Touching Silver (15 page)

He took a step forward automatically, but it wasn’t soon enough. Tiberius rushed out of the house, barking furiously, and raced toward the hedge fencing Olivia’s yard. The dog’s behavior stunned Isaac, and he momentarily forgot about his car. Tiberius had always been well-behaved, even mild-mannered. But the dog attacking the hedge was neither.

“Tiberius,
heel
.”

Tiberius turned to look at her, then looked back to the hedge, but finally heeded his mistress’s order and pranced back to the porch. She met him on the bottom stair and hooked a leash on his collar. Tiberius yelped and turned back to the hedge, practically dragging her in his enthusiasm to investigate. Isaac might have joined them any other time, but now he was drawn to his car.

Or what remained of his car.

The tires weren’t just slashed. They were in shreds, rubber strips more than anything else. Shards of glass littered the drive where the windows had been smashed in, and the windshield was a concave spider web, only held in place by the molding of the car. Isaac approached the Toyota slowly, picking out the fresh dents in the side where somebody had obviously kicked it in, and glanced inside to see the dash gutted, a gaping hole where the stereo used to be.

He barely heard Olivia’s sharp breath behind him. He was too busy trying to tamp down the fury rising in his gullet.

Tiberius surged forward, trying to investigate the driveway. Olivia yanked him back, away from the sharp shards of glass, and fished her cell phone out of her pocket. “Don’t touch anything.”

While she made the call, Isaac circled the car, searching for other signs of vandalism. No window had been spared, no panel wasn’t kicked in. There were even scratches along the hood where someone had keyed the dark paint.

“I guess getting that new car just took a top priority,” he complained when Olivia snapped her phone shut.

“I can’t believe they did this right outside my house.” She repeated the revolution around the vehicle he’d just taken, her eyes constantly darting around, not missing a single detail. “Did you hear anything?”

His answer came through gritted teeth. “No. Not a peep.” He scanned the calm street. “We should question the neighbors. See if they saw or heard anything suspicious. Have you had any other reports of vandalism in the area?”

Olivia shook her head. “This is a really quiet neighborhood, Isaac. We’re just a block from an elementary school. Most of these people are retired or young families. We’ll start knocking on doors as soon as the uniforms show up.”

Isaac shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. “So much for getting to work on time. No offense, but there are parts of this week that I wish I could shove up somebody’s ass. I take a step forward, someone shoves me two steps back. It’s getting a little annoying.”

She put a comforting hand on his arm. “We’ll figure out who is responsible for everything. And we’ll stop them.”

Everything.
He stared at her, incredulous. “You think this is part of Gabriel’s mindfuck?” He waved at the car. “This is kids looking for fun. Gabriel wouldn’t bother smashing the windows out of my car. He’d blow it up.”

“Isaac, you’re a smart guy and a good detective, but you are the most stubborn man I have ever met. You’re right. Gabriel wouldn’t bother smashing the windows out of your car. And he wouldn’t kill your fish. And he wouldn’t take pictures of you while you slept. Gabriel is not responsible for
any
of it.”

He wasn’t stubborn. He was finding a solution in the only way he knew how. None of his active cases would merit the bothersome treatment he’d been getting all week. The only one who had any reason to worry about him at all was Gabriel. He had gone after Remy and Nathan, hadn’t he? It made perfect sense for him to go after—

Except he hadn’t. Everything that had been going on in Isaac’s life was petty compared to the thugs that had been sent to dispatch Remy and Nathan before they left for Argentina. Dead fish were nothing compared to a dead police officer.

“So if Gabriel didn’t plan any of these attacks,” he said carefully, his voice low and angry, “who the hell did?”

Remy gazed down at Nathan’s naked body as he slept, resisting the urge to trace over the scars on his chest with her fingertips. She knew them, each and every one. She knew them better than her own body. Some of them were nearly invisible, others so puckered and vivid she still occasionally winced when she saw them. Knowing he’d suffer every injury over again, if it meant saving her from harm, amazed her.

He loved her that much. And to this day, she had little idea what she had ever done to deserve the second chance the Silver Maiden had given her.

Remy knew more about the coins than she had when they had first arrived in the village. The meeting with Cora had been invaluable. They knew what Gabriel hoped to do, why he went after those girls, the power he hoped to gain. Gabriel’s quest for more power made the most sense to both her and Nathan. For Gabriel, power was the absolute.

