Under A Painted Sky (Spirit Warrior Series) (16 page)

He dialed her number on
his cell. I was anxious for him. I listened to his side of the conversation and
it sounded like it was going well. After a few minutes, he hung up his phone.

I said, “Well, that
sounded good.”

“It was great. She is
so cool. She said she picked me for you and prayed we would get together. She
was, well, ecstatic about it. She won’t take her money back. She said I did just
as she asked and everything she prayed for. She asked if you were happy and I
told her you were. She asked if you were with me, and I asked if she wanted to
talk to you, and she said no. She said she found out everything she needed to
know and even better news than she’d hoped. I told her I was in love, and she
said she was so happy for us,” Logan recapped.

“Oh
my
gosh
, I can’t believe it. I guess I can, because she kept asking about
you and us and how we were getting along. That is so cool that she wants us
together,” I said.

“Yes, I had no clue,”
Logan said.

“That takes care of
that,” I said.

“Are you ready to go to
her house?” Logan asked.

“Sure,” I said.

We traveled toward
Vista Hermosa and listened to “Not
Over
You” on the
stereo by Gavin DeGraw.

“Do you realize that I
have not cooked one time since I’ve arrived, and I have only driven once?” I
said.

“Are you happy or sad
about that?” Logan teased.

“I guess I am actually
very happy about that because I’ve had a grand time with you, Logan Hayes,” I
responded.

“Do you like my name?”
he asked.

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

“Good. Because one day
soon, I want to give it to you,” Logan said.

“Then, I guess I will
just have to take it,” I replied.

He lit up the truck
with his gorgeous smile and his green eyes were dancing with expectation.

I wanted to jump into
them and party down.

He pulled up to the
gate and punched in the code and we were in.

I asked, “How will
Cheveyo get in when he gets here?” I asked.

“I told him I would
meet him at the gate, so I’m pulling over here to the side for a bit,” Logan
said.

We pulled over and
looked up and there was Cheveyo. Logan got out and went to punch in the code
for him. He got back in and we made it to the house. We collected our things
from the truck and Logan unlocked the door to the house and took care of the
alarm. Cheveyo came in behind us.

They conducted a walk
through and I followed upstairs and then down. There didn’t seem to be anything
out of place that wasn’t before.

“Are we going to go
back over the papers about our visitor?” I asked.

“No, I think we need to
take a break from it and relax. We need to do something to take our mind off of
it. That usually helps in getting a new perspective. We can regroup and
brainstorm again about it in a little while,” Cheveyo said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Since we’re camping
out here, why don’t we just relax outside in the fresh air and maybe later pick
up something to grill and treat this like a real campout?” Cheveyo suggested.

“I guess we can tell
real ghost stories, laugh out loud. Oh, sorry, that was a very bad joke,
especially since this is really freaky and scary,” I said.

“Actually, I think it’s
good to be able to laugh at ourselves, even in a fearful situation. I think
there is something to that saying about laughter is the best medicine,” Logan
replied.

“I have a refrigerator
and freezer full of food. I can take out some rib eye steaks for the grill and
we can have baked potatoes and salad, if that is all right? It will actually be
my first real time cooking here except for frozen pizza,” I offered.

“That sounds great. We
can even take a swim if you want,” Logan said.

“You two go ahead. I
did not bring a suit so I will just watch,” Cheveyo replied.

“I think we are the
same size and I have a couple of swim trunks in my truck. I’ll loan you one,”
Logan offered.

“Nice; I could use a
cool dip in the pool,” Cheveyo remarked.

“I will get the steaks
out to thaw,” I said.

“And I will get the
swim trunks,” Logan said.

I got the steaks out
and Logan came back in with the swim trunks. I noticed he gave the red and
black ones to Cheveyo and he kept the one that matched my swimsuit. Awe! That
was so sweet.

“I’ll change in this
bathroom if that is okay?” Cheveyo asked, pointing to the bath downstairs.

“Sure,” I replied.
“Logan, will you go upstairs with me? I’m still a lot spooked about being alone
by myself anywhere in this house. I have to get my swimsuit and grab some
towels,” I said.

“Anything, for the
woman I love,” Logan said.

Going upstairs was
uneventful. When we came back down, Cheveyo was out on the patio.

Logan said, “You change
first and I will wait outside the door.”

After I changed into my
suit, he went in and I told him, “I’ll be just outside the door. Yell if you
need me.”

When he came out, I
turned the music on using the wall switch so we could hear it while outside. We
joined Cheveyo on the patio.

Wow, I hadn’t really
noticed before just how hot Cheveyo is. He was much more ripped than Logan, and
that dark Indian tan skin with his silky long black hair could make any girl
swoon.

Cheveyo dived into the
pool and the tan muscles on his arms ripped through the water as his long silky
hair flowed behind.

“Ready, Isabella?” Logan
asked.

The sound of his voice
shocked me back to reality. “Yes, I am,” I answered.

I walked into the pool
as Logan dove in like Cheveyo had. We swam around for a few minutes, and then
the male competition started. Logan had picked up a rock from off the patio and
the guys were throwing it and counting to three and diving in after it. I got
out and made my way to the lounge chair by the pool and watched as the man I
love got slaughtered in the game. Cheveyo was much stronger and faster and
Logan won like four times to Cheveyo’s twenty.

Logan said, “You must
work out a lot.”

“I try to keep in
shape. Every day, I work out for an hour,” Cheveyo responded.

