A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (3 page)

“I’m fine,” Colin answered.

“You don’t know that.”

Colin thumped himself in the chest. “Heart’s beating like a champ. No pain.”

“You were rubbing your chest before. It hurt then, didn’t it?”

“It was indigestion,” he told her. “Hurt like a mo—hurt a lot. But it was just gas.”

“That’s not how it works. Time equals muscle when it comes to heart attacks.” Colin didn’t look convinced, so Natalya continued, her worry lending persuasion to her tone. “A heart attack happens when the blood supply to part of your heart is blocked, damaging heart muscle. If the rest of the heart works, the pain can stop. People have heart attacks and walk around afterward as if nothing happened, but that doesn’t mean the damage isn’t there. And if an artery is blocked, you could have another heart attack any time.”

Colin frowned. “I need to start an investigation. I’ve got to call around, see if anyone’s reported a missing child. Check missing person reports, get some dogs out here to retrace her trail, get in touch with DCF—I’ve got a lot to do.”

“One of your deputies could do all that,” Natalya suggested.

“What about—” He paused and tugged his earlobe thoughtfully.

“What are you thinking?” Natalya recognized that look. He was going to try to talk her into something.

“Your lab is what, five minutes away?”

“Yeah,” Natalya answered warily.

“You could check us both out there. You’ve got some fancy-pants scanner, right?”

Natalya stopped herself from rolling her eyes with an effort. Fancy-pants was not the word she’d use to describe the multi-million dollar imaging system she used for her research. “I have a high-end imaging system, yes.”

“Could you use that to see if anything’s wrong?”

“I’m not a cardiologist or trauma specialist,” Natalya started, before pausing. Her imaging system was probably the best system in the state of Florida, certainly better than anything at a local 24-hour clinic. And although General Directions wasn’t a medical facility, it was well-stocked with medical supplies. She could run the same tests a hospital would run.

She should send Colin to a hospital.

She shouldn’t get involved.

But it would save a lot of time.

“I can’t treat you at GD. I don’t have the right drugs and I’m not about to do an angioplasty. But if you do have a blocked artery, we could get Dave to fly you to Orlando or Jacksonville. You’d get better cardiac care there, anyway.”

“That’s the ticket.” He grinned at her. “And I can get a missing person investigation started.”

“Found person, surely,” Natalya murmured, wondering if she was making a mistake.

“Same difference, happier ending.” He looked away, back toward her car and the hidden child. She could see his frown, but the word was barely audible as he added, “Maybe.”

Colin slid into the passenger seat of Natalya’s car with a wince. He hated being a passenger. Nat’s pointed question about whether it was safe to drive when he didn’t know why he’d passed out was valid, though.

Why had he passed out?

And what had happened while he’d been unconscious?

He reached up and flipped open the mirror on the sun visor, angling it so he’d be able to see the girl in the backseat. In the darkness, her face was shadowed, so he pushed on the overhead light. While he’d been radioing in and parking properly, Nat had given the girl food. She sat now with the open tin of cookies by her side, a Santa Claus sugar cookie clutched in her hand, but her eyes were glazing over, the lids fluttering down. Her head tipped to one side and she jerked it back upright, eyes flying open. She saw him looking at her and scowled, eyes narrowing and lips setting stubbornly, before her scowl disappeared in a yawn.

Colin smiled as he turned off the overhead light and settled back into his seat. He didn’t mind her glare. It was a good sign, he thought, that her fear didn’t have her cowering in the corners.

“Is she asleep?” Nat asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Getting that way. Did she say anything?”

“Not a word.” Nat shot a quick glance at him. “So tell me what happened.”

He rubbed his chin. “It’s going to sound crazy.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I have very high standards for crazy.”

His answering chuckle was wry. Living in Tassamara was like that. On the surface, Tassamara was a sleepy rural town, supported by the occasional tourists passing through and business from the local farms, orchards, and ranches. Underneath that façade, though, lay a vibrant community composed of open-minded scientists, psychics, and people who didn’t quite fit in the outside world.

