Dream Huntress (A Dreamseeker novel) (Entangled Ignite) (20 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Ty left early for Buck’s, and Jordan missed him already. She’d promised to stay in bed and rest, but seriously, how much TV could one person possibly take? Plus his scent on the sheets was driving her crazy. His pillow was a poor substitute for that warm groove on his shoulder where her head fit like a key in a keyhole.

Yeah, it was corny, but he’d reduced her to that. Would she ever have the strength to tell him that his touch, his arms wrapped around her, had been the only place she’d ever felt at peace? Probably not. Putting such sappy feeling into words would make her feel like an idiot, so she’d keep it her little secret, just like the visions.

But really,
secret
was too strong of a word. She’d told Ty that she dreamed, and many of her dreams were about the night her family died. So technically, there was no lie to feel guilty about.

Now that she’d locked her conscience in a box and wrapped it up neatly, she was going to scavenge through the kitchen for some ice cream. Ice cream could smooth the jagged edges off any guilt. And there would be no calories in the ice cream, because she wouldn’t read the label. If she didn’t know about the calories, they wouldn’t exist any more than the visions did.

Okay, that theory was a work in progress, but she thought she could make it fly.

It was only the second time she would venture down the stairs, the first without Ty in the house, but she felt pretty steady on her feet.

Taking a good look around Ty’s boyhood home could be entertaining. Didn’t parents always have a few embarrassing pictures hanging around, the kind that highlighted those awkward teenage years of bad hair and ugly braces? Although, if she had to lay money on it, she’d wager that Tyler McGee never had an awkward day in his life. Nature had dealt him a royal flush in the looks department.

It was aggravating how one measly flight of stairs had her panting by the time she walked into the kitchen. She leaned against the countertop to catch her breath and studied the room. The walls were a bright and cheery yellow. White antiqued cabinets filled the space. Photos and magnets hung on the fridge, and plants lined the windowsill. The small touches of a home were everywhere.

A giant oak table sat as the centerpiece, and she wondered how many meals Ty and his family had shared there. Then she wondered if she would have had a home like this and a large table full of memories if her family had survived. She ran a now-shaking hand across the counter, absentmindedly opening a drawer and then closing it. Ice cream suddenly lost its appeal.

She strolled into the family room. It was furnished with overstuffed furniture, a large-screen TV, a fireplace. Homey, cozy, safe—everything her life hadn’t been. That was how he’d grown up, she thought, and that was what he brought to her.

Love.

Her heart burst into a thousand terrifying pieces at the notion of being in love. She stumbled around the couch and sat. Broken ribs were nothing compared to the ache of realizing, beyond any doubt, that she was in love with Ty.

Oh, God, she loved him. Deeply. Irrationally. Stupidly.

Why was the thought so terrifying?

Because the last time you had people in your life to love, you let them all die.

The reality was a painful one. It wasn’t being in love with Ty that was hard. It was the possibility of seeing him hurt or killed in a vision and being as powerless to stop it as she had been with her own family. She’d never survive that kind of pain again, wasn’t entirely sure how she had survived it once.

She’d been running from any real connections since she’d been ten.

Falling in love was never supposed to happen, not to her, but now that it had, the thought of life without him was unbearable. If she could keep the past where it belonged and the visions under control, maybe she could have a real future with Ty. The kind of life that normal people had.

She took a steadying breath and stood. Enough adventure and soul-searching for one day. Her restless energy was draining quickly, and if she moved fast enough, she might just make it back to bed.

Heading toward the stairs, she passed a small space off the family room that looked like a home office. It held a large desk, computer, and hundreds of pictures on bookshelves and the walls. This is where she would find it, the one embarrassing picture of Ty, if such a thing existed.

Surely there was one goofy shot in the bunch. She’d just have to put her detective skills to work. Then she’d prop it up on his pillow so that when he came home, she could thoroughly tease him.

Geesh, she was bored.

The pictures—a whole lot of pictures—were aligned along the bookshelves in an almost perfect timeline progression. Even if her mother had lived, Jordan doubted that they’d have had this many photos.

