Spectre of Intention Page 4

  A name. He knew me. Ashley knew him.

  If I could just try a door, get into a room. Were they all locked? If I stopped long enough to try one, they’d be on me. Ahead I heard a bright, feminine laugh. I looked, a crack of light.

  Apologize later.

  I shoved my way into the room. I reached back to slam the door.

  My head shattered.

  Shards of pain exploded like so much glass, leaving behind a tender, exposed emptiness. My shrill gasp echoed through it.

  Silence.

  The footsteps from the hall followed me in. Someone grabbed my arm from behind as I stumbled forward into the over-bright room. A voice in front of me raised in disgust.

  “Mak, what the fuck?! Who the hell is this chick? Are you trying to blow everything?”

  I raised my head. The man perched on the arm of the sitting room couch continued to rage at the man gripping me, not giving me a second look. But I saw him, saw the changes wrought both by time and man. Hair once a tousled fuchsia, now hung straight, black to his jaw. A once slender frame now filled in with muscle under that crisp white shirt. The face fuller, more sensual; the eyes still cocky as hell.

  Then I felt it, the warmth of his mind touching mine. Him, sliding in, taking over my very being without meeting defense, without facing a moment’s resistance.

  And he must have felt it, too, because at that instant, Stephan Chen turned to look at me for the first time in five years.

  “Ashley?”

  Kaitlin flickered out and for a moment I did, too. I felt Mak haul my body back onto its feet, saw Stephan slide off the couch and step forward. I regained my balance, clawed Mak’s hand away. He just laughed and let me go. He knew as well as I did I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Stephan and I stood facing each other, too shocked for a real reaction. His gaze searched my face, my body for anything that might confirm what he’d felt. His mind caressed mine, trying to coax out something familiar, some kind of recognition. I clung to my blankness like a knife in a fight for my life.

  Slowly, a cold ache poured off him like a despairing mist seeping into my bones. Between us that fog coalesced. The airy specter reached for me, wanting, wanting so much. He would hold me, protect me, nothing would ever hurt me again, he promised me. His wordless whispers filling my head.

  Those ghostly arms tried to pull me in.

  I jerked back into Mak.

  Stephan smiled in triumph.

  “Hello, Ash.”

  So stupid! The blankness in me snapped. I snarled at Ashley, chased her away, even as she stood there looking at Stephan like he was some sort of god. I forced Kaitlin back into consciousness.

  “Stephan.”

  “I like the changes.”

  He reached out, lifted a lock of my golden hair, let it run through his long, deft fingers. I caught myself watching and jerked my head away.

  “I really don’t care.”

  “Ah, but I think you do.”

  The hands that weren’t his hands continued their explorations, tracing my cheekbones, drawing their spectral fingertips down my throat, running their mist-like thumbs along my collarbone. I refused to react. With all my force of will I leveled him a cold stare.

  “Let me go, Stephan.”

  Those cocky eyes just laughed as he smiled.

  He looked around the room, sharing the joke, and I took count of the small crowd watching our exchange. Mak with his hands on my shoulders. The three men with him. Two were his, one was ours. A woman, who had hovered in the doorway of the sleeping room, walked in now. Pixie hair, pixie eyes, pixie ears, a tiny, lithe pixie body. Amilee Carson had been frozen in time, down to her elbow-length fingerless fishnet gloves. I saw her eyes tear even as she moved to Stephan’s side, put a proprietary arm around his waist.

  “You left us,” she said.

  The girl who had stood by me in the worst times of my life wanted to run to me, wanted to share that old joy with me again. But that joy was too marred with the uncertainty of abandonment, with the fear of losing Stephan. So, she shed silent tears instead.

  In that instant, I wanted to grab her, steal her away from here.

  Stephan put his arm around her.

  I let it go. Let it go like I’d had to five years ago…because I knew she didn’t want to be rescued. She didn’t see anything to be rescued from. She never would.

  Let it go.

  “I’m sorry, Ami.”