“I don’t ever seem to
have an hour on most days. I guess if I really wanted to, I could find an
hour,” Logan said.

“It is truly a
commitment, I can tell you that,” Cheveyo said.

Logan took a lounger
next to mine and Cheveyo got one beside him. We were all lying facing the house
and we were listening to our music and basking in the warm rays of the sun.

Life was so good! After
being there for about forty-five minutes, Logan asked, “Don’t you think you
should turn over, Isabella?”

“I think you are
right,” I told him.

I got up to turn over
and noticed someone in the window of the house. It was an Indian woman dressed
in blue, motioning for me to come to her.

At first, I froze, and
when I got to where I could talk I said, “Guys, look.”

They both looked up at
me and asked, “What?”

I said, “Look at the
window upstairs in the second room.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Holy crap, someone is
in the house,” Logan said.

They both jumped up and
ran toward the door and I said, “Wait for me.”

When inside, Logan
said, “Wait,” and grabbed his gun from his overnight bag. Logan went first,
then Cheveyo and
I
up the stairs. He went straight for
the second room and found nothing. All of a sudden, the door shut and the door
knob was being turned back and forth real fast. It made an awful sound. We all
dropped our mouths because everyone saw and heard it.

There was a one to two
inch gap at the bottom of the door and there were no feet in front of it while
the knob was being jerked back and forth. My heart was beating out of my chest.
I pointed to the crack under the door and they noticed what I had. There were
no feet under the door.

Cheveyo yelled out,
“What do you want?”

The window started
going up and down. I looked toward the bed and there was an indentation like
someone was sitting on the bed. I hit Logan and pointed to the bed. I was
paralyzed in my tracks.

Cheveyo stood in front
of me and held up his arm like he was protecting me.

Logan said, “Come out,
you coward!”

Cheveyo said, “No,” and
started chanting and walking back and forth and the window stopped going up and
down. He kept chanting his spirit warrior chant, and then the indentation on
the bed disappeared and next the door opened and the knob stopped turning.

Cheveyo said, “We can
go out now.”

I looked toward the bed
and up above it on the wall was the word ‘back’ in a shadow on the wall. I touched
Cheveyo’s arm and pointed to it. We slowly started out of the room as the
shadow disappeared on the wall.

We went downstairs and
Cheveyo said, “Let’s get those papers out again and set up in the outdoor
kitchen at the table.”

“Okay, I’ll get the
papers,” I said.

“First, what did you
say to her with your chanting? I asked. “I guess we can all agree this is a
woman ghost/spirit or whatever.”

“Yes, we all saw her in
the window,” Logan replied.

“I was just telling her
to travel on home and wished her peace and rest. First, let’s all write down
everything that just happened,” Cheveyo said.

We all wrote down
everything that occurred.

Logan said, “I need a
drink. Does anyone else want something?” We both said water and Logan picked up
his gun.

Cheveyo said, “You
can’t use that gun on a spirit. It is very clear that is what we are dealing
with.”

“I guess you’re right,”
Logan replied as he put the gun down on the table. He looked kind of ridiculous
with that gun in his swim trunks anyway.

Logan brought our water
back and sat down.

Cheveyo said, “Let’s
start at the beginning. Logan is the caretaker of this new home that your aunt
purchased and he was here working on the house doing upgrades and upkeep for
more than a week. Then, your aunt decides to let you live here and you move
here from Florida, right?”

“Right.
I moved in here and didn’t see or hear anything until after I’d been here three
days,” I confirmed.

Logan said, “I am the
caretaker for this vacation place indefinitely. Her aunt decided to let
Isabella move here full time and she paid me to stock up and make sure
everything is ready for her when she arrives. She also paid me to take her and
show her all the sights for a week so she’d feel more comfortable. The day
after she arrived is when I started being with her every day until evening. We
fell for each other and I want to give back her aunt’s money, because I want to
spend as much time with Isabella as possible.”

“So, you and Isabella
have been together basically every day except the first, and no spirit activity
until day three,” Cheveyo reiterated.

“That’s correct,” I
affirmed.

“That is so strange
that Logan worked here and you moved in and nothing happened until after she
had been here for three days. Why, after all that time, would the spirit get
upset because you were here?” Cheveyo wondered.

“I checked it out, and
nobody was hurt or died on this property and it was not built on any burial
ground,” Logan reminded him.

“Usually, if a spirit
is here, it has unfinished business, which doesn’t make since that it showed up
later instead of being here all the time,” Cheveyo said.

Logan nodded.

“Let’s look at what you
did on the third day when you said it showed up. Here, I see that Logan picked
you up at eight a.m. Then you went to the Petroglyphs. Well, there are a lot of
spirits there.” Cheveyo laughed and then stopped. “Wait a minute; did you do
the tour thing or go alone?” he asked.

“We went alone,” Logan
answered.

“The lady in blue at
the window we saw was wearing her wedding dress. The Pueblo Indians used to be
buried in their wedding clothes. You did not touch the etchings, did you?”
Cheveyo asked.

“As a matter of fact, I
did. When I saw a hand the same size as mine, I couldn’t resist. I reached up
and put my hand in it,” I confessed.

Cheveyo said, “There is
a legend or story about a woman who died right after she took her wedding vows.
She was allegedly killed by Conquistadores. The legend has it that she died
with a broken heart.”

My eyes opened wide and
I said, “How sad.”

“She never got to live
with the man she loved. She couldn’t pass on to the next life until she heals
someone else,” Cheveyo explained.