Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (24 page)

I’d been naive, I realized. Naive to think that if only I could find answers to my questions, everything would be better. Everything would make sense. I’d never let myself believe—I’d never even considered—that everything could get worse.

“He turned it into a contest,” Fourcade said. “A game … like chess. He would make a move specifically and explicitly to find out if your mother could match him. If she could beat him.”

Against my back, I could feel the rise and fall of Chase’s chest. “That’s messed up,” I muttered.

Fourcade’s mouth flattened into a tight line. “And she could,” he said. “She could match him. She could see through his eyes, know what he knew. Feel what he felt…”

I couldn’t even imagine. It was bad enough catching glimpses of Jessica. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to actually feel what she was feeling. Or worse, to feel what her abductor was feeling. See what he was seeing.

Want … what he wanted.

“Who would do that?” I asked. “What kind of sick, twisted…”

Very slowly, Jim Fourcade lifted his eyes to mine. “The man who killed her,” he said. “The man who murdered your parents.”

TWENTY-ONE

Nothing prepared me. Nothing could have. How could anyone be prepared to hear that the parents you thought died in an accident had actually been murdered?

Murder. It was such an ugly word.

An even uglier image.

So much twisted through me all at once. It was hard to explain. Shock made me cold. Fury made me shake. And sorrow … The slow bleed made me feel as fragile as the glass dragonfly in my bedroom, as if the wind blew hard enough, I would simply shatter.

Some sicko had murdered my parents.

Some sicko had killed them while they slept.

As part of some sick psychic game of chess.

All because she’d tried to help. Because she’d come forward with what she saw, and tried to make a difference.

They’d never even had a chance.

“Hey,” Chase said, and then he was turning me toward him, lifting a hand to the side of my face and looking down at me, frowning, maybe shaking a little himself. His touch was so gentle I wanted to cry. Instead I sunk into him, exhaling slowly as his arms slid around me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

And I had to wonder for what. For what Fourcade had told us—or for unearthing this stone in the first place, for digging when I’d asked him to stop … for bringing me to this crossroads?

I wanted to lose myself there, in his arms, in all that warmth. But I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t allow myself to crumble—and I couldn’t turn my back on the truth.

It took effort, but I grabbed onto the determination that had brought me this far to begin with and twisted back toward my mother’s cop. I made myself step away from Chase.

“What happened to him?” The question came from me; I knew it did because I felt my mouth move. But the voice I heard, all raw and thick and scraped, was one I’d never heard before. “Is he in jail?”

“Some say he was killed,” Fourcade said. “Some say he died on his own. Others say that after your mama was gone, after the game was done, he just … went away.”

“And you?” I asked. “What do you say?”

Fourcade rocked back, returning the chair to all four legs. But his eyes, timeless and silver and unspeakably tortured, remained on mine.

“I say that your mama knew,” he said. “I say that she saw and she knew and she moved every mountain to make sure the ugliness of her life never touched yours.”

A feather could have knocked me over.

“I say your grandmother was a saint, giving up everything she’d ever loved, ever known … to protect you.”

Chase stepped into me, his arms once again drawing me back against him.

I didn’t feel a thing.

“I say you should pray,” Fourcade said, but really, his voice was barely more than a murmur. “I say you should pray it’s not too late.”

*   *   *

Dusk fell in a gauzy veil. Earlier, on the drive down into St. Bernard Parish, I’d made out buildings and houses, even one of the hauntingly beautiful aboveground cemeteries. But on the drive back there was only the gathering darkness. Not that it mattered. I doubted I would have seen anything to begin with.

We drove in silence. I’m not sure how we could have done anything else. It’s not like we could talk about football or next week’s chem test, not with the weight of Fourcade’s revelations pressing down on us. We couldn’t even talk about that.

Wow, so some psychic pervert killed your parents. But you know what I don’t get? If your mom was so powerful, why didn’t she realize what he was going to do?

