A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) (30 page)

Knowing that it was Lucas waiting, not a burglar or a
kidnapper, didn’t slow Sylvie’s heart rate. If anything, a combination of dread
and anticipation had it racing. How long had it been? A decade at least, she
realized.

That time in Milan was the last. She’d been just out of the
corps, angry, bitter. He’d been . . . rich. Her lips quirked as she helped
Rachel up the back staircase, her hands gently guiding the girl’s wavering
steps. He’d always been rich, of course, and wasn’t that half the problem?

She would have been what, twenty-seven? Her thoughts
continued inexorably on. They’d been in the galleria, that street with the huge
glass ceiling by the cathedral. She’d been drinking espresso at some café,
wondering what she was going to do with her life, and he’d been walking by with
that woman, the one with the honey-colored hair and the little black dress that
probably cost more than a Marine earned in a month. Walking and laughing until
he saw her, and then his face froze.

Sylvie felt almost nauseated. Milan hadn’t ended well. She
pushed away the memories of Lucas’s lips on her skin, his hands caressing her,
the bedroom in his posh hotel that they didn’t leave for two days, the bitter
words that she’d thrown at him when she stormed away.

Had he looked for her then? She hated to admit it, even
privately, but she probably owed him an apology. Maybe more than one.

Or maybe her sick feeling was caused by the smell of vomit
that lingered around Rachel.

She wondered what had happened to the blonde.

“Do you want to take a shower?” she asked the girl as they
entered her bedroom. Instinctively, Sylvie assessed the room. Ugh. She’d seen
the house blueprints for security drills, so she knew where Rachel’s room was,
but this was the first time she’d ever been inside it. It was pretty but cold.
White furniture, mauve walls, and the only personal touches were the crowded
bookshelves.

“Uh-uh.” Rachel shook her head.

“You should brush your teeth and change your clothes.”

“Don’t wanna,” Rachel mumbled, dropping onto the bed, and
letting her eyes close.

Sylvie eyed her, not quite sure, and then made a decision. “On
your feet,” she ordered, using the voice that in a different life had made
recruits cower.

Rachel’s eyes opened and her head rose. “Wha—” she started.

“Come on,” Sylvie said, taking her arm and tugging her up,
off the bed, toward the bathroom. The bathroom was as bad as the bedroom, both
ostentatious and somehow austere. Marble, glass, gold-plated fixtures, but none
of the mess that would say a teenager actually worried about pimples in front
of the multiple mirrors. “You can get in the shower on your own, or I can put
you there. Which is it going to be?”

Rachel batted Sylvie’s hands away, then spotted her
bedraggled self in the mirror. She winced. “All right,” she said. “Okay.”

Sylvie gave her a considering look. Satisfied, she said, “I’ll
be back to check on you.”

Closing the door to the bedroom behind her, Sylvie took a
deep breath. Why was Lucas here, she wondered, as she headed to the study. Why
had he come looking for her? And why hadn’t he turned on the lights, she
thought irritably, flipping the switch by the door.

The look of surprise on his face as he looked up from an
open desk drawer was an answer of sorts to her questions. Without pause,
without thought, she took two steps sideways, putting her back to the wall
instead of the open doorway as she slid her hand smoothly into the carefully
disguised slit in her little black cocktail dress and pulled out the
semi-automatic that had been holstered at her waist. She flowed naturally into
a comfortable shooter’s stance, both arms up, gun aimed at him, as her brain
finally caught up with her actions: he hadn’t known. He wasn’t here for her.

She concentrated, reaching out with her sixth sense,
searching for other intruders. Was he alone? The only other presence she felt
was Rachel, so she let the tension drop out of her shoulders as she frowned at
him.

“Beth?” He looked older, she noted. The black hair had a few
touches of silver, and there were new lines around his eyes. It looked good on
him. 
‘What did you do to your hair?’
 he thought. 
‘And—ruffles?
Really?’

She resisted the urge to touch her hair, tightening her grip
on the gun. The color, a demure brown, was much less noticeable than her
natural ginger and much better suited for the invisible companion she aspired
to be. As for the ruffles, 
‘Tough to hide a gun under a skin-tight
dress,’ 
she answered the thought. “What the hell are you doing here,
Lucas?”

The flood of feeling she got back from him didn’t answer the
question, but she tried to sort out the emotions. He was angry, frustrated,
searching for something.

But not searching for her.

And not searching for Rachel.

She straightened, letting her gun drop to her side. If her
charge wasn’t in danger, she shouldn’t be holding a weapon on Lucas. Yeah, she
wanted to know what he thought he was doing, but not enough to risk hurting
him.

