Dangerous Lover (14 page)

He looked up, his eyes wet and utterly stricken. “He's my kid brother.”

“You…you do remember.”

“Just that. Nothing more. That and—that I promised our mother I'd take care of him. And damn, look at this. Just look at his. Casey….”

She knelt beside him as he lowered his head, probably to hide the tears that were streaming down it now, or to try his best to silence the sobs racking his glorious back and shoulders with every breath he drew.

“I'm sorry, Cory. I'm so—” As she spoke, she touched the face of the young man on the ground, and then she went still. “Casey?” she asked.

Cory stopped sobbing and lifted his head. “Selene, what—?”

“He's still warm.” She was moving her hand now, sliding her fingers over his throat, and then bending to press her ear to his chest. She sat up fast. “He's alive, Cory.”

 

Even as he scrambled closer to his brother, Selene was yanking one of the walkie-talkies from the backpack he wore. She switched it on, switched the channels.

“Channel nine,” he muttered as he bent over his brother, noting the blood-soaked shirt Casey wore. “Police monitor that one.” He tore the shirt open. “I think he's been shot, Selene.”

She was keying the mike as he spoke. “This is an emergency transmission. Can anyone hear me?”

It wasn't long before a familiar voice—Jimmy's voice—came back, loud and clear over the speaker. “Is this who I think it is?”

“No names. We don't know who might be listening in. Listen, I've got a badly injured man, looks like a gunshot wound, just inside the falls woods, off North Road where I assume you guys already found the car. Am I right on that?”

“Affirmative. But we searched those woods.”

“He's pretty well hidden. I'm going to mark the spot with a strips of white cloth. You'll need advanced life support, EMTs and you're going to want to comb the area for trace evidence.”

“We'll be there in five.
Wait
for us.”

“Can't.”

“Your family—”

“I'm switching off, Jimmy. Hurry, okay?”

Before he could reply she switched off the power. Then her hand was closing on Cory's arm. “Come on. They'll be here soon.”

“I
can't
leave him.” He had shrugged off his borrowed jacket, draped it over his brother's torso. And as she tugged at him, he was lifting Casey's feet up, elevating them with help from a nearby fallen log.

“We won't leave him. We'll hide nearby, close enough to keep an eye on him until he's safely in the ambulance.”

He spun around to face her. “And then what? Leave him in the hospital so this asshole can sneak in and finish him off, just like he tried to do to me? No way.”

“They know these guys are going to try that, now, Cory. They'll take precautions. He'll be safe.”

“And what if he's not?” He was glaring at her, snapping, almost shouting. He didn't realize it until he glimpsed the wounded look in her eyes.

She didn't snap back, though. Instead she put a hand on his shoulder. “What else are we gonna do, Cory? We can't fix a gunshot wound. Not even me. We can't pack him out of here on our backs. It would take too long, and he's already been out here almost twenty-four hours. He needs help, more help than we can give him. You've done everything you can for him for right now. He's warm, his legs are elevated, he's not bleeding. They'll be here soon, I promise.”

“Couldn't you—you know, do that Reiki stuff on him?”

“I can. And I can do it from a distance.”

“You can?”

“I wouldn't lie to you, Cory. There's a symbol specifically for distance healing. Trust me.”

He lowered his eyes.

“This is his best chance, Cory. If it were one of my sisters lying there, I swear to you, this is what I would do for her.”

Blinking away hot tears, he lifted his gaze to hers again, nodded once. “I know you're right.”

“Okay. Now, don't bite my head off, but before we duck into some nearby cover, we need to go through his pockets.”

“What the hell for?”

“Well, you remember him enough to know he's your brother, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Enough to know what the two of you were doing out here in this forest? Who was after you, or why?”

He closed his eyes, shook his head side to side. “No.”

“Then maybe something in his pockets will tell us.”

He refocused, staring down at his fallen brother, who was breathing so shallowly it was barely visible.

“I'll do it.” She shouldered past him, and bent over his brother, carefully going through his pockets. “No wallet, same as you,” she said aloud. But there were a set of keys, some nail clippers, loose change, and a pocket-sized planning calendar. “Not a big haul, but—”

He put a hand on her arm. “Listen.”

She listened; he could see she heard sirens in the distance, getting louder, closer. “Damn, that was fast. Come on, this way. And try to step lightly. We don't want to leave them a clear trail.”

He went where she led, confident in her ability and her knowledge of these woods. Amazed that he was so sure of it, when he was sure of nothing else. But he was, and he wasn't proven wrong. She led them no more than fifty yards away, into the shadow of the root plate of an upturned tree. Tangled roots, soil and weeds formed a natural cave, and they crawled into it, pulling brush behind them until he was sure they were invisible.

