Read I Hope You Find Me Online

Authors: Trish Marie Dawson

Tags: #action adventure, #urban disaster fiction, #women heros, #romance adult fiction, #thriller and mystery, #series book 1, #dystopian adventure, #pandemic outbreak, #dogs and adventure, #fantasy about ghosts

I Hope You Find Me (7 page)

BOOK: I Hope You Find Me
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He actually felt happy with Riley around.
Like there was a purpose in even trying to make it through the day.
He could even get used to the dog slobber. It felt safer with
them…comfortable and like it was okay to laugh again. He could be
himself, his real self with Riley because she didn’t know him as
the rest of the world had.

Plus, she was gorgeous, though a bit
careless, and she had a plan, even though he didn’t know what it
was exactly, it was better than sitting in a luxury hotel waiting
for the power to finally die out and having nowhere left to go.

The real colors of the room were starting to
come back to life as the sun struggled to pierce through the
darkness of night and warm the land with its rays when he finally
let his eyes close. Sleep took him quickly, eagerly, and gave him
no dreams to struggle through.

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

It hadn’t taken long for Zoey to fall asleep
curled up against my legs but I kept my eyes open until dawn. When
the sunlight started streaming into the room it forced away the
shadows, and I didn’t want to move until the darkness was gone. The
room was awash in pale yellows and oranges when I rolled onto my
side and buried myself under the covers. I woke two hours later
with Zoey nudging my face with her wet nose. I stumbled out of bed,
dressed quickly in my jeans, leaving my tank top on and let her out
of the room. She seemed disappointed to find the bowl on the
kitchen floor empty.

I noticed Connor had closed his door as well
during the night, so I approached it quietly and carefully leaned
near the frame and listened for any sounds coming from the room.
Satisfied he was still asleep, I ventured into the kitchen and
hunted around the cupboards for coffee and mugs. I decided to make
a full pot and the smell alone as the coffee brewed helped me relax
and wake up a bit. I took my hot mug to the windows and looked at
the city around us. There was a partial view of the ocean that I
couldn’t see during the night and this early in the morning the
sunshine made the water look like colored glass. The glint was
almost blinding so I shifted my gaze up and down a few of the
streets. In the direction of the airport the sky was hazy, the wind
must have been blowing the smoke away from us, but it seemed there
was still some sort of fire burning in that area. Zoey allowed me
to enjoy my coffee for exactly two minutes before she sat at the
front door, whimpering to be let out. This meant walking down
twenty flights of stairs.
Great
.

“Alright, alright. Give me a minute
girl.”

I went into my room and pulled on my converse
and took Zoey’s leash from my pack, sliding it around the back of
my neck like a thin pink scarf. I grabbed the key card from the
counter where Connor had left it the night before and quietly
slipped out the door. The dog and I jogged down each flight of
stairs till we reached the main floor landing.

The lobby was bigger than I had remembered
from the night before. There were chairs and tables scattered
around one side of the main room for socializing, and a small bar
took up the furthest corner. The main desk itself was the most
impressive thing in the room to me, with a large rugged marble top
and a back-splash of colorful blue tiles.

Once outside I could smell the smoke in the
air and it seemed the wind was shifting, blowing the airport fire
in our direction. I silently chided myself for not wearing
something warm on my arms since at 6:00 a.m. it was nippy
outside.

Fortunately we didn’t have to walk far from
the hotel entrance before finding a patch of grass for Zoey to do
her business. While she scouted for the perfect spot I walked to
the corner of the building and glanced down the street. The sun
hadn’t yet reached the cars and most were still covered in frost. I
squinted my eyes at each of the building windows looking for signs
of life, but nothing moved, nothing breathed. Zoey sniffed behind
me and together we passed back through the lobby and headed up the
stairs.

On the fourth floor landing, when I was
talking to the dog about breakfast and being polite to our host,
one of the hall doors below us opened with a loud squeak and
promptly slammed shut. The noise startled the dog enough to send
her dodging up half a flight of stairs. I froze in place. I wasn’t
sure if I should call out, or stay hidden. Eventually I leaned over
the railing enough to see down the spiral but it didn’t appear like
anyone was climbing the dark stairs below us. Suddenly Zoey barked
loudly, causing me to jump so badly I bit my lower lip. The air
went heavy and the already cold stairwell dropped in temperature
causing my arms to break out in goose bumps.

