The Empath (The Above and Beyond Series Book 1) (5 page)
Read The Empath (The Above and Beyond Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Jody Klaire
Serena put her keys away. Exactly, where was she going? To charge off into the forest and take down a killer? To save a girl’s life and blow her cover permanently?
“Can you tell anyone? Your people?”
“My people? Like Val and the other guards?”
Aeron closed her eyes and hung her head. “I hope it’s worth it.”
Serena shoved her hands in her pockets. “That’s not my call to make.”
“Ain’t there anyone? She’s going to suffer. It won’t stop there.”
“Will it make you have a fit again?”
Aeron opened her eyes and frowned. “What?”
Serena walked to Aeron and handed her a chocolate bar from the cooler. “Will it make you have another fit, will you keep seeing her?”
Aeron nodded. “I’ll live every second if she’s like Mari.”
Serena nodded and pulled her keys back out of her pocket on the way to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“If your safety is in question I need to get advice from another doctor. Help stop the fits.”
“Thank you,” Serena heard Aeron whisper as she walked out of the door.
Serena walked to her car completely confused at how unraveled she had become. She’d heard of other agents who got to a stage when the lies all rolled into one and they couldn’t operate anymore. Is that what was happening?
Aeron was a friendly, a protectee that Serena had no doubt wouldn’t harm anyone intentionally but what about the next placement? What if the protectee wasn’t a friendly? What if she slipped up then? She got into her car and pulled out the hidden flap in the dash. She took out the phone inside and hit her boss’s number.
“What is it?”
“Reference 0128428, subject had a 3-2-4, nearly fell off the roof. The Unsub may be in or near the Rapid Lodge.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“No.”
Serena only prayed that was true. They were miles from anywhere.
“At no point will you allow the subject to get near.”
“Will you send someone to clear it up?”
“It’s none of our concern.”
Serena bit her tongue. Her boss was silent for a moment before sighing. “Fine. I’ll send someone . . . keep the subject at the mill.”
Her boss disconnected, and she breathed out slowly. She was asking a massive favor, she was putting her career on the line. “What career? If you can’t play doctor in a lonely mill with one woman then how the hell can you pull off anything else?”
Serena got out of the car and walked into the mill.
Aeron was already stacking up the tiles they would need to put on the roof. “We need to fix the holes first, the boards, then the tiles. It’s hammer and nails, I’m afraid . . . Nan didn’t do nail guns.”
Serena nodded, remembering helping out her father when he fixed the roof after the winter. She had fond memories of good old hammer and nails.
“Doc, you coming?”
Serena looked up and nodded, shaking her memories from her mind. “Just don’t expect me to talk to you if I break a nail.”
Chapter 39
WHEN DARCY OPENED her eyes, the storm was almost upon her. Her vision so blurred, her body so beaten that she couldn’t move. She was so tired, so worn. A blurred figure seemed to hover over the ground. It was in front of her but when she tried to focus, her eyes flickered in her head.
Darcy tried to speak, the words in her head saying one thing, her own voice in her ears, strangely saying something different. Something that made no sense, just noises.
The figure walked over to her. She tried to ask it for help, again more noises, again only strange sounds.
It spoke back, loud and booming, so much so that the tone rattled the walls of her mind and made her sick.
She heard it laugh at her as she retched on the ground and it spoke to her again. It was near now, and in a fit of anger she pushed out. It thudded against something nearby.
The reward was a rope sliding around her neck.
ELI TRIED NOT to sigh as Mayor Casey and his lawyers bustled into his office after lunch. So far the search for Darcy Toughton had yielded nothing. Mrs. Jenkins had seen her leave work and walk in the direction of home. A home she had never reached.
Eli had every on- and off-duty officer and a posse of volunteers out looking for her, scouring every inch of land between Jenkins’ farm and her home. They had found nothing, not even a sign that she’d ever been there at all.
Jeff had found no DNA, no trace evidence, and no drag or tread marks anywhere and the last thing Eli needed right this moment was a run in with the mayor.
“Chief Lorelei, allow me to introduce my legal team,” Mayor Casey said.
Eli nodded at the paid vultures. He was surprised his ex-wife Iris wasn’t among them. “What can I do for you?”
“I want Aeron Lorelei out of this town.”
Eli sat back, his fist balled under his desk. “You may be the mayor, but you do not own the entire town.”
“I will buy the cabin from you, whatever the cost and you can just send your little freak show someplace else.”
Eli laughed. “Oh, you think I own the cabin? Unfortunately, Mr. Mayor, I don’t. Aeron does, along with the field and all the rest of the town . . . or have you forgotten?”
