Storm Born

by Christine Pope

“Don’t. Keep trying. Whoever is doing it has to be leaving some kind of trace behind.”

  “Yes, sir.” A pause, and then she asked, “Any idea how long you’re going to be in Las Vegas?”

  “As long as it takes, Dawson. Keep me posted if there are any updates.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He closed the laptop then, severing the connection. A scowl creased his forehead as he went to the window and stared out at the city, glittering in the bright afternoon sunlight. Somewhere down there, Adara Grant and the mysterious “Jake” had hidden themselves…if they hadn’t already left town. It was entirely possible that they’d only spent one night there, or had merely stopped for food before pushing on to…well, wherever it was that happened to be their destination.

  For just a moment, he wondered if he’d been too hasty about destroying Adara’s Kanab home. Possibly, this Jake person might have left a fingerprint on the door, or on the jamb. But no, he’d only knocked and hadn’t touched anything else. Even if he had, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have left a clear print anyway. Besides, fingerprints were far from a sure thing. They only existed in a database if someone had had a reason to get fingerprinted in the past, whether to get bonded, obtain a teaching credential, or get some kind of clearance…or possibly because they’d been arrested at some point. As much as Randall Lenz would have liked to think that Jake had some kind of a criminal record, he didn’t seem to be the type. His clothing was plain but good quality, and he definitely didn’t look like a user. His vehicle was new, and expensive.

  That vehicle….

  Not bothering with the laptop, he picked up his phone and sent Dawson a quick text. Cross-reference any sales of black Jeep Gladiators over the past year with men whose first names are Jake or Jacob, he typed. A few seconds later, her reply showed on the screen.

  Working.

  That seemed to be about all he could do for the moment.

  Well, except one thing.

  Resolute, he dug the electric shaver out of his duffle and went into the bathroom to get cleaned up. It might be a waste of his time to start inquiring about Adara and Jake when there were literally hundreds of different hotels where they could have stayed, but Lenz figured he might as well give it a try.

  After all, what else did he have to do with his time?

  11

  I didn’t really know what to say to Jake on the drive back to Flagstaff, so I decided to remain quiet, acting as though I was exhausted by the trip, my head leaned against the back of my seat and my eyes shut.

  Actually, it wasn’t much of an act. The day had turned out to be a very long one.

  And yet, with all of the things that had happened during that day — meeting my brother and his family, learning that I would soon be a millionaire, discovering that I’d somehow managed to escape the curse that had haunted the Wilcoxes for more than a hundred years — one detail in particular kept preying on my mind.

  Jake had asked me out on a date.

  Okay, it was probably one of the most sideways invitations ever offered, but still. He hadn’t seemed put off by my non-answer, had taken my comment at face value. A non-answer had been about all I could give him, simply because I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react. I could lie to myself and say I wasn’t attracted to him, but what would be the point? He was definitely the handsomest man I’d ever seen in my life…and kind and tough and resourceful as well. Who wouldn’t want someone like that asking them out?

  Well, someone who’d just lost her mother, who’d just discovered she was far more than she’d ever believed, who’d learned she had a huge extended family just waiting to take her under their wing and make sure she survived this transition into her new life. With all that on my plate, I’d be crazy to even contemplate attempting a relationship.

  And yet….

  This was all impossible. I tried to tell myself that I hadn’t committed to anything except another dinner at some hazy point in the future, but since I hadn’t turned Jake down outright, he knew I was receptive, even in my current muddled state.

  Sigh.

  Eventually, we emerged from winding Oak Creek Canyon and into what looked like a vast, black forest. The highway continued without interruption, and though far ahead I glimpsed the taillights of another vehicle, it nonetheless felt empty and frightening, the darkness swirling all around us. There hadn’t been any sign of pursuit, not even a hint that Agent Lenz had figured out where we’d gone, but a chill still began to inch its way down my spine as I wondered if a series of black, unmarked vehicles were going to burst forth from one of the service roads that fed into the highway, or whether a black helicopter would swoop down from above and somehow scoop me up from Jake’s truck.

  Silly fancies, I knew, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling of foreboding, of unfriendly eyes following our progress. Only when the frontage road we’d been driving on gave way to obvious signs of suburbia — gas stations, a Walmart, a Coco’s — did I finally allow myself to relax slightly. The chances of being snatched up when surrounded by people and streetlights seemed much lower.

  About five minutes later, Jake turned off the main road and into the older neighborhood where his house and the cottage were located. He pulled up into the driveway of the cottage and said, “I’ll walk you to the front door.”

  I didn’t bother to protest. Maybe my silence signaled to him that I wanted to prolong our time together, but in reality, what I really wanted was to postpone the moment when I would be left alone in the cottage. It might have been perfectly safe, but for whatever reason, knowing that Jake was only two doors down wasn’t enough reassurance to keep me from imagining a terrible series of worst-case scenarios.

  We walked up to the front door. I hadn’t left the porch light on, but he only had to look at it and it flared to life, illuminating the area — which of course was completely empty except for the same flowerpots of geraniums that had been there when we left.

