MERKABA
By Lorhainne Eckhart
Other Books by Lorhainne Eckhart
A Father’s Love
The Forgotten Child
A Baby And A Wedding
Fallen Hero
The Search
The Awakening
The Choice
Lost and Found
Merkaba
The Captain’s Lady
Box Sets
The Friessen Legacy Series
Walk the Right Road Series – Danger Deception Devotion: A Box Set
Praise for Works by Lorhainne Eckhart …
A Father’s Love ~ I LOVED this story. It was very heart warming. It’s the kind of story I think every father should read to their children.
Mimi
The Forgotten Child ~ READERS FAVORITE 5-Star Review: A real page turner with … a fast moving plot. A must read!
Reviewed by Brenda C. for Readers Favorite
Danger Reunites a family ~ The Search
Nancy Radke
This was a very compelling and well written story. I couldn’t put in down and finished it in two days with off and on reading.
Bonnie – Amazon Reviewer
The Forgotten Child ~ Wonderful ~ Really hit home when Trevor came into the picture with autism. Real dramatic issues that could happen. Great plot! Expertly crafted.
Short Stuff ~ Amazon
Lorhainne has a way of making you crazy about her characters, whether it’s hating them or loving them…on the edge of my seat for both and can’t wait for the next.
Amazon Reviewer ~ Skybabe
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Afterword
Other Works by Lorhainne Eckhart
About the Author
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
He watched her from the shadows, hiding behind an old fir tree in the thick, forested parkland. She was in the clearing. He’d seen her there yesterday and the past four days before that.
He’d stumbled upon her quite by accident. Wednesday, five days ago, just after breakfast, he had been intrigued by what she was doing. At first, he couldn’t figure out what the woman was about, as she appeared to be searching for something in the grassy ground of the clearing and then in the brush. She would reappear with a rock and drop it in the center of the open meadow again and again until she had a pile of different-sized rocks. And she was always sprinkling something from a leather-fringed pouch at her waist.
Had it been any other woman, he wouldn’t have given her his attention for this long, but there was something about this one he couldn’t read. She remained mysterious as she stood tall, shoulders squared and back as if nothing in life could hold her down. She nodded to herself and smiled as if someone was with her. He looked twice and then glanced behind him, and he knew that she was, in fact, alone. This strange woman was stunning, with silky dark hair tied back in a ponytail that draped to her waist. She was slender in an athletic way and had long, tanned legs that he could only imagine entangled with his. Every day, she dressed the same: tank top and beige shorts, with gray wool socks sticking up from the tops of old brown hiking boots. Her outfit was practical and cool on this extremely hot July day in the state parkland just outside Gardiner, Washington.
He appreciated a woman who knew how to look after herself, and by the looks of this one, she didn’t let an idle moment pass. This had piqued his interest, as had her determination as she constructed and built a circle of rocks, closing her eyes and then muttering something he couldn’t make out from this distance. After she had finished, she pulled a lighter from her pouch and lit something in her hand, smoke drifting up and trailing as she walked clockwise around the entire circle before tucking the smoking bundle between the rocks.
Now, today, five days later, she was sitting on the ground, watching the circle with a peaceful expression he hadn’t seen on anyone since the shaman he met in San Pedro, Chile—the shaman responsible for his return to Gardiner.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he cut through the bushes and long grass until he faced the woman and her circle. Standing on the other side of the rocks, with the morning sun nearly blinding him, he raised his hand to block the light as he gazed down on her. She didn’t acknowledge him right away, but his heart thudded when she glanced up slowly with the most amazing green eyes. Her face was tanned, with rounded cheeks, and she stared in a way that made him realize she wasn’t about to make this easy. Damn, a difficult woman, but that would just be a minor challenge.
“How’s it going?”
She stared at him, her hands folded in her lap. Her lips thinned in a way that made him think she was irritated.
“Ah, I was out taking a stroll and stumbled upon this.” He gestured down at the circle. “Wow, it’s nice.” He flashed her one of the killer smiles that all the ladies loved, and he knew she soon would melt and invite him to sit down with her.
Instead, she frowned, glancing away and wiping her hands together as she stood up. Tough chick—maybe he needed to start a little more formally.
“The name’s Dan McKenzie, Miss…” He waited, but she wasn’t biting.
“If you’ll excuse me.” She inclined her head and gave him nothing of herself, not a glance, not her attention, nothing. In fact, she turned, taking a step to walk away.
He couldn’t believe it. “I didn’t mean to intrude or anything. Was just trying to be friendly.” He stepped aside.
She placed her hands on her very curvaceous hips, definitely a spot he’d like to have his own hands, and watched him in a hard way that had him clearing his throat. She was a tiny thing, too. The top of her head didn’t clear his shoulders, but then not many reached his height of six-foot four.
“Dan, is it?” She flattened her palm in a motion for him to stop, and her tone was pure annoyance. “I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re selling. Been there, done that, honey. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Whoa, wait, I’m not selling anything. I just stumbled across you and wanted to say hi. Being neighborly is all.”
