A Gift of Thought (16 page)

Dillon thought. He was surprised that she believed him. She’d looked for the camera and the computer manipulation, but not for long. He thought her acceptance was a measure of her desperation. She didn’t really want to die; she just didn’t want to keep on living the way she had been.

Mom worried about you,
he answered her, hoping she’d ask the obvious.

She didn’t. She didn’t have to. “Sylvie?” Her voice was tinged with doubt, but at the same time held an absolute certainty. Dillon wasn’t surprised. Rachel didn’t seem to have too many people who cared about her in her life.

Y
. He was running out of energy. He could feel it. It wasn’t like tired, more like slow. But he knew he didn’t have too many letters left in him before he’d need to regroup.

“I didn’t know she had a kid,” Rachel said.

Dillon didn’t answer. What could he say to that?

“I guess if you’re dead,” Rachel started. She stopped. And then continued, the words bursting out of her, “It doesn’t matter, you’re wrong. Dead would be better. Would have to be better. I can’t, it doesn’t, I don’t—” She pressed her palms to her eyes and Dillon knew she was stopping herself from crying.

NO
, he quickly texted, forcing her phone to buzz.
Dead = bad.
Help me instead.

“Help you?” Rachel asked. She sounded reluctantly intrigued. “How can I help you? I can’t even help me.”

Run away.

Rachel stared down at her phone. She laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh, more like a breathy chuckle. “Right, like that would work. I have bodyguards. I’m never alone. They’d catch me in two minutes.”

Plan.

“Plan,” she scoffed. “What difference would that make? There’s no place for me to go.”

Tassamara.
Each letter took an effort. He had to pause between them as if he was gasping for breath on the twentieth lap of a track run.

“Tassamara?” Rachel repeated. “I don’t know where that is.”

Dillon didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He had, at most, a couple of letters left. How could he explain to Rachel that if she could get herself to his home town, Akira could talk to people on her behalf? He couldn’t be sure that his family could help her, but he knew they’d try and that would be more than she had now.

“Tassamara,” Rachel repeated again. Dillon wished he could plead with her, but he didn’t know how. What few words could explain what it would mean to him if she could get his mom to a place where he could talk to her, really talk?

But he didn’t have to explain.

Rachel pressed her lips together, looking down at her phone. Then she glanced at the book where her pills were lined up in neat rows. She tilted her head from side to side almost as if she were responding to music, to some rhythm he couldn’t hear.

Then she nodded.

She picked up the baggie and carefully swept the pills into it, making sure that each one found a safe destination inside the plastic. Then she folded it up neatly and tucked it into her book, closing the cover.

“Tassamara, huh?” she said, sounding almost cheerful. She stood and carried her book back to the bookshelf and slid it into its place. Then she crossed to her desk and turned on her laptop. “Let’s see how to get there.”

*****

Sylvie’s plans to help Rachel went awry as soon as she got back to the security room.

Ty was waiting for her, face grim. He didn’t bother with a greeting, just asked, “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“What are you doing here?” Sylvie responded. He was dressed more casually than usual, no suit jacket or tie, but his shirt was pressed, edges even, and his slacks held a crease as crisp as if he’d never left the military. But it was Sunday. He should be home with Jeremy and Josh, wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans.

“Looking for you,” he answered. “I’ve been calling all day.”

He sounded impatient and Sylvie frowned, wondering why she hadn’t heard a phone ring. Then she shook her head, annoyed at herself. Impulsively throwing her phone away had been a stupid move. “Oh, right. I got a new cell this week. And we’ve been out, so I wouldn’t have heard the phone here.”

Everything had been so crazy. She’d meant to give Ty her new number, but she’d forgotten. In fact, except for her mom, who she’d called yesterday afternoon for their traditional weekly call, no one had her new number. Even Lucas, with his magical ability to find unlisted numbers, might not realize that hers had changed.

Could Dillon be with him? Sylvie glanced around for her bag. Maybe she should call Lucas. She needed to know whether her son had moved on or was still a ghost after all, she thought, trying to ignore the sense of relief she felt at the idea of talking to Lucas.

