Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (25 page)

“And so you come to see for yourself,” he said, “even though my father said he would check it out for you.”

The sky was an incredible shade of blue, dotted by endless fluffy white clouds. “There’s more,” I said, lifting a hand to the glass. “This town … I’m supposed to be here.” Had I been seeing this street all along? “It’s linked to the girl who’s missing.”

“Are you ready to find out?”

I twisted around so fast the room spun all over again.

He caught me, steadied me.

“Is this what a concussion feels like?” I asked.

“You don’t have a concussion.” He dragged the chair toward me. “Here. Sit.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do,” he said, helping me onto the cushion. “What’s your name?”

I eased in a breath, eased it back out. “Trinity Monsour.”

He lifted his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

I looked at them, cringing at the reddish, skinned-up knuckles. “Three.”

He reached inside the paper bag and pulled out a black T-shirt, yanked it over his head—

—and the dream catcher went away.

But his eyes never left mine. “What’s my name?”

I’m not sure why I hesitated—maybe because I always did when his name touched my throat.
“Dylan.”

His smile was slow, lazy. “See? No concussion.”

“Where … where’s my phone?” I had to call …

Chase.

Dylan glanced toward the bathroom counter. “Drying out.” He gestured toward the dresser, where a BlackBerry almost identical to mine sat. “You can put your SIM card in mine.”

Other realities were starting to register. I would have to tell Aunt Sara. LaSalle would want to know why I’d gone to Fourcade instead of him. “My grandmother’s car—”

“I had it towed,” Dylan said, nudging the brown bag toward me. “You need to get dressed.”

Because I wasn’t …

Refusing to dwell on that fact, I looked inside the bag—and saw the neatly folded jeans and T-shirt. But before I could lift them, Dylan was shoving his gun into his waistband and crossing to pull open the door. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

Behind him, the heavy metal clanged shut—and my eyes filled. Minutes. Sometimes that was all that separated a good outcome from a bad—life from death. If Dylan hadn’t been following me, if he’d arrived a minute or two later …

The possibilities chilled.

Still woozy, I made my way to the bathroom, found my SIM card on a towel, then brought it back and slipped it into Dylan’s phone.

Two messages waited, one from Victoria, asking where I was and if I was okay, and the second, from Chase.

Got your message.

Hope this ends it.

CMWYC.

My eyes flooded, and for a fractured heartbeat it was last night again …

Not wanting to go back, I picked up the bag, dumped out the clothes, and saw the book. It landed facedown, the leather of its back cover blank. I flipped it over without thinking, my eye snagging on a bag of M&Ms on top of the blue jeans. Then I saw the small lock on the book. And the dragonfly. With iridescent wings outstretched, it soared across the cover, fluttering above one single word: DREAMS.

*   *   *

His hair was longer.

It was such a ridiculous thing to think about considering everything else going on, but as we settled into a booth along the front window of Gaston’s Place, I found myself wondering why hair that had been military short was now almost long enough for a ponytail.

Something had happened. Something had changed. In the four months since I’d last seen Jim Fourcade’s son, it didn’t look like he’d had his hair cut even once.

Chase went once a month like clockwork.

Chase.

Thinking about him made my heart hurt. He was so not going to be happy when I told him what happened—or who’d chased off the guy from the gold car.

Dylan’s BlackBerry sat on the white cloth covering the table between us. Trying to figure out what I was going to tell Chase, I reminded myself it didn’t matter why Dylan had let his hair grow but shaved his goatee. It didn’t matter that he looked leaner, that the silver of his eyes looked even more burnished. It didn’t matter that I was pretty sure the ink at the back of his neck was new—or that he’d specifically chosen a seat that allowed us both to see the whole restaurant, but kept his back to the wall.

“Is there someone you need to call?” he asked.

I looked up. “No … not yet.” It was still early. School hadn’t let out. And I didn’t know anything more than I had a few hours before—except that someone had gone to extreme measures to keep me from coming to Belle Terre.

