Water Bound (26 page)

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Authors: Christine Feehan

BOOK: Water Bound
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Lissa opened the back bedroom door and stopped to get Rikki’s weighted blanket. “Take this, honey.”
Rikki didn’t see how cowering under her blanket was going to stop her from feeling guilty. She should be outside, helping Lev.
“He shouldn’t be out there alone. He’s hurt, Lissa. He really hit his head. He’s had a terrible concussion. That’s why I let him in the house. Someone had to take care of him.”
The women exchanged relieved glances and Rikki realized that made sense to them, that she would bring him home to take care of him.
“You should have told us,” Blythe said gently. “We could have helped you.”
“I didn’t want anyone else in the house,” she muttered. That would make sense to them as well. They knew she was extremely leery of having anyone inside her house.
She looked around her at the faces looking back at her with so much open affection. “You thought he was using me, didn’t you?”
There was an awkward silence. “He’s gorgeous,” Blythe said. “Any woman would take one look at him and fall at his feet.”
“You mean like Judith and Airiana did?” The scent of smoke was fading as her mind cleared, slowly releasing her from the grip of a full-blown panic attack. She turned her gaze back to the outdoors. She wouldn‘t—
could’nt
—be comfortable with the people she loved gathered under one roof, so she would have to pull herself together in order to keep them safe. “Or just me? I’m not desperate for a man, you know. I’m quite happy here without one.”
“Rikki, no one is saying you’re desperate for a man,” Judith objected, her voice every bit as gentle as Blythe’s. “There are predators in this world, and they look for certain traits in women so they can use them.”
“Certain traits?” Rikki sat up straighter, the scent of smoke dissipating altogether as her temper kicked in. “Just what are you saying?” She glared at them all. “No man is going to want to be with me because I’m so different? You think I don’t already know that?”
“That’s not what I said,” Judith replied. “Nor do I think it’s true.”
“Yes, you do,” Rikki said. “I think it, so why shouldn’t you? I don’t care. That’s the important thing here. I honestly don’t. I’m happy. I have a life. I don’t like other people around touching my things. He used my dishes this morning. He doesn’t eat peanut butter. Sheesh. He wants on my boat.”
Blythe folded her arms and sat back in her chair. “Let’s think about this.”
“Let’s not,” Rikki said. “As soon as he’s feeling better, he’s gone. No one has to worry about whether or not I’m going to be so desperate for a man’s attention that I let him use me.” She glanced up at Judith. “Or abuse me, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Judith shrugged. “You can get as angry as you want with me, Rikki, but if you think I’m going to back off from protecting my sister from a predator, you can just get over it. That man is no lamb. He’s got teeth, and he’s dangerous. It’s not some small shadow surrounding him. He lives with violence.”
Judith always managed to disarm her with affection. And Rikki couldn’t very well deny that Lev was a violent man. He’d put a knife to her throat and he was a walking weapon. But they’d given her a chance, and she saw something in him that apparently Judith and Airiana couldn’t see. She saw
past
those shadows to something altogether different. But how could she explain what she didn’t understand?
“I know what he’s like, Judith. You have to trust me this time. He’s much more than the protection he’s wrapped himself in.” Rikki looked up at the one person she knew she’d have to convince. Judith always amazed her with her insight into people. She was calm, where Rikki was stormy. She chose her words carefully, while Rikki often blurted out a response, if she bothered at all. “I’m asking as a personal favor to me that you give him a chance, Judith.”
Judith sank down in front of Rikki and took both of her hands. “Tell me why you feel so strongly about him, honey. Make me understand.”
Rikki shook her head. “I’m not like you. I’m not good with words. But I know him. I know him better than he knows himself. I see him. I can’t tell you how, but I do. He needs us. All of us. We have to help him. He’s lost—just like I was.”
The women exchanged wary looks.
