A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (23 page)

The boy twitched, his eyes closing for a split second and his shoulders hunching.

“My, my,” Rose said. “That was an interesting reaction.” She crossed her arms and pursed her lips, before glancing back to the table where Akira sat. Should she mention him to Akira? But she hesitated.

She’d spent all the years of her brief life in Florida, in the 1940s and 1950s. She didn’t remember the war years, she’d been too young, but she remembered what life was like when she was a teenager. Dozens of black-owned homes were burned and bombed in Florida during those years. One time, over in Groveland, they’d had to call out the National Guard to stop the lynch mobs.

Accusing a black boy of messing with a white woman and a white girl? Why, that would be a fast way to get him murdered. Times had changed, of course, but in this crowded room of anxious people, Rose didn’t much feel like claiming a black boy was involved in a kidnapping just because of a nervous twitch.

Of course, she was also a ghost. It wasn’t like anyone was likely to listen to her, anyway. Akira would take her seriously, but Akira hated talking to people about anything ghosts said. She’d do it, but she wouldn’t like it.

“We do have one possible item of evidence,” Colin was saying to Carla. His eyes scanned the room and he waved over one of his deputies.

As the man wove his way through the tables, Emma passed a large white shopping bag of food over the counter to the boy. “Here you go.”

His eyes widened as he felt the weight of the bag and looked at the multiple containers within it. “That’s—um—you sure?”

Max Latimer, he’d listen, though. Rose liked him. She’d watched him inviting ghosts into the diner one day—not real ghosts, but ghosts he thought might be there—and found it right friendly of him. He didn’t usually realize it, but she often sat next to him while he ate and chatted to him. If she had even the slightest clue as to where his daughter was, she wanted to share it with him. But was this boy really a clue?

Emma’s smile held a glimmer of mischief. “Maggie is. She decides what goes in a special. Gotta say, though, you’re the first guy my age I’ve ever seen get spinach salad. Maybe she thinks it’ll be like a Popeye thing.”

He stared at her blankly.

Rose’s eyes widened. Spinach salad? Could that be for Natalya? Could Maggie be providing this boy with what Natalya wanted to eat without even knowing it? She tried to peek into the bag, to see what else was in there, but he was already closing it up, bundling the bag close to his chest.

Behind the boy, Colin held out a piece of paper his deputy had handed him to Carla. “Do you recognize this man?”

She glanced down at it, mouth opening as if to immediately respond, before pausing, her mouth closing. “Well,” she said slowly. “This looks a lot like Jack Thompson, one of our foster parents.” She raised her eyes to Colin’s.

“You know, like…” Emma bent her arm to show off her bicep to the boy, “super-strength?”

The boy shot a frantic glance over his shoulder, before grabbing the bag. “Um, thanks,” he blurted out. He retreated through the crowd, backing away until he’d almost reached the door, before turning and bolting through it.

Emma sighed. “Way to scare off the cute guy, Em,” she muttered to herself, before turning back to the next customer at the register.

“That little girl was not in our care before Christmas,” Carla was saying to Colin. “We would have known, we would have recognized her, she couldn’t have gone missing. We have procedures…” Her voice was rising, as Colin moved to reassure her.

“We don’t have any reason to believe he’s involved, ma’am. We’d just like to ask him a few questions, that’s all.”

Ah, drat. Rose had run out of time to be indecisive about whether to talk to Akira or not. With one last glance at the table where Akira sat, deep in conversation with Max and Grace, she darted out the door after the boy.

He was already rounding the corner. Rose hurried after him, wishing she’d learned Dillon’s trick with cell phones. The boy moved quickly, not running, but striding along at a brisk pace. Rose had no trouble keeping up with him. If she’d been alive, she would have been complaining and out-of-breath within minutes, but ghosts didn’t get tired.

“You sure don’t look like a kidnapper,” she told him. “Not that I’ve met many kidnappers, but I do watch a lot of television.”

He ignored her, of course, but Rose didn’t mind. She followed along, speculating on their destination, his relations, what subjects he liked in school, whether he had a girlfriend, his favorite television shows, if he enjoyed dancing or was one of those boys who just stood still while pretending to move, and anything else that popped into her head, as they wound their way out of town.