This time she laughed, chuckling at him in a way that had him stepping back and crossing his arms. He knew when someone was mocking him.
“Are you for real? Hell, I’ve come across way better liars than you. Let me see. On Saturday, when I came out here, you were hiding right over there.” She pointed through the crop of trees where he had, in fact, been hiding.
But there was no way she could have seen him. Or was he slipping?
“God knows what you were up to, and I still don’t want to know. And then every morning this week, when I came here… Let’s see. Sunday, you were over there, just under that cedar. Monday, you were over there by that crop of alders, and Tuesday, back under the cedar, which I presume you figured was the best spot to watch me. Did you learn anything? Like what you see?” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. She grabbed her small, beaded-patterned pouch before she turned her back, much like a cat would, and started walking away. She hadn’t gone two steps before he called out.
“So will you be back again tomorrow? Same time?”
She glared over her shoulder, picking up her pace as she strode away. She didn’t look back as she hiked onto the trail that weaved its way through the thick forest, which opened onto a rough back-roads parking lot that had barely seen a dozen vehicles all summer.
He blinked, wondering who this strange, sexy woman was. She had discovered him before he had a chance to fig
ure her out, and he laughed, trying to brush her off, but the woman was an absolute puzzle, one he meant to piece together. Before this day was out, he intended to know everything about her.
Chapter 2
Not only could he not find out who she was through his new “friends” who were working for him, but no one remembered having heard of anyone new moving into the area. His conclusion was that she had to be one of the many tourists who visited in the summer. But his contacts didn’t reach the resorts or hotels, and he didn’t know who the visitors were in this part of the Pacific Northwest. None of his old friends knew he was back. In fact, he had planted evidence the past January that was sure to convict Richard, his business partner, of his murder, and as far as everyone still knew, he was dead. That was how he planned to keep it, because he liked having a new start, with a clean slate and none of that baggage weighing him down.
Returning to Gardiner the previous month had been tricky, though, slipping back onto his property in the dead of night and staying in the vacant house he’d kept for growing marijuana. It was a three-bedroom bungalow with a twelve-foot fence that kept it isolated from the others—the only one with a gate that locked from the inside, so no one could see him coming or going. The tenants in the other rental houses would never have expected him, anyway. After all, he was dead, and that was the way it needed to stay. Only his mother, who handled his estate, had any idea of where he was. Even after her initial shock when he had returned that past month, showing up on her doorstep, she had still forgiven him after she understood the truth of why he needed to disappear.
As he slipped into his light blue sedan and drove through downtown Gardiner, shielded by his tinted windows, he glanced at the familiar shops and past the property with the ready-built homes he owned with Richard. When he noticed the large commercial sale sign, something in his stomach sat a little heavy, even though he knew his mother had agreed with Richard and had put the property on the market. Even now, Dan fought the need to hold on to it. He had to let it go, let it be sold. Otherwise, everyone would know what he’d done and the fact that he was still very much alive. If that happened, he would truly be dead this time, and that worry was something he couldn’t live with. So he shoved aside the need to prosper and grab as much as he could from everyone, and he turned the corner.
That was when he spotted his dark-haired beauty wearing the same tank top and shorts she had been wearing earlier, though she had traded her hiking boots for a pair of hot pink flip-flops. She strode down the sidewalk, carrying a brown, wrapped parcel; he assumed she’d just stepped out of the post office. She didn’t stop but walked down the sidewalk with the dozen or so other people, and she then climbed into a black Jeep, an older model with the roll bar and doors off, before signaling to pull out into traffic. Dan slowed his car and waited for her to take the cue and pull out in front of him.
“Come on, lady, I’m waiting for you.”
She did, slowly, and then hit the gas to the next set of lights.
“Where are you going, lady?” Dan followed, not too close to raise suspicion but a ways back, mainly because there were only a few cars on the highway that afternoon. He wondered how he’d get her to come to him. How long would it take before she smiled and did anything he asked? Women were so predictable. They needed to be handled just right, and he could read them well. They all wanted his attention, wanted something from him, just one thing. He knew how to pet a woman and flatter her until she’d dog his heels and bend to his will. That was just what he had planned for this dark-haired beauty. She’d be a pretty distraction that he could play with until… Well, he couldn’t help himself. He tired of women and their dogged loyalty after he had them, after the chase was done—over. Boredom always followed.
Once a woman allowed a man into her room at night, she wouldn’t care if her children saw. She’d give everything to him, and her children would come second. He swallowed and squeezed the steering wheel a little harder as he remembered all too well when his own mother had taken men into her room at night. He could hear, and so could his brothers and sisters, all five of them. But none of them spoke of it when the man slipped out before dawn, and their mother’s mood would be shaky. They never knew who’d be downstairs, whether it would be a happy, sad, or angry mom. “Women,” he spat out, as though the word was distasteful.
