to her house with as little interaction as possible. She dug out a spare house key from under gnome statue, dusted it off, and opened the door. Jonah entered right behind her and leaned against the wall near the door, while she searched through drawers and baskets. For someone eager to get rid of her, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
“You do have a spare key somewhere?” he asked.
“Yeah…” she scanned the room, pursing her lips as she tried to remember where she’d put it last time she used it. “It’s somewhere, but….”
“Guess this doesn’t happen often?”
“All the time; that’s the problem. I never put it back in the same place.” Kaylyn’s eyes lit up as she headed toward the junk drawer in the kitchen. As soon as she pulled it open, her chest tightened as if someone wrapped her in a giant hug. The room danced and she braced herself against the counter.
Sprinting from the living room, Jonah called her name, but it sounded like she was listening from under water.
&nbs
p; The next thing she knew, her legs felt stripped of anything solid, and Jonah’s arms were wrapped around her. She swallowed hard, feeling the panic rise up. “What just…”
“Maybe we should get you outside for some fresh air,” he said slowly.
“Jonah?”
He wouldn’t answer, pulling on her arm until she followed him out to the sidewalk. Halfway between the door and the car, they heard a loud pop from the house. Kaylyn nearly fell off the walkway, but once she regained her balance, she turned back to see the kitchen go up in flames. Jonah’s arm came around her waist, pulling her backwards, but she shook him off.
“Frank is in there.”
“Frank?”
She slipped from his grasp again and ran back to the house. Smoke billowed out of the door, so she cut around to the side windows, picking up a large rock from the edge of the garden and tossing it through the window. Jonah cussed behind her as she cleared the glass and pulled herself through the window.
Frank’s glass aquarium sat on a cupboard just inside the window, so she ripped the plugs out of the wall and tucked the aquarium under her arm.
As she slid it through the window, Jonah seemed to go even paler.
“A snake....” He took the aquarium, staring at the contents like he expected it to go off like a brick of TNT.
Kaylyn jumped out the window, her feet landing on the ground just as another explosion shook the house. She took the tank, which Jonah couldn’t get rid of fast enough, and they headed for his car.
Kaylyn took a seat in the lawn, plopping Frank into the grass next to her as Jonah moved his car away from the house and called the fire department. As near as she could tell, the whole place was smoking more than burning, but she didn’t care to watch the destruction either way. Pushing aside the lid, she pulled the red and orange corn snake out of the aquarium.
“Well, buddy, at least you still have somewhere to sleep.” The snake tickled against her skin as he wrapped tightly around her forearm, absorbing her body heat.
Jonah took a seat in the grass next to her, twitching a bit as if he didn’t expect the snake to be free. “Something is after you.”
Fractured Legacy (Darkness Bound / Frqactured Legacy #1) Page 8
