by L. L. Muir
She'd always liked blonds. And blond guys with shaggy hair and a five-o'clock shadow were just a little more temptation than she could possibly resist.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely because he was hot.
There was no memory there, niggling at her. Nothing familiar about his face. Interesting? Fascinating even? Yes. All of the above. But nothing familiar.
Then how had he recognized her?
She plopped her butt down in her regular booth and decided to watch the restaurant, and her car, for a little while before ordering breakfast. Her stomach was a little too jumpy to eat yet anyway. She wasn't nervous—at least not as nervous as she'd been the day before—because it was relaxing, in a way, to know that today, she was the one setting the trap.
Okay. So it was a little disturbing…knowing she was the bait.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Two hours later, a couple of Somerleds walked by her car. Oh, they pretended not to notice it, but both glanced at the windows, then peeked into the café before walking on. After the second pass, she got tired of waiting for them and stepped out the side door of Mickey D's.
“Yo! I'm over here! You looking for me?”
They just stared. And they kept staring for so long she wondered if maybe her plan wasn't going to work after all. If they weren't after her...
Both boys shook off their surprise and crossed the street.
The taller one smiled. “Hello.”
“Yeah. Hi,” she said, in no mood for chit chat. “I’m going to need you to take me to Jamison.”
~ ~ ~
I’m an idiot.
Skye sat in the back of a huge gold Landau with a white top and tried not to get car sick while Junior Somerled tried to keep it on the road. The steering wheel was more than a little loose, and he spent all his time correcting and over-correcting. By the time they left the city limits, the kid was exhausted and they had to pull over and change drivers. What she should have done was to tie them both up, put them in her back seat, and let them tell her where to turn.
Next time, that’s exactly what I’ll do.
She had insisted they allow her to follow in her car, but they both called her bluff and started walking away. Said if she wanted to see Jamison alive again, she’d have to ride with them.
I should have called their bluff.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t deal with bluffs every shift she worked at the café, or every conversation she had with Blair the Creep. She was the queen of bluffs. So why, when this Jamison kid was involved, couldn’t she stand her ground?
Maybe that was just it; someone else was at risk. It wasn’t just her own butt on the line.
Powerless to change her circumstances, she held tight to the purse that contained her Taser, sat back, and tried to enjoy the wobbly ride.
First, she noticed the dirt rings around the collars of both young men and wondered if they even knew how to do laundry. Somerleds always wore bright white clothes, or at least clean off-white ones. But never dirty. She expected the cult members to be pounding their clothes on rocks in a stream somewhere. Maybe these two hadn’t seen a stream in a while.
Then she noticed the direction they were headed. They got on I-15 Northbound and headed for Vegas.
Oh, great.
She was lucky she’d never actually been placed in a Vegas foster home. She’d always managed to stay outside the big city, even though she’d been moved around a lot until she landed at the Blairs’. Then she'd stopped rebelling and stayed for the little ones, to protect them all she could. But once Blair the Creep started looking at her differently, started touching her accidentally, making her skin crawl, she’d had to get out of there.
She'd done what she could, reporting anonymously, so that additional young children were never offered to the Blairs, but that was all she could do. Once all the little ones were gone, she’d taken off. The two teen boys she’d left behind could take care of themselves.
Thinking of Blair and the money made her stomach turn to knots. At an early age, she had learned to forgive people even when she didn’t feel like it, and she’d forgiven the man for a hundred wrongs in the past. But this time, she just couldn’t do it.
I can't believe I left his name on the account!
She should have buried the money somewhere. Screw the interest. At least she would have the cash.
About twenty minutes later, they drove through Vegas without getting off the interstate. Soon they took the 147 east toward Lake Mead and the mountains. As relieved as she was to leave Vegas behind, the solitude of the mountains made her really nervous.
It was every girl’s nightmare—being taken away from a public place by strangers. But she couldn’t be a frightened little girl here. They’d said she wouldn’t see Jamison alive again. They were talking about killing the guy. And it would all be her fault…if she didn’t do something to stop them.
So that’s what she’d have to do. Stop them. Hopefully, it wouldn’t mean taking the guy’s place.
The air conditioning wasn't working well. A bead of sweat gathered on the taller kid's head. It collected more of its kind as it rolled down his neck and disappeared into his grimy collar. She could tell by the way the fabric of his robes stood out in spots that he wore other clothes underneath them. No wonder he was sweating.
And no wonder there weren't more Somerleds in Nevada if they had to wear layers of stuff—it was like being forced to wear a coat.
“Dude,” she said to the driver. “Would you mind rolling down a window?” If the pair of them started stinking, she didn't want to know.
The two exchanged a look, like the driver didn't dare make that kind of call on his own. The younger guy finally shrugged and the windows came down. She scooted over close to the door and hung an arm out, trying to redirect the fresh air into the car, but the way the two Somerleds reacted, you would have thought she was trying to jump out the window.
“Whoa!”
“Hey! What are you doing?”