“My card’s still inside?” I asked as the door opened and two older men came in. So far, we’d seen a handful of customers, the hostess, and three waitresses. None of them looked like the girl from my dream.

“Unless you took it out.”

One of the men turned toward me.

Instinctively I pulled back.

The hostess nudged him, and, frowning, he followed her to a back table.

“No texts have come through?” I asked.

Dylan slid the phone toward me. “See for yourself.”

I glanced at the dark screen, then back at him. “Not scared I’ll find out all your secrets?”

“Not from my phone, no.”

My smile just kind of happened. It was fast and spontaneous, completely unexpected. “Then where are they?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Somewhere safe,” he said as the waitress, Aurora, slid two glasses of ice water between us. With that razor-sharp sweep of hair cutting against his cheekbone, he glanced up at her through heavy-lidded eyes, and gave her a devastating smile.

And I knew he was finally going to ask her about the girl I’d seen in my dream.

“Perfect.”
He lifted his glass for a long, deliberate sip. “Looks like it’s my lucky day after all.”

With soft blond curls bouncing around her face, she flashed a self-conscious smile and turned away—but not before her eyelashes fluttered.

Words failed me. I sat there and looked at him, watching him as
he
watched
her
flutter away.

“Omigod, are you
serious
?” I asked, not even wanting to touch my water. “What are you waiting for?”

Eyes still all smoldery, he shifted his attention back to me. “It’s too soon.”

“Too soon? It’s been twenty minutes—”

“Trinity.” He shifted, watching. “I know what I’m doing.”

A man in all white stepped from the kitchen, looking from table to table.

“Then maybe you should tell me,” I suggested as the chef-looking guy slipped back through the doors.

“It’s called waiting until the time is right.”

I looked away, toward the window where the big block letters announced the name of the restaurant—exactly as they had in my dream.

“Some things can’t be rushed,” he said as I kept looking away, beyond, toward the moss swaying from the parade of oaks sloping toward the bayou across the street.

When he spoke again, his voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear it above the light jazz of the restaurant.
“Especially when they matter.”

TWENTY-THREE

I didn’t want to look, because I didn’t want to see. But I could no more have continued to stare at the trees than I could have ignored the band tightening around my chest.

He sat across from me, sprawled against the red plastic of the booth, the dark hair falling against his face, cutting in a straight line along his cheek.

“And this matters,” he said in that same smoke-and-honey voice, the one as soft as the feathers of his dream catcher. And for a fleeting second I had to wonder …
what dreams did he catch?

But there was nothing soft about Dylan Fourcade—or the way he saw without looking. It radiated from every line of his body, the preternatural awareness, the … knowing.

“The Navajo is strong in him,”
his father had said.
“Far stronger than it is in me.”

I hated the quick blade that cut through me—the quick denial. Dylan and I had been friends as children. The ties of our parents bound us. He was here because his father had sent him. That was all that
mattered
—not the fog that drifted through me every time his eyes grew heavy and he touched without lifting a hand.

I looked away. Near the kitchen, two waitresses quickly turned and vanished behind swinging doors.

“That book,” I said, changing the subject and pretending I wasn’t aware of the way people kept staring,
as if there was something very wrong about me being there.
“The one with the dragonfly—what is it?”

I felt him shift, heard him let out a slow breath. “It was your mother’s. I thought you should have it.”

Everything around me, the sights and the sounds, the possibilities, fell away, leaving only the two of us—and the leather-bound book I’d left in the hotel.
“My mother’s?”

His shoulders rose again, fell again. “I found it in a box my dad packed away after the storm.”

My heart kicked hard, bringing a new kind of possibility. “What is it, a journal?”

He started to answer, but Aurora appeared with our po-boys.

“Can I get you anything?” Her eyes sparkled as she looked at him, and only him. She, unlike everyone else, wouldn’t even look at me. “Some mayo or ketchup—Tabasco?”

His smile could have melted polar ice caps. “Not right now.”

With another flutter of her eyelashes, she flushed and took the path to the kitchen like a runway.