Judith sighed. “You were never violent, Rikki.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t. You took it on faith that I didn’t start those fires, but even I don’t know for certain. It makes sense. Everyone else believes I did. And don’t think Jonas Harrington hasn’t had his suspicions about me. He watches me. I’ve seen him. You gave me a chance when there was no reason to and I’m asking you to do the same for him.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Blythe said.
“I’ll keep him away from the rest of you. I’ll be the only one in danger.”
Judith shook her head. “Absolutely not acceptable. I’m sorry, baby, but if you take the risk, we all do.”
Rikki looked around her. Each of the others nodded solemnly. There was no dissenting vote. It was up to her. How strongly did she feel about Lev? She barely knew the man. She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the center of her palm.
“Why are you doing that?” Airiana asked.
Rikki frowned. “What?”
“You’re rubbing your palm. You’ve never done that before.”
Airiana was frightening in her observation of detail. Rikki shrugged and turned her palm over, pressing it against her jeans. “No reason. I’m just confused about all this. I want to give Levi a chance.”
Blythe glanced at the others and then nodded. “We’re with you then.”
10
LEV opened the window in the bedroom, grateful it slid up silently. Whoever was watching Rikki—and how the hell had they found her?—had some kind of psychic power. He’d felt the shift in energy. It hadn’t been particularly powerful, but he noticed the two women who he had determined were the most sensitive to psychic forces had been the only ones really affected. Rikki had been with him all week, holed up in her house, so if this was about her, there had to have been a trail leading to her. And if it was about him ... Well, no one was going to hurt her or the others because of his dubious past.
He did a rolling somersault, coming up on one knee, allowing a couple of seconds to orient himself in the surrounding terrain. The few minutes he’d managed to stay up he’d spent studying the house and the immediate acreage around it. He’d committed the map of the farm to memory so he was fairly certain he could find his way around, but it was imperative he scout Rikki’s five acres as soon as possible. He needed to know every shrub and tree, every hollow. Where the tall grass was that might conceal someone. Everything.
Especially if he was going
to make his home here.
That brought him up short. What was he thinking? Living here? With Rikki? Men like him didn’t have homes. They didn’t have loved ones. Those things were liabilities to his kind. He’d been trained to move, to shed his identity fast and assume another one just as quickly. That was life. Trying to be someone was a certain road to death.
He moved as fast as his pounding head would allow him. Each jolt sent a dagger through his skull. His stomach lurched. He knew his head injury had been worse than he’d first imagined, but it was healing. He was speeding the process along as best he could, and now he needed to be at full operating capacity. He made his way up the terraced flower beds and began working his way over toward the northern side of her property up toward the tree line.
Sid Kozlov was dead. Did that mean Lev Prakenskii was as well? An image of Rikki’s little frown filled his head. A few times, when he couldn’t sleep and he just lay there beside her, aching, wishing, he fantasized that she was his. That the world he was in was real. Maybe this was his one chance. It was a miracle he’d survived the sinking of the yacht. Another miracle, that although he’d been slammed into the rocks by a powerful wave, he’d lived through it. And Rikki.
She
was the real miracle, with her quirky ways and her eyes that could see beyond his armor and straight to something he’d thought long gone.
Damn. He wanted her. He wanted this life. He wanted it to be real. Were there second chances? It was possible he’d have to walk away, but before he did, Rikki Sitmore was going to be safe. She would know that she didn’t start fires in her sleep. She would know she hadn’t killed her parents or fiancé, nor had she burned down the homes of her foster parents.
As he made his way through the trees, he tried to figure out what it was about her that appealed to him so much. Passion. She was passionate about everything she did. Everything she was. Who she was. He was fairly certain she had some form of autism, yet she had carved out a life for herself in spite of all the odds and she made it her own. She was the sea she loved so much, moody, joyful, playful, and at times stormy and wild. He was ice-cold, a passionless floe out in the arctic seas, alone and struggling for survival.
