by Sharon Sala
Denver shrugged. “He just knows, that’s all.”
“I like to know who I’m working for,” Boone said, aware that he might be pushing his luck.
This time Denver balked. “It’s not my story to tell. If the boss wants to meet you, then you’ll be the first to know. Otherwise, do what you’re told and keep your mouth shut.”
“I’m not baby-sitting that fool again,” Boone said. “I work alone, or not at all” He glared at Snake again to reiterate his point.
Denver held up his hands, as if in surrender. “Fine...fine. Just check back with me in a day or so. We’ve got a load of crystal meth that’s overdue from the lab. When it shows, we’ve got to get rid of it fast, understand?”
Boone nodded, then left. When he was several miles down the road, he reached for his phone. Moments later, he was unloading what he’d learned to Captain Cross. They’d spread a net to catch some thieves, and caught a killer, as well.
Pain shattered the dream within Rachel’s head. She woke up facedown in the yard. As always, she had a blinding headache and tears on her cheeks. She scrambled to her feet. Unaware of the rain-soaked ground coming up between her toes, she swayed slightly as she stared into the night. This time, to her relief, she was alone.
“Dear God, this has got to stop,” she muttered, and staggered up the steps and into the house.
Once inside, she stripped off her muddy gown as she headed for the bath, anxious to wash away more than the mud clinging to her skin and clothes.
The water was warm and welcoming as she stepped beneath the spray. She lifted her face, letting the heat soak into her chilled, shaking body. Long after she was out and dry, wrapped in a clean robe, she was afraid to sleep, for fear it would happen again. But she’d been forced to accept a truth she’d been ignoring before. She needed help—professional help. She would deal with it tomorrow.
And then she looked at the clock. Tomorrow was already here.
Griffin Ross had a new suit. Lois Klein spotted it the moment he walked in. Her hand automatically went to her hair, checking to make sure it was all in place. She didn’t want to rush things, yet she was determined not to miss her chance. One dance did not a relationship make, and although they’d had what she considered a wonderful time, there had been nothing between them since then but cordial smiles and polite conversation.
Griff walked like a man who knew his place on this earth. He had everything he’d ever wanted...except Rachel Brant, and he hadn’t completely given up on changing that fact. He saw his secretary fidget, and knew that taking her to the dance had been a mistake. Lois was a nice woman, and more than attractive, but she wasn’t Rachel. He nodded and smiled as he walked past her desk.
“Morning, Lois.”
She preened. “Good morning, Griff....” She blushed, then glanced at the customers waiting outside his office. “I mean, Mr. Ross.”
Griff winced. He’d been right. Taking Lois to the dance had been a great big mistake.
Lois handed Griff a file. “Mr. Dutton is waiting to see you, sir.”
Griff glanced at Charlie Dutton and smiled. “Come in, Charlie.” As Charlie entered the office, Griff closed the door and then took a seat behind his desk.
Charlie slid into the guest chair and then sat forward, leaning toward the desk.
Griffin Ross was of the opinion that body language told more about a customer than what they might say about themselves. From the way Charlie was behaving, he was expecting him to ask for an extension on his loan. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
“I came to pay off my note,” Charlie said, and pulled a cashier’s check from his pocket, already made out and signed.
For a moment Griff was taken aback, but then he smiled broadly. “Well, now, that’s fine, just fine! But that’s quite a sizable amount, isn’t it?”
Charlie grinned and slid the check across the desk to Griffin.
“Thirty-three thousand dollars and forty-four cents, interest and all.”
“My goodness,” Griff said. “You must have a whale of a second job.” He grinned. “What are you doing, making moonshine-on the side?”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed, but his smile stayed fixed. “I just had myself a little luck,” he said quickly. “I don’t like to be in debt any more than the next man.”
Griff nodded. “Good. That’s good. Now you wait here while I have Lois pull your note. We’ll have you free and clear in no time.”
Down the street, Rachel pulled her car up to the curb, right in front of Curlers. Joanie Mills looked up, then waved at her through the window as she gave her client’s hair a final pat.
The doorbell jangled as Rachel walked in.
“Be right with you,” Joanie said, making change for Mavis Bealer, who was paying for her perm.
“Nice hairdo, Mavis,” Rachel said, and was rewarded with a wide grin as Mavis prissed herself out of the door.
Joanie turned to Rachel, and her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
Rachel sat down and ran her hands through her long, dark hair.
“I need the ends trimmed.”
Joanie frowned. “I wasn’t talking about your hair. I haven’t seen circles that dark under anyone’s eyes since New Year’s Day. Have you had a bad week?”
Rachel shrugged. She could lie and blame her mood on her job, and Joanie would believe her. Joanie all but fainted at the sight of her own blood, and considered Rachel something between an angel and a masochist.
“I’ve had better,” she said.
Joanie patted her on the shoulder and then flopped a waterproof cape around her shoulders, fastening it firmly at the neck. “Let’s get you washed. You close your eyes and relax.” She wiggled her fingers in Rachel’s face. “I give the best scalp massages in town.”
Rachel grinned as Joanie angled her head beneath a flow of warm water. “That’s because you give the only scalp massages in town.”