It was all I could do not to jump across the table and shake him. “Dylan—”

“It’s locked,” he said as the man at the back of the restaurant, the one who’d been staring at me, lifted his phone as if to text—or take a picture. “It wasn’t my place to open it.”

Locked—protected. Something of my mother’s …

I looked away as the man aimed his phone at us. “Everyone’s staring at me.”

Dylan popped a fry into his mouth. “I know.”

“Don’t you wonder why?”

He went to work on his sandwich. “That’s the beauty of taking your time,” he said, between bites. “You never know what might happen.”

I looked from him to the fried shrimp spilling from my sandwich.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “My dreams are mine—no one knows what I see. Who would try to run me off the road? Why?” My stomach churned, but I made myself take a bite. It was my first of the day. “Why does everyone look like they’re scared of me?”

Dylan reached for another fry. “Maybe they are.”

I barely tasted the shrimp. “But—”

“Hey, Aurora?” he said as the waitress left an older woman sitting by herself—and staring at me. “Got a sec?”

The curly blonde fluffed over. “Can I get you something?”

Dylan kept his movements all casual, lazy almost. “Just wonderin’ if you can help me out with something.”

Her smile widened. “If I can.”

He slid his arm along the back of the booth. “My friend’s looking for someone,” he said. “The girl who paints here—”

Aurora’s smile froze.

“She’s about fifteen,” Dylan added, but already Aurora was shaking her head. “Brown hair in a ponytail—”

“You must have the wrong place,” she rushed.

He made a playful expression. “No, no, I don’t think so. We saw her—”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, twisting away.

Dylan’s hand snaked out, stopping her.

Her eyes went wide and dark.

The man in white stepped from the kitchen.

“We just need to talk to her.” It was the quiet voice—the persuasive one. “We have reason to think she could be in danger. Maybe you could ask—”

“You’re in the wrong place,” she said again, really, really fast.

And then she was gone.

She didn’t come back, either. Only the man did, the owner, and only to give us our check.

*   *   *

By the time we walked into the bookstore over an hour later, it was obvious the people of Belle Terre didn’t want to talk.

Which totally meant they knew something.

Everywhere we went, people stared, but no one claimed to have any idea who we were talking about. In the hardware store, Dylan asked about a guy instead, the one from the gold car.

But the owner had been as closed-mouthed as everyone else.

Frustrated, I savored the scent of espresso as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting inside Isobel’s Curiosities. Books crowded the shelves. Purple velour couches sat scattered throughout. A few were occupied, but most sat empty. Funky stools sat in front of the coffee bar, where crystals lay in small piles among magazines and books.

“Can I get you something?” a girl asked, emerging from a door behind the counter.

The second she saw me, she stopped in her tracks, and something inside me snapped. “What is it—why does everyone keep—”

Dylan didn’t let me finish. “Water for me,” he said, sliding an arm around me. “An iced mocha for my friend.”

I stood without moving, tried not to feel, not the warmth of his body—or the way his hand curved around my shoulder.

“Java chip,” he added, guiding me to the cluttered bar.

The girl, with her long blond hair hanging straight and her eyes blue like the sky, nodded and hurried away.

Easing onto one of the stools, I absently reached for a small pyramid of pink quartz. Its edges were smooth—

Silver flashed,
and my heart started to race.

I hung there, frozen, my arm outstretched, the leather of the bracelet Chase had given me coiled around my wrist, staring, staring without seeing, but feeling … feeling something unseen lock around me, and the hot kiss of adrenaline streak into my blood.

“Trinity?”

My hand started to shake, and my breath started to chop.

Dylan crowded close. “What? Tell me what’s happening.”

I looked at him, blinked, blinked again, and the tight, unseen grip released. “I … I don’t know.”

“You’re white as a ghost.”

“I…” Didn’t know how to explain. “It was like I saw something, and then someone grabbed me.”

“Do you still feel it?”

I shook my head, sending tangled hair against my face as the girl returned with our drinks.