A Deep and Dark December (36 page)

“With true power comes responsibility. I’ll teach you as my father taught me. You’ll be the greatest Influencer yet.”

Graham jerked back as his father’s words truly sank in. Power. Heritage. Influencer. Ham wanted his son to be like him, like his father and his father before him and so on, going back six generations. Murder and manipulation were in his blood, sewn into his genes.

“Didn’t you ever wonder,” Ham asked, his tone conversational, “why your confession rate was the highest in the precinct? How you could talk anyone into anything? How if you really put your mind to it, you could have anything you wanted?”

Ham looked down at Erin. “How you could get this one to drop her boyfriend and fall flat on her back for you?” Ham turned his gaze back to his son. “That’s your heritage, son. We’re Influencers. Protectors of this town.”

Graham stumbled back a step, a guttural moan ripped from his chest.
No!
Everything in his life, everything he’d ever thought he’d worked for, every person he’d met, every job he had, every case he’d solved, every woman he’d ever taken to bed…had any of that been real? Had he earned even one success? Or had it all come from his ability to manipulate people to do what he wanted?

“No,” Graham whispered. The enormity of everything in his life being stripped away from him brought him to his knees.

And Erin too. Was what they’d shared even real? Had she confided in him because she’d trusted him or because he’d unknowingly compelled her to do it? Had she gone to bed with him because she wanted him or was it because
he
wanted
her
? Had he, in a sense, raped her?

“No,” he moaned, dropping to all fours in the rocky soil. He couldn’t catch his breath. Blackness crowded his vision. He gripped the soil, the rocks biting into his flesh the only real things left for him.

His father’s feet appeared in his hazed line of sight. “You’ll come to accept your power, develop it, and use it. I’ll teach you as my father taught me.”

“I don’t want it!”

“How could you not want your God given gift? How could you not grow it and use it as He intended?”

“God given?” Graham staggered to his feet, a rising, churning tide of anger swelling within him. “What you did was not sanctioned by God or anyone else. You killed people. You killed your own child!”

“Grown or not, you don’t get to talk to me like that.” Ham reached out to put a shaky hand on Graham’s shoulder. “Son—”

Graham jerked away. “Don’t call me that. Don’t ever touch me again.”

“You don’t mean that.” Ham took a wobbly step forward. “You’re in shock. I was just like you—”

“You’re
nothing
like me.” He couldn’t believe this was the man who’d raised him. Who’d showed him how to shoot a gun, catch a pass, and build a fort. The man who’d taught him right from wrong, for fuck’s sake.

He turned away from his father and caught sight of Erin still on the ground as though she was injured or couldn’t get up. His face burned with shame. He’d never be able to look her in the eye again, knowing he’d taken away her free will. He’d never be able to hold her and kiss her without wondering if she really welcomed his attentions. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he swallowed back the vomit that climbed the back of his throat.

He moved toward Erin and knelt down. He wanted to touch her, hold her, and tell her everything would be all right. But he no longer had the right. He balled his fists at his sides. “Are you okay?”

Her lips were still pressed together as though glued shut. He realized that she’d hardly moved an inch since he’d arrived.

He turned back to his father, pointing at Erin. “What have you done to her?”

“Go home, son. Let me deal with this.”

“Release her. Now!”

“I’m not going to do that. Our legacy is a closely guarded secret. I can’t let her go. She’s your Eve. She’ll tempt you away from your true purpose, your calling.”

Graham lunged at his father, grasping the man’s shirt in his fists. “Let her go or I swear to God—”

“Do not use the Lord’s name in vain!” Ham gasped, his cheeks flamed red, his eyes bulging and red-rimmed.

Graham shook him. “Let her go!”

“No. Go home.”

And then he knew. Ham was going to kill Erin. His skin was suddenly too tight to contain the rage that boiled and swelled within him. Before he realized what he meant to do, he’d pulled his gun and pointed it at Ham’s head. He pressed it against the man’s temple.

“Let. Her. Go.”

Ham’s eyes widened and he went a slack. “Son—”

He twisted his fist, bunching Ham’s shirt tighter against his throat. “I told you not to call me that anymore,” he said, pushing the words through gritted teeth. “You’re nothing to me.”

“You…you don’t mean that. You’re just—”

“Don’t tell me what I am! You don’t get to tell me anything ever again.” He brought Ham closer, raising him up by the shirt until Ham’s feet barely touched the ground. “Let her go. Now!”

Erin gasped for breath behind him. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

“You’re making…a mistake,” Ham panted. “She knows too much. She knows our secret.”

He pressed the nozzle of the gun harder against Ham’s temple. “My only mistake was believing in you.”

“Graham.” Erin’s voice was weak, but brought a flood of relief to him.

She was all right.

“I’m still your father,” Ham rasped.

“You’re nothing but a lying, cheating murderer.”

Erin struggled to her feet. With one hand pressed to her neck, she put a gentle hand on Graham’s shoulder. “Graham.”

He flinched from the contact. He’d never really be sure if her touch was real, if anything between them was or would ever be real. Ham’s revelation had stripped him of everything. He’d never be able to do anything, get close to anyone without wondering if it was really his or not.