Ty as a little baby. Ty as a toddler.

She was right. He’d had the face of an angel from the day he was born. There he was scampering around in a diaper and adult slippers, then naked in the bathtub. At seven or eight, a mischievous silver-eyed cutie posing with a tinier version of himself. Must be his baby brother. They looked identical. Too cute.

And there they both were with a baby girl sitting between them.

Ty had talked about his brother, Trevor, but she couldn’t recall him mentioning a sister. Surely he must have, ’cause there she was. Same hair, same eyes on all three of them. Each one as picture-perfect and adorable as the next.

Tyler McGee was not only handsome in the flesh, he was downright photogenic. He looked better in the pictures than he did in real life, and that she wouldn’t have believed possible.

Trailing along the bookshelves, Jordan enjoyed the age progression of Ty and his siblings over the years. Good-looking kids. Good-looking parents. The all-American dream. It was nice to know someone had lived it.

The last bookshelf held professional, posed, eight by ten portraits. As Jordan took in just how attractive all three kids were, a cold, clammy dew broke out on her skin.

Oh, my God.

Her eyes shifted back and forth as she tried to make sense of what she saw. No, no, no! There was some horrible, cruel mistake.

“Tara.”

She managed to whisper the name through the choking ache that had seeped from one injured lung into her whole chest. The cute little girl with no front teeth and pigtails had turned into Tara, the dark-haired, beautiful teen who haunted Jordan’s dreams.

She took a deliberate step back and forced herself to focus, gasping in enough air to keep herself upright.

Tara. Beautiful Tara. Tara who had been raped and murdered over and over in Jordan’s dreams.

It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. She could be crazy, and
that
she could live with. She could be unconscious and all of this one big, fat, ugly hallucination—like the one she’d had of her father.
Let it be anything, anything other than what it looked like. Please don’t let the dark-haired beauty be Tyler’s sister.

One after another, questions whirled through her mind. Why would Ty hide this from her? He knew about her family. How could he think she wouldn’t have understood? Did he know what had happened to his sister? Had they found the guy that had done it?

A devastated certainty claimed the last bit of hope: Tara wouldn’t have come to her in a dream if Ty didn’t still need answers.

She gazed toward the back of the house. Sickness and dread tore through her, but she needed to know, had to see for herself. Stumbling down the hall, she reached the back of the house, turned the lock, and swung the door open.

There it was, perfectly centered in the yard like an evil picture—Tara’s swing and the giant old oak tree. The thick, fringed rope and the worn, wooden seat swayed helplessly in the wind, waiting for the girl who’d once perched there like an angel.

Jordan stumbled barefoot and in shorts across the cold, dead grass. She couldn’t have said what made her do it, but she picked up the wooden plank swing and turned it over to look at the bottom.

Happy seventh birthday, Angel—Love Daddy.

Jordan looked up at the house. Tara’s bedroom window loomed back down at her. Her heart beat with a sick, sick ache. She blinked through the tears, attempting to clear the images from her eyes, the implications in her mind, and the injury to her heart.

Still, her gaze kept returning to a barren garden filled with small stones. She walked closer, dragged her toe through the pebbles. These were the rocks the boy had thrown at Tara’s window. Bile lurched into her throat. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she dashed into the house and up the stairs.

Cold and trembling, she paused at the threshold of Tara’s door. Breathing roughly, she pressed one hand to her chest, but forced the other to turn the knob. She stepped into the room and walked straight into her dream. Baby blue walls closed in around her. Nothing had been touched since the night of Tara’s murder.

The walls were just as she’d seen them, lined with trophies and medals for running track. Pennants. Cheerleading pictures. Tara’s world shifted and came to life. More vivid now, with more detail, but the dream had been eerily on target.

Tara’s presence invaded the room. Jordan trembled, sensed Tara’s spirit spurring her on, pushing her to think.

