Ashlyn's Radio (29 page)

Mortifyingly, tears sprang to her eyes at the thought. Dying a virgin would be sad. Dying without having made love with Caden … that was too tragic to contemplate. She sucked in a tremulous breath.

“Ash, are you okay?” He pushed her off him far enough to examine her face. There was no point trying to hide her tears, because one of them plopped right onto his chest and rolled down his side. “My God, Ashlyn. What is it?”

He tried to sit up, but she pressed him back. “Make love to me, Caden.” She bent close again and kissed him. Or tried to. His mouth had gone slack. “Please,” she murmured against his mouth. “It has to be now. We have to!”

Her tears had frightened him. And now, her pleas were probably freaking him out. But then his lips moved under hers and he was kissing her fiercely. For about ten seconds. Then he sat up and pulled her back onto his knee. She might have persisted, but he was crushing her against his chest now, her head cradled under his chin. His voice soothed her as she wept, as did the hand on her back.

The storm didn’t last long. Just long enough to give her a runny nose and make her face look a wreck.

“Oh, God, I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry,” she said, wiping her face with her hands.

“No you’re not. You’re just under a lot of stress.”

She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, you could say that. Thank you for being the responsible one. I didn’t really mean to put you in that position.”

“Which position?” He gave a lock of her hair a gentle tug. “You put me in quite a few, if I remember.”

She dug her elbow into his belly and laughed. “You know what I mean. When I talked you into the back seat, I wasn’t planning to … you know … ambush you like that. Well, okay, yeah, I planned to jump you, but I also planned to stick to the ground rules.”

“Something you said …
it has to be now
.” His hand resumed petting her hair. “What did you mean by that?”

“I was just … I was thinking…” She tightened her arms around him and pressed her face to his chest again. “I was thinking I didn’t want to die before we had a chance to do it. I mean, I know it’s gonna hurt and be awkward — I honestly don’t have any unrealistic expectations — but—”

“Whoa! Hold it right there.” His hands tightened on her.

“Hey, no insult intended. It’s just that a girl’s first—”

“What’s this about
dying
any time soon?” He pushed her away from his chest so he could see her face in the deepening dusk. “You’re not going anywhere near that train, right? So nothing’s going to happen.”

She raked her hands through her hair. “Hey, it’s not like I
want
to die.”

“But you are going to stay away from the train?”

“Rachel thinks the message is about her. She thinks it’s her inescapable destiny to get on that train.”

“I know. You told me in your text messages.”

“I explained to her over and over again why it was about me and not her, but she won’t listen. She’s sure it’s about her. I mean,
dead
sure. Fatalistically sure. Which means she’s not going to stop turning up at the tracks, looking for her ticket.”

Caden’s hand tightened on her thigh. “So every time the whistle blows, you plan to rush down there and try to stop her.”

“She’s my friend.” Ashlyn lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “She’s
our
friend. Nobody has ever tried to save her. Not her father, not her mother, not the teachers at school. She’s had to save herself. But oh, Caden, if you could have seen the look on her face last night. I don’t think she can do it anymore.”

“You can’t go without me,” he said, his voice breaking. “Don’t ever go without me, Ashlyn. If you hear the train whistle, wait for me. I can be at your place in five minutes. I can pick you up and get you there faster than you can get there on foot.”

“Okay,” she said, and this time it was her turn to soothe him by stroking his hair. “I promise. I’ll wait for you.”

They stayed like that for a few minutes, until she felt his heartbeat gradually slow beneath her hand.

“Ash, tell me again why you think the radio’s message is for you?”

She sighed. “The radio, the train and the Caverhills are inextricably linked. My great grandmother Catherine Brennan put her son on that train when he went off to war, with that very conductor. The flesh and blood conductor, or so he appeared then. But she knew something was wrong. Then she bought that radio — that perfectly ordinary radio — and bent her attention to it so completely that her obsession somehow put a supernatural whammy on it. So my great uncle got on that train and left his soul there. Between the train and the radio, my great grandmother’s life was ruined. My father….” Her voice broke as she remembered her father calling to her the other day, warning her. What retribution would the furious conductor have meted out for that? She wet her lips and continued. “My father got on that train just before I was born. My mother left town to escape it. And poor Maudette — she’s been hiding from that radio her whole life.”

“But why does it have to be about you? Maybe it is about Rachel.”

“The song, Caden. I told you about the lyrics. Ain’t gonna break till the end of the line. Well,
I’m
the end of the line. The end of the Brennan/Caverhill line. That’s why the conductor wants me, I guess. And he won’t stop with Prescott Junction … with Rachel … until he gets me. He’s obsessed with claiming my soul. That’s why he came in the middle of the frigging morning and tried to talk me on board.”

“I can’t believe he did that,” Caden said. “No one even knew he could come in the daytime.”

Ashlyn shivered. “Rachel thinks he’s afraid of me. She thinks that’s why he went to all that trouble to present himself when I was alone. When I was vulnerable to his lies. If my dad hadn’t intervened….”

“What the hell? Your
dad
intervened?”

Whoops. She hadn’t told him that part, about how close she’d come to actually taking that ticket. Caden had been so far away, and she hadn’t wanted to make him too crazy.

“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t quite tell you everything.”

“Dammit, Ashlyn!”

“What? As it was, you were ready to come racing home, leaving your mother in a strange hospital. I should have dumped that on you, too?”

“Okay.” He bent his forehead to hers. “Tell me now.”

She did. She was tempted to downplay how close she’d come to taking that ticket, but he needed to know. And even more, she needed to tell.

He hugged her tight when she was done. “Oh, baby, no wonder you’re stressed. You’ve been through hell.”

“True that.”

