The Sign of Seven Trilogy (23 page)

She knew she screamed as she clawed her way across the quaking floor. Teeth chattering against terror and cold, she rapped her shoulder against another machine. Think, think, think! she told herself, because something was coming, something was coming in the dark. She ran her shaking hands over the machine—recumbent bike—and with every prayer she knew ringing in her head, used its placement in the room to angle toward the door.

There was a crash behind her, and something thudded against her foot. She jerked up, tripped, jerked up again. No longer caring what might stand between herself and the door, she flung herself toward where she hoped it would be. With her breath tearing out of her lungs, she ran her hands over the wall.

“Find it, goddamn it, Quinn. Find the goddamn door!”

Her hand bumped the hinges, and on a sob she found the knob. Turned, pulled.

The light burst in front of her eyes, and Cal's body—already in motion—rammed hers. If she'd had any breath left, she'd have lost it. Her knees didn't get a chance to buckle as he wrapped his arms around her, swung her around to use his body as a shield between hers and the room beyond.

“Hold on, now. Can you hold on to me?” His voice was eerily calm as he reached behind him and pulled the door closed. “Are you hurt? Tell me if you're hurt.” His hands were already skimming over her, before they came up to her face, gripped it.

Before his mouth crushed down on hers.

“You're all right,” he managed, propping her against the stone of the building as he dragged off his coat. “You're okay. Here, get into this. You're freezing.”

“You were there.” She stared up into his face. “You were there.”

“Couldn't get the door open. Key wouldn't work.” He took her hands, rubbed them warm between his. “My truck's right up there, okay. I want you to go up, sit in my truck. I left the keys in it. Turn on the heat. Sit in my truck and turn on the heat. Can you do that?”

She wanted to say yes. There was something in her that wanted to say yes to anything he asked. But she saw, in his eyes, what he meant to do.

“You're going in there.”

“That's what I have to do. What you have to do is go sit in the truck for a few minutes.”

“If you go in, I go in.”

“Quinn.”

How, she wondered, did he manage to sound patient and annoyed at the same time? “I need to as much as you, and I'd hate myself if I huddled in your truck while you went in there. I don't want to hate myself. Besides, it's better if there's two of us. It's better. Let's just do it. Just do it, and argue later.”

“Stay behind me, and if I say get out, you get out. That's the deal.”

“Done. Believe me, I'm not ashamed to hide behind you.”

She saw it then, just the faintest glimmer of a smile in his eyes. Seeing it settled her nerves better than a quick shot of brandy.

He turned his key again, keyed in the touch pad. Quinn held her breath. When Cal opened the door, the lights were on. Al Roker's voice cheerily announced the national weather forecast. The only sign anything had happened was her sports bottle under the rack of free weights.

“Cal, I swear, the power went out, then the room—”

“I saw it. It was pitch-black in here when you came through the door. Those weights were all over the floor. I could see them rolling around from the light coming in the door. The floor was heaving. I saw it, Quinn. And I heard it from outside the door.”

He'd rammed that door twice, he remembered, put his full weight into it, because he'd heard her screaming, and it had sounded like the roof was caving in.

“Okay. My things are in the locker room. I really want to get my things out of the locker.”

“Give me the key, and I'll—”

“Together.” She gripped his hand. “There's a scent, can you smell it? Over and above my workout and panic sweat.”

“Yeah. I always thought it must be what brimstone smells like. It's fading.” He smiled, just a little, as she stopped to pick up a ten-pound free weight, gripped it like a weapon.

He pushed open the door of the women's locker room. It was as ordered and normal as the gym. Still, he took her key, nudged her behind him before he opened her locker. Moving quickly, she dragged on her sweats, exchanged coats. “Let's get out of here.”

He had her hand as they walked back out and Matt walked in.

He was young, the college-jock type, doing the part-time attendant, occasional personal trainer gig. A quick, inoffensive smirk curved on his lips as he saw them come out of the women's locker room together. Then he cleared his throat.

“Hey, sorry I'm late. Damnedest thing. First my alarm didn't go off, and I know how that sounds. Then my car wouldn't start. One of those mornings.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed as she put back the weight, retrieved her water bottle. “One of those. I'm done for the day.” She tossed him the locker key. “See you later.”