Mayor Casey narrowed his eyes. “What?”
Eli nodded to the lawyers who stopped smiling and scrabbled through the paperwork they had with them.
“The Lorelei family founded the place. It was their gold mine. It’s been handed down since then, every right, every blade of grass belongs to Aeron.”
The Mayor sneered. “It doesn’t—”
“Sir, actually Chief Lorelei is correct,” one of the lawyers said. “He ensured the line was not broken by taking the Lorelei name on marriage. It’s all legal. Aeron Lorelei is the sole owner of Oppidum.”
Eli tried not to enjoy watching the mayor turn as purple as a prune. “You can lock her up if she commits a crime, you can hound her and heckle her and make her life hell but you cannot force her to move because you’re on her land. We all are.”
“She’s a murderer. A freak. A witch. That’s what she is!” Mayor Casey said.
Eli looked at the lawyers who were trying to usher a ranting Mayor Casey out of the office.
“You mark my words, Lorelei. I’ll see her behind bars. I’ll see she pays.”
Eli closed the door to his office and slumped back into his chair. Aeron didn’t have a clue how rich she was, she didn’t have a clue how much power she held. He had never told her anything.
Eli opened his desk drawer and pulled out the picture that he’d spent years drinking over. Lilia had been a clever woman. She’d seen that the town would remain in the family’s hands by persuading him to take her last name.
It had all been completely secret of course. The fact that the Lorelei family lived in the mill from the start had prevented them from being targets. They’d never demanded anything from the people on their land, but the steady income had filled their pockets. Time had forgotten the township belonged to them.
As long as someone carried the Lorelei name, the land was safe. It was the sole reason why Eli had taken Lilia’s name, and the reason why he had never relinquished it.
A bad father he no doubt was, a bad husband and man, but he would never take Aeron’s roots from underneath her. That and he would never throw that kind of weight onto Aeron’s shoulders. He was starting to understand that he may hold the name but it was Aeron who held the future in more ways than she realized.
Chapter 40
WE WERE EATING lunch after making great headway on the roof on an old bench in the front yard.
I sighed as I heard a car crunching up the lane. The squad car emerged from a cloud of dust and stopped on the edge of the grass. I knew it had to be about Darcy and I was pretty sure that I would be arrested. The sight of my father and Sam made me tense in expectation.
Llys touched my knee. “Let me handle this.”
Sam and my father climbed out of the car and exchanged glances, both looking a little baffled that I had company. Her presence made them shuffle and shrug, which eased my nerves, if only a small amount.
“Aeron, I need to ask you a couple of questions,” my father began.
Llys squeezed my knee again. “Keep it zipped.” She looked up. “Good afternoon, Chief Lorelei. My name is Doctor Serena Llys, Aeron’s psychiatrist.”
I noticed that she did not get up to greet them but forced them to walk over to us. She had begun some kind of psychological battle that I didn’t know much about.
My father nodded and smiled pleasantly. “I need to speak to Aeron alone, Doctor Llys.”
Llys shook her head. “I am Aeron’s legal representative. She’s been in my care for some time and so she assigned me as such.”
My father frowned and looked at me as if to question it. I simply nodded. No one would represent me when I was convicted, so it made sense that I’d ask someone I trusted.
“Very well, Doctor Llys, this is Deputy Chief Sam Casey. We would like to ask Aeron a couple of questions about her whereabouts over the past few days.”
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
My father put his hands on his hips. “I’m quite capable of doing my job, Doctor.”
Llys seemed unfazed. “I didn’t mean you. Deputy Chief Casey is the brother of Jake Casey is he not?”
Sam tensed at the sound of his brother’s name. I felt my stomach roll like a winter avalanche.
“Yes,” my father said. I could see his irritation in his mannerisms—hands on belt, frown deeper than the colors in fall.
“Don’t you think that’s a little inappropriate that Aeron was convicted of Jake Casey’s murder, yet you bring his brother to question her in another matter?” Llys asked.
“The mayor requested it,” Sam snapped.
I could see Llys pulling in her trap. “And does the mayor often command the local law enforcement?”
My father took his hat off and sighed. “Sam, go wait by the car.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Sam stood there in defiance for several moments. He had never been much for obeying the orders of someone else and he’d spent the entire time avoiding looking at me. Now he glared at me as if I should stick up for him.
My father glared at him. “Sam—”
“Going!” Sam stomped to the car, got in, and slammed the door.
My father turned to Llys. “He didn’t want to be here.”
“Then perhaps you should remember who is the police officer and who is being policed.”
My father scowled. I thought he was going to launch into a full blown argument but instead he turned to me. “Where were you between the hours of seven last night and ten this morning?”
