Mind Games (Games Thriller Series)

by J. E. Taylor

  Quiet permeated the car laced with the soft echo of music coming from the speakers. The CD looped over and over just loud enough to be heard over her silent tears.

  “She’ll be ok Jess,” Tom said and pulled off the highway, navigating the roads to her ex-husband’s house easily.

  They hurried out of the car and rang the doorbell. LeAnn Connor opened the door with red and puffy eyes doling out hugs to Jessica and Tom as they entered.

  “Where’s Emily?” Jessica asked, wiping her own wet cheeks.

  “Upstairs, sleeping,” Daniel said walking around the corner into view.

  “I want to see her,” Jessica said and climbed the familiar stairs, stairs she navigated every night for close to twenty years before Ty kidnapped her. Eric’s door swung open when she reached the landing and she stopped, meeting his troubled gaze.

  “I can’t fix her,” he said, his eyes as red and puffy as LeAnn’s and Daniel’s.

  Jessica smiled and put her hand on his cheek. “It’s ok baby. I can.”

  Doubt etched his features and he shook his head.

  “Yes honey, he gave it back to me,” she said.

  Eric’s mouth dropped slowly. “Ty?”

  She nodded and saw the hope spark in his eyes. Walking into Emily’s room and closing the door behind her, she sat on the side of the bed studying her face, dark circles surrounded her eyes, even in sleep, the tell tale sign that all was not well.

  “Emily?” Jessica ran her hand through her daughter’s hair.

  Emily opened her eyes and the sob escaped at the sight of her mother. She threw herself into her outstretched arms.

  “I love you. I promise everything will be just fine,” Jessica said and kissed her forehead, wishing the cancer eating her daughter’s brain gone. She held her and let the magic do its thing.

  “Mom, it hurts.”

  “Only for a minute.” The light dancing over Emily’s skin died down and Jessica pulled away, scanning her face for the dark circles that had been there when she walked in the room. They were gone and her eyes were clear of the haze of illness. Jessica took a deep breath, the power infusing into her cells, growing stronger with use. “Better?”

  Emily nodded, her chin trembling before tears leaped to the surface.

  She held Emily, closing her eyes, silently sending a simple prayer of thanks. Chris gave her everything she said she wanted and more. The light behind the door in her subconscious burned brighter than ever.

  “I need to talk to your father and LeAnn,” Jessica said and stood up.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too, honey.” Jessica closed the door behind her and walked downstairs. She exchanged a glance with Tom before focusing on Daniel and LeAnn. “Danny, I want a second opinion.”

  “Jess, we’ve had second opinions!”

  “I want another one, please,” she insisted. “We could bring her to Los Angeles with us and get one out there.”

  “No. If you insist on this, I’ll bring her back to Yale-New Haven for more tests.”

  “I’m insisting. Call them and see if you can set something up for tomorrow or the next day and I’ll go with you.”

  Daniel nodded and exchanged a glance with his wife. “Okay, we’ll try.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?” LeAnn asked.

  Jessica shook her head. “I was going to call my folks, but it’s a little late now.”

  “Why don’t you stay here tonight?” Daniel offered.

  Jessica looked at Tom and received a shrug in response. “That would be nice,” she said as she accepted the gracious invitation.

  * * * *

  Jessica couldn’t sleep, even with Tom’s arms protectively wrapped around her. She listened to his even breathing and slipped out of bed when he started to snore. Throwing on her bathrobe, she quietly went downstairs to the game room and slid behind the bar. She grabbed a wine cooler and cracked it open, taking a swig as she scanned the pool table. It had been a while since the last time she held a cue stick. She racked the balls and broke, raising her eyebrows as three balls found their way into the pockets. “Not bad.”

  “Everything all right?” Daniel rounded the corner into the room.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I hope you don’t mind.” She waved at the table.

  “Not at all.” He pulled out his cue stick. “Mind if I join you?”

  “It’s your table.” Jessica took another shot and missed. “I’m a little rusty.”

  He cleared the table and she shook her head as she re-racked for another game. “You still can shoot rings around me.”

  “What really happened to you Jess?”

  “Danny,” she sighed. “You saw enough on television. You really don’t need to know.”

  He walked over to her and touched her face. “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said. “I thought you were dead and LeAnn...”

  “—I know, you fell in love with her and I can see why. She really is a sweetheart. Besides, I’m not sure I could have come back anyway, even if LeAnn wasn’t in your life.”

  Daniel took a step back; his eyebrows rose and his lips slightly parted. After a moment, he snapped his mouth closed, the muscles in his jaw tightening. He turned away from Jessica, studying the pool table.

  “Danny, what I went through. It was horrifying and you don’t just leave that behind. It follows you for the rest of your life. Tom and I have a connection. He was there; he saw what I went through, what it did to me. I didn’t think I’d ever feel safe again, but he gave that to me down there and it meant the world to me. He protected me when he could, and the times he couldn’t still haunt him,” she paused and Daniel looked over his shoulder at her. “As much as I loved you and the life we had together I never would have been able to go back. I would have never felt safe here.” She caught the raw hurt in his eyes and diverted her gaze to the pool table, lining up her next shot, the red-three-ball plunked into the pocket.