“Sure.”

She waited until they were out of the building. “He thought we'd been—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Ever do it in a locker room?”

“As that was actually my first foray into a girl's locker room, I have to say no.”

“Me, either. Cal, have you got time to come over, have coffee—God, I'll even cook breakfast—and talk about this?”

“I'm making time.”

 

S
HE TOLD HIM EVERYTHING THAT HAD HAPPENED
while she scrambled eggs. “I was scared out of my mind,” she finished as she carried the coffee into the little dining room.

“No, you weren't.” Cal set the plates of eggs and whole-wheat toast on the table. “You found the door, in the pitch-black, and with all that going on, you kept your head and found the door.”

“Thanks.” She sat. She wasn't shaking any longer, but the inside of her knees still felt like half-set Jell-O. “Thanks for saying that.”

“It's the truth.”

“You were there when I opened the door, and that was one of the best moments of my life. How did you know to be there?”

“I came in early because I wanted to swing by here, see how you were. Talk to you. Gage—”

“I know about that. Tell me the rest of this first.”

“Okay. I turned off Main to come around the back way, come here, and I saw Ann Hawkins. I saw her standing in front of the door. I heard you screaming.”

“From inside your truck, on the street. That far away—through stone walls, you heard me?”

“I heard you.” It hadn't been one of the best moments of his life. “When I jumped out, ran toward the door, I heard crashing, thumping, God knows what from inside. I couldn't get the goddamn door open.”

She heard it now, the emotion in his voice, the fear he hadn't let show while they were doing what needed doing. She rose, did them both a favor and crawled right into his lap.

She was still there, cradled in his arms, when Cybil strolled in.

“Hi. Don't get up.” She took Quinn's chair. “Anyone eating this?” Studying them, Cybil took a forkful of eggs. “You must be Cal.”

“Cybil Kinski, Caleb Hawkins. We had a rough morning.”

Layla stepped in with a coffee mug and sleepy eyes that clouded with concern the minute she saw Quinn. “What happened?”

“Have a seat, and we'll run it through for both of you.”

“I need to see the place,” Cybil said as soon as the story was told. “And the room in the bowling alley, anyplace there's been an incident.”

“Try the whole town,” Quinn said dryly.

“And I need to see the clearing, this stone, as soon as possible.”

“She's bossy,” Quinn told Cal.

“I thought you were, but I think she beats you out. You can come into the bowling center anytime you like. Quinn can get you into the fitness center, but if I can't be there, I'll make sure either Fox or Gage is. Better, both of them. As far as the Pagan Stone goes, I talked with Fox and Gage about that last night. We're agreed that the next time we go, we all go. All of us. I can't make it today and neither can Fox. Sunday's going to be best.”

“He's organized and take-charge,” Cybil said to Quinn.

“Yes.” She pressed a kiss to Cal's cheek. “Yes, he is. And I've made you let your eggs get cold.”

“It was a worthwhile trade-off. I'd better get going.”

“We still have a lot to talk about. Listen, maybe the three of you should come to dinner.”

“Is someone cooking?” Cal asked.

“Cyb is.”

“Hey!”

“You ate my breakfast. Plus you actually cook. But in the meantime, just one thing.” She slid out of his lap so he could stand. “Would Fox hire Layla?”

“What? Who? Why?” Layla sputtered.

“Because you need a job,” Quinn reminded her. “And he needs an office manager.”

“I don't know anything about—you just can't—”

“You managed a boutique,” Quinn reminded her, “so that's half the job. Managing. You're on the anal side of organized, Miss Colored Index Cards and Charts, so I say you can file, keep a calendar, and whatever with the best of them. Anything else, you'll pick up as you go. Ask Fox, okay, Cal?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“She calls me bossy,” Cybil commented as she finished Quinn's coffee.

“I call it creative thinking and leadership. Now, go fill that mug up again while I walk Cal to the door so I can give him a big, sloppy you're-my-hero kiss.”

