Rx Missing (Decorah Security Series, Book #10): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel (5 page)

“You trust everyone here?” he asked.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Why does Tom Wright want to go off alone? Is he waiting to contact someone?”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“And I don’t know where Paula got her information about this place.”

“She’s been here.”

“Has she? And what’s Jenny Seville hiding?”

“I don’t know.” She moistened her lips. “You’re suspicious of everyone?”

“I have to be.”

She wasn’t exactly coming from the same place as he was. Still, now that she was part of the group, her stress level was off the charts, and her feelings for Mack Bradley were a big part of her roiling emotions. He interested her. Excited her. Inspired her admiration. She was even impressed by the way he wasn’t taking anything at face value—even her.

He kept staring at her, and she managed not to look away.

Silent messages passed between them, messages neither one of them could acknowledge aloud. She stood her ground when she wanted to close the distance between them and grasp his shoulders.

The moment was interrupted by a creaking noise like rusty hinges. As they watched, the door in the wall opened—like an invitation.

Mack heard Lily suck in a sharp breath as she stared into the darkness.

As she stared at the open door, the expression on Lily’s face was a mixture of panic and uncertainty.

When Mack started forward, she grabbed his arm. “Don’t go out there.”

“Why not?”

“Paula said it could be dangerous,” she answered.

“Paula was talking about India. This isn’t India.”

“How do you know?”

“Too many weird things—like Douglas disappearing. The temperature being the same inside and out. The sky going wonky.”

When he tried to tug away, she held fast.

“I want to know what’s going on,” Mack answered, unable to fight the sudden reckless impulse that grabbed him. “Is there something you know about this place that I don’t?”

She hesitated for a moment, then whispered, “No.”

“Then let’s not waste this opportunity.” Shaking off her hand, he charged toward the door in the wall.

Lily caught up with him and grabbed his arm again. “Stay here.”

“I don’t think so.”

He felt the impatience bubbling like a boiler set to explode. It came from frustration with this whole out-of-kilter situation and from a compulsion he couldn’t name—as though some impulse outside himself had taken control.

oOo

If he’d been thinking straight, that feeling of compulsion would have stopped him.

Instead he stepped through the open doorway into the woods. The light was suddenly dimmer, because the trees were blocking out the sun. There was no sound. No movement of the vegetation. If he was going to find out anything, he had to go farther in.

Mack started down a forest trail, leaving Lily behind. From the other side of the wall, the woods had looked normal. Now he saw that the tones were . . . wrong, like when the sky had stopped obeying the laws of nature.

Pushing his way through thick blue vines with blood-red flowers, Mack broke into a forest clearing, but the trees around him were far from ordinary. This was some kind of enchanted forest. Did the gnarled trunks have faces with large staring eyes? He couldn’t be sure. But the leaves were a rainbow of colors, changing and flickering like a rock concert light show. It was similar to the earlier changes in the sky, only now he was surrounded by it.

Far away in the depths of the forest he heard stirrings and strange calls. A huge black bird like the one they’d seen earlier emerged from the foliage along a branch and stared down with glowing red eyes, making a clacking sound with its large, curved beak.

Mack was focused on it, when a loud, roaring sound made him turn. A beast came charging out of the underbrush, headed straight for him. It had one enormous horn in the middle of its broad forehead, and it ran on short legs, heavy enough to hold up its armored body.

Dodging aside like a matador, Mack felt its hot breath as it went past and disappeared into a tangle of writhing red and orange vegetation.

That was the signal for all hell to break loose. Suddenly the woods were alive with branches swaying and the underbrush crunching. Sometimes he saw nothing but the foliage moving. Sometimes a strange-looking animal would leap out of the trees, heading for Mack or charging past him as though he weren’t even there.

A series of savage growls made him spin to the right in time to see a troop of little men about three feet tall and dressed in animal skins emerge from the underbrush. Their faces were covered with warts, their hair was a matted mess, and they carried spears.