He glanced outside, noting that the sun was down already and the day was rapidly losing its light. “For Maudette’s sanity, I think I’d better get you back before dark.”

“Good idea,” she agreed. “Again, good thing someone is being responsible.”

“Responsible.” He pulled a face. “That makes me sound so … boring.”

“No, that makes you strong. Strong and incredibly sexy.” She kissed him quickly, then scooted off his lap and crawled into the front seat. She started doing up the buttons of her shirt. “See? I can be responsible too.”

He laughed, then joined her in the front seat, but via getting out one door and climbing in the other. “You realize we’re going to have to park in the driveway for like, ten minutes or something. Just so Maudette thinks you got those swollen lips in her yard.”

“We get to make out again so soon? Well, I guess that’s some small consolation for not getting my booty.”

“Hey, that was last-chance, goodbye booty you were looking for, babe. And that you don’t need. ’Cuz nothing’s going to happen to you, I’m not going anywhere, and soon you’ll be eighteen.”

She tilted her head. “Know anyone with a talent for doctoring official documents? Because I’ve got this birth certificate at home that I’d like to modify by a few months….”

He flashed her a grin and started to say something, but his words were cut short by the distinctive sound of the ghost train’s mournful whistle.

They both froze, gazes locked. Ashlyn was pretty sure the horror in Caden’s wide eyes was a mirror image of what he was seeing in hers.

Oh, God help them.

The conductor had come already.

A
SHLYN
’
S HANDS SHOT OUT
to brace herself on the dash as Caden cornered hard, carrying them out of the gravel pit and onto Dugan Road. They had to get to the train bridge before the train did. Before the conductor arrived to claim another unsuspecting soul.

Or before he claimed a soul who more than suspected — one who believed she knew.

Ashlyn glanced at Caden. If his grim profile wasn’t confirmation enough that he feared for Rachel’s safety just as much as she did, his driving sealed it. He kept the gas pedal damned near to the floor as they tore along the old dirt road, throwing up billowing clouds of dust in their wake. At the corner where the dirt road joined the main drag, he slowed just enough to navigate it safely before nailing the accelerator again.

“Caden, look out!” Ashlyn braced herself in the seat.

Caden quickly swerved to his right and onto the shoulder to avoid a car barreling toward them, straight down the middle of the road. The SUV churned in the gravel for endless, white-knuckled seconds until Caden fought it under control. He swore as the light-colored Acura streaked past, its horn blaring. And as it passed, a beer bottle came flying out of the window, missing the SUV by yards and smashing to pieces on the side of the road.

Ashlyn knew that car. “Brian Caldwell!”

Caden grunted. “Figures. What a jerk.”

“What’s he doing out? Everyone stays in bed at night in Prescott….”

The realization grabbed Ashlyn like a cold claw, wrapping around her entire being. People
weren’t
in their beds. Not Brian Caldwell and probably not anyone else. It
wasn’t
night. It was barely dusk, and the train whistle was blowing through Prescott Junction. Calling out to desperate souls to get on board the train.

Come get their ticket out.

Or her ticket out.

Deep down inside, Rachel Riley truly believed the conductor was after her. But Ashlyn knew better. Ashlyn herself was the prize he wanted. Still, she knew the evil bastard would gladly give Rachel a ticket if he got a chance to. If Rachel stubbornly persisted in believing that was her fate and kept turning up at the tracks, ready to get on board.

“There’ll always be another time … it’s always about betrayal. There’s only one way out for me. Only one ticket.”
Ashlyn recalled Rachel’s words, and with a hand on her chest again she struggled with the knowledge she’d repeated the radio’s message to her friend.

Rachel’s words had saddened Ashlyn then. Hell, they’d broken her heart.

But now those words terrified her, as the whistle blew again.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Ashlyn snapped.

Caden didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Not if we want to get there in one piece.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m just terrified for Rachel.”

“I’m terrified for you both.”

Ashlyn sucked in her breath. She had to ask. “Don’t you feel it, Caden? The conductor’s pull?”

“Everyone has to around here, to some extent. Rachel’s in a dark place in her life — she’s gotta feel it like crazy.”

“And me?” With her mother hospitalized, being forced from her Toronto life to life in Prescott Junction, did Caden see her also as being in such a dark place?

“It’s completely different with you.”

“Why?”

“He wants you badly, Ash. He demonstrated that when he came for you yesterday. He’s hell bent on claiming your soul. I don’t know why, but he is. And I’m hell bent on making sure he doesn’t.”

Ashlyn’s heart was hammering as Caden turned into the train station yard, tires screeching in protest, and pulled up to the platform. She jerked forward and back in the seat as he brought the SUV to an abrupt stop, almost exactly where he’d parked it the other night when Degagne’s soul had been lost.

Two vehicles — one right after the other — zoomed by on the road behind them.

“People are racing home,” Caden said. “They heard the whistle and they’re rushing to get in their beds.”

“For their sakes, I hope they are.” She jumped out of the vehicle and slammed the door shut. “Oh, God, poor Maudette! I want to hurl just thinking how she must be feeling.”

Ashlyn could imagine it all too well, the terror her grandmother would be feeling right now. The terror she must have felt all along when she’d warned Ashlyn so many times. Maudette better than anyone knew the promise of the ghost train. How justifiably terrified she must have been for her only granddaughter. And no wonder Ashlyn’s own mother had wanted her to stay far, far away from Prescott Junction.

Those Caverhill women had been warned.

The radio.

Was it singing to Maudette even now of Ashlyn Caverhill’s demise?

Caden grabbed her hand as they stepped down between the rails.

“Do you see Rachel?” she asked anxiously.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I think… Oh crap!”