Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (34 page)

Except I
was
scared. How could I not be? I saw things. I knew things no one should know.

“A room,” I whispered, and my voice thinned on the word. “It’s dark, abandoned.” Staring straight ahead, I saw the two Fourcades, one with silver hair, one with black. With a slow blink they merged and moved toward me.

“She’s against a wall,” I said with what little voice I could find. My arms hung against my body. My hands opened. “In a gown.”

He stopped before me, took my hand. “What kind of gown?”

“Dirty,” I said, closing my eyes and opening myself, inviting the images to return. “Stained.” Against me, the wind whipped. “There’s something on her arm … like a … bracelet.”

Against mine, his fingers tightened. “What else?”

“She’s scared.” My whole body started to shake, and then I was there again, in the suffocating darkness, turning in slow circles. “There’s boxes, lots of junk. Trash.” I wasn’t sure what made me look up. “A light,” I murmured. “Leaking through some cracks. And a sound … a wail … like a horn … I—”

“My God.”

Like a fist to the gut, the hard edge to the voice made me sag.

“Hey.”
Gentle now. Soft. Arms around me, easing me to the ground. I sat but barely felt the gravel against my knees, swallowed, made myself look. Made myself see.

Jim Fourcade held me, watching me through eyes the same silver as his son’s. “You’re okay,” he said. “You’re perfect.”

“I don’t understand.”

Nothing prepared me for his smile, as warm as it was heartbroken. “You found her,” he whispered.
“You found her.”

*   *   *

The wharf hulked against the night, a stamp of pure darkness against the glow of lights from a complex downriver. While the rain-slicked French Quarter partied and the Central Business District slept, along the Mississippi barges slipped like shadowy ghosts, silent save for the occasional cry of a horn.

With a shiver, I pressed my hands to my temple, trying to merge reality with the distorted slide show flashing through my mind. Every time I tried to hold on, the image shifted—and the invisible vise around my head tightened.

Fighting it, I sucked in a slow breath, counting to five as I let it out.

“He should be out by now,” I murmured, resisting the urge to hug my arms around my body. The afternoon storms had moved on, leaving behind the first breath of fall. The breeze off the water swirled against my bare legs, making me grateful for the fuzzy pink slippers Jim Fourcade had mysteriously produced. They were a little big, but so much better than being barefoot.

Almost an hour had passed since he’d vanished inside the falling-down structure that had once served the Port of New Orleans. I didn’t want to think about what was inside now.

A few feet away, his son turned toward me. I’d never met anyone who could be so still, even when he moved. “Give him time.”

The ironclad calm to his voice made me want to scream.

“He’s had time—” I started, but a wave of pure ice cold doubled me over. I caught myself, hung there while the fuzzy images flickered faster: Jessica, rocking, crying. Fading. Even when I blinked, focus would not come, just the distorted sight of Fourcade’s son lunging toward me.

“No.” I darted past him, toward the metal door hanging open. “Something’s wrong—”

He caught me from behind.
“Trinity.”

“No!” I thrashed against him, my heart pounding so violently I couldn’t even breathe. “Let me go!”

“You know I can’t do that.” His voice was quiet, hypnotic. “You can barely stand up.”

I hated that he was right. But somehow I made myself twist from his arms before he could stop me, even as a swirl of bluish white danced before my eyes. Staggering, I was three steps from the door when my knees went out from under me.

Darkness swam. Light flirted against it. Shaking, I brought my hands to the sides of my face and pressed.

But the low buzz would not stop.

“Hey.”

The voice broke through the static, and I opened my eyes, made myself focus. He crouched with his hands on my shoulders, steadying me. But nowhere near as much as his eyes. They were dark and glowing, safe …

“What do you see?”

My mouth opened, but no words came out. I swallowed, tried again. “Jessica … she’s…”
Not here.
I didn’t know where the words came from, so I pushed them aside. “Hurt,” I said. I could feel it, the sharp sting of pain radiating from the wrist I’d unknowingly wrapped my hand around. “Bleeding.” I barely recognized my own voice. “There’s not much time.”