They looked at him and pointed. Then one screeched and threw his weapon, and the sharp tip dug into a tree beside Mack’s shoulder. He pulled out the spear, and faced the attackers.

As he did, they all rushed toward him, screaming barbaric war cries.

He answered with his own furious shout as he threw the spear he’d pulled from the tree, striking the leader in the chest. The little man went down with a groan of surprise, and the others cried out in anger, launching their weapons. Mack snatched another spear from the ground and threw it back, taking down a second attackers.

If he ran, he’d be pursued by a hail of missiles. Choosing to stay and fight, he dodged behind a tree, scooping up a handful of spears as he took cover.

He swayed to the side, throwing, then dodging back as more missiles sailed toward him. When the volley stopped, he darted out and threw another couple of spears, keeping his eyes on the attackers, taking down another and another of the hoard. He might be outnumbered, but he was winning the battle. Finally, the remainder turned and fled.

When they were gone, he stood with his back against the tree trunk, breathing hard.

Where had the little warriors come from? Could they have killed him? Or was that just an illusion? And if so, what about the hotel and grounds on the other side of the wall? Was that an illusion, too?

Although he’d chased the ugly little men away, a terrible thought tore at him. If they were after him, were they after Lily, too? Could they kill her—because she’d followed him in here?

He’d left her somewhere in the woods. Now guilt and fear for her shot through him. If anything happened to her in here, it would be his fault.

Desperately, he shouted her name and thought he heard her answer from far away. But he couldn’t be sure.

As he called her again, the trees around him began to shake in the kind of wind that precedes a violent storm. And while multicolored leaves flew through the air, he sensed something he’d been ignoring. A force was tugging at his mind, pulling out recent memories.

His temples throbbed in time to the pounding of the blood in his veins, and he moaned, hunching his shoulders and slapping his hands over his ears, but that did nothing to stop the awful whirling inside his head. He had to get out of here. Out of the woods. Back to the relative safety of the hotel grounds before every thought in his mind had been snatched away, and he was just an empty shell of a human body.

A noise from above made him look up. Standing on a tree branch, holding fast to the trunk, was a man with a shaved head and beard stubble, dressed like a biker. Although the forest shook around him, the tree where he stood remained steady, like a rock in the middle of pounding waves.

He was looking at Mack with clinical detachment, as though he was interested in how he was coping with this weird place.

“Are you doing this?” Mack croaked.

The man didn’t answer.

“Make it stop!”

“No can do.”

“I can’t . . . think . . .”

“Sure you can. You are. Keep giving me information.”

He started toward the tree, intent on climbing up and throwing the guy into the jungle. Before he reached the trunk, a voice stopped him.

It was Lily.

“Mack? Is that you, Mack?”

When he heard her, his heart leaped. Thank God!

“Lily! Where are you?” he shouted. As soon as he heard her voice, finding her became the total focus of his being.

“I don’t know,” she answered, her tone echoing the panic he felt.

“Keep talking.”

“I . . .”

“Sing something.”

“What?”

One of his memories had been of Sunday school. “When the Saints come Marching Home. You know that one, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She began to sing the lusty old hymn.

Oh, when the saints go marching in,

Oh, when the saints go marching in,

Lord, I want to be in that number,

When the saints go marching in.

Her voice faltered at first, then grew stronger, and he followed the blessed sound. She didn’t seem to know more than the first few lines, but she repeated them over and over. Listening to her helped him hang on to his sanity and his own memories as he staggered toward her. They crashed against each other in a clearing, and he wrapped his arms around her, rocking her in his embrace, so very thankful that he had found her and that she seemed to be all right. At least physically

He hugged her more tightly. “Lily, thank God. I’m so sorry I dragged you in here.”

“You didn’t drag me.”

“Still my fault.”

He noticed that she didn’t argue about that. Still, she didn’t say, “I told you so,” as she clung to him.