Long-time residents claimed the town was built on a convergence of ley lines or a vortex point. They said it had been a place of dimensional energy that nourished spiritual gifts for thousands of years, always attracting people with unusual abilities. Maybe it was true. As sheriff, he’d certainly had to deal with his share of strange events and odd occurrences. Still, this night was one of the weirdest of his life.

“It was like a dream,” he said.

Nat shook her head. “Don’t start there. Start at the beginning. You were in your car and—?”

He’d been driving aimlessly, after a long day capped a long week. Earlier in the month, an apparent double murder turned into a massive drug case involving Feds from all sorts of three-letter agencies. Two days ago, it culminated in a debacle of a raid, leaving three people dead, one in the hospital. The agencies would be pointing fingers and fighting about responsibility for weeks. Despite the holiday, he’d spent hours working on his share of the paperwork.

He didn’t blame himself. It might be his town, but neither the drug trafficking nor the botched federal raid were under his control. But the combination of death brushing its wingtips too close and the holiday had him pensive. And nothing could soothe him like the stillness of a dark night and the feel of an automobile engine humming. He loved the solitude of the quiet roads, the control and power of having his hands on a steering wheel.

He’d been waiting to die for a decade. He could still remember the exact moment Nat had told him what she’d seen, as vividly as if it were happening in real time. When she’d started talking, most of his attention had been on the overflowing recycling bin, wondering if they’d missed the right day to take it out, until her words dragged his gaze to her luminous blue eyes.

As the years passed, he tried not to dwell on it. Nothing he could do, no way to change it. Nat’s foresight was inevitable, immutable, destined to happen as forecast. Still, knowing death was impending changed a man’s perspective.

“I saw a lump by the side of the road,” he said. “I thought trash at first. Figured someone dumped something. And then it moved, so I thought animal—maybe a raccoon? But it didn’t fit. Wrong size, wrong shape. Too small for a bear and dog didn’t make much sense. I was already past it, so I stopped and started to back up, just to check on it.”

He fell silent. He’d already been feeling bad, but not bad-bad, just kind of off. Indigestion, he’d thought. Too much of his gramma’s turkey and stuffing, although they’d eaten dinner at noon, hours earlier. But as he’d turned to look over his shoulder, raising his right arm to rest it on the back of his seat, a sharp stab of pain had broken into his concentration. Gasping, he’d dropped his arm, turning his hand to push on his chest as if pressure would relieve the tension, hunching his shoulders into the hurt.

He’d known then.

It was time.

It was over.

He’d tried to take a deep breath, but could only suck in shallow gasps of air.

“I felt this—pain.” The word seemed entirely inadequate. Pain was a sprained ankle, a broken toe, a bad bruise from a game of touch football that got rough. This was something more like agony. “But then it eased off. It hurt but not so much.”

He’d figured he’d made a weird move. Pulled a muscle, maybe. Or pinched a nerve. The sweat on the back of his neck had cooled rapidly and while he still hadn’t felt well, sort of fuzzy and shaky, the stabbing misery had disappeared as if it had never happened, leaving only the dull grinding pain of his previous indigestion.

“I stopped, got out of the car and then…” He fell silent again. The lump he’d seen had moved, had raised a head. He’d seen the blonde hair, the eyes, and realized he was looking at a child. It made no sense. What was a child doing by the side of the road, this road, after dark on Christmas Day?

But he couldn’t think it through, because the pain had returned, intense and churning. He’d put a hand on the car, bracing himself, hoping the cold metal would break through the fog of agony clouding his vision.

It didn’t.

He could barely feel it. His hands had felt far away, disconnected, almost like they weren’t part of his body any more.

“The pain was back?” Nat asked.

He nodded. He turned again and looked at the child in the backseat. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted to the side. She’d dropped the cookie.

“And then what?”

“I stepped out.” His voice was quiet.

“Out of what? The car?”

“No. No, I was already out of the car.”

“Out of what then?”

He glanced at Nat. She was focused on the dark road, not looking at him. “Out of my body,” he answered.

“You—what?” She turned her eyes to him for a brief moment, before returning her gaze to the road.