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“What?” she asked, as she reached for her bag, digging into it for her phone. Ty couldn’t be asking about Dillon; she hadn’t told him anything. She would, eventually, but she hadn’t had time. And Ty, although accepting of her abilities, was going to have a hard time believing in ghosts.

“The story in the
Post
.”

“Oh, right.” Sylvie paused. She needed to look at that story, find out what it said. “Not exactly, no.”

“Have you seen it?” Ty asked.

“Yo,” said James, entering the room with a wide grin on his face. “Superhero Sylvie. Hot stuff, my friend.”

“James?” Sylvie blinked in surprise. He shouldn’t be here either. They worked together Monday through Friday and he hadn’t missed work on Thursday. “Are you working today?”

“Nope,” he answered, cheerfully. “Just stopped by to visit the hero. I tried to call but couldn’t get through. I figured your phone must be off the hook with reporters calling.”

“Uh-oh.” Sylvie dropped into the chair by the desk. She looked from James to Ty and back again. James was smiling, Ty was not. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Depends on your point of view,” Ty responded, voice dry. “Did you want to be famous?”

“Famous?” It took a second. “Because of the guy in the parking lot?”

“What were you thinking? How could you take that kind of risk?” The anger in Ty’s voice didn’t cover the worry and concern underneath.

She waved off his words. “It wasn’t that much of a risk, honestly.” She was grateful that he couldn’t read her emotions the way she could his or he’d know she was lying. He was right. That guy had been big and tough and she could have been in real trouble. She should have been more cautious.

“Too late now.” Ty’s worry reached the surface, the anger in his voice disappearing. He sighed.

James was looking between them, smile fading. “What’s the big deal?”

Ty shook his head. “Nothing. Except the hell it’s going to play with my schedule while Sylvie takes the week off.”

“Wait, what?” Sylvie protested. “I can’t take a week off.”

Ty rubbed his forehead, pinching his brow as if he had a headache. “We’re going to have to hope it blows over in a few days. You’ll have to decide how you want to deal with it, of course, whether you want to talk to the media or hide out, but either way, you can’t do your job while this is going on.”

“This? What this?” Sylvie protested again. She couldn’t leave Rachel, not now. “I say no comment to a few reporters and ignore my phone calls. What’s so hard about that?”

Ty folded his arms and just looked at her. Sylvie could feel that he was exasperated, but she didn’t think she was being stupid. Reporters moved on to new stories like terriers chasing squirrels; once they realized she wasn’t talking, they’d be gone.

James started whistling between his teeth, trying to suppress his smile. “That photograph is the real problem,” he offered. “It makes you look . . .” He paused.

Sylvie glared at him. Why the hell was he so amused? “What photograph?”

“Hang on, it’s in my car,” he answered, grin breaking free, as he turned and hurried out the door.

“What photograph?” Sylvie demanded of Ty. She should have known, of course. The woman in the art gallery had recognized her, therefore her image was somehow public. But it had all happened too quickly and Rachel’s situation had taken precedence.

“The
Post
ran a picture of you,” he said, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “James is right, it’s the problem. It’s a nice picture, though.”

Sylvie shook her head. How could anyone have gotten a picture of her?

“Someone must have taken it at the police station,” Ty added. “Maybe with a cell phone? You’re sitting, and there’s a guy standing next to you, checking out your bruise.”

Lucas. Sylvie hadn’t noticed anyone taking a picture, but she might not have if it was a cell phone, not a camera. “And?”

Ty’s half-smile turned into a real smile. “And you get to choose how to handle the media.”

“I can’t take the week off, Ty,” she said, feeling annoyed, as James returned with a folded newspaper in hand.

“Here you go.” He passed her the paper.

She took it, about to ask where to look, and then glanced down at it. Oh, hell. She didn’t say the words, but she probably didn’t have to. The paper was open to her image. She was seated, hair messy, head tilted up, lips slightly parted, with Lucas standing next to her, head bent to her, his finger touching her cheek.

“Oh, God.” Something about the perspective, Lucas’s size, the worry on his face, and the angles of hers made her look almost delicate. “I look—” she started in dismay before pausing, searching for the right word.

