A Gift of Thought (15 page)

Maybe if she knew more about their background, about who Rachel’s mother was and what had happened to give Chesney sole custody, she’d have a better idea of what to do.

She slipped into the chair in front of the monitors, and frowned down at the keyboard. Information meant internet. Chesney was famous: maybe she could Google him?

Two hours later, her queasiness was back full-force.

She needed to go talk to Chesney.

Not because she’d found out anything useful about Rachel’s mother; it would take her a lifetime to work her way through the ten million results on a search of Chesney’s name. But she’d found Rachel’s Facebook page and now she understood what the girl had been thinking that morning at the school when Sylvie had caught an inadvertent peek into her thoughts.

She shouldn’t have let that slip by that day. She’d been distracted by knowing that Lucas was nearby, but she should have asked questions.

She rubbed her face, grimacing when she inadvertently pressed against her healing bruise. She could spend forever planning this conversation. Or she could just get it over with.

Outside the door to Chesney’s home office, she paused, hearing raised voices and feeling anger and frustration from the people inside. Maybe this was a bad time. Maybe she should call Ty. Maybe he should have this conversation with Chesney.

Before she could decide whether to knock or not, the door was flung open. A woman—one of the maids, Sylvie thought—startled back at the sight of Sylvie, and then muttered something in Spanish as she brushed by, heading away down the corridor.

Chesney stood in front of his desk, face flushed, but he managed to produce a strained smile.

“Congratulations, Ms. Blair,” he said.

Sylvie’s hand was still upraised to knock. She dropped it, feeling awkward, and took a step into the room. “Congratulations, sir?”

“It’s not every day that you catch a criminal, is it?” He was still angry, Sylvie realized, but hiding it well. She would have been unable to tell anything about his emotions without her gift. His smile seemed almost natural now, and his skin color was rapidly fading.

“Ah, no, sir,” she said, frowning, not hiding her confusion.

He responded immediately, gesturing to the newspaper lying open on his desk. “You made the front section of the
Post
.” He turned away from her, walking back to his chair. “I hope you’ll continue to maintain your press silence,” he added, as he reached his seat. “I have to imagine that too much recognition would prove distracting while on duty.”

“Of course, sir,” Sylvie murmured an automatic agreement. Press silence? The front section of the
Post
? Shit. She’d have to get a newspaper and take a look at the story as soon as she got the chance.

“Is that why you’re here?” Chesney asked. “If you need time off to handle the repercussions, you’ll have to speak with Mr. Barton. I don’t get involved in his personnel management.”

Sylvie blinked. Indeed. She was tempted to respond sharply, but she bit back her instinctive disdain for his lack of knowledge. As if she would ever come to him for something so mundane.

“No, sir.” She kept her voice calm. “I’m here about Rachel.”

“Rachel? What about her?” Chesney sat and pulled open his desk drawer. He could not have expressed his disinterest more clearly if he’d tried. Sylvie couldn’t read his mind, but she knew he was barely listening.

“She’s being bullied,” she said, wishing she’d found some better way to phrase what she’d discovered.

“Eh?” he asked, looking up from the papers he was pulling out of a file.

“Online. On Facebook. Other students at her school are . . .” She paused, not sure how to explain what she’d discovered. She hadn’t learned some of those words until she’d joined the Marines. “. . . calling her names.”

Chesney didn’t roll his eyes, but his glance at the ceiling asked for patience. “Children do that, Ms. Blair. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

Sylvie took another step into the room, not sure how to protest his cavalier attitude. He hadn’t looked at the site. He didn’t understand. “I think it may be making Rachel quite unhappy,” she said, trying to be careful. She didn’t want to mention the art gallery or reveal her ability to perceive emotion.

“She’s a teenager. They’re notoriously unhappy,” Chesney replied, dismissing her concern as he took out a pen.

Sylvie felt pressure in her jaw. She was clenching her teeth, she realized. She didn’t believe in Lucas’s suspicions—it was too farfetched to think a man like Chesney would risk working with drug dealers. But God, he was an ass. Still, liking Chesney wasn’t part of her job description. Protecting Rachel was. “Respectfully, sir, I have to disagree. I believe you should take a look at these comments.”