A few feet away, the wind sent an empty plastic bottle skittering along the damp concrete, but Fourcade’s son didn’t move. “If she’s in there, my father will find her.”

“But I have to—”

“No, you don’t.”

I looked away from him, watched the bottle rolling toward a puddle at the edge of the building. Dyl—

I broke the thought, refused to let his name form. His name threw me back. His name returned me to those first few distorted moments by the river, when he’d held me …

His name took me back to his apartment—his kitchen.

Jim Fourcade’s son. That’s all he was. For all intents and purposes, a stranger.

“You can let go of me now,” I whispered.

Surprisingly he moved, shifting so the shadows slipped from his face. “Can I?”

“Yes.”

His hands fell away. I swayed, but caught myself, pushing to my feet and putting a few steps between us. My whole body hummed. I wasn’t a waiting kind of person. So close, was all I could think. We were so close. I wanted—

I didn’t know what I wanted. To be inside, yes, but even as the thought formed, I realized how absurd it was. I was a sixteen-year-old who’d been in the city less than two months. What could I—

Movement to my right drew my attention to an old pylon with a fraying rope hanging from rotting wood—and a skinny white cat watching me through unblinking eyes.

The quickening was immediate. I tensed, wanted to step forward with an outstretched hand, even as I wanted to step back, and make it all go away.

“Do you see a cat?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fourcade’s son edge closer. “What do you want me to say?”

It made absolutely no sense, but I would have sworn he sounded … amused.

“The truth,” I said, watching the motionless animal. “Is there a cat—or am I staring at thin air?”
Again.

“There’s a cat.”

The quick flutter in my gut was ridiculous. “You can see it?”

“I can see it.”

I glanced back at him, with his low-slung jeans and his T-shirt, the faint goatee and military-short dark hair, and the smile just happened. “Really?”

His eyes met mine, for the briefest of heartbeats, before shifting toward the pylon.

The cat was gone. “That’s not funny…”

“I’m not laughing,” he said as tires screeched and headlights cut in from behind us.

I spun, recognized the Lexus immediately, and before I could process what was happening, the car stopped and the driver’s door flew open, and Aunt Sara was racing toward me.

“Oh, thank God!” she cried, pulling me into her arms as a siren screamed somewhere nearby. “Thank God, thank God, thank God!” She squeezed me tight. “I’ve been so worried.”

The twist of guilt and relief paralyzed me. I’d done this to her. I’d run. I’d vanished. I’d left her to worry …

“I’m okay,” I whispered, and then my arms were moving, lifting to wrap around her.
“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said, still holding me, not letting go. “I know how hard all of this is—”

“I was scared,” I said. “I didn’t know what to—”

And then I saw him, and everything else fell away.

Chase.

In the same torn jeans and Tulane T-shirt he’d worn that afternoon, he stood beside the car, watching.

My throat knotted. My heart forgot to beat.

Looking at him hurt. Seeing his eyes, normally warm and bright and such a vibrant shade of blue, shadowed now, ravaged.

Aunt Sara pulled away, stepped away, leaving nothing between me and Chase but a few puddles, and the memory of the last time I’d seen him.

Around us the cool breeze of that no-man’s-land between night and morning whispered, sending an empty fast-food bag ambling across the gravel of the parking lot. From somewhere behind us a siren wailed. Chase started to move.

“Trinity.”

My chest tightened. So much emotion there, all hot and boiling. I wanted to move toward him. I wanted to run. I wanted to feel his arms close around me, feel him hold me, make it all go away.

But … I couldn’t move.

He walked slowly, like I might disintegrate if he moved too fast. All the while he kept his eyes on mine, until he stood so close all I had to do was lift an arm, and I could have touched.

“I’m sorry.”

The words came at me through a vortex of hurt and regret, of shock and denial and relief, and I felt my eyes sting, felt the flood of moisture even as I tried to lock it all away. And then he was moving again, moving when I couldn’t, eliminating the last breath between us and reaching for me, taking me into his arms and holding me.

Even as I stood glass still.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, this time with a hand against the back of my head, holding me tight, so tight, just like I’d wanted before, at the house on Prytania, when he’d …

Walked away.