Joanie pretended to leer, and then lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s not what I hear. Someone told me that ColaBelle Prather was doing all right for herself on Saturday nights.”
Rachel laughed, then closed her eyes and started to relax. Her friend’s outrageous gossip was just what she’d needed to hear. She shifted in the chair and then settled, letting her mind wander in and out of focus as Joanie washed and rambled. It was only when Joanie’s hands suddenly stilled in the act of scrubbing that she started to listen more closely.
When Joanie groaned and then sighed, Rachel opened her eyes and looked up. The look on her friend’s face was close to rapture.
“What?” Rachel asked, wishing she could see more than the flyspecks on the ceiling above.
“Oh ... my...Gawd!” Joanie gasped. Joanie quickly washed the soap out of Rachel’s hair, then swathed her head in a towel and sat her up. “Take a look out there!”
Rachel rolled her eyes and grinned, then looked in the direction Joanie was pointing. The grin froze on her face as Joanie continued.
“I’d say about a hundred and ninety-something pounds. At least two or three inches over six feet ... and good grief, Granny, the longest legs and the cutest butt I’ve ever seen on a man.”
Rachel had no comment to make about Joanie’s raves. There was nothing to say. She’d been up close and personal with this man far too many times as it was. Even ogling him from behind plate glass seemed risky.
“Just look at that face!” Joanie gasped, and pretended to shiver with ecstasy. “Isn’t he just to die for?”
Judging by who he hangs out with, you very well might.
Joanie elbowed Rachel. “Wouldn’t you just love to get him alone in the dark?”
A nervous twinge pulled at Rachel’s belly. What on earth would Joanie think if she knew that had already happened?
“I don’t know,” Rachel said, feeling her way through the unexpected conversation. “He looks pretty rough to me.”
Joanie grinned. “The better to love you with, my dear. She giggled.
But Rac
hel wasn’t laughing. She was too busy trying to hang on to the chair. In spite of the fact that she could see her own reflection in the window before her, another shape—another face—was again superimposing itself over hers. It was her ... and yet it wasn’t. She wanted to shriek. She wanted to cry. But she couldn’t move. By the time she took her next breath, her reflection was gone and Mercy Hollister had taken her place.
It was happening all over again!
An off-key piano was being played downstairs. Short bursts of laughter drifted to the floor above, floating down the hall and under the door of Mercy’s private room. A coal-oil lamp burned on the washstand nearby, highlighting the passion on Dakota’s face as he slid into Mercy’s soft body.
Mercy sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Dakota...Dakota... I love you so. Promise you’ll never leave me.”
He stilled, his eyes black and glittering. Caught in sweet Mercy’s warmth, he looked down at her, A smile broke the hard, embittered expression he normally wore as he leaned down and kissed the side of her face.
“Only when I die. Only when I die.”
Rachel jerked and, to her horror, nearly pitched forward out of the chair. If Joanie hadn’t grabbed her, she might have fallen facedown on the floor.
“Good grief, girl. I know he’s gorgeous, but this is no time to be falling at his feet. Besides, he’s not the type to take home to Mama. That’s a look-but-don’t-touch man. They’re pretty...but way too dangerous for a good woman’s heart.”
Rachel wanted to cry. She felt an overwhelming urge to tell Joanie what had just happened. But how could she explain something she didn’t understand herself?
“Sorry,” she muttered, and closed her eyes, trying to come to terms with the transition she’d just made from one world to another. “I got dizzy, but I’m fine now.”
Joanie frowned and pressed her hand against Rachel’s forehead to test for a fever.
“I’m not sick,” Rachel said, and managed a smile. “Maybe you just sat me up too fast.”
Joanie wasn’t buying it, but she had no explanation to replace the one Rachel had given her. Still frowning, she turned Rachel toward the mirror to begin the trim she’d asked for; the man on the street forgotten.
But Rachel hadn’t forgotten him. More than once, as Joanie combed and snipped, Rachel’s gaze drifted to the mirror, and to the reflection of what—and who—she could see on the street behind her.
Boone was still there, leaning against the front of his truck, obviously waiting for someone in a store nearby. His face was a study in repose; she had the oddest sensation she was watching two different men.
Whenever someone passed by, Boone’s face underwent an odd transformation. His eyes narrowed, his mouth turned up at one corner in a cold, mirthless smirk, and his slouch went from careless to careful. It was only when he believed he was unobserved that he let down his guard. Only then did Rachel see the man who’d been at the scene of the wreck, the man who’d crawled into a wreck to hold a little girl’s hand, the one who’d shed tears for a dead man and his child.
Something inside her started to hurt. It was a pain she couldn’t locate and had no way to heal. Blinking back tears, she tore her gaze from his face and made herself watch what Joanie was doing.
She was getting scared. Every time she saw that man, she also saw Mercy and her outlaw. Why? What on earth was the connection between them? Or was it all in her head?
She closed her eyes and sighed, absorbing the pleasure of the comb gently biting into her scalp as Joanie combed through her hair. But try as she might, she couldn’t get the words of an outlaw out of her mind.
Only when I die. Only when I die.