“I’ve tried,” Jordan cried out. “I really have.” She
had
been thinking, really
had
tried to see his face…but…maybe she…

“Oh, hell.” Jordan stopped, thought for a second. Then stepped toward Tara’s pennant, the blue and white pennant. “It’s the colors,” she whispered running her fingers over the soft triangle of cloth
.
She glanced at the cheerleading picture. Tara’s uniform was blue and white. The pompoms on the floor next to the dresser, blue and white.

Jordan closed her eyes, trying to recall the details of her dreams. She still couldn’t see the boy, nothing about his face, but she could see his football gear. And his jacket. The answers had been in the jacket the whole time. She hadn’t see any colors or numbers before, but now, in Tara’s room, she saw them all.

The boy’s jacket, maroon and gold.

His graduation year, sewn on the sleeve.

Even his car, white.

Tara’s presence in the room was still bold and certain, as if the girl stood before her in flesh and bone. But nothing about her was threatening. Tara was filled only with sweet innocence and a desire for Ty to know it all. So Jordan would tell him. And when he deemed her to be the freak that she was, she would lose him.

Stumbling to the bed, she picked up a doll. Tara’s favorite. How did she know? Who the hell cared how she knew any of the crap that raced around in her head?

Too much. Too much. Too much.

She collapsed against a wall and slid to the floor, clutching Tara’s doll.

…

Ty barreled down the long, gravel driveway leading to his parents’ house. The alarm company had notified him there was a breach of security, and Warren had been oddly absent from the club tonight. They’d been so careful, but the fear of Warren figuring out Jordan was alive never strayed far from Ty’s mind. His tires ground to a stop as he hit the brakes, threw his truck in park, and plowed through the front door.

“Jordan?” he yelled. “Damn it, Jordan, where are you?” She didn’t answer. Adrenaline flooding his body, he flew up the steps. Why the hell had he left her by herself?

The door to Tara’s bedroom was open. Why would that door be open? Terrifying thoughts pushed him through the threshold of his baby sister’s room.

Jordan was on the floor, pale and shaking.

His heart raced as he knelt in front of her. “Christ, what happened?”

Her eyes were glazed. No awareness that he’d entered the room passed across her face. He looked for signs of a struggle, but the room looked exactly as it always did. Except that Tara’s doll was not on the bed, but in Jordan’s hands.

He lightly stroked her cheek. He’d seen her stunned before, confused and terrified after a nightmare. Her face had the same look now, her body the same rigid tremble.

“Did you have a dream, baby?”

“You didn’t tell me you had a sister, did you?” she asked.

He slid a hand around her arm.
Fuck
. His mother had kept every newspaper article that had been printed about Tara’s murder. Apparently, Jordan had found them. “I…I don’t. She died. Come on, let’s get you up.”

“Don’t touch me.” She jerked out of his grip. Her gaze, lined with betrayal and hurt, finally met his. “You should have
told
me she’d been murdered.”

He broke out in a cold sweat as fear flooded his body. She was right; she’d deserved the truth a long time ago. Now he had to make her understand. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you a million different times in a million different ways.”

“Did you find her body? Do you know who did it?”

Without answering, he pulled her to her feet, lifted the doll out of her hands, and scooted her out of Tara’s bedroom. He guided her across the hall to the room he’d grown up in and sat her down onto the bed.

“Did you catch her killer?” She demanded again.

He shook his head, searching for the best way to begin. “A buddy of mine called me the morning her body was found.” A painful lump swelled in his throat. “But, no, there hasn’t been an arrest yet. I was going to tell you. About everything. I swear I was, but…”

She nailed him with an icy glare. “But having sex with me was a much easier way to get what you wanted?”

It took a second for him to get it, to really grasp what she was saying. He understood her anger about the deception, but it never occurred to him that she’d think their whole relationship had been a lie.

“Nice work, McGee.” She was trying to remain distant and unemotional, but he saw tears begin to swim in her eyes. “Much easier to get what you want, to talk me into letting you in on the investigation, when you leave out the most important details and twist me up with sex. Well played.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Fury shot up his spine with enough intensity that he thought his head might explode. He grabbed her arms and hauled her close. “After everything, after every goddamned thing we’ve been through, how could you think I’m sleeping with you to use you? Tell me that’s not what you really believe.”