I looked at Llys who nodded. “Here.”
“Can anyone verify this?”
“I can,” Llys answered.
“You?”
She nodded. “Me.”
My father scowled, looking at me as if I would deny it. “What the hell were you doing here?”
I kept my mouth well and truly shut, knowing that all I’d do was end up tangling me and Llys in some kind of web.
“Aeron contacted me, she was distressed at the events in the town and the way in which she was being treated by the officials,” Llys said. “She was worried that the murder of a woman who you dropped outside her cabin would be linked to her. I immediately came here to ensure that Aeron could not be the focus of a witch hunt of any kind.”
My father did bite at that. “Officials? I guess that means me, does it?”
“You, your deputy.” She nodded at the car. “It was you that removed her monitor and dropped the victim outside the cabin, was it not?”
My father’s face turned red. “I didn’t know that Natalia would get hurt . . .”
I heard the deep regret echo in his voice. Llys was making it sound like he was trying to frame me. I felt too lost at her argument to utter a word. Would he? Was he trying to get rid of me permanently? Would my own father do that?
“And the monitor?”
“To stop her coming into town.”
Llys looked like a cat about to pounce on a cornered mouse. My father was being tied up in knots.
“Doesn’t that play very nicely into someone’s hands who may wish to rid the town of both of you?” she asked.
My father opened and closed his mouth a few times. He looked at me, then he looked at Llys. “You think that’s . . .” He looked down at the ground with his tongue poking out. “Aeron, Darcy Toughton is missing,” he whispered. “You got any ideas?”
Llys shot me a look to tell me to shut the hell up. “Perhaps that flare may help you, Chief.”
My father looked up, as did I. She was pointing at a flare shot high over the forest quite a way from us.
My father looked at Llys, looked at me, and nodded as though he now understood something that was completely beyond my grasp.
“Thank you for your time, ladies,” he said as he sprinted to his car.
“Take your tablets,” I called after him.
He turned as though I’d just shot him. His eyes locked on mine. A second later he nodded again, got in the cruiser, and screeched off.
“Well, that went better than expected,” I said.
Llys looked at me like I’d just missed the entire conversation. She got up, walked to where the car had been, picked up a rock, and threw it into the river.
“What are you doing?”
“My job.” She brushed her hands together. “Now, let’s fix up the roof because I want to go and get you some clothes that fit.”
THE ROOF TOOK half the time I had expected it to. Llys and I worked really well as a team. Whoever she had been before she ended up here, she knew her way around a roof repair as well as I did. So, by mid afternoon I was fixing the axle on the side of the building and preparing it to get the wheel back on. With the roof fixed and the wheel working, the cabin would be up and running in no time and with electricity, we wouldn’t have to rely so much on the cook stove for warmth. I didn’t mind it, but the less propane I had hissin’ at me in a confined space the happier I would be.
As I was hanging on my climbing rope fixing up the wall, I ran over all Llys and my father had said to each other. I didn’t know what was going on, and the three people—Sam, my father, and Llys, I couldn’t read.
When you’re used to knowing too much, not knowing anything feels like running blind through a mine field. I didn’t like it, not even a bit.
My thoughts kept going back to the almost lawyer-like arguments that Llys threw at my father. How he’d taken my monitor off and dropped off Natalia to me. I was shocked cold by that thought. My father was many things in my eyes but did he hate me enough to frame me for murder? And was he himself capable of such a thing?
I hoped to heaven he wasn’t.
And what did Llys mean by the fact that someone could be trying to set both of us up? Who would want to get rid of my father? I mean, sure, he had me—I was an outcast but the folk around town liked him—didn’t they? I mean, why would they keep him as chief if they didn’t?
I looked down at the swirling clear waters. Llys had said she was doing her job. Doing what job? What was her job? As a defense attorney she would have trumped my mother any day. As a doctor, she must be amazing because in the last twenty-four hours, I felt more normal than I ever had—if I didn’t count the vision of Darcy.
I looked back down at the river. She’d thrown a stone into it, a stone that had been where the car had been. Why? I finished up the wall, trying not to think about it. The snatches I had from Llys told me that she was on my side, for whatever reason, and that she was trying to keep me from harm. I should leave well alone, shouldn’t I?
She kept saying that to push and prod at her mask would put us both in danger. She didn’t realize just how little I saw. Most of my questions about her being an agent were pretty much guesswork. Why would an agent be following me? Why would her duty here be more important than the murders of Natalia and Mari?
A gust of a bitter wind hit me out of nowhere and I swung on the end of the rope like a wind-chime.
“What?” I asked it, figuring it was Nan or Natalia.
