Forever (3 page)

“Run. Run,” he cries, “don’t look back!”

Seeking to hold her scent, he breathes deeply. He captures one last image of her auburn hair falling in soft waves down her back. He lifts a hand, aching to touch it, but he hardens his heart and turns back to face his enemy.

For one brief moment, his rage overshadows his fear and then . . .

a flash of light a roar a searing pain in his chest a scream

Felled like a buck, he stares up at her. He can’t lift his hand to touch her. “I’m sorry,” he tries to say, but the blood bubbling in his throat chokes him.

And then
. . .

Tom looked into the stunned eyes of the woman in the booth and saw clearly they were green. He realized two things at once—his expression surely mirrored hers, and she’d just seen exactly what he’d seen. Adrenaline pumped through him causing his heart to pound while his insides impersonated Jell-O in an earthquake.

“Tom!” Julie jerked on his arm.

Moving as if in a dream, Tom allowed her to pull him away, but he held the gaze of those green eyes. For a second, he saw a slight double-image, as though a transparency overlaying a solid briefly shifted. In that moment, he understood. Through the eyes of the dying man, he’d stared into a similar green gaze, and now—somehow—he’d seen the real and the imagined simultaneously.

Seated in the theater, Tom watched the movie but saw little of it. His mind kept wandering back to those woods, back to the ticket booth, back to the strangest experience he’d ever had. The longer he sat there, the more urgent grew his need for another glimpse of the woman.

Finally, he leaned over and whispered to Julie, “I’m going to the restroom.”

He passed the men’s room and stopped just inside the far left theater entrance. From that location, he had a clear view of the ticket booth. One glance told him she was no longer there. Disappointed, he turned away and started back to his seat. He nearly tripped over his own feet when he saw her standing behind the popcorn counter. He ducked into the restroom alcove. When his heartbeat slowed, he stepped out and over to the water fountain. From there, he could see where she stood.

While he pretended to drink, Tom watched her from the corner of his eye. With no customers in line, she stood motionless, looking down. Nothing visible indicated she was anything but a completely normal woman.

“Looks like a fun time in the sack, doesn’t she, Tom?”

Eddie’s voice in his ear caused Tom to jump back from the fountain. He shoved Eddie away. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He didn’t stay to hear Eddie’s response.

A sudden chill pulled Annie Garrett from her thoughts. At first she attributed it to the theater’s air-conditioning, but the chill intensified when she looked up and saw the short, bald man standing on the other side of the concessions counter. She gasped.

“Yes, my dear, you know me,” he said. “In some part of your
soul
, you remember every minute you spent with me . . . especially those moments we shared alone at night. In the dark.”

She swallowed against rising nausea. Her instinct told her to run, but she knew without trying that she couldn’t move. He wouldn’t let her.

He laughed. “No, you’re not going anywhere. You’ll stand here like the mindless cunt you are until I leave, and when I do, you won’t remember a thing I’ve said to you.”

A whimper rose in her throat.

“We’re going to have so much fun, you and Tom and I. Tom is the man you were thinking about when I walked up. He’s thinking about you too. Eventually, you’ll remember him and he you. And you’ll both remember me—when I
will
it.”

He wiggled his fingers and she felt her arms rise and dance in the air. He laughed again, and her arms fell limp to her sides.

“Oh yes, I’ll control you and him like marionettes. And when I tire of that . . . well, I don’t want to give away the big surprise. Let’s just say revenge is sweet, shall we?”

His lips stretched into a mockery of a smile. “Everything I do to you and Tom will be
your
fault, my dear. Your pathetic and stupid craving for love doomed you both to an eternal pas de trois with me. I’m thrilled, aren’t you?”

She wimpered again.

“Not thrilled? Oh, that’s right”—all semblance of his dark humor faded—“guilt
hurts
. . . so I’ve heard.” At a flick of his hand, pain ripped through her abdomen. The scream inside her head never made it to her lips. A snap of his fingers plunged her into blackness.

“Hey, lady, are you open?”