“You spend a lot of time in the woods, don't you?” he asked.

“Yeah. And so do you.”

“You think?”

She nodded. “You walk without breaking twigs or crushing plants as if it's an automatic thing. You probably don't even know you're doing it. And you don't grab onto trees and saplings as you pass, the way less experienced people would. Why is that?”

“You leave scent wherever you touch. Any animal that regularly passes this way would change his course. We don't want to interfere with them like that.”

“We?”

He blinked, then frowned. “I don't know, Selene. You're right, that meant something, but I don't know. It just came out.”

“Yeah, like something you've talked about before.”

“Here they come.”

They crouched there, side by side. When the sirens stopped, and the men fanned into the forest, he could hear them in the distance, crashing through the undergrowth. Closer, he could hear only her breathing. Gentle, shallow breaths, designed he was certain for silence. In and out and in again. She was sitting on her knees, bent slightly forward, straining to watch. He was sitting flat, knees bent up in front of him, watching via an opening in the brush as men surrounded his kid brother.

He did remember some things. Kid things. Swinging from a rope and dropping into a water hole. He could see Casey clear as day, skinny and freckled in cut-off denim shorts, with a blood blister under one toenail. He could hear, just as if the voice were real and present, his mother telling him over and over,
You take care of your baby brother, Cory. I'm counting on you.

I will, Mom.

Selene sent him a sharp look, then a questioning one.

He hadn't been aware he'd spoken the words aloud. But he knew they meant something. He knew by the contracting of his heart and the way his stomach was knotting up. “I promised our mother I'd take care of him,” he whispered, because it was too much to keep in. It refused to stay in.

Her brows rose, and then she was kissing him. Her arms sliding around his neck, her mouth caressing his with a gentleness that seemed designed to heal. Or comfort. If a kiss could do either of those things, and at the moment he rather thought it could.

Then she released him, and sat back on her heels to dip into a pocket. He didn't even dare to think what she might be doing. Knowing her, she was going to pull out a magic wand or something, give it a flick and send a spiral of pink glitter wafting out to Casey, at which point he'd spring to his feet and dance a jig.

No. She pulled out a chain with a crystal prism hanging from one end. Holding it carefully, she brought it close to her, kissed it, and then whispered to it, “Tell me if Casey is going to survive this. Yes or no?”

“How can I tell you something like that when I—”

“Not you,” Selene interrupted. “The pendulum.” And with that she let the thing dangle, holding only the very end, and steadying it with her other hand until it hung motionless.

She stared at the stone, and he couldn't help but stare, too. It began to move, so slightly at first that he wasn't sure it was moving at all. But it was. It swung, slowly, forming a circle that grew larger and wider, until Selene gave the chain a tug, neatly snapping the crystal upward and catching it in her palm.

“What was that?” he asked.

“That was a yes. A very definite yes. He's going to live, Cory.”

He met her eyes, and wondered how she could be so sure of her alleged powers, when he doubted.

“Hey, I found him, didn't I?” she asked.

She had, at that. He nodded, and turned his gaze back to the woods, to see the paramedics lifting Casey on a stretcher, and carrying him back toward the ambulance that waited on the nearby dirt road. The ambulance's siren came to life, and then began to fade. But the police were still scattered around the area, one of them even now stringing yellow tape from tree to tree.

“Let's get out of here. We've got a lot to do,” Selene whispered.

“How? There are a dozen cops out there.”

She tilted her head. “This way.” Then she turned onto her hands and knees, and began crawling deeper into the darkness.

And even in his grief and worry over his brother, he noticed the small, round butt wriggling away from him. He swore under his breath, and did what any red-blooded male would have done. He followed her.

S
elene drove, because this time it was Cory who was emotionally overwhelmed. She could see it in the slump of his shoulders, the tightness of his jaw and the frown lines between his brows. He was scared to death for his brother. That he cared so much, that he took so seriously a promise he'd made to his mother, those things told her a lot about him. Not that she'd needed to know more than she already did. Her soul already knew his. Her heart had recognized him on sight. He was the man she was fated to love, and she knew better than to question something that felt so true. So real.

Maybe they wouldn't be together forever. Maybe he would never feel the same way about her. Maybe she'd misread all of that. After all, just because he was the one her heart had waited for, didn't mean it was going to end well.

“I wish things could have been different,” she said as she guided the station wagon down a back road to pick up the main highway and an area with cell reception. “I wish we could have met like two normal people, taken time to get to know each other without all the negativity messing things up.”

“Negativity.”

“Yeah.”

“You mean, like people trying to kill us, your friends being murdered and in danger, my brother being shot and left for dead.”