“Damn dog!” I hissed at her,

Ssshhh.”

She stopped barking but stood nervously at
the railing above me, looking down below…her hackles up, her tail
tucked stiffly between her legs. I no longer felt the need to know
who had opened the door and I burst out into a full on run up the
stairs, taking two at a time. We made it to the fifteenth floor
before I had to stop and catch my breath. I had a stitch in my side
that hurt like hell and Zoey was panting heavily but whined at me
to catch up as she ascended to the next landing and sat down,
waiting.

“Hold on.” I was practically panting
myself.

We took the next few flights a bit slower,
but still made it to the twentieth floor in good time. I was
sweating when I leaned my back against the hall door. Zoey stood,
nosing the crack of the door, waiting for me to open it but I
wanted to make sure we hadn’t been followed before starting down
the hall. Again, I leaned over the railing and saw nothing below,
and heard nothing either. If someone was down there, they weren’t
paying attention to where we were on the stairs, so they shouldn’t
know which floor we got off at. I decided to risk it. We left the
stairwell quietly and jogged down the hall. Once inside the room,
both the dog and I relaxed.

Connor was up and drinking his coffee. He
nodded at us, and whistled at Zoey, leading her into the kitchen
where he had a bowl of food out for her.

“I figured the dog needed a potty break,” he
said. His hair was disheveled, like he literally just rolled out of
bed. “Morning.” His voice was still husky from sleep. Daytime
Connor was sexy, but Early Morning Connor…there were no words to do
the man justice.

“Hi.” I was out of breath still. He handed me
a bottle of water and when my chest stopped heaving I told him, “I
think there’s someone else in the hotel.” I chugged at the water
bottle till half of it was gone.

Connor didn’t respond but he was looking at
me curiously. I traded my water for my still warm mug of coffee,
and relayed the happenings in the stairwell. He raised his steamy
mug to his mouth again and listened without commenting. What he
said when I was done surprised me.

“I think you might be right,” he said
quietly.

“Really?” I thought he didn’t believe me,
like he didn’t believe me the night before when I felt someone try
and cuddle with me in bed.

“After what happened last night it got me
thinking.” He paused to chew on his lower lip. “Well, sometimes I
hear things too, but I’ve never seen anyone, at least not
completely.” He sat down on the arm of the sofa, blowing the steam
off the top layer of his coffee.

“What does that mean? Not
completely
…?” I didn’t understand what he was trying to say.
I moved in front of him, waiting for him to make eye contact.

When he looked up at me, his face was tired
and serious looking, the laugh lines around his eyes seemed to have
deepened since the day before. He asked one simple and yet
complicated question.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Riley?”

 

***

 

It was as if all the air was sucked from the
room by some giant vacuum. Part of me wanted to laugh in Connor’s
face at the incredulity of what he was suggesting but the other
part of me, a much
bigger
part of me accepted it,
completely. I had been seeing and hearing things and even feeling
things that couldn’t or at least shouldn’t be real. I sat down
heavily on the sofa, and Connor pivoted on the arm rest to face
me.

“So it’s not just me?” I asked.

He blinked at me. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Good.” I paused to close my eyes just long
enough for my mind to transport me to my house…and I opened my eyes
warily, not wanting to suffer through those memories again.

“Good?” Connor seemed surprised.

“Well, yes. This means I’m not going crazy.
Thank God.”

Connor nodded, then shuffled over to the
counter, and sat down beside me, his shoulder slumped as if holding
the weight of the world on them. He smelled lovely in the
morning…his faint musky sweat mingled with a light fresh linen
smell. For a moment, the scent of him overwhelmed me, and I found
myself leaning toward him slightly as he began talking.

