Games of Zeus 02- Silent Echoes (22 page)

“Your birthday.”

“And her birthday is June twelfth, which is also actually her birthday.” Ian stood, paced toward the small fountain and back. “It all fits. I know it. I feel it.”
Just like I feel the tie-in with her.
“There is no question. Sherrill said her grandparents saw the two people from the photo together. They couldn’t be together. Class and skin color would have prevented it. Then … she disappeared. Someone pointed a finger at him, the town said it was me … and he—I—he was hanged. Rightly so if he—me—I killed her.”

“Well, if that’s the case, be happy you aren’t them, then. You’re you … today. Without race and class restrictions. Sounds to me like you’re getting a second chance. Or, in your case, a fourth.”

Ian nodded to no one. “Exactly what I think. Damn finger tattoo. But this is ridiculous, you know? This doesn’t happen to normal people.”
I wouldn’t kill someone.

Tripp laughed. “Like what Lexi and I can do? Or Taylor?”

“You never said anything about what she could do.”

“Did you think I would?”

Ian shook his head. “Of course not.”

“Good. So, maybe it’s all connected. You know, me, Lex, Sherrill, Marge, George, you, Taylor.”

“I’m not Zeus’s pawn, Tripp. This isn’t a game. You knew what you had to deal with. That was a game. It can’t be when the rules aren’t obvious or clear or even defined. Zeus wasn’t that mad.”

“Think again.” Tripp chuckled again. “No one ever said Zeus didn’t stick things to people, Ian. So … what’re you going to do?”

Ian ran a hand over his head, digging his fingers into his scalp. “I have no fucking idea.”

“Think through this logically. If what you said is true … and you are them from before, and you did—though I’m not saying you did—kill her before, and this is try number four, maybe this time you’re supposed to find a way not to do it. Maybe you’re not the Romeo and Juliet type this time around, but you’re the kick ass and take names.”

“This is
not
a game.”

“Okay. Okay, man. We’ll go with that theory for now. How is Taylor, by the way?”

“Fucked up.” Ian went on to fill Tripp in.

Would a god pit two people against each other who also might love each other? What kind of sickness is that?

“You sound tired, Ian.”

“I’m exhausted. Have you ever tried to sleep on a guest chair for anything other than a nap?”

Tripp’s mirth diffused more of Ian’s tension. “No, and I hope I never have to. But try to get some sleep. A few hours, at least.”

“Yeah. I need to. Maybe I’ll crash on a couch in the lobby.” Ian traipsed back into the brightness of the hospital, to the zing of antiseptic and night cleaning routine. A buffer whizzed and spun to the right, so Ian went left.

Lexi’s voice calling for ice cream overruled Tripp’s. “Gotta go. Get some rest. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about being a pawn to Zeus, it’s that I work better when well rested. Or after lots of sex.”

Ian snorted a chuckle—the first of the night—and hung up. As he walked the hall, the signs for ‘Blood Bank’ and ‘Donation Center’ gave him another idea. He slowed as he approached the double doors.

“Ian?”

He turned at the female voice. The woman walking toward him made him want to give Taylor up or consider a threesome. A moment of recognition hit him, but he couldn’t place her face with the Asian-set, green eyes, toned skin, the clipped back, long, black hair or beautiful smile.

As he stared, a flood of memories hit him.

Of the bratty girl-next-door who followed Michael around like a lovesick puppy. The same girl he wanted to not see, though Ian had to guess Michael hadn’t gotten a good look at her in a few years. He’d have changed his mind for sure if he had.

“Uh … Jessie?” Ian hadn’t seen her since she’d been twelve, so he could have been wrong, but he didn’t think so.

“Yeah.” She stepped to him, offered him a short hug and let go. “How are you? What are you doing here? I thought you lived in the big city.” Her hands wiggled in the air like he’d seen dancers do on stage.

That and the contrast with the white lab coat sent a wave of confusion through his overtired brain. Jessie’d been Michael’s tag-along, the younger sibling he never had and never wanted. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-three to Michael’s twenty-five. The firmed figure, braces-less teeth and smooth skin would have appealed to anyone. Ian kept all his comments and thoughts to himself, realizing he’d been staring for far too long.

“Uh … Ian? What
are
you doing here?” She ran a hand along his arm.