“Go home, Erin.”

“I can’t.”

He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was crying. He fought the urge to pull her into his arms by twisting a little harder on Ham’s shirt. Ham’s cane clattered to the ground as he grabbed Graham’s wrist. Graham didn’t want Erin to see him like this. She must already think him a monster, wondering the same things he had about their relationship, doubting everything they’d shared.

“I need him to…to release my dad and my aunt,” she said.

“Do it,” he ordered Ham. “Now.”

Ham gasped like a landed fish, his face mottled and strained. “No.”

He yanked on Ham’s shirt. “I said, do it!”

Ham glared at him for a moment and then sagged, his eyes rolling back into his head. Graham scrambled to catch him before they both went down, dropping his gun to catch the back of Ham’s head. He lowered Ham to the ground.

Erin knelt beside him. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

“He can’t die,” she said on a sob. “He has to release my aunt and my dad.”

Graham checked Ham’s pulse, his own battering out a hard rhythm. It was weak, but there. He let out a relieved breath. It was sick, but no matter what the man had done Graham couldn’t bring himself to wish for his death. He pulled out his cell phone to call an ambulance. Erin put a hand on his arm. Her touch felt wrong. He stood and moved away to make the call, not wanting her to see how much it killed him to have her near and not be able to touch her.

Ending the call, he looked out over the ocean, everything in him churning and crashing like the waves below. He bent over, gripping his knees, trying to catch his breath. He’d pulled his gun on his own father, so close to pulling the trigger, he could almost hear the gunshot, imagine Ham’s head jerking back, and the acrid smell of gunpowder and death.

Erin laid her hand on his back. He shrugged her off and moved away, out of reach. He wished she’d stop doing that. It hurt too much.

~*~

Erin didn’t know how to reach Graham. Every attempt she made, he rejected. She knew a little something about what he was going through. She’d been through it herself when she’d first come into her ability and her father explained how everyone in their family had some kind of ability. She’d never imagined there could be another family like hers in San Rey.

Graham kept his distance, his gaze moving past her to his father, then back out at the ocean. He wouldn’t look at her or acknowledge her. She ached for him.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, trying to reach him. “He fooled all of us.”

“Go home, Erin.”

His rejection stung. She reached out to touch him, then pulled the gesture. He’d only shrug it off. Again.

“I’m not leaving you like this.”

“Go home. I don’t want you here.” His words didn’t match his tone.

She moved in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “I’m not leaving you. You need me.”

“What I need is for you to go home. Now.”

“I’m not leaving. I care about you, Graham.”

“Do you? How can you be sure?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How can you be sure about anything with me?”

“What?” Her confusion slowly morphed into understanding. His ability. He thought…
Oh, my god.

He broke into her thoughts. “Did you want to tell me about your ability?”

“No, not at first, but you convinced—”

“I convinced you to tell me,” he finished for her. “And when you kissed me that first time, was it because you wanted to?”

“Of course.”

“Really? Because I really wanted you to kiss me. That’s all I could think about that night when I came up here and found you. You kissing me. And then you did.”

“Graham—”

“And when we had sex—” he broke off and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Did you really want to?”

“You can’t… Yes. God, yes. I wanted you so bad.”

“Really? Because I wanted you. I really, really wanted you. But most of all, I wanted you to want me. More than Keith, more than anyone you’d ever been with.”

The anguish in his voice broke her heart. She couldn’t help the tears that fell, couldn’t stop the need to go to him and wrap her arms around him. He stiffened in her embrace, turning his head away, his jaw clenched.

“I wanted you more than anything,” she whispered fiercely, clinging harder to him even as he held his arms tight at his sides. “I want you now. I can’t imagine a day going by when I wouldn’t want you, when I wouldn’t love you.”

He finally looked at her, his gaze hot and searching. He started to say something.

Her body jolted.

A sharp pain punctured her shoulder, spinning her away from him.

The firecracker sound came late, just as he reached for her. The pain hit again, this time in her hip. The ground flew up towards her. Graham caught her, hanging her back over his arm. She heard another shot, this one not for her.

“Graham!” she shouted as the sky went black.

Graham expected to feel something. Anything. But the void that had punctured his chest when Erin was shot radiated out, spreading through every cell in his body, as though he could not only feel nothing, he
was
nothing. Watching the medical team work over Ham’s body, making a valiant effort at keeping the old man alive, he stood at the foot of the hospital bed and tried with every part of him to think
nothing
.

If Ham died, it would be from the bullets Graham had put in him and not because Graham had inadvertently used his ability wishing for Ham’s heart to just…stop.

He didn’t have to close his eyes to recall the way Erin’s body had jerked, the way her eyes had widened and her lips had parted as the first bullet hit. Something in him—training, muscle memory—recognized what was happening before his brain could wrap around it, and he was already going for his back up piece as he threw an arm out to catch her. And then the gun was in his hand, his finger pulling the trigger when the second bullet hit her.

He didn’t remember the sound of his gun firing. Erin’s scream had filled his head, blocking every other sound out, including whatever it was his father had said in that last instant before Graham’s finger had fully depressed the trigger. Then, again. And again. Until it clicked empty and Ham lay motionless.