Annie blinked against the sudden glare, and the red-haired boy standing on the other side of the counter came into focus. She gave the lobby a quick scan, though she couldn’t have said why. A sudden wave of nausea flooded her mouth with saliva. She swallowed. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah.” The boy shoved his empty popcorn tub toward her. “I want a refill.”

* * *

After the movie, Tom drove them all to the trendy new restaurant the award-winning couple was “dying to try.” He was not surprised to see the place decorated in purple and gray—“mulberry and dove” according to Patricia—with chrome sculptures and indirect lighting, kept low for the desired ambiance.

“This decor is absolutely
stunning
,” Patricia said.

Tom bit down on his tongue to keep from sneering. He’d already formed the opinion that, if fully lit, this restaurant decor would resemble the food court in the upscale shopping mall his crew had helped build last year. As Patricia and Eddie
oohed
and
ahhed
over the menu, Tom suppressed the urge to mime a two-fingered gag, but when Patricia feigned a swoon over the wine list, he gave in to a snort of derision.

“
Mes amis
,” Eddie said with a flourish of hands, “I predict, by the end of the evening, we will claim this restaurant as our very own corner of heaven.”

An insult sizzled on the tip of Tom’s tongue, but just then Julie gave him an exaggerated
ohmygod
roll of her eyes, and her gesture redeemed his good humor. He gave her a smile and a wink.

After twenty-four years, his relationship with her had grown into an easy thing, maybe not so exciting but comfortable. On the job, guys griped about their marriages, and even if he allowed for their bullshit exaggeration, Tom knew his marriage could be a lot worse than just monotonous. Julie involving Patricia in their life was a strike against her, though.

Tom’s main grievance with Patricia was her habit of voicing, at every opportunity, the opinion Julie could have married someone far better. And maybe Julie could have—
definitely
she could have—but he couldn’t stand that a pretentious bitch like Patricia judged him unworthy. He and Julie argued less than most couples, but he blamed Patricia for nearly every quarrel they did have. Julie starting a sentence with,
Patricia says
. . . or
Patricia thinks
. . . was all it took to start him pitching fastballs.

Julie drew his attention back to the table. “You’re very quiet, Tom. Did you enjoy the movie?”

Fortunately, with one ear kept tuned to the discussion among the three of them, he’d heard enough to know the movie was a comedy they judged hilarious. “Yeah. It was funny.”

Tom ignored Patricia’s sneer at his lame response. Julie asked him no more questions. The appetizers arrived, wine flowed freely and so did the conversation between Julie and the other two. For the most part, Tom felt free to exclude himself. At times, he realized he hadn’t heard a word for several minutes. As he ate, his thoughts kept drifting to what had happened to him at the theater.

Until that night, he’d lived a life so ordinary it was almost predictable. He’d never made All-American, never made a million bucks, never made it to anyone’s Man of the Year list. He’d never enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame for anything. But this . . .

He’d finally experienced something extraordinary and he wanted to hold onto the memory of it. So while the rest of the foursome were eating, drinking and being oh-so-merry, he could think only of seeing The Woman again.

* * *

Annie stood just inside the doors of the now closed theater, waiting for her sister, late as usual, to pick her up. Although she’d been reluctant at the time, letting Kate borrow her car tonight had turned out for the best. Annie couldn’t have driven home safely. She felt all jangly, like everything had been shaken loose under her skin.

For a while, she’d worked in the ticket booth, filling in during the rush for one of the teens who’d called in sick. The stream of date-night couples had lined up before her as faceless to her as she was to them. Then
he
had stepped up to the booth. She’d worked the rest of her shift in concessions distracted, remembering little of it now, and though she prided herself on always cashing out to the penny, her drawer had come up short three dollars and twenty-seven cents.

Trying to put a name to what she’d experienced tonight, Annie searched her knowledge of the bizarre. It could have been a vision, though she’d never had one before, and the only people she’d heard of who did were deeply religious or psychos. No one would declare her a saint, but as far as she knew, her mind was sound. And yet . . .