Chapter 7
Rachel stepped off the elevator and turned left, as she’d been instructed to do by the downstairs receptionist, then paused outside a door halfway down the hall.
Doctors of Psychiatry
E. G. Ealey
Steven Milam
H. A. Smith
Her fingers were trembling as she took a deep breath and entered. The receptionist behind the counter looked up, nodding a welcome. Rachel returned it with a shaky smile.
“Rachel Brant to see Dr. Ealey.”
The woman handed Rachel a clipboard with a blank form attached. “We’ll need some information for our records. Fill out this form and give it back to me as soon as you’ve finished.”
Rachel stared at the page. If she took the next step, there would be no turning back. It would be the final admission that her life was out of control.
Choosing a chair in the far corner of the room, she ventured a quick glance at the other people waiting to be seen and hoped there was no one present she knew. To her relief, they were all strangers.
Before she could change her mind, she filled out the form, but when she looked up to return it, the receptionist was no longer at her desk. Leaning the clipboard against the leg of her chair, she reached for a magazine.
Two magazines later, and well into her third, she turned to a page that brought her from a slump to upright, her attention focused on the subject matter of the article before her.
“Dreams: Imagination or Reincarnation?”
Curiosity turned to interest, and interest to shock. The more she read, the faster her heart raced. There were too many similarities between what had been happening to her and the case studies mentioned in the article to ignore.
Yet as she finished the piece, she knew that what she was thinking was way off the wall. Granted, the article was in the doctor’s office, but that didn’t mean he would adhere to such farfetched theories. The doctors she knew preferred to deal in specifics; specific symptoms were treated with specific procedures. And while psychiatrists dealt with mental instabilities and stress-related problems, she knew the chances were slim of finding one who would easily buy into the idea that one of his patients had memories of having lived before.
So what do I do now?
Rachel set the magazine aside, then looked up. The receptionist was back, but busy at her desk. The longer Rachel sat, the more convinced she became that the answers to her problems would not come from a doctor. Without giving herself time for second thoughts, she got up and started out the door, then paused.
What am I forgetting?
She looked back at where she’d been sitting. The clipboard with the form with all her personal information on it was leaning next to the chair where she’d left it. She removed the sheet of paper from the clipboard and put it in her purse.
“Miss Brant, the doctor will see you now.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind.”
Rachel walked out without looking back. Her step was lighter, her mind already focused. She glanced down at her watch. Good. There’s still plenty of time for what I want to do.
It was late in the afternoon when Rachel left Lawton and started home. The drive to Razor Bend was long and boring, but after the time she’d just spent in the Lawton Public Library, she had plenty to think about.
The articles and books she’d found on the subjects of past-life regression and reincarnation were verifications of her own situation. But while she was beginning to think there could be truth in the theory, she had no idea as to why it was happening, or how to fix it.
What she did know was that the single continuing thread between her reality and insanity was an outlaw called Boone. The first experience of déjà vu had come the night she woke up in the stream. He’d been mere yards away, reaching out to her. At that moment she’d lost her identity in what she thought was a dream. His reappearances in her life were always unpredictable, yet the end result was always the same. Every time she saw him, she slipped back into Mercy Hollister’s world. And therein lay her dilemma. She couldn’t live out the rest of her life slipping in and out of reality. There had to be a reason why this was happening to her now, and she was determined to find it.
Her medical training gave her no background support for a hypothesis such as
the one she was considering. Medicine was based on cause and effect—symptoms and treatments for specific illnesses and diseases.
In Razor Bend, as well as in most of the world, past life experiences meant what had happened yesterday, or last week, or last year...not in another lifetime. But Rachel was beginning to believe that maybe—just maybe—she’d walked on this earth in another time...in another place...in another life ... and with another man.
Mile after mile she drove, drawing closer to home. About five miles outside Razor Bend, she began to relax. The sun at her back was close to setting. But when she took the next curve in the road, it didn’t take her long to realize her plans for the evening were about to change.
In the distance, Rachel could see a man standing at the edge of the highway beside an obviously disabled pickup truck. Even from here, she could see the lopsided angle at which the truck bed was leaning. He’d had a flat. A few seconds later, she jerked with recognition. It was Boone!
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Why does he keep turning up everywhere I go?
Panic fought with conscience as she drew nearer. Only a day or so earlier, he’d stopped on this very same road to give assistance to the injured and dying. Did she have the nerve to pass him by? Even worse, was she so lacking in brains as to stop?
She came closer, all the while warning herself not to look, but as she drew even with where he was standing, her gaze locked with his, as if drawn by a magnet.
In spite of his obvious need for help, he made no move to try to flag her down. Instead, his dark, silent gaze tore through her conscience, bit by bit. And as she drove past, a relentless warning kept up a replay inside her mind.
If you want to find out what’s going on in your head, now’s your chance. Stop, stupid, stop!
But she didn’t. Afraid of feelings she couldn’t control, she looked away, unwilling to let him see her weakness. But it was too late. She’d already seen his face, and it was the expression he was wearing that helped her make up her mind. He didn’t expect her to stop...and for that very reason, she did.