Good question.
“Here with a friend.”
Lover. Multiple lifetime partner? Victim?
He didn’t know how to describe Taylor.

Jessie cocked a hand on her hip. Her laugh breached the barrier and had his own grin sneaking out. “Girlfriend, Ian? Fiancée? Wife?”

“Could be a guy friend.” He offered her a shrug, though she’d been dead on.

She zipped back and held up her hands. “Right, right. Okay. You look like you haven’t slept in days. From what I recall, you and sleep were well acquainted. I can’t see you staying awake long nights for a ‘guy friend’, unless …”

“Oh, no. It’s not like that.” He rubbed at his eyes as exhaustion overwhelmed them, and pressure wanted to force his lids closed. “She’s … yeah … fuck.” Ian banged his head against the cement wall. “I need—”

“Someone to talk to?”

“No. To do something. Productive.”

“It’s nearly midnight. Maybe you should get some sleep?”

He waved a hand. “Shit. I was thinking I should go give blood.”

Jessie guided him away from the doors. “They aren’t going to take you in this state. You’ll give them the impression you’re a walking germ-pool. You need sleep, Ian. Have you pulled out the chair in the room? It’s not great, but better than sitting upright.”

The chair pulls out? Holy fucking cow! Why didn’t anyone mention that?

They continued walking down the hallway. “Who’s your girl?”

“Taylor Marsh.” He said it with such a monotone even he didn’t recognize his own voice.

Jessie the pig-tailed ten-year-old, at least in Ian’s mind, stopped and smiled up at him. “Room five-twelve?”

He nodded.

Her brows creased. “Really?”

“Yes. Why?”

She hesitated. “She’s a really popular case around here, and I’ve just been assigned to the team.”

• • •

“Ian, it’s Dr. Mathias—I mean, Jessie.”

Jessie?
Pressure on his shoulder stirred him enough to flutter his lids open. An inhale brought an over-clean, sterile scent and a hammering heart. He flipped over and stared into the wide eyes of her face. “Jessie?” A hand down his face didn’t wake him as much as her expression. “What’s wrong? Why are you—Is everything okay?” He shot a glance toward Taylor and her bed.

Jessie nodded. “She’s stable.”

Slow beeps filled his mind from the monitors attached to Taylor. “What time is it?” Ian asked.

Jessie tilted her watch up. “Six.”

Ian whirled on her.
I actually slept for three hours on the pullout.
“No wonder I gotta pee like a bitch.” He’d spent the two hours after he’d met Jessie doing exactly what Tripp suggested—scouring the Internet for historical data.

Jessie hid her chuckle behind a hand. “I can get you a urinal.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Go relieve yourself and come see me at the desk. I gotta leave, but I have a question for you. And, if you want to freshen up, best to do so before the staff changes at seven.”

“I’ll be out in a sec.” Ian maneuvered himself to the bathroom, emptied out a day’s worth of liquid, scrubbed at four-day’s worth of scruff and splashed water on his face. Wrinkles had taken over his clothes, and he reeked from the soap he had to wash his hands with every time he even touched Taylor.

“You look like shit,” he said to himself. “How the hell did you end up babysitting a girl you barely know, who can’t talk to you and who you might have murdered?” He dropped his head, pounded his fist against his heart and stared back into his own eyes. “You better find something that makes all this all go away.” At his exit from the room, Jessie’s head popped up from behind a screen.

She fisted her hand. “You love her, don’t you?”

“Uh …”

Jessie chuckled. Her eyes darted to the left and right. Night and morning staff had already begun their change of shift. “Come with me.” She led Ian to the conference room again and closed the door once he’d entered.

“You’re holding back.” A shiver of worry hit him. “What is it?”

“No. I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“The ring—design—tattoo thing on her finger. It matches yours.”

“Yeah, it does.” The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “How did you—”

“I remember a lot of stuff from when I was little, Ian.” Her lips curved. “Are you guys … is that a new kind of marriage thing?”

He ran a hand over his head. “No. Not like that.”

She bobbled her head. “It bugged the living daylights out of me when I saw that design yesterday during rounds and couldn’t remember
where
I’d seen it. Seeing you brought it all back.”

“Brought what back?”