Her mind replayed the drama she’d seen—no, the drama she’d
lived
—because as weird as it sounded, she
was
that woman. In only those few seconds, she’d registered every detail—the taste of her lover’s kiss, the warm slick of him oozing down her thighs, the roars of fury, the vibrant green of leaves flashing by, the sting of scratches on her bare feet and ankles from the underbrush, and then the deafening sound and acrid smell of gunpowder. Her heart had broken at the sight of her lover cut down, his blood spilling on the ground. Her screams still echoed in her mind.

She’d experienced
those horrible moments, but she had no idea how. It wasn’t a premonition of a future event because some things she’d seen were from the past. Her lover had worn buckskin clothes, his long, black hair tied back with a leather thong. The gun that killed him was . . . well, she didn’t know what kind it was, but it didn’t belong to this century.

The last seconds of the vision remained with her the strongest. As he lay dying before her, she’d felt such desperate love for him. That emotion was strong enough still to force Annie’s eyes closed against the sting of threatening tears.

On the dark canvas of her closed lids, Annie saw a portrait of the man in the theater as he looked after the incredible experience. One look at his eyes, his ashen face, told her that somehow they’d shared it. She’d intended to watch for him as he left the theater, but her scheduled break came just before the showing ended. Although she hurried back to her counter, she never saw him leave.

The blare of the Camaro’s stereo as her sister careened up to the curb broke Annie’s concentration. The reckless arrival reminded Annie how much she disliked Kate borrowing her car, but she liked even less listening to Kate’s whining that she had to sit home on a Saturday night because no one wanted to drive all the way out to the boondocks to pick her up. Kate’s car had died several months ago, just after her twenty-first birthday, so Annie heard that sad song often while Kate saved to buy another.

“I know, I know. I’m late. Don’t yell,” Kate said. “I was having
way
too much fun to leave.”

“It’s okay.” Annie waved away Kate’s apology. “But please spare my eardrums.” She slipped into the passenger seat and reached out to turn down the volume.

Kate pulled out of the parking lot driving as cautiously as a sophomore in a Driver’s Ed car. Annie closed her eyes, leaned her head against the window, and conjured up the image of The Man again. She guessed he was forty-something, and he was handsome, though not in the head-turning way her ex-husband had been. The Man had the look of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. His brown hair was sun-streaked, his skin was a little wind-worn and—she smiled at the thought—he was probably tanned when he wasn’t scared out of his wits.

Kate glanced at her. “Why are you sitting there grinning like a fool?”

Annie shook her head and continued her evaluation of The Man. His hair was thick and softly curling at his ears and collar, longer than most men wore it now, and she imagined he’d probably worn it the same way since his thirties. He didn’t look like the slave to fashion type.

Suddenly, she remembered he’d bought
two
tickets, and then she recalled a vague image of the blonde with him. Annoyed at the intrusion of another woman into her reverie, Annie pushed this bit of information aside.

Tom
. The woman had called him by name.

She’d seen this man Tom for less than a minute, and yet, he was familiar. It was as though she’d been waiting for him, expecting him, to enter her life.

“You would not
believe
the gorgeous guy I met tonight,” Kate said. “He was an honest-to-God Texan to boot.”

“Hunh.”

“And you know how I
love
a man with a drawl.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I swear I almost called you to ask if you’d mind taking a cab home, so I could stay there.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kate prattled on and on about the guy at whatever bar she’d been in tonight, but Annie only half listened. She felt as if part of herself hovered outside her body, detached from reality—or what she’d always assumed was reality.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Annie murmured. Amused that her high school Shakespeare had finally come in handy, she laughed softly.

With a slow, deliberate shake of her head, Kate said, “You’ve finally cracked.”

Annie smiled, but tonight she wondered if Kate’s opinion of her sanity might be right, considering that she’d fallen in love with a man she’d seen for only a few seconds.

June 6

T
om rolled over in bed, groaning as the morning sun filtered crimson through his eyelids. Silently, he cursed Julie for having already opened the blinds. He couldn’t think why, but obviously she didn’t intend for him to sleep in this morning. Determined not to wake up yet, he shifted away from the window toward her side of the bed. Just as he began the descent into sleep, a vision of green eyes yanked him back. His eyes flew open.