“Right. So Pat and Freddie are all about the mystical stuff.”
“What did you find on that?”
She flipped open the folder. “Tons of different things. The guy who made them—Jacob Farmer—was an American mutt. He had ancestry from a couple of Native American tribes, a powerful Gypsy clan, and even what his mother claimed was an African shaman, though he wouldn’t have been called that. He had some bland Caucasian blood, too, but that’s less significant. One legend said he was obsessed with his heritage, with uniting it, and that he created the totems as a way to do that. He supposedly infused the totems with power that gave strength to whoever brought them together and unlocked their secrets.”
“As opposed to just sticking them in the same bag.”
“Right. They do nothing by themselves. There are a few different stories about how they work, most telling the same basics but with different outcomes. Shapeshifting, magical power, control over the elements, a wide range.”
“Do they all say they need the key?”
“Yes.” She flipped through her printed pages. “I only found one description of the key itself.” She found the page and flipped it around for Grant to see the picture on it. It was a hand-drawn rendition of what looked like a diagram painted on leather. Four squares connected in a diamond pattern by filigree-style chains, with a few symbols in the center.
“So you’d obviously put the totems on each of the squares.” He pointed with a long finger. “Any idea what the symbols mean?”
“None at the moment. We should talk to someone who’s expert in pictorial languages.”
“Or magical arts.”
He said it with such a straight face she thought he meant it. Then she glimpsed the twinkle in his eye. She said, “There are plenty of people who claim to be. Never know who might help.”
“If you say so. Where the hell will we find someone like that?”
“I have some leads. Which one we follow depends on what you found.”
“We’ll get to that. Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Zoe hadn’t been thinking about this part, but when she remembered, a spot in the pit of her stomach went cold. It explained a lot she hadn’t understood of the situation she’d been pulled into so long ago. “One source I found cited a set of rituals to do with the totems. I don’t think they have any connection to the original maker. Anything that mentions his name talks about power of different sorts, but not…this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?” His voice was kind, as if he’d guessed already.
“Sacrifices. Rape. Carving the symbols into living flesh. I think with Jordie…” She couldn’t say it, not to Grant. But he had no qualms.
“They were practicing.” It came out flat and emotionless, but Zoe recognized the pain behind his blue eyes.
“Right,” she whispered. “And I was probably going to be part of the final ritual. That one required purity and innocence. Me at twelve…or Olivia now.” She cleared her throat. “That’s why they didn’t abuse me—much.”
Grant’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t show any emotion. Stone face, again. “What’s this ritual supposed to get them?”
“Access to all kinds of things. Knowledge of true history, which will help them find lost objects.”
“Treasure.”
“A window to the spirit world, which can cloak them in darkness and stealth.”
“To steal treasure.”
“And a portal to other dimensions. Not to travel to, but to summon from.”
“Summon what?”
She shrugged. The ridiculousness of it all didn’t diminish her anxiety over the stupid things. “It was a little vague, but it sounded like, I don’t know, weapons of some sort? Ways to kill without risk. Something like that.”
Grant shoved to his feet. The chair scraped harshly across the floor. He kicked it back under the table as he started to pace the wide room.
“So basically, this set of rituals would make them all-powerful.” He glared at her. “If the story is true.”
“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” she protested. “I’m not going mystical on you. I’m just reporting what some people believe. As far as I’m concerned, the end result they’re going for is irrelevant. It’s the killing and raping people part I want to stop.”
“And the forcing-you-to-help part.”
She shook her head but couldn’t meet his eyes. As she’d read about this stuff and it clicked more and more with what she remembered, the harder it had been not to slip back there. So many years fighting to be strong, decisive, balanced—so ridiculously easy to lose what she’d gained. It was fine during the day, but at night, in the dark hotel room, with people whooping and hollering outside her window, the past had pushed its way out. Every set of footsteps past her door had been someone coming to drag her somewhere she didn’t want to be, and her dreams had been swirling nightmares of anxiety and helplessness. Worse were the ones where Olivia was the girl in the dirty bedroom, curled into a ball, frantic breaths puffing into sobs. Zoe always tried to reach her and could never move. Tried to scream for help, the sound no bigger than a high rasp.
Warm hands pulled her to her feet. Strong arms wrapped around her, and Grant’s deep voice rumbled through his chest and into her ear. “You’re not that person anymore,” he assured her. His shirt felt damp, but when Zoe lifted her cheek she found the moisture was on her face. She was crying and didn’t even know it.
“Dammit.”
She tried to pull back but he held her tighter, cradling her and even rocking a little.
“I hate that they can reduce me to this. That they can make me afraid again. If they get their hands on—” She was going to say “Olivia,” but Grant apparently assumed she was going to say “me” and interrupted.
“They’ll be sorry they ever tried.” From reassuring to hard in a heartbeat, his voice actually stiffened her spine. “You are not the same person,” he repeated. “You haven’t been since about six months after you got home, when you made the decision to keep your parents out of your recovery.”