Around them, the trees shook harder, making his head spin.

“We have to go back the way we came.” He cursed in frustration. “But where?”

“There.” She pointed behind him.

“How do you know?”

“I can see the light shining through the door.”

He eased away and turned, seeing a rectangle of light shining through the foliage like a signpost, pointing toward safety. If they could only get there.

He ached to get the hell out of this death trap that seemed to be cobbled together from a random set of nightmares. But when he tried to move, his legs felt rooted to the ground, and he knew he wasn’t going to make it out alive.

“Come on,” Lily urged.

“I can’t. You go on. Save yourself.”

“No.” She tugged on him, and he lost his balance, almost tumbling to the ground. The jarring motion was apparently what he needed. When she started pulling him toward the exit, he stumbled after her.

“Stay,” the voice of the man in the tree boomed behind them.

“No,” he answered, then raised his voice in defiance. “No.”

“Then you’ll be killed.”

Lily gasped.

“You heard him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see him?”

She turned and looked back the way they’d come. Lifting her gaze, she looked toward the man in the tree, then quickly away.

“Come on,” she urged. “The sooner we get away from him, the better.”

“Both of you—stay!” His voice boomed the command like Zeus issuing a decree from Mt. Olympus. But whatever this guy was, he wasn’t a god.

The warning only strengthened Mack’s resolve to escape. Deep inside, he knew the man was lying. Mack Bradley’s death was in here. And Lily Wardman’s, too.

As they staggered toward the door, a huge animal rushed at them. Something bigger than an elephant, but with scales and fangs. Mack was sure they would be trampled by the truck-tire-sized feet or slashed to ribbons by the jagged teeth.

They kept running, the ground shaking from the impact of the beast.

Was the door moving farther away? Or was that just an illusion conjured by this place that didn’t obey the laws of the universe as Mack knew them?

He put on a burst of speed, pulling Lily along.

With the animal almost on them, they dived through the doorway, tumbling out on the lawn where they lay panting.

The thing on the other side of the wall roared in anger. A huge eye peered out at them, but the behemoth was too big to get through the opening.

When the wall shook, Mack glanced back, praying that the monster wasn’t going to crash through the barrier that separated safety from chaos.

But from this side everything looked different, the way it had before they’d gone in. Instead of fantasy shapes and colors, he saw only normal-looking trees.

With every ounce of strength he had left, he heaved himself up and staggered toward the door.

“Come back,” Lily gasped.

“Gotta close it.”

He slammed the wooden barrier closed, before staggering away from the wall again and sinking to the lawn beside Lily. She rolled toward him and gave a dry sob.

“It’s okay. Everything’s okay,” he whispered, reaching for her and pulling her into his arms, clinging and rocking, so thankful that they had both escaped.

She clung to him, shaking.

“What happened to us in there?” she gasped. “I mean, everything turned crazy.”

“Yeah, but we got out.”

“Where did that loony stuff come from?”

“Loony.” He laughed, then shook his head. “Yeah, Looney Tunes.”

He had no real answers for her as he stroked his hands over her back, tangled them in her hair. He only knew that they were lucky to have escaped alive.

But they were safe now, and she was in his arms. He’d wanted to hold her like this, touch her like this. It had seemed wrong before. Now it was the only thing that felt right, as he focused on Lily instead of the terror in the forest.

What had happened in the forest didn’t make sense. But they had escaped, and they could celebrate that.

They were both alive, and he needed to prove it.

The desperate look in her eyes undid him.

“That was impossible,” she whispered. “It can’t be real.”

“Maybe not, but this is real.”

He cupped the back of her head and brought her mouth to his. Perhaps in some part of his mind, he had intended it to be a reassuring kiss, but the moment his lips touched hers, he knew he wanted more.

Lily trembled in his arms, running her hands over his back, his shoulders, gathering him closer, melting against him.