Cybil smiled after them as Quinn pulled Cal out of the room. “She's in love.”

“Really?”

Now Cybil turned her smile on Layla. “That got your mind off taking a bite out of her for pushing that job in your face.”

“I'll get back to that. Do you think she's in love with Cal—the uppercase
L
?”

“About to be all caps, in bold letters.” She picked up the mug and rose. “Q likes to direct people,” she said, “but she's careful to try to direct them toward something helpful, or at least interesting. She wouldn't push this job business if she didn't think you could handle it.”

She blew out a breath as she walked back toward the kitchen. “What the hell am I supposed to fix for dinner?”

I
T WAS HARD FOR CAL TO SEE BILL TURNER AND
say nothing about Gage being in town. But Cal knew his friend. When and if Gage wanted his father to know, Gage would tell him. So Cal did his best to avoid Bill by closing himself in his office.

He dealt with orders, bills, reservations, contacted their arcade guy to discuss changing out one of their pinball machines for something jazzier.

Checking the time, he judged if Gage wasn't awake by now, he should be. And so picked up the phone.

Not awake, Cal decided, hearing the irritation in Gage's voice, hasn't had coffee. Ignoring all that, Cal launched into an explanation of what happened that morning, relayed the dinner plans, and hung up.

Now, rolling his eyes, Cal called Fox to run over the same information, and to tell Fox that Layla needed a job and he should hire her to replace Mrs. Hawbaker.

Fox said, “Huh?”

Cal said, “Gotta go,” and hung up.

There, duty done, he considered. Satisfied, he turned to his computer and brought up the information on the automatic scoring systems he wanted to talk his father into installing.

It was past time for the center to do the upgrade. Maybe it was foolish to think about that kind of investment if everything was going to hell in a few months. But, if everything was going to hell in a few months, the investment wouldn't hurt a thing.

His father would say some of the old-timers would object, but Cal didn't think so. If they wanted to keep score by hand, the center would provide the paper score sheets and markers. But he thought if someone showed them how it worked, gave them a few free games to get used to the new system, they'd jump on.

They could get them used and reconditioned, which was part of the argument he was prepared to make. They had Bill onboard, and he could fix damn near anything.

It was one thing to be a little kitschy and traditional, another to be old-fashioned.

No, no, that wasn't the tack to take with his father. His father liked old-fashioned. Better to use figures. Bowling accounted for more than half, closer to sixty percent, of their revenue, so—

He broke off at the knock on his door and inwardly winced, thinking it was Bill Turner.

But it was Cal's mother who popped her head in. “Too busy for me?”

“Never. Here to bowl a few games before the morning league?”

“Absolutely not.” Frannie loved her husband, but she liked to say she hadn't taken a vow to love, honor, and bowl. She came in to sit down, then angled her head so she could see his computer screen. Her lips twitched. “Good luck with that.”

“Don't say anything to Dad, okay?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Who are you having lunch with?”

“How do you know I'm having lunch with anyone?”

He gestured to her pretty fitted jacket, trim pants, heeled boots. “Too fancy for shopping.”

“Aren't you smart? I do have a few errands, then I'm meeting a friend for lunch. Joanne Barry.”

Fox's mother, Cal thought, and just nodded.

“We have lunch now and then, but she called me yesterday, specifically to see if I could meet her today. She's worried. So I'm here to ask you if there's anything I should know, anything you want to tell me before I see her.”

“Things are as under control as I can make them, Mom. I don't have the answers yet. But I have more questions, and I think that's progress. In fact, I have one you could ask Fox's mom for me.”

“All right.”

“You could ask if there's a way she could find out if any of her ancestors were Hawkins.”

“You think we might be related somehow? Would it help if we are?”

“It would be good to know the answer.”

“Then I'll ask the question. Now answer one for me. Are you all right? Just a yes or no is good enough.”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.” She rose. “I have half a dozen things on my list before I meet Jo.” She started for the door, said,
“Damn it”
very quietly under her breath, and turned back. “I wasn't going to ask, but I have no willpower over something like this. Are you and Quinn Black serious?”

“About what?”

“Caleb James Hawkins, don't be dense.”