  “Go on,” he said, and I realized he was encouraging me to use my powers on the door lock.

  Even though I’d performed the same feat earlier that day, I still couldn’t prevent myself from feeling a tingle of apprehension as I reached for the handle. However, my anxiety was completely unfounded, since I heard the tumblers inside click as soon as I laid my fingers on the cool metal.

  “You see?” His smile seemed almost blinding in the illumination from the porch light, although that could simply have been my eyes trying to adjust to the change. “Nothing to it.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Jake pushed the door open and went inside, and I had no choice but to follow him. The lights inside flared on as well, showing that the cottage was empty, just as we had left it.

  Mounted on the wall next to the door was a flat little box I hadn’t even noticed before, clearly the control panel for an alarm system.

  “You can arm this after I leave,” he said. “It’s really simple — just enter ‘9382’ and press ‘stay.’ Then, if anyone tries to open a door or a window, or trips one of the motion sensors on either the front or back porch, the alarm will go off.”

  I supposed he thought that having an alarm system would make me feel better about being alone in the house overnight. However, as I stared at the panel, I couldn’t quite prevent the little shiver that inched its way down my spine.

  “Is the neighborhood not safe?” I asked.

  The faintest of frowns, and then he shook his head. “No, it’s totally safe. You honestly have nothing to worry about here. The alarm system is more for peace of mind than anything else.”

  “Oh.”

  That was all I said, but the single syllable was enough to deepen his frown, to make him stare down into my face. I wished I could look away; being scrutinized like that was never fun, especially when the person doing it to you was the man you’d recently realized you were extremely attracted to. However, tearing my eyes from his seemed worse than trying to look back at him as innocently as possible, and so I stood my gro
und.

  “You don’t want to be here by yourself.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m sure it’s safe,” I said, knowing I had to give him some sort of reply. “But….”

  A long pause. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels slightly, clearly trying to figure out what he should do next. When he spoke, his words surprised me, since I’d just expected him to convince me that I was being silly for not wanting to stay in the sanctuary he and his team had prepared.

  “Then bring your stuff over to my place,” he said. “I have a bunch of extra bedrooms.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked, relieved and apprehensive at the same time. While I knew I would feel much better not being on my own, sleeping at Jake’s house came with its own particular set of problems.

  They’re only problems if you turn them into problems, I scolded myself. You slept in the same hotel room with him last night and didn’t turn it into a big drama.

  True, except the night before, I’d still been shell-shocked by everything that had happened in Kanab and had no idea I would find myself attracted to my rescuer…or however I thought of him. Oh, maybe in the depths of my distress, I’d still noticed how gorgeous he was, but I would have put aside the thought as entirely inappropriate. It was probably inappropriate now as well, although I’d given up on trying to ignore how much better I felt when Jake Wilcox was around.

  His posture relaxed slightly, as though he was glad he’d gotten past the worst of our awkward moment and just wanted to make sure I was okay with the arrangement. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t okay with it,” he told me. “Like I said, I’ve got lots of extra rooms. One of them even has a bed — Jeremy crashed there for a few weeks about a year ago when the townhouse he bought was being renovated. It’s fine.”

  This all sounded refreshingly normal, like the sort of thing any guy would do for his little brother — at least in a family where everyone got along. I wondered irrelevantly when I’d get to meet Jeremy, then decided I had bigger fish to fry at the moment. “Okay,” I said, not bothering to keep the relief out of my voice. “Just let me get my things together.”

  “Take as long as you need.”

  If he was irritated with me for so cavalierly blowing off the house he’d carefully put together for his “strays,” he didn’t show it. He just went over to the couch and sat down, clearly prepared to wait for however long it would require for me to pack my things.

  Since my “things” consisted of the items I’d purchased in Las Vegas and nothing else, that particular task didn’t take me very long. In about two minutes, I was back out in the living room. “Ready.”

  Jake smiled. “Okay.”

  It seemed silly to drive when we were only going two doors down, but since he’d parked in the driveway at the cottage, of course he’d want to move his Jeep to where it belonged. The garage sat at the end of a long driveway, and appeared to be some distance from the back door. Thinking of Flagstaff’s harsh winters, I didn’t feel like that was the best setup in the world, but then I realized cars hadn’t even been a thing when the house was first built, and so the garage was obviously a later addition.

  But it was June now, and the first snows of winter seemed a long way off. I followed Jake out of the garage and along a walkway that led to the back porch, and from there we went inside the kitchen.

  I tried not to stare. Oh, it wasn’t that the kitchen was all that big — I could tell the space probably retained its original proportions and layout — but everything had been impeccably updated, from the granite counters to the leaded glass on the upper cabinets and the friendly washed antique blue of the woodwork. The floor was wood, and creaked faintly.

  Jake apparently didn’t notice my reaction to the kitchen, because he breezed on through the space and led me down the hallway to the stairs, which had a carved mahogany balustrade. I caught glimpses of the dining room and what had probably once been the parlor and was now the living room, all with the original woodwork intact, although the walls had been painted in warm shades of brick and dark green and deep parchment rather than papered the way they’d probably been when the house was first built, and the furniture itself was relaxed and contemporary rather than fussy Victorian antiques.