No, Chase was not going to ask that. I could tell by the way he stared straight ahead, his jaw hard as stone, his hands clenched too tightly around the steering wheel. I was pretty sure we’d blown way through any and all familiar territory.

Swallowing, I looked away from him, out the passenger window. He wasn’t going to ask, but I was. I already had. And I was pretty sure I knew.

My mother
had
seen. She’d known. The pieces were all there, the story my aunt told about finding my mother rocking me, crying. That my mother had known she would not see me grow up.
She’d known.

But why hadn’t she done anything to stop it? Why hadn’t she done anything to protect herself? My father? Had he known?

It was weird, but I had the feeling they hadn’t necessarily been on the same page.

The car slowed and I blinked, realizing Chase had not been driving toward the Warehouse District, but to a neighborhood with wide, tree-lined streets and huge, gorgeous houses.

“Where are we?” I asked.

He veered right, easing the Camaro down a long driveway next to a big two-story house. Night had completed its fall, but through the scatter of security lights, I could see the brick was painted white, and the style looked Spanish.

A garage door lifted, and Chase pulled inside, slowed to a stop, and killed the engine.

I had my answer.

*   *   *

The Bonaventure’s house was amazing. It was everything I’d imagined a home belonging to a successful lawyer and respected surgeon would be, all high ceilings and dark hardwood floors, lots of crown molding and bold antique furniture, marble and granite and state-of-the-art electronics.

It was also quiet, and still.

Chase led me across the marble floor of the foyer, with its amazing chandelier hanging two stories above, to the sprawling family room, where a wall of windows and French doors looked out onto a cabana. Shadows hid detail, but I could tell there was a pool. And from the sound of barking, I knew the dogs must be out there, too.

“Hungry?” he asked from behind me. “We can order a pizza or sushi—”

I turned toward him. “No, thanks.”

He watched me carefully, as if he half expected me to bolt.

I more than half wanted to.

“A drink then? A soda … beer?”

My mouth was dry, my heart thrumming hard. This was all so very real. I was at Chase’s house. We were alone. He was looking at me in that way I’d always dreamed, when I’d lay awake in my bed, wondering what it would be like if he kissed me. And more.

I’d wondered, but I’d never believed.

But there he was, looking at me as if he could see right through me—and very much liked what he saw.
Wanted
what he saw.

“No, I’m good,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. It wasn’t cold, not even cool. But I needed to hold on as tightly as I could. “I just want to go home.”

But that was so a lie.
Leaving
was not what I wanted.

Chase’s shoulders fell with a rough breath. “Not an option.”

I concentrated on the Gothic cross on his shirt, anything to avoid looking at his eyes. “Chase, please—”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” he said, and then he was moving toward me, erasing the distance between us.

My instinct was to back away. But the open space behind me was only an illusion of the windows.

“Not tonight, Trinity,” he said, and the way his voice roughened on my name made me everything inside of me quicken. “Not after today.” He stopped close enough to touch. But he didn’t.

At least not with his hands or his body.

“Because we both know what will happen.”

I’m not sure how I stood there without moving, given the deceptively small earthquakes tearing through my body.

“You’ll run,” he said quietly. “And you’ll hide.”

Like I’d done before.

Everything closed in on me then, everything I wanted, and everything I feared. I was safe. I knew that. For that moment, in Chase’s house, with its security system and neighborhood patrol, with
him,
there was absolutely no reason to be afraid. I’d faced so much more: the house on Prytania and the horrible dreams, the abandoned courtyard and the field by the airport, the man in the parking garage …

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said, lifting a hand to my chin and easing my face toward his. “Not of me.”

The rush swirled deeper. I could lose myself there, I knew. I wanted to.

That’s why I looked away. Because no matter how badly I wanted to let go and trust, to believe, I wasn’t sure I knew how.

“Did you say something about pizza?” I asked, and Chase’s eyes went even smokier.

He so knew what I was doing.

*   *   *

The slow rhythm of drums and chants washed over me the second I stepped from the small bathroom adjacent to the kitchen. Not too far away Chase sat in the family room, sprawled on the huge sectional sofa in front of the TV.