  Mak laughed and his sharp fingers dug into my shoulders, a pain that drove much deeper in my flesh, because I knew he wanted so badly to rip me apart. My breath caught in my throat. He dug down to bone, then shoved me aside.

  He strode past me to stand next to Stephan, to make sure I understood: the two who had been arch-rivals worked together now, the meticulous safecracker allied with the sociopathic gangbanger. My bile rose.

  “With him?”

  Stephan smiled grimly. “We’ve come to an arrangement. This gig was too good to pass up. Mak and his boys have agreed to work for me.”

  Volcanic rage spewed through the room, knocking my head back. In the fire of his anger, I saw Mak whip out a wicked blade. He grabbed Stephan’s arm, rammed the knife into his gut and yanked. Stephan sank to the floor screaming, his hands scrambling to hold the red, fluid life inside him. I saw Mak turn on me, tackle me; one hand tore at my dress as the other hand dragged the knife across my neck.

  I screamed.

  “Blood! Everywhere. He will betray you. Slaughter.”

  “What the hell is that crazy bitch doing?”

  Stephan grabbed me, shook me. “Snap out of it, Ash. Ashley!”

  “I’ll snap her out of it. Goddamn fucking zombie eyes!”

  I heard the slap of flesh on flesh.

  “Don’t you touch her.”

  The fire still beat at my brain, but the vision began to clear. I found myself on the floor, staring into Amilee’s eyes. I saw all that old fear, all that old submissive soullessness. A trembling started deep in my chest. Terror. I tore my gaze away.

  I pulled myself off the floor. To my left I saw Stephan and Mak exchange blows; in front of me I saw the door covered by a single distracted kid of a guard: one of Mak’s. I snapped Kaitlin in place. I charged forward, drove my heel into the kid’s foot, rammed an uppercut into his floating ribs. He barely resisted as I shoved him to the floor.

  I jerked the door open and ran. I could see the bank of elevators ahead. Which one had I used? The center. I looked at the floor indicator. It was gone. The right-hand one was just two floors away. I slapped the call button, spun around. The other two guards were out the door with Amilee trailing. The cabin door slammed against the wall. Stephan tore out of the room, pushed past Amilee and the two guards.

  I fell back against the elevator door. I had nothing to defend myself with, no spritzer, no bag. Shoes. I pulled off my heels, one in each hand. I heard the elevator car settle in behind me. Stephan lunged for me. I shrank back from his grasp, remembered the shoe in my own hand and swung for his head.

  He was not getting me back.

  Stephan ducked the swing. The elevator dinged. I swung with my left, he caught it, dragged me to him.

  “Ashley, stop!”

  The elevator door began sliding open. I looked over his shoulder. The onlookers had disappeared from the hall. That warm presence slid along the inside of my skull, fumbling, trying to take over. I yanked wildly at my arm.

  “Ashley, it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not!”

  I glanced behind me, glimpsed what looked like ship’s officers’ uniforms in the car. I froze. No one could know. No one ever. Stephan froze, too. I finally managed to pull my hand free, but he ripped the shoe from my grip.

  He stood there, holding the glittering white heel like some kind of grisly war trophy as the doors closed over him.

  “Open the goddamn door, Jessie!” I begged as I watched the peephole for any signs of movement. I couldn’t see the elevators from here. Couldn’t see if t
hey had followed me, didn’t know where the stairs were.

  “Come on!” I pounded on the door again.

  Finally, I heard the door bolt slide. I released my death grip on the handle as he popped the deadbolt. Jessie opened the door just wide enough to look out. He wore only a hastily thrown on pair of jeans. The rest of him was naked: naked feet, naked torso, naked annoyance. His intention flickered to life inches from my face. I jumped.

  Jessie raised an eyebrow. His intention winked out.

  “What is it, Kaitlin?”

  I tried to answer, but my breath stuck in my chest. I couldn’t voice it, couldn’t make it real. I jabbed my finger in the direction of the elevators. My entire body began to shake. I had to…I had to…

  Jessie grabbed my arm. “Jesus, Kaitlin, what’s wrong? What the hell happened?”