“Exactly.”

He shook his head. “
Negativity
is a pretty mild term for all that.”

“Still….”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

She shrugged. “But maybe you never would have noticed me if we'd met over coffee, or at the Corral, or—”

“The Corral?”

She glanced his way and smiled. “I forgot, you don't anything about me, do you? Sometimes, it feels like we're old friends—like you know me really well. I keep forgetting. The OK Corral is a saloon in town. It's our family business.”

“You own a saloon?”

“My mom, technically. But we all help out.”

“All of you? And how many would that be?”

It was nice that her chatter seemed to be distracting him a little bit from his own worry. She wanted to make things better for him. She wanted to make everything in his life right for him. “There's my mom, my four sisters, and me.”

“Five girls in one family. Hmm. They all look like you?”

“We bear some pretty striking resemblances, I think. But uh, if you're thinking what I think you are, forget it. I'm the only one who's not married.”

He smiled, not admitting a thing. “So you're the youngest, then?”

She nodded. “And you're the oldest?”

“Yeah. It's just me and Casey. Mom passed two years ago, and Dad—” he broke off there, shot her a look and shook his head. “How the hell do you
do
that?”

“Get you to remember things you thought you couldn't remember?” She shrugged. “I don't know. I'm just glad I can. What were you going to say. Your dad…?”

“He lives alone, drinks himself to sleep every night and wants little to do with anyone else. Been that way since she died.” He sighed deeply. “He loved her so damn much. Too much, really. She felt smothered most of her life. I mean, Casey and I could see that, but she couldn't tell Dad. It would have killed him. The man was entirely dependent on her. There was nothing else in his life. He didn't give a damn about his sons, even.”

He blinked, shook his head slowly. “Wow. Where did all that come from?”

“It's all coming back. You give it another day or two and you'll be as good as new.” She thought maybe she'd just had her first clear glimpse at his emotional composition. He didn't ever want to love the way his father had.

“So tell me more about your dad. You and Casey—you haven't given up on him.”

“No. We keep trying.”

She nodded knowingly. “I figured as much.” Then she steered the car into a pull-off. “See if we have a signal here.”

He tugged the cell phone out, and turned it on. Then waited, watching the screen. “What made you figure as much?” he asked.

She shrugged. “You're a caring person.”

“And you know that because…?”

“I just do. Signal?”

“Yep.” He handed her the phone and she saw two bars in the panel. “Perfect.” She began making her calls.

 

He watched as she disconnected, watched her eyes, which had grown more damp with every conversation. It was clear to him that she loved the women of her circle in a way that went beyond friendship. Maybe even beyond sisterhood.

“Helena's devastated and terrified. I think she's going to take a leave of absence from her job and leave town for awhile.”

“She doesn't trust the Big Falls police to protect her?” he asked.

She wasn't really looking at him, was somewhere else, with her friends probably. “It's not so much that. She's a kindergarten teacher. I'm not sure she'd be likely to keep her job if it came out that she was a Witch, much less that she was somehow entangled in a murder investigation.” She lowered her eyes, staring at the ground. “Goddess, keep her safe.”

“You gave her good advice, Selene. Told her to leave town by car, rather than using any public transportation, told her not to tell anyone where she was going, and to take enough cash so she doesn't have to use her credit cards. To pick up a prepaid phone card from a discount store and use that to contact you, so it can't be traced back to her.”

He frowned a little, and she finally looked at him. “What?”

“You just seem…to know a lot about covering your trail.”

“Not because I've ever had to. My sister Melusine is a private investigator, married to another P.I., one of the best in the country. My sister Maya is married to a lawyer whose dad is a retired senator. My sister Kara is married to a cop. You pick things up.”

“What about the other sister? That's only three.”

“Hmm, you have been paying attention, haven't you?”

“Absolutely.”

“The other sister is Edie. Retired model, current photographer. Married to Wade Armstrong, who owns two successful auto shops.”

“So are you an expert on auto repair and photography, as well as eluding the police?”

She tipped her head to one side, searching his face. “You're not still suspicious of me, are you Cory?”

He shrugged. “Less and less, to be honest. But then…little niggling doubts crop up every now and then.” He waited for her reaction—hurt or anger or at least irritation—to show up in her face. But it didn't. Instead she seemed to mull his words over. She seemed thoughtful, focused.

“Sorry,” he said. “That must seem pretty ungrateful, after all you've done for me.”

“No, it just seems cautious. Given your lack of memory, it's even logical. I mean, I don't like it, but I think it'll pass. And I guess I have to appreciate the honesty.”