“Same question goes,” Lucas answered. “What’s your
involvement with Chesney?” Sylvie felt him thinking but the thoughts were
moving too quickly for her to catch. The emotions, though—suspicion, hostility,
a wary anger—those were as clear as if he were acting them out in semaphores.

Sylvie looked down, busying herself with putting her gun
back into its concealed holster, as she debated her response. Then, with a
one-shouldered shrug, she told him the truth. “I work for him. Part of his
security team.” Looking up, she added with a wry twist to her mouth, “You know,
the ones tasked with stopping people from breaking into his house and
ransacking his desk?”

The sense of hostility she felt from him lessened, but only
slightly. “Hardly ransacked,” he said, pushing the drawer closed and standing. “No
one was supposed to be here tonight.”

‘
True
,’ she thought to him, ‘
but how do you know
that?
’ Aloud, she said, “Rachel wasn’t feeling well. I brought her home
early. And you’re the one who’s not supposed to be here. I should call the
police, you know.”

‘
Yeah, right,’
 his thought came quickly. 
’And
let the whole DC area know your security wasn’t good enough to keep me out?’ 
His
words, though, were more conciliatory. “We should talk.”

Talk? Inadvertently, her gaze dropped to his lips. That’s
what he’d said the last time they met, but that wasn’t what they’d done. Wasn’t
what she’d done. He was giving her the perfect opportunity to apologize. She
might never stop feeling guilty, but at least she could be honest about her
faults. “About Milan,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He looked startled. “No,” he replied, shaking his head. He
paused, then continued, looking troubled, “You weren’t wrong. But that’s not .
. . .”

She wondered what word he was searching for. Important?
Relevant? Meaningful? She didn’t want him to say any of them, so she spoke
first. “Rachel might come looking for me any minute. You need to get out of
here.”

Lucas’s eyes flickered around the room, a glance that tried
to take it all in and store every detail, and then he stepped away from the
desk.

“Looking for a safe?” she asked him, lips tight. She might
be letting him go, but he needn’t think he was coming back. Chesney didn’t need
to know about this, but she had to tell Ty. They’d find Lucas’s entry point and
close the hole in their security immediately. 
‘How did you get in?’

He grinned at her, and she knew he’d read the underlying
thought, not only the surface words. She narrowed her eyes at him, not quite a
glare, and he put his hands up, in open-handed innocence. “I couldn’t miss
that. You know how it goes.”

She did know. The two of them together reinforced each other’s
abilities. Sylvie hadn’t even had—or known she had—her sixth sense until she
started spending time with Lucas in high school. When he wasn’t around, she
never got clear thoughts, just flavors, sensations. Together, though, it was as
if their two abilities created a feedback loop, making both of them stronger.
She could understand thoughts and he started seeing below the surface, feeling
people’s emotional responses as well as hearing their superficial thoughts.

‘
Did you take the security cameras down?’ 
she
asked him mentally, as she gestured him out the door ahead of her. She heard
the sound of the shower in Rachel’s bathroom, but she put a finger over her
lips to indicate the need for silence anyway. ‘
I don’t want to get recorded
with you.’

‘
In the back,’ 
he conceded, so she led him that
way, treading as quietly as possible. Her mind was racing, trying to decide
what to say, what to ask. She had so many questions. At the back door, they
paused and she turned to face him.

She might not see him again, so she had to ask the most
important question first.

“How’s Dillon?” She tried to muster a smile. “He ought to be
in college now, right? Did he follow you into the Ivy Leagues?”

“Beth . . .” he started and then stopped.

“Sylvie, now,” she said into the silence. Why couldn’t she
read him? His emotions weren’t making sense to her, as if they were a scent she
couldn’t identify, a taste she didn’t recognize.

“You went back to your own name?”

She nodded, as if it wasn’t important, as if reclaiming her
name hadn’t caused her months of mixed emotions, a complex twist of anger,
pain, relief, satisfaction, grief, happiness, even fear. She was still trying
to understand what she was sensing from him. “Lucas, what aren’t you saying?”

“It’s complicated.” The words on the surface were
meaningless. It was the words below that mattered. 
‘He’s dead.’

“He—what?” The words felt strange in her mouth, as if her
face had suddenly gone numb and her lips couldn’t shape the letters.

“It’s complicated,” he said again.

‘
You were supposed to keep him safe!’
 Her
thoughts were a scream. She brought her fist to her mouth, biting down so the
sound couldn’t escape.

“Sylvie.” Lucas reached for her, putting his hands on her
shoulders, but Sylvie brought her arms up, knocking his away. Stepping back,
she glared at him.

“Get out.” She reinforced the words with mental fury, 
‘Get
out or I will call the police.’