He would've laughed, but that tone brought on the Pavlovian response of hunched shoulders. “I don't exactly know the answer. And I'm not sure it's smart to get serious, in that way, with so much going on. With so much at stake.”

“What better time?” Frannie replied. “My levelheaded Cal.” She put her hand on the knob, smiled at him. “Oh, and those fancy scoring systems? Try reminding your father how much his father resisted going to projection-screen scoreboards thirty-five years ago, give or take.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

Alone, Cal printed out the information on the automatic systems, new and reconditioned, then shut down long enough to go downstairs and check in with the front desk, the grill, the play area during the morning leagues games.

The scents from the grill reminded him he'd missed breakfast, so he snagged a hot pretzel and a Coke before he headed back up to his office.

So armed, he decided since everything was running smoothly, he could afford to take a late-morning break. He wanted to dig a little deeper into Ann Hawkins.

She'd appeared to him twice in three days. Both times, Cal mused, had been a kind of warning. He'd seen her before, but only in dreams. He'd wanted her in dreams, Cal admitted—or Giles Dent had, working through him.

These incidents had been different, and his feelings different.

Still, that wasn't the purpose, that wasn't the point, he reminded himself as he gnawed off a bite of pretzel.

He was trusting Quinn's instincts about the journals. Somewhere, at some time, there had been more. Maybe they were in the old library. He certainly intended to get in there and search the place inch by inch. If, God, they'd somehow gotten transferred into the new space and mis-shelved or put in storage, the search could be a nightmare.

So he wanted to know more about Ann, to help lead him to the answers.

Where had she been for nearly two years? All the information, all the stories he'd heard or read indicated she'd vanished the night of the fire in the clearing and hadn't returned to the Hollow until her sons were almost two.

“Where did you go, Ann?”

Where would a woman, pregnant with triplets, go during the last weeks before their births? Traveling had to have been extremely difficult. Even for a woman without the pregnancy to weigh her down.

There had been other settlements, but nothing as far as he remembered for a woman in her condition to have walked or even ridden to. So logically, she'd had somewhere to go close by, and someone had taken her in.

Who was most likely to take a young, unmarried woman in? A relative would be his first guess.

Maybe a friend, maybe some kindly old widow, but odds were on family.

“That's where you went first, when there was trouble, wasn't it?”

While it wasn't easy to find specifics on Ann Hawkins, there was plenty of it on her father—the founder of the Hollow.

He'd read it, of course. He'd studied it, but he'd never read or studied it from this angle. Now, he brought up all the information he'd previously downloaded on his office computer relating to James Hawkins.

He took side trips, made notes on any mention of relatives, in-laws. The pickings were slim, but at least there was something to pick from. Cal was rolling with it when someone knocked on his door. He surfaced as Quinn poked her head in just as his mother had that morning.

“Working. I bet you hate to be interrupted. But…”

“It's okay.” He glanced at the clock, saw with a twinge of guilt his break had lasted more than an hour. “I've been at it longer than I meant to.”

“It's dog-eat-dog in the bowling business.” She said it with a smile as she came in. “I just wanted you to know we were here. We took Cyb on a quick tour of the town. Do you know there's no place to buy shoes in Hawkins Hollow? Cyb's saddened by that, as she's always on the hunt. Now she's making noises about bowling. She has a vicious competitive streak. So I escaped up here before she drags me into that. The hope was to grab a quick bite at your grill—maybe you could join us—before Cyb…”

She trailed off. Not only hadn't he said a word, but he was staring at her. Just staring. “What?” She brushed a hand over her nose, then up over her hair. “Is it my hair?”

“That's part of it. Probably part of it.”

He got up, came around the desk. He kept his eyes on her face as he moved past her. As he shut and locked the door.

“Oh.
Oh
. Really? Seriously? Here? Now?”

“Really, seriously. Here and now.” She looked flustered, and that was a rare little treat. She looked, every inch of her, amazing. He couldn't say why he'd gone from pleased to see her to aroused in the snap of a finger, and he didn't much care. What he knew, without question, was he wanted to touch her, to draw in her scent, to feel her body go tight, go loose. Just go.