  He drew me inside, closed the door behind us.

  “I…I have to go. I have to go now. He’s here. He’s found me. I have to go. How do I get out of here? You have to help me get out of here.”

  “Stephan Chen. Stephan Chen is here on this boat?” Jessie frowned at me. “Kaitlin—”

  I held out my arm. Jessie stopped, looked at the scratches and welts left from that final struggle at the elevator. He looked back at my face, then down to my shoulder. The warm push emanating off him turned to a cool, queasy pull. With careful, gentle movements for hands so big, he lifted the side of my hair, slid the shoulder of my dress to the side.

  “Oh, baby. What did he—”

  Tears welled up. God, not tears. I shook my head, trying shake them away, felt the twist of the bruises for the first time. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go. Please, you have to help me. You don’t know what he can do to me. I have to get out of here!”

  “Hey, whoa. Whoa there.”

  Jessie folded me into his arms. My cheek pressed against the warmth of his bare chest. Some distant part of me found it odd. The rest of me just wanted to be safe. I struggled against the air screaming in and out of my lungs, threatening to build into sobs.

  “What happened?”

  “I went back to…but you weren’t there.”

  “Where? The pub?” His big voice rumbled in my ear.

  I nodded.

  “He jumped you there?”

  I shook my head, my tears smeared across his chest, across my cheek. His arms pulled me in tighter. His pain and panic drove into me.

  “Please talk to me, Kaitlin.”

  I didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to make him worry. I tried.

  “One of the rooms. He wanted…”

  “What? What does he want, Kaitlin?”

  “He’s hooked up…hooked up with a rival gang. He said, he didn’t say what…”

  “He must think you can help him somehow.”

  I felt the floor drop away. My head fell back from his chest.

  “God, Kaitlin!”

  “Me. The score means nothing to him. He wants me. Me.”

  “Shit. Hey, come on back, kid.”

  I blinked my way back to the surface, the roar of the ocean in my ears. The wild trembling had dropped to erratic shivers. I was lying on the couch. Jessie crouched next to me.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Ha, he didn’t want to hear about the way I could feel people’s intentions? Then he really didn’t want to know what the hell that was.

  I put a hand to my head and groaned. It never used to hit me so fast. Jessie would lock me up in the loony bin himself if I kept pulling my oracle routine every time emotions got high.

  “Kaitlin?”

  I glanced over to the worry in those hazel eyes. I trusted him more than anything in the world. Why didn’t he trust me? Maybe because he already knew too much about me. With a sigh, I pushed myself upright on the couch, forcing him to stand up.

  “Don’t worry about it. Once I get the hell away from him, it won’t happen anymore.”

  Jessie’s intentions were strong enough to become corporeal once more. Even as he crossed his arms over his chest, his intention reached down to stroke my hair. I glanced at the door. Stephan had to be somewhere close by.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jessie said.

  The layout of Jessie’s room was identical to Stephan’s. He walked around the end of the couch and into the adjoining sleeping area. A second later he returned, pulling a gray Army t-shirt over his head. He opened a tiny octagonal pot of cream and scooped some out with his finger. He started to reach toward my bruised shoulder, then stopped, scraped the ointment back into the pot and turned it over to me.

  “Here. It will help keep the bruising from getting too ugly.”

  I rubbed a little into each of my tender shoulders. The manufacturer had tried to mask the medicinal scent with lavender. I smoothed a little over the finger marks on my arm just in case. I handed the pot back to Jessie.

  He took the pot, stared at it as he rolled it back and forth between his fingers. He lowered himself to the coffee table in front of me. My stomach sank.

  “Kaitlin, you told me what you did before you ran. But you never really told me what he did to you back then. And I never asked. It wasn’t my place. Plus, it didn’t seem like you were really ready to talk about it. But, kid, it’s been five years now.”

  Oh, the shaking was starting again.

  I watched my hand run back and forth over the cold bronze upholstery of the couch.