The trees nearby howled with a gust leading my eye up to the sky. A huge, black, storm cloud was heading in. Not the cloud of despair over the town, no, even that was heading for cover. This storm cloud was the beginning of storm season. Nature had a way of trumping any other presence with its sheer force.
I climbed over to the side of the cabin and detached myself from the harness. We had a few hours yet but I needed to get the place storm proofed.
I looked at the wide eyes of Mrs. Squirrel as she sniffed the air. “You can camp inside with us. Okay?”
Mrs. Squirrel seemed relieved, and I detached her box and store, and placed her in the sturdiest and safest part of the house.
“You’ll be safe here,” I told her.
For that she sniffed my hand in thanks but my senses were starting to prickle. If a full moon can affect the fluid inside a human mind, then the might of Mother Nature, about to rage, most definitely affected the human heart. And my heart was thudding, this one was a big one.
Chapter 41
ELI LOOKED UP at the growing thunderheads, an ominous turret of white pluming up into the darkening sky. Anything to take his mind off the black zipped body bag being wheeled past him. The building columns looked as unsettled as he felt. Darcy had been found an hour too late by the hiker who had shot up the flare.
The whole situation tugged at his heart. He had worked big cases in the city, he had tracked down serial killers and seen their handiwork close up but this wasn’t the city. Out here, in Oppidum, it was safe, wasn’t it? Its people were small-minded folk who bickered and sniped yet stuck together like they’d been fixed with glue. To think one of them, and it could be one of them, had committed these sick crimes made his entire view of the world wobble.
Was it someone from the gypsy train trying to cover their tracks? Oh, the local folk would love that wouldn’t they? Blame the entire thing on the outsiders they hated. Could it be one of the people in town? The victims were all undesirables in most folks eyes, the Toughtons weren’t a liked family. Was someone trying to get rid of those they disliked?
Was it someone from out of town? Had someone scoped out Oppidum as a target? Was the killer out in the trees watching? Was the killer striking where the ground was already shaky with Aeron’s return?
And what about Aeron? He wanted to believe with all his heart that the girl wouldn’t and couldn’t do a thing to hurt anyone. Those were the thoughts he had as a father, but what about as police chief? He’d arrested her for Jake’s death and she’d recounted the whole thing in detail. There wasn’t even a lot of emotion. He’d figured it for shock but what if she was as bad as everyone said?
What if it
was
Aeron?
Eli shook his head. No, he wouldn’t even entertain the idea. She had that doctor with her to prove it now. A doctor that seemed a lot more filled in on the workings of the court and the town council than she should be.
He was glad that Aeron had someone to fight in her corner. Someone who had run rings around him. Was she right? Was the doc right about someone trying to rid the town of the Lorelei name? Who stood to benefit from that? The only way it would be up for sale was if there were no Loreleis alive.
Eli’s heart skipped a beat. What better way to ensure that than to have Aeron stand trial for serial killings.
The clouds grew grayer, darker, more menacing as the flashes sparked a rumble of thunder. Eli pulled out his radio. “Update from the weather center, Skip.”
“Storm force winds, flash floods, and maybe some electrical storms . . . ETA two hours,” Skip answered in seconds.
Eli looked up at the greenish-yellow light in the sky. He prayed it would only be that. His instinct told him not to take the chance and he surveyed the crime scene around them. Whatever evidence was there would have to be left. The entire town needed to be locked down and readied.
“I want everyone prepped, roads cleared.”
“Sir!” Skip answered.
Eli walked over to Jeff and his team. “Anything you haven’t already got, it gets left.”
Jeff looked like he was about to object. The ground trembled from a rolling rumble from the heavens. “Will do. You heard the chief. Move!”
Eli watched the men hurry around, clearing the last of their equipment. He noticed Michael, the forensics guy, was not moving from his spot.
“Hey, move it,” Eli told him.
Michael waved it away. “I found something. I need maybe fifteen minutes.”
Eli nodded and the rest of the team packed up the vans and drove off. Sam went ahead with Jeff, leaving just Eli and Michael.
“What did you find?” Eli asked.
Michael gently pulled something off a tree trunk. “I don’t know, but it’s not a part of the trunk.”
Eli looked over Michael’s shoulder. It looked like a hair or maybe a fiber of some sort. “Think it’s from the girl?”
Michael shrugged. “For all I know it could be from a critter of some sort . . . but . . . it caught my eye.”
Eli nodded and patted Michael on the shoulder as the sky let out another rumble, much louder—the storm was fast approaching.
“Got it,” Michael said and bagged up the piece. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Eli nodded, and they hurried to his cruiser. A flash forked out across the sky and the roar deepened.