“Pretty?” Ty offered. “Attractive?”

“Cute?” James suggested, openly laughing. “Although sexy as hell would work, too.”

She swatted at him with the paper before pulling it back to her and looking again. Any of those adjectives would do. The photograph was very flattering. She might have liked it if it wasn’t running in a national newspaper.

She looked away from the image and up at Ty.

“Cute little girl takes down two-hundred pound serial killer. You can understand why the media might be interested,” he said, voice sympathetic, before frowning and adding, “A week might not be long enough.”

She scowled at him. “He was at least two-fifty,” she said huffily. Not that that was important, but still . . .

“Oh, that makes it so much better.” Ty rolled his eyes.

She grimaced and leaned back in the chair, rubbing her neck. The timing was terrible. How could she help Rachel if she wasn’t even here? “I changed my phone number. They can’t reach me. I’ll ignore them.”

“I drove by your apartment building on the way here. There are at least twenty satellite trucks in the parking lot.”

“I’ll stay someplace else at night,” Sylvie offered.

“And if a reporter or photographer catches sight of you while you’re on duty?” Ty asked, before shaking his head.

Sylvie tilted her head, staring up at the ceiling. Ty didn’t need to state the obvious: a distracted bodyguard was a bad bodyguard. She couldn’t do her job if she couldn’t focus on Rachel. Damn it.

“Your choice is about how you want to handle it, not whether you’re taking the time,” Ty said, tone gentler than the words.

*****

Sylvie was bored.

Seriously, seriously bored.

And it was only the third day of her exile. Pulling aside the curtain on her hotel room window, she stared down at the busy street below. It was raining, hard, the wind whipping big drops of water that splattered and dripped down the glass, turning the scene into something out of an impressionist painting. That is, if there were any impressionist paintings that were mostly gray and bleak. Sylvie was almost bored enough to Google impressionist painters and find out, but instead she let the curtain drop with a sigh and turned back to the room.

It was lovely as hotel rooms went. Maybe a little bland for her taste, with the colors all whites and navy blues, but the four-poster bed that dominated the room was elegant and the Italian marble bathroom pure luxury. The television set into the bathroom mirror was an interesting high-tech touch. Sylvie didn’t actually care to watch television while she used the bathroom, but she appreciated the concept.

Jeremy, Ty’s husband, was a partner at a prestigious DC criminal defense firm and he’d taken care of the arrangements. Sylvie didn’t know the details and she was sure she didn’t want to see the bill, but her faint hope of heading to North Carolina to spend her enforced week of vacation with her mom, her step-dad, and her half-sibs had been shattered when her mom had called to ask why there were television news crews in the driveway.

She’d see them in a few weeks anyway. One of the nice things about being back in the States was getting to go home for Christmas. She hadn’t told her mom what she was doing when she ran away, but she called about a month later, after she’d enlisted and was partway through basic training at Parris Island and desperately homesick. Her mother had promptly moved to South Carolina, picking up a job as a waitress in a nearby roadside diner, and then followed Sylvie to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. There she’d met a staff sergeant, married him and started having babies. After her solitary childhood, Sylvie now had two half-sisters and a half-brother, all teenagers. She smiled as she thought of them, remembering how excited her brother Sam had been about the television crews.

And then she sobered. Would Dillon have been excited? She looked at her phone, sitting on the nightstand next to the four-poster bed. He hadn’t texted her. And Lucas hadn’t called.

And she hadn’t called Lucas.

Was she being cowardly?

She thought the answer might be yes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to call him. It was that she wanted it too much.

It was maddening.

She needed to do something to take her mind off him. But she’d already spent two hours in the fitness room and the weather was miserable for a run. She’d watched all the television she could stand. The hotel had a lovely little book room, but she was too restless to read.

She had her laptop with her, so she could work on researching Chesney again. But she’d spent enough hours trying to learn more about his history during the past two days to realize that she didn’t have the skills to discover anything useful. Ten million Google hits were about nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand more than she had the patience for. No, if she wanted to know more about Chesney, Google wouldn’t work. She’d need to get help.