She sighed and settled back into his arms, almost forgetting where she was. He was right. The first, awful therapist her parents got for her had made her feel ashamed, as if everything was her fault. He’d told her mother to smother her with love and caring, which to her mother meant feeding her endlessly, following her around the house, and sleeping on an air mattress in her room. He’d told her father she needed discipline, so whenever she lashed out or covered her fear with anger, he’d tried to lock her in her room, the only way he really knew how to apply discipline. Some might say it was better than physical, but to someone who had been abducted, chained, and locked away for a year, it was like she’d never escaped. So she did every night, climbing out her bedroom window like so many normal teenagers, yet not knowing what to do with the “freedom.” When spring hit, bringing sunshine, warmth, and hope, she had demanded a new therapist. This one had supported her need to break from her parents emotionally and follow her own path of healing. She’d started reassuring her mother and behaving for her father, ensuring their guilt was appeased and allowing them to “put the past behind them” while she dealt, every day, with the remnants of her fears.
She sighed, loosening her grip from Grant’s waist. “It’s getting harder to be the person I’ve tried to become. I hate them,” she said fiercely. “I hate that they can still make me feel like this.”
“That’s okay.” He smoothed her cheek dry with his thumb. “Your strength is not about being fearless.”
“It’s about facing those fears. I know.” She smiled up at him. “I remember the therapy. But it’s not just about me…”
The words and her voice faded away. His mouth quirked a little, but he wasn’t really looking at her. Or rather, he wasn’t looking at her the same way she was looking at him. He swept his hand under her hair to push it back off her face, and his fingers trailed along the side of her neck, to the nape, where she’d always been s
ensitive. Her breath caught, his eyes met hers, and it was like someone turned on a brilliant flashlight in a dark room. No! yelled her brain, but her lips parted a yes, and Grant’s head began to lower.
He stopped halfway to her mouth, his fingers now tight on the back of her head. “You’re not committed to anyone right now. You broke your engagement.”
Yes, but I love Kell and I’m still committed in my heart lined itself up in her brain, but only the “Yes” came out of her mouth.
“Good.” He dropped the rest of the way, covering her lips with his, parting them immediately and diving in, tangling his tongue with hers, so much for finding their way back slowly, and dear lord, he was hot, and tasted the same, and smelled the same, except so much better, and his body felt the same against hers, except so much harder, driving desire into her from the bottom up, filling her with need, craving, desperation to banish the loneliness that had filled her in the weeks since she’d left Kell, and she kissed him back, God help her, as if she were dying and this was the last time she’d ever touch anyone, ever again.
Eventually, somehow, common sense tapped one of them on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure which of them had stopped, only that he wasn’t holding her anymore, and she was very, very sorry about that.
No! her brain yelled at her again. You are not! You’re sorry it happened! What do you think you’re doing?
The truth? She had no freaking clue.
* * *
Grant could barely stand to face Zoe. She stood there, unmoving, her eyes a deep green, wide, shocked. He didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t want to know what she was thinking. He couldn’t apologize, couldn’t walk away in this stupid excuse for a house that didn’t even have a proper bathroom she could hide in.
“I think I’ll go for that swim now,” she said in a very small voice.
Relief infused every muscle. “Okay.”
“I think it’s best if you don’t join me.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll be back in…soon.”
“Fine.”
He didn’t watch her leave the shack or cross the sand. Witnessing the removal of her shirt and shorts would have killed him. But he could only restrain himself so long and moved to the sliding door to see what she was doing.
She stood hip deep in the small waves, sweeping her hands through the water and looking out into the ocean. He pushed the door open to lean against the jamb. She was too far away for him to see details, but the red-and-white two-piece was too modest to be called a bikini. Still, when she bent to splash water up her arms and across her torso, he could see how well it curved around her breasts and ass. She’d always had a well-proportioned body, not one shaped to perfection but not too skinny, either, with softness where a guy wanted it and no pokey sharp angles. She pushed out deeper into the water and dove under, coming up in a freestyle stroke that took her out twenty feet before she turned parallel to shore and swam down the beach a ways. Her body was like her personality—strong but yielding in the best ways.
The common sense that had stopped them in that mind-bending kiss told him to stop watching her now, to forget the kiss had happened. She didn’t want him. He’d had his chance ten years ago and blown it. Or she had. Either way, they weren’t together and weren’t going to be.
But he didn’t operate a lot on common sense. For the guys he worked against and with, common sense was just another rule to break. He operated on instinct and gut-level belief, and both told him that he and Zoe belonged together. He was going to fight for her.
Rightness surged through him. It didn’t matter that the other party in the fight, whatever-his-name-was Stone, had no clue there even was one. Whatever honor Grant had was unique and didn’t extend to fighting fair.
He was going to win her back.
Chapter Seven
Zoe didn’t swim far, just a couple hundred yards down the beach, before flipping onto her back and letting the water float her in to a deserted stretch of shore. She just needed to be away from Grant. The situation. If she could get away from herself, she would.