“You're not nearly as predictable as you should be.” Watching him now, she pulled off her sweater, unbuttoned the shirt beneath it.

“I should be predictable?” Without bothering with buttons, he pulled his shirt over his head.

“Hometown boy from a nice, stable family, who runs a third-generation family business. You should be predictable, Caleb,” she said as she unbuttoned her jeans. “I like that you're not. I don't mean just the sex, though major points there.”

She bent down to pull off her boots, tossing her hair out of her eyes so she could look up at him. “You should be married,” she decided, “or on your way to it with your college sweetheart. Thinking about 401(k)s.”

“I think about 401(k)s. Just not right now. Right now, Quinn, all I can think about is you.”

That gave her heart a bounce, even before he reached out, ran his hands down her bare arms. Even before he drew her to him and seduced her mouth with his.

She may have laughed when they lowered to the floor, but her pulse was pounding. There was a different tone from when they were in bed. More urgency, a sense of recklessness as they tangled together in a giddy heap on the office floor. He tugged her bra down so he could use his lips, his teeth, his tongue on her breasts until her hips began to pump. She closed her hand around him, found him hard, made him groan.

He couldn't wait, not this time. He couldn't savor; needed to take. He rolled, dragging her over so she could straddle him. Even as he gripped her hips, she was rising. She was taking him in. When she leaned forward for a greedy kiss, her hair fell to curtain their faces. Surrounded by her, he thought. Her body, her scent, her energy. He stroked the line of her back, the curve of her hips as she rocked and rocked and rocked him through pleasure toward desperation.

Even when she arched back, even with his vision blurred, the shape of her, the tones of her enthralled him.

She let herself go, simply steeped herself in sensation. Hammering pulses and speed, slick bodies and dazzling friction. She felt him come, that sudden, sharp jerk of his hips, and was thrilled. She had driven him to lose control first, she had taken him over. And now she used that power, that thrill, to drive herself over that same edgy peak.

She slid down from it, and onto him so they could lie there, heated, a little stunned, until they got their breath back. And she began to laugh.

“God, we're like a couple of teenagers. Or rabbits.”

“Teenage rabbits.”

Amused, she levered up. “Do you often multitask in your office like this?”

“Ah…”

She gave him a little poke as she tugged her bra back in place. “See, unpredictable.”

He held out her shirt. “It's the first time I've multitasked in this way during working hours.”

Her lips curved as she buttoned her shirt. “That's nice.”

“And I haven't felt like a teenage rabbit since I was.”

She leaned over to give him a quick peck on the lips. “Even nicer.” Still on the floor, she scooted into her pants as he did the same. “I should tell you something.” She reached for her boots, pulled one on. “I think…No, saying ‘I think' is a cop-out, it's the coward's way.”

She took a deep breath, yanked on the other boot, then looked him dead in the eye. “I'm in love with you.”

The shock came first—fast, arrow-point shock straight to the gut. Then the concern wrapped in a slippery fist of fear. “Quinn—”

“Don't waste your breath with the ‘we've only known each other a couple of weeks' gambit. And I really don't want to hear the ‘I'm flattered, but,' either. I didn't tell you so you could say anything. I told you because you should know. So first, it doesn't matter how long we've known each other. I've known me a long time, and I know me very well. I know what I feel when I feel it. Second, you should be flattered, goes without saying. And there's no need to freak out. You're not obligated or expected to feel what I feel.”

“Quinn, we're—all of us—are under a lot of pressure. We don't even know if we'll make it through to August. We can't—”

“Exactly so. Nobody ever knows that, but we have more reason to worry about it. So, Cal.” She framed his face with her hands. “The moment's important. The right-this-minute matters a whole hell of a lot. I doubt I'd have told you otherwise, though I can be impulsive. But I think, under other circumstances, I'd have waited for you to catch up. I hope you do, but in the meantime, things are just fine the way they are.”

“You have to know I—”

“Don't, absolutely don't tell me you care about me.” The first hint of anger stung her voice. “Your instinct is to say all the cliches people babble out in cases like this. They'll only piss me off.”