“When you’re back against a wall, when there is no way out—that is when you’re predictable.”
“In the war of life, that is a weakness.”
“No,” he said, letting his hand fall and his boyish smile come alive. “You’re predicable because there is no doubt that you will win—you will find a way around what is in front of you, one loophole, and that loophole is only obvious to those who know you best, who have dared to get inside your head.”
“Are you telling me that you can see my next move all over my face?” I said with a blushing grin.
“I’m telling you that I’ve got your back, that we will get through this. I have watched every move you’ve made out on our little summer adventures. On instinct, I know what way you’re going before you do most of the time.”
“I don’t think you’re alone in that.”
“No. Gavin, too,” he assured me. We both knew that I never let Wilder in the way I let them in because Wilder and I never saw eye-to-eye. He had told Mason once that their way of getting to me didn’t work, so he was going to try his own way.
I needed to move away from this topic. “Let’s crash this mourning party,” I said with a smirk as I started to walk around the house to where I was sure everyone was gathering.
Every light in the manor was on downstairs, and through the open windows I could see people in almost every room. The issue was that when we had jumped, we had landed feet past the iron gate that outlined the garden and trees against the house, so when we reached the window outside the great room we couldn’t get close enough to see Ben, Cadence, or anyone else for that matter.
“We could always go in through the front door,” I said with a sigh, seeing my element of surprise vanishing.
Mason reached out for the iron gate, but on reflex I grabbed his arm.
“It can’t be worse than the salt, and that only lasted a second. We need to see where everyone is—how they are interacting,” he argued.
Mason always had a theory about pain, too, that it was instant and over too quickly to matter. He believed in adrenaline, that it would always come to the body’s defense.
“You don’t know that. For all we know, it could be lethal to us now,” I argued back.
“Well then, your guardian angel will show up and help us,” he said as he scaled up the gate in two huge strides. I heard him groan, swallowing the pain. He took in a few deep breaths and then turned to look at me with his unmistakable grin. “I have dealt with worse pain than that.”
“That is not saying much. How many bones have you broken?” I asked sarcastically.
“A few. I promise, it’s not bad. It burns.”
“Burns?” I questioned, knowing I was by no means afraid of warmth.
He nodded once as he gathered some snow from the bushes and rubbed it across his hands.
I held my breath, closed my eyes, and squeezed through the wrought iron bars. I felt the burn, even heard the singe of flesh as I passed through, but he was right. I felt the salt on the inside, but this was exterior pain, one I could deal with if I had to, but most definitely not for a long period of time.
“That’s my girl,” he said, reaching for my hand.
We pushed through on the bushes making our way to the window. He was taller than me, so he could see into the windows that were over my head. Not breaking his stare, he let go of my hand and held his hand out flat, a silent gesture I was used to seeing him give me. It was his subtle way of telling me to climb.
I put my foot on his hand and used his shoulder to pull myself up, then I leaned forward to grab the ledge. He didn’t even flinch under my weight. I’d used him as a ladder a thousand times before so he was used to the feel of me. When rock climbing, he would always push me up first, then take the more challenging path to get to the next level.
A beat later, he had climbed up next to me.
I felt sorry for my family as I gazed at them through the window. Every one of them looked so sad as they moved through the crowd with their little hors d'oeuvre plates and glasses of wine. As the crowd shifted, I saw Rasure against the back wall. I dove behind the brick barriers as Mason did the same on the other side.
He nodded, telling me I could look safely. He could see more from where he was.
My uncle Jamison was on one side of Rasure, and Cadence was on the other. Friends were walking by them, offering standard words of condolences and sympathy. Cadence never looked up at any of them. She looked so scared, so alone next to Rasure. I couldn’t figure out how she was standing in that room and had not heard them speak her name, mention that she was in the same boat we were all in. But then I saw Ben. I saw him staring at her from a few feet away. At first I thought it was just the angle, that he surely could not see her if he could not see me, but a second later he took a glass of wine from a tray that was passing him by and walked it over to Cadence. She looked up, and that was when she took the wine from him. Right then, a burning rage I’d never felt before consumed me, and left me feeling utter betrayal for the first time in my life.
Of course, Rasure took the glass from Cadence and said something harsh to him, something that made Ben turn bright crimson with anger.
Rasure put her arm around Cadence and led her out of the room. After quickly finishing the drink in his hand, Ben pulled out his phone and made a call as he went to leave the room through the other door, the one that led to the front foyer. I was sure he was going outside.
“Why do I get the feeling that Cadence made it out of that lake with nothing more than a bump on her head?” I seethed.
Mason didn’t seem nearly as shocked, but he was definitely just as mad. “Had my suspicions,” he said as he jumped down and held out his arms for me to jump.
“You thought this was going on and didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know anything for sure, but I have a pretty good memory and I know that the first go around on this loop we are in that she got her lines wrong.”
“Lines?”