“Don’t know about you,” Michael said. “But I wouldn’t want to be outside when she hits.”
Eli looked in his rear-view mirror at the monstrous black-and-gray fist gliding down over from the mountains. The cloud filled the sky like an avalanche hurtling toward the town. He couldn’t help but agree with Michael.
Anyone foolish enough to be out when that crashed through the town would be lucky to survive. Eli looked up at the thunderhead once more and floored it. Luck had nothing to do with it. If anyone was caught up in that, they’d need a miracle.
Chapter 42
I MOVED THE last of the supplies into the old corn store at the side of the mill and looked up at my work. It hadn’t taken long to storm proof the place and I was quite pleased at how quickly it had all come back to me.
A few of the windows were already smashed so I boarded them up completely. The wheel which was still growing its own meadow, was now bolted down with chains, the barn an’ everything was locked up and steadied.
I’d moved the camp, including all of Llys’s things and Mrs. Squirrel up the metal safety stairs into the storm shelter that I’d built in amongst the colossal pipe work on the first floor at the back. The metal landing gave us enough room to get out of the cramped space should we be in there for any amount
of time. It would keep us safe and dry from any flooding . .
. I hoped.
I could feel the heaviness in the air, my chest protesting the weight of the atmosphere. It was like breathing in thick, hot water. The forest was in panic mode. Birds crying out their warnings fled the tree tops in numbers. Flash floods, a thunderstorm that was what my senses were telling me. No doubt there’d be a few waterspouts. I just hoped the roof would hold out.
As I sat down on the old bench to eat something before my final checks, the unease covered me like a cold, dark blanket. I couldn’t shake the feeling no matter how much I tried to concentrate.
It wasn’t so much the killer or Natalia’s raging spirit but something else was nagging away in my mind, something unknown to me, something which was thumping through my veins faster than blood.
I looked up at the dirt track, hoping that Llys would hurry up. This storm was a bad one and for the first time I was a little scared to be alone.
“Come on, Doc. Come on,” I muttered as I looked up at the thick black thunderheads.
A warning rumble rattled through my body and mind, shaking me in more ways than one.
“Hurry up, Doc. Don’t make me ride this out alone.”
SERENA PULLED ONTO the main road and looked at the backpack and clothes she had gotten Aeron. She’d had to go to the tourist outdoor supply store in order to find anything in Aeron’s size. One pair of hiking boots and some sneakers on top of that had been like trying to pan for gold in Times Square.
The sky overhead darkened and Serena flicked on the headlights. Her instincts from childhood caused her to feel as though she needed to burrow for safety like a small animal. She hated storms. The vast column spilled toward her like lava, its igneous intentions evident. It was all too painful, too raw.
This was not the time to dwell on her father’s death but even so, the cloud above represented loss and heartache. This storm looked the same as the one that took him, as though it was coming for her now.
“When did you become superstitious? Get over it,” she told herself.
Even so, she took the phone from the dash and stowed it in her jeans, put the clothes and shoes in the pack and slung them on her back, along with her gun, ready to haul herself from the car. It was a stupid, childish reaction but one that enabled her to keep driving toward her worst nightmare.
As she got to the dirt track turn off, she glanced in her rear-view mirror. “What the—?”
Bang
.
Serena clung onto the steering wheel as a huge pickup slammed her from behind.
She pumped the brakes. Nothing. The pickup was too big. Too powerful. The river too close. Oh, God, she couldn’t stop. She gripped the wheel and yanked up the handbrake. The tires screamed as she hauled the steering wheel with all her strength, crashing her elbow into the door as the car flipped around. She pushed open the door, threw herself out, and thudded to the ground and rolled as the car crunched into a utility pole.
The momentum catapulted Serena off the edge of the road onto the mud-slick bank as her car fizzed somewhere above.
A sickened crunch sounded through her ears as something hard hit her head. The world spun violently, the mud sucking her down, down into swirling dark waters.
I LOOKED UP the road as I paced on the wet grass. The rain started to hammer down. Where the hell was she? She should be back by now. I didn’t know Llys well, but I knew enough to know that she understood how deadly storms could be. So where was she?
I looked at the bulging river, the rain hammering down into it, the raging waters bubbling. the stone that Llys had thrown still called me like some kind of forbidden treasure. I knew that to touch it was wrong, to touch it would tell me more about her, more than she wanted me to know.
I stood there warring with myself, the rain dripping from my hair into my eyes. What if she was hurt . . . ? What if she had been taken by the killer?
“Listen to yourself. She could probably handle herself a lot better than you,” I muttered.