RetroCog (a Power Up! story) (18 page)

Jesus, what a nightmare. Not sure what to do, he stared without seeing at the computer monitor before a name popped out at him from the screen.
Knowles Tragedy Kills Two.

Ida Knowles owned the Lady Fine Inn; her nephew Bill remained a top suspect. Or did he?

Stop and focus. Panic later. Follow your gut
. He refused to let the vision throw him and read the old news report. Twenty odd years ago, Nancy and Brenda Knowles had perished in a fire. Nancy had died from a fall when she’d jumped to escape the flames. They’d found Brenda’s charred bones days later in her bedroom. Faulty wiring had been the suspected cause, though no one had ever concretely proven what had started the fire.

Noah’s gut churned, his confusion about the past mired with this information. Cecilia flashed in and out of his vision behind the computer, nodding like crazy. He could no longer hear the words coming out of her mouth.

A gasp behind him told him he wasn’t the only one to see her. At least he hadn’t completely lost his mind.

The librarian stuttered and pointed to where Cecilia had been standing. “My God, I saw her. I did! You saw her too, didn’t you? Oh my God!”

The raised voice roused the handful of people in the library, and Noah hurried to close the file he’d been looking at. No need to arouse suspicion about Mike and Bill, not when he had no fucking clue what to do with what he’d just learned.

He darted around the librarian and left the library in a hurry. Needing a shortcut, he used the alley behind the building to return to the inn as fast as he could. Cecilia Fine. Finn Fury. Michael Fury. Lara. What the hell did all of it have to do with him? Noah knew in his bones his history had nothing to do with the Fury brothers. He could trace his lineage back to his Scottish ancestors all the way to the early 1500s, so why the hell had he seen his face where Michael Fury’s had been? Unless Cecilia and Finn weren’t the only ones haunting this town.

He stopped in the middle of the street, shocked at the thought. If Cecilia could overtake Lara the way she had in Lara’s office, might a determined ghost do the same to him? Which would mean that vision of the past could have been manipulated. He’d never run into this before, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. He needed to talk to Chloe again. Maybe her voices could help.

A sound penetrated, but by then, it was too late. In his haste to return to the inn, he hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings. So it was no one’s fault but his own when the truck knocked him from his feet.

* * *

Hours later, Chloe sat with Lara by the register. Frank had gone to find Noah, and worry continued to grow as Noah remained absent. Her lover wasn’t the only one not present. At the thought, Lara stilled.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe had kept up a steady stream of chatter that amused and relieved Lara at the same time. A pleasant woman with a keen intelligence, Chloe had shared more than a few humorous stories about Noah and his tendency to zone off into space.

“I just realized I haven’t heard Cecilia in a while.” Ever since Noah had arrived, she’d heard Cecilia’s voice several times a day.

With no one around at present, Lara and Chloe had the downstairs of the inn to themselves. Only the occasional phone call from interested visitors interrupted them.

“How often do you hear her?”

Chloe put her at ease, especially because the woman took for granted that the voices she heard were real. She hadn’t batted an eye about Lara seeing Cecilia.

“It started a month after I first arrived in town. Five months ago, I guess. I’d hear her whisper. Usually bawdy stuff. The woman has a sense of humor and a sex drive, I can tell you that.”

Chloe grinned. “Yeah? My voices aren’t as fun. The stuff they tell me usually leads to a death or an arrest.” At Lara’s look, she added, “I used to be a cop before I joined the PWP. Now I’m a manager for a gym. Very exciting stuff.”

Lara snorted. “Yeah. Your leap from exercise equipment to theft and murder wasn’t as far as you’d imagine.”

“I like you, Lara. You roll with it pretty well.”

“I do?”

“Most people would be sincerely freaked out by all this. Ghosts, voices, Noah and his freaky ability to see the past. You’re taking it all in stride.”

“Not as well as I’d like.”
Noah, where
are
you
? “I’m not as comfortable with the voices as you seem to be.”

Chloe shrugged. “Why not? They’re a part of you.”

“A part that made my life hell when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, we all seem to go through that. Me, I didn’t hear them until I was six or seven. They warned me to keep quiet. I tested them by sharing with my brothers, who didn’t believe me. Then I shut my mouth and kept their company a secret.”

“I wasn’t so smart.” It felt good to share with someone who understood. Noah could, to an extent. But Chloe had gone through something very similar. “My parents have always been really open with things. I shared everything with them. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it. My voices never told me things I could prove. No secrets of lost treasures or the answers to whodunits. I’d simply provide them company. Like an invisible friend only I knew was real.”

“So everyone thought you were a kook. Happens to all of us with skills.”

“You’re lucky to be with people who understand.”

“I am now, but I wasn’t always.” Chloe gave her an odd look. “Noah seems to get you.”

Lara blushed. He sure did
get
her. “I like him a lot. I feel like I’ve known him for more than—jeez, it hasn’t even been a week.”

“Sometimes that’s all it takes.” Chloe smiled, and then her pleasure dimmed. “I wish the big ox would hurry his ass back. He’s starting to get on my nerves with this research nonsense.” Chloe sighed. “I hate worrying. So you heard these voices all your life?”

Glad to change the subject from her anxiety about Noah, Lara answered, “No, only until I graduated high school. I’d been ignoring them for a long time; I was sick of always being the school freak.”