“The first go around, we all did exactly what we did the first time, but she didn’t. At least once she answered a question before Gavin asked it, then took the key seconds before she had the time before. That made us think, that gave us the feeling that something was off. That’s why I didn’t flip out when you told me we were dead. That whole time your friend Skylynn and mystery man were in there, we were watching her, trying to figure out how she would play into it all. You never moved out of the spot you were in or the pattern you followed until that boy touched you. Just before he did, you should have moved to the left to pour a drink for a customer. That was where you were standing when Gavin’s uncle came in. They pulled you out of the loop, and when they did they pulled the rest of us out, too. We were able to move freely in the illusion, but Cadence kept her role, her words, and stance the same as we moved through the last part of that illusion. Even when Gavin and I were trying to ask each other if we were both seeing this the same way, she kept acting out her lines—it was ridiculous, really, watching her argue and struggle with herself.”
“A wolf among sheep,” I said under my breath. Phoenix had warned me about this. I would bet that Guardian tried to heal us, and when he did he figured out he was missing one—he was missing Cadence. That is what he was telling Phoenix. Why would he not just tell me that?
“One that has been in place for a hot minute. Here is some food for thought: how can a girl who is obviously alive and well sleep with a ghost— see ghosts?” Mason asked with a sinful grin.
“She did sleep with Gavin, didn’t she?” I said with wide eyes.
Mason nodded once. “Right on cue...well, I heard it was not right on cue, but anyway, yeah.”
I charged around the house, ready to go in and face Cadence and Rasure, let them look like idiots in front of everyone as they talked to us. Cadence had just ticked off the wrong girl.
Chapter Thirteen
Just as we rounded the corner that led to the front of the manor, we slammed right into
Gavin.
“Oh my God, man—I almost knocked you the hell out!” Mason said in a harsh whisper.
“Feeling is mutual,” Gavin said, urging us around the side of the house. “Ben is walking this way,” he said in a murmur as he crouched down.
He wasn’t dodging Ben, he was dodging the phony security guards that were standing on every corner of the porch, ones that could obviously not only see the dead but talk to us.
There were police officers standing next to the guards and a few other men in suits who I would guess were detectives.
“What is going on?” I whispered as I nudged Gavin.
“Ben issued a search warrant.”
“Based on what? Looking for what?”
“The key, I hope. A witness told him that there was an obvious struggle in my truck before we ever went off the road. I think he’s trying to figure out what we were fighting over. He knows he’s missing something, and he found just cause to search for it.”
“Thinking it’s the key is a long shot, though.”
Gavin glanced back at me. “Sophia was alive when emergency workers showed up. When they asked what happened, she told them what we were fighting over.”
“She was more aware than all of us put together, and yet she’s the one that is gone?” I asked in disbelief.
Gavin let out a sigh as sorrow filled his eyes. “The accident didn’t kill her, Mason saved her life. She died because at the hospital she was given a drug she was allergic to.”
“You’re freaking kidding me. How do you know that?”
“Ben. He was talking to that detective over there, who told Ben her parents wanted an investigation opened right as he handed Sophia’s statement to him.”
“Ben will figure this out—he’s smart,” I whispered as I tried to overhear what he was saying into his phone. All I could hear was the echo of the other side, and it sounded like a radio. I kept hearing people say, “Clear,” “Over,” and then finally I heard, “I have something.”
A few seconds later, Rasure charged out the front door of the manor, walked over to Ben, and slapped him across the face. I lunged forward, but Mason and Gavin held me back.
“You cold-hearted bastard! How dare you come into my home and search for anything? Do you have no sympathy? Your sister is in agony, broken into pieces, and you have the audacity to question her involvement? Indie and her friends were wild. I have witnesses that will clearly state that they were taking shots of liquor before they ever got into that truck. If she was struggling with them, it was to take control—to save her life. You are banned from the property. I’m taking a restraining order out on you this instant.”
“It is not your property. If you wish not to see me, then you need to leave,” Ben said smoothly, with an all-too-polite grin that the Falcon children were known to have.
Before she could say another word, two police officers along with a detective walked over to Ben. On a white cloth, they were holding the cameras Mason had destroyed moments before.
“Where were these found?” Ben questioned.
“The girls’ room,” the officer answered. “We are sweeping the home for others.”
Ben looked sharply at Rasure as he spoke to the detective. “Find the feed these went to and have someone trace the purchase and work orders attached to these cameras. I want to know who was spying on my sisters.”
“In the process as we speak, sir,” the detective said, matching Ben’s stare, which was still firmly held on Rasure.
She turned briskly and called out my uncle’s name as she entered the manor again.
“We didn’t find any odd key or part of it, but it could take days for us to find something that small in a home this size,” one of the detectives said to Ben.
“Bring Cadence in for questioning. Make sure she knows we are moving forward with charges on money laundering, and…manslaughter,” Ben ordered.
“How many counts?”