Chesney’s grunt would have been rude even without the flavor of his feelings. “As you’ve told me before, Ms. Blair, you’re a bodyguard, not a babysitter. Rachel can handle a few names. Your job is to keep her safe from kidnappers.”

Sylvie felt her cheeks heating as she swallowed an angry response. “Yes, sir.” She paused but Chesney had already begun marking up the document with his pen, visibly dismissing her.

Turning away, Sylvie left without another word.

She’d review the comments, every one. She’d follow every link. She’d look at every vicious word Rachel’s classmates had written. And somewhere in there, she’d find a threat. And when she did, she’d take it straight to the school principal.

Reporting bullying might not be her job, but investigating threats definitely was.

Chapter Nine

Dillon wished he could fry Chesney’s electronics. He’d killed quite a few devices by accident while learning how to use his ghostly power to communicate: maybe he could manage a few more on purpose. And if anyone deserved to have his computer zapped, it was Chesney.

What an asshole the guy was.

The man hadn’t even bothered to look at what those bitches were saying about Rachel. Not even after Sylvie left the room. He’d just gone back to his work as if what she’d told him was inconsequential.

Dillon was disgusted. He’d already had an idea of how bad things were for Rachel at school from his morning there. Those girls were nasty. And reading the things they’d written online over Sylvie’s shoulder had made him even more sympathetic to Rachel. If he’d said even one of their lesser insults out loud, his gran would have grounded him for a week and made him write a note of apology to the person he’d insulted.

He said to Chesney, voice disapproving, “You’re a crap dad, you know that?”

Chesney, of course, didn’t respond. Shaking his head, Dillon walked through the closed door. As he headed down the hallway on his way downstairs, he paused at Rachel’s room.

If he went back to his mom right now he’d be tempted to talk to her. He’d managed to resist the desire for days and he still wasn’t ready to let her know he was around. Maybe he should visit Rachel instead.

Acting on his impulse, he pushed his way through the wall. It was the first time he’d visited Rachel since that first night, and she was again standing by her bookcase. She was holding the same book she’d been holding the first night, but not opened as if she’d been reading it. Instead she was using both hands, and staring down at the cover as if the red ribbon held an encoded message only she could see.

“You must like that book,” Dillon said, joining her by the bookcase. He felt almost relieved, and realized that he’d been a little afraid she’d be crying. He couldn’t see her face, but if she had been crying, she was over it by now.

Still holding the book in an awkward two-handed grip, Rachel carried it over to her bed and set it down. Then she disappeared into the bathroom. Dillon didn’t follow her, of course, but she returned just a few seconds later with a full glass of water that she set on her nightstand next to her cell phone and iPod docking clock.

She climbed onto her bed and sat cross-legged next to her pillow, reaching for the book and sliding it over in front of her. But she didn’t open it.

Dillon began to feel uneasy. Something about the way she was handling the book was wrong. She didn’t hold it by its spine, the way people grabbed books. She held it like it was a plate instead. And then she flipped open the cover. He craned to see what she was looking at as she pulled out a plastic baggie.

Uh-oh.

She’d cut out the interior of the book, not all of it, just a chunk from the center of the pages, about an inch wide by two inches high and probably an inch deep. It wasn’t a book, it was a hiding place.

She unrolled the baggie and held it up to the light, her eyes narrowing.

Mixed pills, Dillon realized. Some blue, some pink, some white. Different shapes, different sizes.

With a shake of her head, Rachel flipped the cover of the book closed and carefully spilled the pills out on top of it.

He recognized this from kids at his school. She’d been stealing from people’s medicine cabinets. Not a lot of pills probably, just a few at a time so she wouldn’t get caught. When he’d stolen the pills that killed him, he’d taken the whole bottle. He’d meant to take just enough to cause hallucinations and then put the rest back later. He’d miscalculated, though. Or maybe under the influence, he’d kept taking them? He didn’t really know what had happened.

