Hereafter (Shadowlands) (22 page)

I stood at the very back of the cave, a flashlight stuck into the ground at my feet, shining up at his name.

TRISTAN SEVARDES (PARRISH) 1766.

He’d made me believe that he loved me, that he was willing to change everything for me, but it had all been a ruse to throw me off the scent. He and Nadia had been together all along. That confrontation between them on the night we first kissed had been for show. He’d been lying to me from day one. Setting me up to take the fall.

I was so stupid. So very, very stupid.

The wind outside shifted, howling through the mouth of the cave. I shivered inside my heavy sweatshirt and hugged it closer to my sides. I was never going to trust anyone ever again. I was never going to allow myself to love. Clearly, I had no sense of people, no ability to judge character, no clue what was going on in anyone else’s mind.

“Rory?”

Joaquin’s voice echoed through the cave, surrounding me, filling me with a whisper of hope.

“Back here,” I called out.

His flashlight beam darted across the wall, illuminating colorful snatches of names, a riot of letters and numbers. I wondered if Tristan had been here that night, when I’d come here to find his name. If he’d hidden from me in the shadows. If he’d left that tally behind in his haste to get away from me. Bile rose up in my throat at the millionth realization of how stupid I’d been.

Never again. Never.

After a moment, Joaquin and Krista appeared. I’d left them just over an hour ago, but they both looked as if they’d been marooned somewhere for days. Krista’s white T-shirt had a streak of dirt across the front, and Joaquin’s forehead had gone red with sunburn. They were out of breath as they stopped behind me.

“What’re you doing?” Krista asked, eyeing the open can of red paint at my feet, the paintbrush handle sticking out the top.

“I realized I never added my name to the wall,” I told her coolly. I wouldn’t let my voice betray my emotions. Once I started letting my emotions pour out, they would drown me. My sharpened gaze flicked to Joaquin. “Did you find him? Nadia?”

“Not yet, but we will,” Joaquin said, gasping for breath as I turned my back on them to face the wall. He reached out to grasp my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m an idiot,” I said, glaring at Tristan’s name. “There are all these things I’m remembering. The other morning I walked in on him locking something inside his desk—probably the coins.” I looked at Krista. “Then you heard him and Nadia talking Thursday morning and they were both gone all day—the same day five souls got ushered? They must have been off somewhere, planning it. Making sure everything would go off like clockwork.”

“I can’t listen to this,” Krista said, shaking her head and taking a few steps back toward the fire pit.

I pursed my lips as I looked over my shoulder at Joaquin, knowing how hard this must be for her.

“Remember that tally I found the other day? The one Pete took from me?” I said, and Joaquin nodded. “I think it was theirs. I think that’s why Nadia immediately knew what it was and tried to pin it on me. I saw Tristan making those same kinds of marks in the sand the other day.”

“This is insane,” Joaquin said, rubbing his forehead. “This can’t be happening.”

“I just didn’t put it together until today,” I finished.

“Stop it,” Krista snapped suddenly, storming over to us. Her skin had gone from white to red, and I’d never seen her eyes so angry. “Tristan is the best of all of us. There’s no way he had anything to do with this.”

“Krista…what other explanation is there?” I asked.

“He’s had a lot going on,” Krista said, looking at the ceiling. “He’s been distracted. Maybe Nadia planted those coins in his room—did you ever think of that?”

“Then why did he run?” Joaquin asked. “Why is he hiding?”

Krista just stared at him. She didn’t have an answer for that.

“And why did he have this?” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and unfolded the photo of my family.

“Where did you get that?” Joaquin asked.

“When you guys went after Tristan, Fisher came back to tell us Nadia was gone, and he and Kevin searched Tristan’s room,” I told them. “They found this in the bottom of his shoe trunk.”

I looked at it once, staring into my father’s laughing eyes, before folding it and putting it back into my pocket.

“So what do we do now?” Krista asked.

“Simple.” I reached down and picked up the paintbrush, scraping the excess paint from its bristles into the can. “We figure out how to get my father and Aaron and Jennifer and the others back.”

I reached up and started to paint my name right above Tristan’s, the tail of the R touching the top of the T. It took all my concentration to keep my arm from shaking, but I managed to work through it.

“But how?” Joaquin asked, watching the brush as if mesmerized. “No one has ever come back.”

“There has to be a way,” I said firmly, biting my tongue to keep from cracking as images of my father, Aaron, and Jennifer swirled through my mind. I dipped the brush into the paint again and methodically wrote my last name, Miller. “If people can be sent there erroneously, there has to be a way to bring them back. We have to believe that.”

“And then what?” Krista asked. “If we do get them back. What happens then?”

I didn’t reply. Not until I’d finished. Not until my name was fully inscribed on that wall for all eternity.

RORY MILLER (THAYER) 2013
.

The bottom curl of the
3
dripped down the craggy rock wall, the bloodred paint marring the top of the white
h
in
Parrish
. Satisfied, I dropped the paintbrush back into the can and faced them.

“Then we find Tristan and Nadia,” I said clearly. “And we make them pay.”

Every book I write is a journey, and this one in particular marked my path from a dark, devastating moment in my life back into the light. As such, it started out in a rocky place and seemed to take forever to be guided to where it needed to be. For their help along the way, I have to thank the following people, who always seem to be there to support me in ways large and small.

I owe the deepest gratitude to Lanie Davis, who worked as hard as I did on this book, if not harder. I couldn’t have finished it without you. (But you knew that.) Thank you also to Josh Bank, Sara Shandler, Katie McGee, and Emily Meehan for their input and insight at various stages of the manuscript. Thanks to Sarah Burnes for metaphorically holding my hand through my breakdown and to Matt for actually holding my hand and talking me out of my threats to drop everything and become a Realtor or a cupcake-baker or a cupcake-baking Realtor. Most of all, thank you to Brady and Will for always bringing a smile to my face and reminding me why I do what I do. I love you more than anything and always will.