“I shut down,” he said in a voice so raw I knew exactly where the surprise of Jackson’s words had thrown him, back to the day he’d raced into his kitchen for water, and walked out with no idea who he was anymore.

“I was wrong,” he said. “I just … Shit,” he muttered. “I lost it.”

My throat hurt. I made myself swallow. I knew I needed to say something, but the words wouldn’t form.

“I walked,” he said, and now he pulled back enough for his eyes to meet mine. “For a long time I just walked. And I kept thinking, I kept thinking about everything, about what Jackson said and what you said, but more than that about the way you’d looked at me, what I’d seen in your eyes, and I realized…” His expression twisted. “I tried to call you.”

But I did not have my phone, didn’t even know where it was.

“When your aunt told me what happened…” His hand came to the side of my face, gentle, so very, very gentle. “We’ve been looking for you all night.”

I’d been trying to be brave. I’d been trying to be strong and do the right thing, to take charge instead of following directions, to be the person my mother had been. But standing there with the breeze slapping my hair against my face, I no longer knew what was a lie, and what was real. Maybe the new Trinity was the illusion, an ironclad façade to shield myself from the hurt that came from letting anyone close. The old Trinity was still there, wanting more than anything to just let go.

And I did. Blinking against the hot, salty sting, I felt the warmth shimmy all the way to my toes. “It’s okay,” I whispered.

“No, it’s not.” Long bangs fell against his eyes, but did nothing to conceal the blue. “I should have known—”

I stepped back into his arms, closing mine around him. I held on tight, squeezing my eyes shut as I drank in the unexpected wonder of the moment, the amazing way he held me, the happiness flowing through me. I absorbed it all, never wanted it to end.

Then I opened my eyes—and saw Jim Fourcade’s son.

He stood in the shadow of the forgotten wharf with the glow of the port behind him, and the emaciated white cat in his arms. His eyes gleamed of burnished silver. And the moment froze, locked around me like Chase’s arms, stripping me of my ability to move.

Until Detectives Aaron LaSalle and DeMarcus Jackson stepped from inside the darkness, and shattered the illusion of sanctuary.

Chase still held me. I knew that he did. I could feel his arms, his body. But the way the cops looked at me brought the cold pouring back, and I knew. I knew.

Before they said a word,
I knew.

“No,” I whispered, trying to back away even as Chase held me. “No…”

“How nice of you to join us,” Detective Jackson said as Jim Fourcade staggered through the doorway.

“I don’t understand…” I whispered, staring at the silver hair falling against the older cop’s leathery face, his clothes … torn. Shock ripped through me. “You … you called them?”

His eyes, oddly flat, met mine. “Trinity, I had to.”

Had to?
What did that mean? “Why?” The question was somewhere between a gasp and a shout. “I trusted you! I thought—”

“That he’d play your game?” Jackson asked as Aunt Sara rushed over to Detective LaSalle and put her hands to his chest. My heart slammed crazily against my own. “Like he played your mama’s?”

I took the words like a physical blow, unable to look away from my mother’s friend. His son had moved to join him. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“Am I?” Jackson asked. “Really? Because it doesn’t look that way to me. Your mama’s friend may have swallowed your story, but evidence doesn’t lie. I knew sooner or later guilt would get the better of you and you’d slip—”

“No.”
Everything shifted, tilted. I lunged toward him anyway, had to make him go back inside.

Chase wouldn’t let me take so much as a step.

“You have to go back!” I could see her … I could see her! “Look again. She’s in there!”

“Is she?” Jackson’s smile was horribly mild. Despite it being the dead of night, he looked ready to go out on a date, with a sports coat and pressed slacks, dark boots.

“And why would you think that?” The question was soft, deceptively gentle. “Is this where you left her?”

Chase’s arms tightened around my waist. “That’s bullshit and you know it!”

“Back off, Jackson—” That was Dylan’s father.

Jackson started toward me, but before he took two steps Aaron LaSalle pulled away from my aunt.

“Everyone take a deep breath,” he said, heading toward his partner. “We’ll take this to the station and sort it all out—”

“No!” The word ripped out of me, and with it came a new strength. I scrambled from Chase, edged away from them all. “You can’t do that.”