“I know,” he said. It sounded ridiculous. But it was what had happened. He suspected he wasn’t going to be sharing this story with too many people.

There was a moment of silence before Nat said, “Okay. Keep going.”

He felt his lips curling up, amusement stirring. If Nat was having trouble with this first part, she was never going to believe what came next. “This is when it started to feel like a dream. There was a girl there.”

“Not her?” Nat tilted her head in the direction of the backseat.

Colin shook his head. “No, another one. Older. A teenager. Wearing a costume of some kind. And she was not real happy with me.”

“A costume?” Nat sounded disbelieving.

“Not like Halloween or MegaCon. She wasn’t a superhero. God, that would have been strange.”

Nat coughed slightly and he could see her trying to hide a smile.

“Well, yeah, it was strange anyway. Stranger, I guess,” he admitted. “No, she was dressed old-fashioned, that’s all.” He ran a hand through his hair, then over his face, trying to remember. “It gets blurry. I think I asked her if she was a shinigami.”

“A what?”

“You know, like in—never mind.” No way would Nat know. She’d never gotten into manga. “She didn’t know what a shinigami was either. Or a reaper.”

“A what?” Nat asked again.

He sounded crazy. He knew it. He’d warned her. “You know, like a spirit guide, someone to take me on to the next plane of existence, the afterworld. But she laughed and said if she was a spirit guide, she’d be the kind stopping and asking for directions every five minutes, because she was as lost as a goose in a snowstorm.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. You’ve left your body. You think you’re dead. And you’re talking to a girl in costume who’s making jokes about geese?”

Put like that, it didn’t sound crazy. It sounded ridiculous. “I told you, it was a dream.”

Nat shrugged. “Maybe. Then what?”

It was a dream that had felt very real, though, in its own way. He hadn’t been in a strange place or a surreal world. He’d been exactly where he was, standing above his body, talking to the teenager. The little girl had darted into the underbrush at the side of the road when he got out of the car, but she’d crept closer, wide-eyed and uncertain. She’d reached a tentative hand out to him and patted his back gently. His body hadn’t moved, but he had, crouching down next to her as he asked the teenager about her.

“The little girl moved me,” he said, remembering. She’d tugged at his body, pulling on his arm, working hard to turn him over. And the bigger girl, she’d said something. But it was gone, whatever it had been. The memories were slipping away, the rich, vivid images fading like a dream after being awake for too long.

“Rolled you over?” Nat asked sharply.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Nat looked over her own shoulder at the girl. “Not easy. She’s what, maybe fifty pounds? You would have been a dead weight. No pun intended.”

“No,” Colin agreed. “The other girl helped, I think.” Had she? She’d crouched down, too, almost on top of them both, her hands and arms passing straight through the smaller one. They’d touched his face, both of them, soft touches, but then the bigger girl shifted, directing the little girl down to his chest.

And then… he didn’t know what had happened then. There’d been light and heat and pain again, the burning in his chest back for a moment that lasted forever, and then Nat over him.

That had seemed as much a dream as anything. Ten years had passed since she’d touched him, a decade without her blue eyes the first sight he saw as he woke. Yet opening his own to meet hers had felt like falling back into the world as it should be, as it was meant to be.

“You know everything else,” he said. “I woke up. You were there.” The words sounded so simple. So easy.

Nat was silent.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

“We don’t dream when we’re unconscious,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“No idea.”

They’d reached the gate barring the way into GD. The security booth was dark, no guard on duty, but Nat pulled to a stop and rolled down her window. She punched a code into the computer pad next to the gate.

“She’s asleep, right?” Nat asked without looking back.

“Yeah.”

“So we’ll run some tests on you first. See what we find. Did you call DCF?”

“Not yet. I’ve got dispatch checking missing persons and making some calls.”

She frowned at him. “Child Protective Services will need to send a caseworker. They’ll probably want a psychologist present when you interview her.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Colin agreed. “But it might not be that complicated. How does a kid wind up lost in the forest?”

Nat’s brows drew down as she pulled the car forward. “Camping?” she offered. “Hiking?”