Hidden Darkness (Hidden Saga Book 4) (13 page)

How many flipping pine trees
were
there per square foot in this flipping country?

I drove along the two-lane county road leading away from Deep River, finally picking a direction and committing to it. Since I had nowhere to go, it didn’t really matter which way I went.

              I’d spent the night cruising through the small town, actually sitting in the parking lot of the Food Star for several hours before giving up and putting the car into drive again, sighing in disappointment. I wasn’t sure what I’d been hoping for exactly.

Well, there
was
a Sonic across the street, and I’d watched cars as they drove in, stayed for a while and left. Some of them—the ones containing teenagers—never even stopped but made a slow pass through the drive-in restaurant, looped through town, and came back again.

Not one of them had been a big red pickup truck.

I literally laughed out loud at my own stupidity.
No one
could solve a problem like mine. I
was
the problem. 

              The road sign said the Interstate 55 connection was three miles ahead. When I reached it, I’d have another decision to make. Which way? North toward Memphis? South to the ocean? What did it matter? No matter where I went I’d be alone, and I
should
be alone since the only thing I was good at was hurting people.

              I pulled over to the shoulder of the road, my eyes too blurred by tears to continue. There were no buildings around and hardly any traffic at this early hour. Nothing but farms and pine trees and a row of electrical towers, standing like tin soldiers and dividing the dense tree line as if an enormous comb had come down and formed a perfect part on a mythical giant’s head.

              I stared at the leggy metallic structures, my thoughts wandering. Like me, they contained a powerful, destructive force. Unlike me, they met a need in this world, providing light and heat and all sorts of useful functions.

Opening my car door and leaving it ajar, I got out and started walking through the tall grass toward the towers. I dropped my keys somewhere along the way but didn’t bother to stoop and pick them up. Someone else could find them.

Coming to the foot of the nearest tower, I tilted my head back and peered up at its peak, where cables connected it to the tower behind it and stretched across the two-lane road to the one on the other side. The electrical hum was loud but not unpleasant.

Very slowly I reached out a hand to touch the steel leg of the structure. Now the buzz vibrated through my body as well as in my ears. So much power. To give energy. To take it away.

Searching the structure, I found what I was seeking. Built into one of its legs was a sort of ladder, a lattice of metal that went all the way to the top. The ladder started high off the ground, but being Elven, I was tall enough to reach it. I chuckled to myself again.
Lucky me.

Stretching my arms over my head, I jumped and caught the bottom rung with my fingers then worked my hands firmly onto it. I pulled myself up until I could hook one foot over the rung then dragged the rest of my body up onto the ladder.

Now it was just a matter of hand over hand, one foot after another until I reached the top. As I climbed, I had vivid flashbacks of another climber, another person who’d reached the furthest boundary of what he could handle. His tower of choice had been the California State Capitol building’s historic dome.

The disgraced former governor had climbed to the highest open point, the cupola, and stayed there for six hours while a police negotiator spoke to him through a megaphone—trying to persuade him that a lost re-election bid wasn’t the end of the world. The Sacramento news crews had gone to continuous coverage. Even the national news picked up a live signal of the desperate man, waiting for him to decide.

Some people thought he
should
jump after what he’d done. After being caught flagrantly cheating on the state’s beloved first lady, the fool had claimed he’d actually
forgotten
he was married. Of course no one believed the bizarre excuse.

No one but me.

The buzz up here was very loud, the electricity in the air lifting my hair around my head like dandelion fluff. I felt like I could see for miles from this height.

I’d always been a city girl, but I’d nursed a secret fascination for rural places. There was just so much…
life
where things grew. The air was clean, you could hear yourself think. Like this place.

It all looked so peaceful from up here—the farms with their patchwork quilt field plots and red barns and white farm houses. A herd of cows grazed just on the other side of a copse of trees, resembling tiny Playskool toys from this distance. A green tractor putted along a row of dark brown soil, maybe preparing it to nurture a new crop.

And coming down the highway in a blaze of color was a red truck.

My grip on the ladder tightened as my pulse picked up. I glanced up at the lines over my head—not close enough to touch. Then I looked down at the ground, a dizzying distance below. Certainly far enough…

The blare of a horn drew my eyes to the pickup again. It had left the road and was now tearing across the field toward the tower where I was perched. My heartbeat kept time with the constant beep beep beep of the horn that the driver was pounding.

What is that idiot doing?

              His truck approached the base of the tower at such high speed, I thought he was going to hit it and take the decision out of my hands.

              Instead, just before reaching it, the driver slammed on the brakes and the truck did a donut, spraying dirt and grass in a fifteen foot radius from the nubby tires. The door flew open, and out jumped the guy from the Food Star parking lot—Asher. He was shouting.

              “Hey up there—Miss California—Ava, right?”

              I just stared down at him, not answering. What was
he
doing here? How did he recognize me? Then, cutting my eyes over to my car on the side of the road, I understood.

              He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Are you, by any chance, having a problem?” 

              His question was so absurd, I almost laughed. Instead, I yelled back, “I told you the other day—I don’t
have
any problems.” I did
not
want to deal with this guy right now.