He lifted his brows. “That's all very rational. Now tell me how you really feel.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Okay. I want to smack you upside the head and ask you what it's going to take to convince you I'm on your side here.”

“And your feelings are hurt.”

“Well, sure they are. I'm trying to be patient with you, Cory, but damn.”

“I'm sorry.”

She nodded. “I know.”

She did know. He appreciated her honesty, too, and it bugged him that he'd hurt her feelings. And part of him was smacking himself upside the head, and asking just how stupid he must be to keep doubting her, even a little bit. His gut trusted her. It was his head giving him trouble.

Time to readjust the subject. “You told me about Helena. What about the other two? Marcy and Erica, right?”

“Marcy's going to the police, going to cooperate fully and hope they can protect her and her boys.”

“She trusts them, then?”

“I think it's more that she's angry. She loved Tessa. She wants vengeance. Knowing Marcy, she's probably hoping the killer will come after her so she can have a shot at making him pay. She's got a temper on her like…like my sister Mel.”

“And Erica?” he prompted when she drifted off into silence again.

“There's the rub. With all that's happened, I totally forgot. Erica's out of town. She doesn't know about anything that's happened since the night I found you. Not the break-in at my house, not…Tessa and Chet. Nothing.”

“And you can't reach her?”

“We
have
to reach her. She has to know she's in danger. But we can't reach her by phone. She's at a Pagan festival at a campground in Texas. She told me she'd be completely cut off. I tried her cell, but no luck.”

“Doesn't this campground have an office?”

“Yeah, but they won't admit she's there even if we call and ask for her.”

“Not even if you tell them it's an emergency?”

She shook her head slowly. “It's owned by Witches. They know how important anonymity is to some of us, and they also know the lengths some people will go to, to uncover our secrets. They protect their guests.”

He nodded slowly, and it came a little clearer to him the risk some of these so-called Witches had to take to practice their faith. It really didn't make a lot of sense, in the twenty-first century, in an enlightened society. But he thought it was real.

“Suppose the police contacted them. Would they get a message to her then?”

“That would mean telling the police she was one of my coven, and telling them where she was.”

“And you're not willing to do that.”

“Her father is the local minister, Cory. I can't do that. It's not my secret to tell. I gave my word, took an oath—”

“Okay, okay. Understood.” And it hit him again that a woman who took her promises as seriously as Selene did was probably a woman he could trust a hundred percent. His niggling doubts were fading fast. “So what are we going to do? What do you want to do?”

“We have to go down there. We have to find her ourselves, warn her.”

“But if they're that careful about their guests, isn't it a pretty sure bet she's safe?”

“Maybe. At least until she leaves, and walks right back into town without even knowing she's at risk. Besides, Cory, it's her life. She has a right to know it's in danger, and make her own decisions about how best to proceed.”

“You Witches are real big on that aren't you?” She lifted her brows and he went on. “You know, your right to have all the information and make your own decisions, and all?”

“Personal responsibility,” she said. “We make our choices, and accept the consequences. The karma. We don't blame circumstances or our childhoods or the devil for what we do. It's all on us. And it's important to us.”

He nodded. “You told the police you wouldn't leave town.”

“Yeah. But Erica's safety is more important, don't you think?”

“So you're choosing the lesser of two evils?”

“I think of it as choosing the greater good.”

He nodded, but thought it was just semantics. “So then, we're going to Texas?”

“I'm going to Texas. You don't have to come with me. You don't owe me anything, Cory. There's nothing keeping you with me.”

He kind of thought there was, but he wasn't sure what, or why or…hell, he liked the woman. He wanted to make sure she was safe. And no matter what she said, he
did
owe her. He didn't say any of that out loud, though. He just said, “I want to go with you.”

She smiled, a sad, half smile dulled by grief, but it brightened her face a little. He saw a lot in that smile. More than just gladness. He saw relief, and maybe some nervousness, too.

“If that's okay with you,” he added, even though he could tell by her face that it was.

“More than okay,” she said. “Way more.”

 

They drove until neither of them could stay awake any longer, then pulled into a motel that looked cheap enough not to be too fussy about ID, not that he would have had any, anyway. Selene went into the office alone, paid cash in advance for a room, one room. And she supposed she could have blamed that on wanting to save the cash she had for any other expenses they would encounter on the road. But she wouldn't have booked separate rooms even if she'd had barrels of money, and she wondered if he knew it.

When she came back out, he had parked the car, and was standing near it, waiting for her. She looked at him, and her eyes got stuck for a minute. Damn, she loved looking at him. His bedroom eyes were particularly sultry tonight, probably because he was exhausted.

She went to where he stood, held up the key. “Number seventeen. It's around back.”