“One so far,” Ben said as he nodded goodbye to the detective and went to speak to our brothers and sisters that were coming out to see why Rasure was having a meltdown.
“I guess you are not going to get anything out of her tonight,” Mason said to Gavin.
“I think it’s still on her,” Gavin said in an angry whisper.
“Would you have not figured that out, you know, the other night?” Mason asked with an audacious grin.
Gavin looked down as he thought over last night. He stood up. “I didn’t look everywhere for it,” he said, then boldly walked around the side of the house.
They were walking Cadence out. On the front steps, they stopped and began to read her rights to her. Gavin bravely walked past the guards we knew could see us and went right up behind Cadence. He whispered something in her ear as his long arms reached down and pulled up the hem of her black dress, revealing black thigh-high stockings. He moved his hands around the band as Cadence started to struggle. The officers holding her restrained her, and because of the commotion they never noticed her dress moving up.
Either Gavin found what he needed or nothing at all. He moved his hands up her dress, squeezed her hips, and then walked away shamelessly. The guards started to move after him, but Gavin was smart. He put himself right beside Ben and all but dared them to make a move for him.
“That is why that S.O.B. is my best friend,” Mason said in a proud tone.
Gavin never looked in our direction or gave the guards any reason to believe that he was not alone in this act.
Gavin stayed shoulder-to-shoulder with Ben as he watched Cadence being loaded into the cruiser. Once they were gone, Ben made another call as he walked to the side of the yard, toward the woods in front of the lake we perished in. Once Gavin was close enough to the woods, he took off in a sprint.
“What do we do now? Wait to be zapped back in that house?” I asked Mason.
“No, we go to the memorial garden. That was the plan.”
“Whose?”
“Mine and Gavin’s. He was supposed to corner Cadence, figure out what he could. I was supposed to get you and get there.”
“Where is Wilder? Why there?”
“We told him to figure out his girl, see what she knew about all of this and that we would see him when we were all zapped back to your house. The key had ‘Falcon M’ on it—you were born there, so something connects to that place without a doubt.”
Seeing he had a point about the connection, I only had one argument. “Wilder is going to have a hard time doing that. I killed that girl, and Phoenix burned what was left of her.”
“Did you?” Mason asked with a disbelieving stare. “He doesn’t know that.”
“Right. So we need to find him and tell him that,” I stressed.
“Listen, if he would stop being Mr. ‘I-know-everything,’ then maybe we could have figured that out before. But no, his plan is to charge Rasure. He needs to figure out how to be a part of a team.”
“We don’t have time to fault him for that,” I said in Wilder’s defense.
“Then ignorance will keep him safe. We were not about to let him put us in danger. He already managed to put you at the bottom of a lake.”
“He was run off the road.”
“Yep, and Gavin will swear to you that after we crashed he was more concerned about getting Cadence out than the rest of us.”
“Because he’s a gentleman. Of course he would have tried to save her.”
“I’m not arguing with you. I wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to save Sophia, and obviously I had greater forces working against me,” he said with evident disgust and guilt. Sophia followed him into the truck that night, and he was bearing the weight of that.
“Don’t we all,” I muttered as I started to follow him through the shadows. It seemed like it took us forever to reach the path that led to the gates of the massive tomb and observatory just before it. I was grateful that the iron gates were open and that we would not have to push through that pain again.
A few step
s later, I was wishing for that pain. All at once, it felt like a million razor blades were coursing through my veins. I couldn’t figure out why, and every step I took made it worse. If we moved to the side or forward, the wicked pain grew exponentially. In my frantic state, I realized we were not walking on snow, but salt—a ton of it.
It was sucking the life out of me if that was even possible. We were both so disoriented that we couldn’t figure out which way was back, where the snow ended and the salt began.
As if it were the flap of an angel’s wings, I heard a swoosh of wind and then found myself inside the gates of the memorial garden, side by side with Mason. We both leaned forward on our knees, trying to catch our breath. A second later, Gavin appeared at my other side and Skylynn was in front of us with crossed arms. Behind her, leaning casually into the frame of the doorway leading into the observatory, was Phoenix.
In the center of that marble room behind him was a forevermore burning fire. The warm, reassuring glow of it made Phoenix look all the more inviting to me. I no longer felt the cold of the snow, but I most definitely felt the cold stare of disapproval.
“I told you to stay put, not move,” Skylynn said to me.
“I don’t think those were your exact words. I’m on the grounds of the manor.”
“You wouldn’t have been for much longer. Everything is salted around here. That evil wench obviously has no mercy on Mother Nature either,” Skylynn said with a degree of disdain.
“Cadence didn’t die,” I said, holding her stare, letting her know I was not some blind fool.
“Does she know that you know that?” she asked with wide eyes.
“No. But I know that the two of you knew that,” I said, nodding to where Phoenix was, “and neither of you bothered to tell me that.”
Dangerous Lovers Page 48