“How did other people know? Did you or your family tell them?”

“It was a friend who did it. Before I’d realized sharing everything with family wasn’t helping, I’d extended that trust to my friends. My family tried to understand me. They chalked up my voices to an odd quirk and let it go. My friends turned out to be not so friendly. Before I’d entered middle school, I was the town freak show. So I kept to myself and left town as soon as I could. I went to college far away, got my degree in hotel management, and here I am.”

“But how did you get here?” Chloe frowned. “All this coincidence, you looking like Cecilia, hearing her, working at her old place. It’s tied together. It fits.”

“I don’t know. I was moving from internship to internship and furthering my education when I was drawn to this place. Maybe an article I saw in a magazine or a news piece on TV. Remember a few years back, how anything Western was really big? They did some stories about outlaws. I must have heard about Finn and Cecilia’s doomed love affair.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

Chloe cocked her head, and Lara swore she felt another presence with them. An odd sense, to be sure, but not a scary one.

“I think you were called. She needed you here. To break the cycle.”

“What cycle?”

“The past sometimes repeats itself if you don’t break the cycle. Someone killed Cecilia and Finn a long time ago, right?”

Lara nodded. “Yeah. No one ever found their killer, and they died in each other’s arms. It was tragic. A lot of historians think Finn killed her, then killed himself.”

“And here we are,” Chloe said as she threw up her arms. “The painting of Cecilia Fine has been stolen. Two people are dead because of it, and one of them looks just like you and Cecilia. Now Noah’s here, and you’re thinking he’s Finn. Why?”

“Why do I think he’s Finn?”

“Yeah.”

Lara swallowed hard, allowing herself to admit what she didn’t want to. “Because he and I share a connection, one that shouldn’t be so strong after just getting to know each other. It kind of makes sense if it’s because of the past.”

“Yeah. Because how much of a slut would you be if you’re balling my buddy days after meeting him?”

Lara gaped, not sure how to react, when Chloe burst into laughter.

“Sorry, you had that one coming. Seriously, Lara. It’s obvious you two gel. He talks about you like you walk on water. Noah barely speaks, but I couldn’t shut him up yesterday. He went on and on about you, which was weird enough. Noah is usually so oblivious to women, I used to think he was gay.”

“He’s not gay.”

“I have a feeling you’d know.” Chloe grinned. “Noah’s a great guy, but I worry about him. He spends so much time in the past, he loses himself in the present.”

“Not with me.”

“And that’s why you two belong together. He looks at you like he’s never looked at anything or anyone. And I’ve seen you checking him out too. All morning you kept sneaking him glances. Those moon-eyed, I’m-in-love looks.”

How embarrassing.

“It’s okay to like the guy. He’s hot. No, nothing ever happened between us, and nothing will. But damn girl, I have eyes. He’s got the dark, brooding thing down to a science.”

Lara chuckled. “He does, doesn’t he?”

“So are you going to come back with us to Oregon when this is done?”

“What?”

“You know. Come back with us. Bend has some terrific Craftsman architecture. It’s a real tourist town with all the ski slopes so close. You could easily run a B and B there.”

“I’d run an inn,” she said automatically, trying to process the thought of setting up in Bend, finding a new place to explore and reinvent.

“Whatever. People always need a place to stay and a qualified person to manage it. Point is, you can work anywhere, right? But there’s only one Noah.”

“He hasn’t asked me to come with him.”

“So who says he has to ask? Though I have a feeling he will. Think about what you’ll say when he does.” Chloe nodded to herself. “Sorry I got distracted. So about Cecilia…”

She continued to talk, but Lara didn’t hear her. She had a hard time thinking about anything but Noah. What if he did ask her to come with him? Would she? How tied to the inn did she feel? And what would it be like to be around people like Chloe, others who accepted people with odd
skills
—as Chloe called them—without blinking an eye?

“Lara? Cecilia. Why do you think you can’t hear her now?”

“I don’t know. But it bothers me.” To her surprise, it did. Before, hearing Cecilia reminded her she’d never be normal. But not hearing her now hinted at something not right with their town. “And I don’t like not knowing where Noah is either. I have a bad feeling about him.”

“Me too.”

Frank entered the inn, breaking the somber mood. He wore his customary dress slacks and a button-down shirt. He had his hair tied back, a diamond stud in his ear, and his handsome face was wreathed in smiles as he entered with the Littleton couple. Lara appreciated the normalcy of the moment, grateful for the distraction. Imagine Frank—
Ian Ryder
—a master forger. Talk about weird with a capital W. No matter what the others said, Lara trusted him. She trusted
Frank.

“Good luck with your gallery, Mrs. L. And I’m glad you like
Sunrise
. That piece was always one of my favorites.”

The older woman smiled, gave him a wink, and joined her husband up the stairs after a wave at Lara and Chloe.

“There you two are.”

He drew closer, and Lara noticed the strain on his face. “Frank?”

“Mrs. L. just bought one of my best pieces. One I did all by myself, not copied from anyone whatsoever.” He glared at Chloe before looking around at the empty area. Then he centered on Lara. “Don’t freak out on me.”

Beside her, Chloe tensed.

Lara panicked. “Frank, what’s going on?”

“Noah’s at the hospital. He was leaving the library and got hit by a car.”