She sighed. “I'm breathing, okay? It's freaking hot in here.”
Signs were becoming few and far between. Oncoming traffic dropped to a trickle. Cars stopped passing the giant gold beast. And thankfully, the air cooled a good five degrees.
Skye tried not to imagine what might happen once they got to Jamison and tried to focus on the positive, like the fact she was still able to keep that promise she'd made to herself, to never get stuck in Sin City. But maybe it wasn’t the city she’d needed to steer clear of. Maybe her fate was to be mixed up with scary people no matter what she’d tried to avoid.
Given that her guardian angel was an old Scot who was always on the run, maybe she’d never been destined for a peaceful life.
She turned and looked at the seat to her right, honestly expecting that pain-in-the butt ghost to be sitting there, holding out his coffee cup, expecting a refill.
Where are you, old man?
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Lucas! Answer me!” Jamison lunged for the Somerled who had run the farm next to Jamison’s grandfather’s place. The man had promised to get Jamison’s mother to safety after Jamison left for Nevada to find Skye. Since the Somerleds weren’t allowed to interfere for some reason, it was left up to Jamison to warn the girl before Gabriella got her hands on her. Lucas wasn’t supposed to be there at all. And there was no chance the guy had arrived before Jamison, unless Lucas could somehow teleport himself.
But before Jamison could get close enough to grab the big man and force answers from him, guards seized him from both sides. They stuck their arms through his and walked him backward toward the stairs and the elevator.
And Lucas just stood there.
“Son,” he heard in his head. “I am not your Lucas, but I need your help. These guards cannot listen to thoughts. Quickly. Open your mind to me. I must know what you know.”
“What have you done with my mother?” Jamison hollered.
“I know nothing of your mother. Now open your mind.”
<
br /> Jamison nearly cried with relief. If this wasn’t the Lucas he knew, then his mother was still safe, right?
“Tut, tut, tut,” said the guard on his left. “No speaking with the Diamonds. You were only meant to find the Hearts.”
“Hurry, son. The elevator is coming. Show me now!”
So. He’d been expected to overpower Dumb and Dumber, expected to escape. But whatever he might have done to please Gabriella, he would worry about later. He had to make the choice now.
Did he keep his secrets and possibly take them to the grave? Whatever those secrets were? Or did he take a risk and trust someone simply because their voice in his head felt somehow familiar?
He opened his mind wide, allowed everything that had happened to him in the past year to rise into his current thoughts, painful or not. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Skye to the moment he’d been taken to the catacombs. If the mysterious Somerled could use any of it to help the humans imprisoned above them, it was worth the risk that Pilot or the others might be eavesdropping on his thoughts.
The elevator doors opened. As he was led inside, Jamison turned to look at Lucas, but there was no change in the expression on the big Somerled’s face.
“Thank you,” that someone said in his mind.
Jamison only wished he knew for sure who that someone was.
~ ~ ~
The car slowed. For a second, Skye wondered if they had run out of gas. These two seemed a little slow-witted, so running out of gas could have been a regular thing for them. But the driver turned on the right blinker and she realized a road was coming up. A dirt one. A long, tan ribbon that popped up here and there headed toward a low mountain range.
“How much longer?” She held onto the seat in front of her while they completed the turn. “I'm telling you right now, this Jamison guy doesn't mean all that much to me. If it's more than a mile or two from here, I'd just as soon bail out now.”
They ignored her.
She got anxious just thinking she was about to see the blond again. Of course she wanted to see if he was okay, but she was nervous about speaking to him. Maybe he’d be able to tell her if they’d met before, or at least explain why he’d come after her in the first place. It wasn't that she wanted his help getting her money back, even though she did. And it wasn't because she felt guilty for him being taken, though that was true too.
Her first priority was to get him out of danger, but there was something bizarre going on, and that something would bug her to death unless someone explained it to her.
Just one quick conversation. That was all she needed. Just a quick question or two. And hopefully, he'd be alive to answer them.
Skye sighed inwardly. She wasn’t looking forward to telling him that even though he'd sacrificed himself for her, she'd willingly climbed in the car with the bad guys anyway.
Yeah, that’s really going to impress him.
By the time the car stopped, Skye was ready to kill the two idiots who'd driven her there. Her car door opened and she looked up into the face of one of guys from the day before, the one who told her to run, that he was protecting her.
She wanted to whip out her Taser and zap him in the nuts.
He grinned. “Hello again.”
“So where is he?” She got out and looked around the farmyard. There wasn't even a cat in sight.
This was such a bad idea.
“Patience.” The guy pointed to the house on the other side of the car.
She took a deep breath and headed in. In for a penny, in for a pound. She'd come this far. Retreating would get her nowhere. And if they were thinking of getting any ransom for her, they were SOL.
She approached the house cautiously, then turned the knob, but it was pulled out of her hand when someone from inside opened the door. There were three more Somerleds wearing much cleaner white robes than the two she'd ridden with, and they were all smiling at her.