  “Kaitlin, did he—”

  I shook my head, cutting him off. I tried to look up from my hand on the couch, could only hold his gaze for a second before I looked away again. I didn’t want to be this. I didn’t want to be like this again. I didn’t want to be Ashley with Kaitlin dead, utterly dead inside me. I couldn’t even hear her whisper.

  “I loved him, Jessie. But he could make me do things I didn’t want to do. He…” I shot to my feet. “I have to go.” I had to get out of here. I had to get away from here. Go somewhere I could put myself back together again.

  I was halfway to the door when I froze. He was out there, somewhere close by.

  Jessie’s big, gentle hand closed over my shoulder.

  “Kaitlin, look at me.”

  Jessie would never know how much it cost me to turn around, to turn my eyes up to his in that moment. Every cell in my body fought it, but I stood there, I looked him straight in the eye, because I had to. I had to have someone in my life that I could trust that much.

  “Do you really want to give all this up? Do you want to give up your career, your apartment, your friends? Do you want to give up the woman you’ve built yourself up to be? Do you want to give up Kaitlin Osgood?”

  Tears again. Goddamn tears again.

  “Because if you run again, he’s got you. You lose everything, and he’s got control of you again. He’s followed you all the way out to a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What does that tell you, Ms. Osgood?”

  “That he’ll…he’ll just keep coming. Oh, god.” My knees almost came out from under me right there, but I held on, fought it so hard. I didn’t want to be Ashley. Please, don’t let me be Ashley.

  I stared blankly at the white star in the Army logo on Jessie’s t-shirt. He ducked to catch my gaze.

  “Maybe it’s time to turn around and fight back.”

  No, no, no. Fighting back would mean being near him. No, no, no.

  “My mom—”

  “We’ve got your mom covered.” He sighed, pressed his lips together. “Sometimes I think I did the wrong thing, helping you hide.”

  All the blood drained from my face.

  “I don’t mean I regret helping you. I mean I regret not trying to convince you to eliminate him as a threat. You can’t live like this forever. You weren’t strong enough before, but I think you are strong enough now.”

  Jessie drew me away from the door so very carefully, as if he were drawing me away from a window ledge. “I know it’s hard but think about it: he’s got just as much to lose as you do with exposure. Let’s take our time with
this. Let me make some calls tomorrow, see if there is anything we can use. It might even be as simple as showing Cam that he has a record.”

  “Mak does.”

  Jessie smiled.

  My heart rate slowed for the first time in hours.

  “But I don’t know his real name. I would have to find an image of him, a fingerprint, something.”

  I wasn’t stupid. It wouldn’t be that easy, but maybe, just maybe there was a way…

  Jessie chuckled as the calculations played across my face. “Alright project manager. Enough for tonight. It’s got to be pushing three o’clock in the morning. Sleep on it. We’ll work on it tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Alright.”

  Kaitlin hovered at the edge of my senses. As I turned toward the door, I could feel her pushing me to act like a big girl and go.

  “I’ll walk you,” Jessie said behind me.

  I sighed my relief, laughed under my breath.

  “Thank you.”

  Jessie disappeared back into his sleeping room, returned with his shoes, sat down on the coffee table. I looked around, grabbed my one remaining heel from next to the door. Jessie raised his head from pulling on his tennis shoes.

  “Where’s your other one?”

  I stared down at the strappy white shoe, over at the scrapes on my arm.

  “He’s got it.”

  Jessie’s eyebrows rose in alarm as he got up and joined me at the door.

  I shot him a wry little smile. “I was trying to use it to put a hole in his temple. You can hardly blame the guy.”

  Jessie laughed out loud, clapped me on the back.

  “That’s my girl. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Jessie, I’d know if anybody was here.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t.”

  My one-room suite wasn’t much to search. He flipped back the heavy copper balcony curtains, checked the closet, the bathroom. Unless Stephan was hiding in the box spring, he wasn’t here.

  “Alright, looks like you’re good.”