And he didn’t know what Rachel was doing now. Did she take drugs to get high? His sense of unease was growing. It wasn’t any of his business if Rachel took a painkiller or a sleeping pill, even if she was stealing them, he tried to tell himself. But maybe he should text his mom anyway.

She was lining the pills up, one by one, organizing by color. Her finger tapped along the line as she counted.

He looked at her face, trying to decipher her expression. She had been crying earlier, he saw. She had that look around her eyes and her skin was still almost blotchy. But she wasn’t crying now. If anything, she looked determined.

Determined.

Determined was bad.

Determined wasn’t taking a pill to sleep. Determined wasn’t getting high.

Determined was something else, Dillon decided with a sinking feeling, just as Rachel stopped counting and nodded to herself as if making a decision.

Shit.

Dillon needed to do something. And quickly. Text Sylvie? Then his eyes fell on the cell phone on Rachel’s nightstand. Would this work? Would she believe him?

Rachel pressed her lips together and for a moment she looked like maybe she’d start to cry again. And then she took a deep breath and stuck her chin out and reached for the glass of water.

Then she startled as her phone buzzed. Instead of picking up the water, she picked up the phone and glanced down at the screen. Her eyebrows drew down immediately and she stilled, before her glance flickered around the room, just her eyes moving.

She started to type a response and her frown deepened.

She must have realized that the text didn’t come from an outside line but from the phone itself, Dillon thought. He waited, wondering how she’d react.

Would she throw her phone away, the way Sylvie had when he tried to talk to her?

Or would she be willing to listen to him?

Don’t
, he’d sent.

What?
Rachel typed.

Take those
, Dillon responded eagerly, feeling a glad relief. She was going to listen.

Rachel looked around the room, this time not just with her eyes, but with her entire head swiveling from side-to-side as she searched for a camera. Dillon waited. What would she say?

Why not?
She typed, returning her gaze to her cell phone.

Ouch. That was a hard question. And not the one he’d expected. Why wasn’t she asking who he was, how he was talking to her?

I want to die,
she added, still silent, just typing one letter after another.

Or maybe this would be easy.
Bad idea
, he answered.
Dead is boring.

She looked up again, away from the cell phone, and this time her glance around the room was slow and steady, focusing on the ceiling and then the walls. Slowly, carefully, typing with only one finger, she responded.
Boring would hurt less.

Dillon wished he could write paragraphs in response. He wanted to tell her what it was like four days after he’d died, when his Aunt Grace had driven the car he’d died in with tears streaming down her face, barely able to contain her sobbing long enough to brake at the stop signs. Or six months after his death, when his uncle had yelled at him, not really knowing that he was there, and Dillon had no way to apologize. Or two years after he’d died when he’d seen his father for the first time in months and had to wonder if that grim man was the same cheerful weekend visitor he’d always known.

And his gran—well, he couldn’t even go there.

Death didn’t hurt less. It just hurt different.

No.

She would have to read into his answer what she would. If Akira was around, he could expostulate passionately but without a translator, it was just too hard. But if Akira was around . . .

That was an idea.

Who are you?
Rachel wrote.

Dillon
, he responded readily.

“I don’t know any Dillons,” she said aloud, frowning at her phone.

Dillon’s mouth twisted in a crooked smile. This would be tough to explain. Impossible, probably.

No,
he responded again.

“Well, who are you?” she repeated, still talking rather than typing.

Ghost
, he typed into her phone.

Rachel’s frown deepened. She looked around the room again, clearly wanting to find the cameras. “That makes no sense,” she said. “This house is new. My father had it built just a few years ago. It can’t be haunted.”

Dillon liked the way Rachel thought. Of course, she was wrong, but still, the analytical way she was looking at the problem was a good sign. Maybe they could work together.

Not haunting house,
he answered.
Haunting mom.

“So what are you doing in my bedroom?” Rachel asked. She didn’t look tearful anymore. She looked skeptical, wary, her dark eyes doubtful.