  “Emily will be all right,” she added, changing the subject.

  “Jess, she has cancer.”

  “We’ll see.” She looked at the table assessing her next move, crossing to the bar and taking another swig of her wine cooler before returning her attention to the game.

  Daniel grabbed her arm as she walked past him. “Cancer, Jess,” he emphasized.

  Jessica stopped and looked into his eyes. “Not anymore.”

  He let go of her, his mouth slowly dropping.

  “I fixed her,” Jessica replied to his shocked gaze and took her next shot; the ball went into the pocket where she expected it to. She continued to clear the table and he stared at her, blinking every few seconds.

  Jessica finished off her cooler after the last ball plunked into the pocket. “I think I’m gonna call it a night.” With that, she left her ex-husband staring at her dumbfounded.

  Tom stirred a little as she crawled back into bed. He wrapped his arms around her again and yes, she still felt safe in his strong grasp.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, Jessica woke early and slipped into her jogging clothes and shook Tom. “You coming?”

  Confusion lit up his face for a moment and he glanced around the room, wiping the sleep from his eyes. He blinked and brought his gaze back to her with a nod. “In a sec,” he said and headed to the bathroom.

  Jessica brushed her hair in the mirror and wrapped a hair band around her ponytail when the temperature in the room plummeted. Goose pimples peppered her flesh and she rubbed her arms glancing up at the air conditioning duct, the most logical source of the sudden cold draft. She returned her gaze to the mirror and gasped. Frank stood behind her in the reflection and he smiled the sadistic smile that promised violence and pain. The same one she remembered in the complex and fear balled in her stomach.

  A frigid hand wrapped around her throat and his cool breath chuckled in her ear.

  “No.” She struggled in vain as the ghost shoved her shorts to her knees.

  “Oh yes.” He spun her
toward the bed, pushing her over the side.

  Her teeth chattered and she squeezed her eyes closed, filling her mind with the one name that she knew would hear her anywhere, blasting the silent siren with the force of an F-18 hitting mach one. Enduring the violent ice-cold thrusts, she glanced toward the mirror and whispered, “Ty help me!”

  Frank laughed. “If you think my little brother can help you here, you are mistaken. When I’m done with you, I think I’ll go visit your daughter,” he whispered in her ear.

  The mirrors in both the guest room and Emily’s room shattered to pieces, but not before Jessica saw the reflection of her savior’s angry blue eyes.

  * * * *

  The sound of shattering glass set him in motion and Tom flew into the room, his eyes darting from the shattered glass to her crumpled on the floor, landing on the dark bruises around her throat.

  Crippling fear squeezed his heart and it took him a second to be able to draw a shaky breath. He closed the door behind him and shimmied past the shards, kneeling next to her, silently searching her eyes and what he saw turned his blood thick forcing his heart to pound harder. He gulped the last of the spit in his mouth.

  “Frank was here,” she whispered and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  He pulled her to his chest, praying he wasn’t trembling like she was. Picking her up, he set her on the bed and shifted, tracing his finger along the fading marks on her neck. A thousand questions clouded his mind and he returned his gaze to the shards on the floor. “You broke the mirror?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “He did.”

  Tom held her and stared at the shattered glass. No explanation was needed, he knew whom Jessica was referring to and at that moment both fear and a bizarre sense of relief accosted him. Ty Aris, Jesus, it’s like he’s been appointed her guardian angel. How the hell do I deal with that?

  He didn’t know how long the guardian angel routine would last before Chris crossed the line and hurt her again.

  Chapter 13

  Chris bolted out of sleep, jumped out of bed, and flew into the bathroom as the scream filled his head. He looked into the mirror in time to see her whisper “Ty help me” and saw Frank slam into her and then Frank’s unspeakable words of paying a visit to Emily.

  Fury overwhelmed him and it escaped his control along with the command hissing from his lips. “Shatter!”

  The image crumbled and was gone.

  Instantaneously, fear replaced the fury and his legs gave way, collapsing beneath him as sure as the glass in the image. He caught himself on the sink. “Jess!”

  He couldn’t see her anymore and hot panic raced through his blood. The echo of the fortuneteller’s words pinging in his brain.

  This is what Eric must have felt like when he couldn’t see her in the complex.

  “Eric,” he said. Eric had once found him psychically and Chris stared at the mirror, concentrating on getting a message to the boy who saved his life.

  The reflection in the mirror altered and with a blink, he stood in a room he didn’t recognize and there was a commotion in the hallway on the other side of the door. A boy was sleeping in the bed and Chris reached out, shaking the child.

  Eric looked up groggily at first and then his eyes went wide.

  “Please tell me your mom is all right,” Chris said. The urgency in his voice caused Eric to glance in the direction of the commotion.

  Eric stood up and opened his door. Tom was leading his mom out of the guest room, she looked a little shaken up, but otherwise she was okay. He closed the door and looked back at Chris. “She’s okay.” Eric nodded and the image faded.

  Chris knelt down over the toilet and threw up, shaking violently.

  “Holy shit,” he gasped, leaning back against the wall.