              He nodded and looked around, then back up at me, shading his eyes from the bright morning sun. “Yeah. Me either. Sometimes when I’m having a
really
great day, I like to come take a walk on a live power line myself—very invigorating. In fact, that’s why I’m here. But you seem to be on my favorite tower… and I don’t like to share. So I’m gonna have to ask you to get down.”

              I stared at him a few seconds more, still processing that he was actually there talking to me. Why did he have to drive by? Why did he have to see me like this? Didn’t my life suck enough already? Apparently not. No, I had to have a hot guy witness my darkest moment.

              “Why
are
you here?” I shouted down at him. “Why are you out driving around so early in the morning?”

              He raised a brow, tactfully
not
asking why I was two hundred feet off the ground so early in the morning. “Some of us losers are still in high school. I was driving into town, trying to make it for the morning bell when I saw your car on the other side of the bypass with the door standing open. I pulled a u-ey and came back to check on you.”

              “Well, I’m fine,” I insisted just as a gust of wind buffeted me, making my feet rock on the metal rung and my arms tighten around the steel support. My heart lurched up into my throat.

              “Okay, but if it’s all the same to you, could you be ‘fine’ down here on the ground?” Asher paused as if searching for some magic persuasive words. “That way you won’t have to yell to tell me where you’re headed.” He threw his hand out to the side, gesturing toward my car. Even from here, my luggage was clearly visible in the back seat.

              Where was I headed? Now that Asher was here and I’d had a moment to think and to see myself from his perspective, I realized I
wasn’t
headed for the ground below. Not that fast, anyway. Slowly and carefully, I climbed back down the ladder.

When my feet hit the bottom rung, Asher’s hands grabbed my hips and lifted me the rest of the way down, causing me to fall back against his chest. His rapid heartbeat nearly bruised my back.

His tone gave nothing away, though, and as I turned to face him, he smiled and let out an audible breath. “Okay then. Now that I’m officially tardy, we might as well go out to breakfast.” 

I stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah—I don’t know about you California types, but here in Mississippi, we like to eat a meal in the morning, usually consisting of biscuits and some sort of pan-fried meat—bacon, sausage—you know. Grits are optional but recommended. There’s a great little diner on Main Street that serves them hand ground and swimming in butter.”

I had no idea what a “grit” was but the thought of biscuits and bacon had my stomach rumbling. I hadn’t eaten since the appetizers at the banquet last night.

Looking at his expectant face, I realized how adorable this guy was. And how impossible it was to go to breakfast with him.

I shook my head. “No, I… I’ve got to get going. I can’t stay around here.”

“It can’t be that bad. And even if it is, remember what I said? I’m pretty good at solving problems.”

I shook my head emphatically. “You can’t solve this one. I ruined someone’s life—two someones. Actually I have ruined
lots
of lives—more than I want to count. And it’s too late to fix things.”

Asher held up a staying hand. “Now
that
—I must disagree with. My granddaddy always says, ‘It ain’t too late till the possum puts on his pants.’”

I couldn’t stop myself—I laughed out loud. “That’s ridiculous. Does he really say that?”

He gave me a happy grin, clearly pleased with himself for cracking up the weird suicidal girl. “He sure does. And I believe it. It’s never too late to change, it’s never too late for love, and it’s never too late to say you’re sorry.” He glanced at his watch. “Sometimes, though, it gets too late for breakfast… so let’s get a move on.”

He made one of those come-along hand gestures, nodding toward his truck. I glanced at it, but my feet stayed planted. Why was he being so nice to me? I didn’t deserve it.

“Sometimes it is. Too late, you know. If you only knew what I did…”

Asher took my hand, surprising me. “I don’t
care
what you did. I can tell you’re a good person…” He tapped his chest. “… in here. And the fact that I came along and found you where I did this morning proves it’s not too late for you. If you didn’t care about what you’d done, you’d have kept on driving that sassy little car of yours to wherever you damn well pleased without a second thought. Instead, you’re here with me, about to tell me a
very
interesting story over breakfast. And then we’ll figure out a way to fix that problem of yours and make things right, and you won’t
have
to run off. You can stick around and find out all the other crazy things my granddaddy taught me.”

Staring into those tropical blue eyes, I found there was nothing I’d ever wanted to do more. For a moment, I actually considered telling him everything and finding out if his grandfather’s wisdom offered anything that would apply to recovery and redemption from a life as a Dark Elven memory-assassin.

But I couldn’t of course. He was a human—the sweetest, most attractive human I’d ever met. And
this
wasn’t going to happen.

“I can’t.” His crestfallen expression tugged at my insides. “But thank you—really. Thank you for turning around and coming back and missing school and telling me what your granddaddy said about possums. And for your kind, kind offer. You have no idea how much I wish I could take it.”

He nodded slowly and dropped his gaze to the ground, the toe of his boot kicking at a hunk of earth and grass his truck tires had dislodged. Then his eyes came up to meet mine again. He looked like he wanted to make another argument, but he didn’t.

“Okay then. Where will you go?”

“Actually, I’m going back to where I’ve been staying the past few days.” Until I’d said it just now, I hadn’t known the answer myself. Now I knew I
had
to try again to repair the damage I’d done. “I’m going to try one more time to make things right. After that… who knows?”

His grin returned. “Good for you. And California—if you need a little company on the way to ‘who knows,’ let
me
know. Big Red is always up for an adventure.”

I nodded, knowing I’d never see him again.