Don’t compare, she warned, but too late. Grant’s passionate devouring of her was nothing like Kell’s usual kisses. His need and desire were always apparent, but tempered by time, affection, tenderness. There was nothing tender about her old flame. Her body shuddered at the memory just before her head scraped sand.
She sat up in the shallows and wrapped her arms loosely around her knees, not seeing the sparkle of sunlight on the gentle water or the wheeling of the gulls overhead. The breeze cooled her wet skin, but she didn’t feel cold. She didn’t feel here at all.
Déjà vu hit like a thunderstorm. She’d felt like this before, when she first got back to her parents after her escape. Not part of the world she’d just been living in, but even less a part of her normal world.
She didn’t want Grant. She wanted Kell. She didn’t fit into a life where a shack was an acceptable way station between dangerous jobs—yet she felt so comfortable here. If things were different, she could see taking the next step with Grant, as easy as breathing. Her old life—her real life—seemed so far away.
Yet not so far away that she couldn’t dredge it up. It was like being on vacation, sitting here with sand in her suit, tasting the salt water on her lips, and thinking about her company and employees and what she would likely face when she got back, and how Kell wouldn’t have changed anything in the apartment, and being with him would feel safe and right.
How could two men both feel safe and right in two such totally different ways?
Sitting here was getting her exactly nowhere. But instead of rising and walking down the beach, she just pushed back out of the water and sat on the sand, letting her skin air dry. Letting her brain empty.
Trying not to think about the one deep truth that separated Grant from Kell. He knew her. Knew all of her. She’d never hidden anything from him like she’d hidden herself from Kell.
“You okay?”
She let a sigh through her lips. It figured Grant would follow her. At least he’d given her a few minutes to herself.
She didn’t turn. “Fine.”
A ragged, red-striped beach towel landed on the sand.
“Thanks.”
When she didn’t move, Grant said, “We didn’t discuss what I found yet.”
Right. The totems. The reason she was here, in this whirling confusion. And on this island. She sighed and stood, the towel in one hand. She was already mostly dry so she whisked the towel over her back and legs to get the sand off, then wrapped it around her waist for the walk back to Grant’s shack. He fell into step beside her, about a foot away, and gave no sign that the kiss had meant anything to him.
You are not disgruntled about that.
“What did you find out, then?” she asked about halfway back.
“Not a heck of a lot, but enough, hopefully. I put out a lot of feelers that might still net something. It’s amazing how much data is computerized now. Old rail routes, for one thing.”
“Online?”
“No. I worked with a guy not too long ago who’s one of those insane railway hobbyists. You know, the ones who take photos of every car that ever passes a certain spot, and go on road trips just to watch them, stuff like that. They keep records like birdwatchers do.”
“I think we watched something about that on TV once.”
“Yeah. Anyway, he doesn’t have any business connection to the railroads, but he knows tons of people from his hobby research. God help us if the terrorists ever find out about him.” He shook his head.
“Did you figure out what train I was on?” The water rushed up over her feet, the tide coming in. Grant angled away from it, then back to her as it receded.
“That was easy. The FBI had already noted it in your file.”
“What? You have my file?” She looked up at him. “The whole thing? How?”
“I worked with the feebs on my last job. An agent owed me a favor and gave it to me when I said
it was personal.”
“Great.” Zoe tossed up her hands. “He’s going to tell Henricksen. He will not be happy that we called attention to this.”
“He’s not going to tell Henricksen. As far as my friend knows, this is just an old case. And I didn’t tell him why it was personal. It was pretty obvious.”
“Oh.” Of course. Grant and his brother would both be named in the file. “I’m sorry. I’m so self-centered.”
“Nah. Self-focused, maybe.”
She smiled at his attempt to soothe her but had to look away quickly when he smiled back, a full smile, not the half-quirk he usually gave.
“But knowing what train you got off of helped the FBI narrow down where you probably got on it, which helped me and my hobbyist friend figure out which train you put the totems on, and where that was going.”
“And where was that?” She held her breath, hoping it had been near the end of its run.
“California.”
“Shit.”
“No kidding.”
“So it’s hopeless.”
“No, it’s never hopeless.” He caught her hand on the backswing and gave it a quick squeeze, then released it. “It’s a lot of ground to cover. But we have a narrow corridor to start in, at least.”
“But it could have fallen out, been picked up…anything, anywhere along the line.”
“We’ll narrow it down more.”
“How?”
She was getting agitated, because it seemed so fruitless. If she couldn’t find them, knowing the most of anyone about where they’d gone, Pat and Freddie would have even less chance. Which meant they’d never find them, which meant they’d never stop trying. This would never end.
“My friend doesn’t work for a railroad, but he has friends who do. They can check around, find out if anyone ever talked about finding something like the totems.”
It was too much. Zoe stopped and spun down to the sand, slumping against her towel-covered legs.
Grant sank to a knee beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“I was foolish to think we could get anywhere. That could take years, and it’s so haphazard. If some guy was checking cars and found the bag and brought it home…if he still works there after a decade and a half, or if someone remembers him.”
Aftershocks Page 11