“I flew into town from L.A. for business
three weeks ago with two others.” He paused to clear his throat
before continuing. “It’s funny because looking back now, I remember
seeing a handful of sick people in the airport. This guy and his
kid on the flight were sick actually. Anyway, we were here for
three days before the quarantine notices went up, and the
transportation systems were shut down.”

I interrupted, “Shut down?”

“Yeah, closed off. We left the hotel and
tried for two days to get a flight out. People just mobbed the
airport. They ran through the security systems, toppled over gates.
And half of them were sick. My friends were showing symptoms that
second day so we decided to come back here. The military had
started separating people, just grabbing them and taking them away.
They announced the airport was shut down – nothing in or out.” He
took a sip of coffee and then leaned forward and sat the mug on the
coffee table. I sat, riveted, unable to look away from his face
while he shared his story with me.

“So, we headed back to the hotel but took a
different route, and there was this mobile clinic, and a big truck
parked in this lot and people were lined around it, trying to get
in. It was total chaos. But there were military nurses and doctors
inside, we could see them. I left my friends there.” Connor looked
down at his hands. I reached out and slowly touched the side of his
hand, just slightly, to let him know I was there.

“They were sick; I didn’t know what else to
do. My friend Grant, he was so ill he couldn’t walk anymore. He
kept shaking, and started bleeding from his nose, his mouth and I
just panicked.” He brought his hands up and dragged them down his
face. His eyes were red and watery when he looked over at me.
“Jesus, I just left them there to die. With all the other sick
people. I just left them.”

He balled up his hands into tight fists and
pushed them up against his eyes and stayed like that for a long
time. When he finally lowered his arms and looked at me, I said
quietly, “There was nothing you could have done to save them.”

“Right.” He said, with a touch of
sarcasm.

“What happened next?” I asked him.

“Well,” he sighed heavily, “I came back here.
By then, this place was pretty much cleared out. Only a handful of
people had stayed. The staff had mostly left too. I holed up here,
in my room. The streets were full of wandering people, and the
sick. I called my parents and they told me half of Dublin had it.
My friends in London were either sick or unreachable. Everyone
around here died within a week. I’ve knocked on each and every
door. No one has answered. I moved the bodies I found into the
conference room. I didn’t know what else to do with them.” He
paused again, leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. He
sat down on the sofa, leaned his head back and stared up at the
ceiling. With my hand, I reached out and gently squeezed his
shoulder. He smiled down at me faintly.

“The next day I was down in the kitchen and
it felt like someone was in there with me, following me around, you
know? Every time I’ve been in there since, it feels like I’m being
watched. I hear things too, like whispers or talking. And one
morning I woke up after something brushed across my cheek. Before,
I dismissed it, you know, as stress or something. But after last
night with you, well, I can’t stop thinking about it.” He brought
his gaze down and fixed it on my face.

“So, you think that what we’ve heard and
felt…that there are ghosts, or apparitions here?” I asked him.

“It makes sense if you think about it. I
mean, all these people died, probably billions if it’s still
spreading across the world, and it happened so fast. There was no
closure. For anyone.” He turned around so that his whole body was
facing me. “If you believe in stuff like this I guess.”

“Well, I’m a Stephen King fan, I believe in
almost anything.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say and I
grinned shyly. Connor laughed.

It did make sense, with so many people dying,
of the same thing, the same illness, and dying so quickly. There
would be millions of people who didn’t get a chance to say goodbye
to their loved ones. If a spirit was ever to have a reason for
unfinished business, this would surely qualify.

“What do we do now?” I sat there, with the
question hanging in the air, knowing neither of us knew how to
answer it.

“I have no idea. Keep living, I guess,” he
replied.

 

***

 

I sat on the floor with my legs crossed, as I
gazed out the window. Being twenty stories up in the air was
dizzying at first, but the longer I stared down at the streets and
the smaller buildings around us, the less my vertigo threatened to
take control of my body. The view would have been magnificent on a
clear day if the layer of smoke drifting on top of the air like
smog didn’t filter out a good portion of the sunlight. We could
smell it inside too. The faint wisp of smoky air was
everywhere.

BOOK: I Hope You Find Me
9.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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