Touching Eternity (Touch Series 1.5) (11 page)

Her eyes went wide and shiny with terror. “No! You can’t tell! You can’t tell, Isaiah! Please promise you won’t.”

He scowled at her pleading. “Okay fine I won’t tell. What’s the big deal anyway? How is he supposed to help make you better if you don’t talk to him?”

“
He can’t know,” she whispered, her voice barely loud enough to be heard. “He doesn’t understand. If I tell him, he’ll lock me up. He’ll give me needles and he’ll hurt me.”

He turned away, smothering the knot in his gut at the soft, scared whisper. “Go to sleep.”

There were several heartbeats of silence as she lay back down and drew the blankets to her chin.

“
Isaiah?”

He groaned, exasperated. “What?”

“
I know you hate me, but…I’m really glad you’re here.”

Without meaning to, he twisted onto his side so they were face to face. She wasn’t looking at him, but seemed intently interested in the fingers she had curled around the blanket, keeping it in place around her like a cocoon.

“
I don’t hate you,” he grumbled. “You’re just really annoying.”

Little lines formed across her brow. Her lips pursed. She didn’t say anything, but he knew he’d hurt her feelings.

He sometimes forgot she wasn’t like the kids he’d grown up with. She wasn’t rough and angry. She wasn’t cold or bitter or hard. Everything about her was soft, vulnerable. She wouldn’t last a minute in his neighborhood. She’d be torn to shreds, a wounded lamb in the lion’s den. Something about that made him want to protect her, shelter her, even from himself. Just being near her made him want to shower, made him want to scrub the stench and grit he could sometimes feel caking his skin. The streets never really washed away, and she was so clean.

“
Look.” He waited until she was looking at him before continuing. “You’re not exactly annoying, okay?”

Her smile was half hidden in the blanket. “So you like me?”

He flopped over onto his back. “Yeah. Sure.”

“
Isaiah?”

“
Hmm?”

“
Do you think I’m pretty?”

Fingers of heat crawled into his cheeks. He quickly snapped over onto his other side. “Don’t be stupid! Go to sleep.”

He blocked out her giggle by squeezing his eyes shut.

***

Isaiah entered the dining room a little after eight the next morning feeling as if he hadn’t slept a wink, which he hadn’t. Every time he’d closed his eyes, he’d hear Amalie’s whispered giggles from across the vast canvas of his bed. He’d see her face, half-buried beneath the folds of the blanket, peeking out at him. At one point, he even woke up feeling her hair draped over his face and chest. There’d been nothing there, but he’d jerked awake in a pool of his own sweat. His stomach revolted the violent sensation, roiling until he felt it coming up his throat. He’d only just made it to the bathroom.

Now he just felt like death was toying with him.

“Isaiah!” Garrison folded his morning paper, set it down between his plate and coffee. “Good morning, my boy. How did you sleep?”

“Not so well,” he admitted, stifling a yawn. “I guess I’m not used to the time change yet.”

Garrison nodded, motioning for Isaiah to join him. He waited until the younger man was fully seated before speaking again. “How did last night go?”

Isaiah hadn’t thought of his night of breaking and entering, of holding down a man and threatening to cut his tongue out, but now it all came rolling back to him and he felt sick all over again.

“Fine,” he lied, turning all his interest on the bowl of green apples across from him.

Garrison rested his elbows on the table on either side of his plate, steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “Did you like Bruce and Lew?”

Isaiah shrugged. “They were all right.”

“They didn’t give you any trouble?”

He shook his head, picking an apple at random. “They were fine.”

Garrison busied himself scooping bacon, eggs and sausages onto his plate. “They’re a little rough around the edges, but…they get the job done.”

“What kind of jobs do you make them do?” Mentally, Isaiah kicked himself for opening his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Stuff like last night?”

In the process of buttering a triangular piece of toast, Garrison paused, glanced up. “Sometimes,” he said carefully. He set the knife and toast down, cocked his head to the side. “I thought you understood how important last night was to my research.”

Isaiah dropped the untouched apple into his plate, his stomach protesting the very idea of swallowing saliva, let alone actually eating anything. “Yes, I understood, but you didn’t say…”

“What?” Garrison prompted when he faltered.

Isaiah buttoned down his courage. “They threatened to cut the guy’s tongue out!” he hissed, his voice low even though they were the only two in the room. “Yeah I get that he was running his mouth, but couldn’t you have just talked to him? I don’t think—”

“I agree!” He nudged aside his plate. “But there is always a time and place for talking. Sometimes, with certain people, the time for talking has passed and action is needed. Mortimer Hobbs had already been warned. He needed that extra incentive to nail down any reservations he may have had regarding my intentions. I told him things would not go well for him if he continued to speak with the board and university behind my back. He couldn’t seem to get that through his head.”

“But—”

Garrison put up a hand, silencing him. “Isaiah,” he said calmly, patiently. “I need you to trust me. I don’t ever do anything without a reason. When you’re older and hopefully wise enough to take my place, you will see how important decisions like these are.” He suddenly rose from the table, smoothed a hand down the front of his steel-gray suit. “Come.”