“Skye. Welcome,” said one of them—a short man with a large nose and black curled wire for hair. He gave her a little bow, stepped back, and gestured toward a doorway to her left. She pretended not to notice the mess of the room behind them. The house was huge, but empty. And it looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry.
Every cell in her body screamed run! But she wasn’t going anywhere.
She walked into the side room. It didn’t have much in it either. There was a sad looking rug on the floor, a generous sprinkling of sawdust, and elevator doors. Since it was a single story house, she figured the only way was down.
The doors opened and she stepped inside, anxious to get on with it, or at least anxious to find that point of no return so that little voice would stop urging her to flee. She kept her purse tucked tight beneath her left arm and hoped no one would think to take it away from her. The hard lump of the Taser was the only thing keeping her calm.
The clean Somerleds joined her but were careful to give her plenty of space. They tried not to show it, but she could tell they were pretty happy about something.
“Oh, please,” she said sarcastically, “go ahead and sing if you want.”
The tallest one laughed. The other two shared a guilty look.
“You’ll have to forgive us, miss,” said the one with the nose. “It’s kind of a big day around here.”
She waited for him to say more, but he bit his lips and concentrated on the ceiling. So she looked at the tall one. “How deep are we going?”
He winked, then he, too, looked at the ceiling.
She checked. There was nothing special up there. Just lights.
The elevator slowed, then stopped. She was glad she was wearing sneakers because if she and the Jamison kid had to climb stairs to get out of there, it was going to take a while. Depending on the speed of descent, she figured they were at least six or seven stories down.
The doors separated. The others got out and waited for her. She glanced around, but there were no buttons to take her back to the ground floor. Apparently they wouldn’t be able to leave that way without an escort.
She stepped out and the doors closed quietly at her back. They were standing in a large lobby. Plenty of doors. Plenty of ways to get lost, maybe. The wall around the elevator behind her was carved stone, and to the right, there was an opening. Since no one seemed worried about stopping her, she walked over to get a better look. There were stairs, all right, but they only led down.
She wasn’t going to freak out, though. Elevators always broke down. Anyone who put in an elevator would make sure there was an alternative. There would be other stairs somewhere.
The guy with the nose gestured for her to follow him to one of the double doors. He grasped the handle and grinned.
“They’re waiting for you.” He pulled a door wide. “Go on.”
Skye stepped through the door and sensed the others following, but she completely forgot about them a couple of heartbeats later when the earth opened up and swallowed her whole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Just south of Henderson, Nevada Skye used to drive up a dirt road into Sloan Canyon to a little ridge that overlooked Green Valley. She’d only been able to go a handful of times, since she’d always been working at the café to keep from spending much time at the Blairs’. When she wasn’t on a schedule somewhere, she was expected to be home.
So the only time she’d been able to go up the canyon was when she was skipping classes, and she didn’t skip often. Her future was too important. Getting away from Henderson was pretty much her sole reason for living.
But on those few days when she was able to run away, she’d go up the canyon—not for the canyon itself, but for the view.
One human was really such a small thing when compared to the expanse at her feet, let alone when you compare a single human life to the entire world. And that little shot of perspective always helped when she felt like the Spaghetti Wall—the spot in Fernando’s kitchen where he threw his noodles to see if they were cooked right. And some days, she felt like she was everyone
’s spaghetti wall, where they threw their drama to see if it would stick.
Looking down from the ridge helped her scrape off the crusty debris and start over.
Standing inside the maw of a massive stadium carved into the center of the earth, she felt like she had on the ridge. How important were her little problems when compared to this?
This…this… She had no words.
“Welcome to the coliseum,” the Nose said next to her. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “I’ve never heard of this place.”
His brows rose. “I should hope not.”
He moved to an aisle and waved for her to follow. With the other two in tow, they traveled halfway to the circle at the center of the arena then turned and walked around to the opposite side where a large stage backed up against the carved stone.
Whatever machine had shaped the massive walls had left deep, jagged, triangular teeth marks in circles about ten feet in diameter. And the lights imbedded in the dome brought out the flecks of gold, blue, and silver in some of the layers. It was like someone had swirled glitter in a stone bowl and turned it upside down.
A geologist would have loved it.
The small stage was created from a semi-circle of smooth stone on the floor with the flat side against the back and another semi-circle mirroring it on the wall. It looked like a flat, open clam. The stone itself was a mosaic of yellow and gold, with a gash of red stone and crystal quartz here and there. The lights glanced off its polished surface like a shiny new car.
The only thing interrupting that brilliance was a large high-backed chair of gnarly pale wood polished as well as the floor.
She hesitated, but Nose insisted she step onto the stage.
“What is this place?”
No one answered. Their attention had turned to the far left side of the platform.
A door-sized chunk removed itself from the wall, and through the void stepped a tall woman with a huge head of dark hair. She was dressed much like Skye, in jeans and a tee, but she wore a pretty blue blouse over the top that hung nearly to her knees. Her make-up and hair suggested she was a performer.