After they’d hiked for at least a mile along one of the main state roads connecting Tassamara to nearby towns, Rose said, “Your dinner must get pretty cold by the time you get home.” She was starting to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. Anything could be happening back in town and she would be missing it. She’d feel a right fool if she got home and Natalya was sitting peacefully with Kenzi, explaining how the whole thing had all been one big misunderstanding. It could happen.

But when the boy came to a crossroads and ducked into the woods by the side of the road, Rose didn’t hesitate to follow him. She stayed close to him, stepping on his heels unnoticed more than once as he wove his way through the forest. She didn’t understand how he knew where he was going. The moon was high, but under the trees, the shadows were impenetrable.

Rose thought they were still deep in the trees when she heard a quavering voice, say, “That you, Travis?”

“Yep.” Her boy’s answer was laconic as he pushed his way through some ferns and Rose realized they’d reached a stream.

“Did you get the food?” The speaker was a younger boy sitting in the bow of a canoe.

“You know it.” Her boy, Travis, leaned over and placed the bag of food by the other boy’s feet. “She gave us a lot this time.”

“Cookies?” The words were hopeful, the boy’s eyes bright as he looked up at Travis, but he made no move to open the bag.

“Didn’t check yet.” Travis paused, looking down at the boy. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

The boy dropped his head. “No,” he answered, but his voice was small.

“You okay, Mike?” Travis sounded surprisingly gentle.

“Oh, you’re a sweetheart, you are,” Rose said. She shifted around him so she could see his face, liking the way he talked to the younger boy.

“Heard a big splash, that’s all. Got scairt.” The last word came out in a mumble.

“Told you before, you’re way too big for a gator. It’s more scared of you than you are of it.” Travis made no move to get into the boat.

“You saw that big one. Thirteen foot long, it was! I’d be, like, breakfast. And not a good breakfast, neither. Not bacon and eggs, I’d be like a bowl a’ cold cereal.”

Travis chuckled. “Well, it didn’t get you,” he said indulgently. “You go ahead and see what we got. If we got cookies, you can have one while we head home. But we gotta get there fast.” On his last words, his voice lost its softness and his tone became grim. The light, now that they weren’t under the trees, was enough that Rose could see his lips shaped into a tight line.

“A boat ride? Oh, how fun,” Rose said with enthusiasm. As Travis positioned himself in the stern, she leaped lightly into the middle of the boat. The canoe was small and the floor was damp, but Rose sat down, cross-legged and spreading her skirts wide, ready to concentrate on the movement.

As a ghost, traveling in vehicles didn’t always work out for her. More than once, she’d been left behind as a car started when the vehicle moved through her and away instead of carrying her along. Her friend Dillon never had that problem, but he’d spent most of his ghostly life trapped inside a car. She thought he perhaps had an instinct for it she lacked. In her limited experiments, though, paying close attention to the moment the motion began triggered her energy to stay with the car. She hoped it would work with a boat, too.

It did.

“Oh, yay,” Rose said as Travis began paddling. She clapped her hands with delight as the boat moved through the water, gliding smoothly up the stream. She was almost disappointed when they reached a dock a short while later. She’d never gotten to take a moonlit boat ride before.

The younger boy hopped out first, reaching back for the bag of food. “You want I should leave this here while we put the canoe away?” he asked.

Travis shook his head. “I gotta go out again.”

Mike paused. “Why?”

Travis ignored the question. “Go on, take the food up. I’ll be right there.”

Mike looked doubtful, but did as he was told, grabbing the food and scampering off. Rose waited in the boat as Travis paddled forward, beaching it on the shore. He swore under his breath as his foot splashed into the water as he got out and Rose tsked at his carelessness as she climbed out after him. Wet feet in this weather? He’d catch his death of cold.

She followed Travis into the house and up the stairs, wondering the whole while whether she’d been right in chasing after him, and crowed with delight as soon as she entered the wide open space on the top floor. Natalya and Kenzi and a collection of boys were clustered on the floor around the shopping bag, taking out the containers of food.

“I found you, I found you,” Rose chortled, hugging herself. Now if only she had a way to reach Akira.

“Spinach salad?” Natalya said dubiously, holding a clear plastic container up to the light from the window. “Which one of you wants it?”

“Yuck,” one of the younger ones said. “I’m not eating that. But we got brownies.”