The glazed look in his eyes, so like that afternoon at the scrap of land that had once been his home, told me he had no idea how long I’d been gone.

A rocky field gleamed on the wide screen of the TV, with a big concrete tower on either end, and a bunch of dead things. Never blinking, never even moving, Chase just kept mowing them down, one after the other.

I could only imagine what he saw in the edges of his mind.

Quietly, I tossed my purse onto a formal chair and crossed to the sofa.

It was just a game, a game I myself had played numerous times. But games were supposed to be fun, and there was nothing fun in the way Chase kept destroying everything that so much as looked his way. Watching him should not have hurt. Watching him should not have made that big aching chasm inside of me fracture even more.

But it did.

“You’re good,” I murmured, driven by something I didn’t understand. “You must play a lot.”

He stared straight ahead. “When I need to.”

“
Need
to?”

The haunting music kept drifting, gradually louder, gradually lending an unexpected beauty to the savagery of his actions. “To get away,” he muttered, and finally his eyes flickered, just a trace, a small little flash that told me he was much more aware than I’d realized. “To forget.”

The music still played. I was sure that it did. But the chant faded to more of a low hum. And when I looked at Chase, the bangs falling into his eyes and his T-shirt loose, casual, his jean-clad legs spread wide, I knew his relaxed stance was a complete and total sham.

Only a few days before, I’d thought he had the perfect life. Now I realized it was also the perfect lie.

“Forget what?” I whispered without thinking.

Someday I would have to stop doing that.

“Everything,” he said quietly. “The lies, the secrets … Jessica.” He turned, obliterating me with his eyes—and one simple word.
“You.”

I went to step back, but my legs wouldn’t move. “Me?”

Something about him changed, softened. “This wasn’t how things were supposed to be,” he said in that same quiet, almost robotic voice. “I would change it all if I could.”

My throat burned.
My whole body burned.
“What would you change?”

The shadows about him deepened. “Jessica,” he said. “Your parents … the fear I see in your eyes.”

Instinctively I glanced away.

“I want to make it go away for you, too,” he said as my heart drummed so hard I could feel it in every pulse point. “If you’ll let me.”

Slowly, I looked back toward him and felt the promise in his eyes slip into my blood.

He extended a hand. “Come here.”

And I did. Just like that, against better judgment and every remnant of uncertainty, I took his hand, and went to him. “You make it sound so easy.”

“Not easy,” he said as I sunk down beside him. “But worth it.”

And somehow, I believed him.

“The world as we know it no longer exists,” he murmured as around us the apocalyptic music crested. “Humanity has been forced to flee. Space travel is the norm. Genetic engineering has created a whole new race.”

Called Spartans. I actually knew that. Growing up in the mountains was not like growing up in a cave. I’d had a friend, Jeffery. His grandmother and mine played bridge. While they did, Jeffery and I hung out. He, too, had been killer at
Halo
.

“There are these aliens,” Chase explained. “The Covenant. They’re the bad guys.”

They looked like giant toy Transformers.

He reached for the second controller and handed it to me. I would have sworn my fingers tingled. “It’s up to us to stop them.”

Us.
And in doing so … find a way to forget everything else. “What happens then?”

His eyes took on a smoky gleam. “Let’s find out,” he said, resetting the game so that two survivors stood on the rocky field.

He scooted closer, ran me through the basics of my controller. “And this,” he said, sliding his arm around me to hover his finger against a trigger, “throws a grenade.”

“What about this one?” I asked, joining my clumsily bandaged hand with his as I slid both to the right.

He glanced at me. His bangs fell into his face. “That one shoots.”

Somehow he’d ended up so spooned against my back that I could feel his heart, his breath. “Okay.”

“It seems like a lot to remember,” he said, “but once you get started…” His heavy-lidded eyes met mine. “Instinct takes over.”

Before, I’d shivered. Now, despite the slow swirl of the ceiling fan, my whole body burned.

“Just go with it,” he murmured. “See where it takes you.”