Isaiah blinked. “Pardon?”

Garrison waved him to his feet. “We’re going to the lab today. I want you to see what I do. Also, I want you to get a feel for the place for when you start working there.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse, but one look into the other man’s hopeful and proud eyes and the words liquefied and trickled back down his throat.

He forced a smile. “Great.”

The drive wound through miles of rough, nearly uncharted terrain. The smooth marble of the driveway broke into gravel that quickly melded into compact dirt that was too bumpy not to be nature-made. Trees strained towards them, seemingly as if to stop their progress deep into the wilderness. Isaiah watched the different hues of browns and oranges and splotches of greens blur past the tinted windows of the limousine with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Part of him wondered if he was coming down with something.

“We’re nearly there.”

Isaiah turned in his seat to face the man across from him. The smooth leather squeaked. “Sir?”

Garrison made a humming sound.

“Aren’t you worried Mortimer Hobbs will know you’re the one that sent people to…talk to him? Won’t he go to the police?”

Unconcerned, Garrison folded his right leg over his left. “Not if you three did your jobs correctly and convinced him opening his mouth at all will result in severe consequences.”

Isaiah still didn’t like it. The whole situation was wrong. He’d been trained to uphold order, to protect the innocent. He hadn’t protected Mortimer Hobbs. He’d taken part in hurting another human being. What did that make him?

“I want to tell you a story,” Garrison said unexpectedly, drawing Isaiah’s attention to him. “It’s about when I was your age.” He crossed and uncrossed his legs. Sat straighter and folded his hands in his lap. “My mother, before she married my father, came from a very wealthy family. My father, both an alcoholic and a gambling man, wasted his money on gin and the tables and was in financial disarray by the time he was thirty-one. My mother’s arrival into his life came at a very convenient time for him and he wasted no time marrying her and squandering her inheritance as quickly as he had his own. By the time I was born, my father had nearly bankrupted us. My mother took me and we moved in with my maternal grandparents when I was seven. My father never came to get us back. I didn’t see him again for nearly fifteen years. I was twenty-two, married and a father myself when he darkened my doorway.”

Isaiah watched him, waited for him to continue. He’d never heard this story. True, he’d never heard any stories, but this one seemed very personal. He wasn’t really sure why Garrison was telling him, but he wasn’t going to stop him.

“He was disgusting,” Garrison continued, staring down at his fingernails. “Years of drinking had begun to rob him of his youth and vitality. He was no more than a common bum. He told me lies about where he’d been and how he’d changed. He thought I was as gullible as my mother and that I would fall for his sob stories. Then Abigail walked into the room with Amalie and he told me how proud he was of me, of them…”

“What happened, sir?” Isaiah prompted when Garrison fell quiet for far too long.

His eyes were as cold and flat as unpolished emeralds as they bore into Isaiah. The air inside the cabin solidified, a solid sheet of ice.

“I killed him.”

Isaiah

Isaiah didn’t move. He didn’t breath. He stared into the eyes of a wolf and watched, paralyzed, as the creature stared back with eyes too bloodthirsty to be human.

“Are you surprised?” Garrison’s smile was a slash of ice.

“Uh…” was all Isaiah could think to say.

Garrison chuckled, his face transformed into one of amusement. “I know there are times when my methods seem unorthodox, cruel inhuman. But I have never done anything without purpose. I have never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

What could Isaiah say? Hadn’t Garrison killed for him? Hadn’t he shot a man in the heart to protect Isaiah? There were still nights Isaiah was torn from his sleep by the feel of giant hands around his throat, depriving him of precious air. Did that make it right? Who was he to say?

“Why did you kill your father, sir?”

Garrison seemed pleased by the question. He leaned back in his seat and smiled. “Because he thought he could use them against me. Because I knew they would be a reason for him to keep coming back and asking for more. He would never have been satisfied with a one-time payoff and I wouldn’t allow him near my family. They were mine. They were my responsibility. It was my job to protect them against trash.”

“Then why did you bring me home?” The words slipped before Isaiah could stop them. He inwardly winced at his own stupidity.

Garrison’s smile was warm, gentle and fatherly. “Because when I looked into your eyes, I saw someone the world had forgotten about and yet you fought not to drown in it. I saw potential. You were so tough for someone so small and I knew you would make an unstoppable solider one day.”

“Is that why you sent me to all those military schools?”

Something glinted in his eyes. “Your greatest strength, Isaiah, is your will to live. Honed properly, there is nothing you can’t do because you will always fight to stay alive.”

They arrived at a long, single story structure made entirely of glass. It was no bigger than a one bedroom rancher and it was smack dab in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by towering trees that blocked it from being seen overhead, and yet there were two men standing fully armed outside the door.

They stiffened to attention as Garrison exited the limo. Each raised their right hand, the one not supporting a rifle, and saluted. Neither gave Isaiah a single glance, nor did they stop him when he followed Garrison through the doors into a brightly laminated corridor.

“This way,” Garrison said, leading the way forward.

Ten steps and they were at a fork. Isaiah couldn’t fathom how that was possible when the structure didn’t look big enough from the outside to harbor very much space, let alone two completely opposite paths.