  “Up here,” he said, and I followed him to the second floor, which had another long hallway bisecting the area, with three doors on the left and four on the right. “You can take the first bedroom,” he added as he opened the door. “Sorry I haven’t done much with it, but Jeremy said the mattress is comfortable.”

  Jake wasn’t being modest; the space he’d indicated definitely wasn’t as “done” as the downstairs. Yes, the same warm woodwork framed the doors and windows, and there was crown molding around the ceiling, but the walls were plain off-white and the furniture consisted of a queen-size bed with a black iron headboard, a simple bedside table with a glass-shaded lamp sitting on it, and a highboy that matched the table over in one corner.

  Simple as it was, I felt immediately better knowing I’d be sleeping in that room with a warlock just down the hall, rather than in the cottage by myself…even if that cottage was guarded by an alarm system. “It looks great,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem. Bathroom is two doors down the hall.” A pause, and then he added, “And I’m just across the hall in the front bedroom, so if you feel hinky about anything….”

  The words trailed off, but I knew what he was trying to say. He wanted me to know he was right there, just in case I was seized by night terrors or needed to know reinforcements were close by.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Okay.” Looking a little uncomfortable, he went on, “I suppose I should have thought of this sooner. I mean, the cottage is probably fine under most circumstances, but after what happened with your mother….”

  Again, his words faded away, as though he’d realized that maybe completing the thought wasn’t the best idea. But I understood. While he’d imagined shepherding his lost witches and warlocks to sanctuary in the cottage he and his team had prepared for that very task, he probably had never imagined any of them losing a parent to an unexpected attack by a rogue federal agent.

  If Agent Lenz was a rogue at all. Far more likely was the reality that his actions had been sanctioned by someone a lot higher up the food chain, a person or persons who had decided human life wasn’t that important when measured against any advantages the government might gain by having supernaturally powered humans working for them.

  “I’d rather not be alone,” I said quietly.

  For a moment, Jake didn’t respond. I got the feeling that he wanted to reach out and give me a hug, or at the very least, touch my hand to let me know he was there for me, but wasn’t sure how I would react to such a gesture.

  I could understand his diffidence. To be honest, I didn’t even know how I would react to that kind of an advance. It would have been way too easy to let him take me in his arms and have him hold me while I cried. Because those damn tears were stinging my eyes again, and I knew it wouldn’t take much to make me break down again.

  However, I didn’t want him to come to me out of pity. Compassion and kindness, sure, but it was probably better to just put a cap on the evening and see what the next day would bring.

  Maybe he got some of my vibe, or maybe he’d come to the same conclusion on his own. Either way, he said simply, “Good night, Addie,” and then went across the hall to his own room and quietly closed the door behind him.

  I stood in the bedroom for a moment, wondering if I’d just made a colossal mistake. But there wasn’t much I could do about it at that point.

  “Good night, Jake,” I whispered, and shut the door to my borrowed room.

  Strangely, I felt much better when I woke up the next morning. Maybe it was only that I could tell the day was a bright and sunny one out past the wooden blinds that darkened the room, or maybe it was the realization that I’d gotten a solid
eight hours of sleep with no interruptions, no federal agents breaking in, no storms brought to life by uneasy dreams.

  From downstairs came a faint clank as Jake put a kettle on the stove or performed some other early morning task in the kitchen. The thought of coffee was appealing, but I really wanted a shower first. The day before, I hadn’t washed my hair, since we’d been focused on getting out of Las Vegas as quickly as we could, and it was time to get myself really clean.

  Like the kitchen, the upstairs guest bath had been fully modernized, and had a large glass-enclosed shower with granite tile and a big adjustable shower head with massaging jets. It felt delicious to let the hot water knead my scalp, to use the shampoo and conditioner and soap I’d bought at Walgreens to wash away some of the residue of the last two days. I could still feel the hurt lurking inside, but that morning I felt a little better equipped to handle it, as though the extra night’s sleep had done something to replenish a store of strength I hadn’t even realized had been so terribly depleted.

  I hadn’t bought a blow dryer, and there wasn’t one under the sink, so about all I could do was comb out my wet hair and be glad that it was straight and silky and generally looked acceptable even when air-dried. Probably no point in brushing my teeth if I was just going to have coffee once I got downstairs, but I went ahead and put on a little lip gloss and some mascara, telling myself I might as well make that tiny bit of effort.

  When I got to the kitchen, I saw Jake leaning against the granite counter, his own hair looking slightly damp and a dark scruff covering his chin. He also appeared far more rested — and so gorgeous that I had to actively keep myself from staring.

  “Coffee smells good,” I said, desperate for any kind of comment that would break the tension I could already feel building between us.

  “I’ll pour you a cup,” he replied, then set down the mug he’d been holding and went over to the cupboard to fetch one for me. He filled it up from the fancy stainless machine that sat on the counter across from the stove, and came over and handed it to me. “Milk or sugar?”