  He broke those mirrors, not Jessica.

  Chapter 14

  Jessica grabbed a glass of orange juice and curled into the overstuffed family room chair while Tom poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Still shaken from the encounter, she shivered and closed her eyes.

  “He was here.”

  Eric’s voice cut through the haze and her eyes flew open to her thirteen-year-old kneeling on the floor before her. “You saw him?”

  Eric nodded. “He was worried about you.” He glanced toward Tom and back. “What’s happening, Mom?”

  “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Then why would he come to me?”

  Jessica thought for a moment. “Because my mirror was broken and he couldn’t see me.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “He broke the mirrors to protect us,” Jessica said.

  “From what?” Eric shot a glare in Tom’s direction.

  Jessica saw the glare and her heart broke. “Eric, Tom isn’t hurting me.”

  “Then what was he protecting you from?”

  “A ghost,” Tom answered.

  “The bad man,” Eric gasped, his eyes going wide, causing both Tom and Jessica to break out in goose bumps.

  Jessica shot Tom a look that told him to keep his mouth shut. Eric didn’t need to know about this, even though he figured things out pretty quickly, especially since he could read other’s thoughts with little to no effort. She glanced back at Eric. “Yes but I’ll be just fine.”

  “He can’t protect you, can he?” He pointed his thumb at Tom.

  “Of course he can.” She tried to smile but it didn’t convince either of them. “I’m going out for a run,” Jessica said, changing the subject. “You still coming?”

  Tom nodded and they headed outside.

  Jogging side by side down the quiet suburban street, the silence thickened.

  “Are you okay?” Tom asked.

  “I will be.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t be with me twenty-four-seven.”

  “It’s his fault.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “He shows up and this shit begins to happen. It’s his fault.”

  “If he hadn’t shown up, Emily would be dying of cancer,” Jessica snapped and sped up a little, pulling away from him.

  Tom easily caught up with her, but didn’t say anything for a while.

  With her feet rhythmically hitting the pavement, her mind drifted to Ty. The fury in his eyes this morning reminded her of the way he looked in the complex when Frank brought her bruised and battered body in the room for the first time. The look was murderous.

  A gentle yank on her ponytail brought her back to the present. “Stop it, Tom.”

  “Lighten up.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He grabbed her arm and stopped running. “Jess, what’s wrong?”

  She was taking her frustration out on him and it wasn’t fair. This wasn’t his fault and she knew he would do anything to stop it if he could. “He threatened Emily,” she finally said and began to run again.

  Tom caught up to her. “He what?”

  “Frank threatened to go after Emily.” The anger burst through the surface and she ran faster. “Ty heard what that bastard said and then both our mirrors shattered.”

  Silence filtered between them again, their pace in harmony, each step echoing the other’s.

  “Do you think Ty is making this happen to screw with you?”

  Jessica didn’t answer him right away, but she did send enough of a warning glare in his direction to make him take a side step away. “It isn’t Ty doing this to me Tom. He wouldn’t hurt me and he would never threaten my kids.”

  “How the hell do you know?”

  She stopped and glared at him. “I know.”

  “Jess, he hurt you plenty,” Tom said stopping a few steps ahead of her. “Or did you forget?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. But he isn’t the man we knew down in that hellhole. Eric and I profoundly changed him, Tom, more than just healing his wounds.”

  Tom shook his head. “He’s a killer, Jess. He should be dead or in jail
for everything he’s done.”

  “I killed too,” she reminded him.

  Tom closed his eyes and put his hands on his hips. “That’s different.”

  “How is that different?”

  “He’s a psycho, you aren’t. And don’t you dare stand there and tell me he wouldn’t grab you in a second and… and...” he trailed off, the muscles in his jaw working and he clenched his teeth together. “He brought this on us.”

  Jessica remembered the words she said to Chris at the lighthouse. “Okay, I’ll admit he may have led Frank to us, but I don’t believe for a second he knew. Frank wants to kill all of us; he wants Ty to watch me die.” She paused and looked back in the direction of the house. “He came to give me exactly what I said I wanted, to save Emily.” She started to jog again and Tom followed. “I’d trade my life in a heartbeat for my kids.”

  Tom kept pace with her. “What do we do now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  They slowed as they approached the driveway, walking the rest of the way. “I love you, Jess.”

  “I know and I love you too.” She slung her arm around his waist despite his sweaty shirt and they walked up the front steps. “Did I thank you for coming with me?” She looked up into his blue eyes.

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Thank you.” She got on her tiptoes, kissing him gently and pressed the doorbell.

  Eric opened the door and let them inside.

  Daniel poked his head around the corner, the phone plastered to his ear and he waved them into the kitchen.

  “They can see her today,” he said covering the phone. “I just need to find someone to be here when Eric gets home from school.”

  “I’ll stay,” Tom offered without consulting Jessica.

  She pressed her lips together, looking at him sideways, suddenly irritated that he didn’t want to come to the doctor’s office with them.

  “You sure?” Daniel asked, his gaze bouncing from her to Tom and back.

  “Yep, I’m sure,” Tom said and he looked at Jessica. “You don’t mind, do you?”