“Healthy food first,” Natalya said, digging deeper into the bag. She handed Kenzi a white Styrofoam container. The little girl’s face held a smile of satisfaction as she opened the container and tilted it up to show off the generous helping of homemade macaroni and cheese inside.

“Yum, Maggie makes great mac ‘n cheese,” Natalya said with approval as she handed out more white Styrofoam containers to the boys.

“How did you know about her?” Travis asked suspiciously.

“I live in Tassamara, kid. Everyone knows Maggie’s,” Natalya answered, pulling out another soup container.

“Not a kid,” Travis muttered as one of the boys opened his container and announced, with a squeal of glee, “Pizza, pizza, I got pizza in mine!”

“I want some,” protested his lookalike, a hint of a whine in his voice. “I got enchiladas. Pizza’s better.” Rose hadn’t paid enough attention to his clothes to be sure which one of the two had been in canoe with her, but she thought it might be the one with the enchiladas.

“Share the pizza, Mitch,” Travis ordered, sounding weary.

“Yeah, okay,” the other boy said agreeably. “Enchiladas are good, too, though. Do they got the green stuff?”

As the twins compared food, Travis crossed the room to the small group, Rose right behind him. “How ya doing, Jamie?”

“Ate a little soup,” the boy leaning against the windowed wall told him. “Didn’t puke it up.”

Rose frowned at him. Even in the shadowed room, Jamie looked terrible, deep bruises around his eyes and across his cheekbone, his face too thin, his eyes too bright.

“Good, good.” Travis squatted next to him. “You gotta get well and quick.” His eyes flickered over the group and his mouth twisted as if he were chewing on his words.

“What is it?” Jamie asked, pushing himself up.

Travis nodded toward Kenzi who was happily spooning up her macaroni. “Make sure she gets plenty to eat, okay? We need to get you healed and get out of here.”

“Why? What happened?” Worry tightened Jamie’s voice.

Travis pressed his lips together as if reluctant to speak, then spoke anyway. “We got a time limit. Turns out the school reports absences to the agency. They’ll know we’re missing pretty much as soon as break’s over. We gotta be long gone by then.”

“Aw, man.” Jamie’s shoulders sank. “How’s that gonna work? Even if I’m better, Trav, we gotta be almost out of money by now. You can’t count on making another score like…” He looked toward Natalya and fell silent.

“Breaking and entering, I assume?” she asked, spearing a piece of spinach with a plastic fork. “Let me guess, you found a stash of cash in one of the vacation houses over by Sweet Springs.”

“Jesus, lady,” Travis swore. “Who tells you this shit?”

Wordlessly, Natalya pointed her fork at Kenzi, sitting next to her, and raised an eyebrow.

“Mac don’t talk,” Travis complained. “She ain’t said a word for weeks now.”

Natalya waved the fork in a negative gesture. “No, no, I was referring to your language. No swearing in front of the children, remember? Kenzi—Mac didn’t tell me anything.”

“Why do you call her that?” Jamie asked. “It’s the wrong way around.”

“The wrong way… oh.” Natalya ate a bite of salad, looking thoughtful. “So her real name is Mackenzie? That’s interesting.”

Rose was more interested in the condition of the boy. Could she help him? But she paused before touching him. If he was healed, and they moved on immediately, what would they do to Natalya? There must be a reason the woman had come with them.

“Don’t say you guessed that,” Travis protested.

“I’m a good guesser,” Natalya said peacefully.

“You’re spooky, lady.”

She smiled at him, looking happier and more amused than Rose had ever seen her. Kidnapping must agree with her. “I told you normal was overrated.”

Travis shook his head. “Don’t matter, I don’t got time for this.” He turned back to Jamie. “We got one chance.”

Jamie looked confused for a moment and then his expression cleared. “No way, man. You never wanted…” He glanced back at Natalya, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “You thought it was a bad idea to begin with. And without Mary—”

“Hush,” Travis ordered. He, too, glanced at Natalya. “I’m gonna go get it now. We’ll need a couple days, maybe more. But we gotta be outta here by next week and it’ll be worth at least a couple thousand bucks, enough to get us to…” He fell silent again.

“Trav, it’s not worth the risk.” Jamie was shaking his head weakly, his face pained.