He sat up straighter as the dark-haired beauty ahead of him slowed down. Her brake lights flashed, and she turned into the parking lot of the Super Save, a clean, no-frills, box-style motel for anyone on a tight budget. Dan slowed as she parked, pulling over to the side of the road as she hopped out of her Jeep. She toted the package up the stairs, opening the second door from the end and shutting it behind her.
“Well, at least I know where you are. It’s a start. So, my dark-haired beauty, what brings you to Gardiner?” Dan smiled to himself as he pulled back onto the highway. He loved this game, anticipating how to handle her when and if she returned to her circle. Maybe she would come at the same time tomorrow, and, like every morning for the past five days, he would be waiting.
Chapter 3
Alecia tossed her keys on the chipped bedside table. It was a clean room, the bed a little on the soft side, but all that mattered was that there were no bugs or rodent droppings, and staying there didn’t drain her bank account.
With a heavy sigh, she sat on one of the double beds and ran her hand over the brown paper wrapping of the package she had just picked up from the post office. Her mother—bless her—had sent her more supplies: sage, sweet grass, tobacco, and another deer-hide pouch and a medicine bag for her treasures. Alecia loved her mother, and that was why she was here. Her mother never tried to stop her from coming back to clear the hurt and anger that had been ingrained in the earth by so many generations of desecration and pain. Her father, on the other hand—Patrick Moran, a proud Catholic Irishman born in County Galway in Ireland—now lived in Boston with her mother. He, of course, had yelled and swore over her ridiculous need to come and set things right. He didn’t understand—he couldn’t—but Alecia’s mother, Harriet, not only understood but recognized that the time was now, as she had worked with elders across the nation from where she was in Boston, elders from many tribes.
Alecia breathed in the scent of each red cloth bundle and prepped her pouch for the next morning, wondering if that strange man who’d been watching her for days would be there as well. He was handsome, tall, lanky, with short reddish hair that had its own natural curl. He had patrician features, a long nose and a smile she was sure could set a lady’s soul on fire. He had timed his visit, she knew that much. She hadn’t seen a man so much in control of his emotions in a long time, and maybe that was why she had stared as she did. He had misread her, though. She hadn’t ignored him when he came to her circle—she’d been speechless because of who she thought he was.
With broad shoulder and tanned arms, his body screamed of a man who knew how to look after himself. But his casual manner downplayed why he’d really been watching her. He wanted something. Her, namely. She’d figured that much out, but why? She knew she looked good, but she was by no means a cover girl. She was plain, ordinary, and she knew she’d never win any beauty pageant, not that she cared. Alecia never put any effort into looking like a woman. She tied her hair back, loved her hiking boots, and always had her face tilted to the sun, which had always sent her friend Tina into a tizzy, warning her that she’d be old and wrinkled before her time if she kept it up. A woman needed to be kind to her skin, keeping out of the sun, to maintain her youthful appearance. Of course, Alecia had snorted and laughed at that. Her mother had rolled her eyes, and her father had left the room.
Alecia wasn’t interested in being one of those damsels who cried too much and hid out in the shade, afraid to get dirty. She had worked alongside her father in his downtown bar in Boston, with all its laborers, cops, and men who worked with their hands all day—men who could curse a blue streak. According to Tina, the bar was definitely no place for a lady
, but then, Alecia hadn’t been raised a lady. She had been raised to be respectful, tough, and hardworking, and she had worked damn hard for everything she had, including the PhD in theology that she had earned at Boston University.
Her father had taught her honor and the importance of family, and that was why she was here now in Gardiner—for her mother, for what she had survived as a kid and, to this day, still couldn’t talk about.
Chapter 4
She glanced at her watch but already knew he was right on time. She could feel his presence, and he wanted her to. She didn’t look up as she folded over a red cloth filled with tobacco and tied it with a string before standing and closing her eyes. She had already put her intent, her prayer, into the cloth. She leaned down and sprinkled tobacco at the entrance and stepped into the circle after she’d silently asked permission.
The center pole was a solid two-foot-high stick with a short branch veering off, and that was where she’d tied each of the prayer cloths. Red, yellow, white, purple, blue, and green. She knew it looked like a rainbow, and she could feel his interest as he hovered just behind her. She pinched tobacco from her pouch and tossed it on the ground before she walked out of the circle to where Dan McKenzie stood, watching her in a way that had her relaxing a bit.
Maybe all this fuss was just her anxiety over what she’d decided to take on. After all, undoing the past and healing all those deeply buried hurts was a monumental task. So, instead of continuing with what Tina—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slender beauty—had called her prickly attitude that sent guys racing for the hills, she relaxed and met the curious, charming man’s gaze.
“This is amazing. So what is this thing you’ve built here?” He uncrossed one arm and swept it in a gesture to her circle of rocks.
“This is a medicine wheel.” Alecia started to say more and then clamped her jaw shut. Most people weren’t really interested, and quite often she babbled on, wanting—no, needing—to share all the information, the history, and why it was so important. But after the last guy had walked away, uninterested—which really did hurt, no matter what anyone said—she found herself saying as little as possible.
Merkaba, a supernatural suspense series (Walk the Right Road, Book 3) Page 1