“Um … so, I studied in Greece for a summer—two years ago. Wanted to broaden my horizons, as they say …”

Translation: Find a man.

“… and the woman I lived with had a tapestry on the wall. It was of that tattoo you have—which … why put it around your finger? I always wanted to know. It had to hurt, what with the sensitivity of the skin there and—”

Ian held up a hand. “It was just the right place, that’s all.” He dropped into a chair.

“But on your finger?” She held up both hands and waved them. “Sorry, that’s getting too personal. She told me about it—the design, that is. What a history.”

“Your hostess did? What did she say about it?” Ian leaned back.

Jessie’s cheeks flushed, her eyes dipping down and returning. “You really want to know?”

Ian nodded.

“So … she said to me, ‘Jessica … you need man in life. Man need bosom of woman to survive. Man who not play games. Not man with lifes.’ I had no idea what she was talking about. Still don’t really, but she was so sweet and so kind. I actually thought—” Jessie shook her head and waved, dropping her hand to the back of a chair. In her prim and proper, I’m-a-doctor-and-you’re-not posture, she said, “My profession teaches me to listen, learn, take in the facts and find answers. So … naturally … I asked her to tell me more, and I spent three hours enraptured, listening with a big glass of wine in hand.”

He remembered Jessie’s incessant curiosity. It had been one of the many reasons she followed Michael around as a kid, always asking questions of him or of Ian. He hitched up his chin, dropping it against his palms, waiting for her to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “Maybe you could tell me more? What else you learned? I do love a good story.”

“You
really
want to hear it? It’s just an old … romantic thing.” Jessie sat and clasped her fingers together on the table, cheeks flushing again.

Damn right, I want to hear it.
“It would be good for me to think about non-medical issues for a while, don’t you think? And, I do have this thing, so the stories are all … cool to know.”

Jessie turned her watch toward herself. She nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” Her gaze met Ian’s again even as those cheeks burned.

Why the continued blushing?

“She called the design ‘love roots’. Now, before you freak out—Adonia was the local storyteller. Big on tale. Small on funds. That’s why she took in boarders. And, some people paid her for her stories, believing they would extract wisdom or prophecy. So, the longer the story, the better for her. ‘I give you for free,’ she said to me.” Jessie wagged her hands back and forth.

Ian wanted to say, ‘Move on with it’, but he held his lips shut, waiting for her to proceed.

“Anyway … Adonia said the design was a symbol of a game.” Jessie sighed just a tiny bit.

Shit. Shit. And triple shit. This
is
a game.

“The game begins with the design appearing—” She pointed to Ian’s finger. “—and ends in someone’s death. All good Greek stories do, right?” She chuckled behind her hand.

Yeah. Sure.
Ian nodded her forward.

“The little root things are like the scoreboard. They show the number of tries the person has to find and win their soul mate’s love or be destined to an eternity of searching but never finding. Think Romeo and Juliet in Greek.” She flicked her finger against the table, cheeks flaming again. “‘Make sure find love’, she said. She was always giving me advice.”

So, the thing we didn’t get right is finding each other? But, there’s a picture of us. If we found each other before, then we succeeded. We won. Right?
Ian sat up straighter.

“Wouldn’t that suck? To do something over and over without resolution, and when the finale comes, if you’ve failed, you live for eternity without the one thing you wanted most?” She lifted up toward Ian, with a look of longing in her eyes. “You know, like Sisyphus, the one who had to roll a rock uphill only to have it fall back down every time?”

“Uh, yeah. Very true.”
How is it a game if we found each other before? Aren’t we meant to be together?

“Of course, with the Greeks, there’s always a catch.”

And, here comes more.

“‘Tree without earth, weak. Tree with earth, strong.’ That’s what she said, anyway. I really have no idea what it means. But … I gathered, since it’s related to roots, that if the two don’t have a foundation somehow, they aren’t strong enough to stand together, and they fail.”

“How do you know who’s playing the game?”

Jessie pitched her head to the side. “Uh … I don’t know. Does it matter? I mean, it is all a crazy story about unrequited love and the tragedy that is everyone’s life when they don’t care for the one right there in front of them.” She turned, eyes toward the floor. “Or don’t care back.”

Ian forced a laugh. “Right. Would suck to be those two, wouldn’t it?” He pushed out another chuckle for show.