He had faced death every day of his life and never once had he flinched. He’d seen things that no man should ever have to see. He’d made decisions no man should ever have to make. Some might call him courageous, yet compared to Rikki, he saw himself as a coward. She took hold of life and lived it, in spite of her limitations. She forced herself out of her comfort zone for those she loved, while he stayed in his, behind his wall of armor, behind his survival instincts and his vast training.
He wanted life—with her. With Rikki. He wanted to lie awake at night and feel her next to him. He wanted to hear her breathing while she slept. He wanted to know that she couldn’t tolerate anyone else in her bed—only him. He wanted to see her frown and the flash of her eyes, hear her breathing change right before he kissed her. They had a connection he didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter even though everything else in his life had to make sense. She didn’t. She just was. And that was enough and that was everything.
He glanced up at the sky, watching until he spotted a hawk in the outer branches of a fir tree. He closed his eyes and summoned the predator, pushing it to take flight. Its talons dug into the branch for just a moment of resistance before the hawk spread its wings and glided into the air. The hawk began the search with a tight pattern, widening each circle as it took in a larger and larger radius.
Images poured into Lev’s brain, but none of them were of what he was searching for. He released the hawk with a small nod of thanks, knowing even before he came up on the spot where he knew the intruder had been that the man was already gone. He still moved carefully, wanting to preserve evidence. The watcher had been much lighter than Lev. The storm had left the soil damp and there were impressions everywhere. Crushed grass and sunken boot prints, but not too deep, indicating a lighter build. The man was tall, though, because the needles had been knocked off several branches of the tree he’d been standing under at about an inch or so below Lev’s height.
He liked fire. As Lev examined the ground, he had no doubts in his mind that this was the man who had stalked Rikki since she was thirteen, starting the fires that had destroyed her loved ones. Tiny bits of grass were burned in small clumps, as if, while idle, the man had started tiny fires to amuse himself. How long had he been up there? There were four cigarette butts and seven places where the grass was burned. Fortunately the entire area was soaked so there was little chance that the fire would have gotten out of hand, but Lev could see the potential for disaster. Fire generally burned uphill, but that didn’t mean the stalker wasn’t contemplating a massive strike.
Lev studied the house from this position. Rikki was in the habit of sitting on her kitchen porch each morning and having her coffee. There was a clear line of sight to the porch. The stalker could have been here observing her often, but Lev doubted it. There was no evidence that visits to this particular spot had occurred at any other time.
He tracked the boot prints through the trees back to the road. The man had scouted along the ridge, but he hadn’t gone off the narrow deer trail. Lev didn’t have the feeling the stalker was experienced in the woods. He’d avoided deeper woods and didn’t try to go through heavier brush. He was no professional hit man. This wasn’t about a contract. But how could it be personal when the trouble had started when Rikki was only thirteen?
Lev cast around for more signs, but as far as he could tell, whoever was watching her had only come this one time and had stood in the grove of trees above her house, watching long enough to smoke four cigarettes. Lev hadn’t caught the smell of smoke, but the wind had been blowing toward Blythe’s home.
“Next time,” he whispered aloud. He knew with absolute certainty there would be a next time, but he’d be more prepared.
Rikki had set up security around her immediate home. She’d installed an amazing widespread sprinkler and water system throughout her yard and the farm. But she had no surveillance on the property anywhere. He would have to change that. He found where the stalker had parked the truck—not a car—and took note that the back tire was worn. He should have sent the hawk toward the road first.
“Next time,” he repeated, and searched for more signs, trying to get a good picture of the man responsible for several murders.
He liked fire. There was no doubt in Lev’s mind the stalker had been playing with it while he waited—almost absently playing with it. Fire intrigued him. Maybe the man even needed the crackling bright flames like some addiction—or maybe in the same way Rikki needed water. Elements attracted one another. Could she have run across another element as a child and this was a bizarre war she didn’t even know she was in?

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