But the answers she had hoped to find for herself were still elusive. Sure, she had a better idea of why she had been dragged through time. Desperate and terrified, she’d wished to be free of the life she’d had in D.C. She knew the power of the coins made it possible. But she didn’t know why. Most importantly, she didn’t know if it could happen again.

She rolled out of bed, careful not to disturb Nathan. The village bustled with activity as the sun reached its zenith. Though she longed to lie with him and pretend none of the outside world existed, she couldn’t think when she was still. She needed to be moving. She needed to get out into the sunshine, beyond walls trapping her within her meandering thoughts, and sort it all out. While she had the chance. The clock was winding down on their time in Argentina, and she worried that once she left the answers would never come.

She dressed quickly in jeans and a tank. Nathan stirred once and she paused, watching him steadily to make sure he wasn’t going to rise. If he joined her in her walk, he’d worry about her inability to settle. She didn’t want him to worry. She wanted him to rest.

When she was convinced he wasn’t going to get up, she picked up her shoes from the floor and carried them out to the porch. The sun scorched her skin, and she squinted against the brilliant light as she sat down and pulled on her boots. Smart move would be to go back inside and get her sunglasses. But sneaking into the room would mean running the risk of waking Nathan again.

Shielding her eyes, she scanned the horizon. The dark shape of the jungle made her stop.

The jungle would be cooler. She could take the same path Cora had shown them the day before. It would be perfectly safe, she’d have privacy to think and she wouldn’t need her sunglasses.

Villagers smiled as she passed, and though Remy returned the greetings, using the halting Spanish Nathan had taught her to get by, she didn’t linger. Each step was surer than the one previous, as if the path had been laid out before she’d set to it, so that by the time she reached the jungle’s edge she didn’t even consider where she was going. She moved on instinct. The rest of it was insignificant.

She easily found the path from the day before. Crushed undergrowth revealed their treads, and broken branches from the low-hanging greenery marked deviations from the trail Cora had chosen. Contrary to what she had believed, the heat was even more oppressive here than in the village, as if the trees were gathering the sunlight and storing it for the cooler months ahead. To Remy, her footsteps sounded thunderous, but those times when she attempted to move more quietly, the hum of the jungle made her skin crawl.

She thought she was being followed. More than once, she stopped and looked behind her, wondering what had made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. But each time she only saw green, green and more green. She was alone. Imagining things. There was nothing but the life that naturally teemed within the confines of earth and sky. She was the intruder. Nobody else.

The babble of the stream Cora had stopped at gave Remy a place to rest, but her skittish gaze jumped from tree to tree. Why had Cora chosen this spot to talk about the Silver Maiden? She had been adamant about not discussing it in the village. Was there some significance to the stream? Remy didn’t think so. It was calm and beautiful, but it was just a tributary. The original Silver Maiden had forged her coins at the river.

It wouldn’t hurt to follow the stream. As long as she didn’t stray from its winding path, Remy wouldn’t get lost.

Ten minutes later, the whispering started.

At first she thought it was a breeze. It was low and almost not there. A specter in a world that breathed with more life than she’d ever seen in all her twenty-five years. But when it dawned on her that her hair was sticking to her neck, that nothing was moving but her feet, she knew it wasn’t the wind playing tricks on her.

Remy stopped. Cocked her head. Closed her eyes. Listened.

She didn’t hear it. She felt it. That’s why she had thought it was just a draft of air. She felt it slither beneath her skin, crawl to her spine and make it tingle.

By the time she opened her eyes again, her heart was pounding.

She should go back. Nathan waited for her at the house. She hadn’t even left him a note, and he would kill her for making him worry. No doubt he would wake with her gone from their bed. Common sense screamed at her to turn around, and any other time Remy would have taken common sense in hand and let it lead the way. It was how she’d survived as long as she had. She didn’t do dumb things like this.

But she’d also survived by listening to her gut. And right now, her gut wanted to pay attention to whatever whispers the jungle wanted to share.

She walked. Always with the stream, always with a step that didn’t falter. When she saw the structure rising out of the earth like it had just as much right to be there as the trees, she knew why she had followed her instincts.

Dirt clung to the base like to the roots of a tree, thinning over the smooth walls the higher it climbed. Time had weathered the stone to a mottled gray, but she could tell it had once been the palest white, catching stray beams of light to send gold scattering across the water. She could even imagine the backs of women, brown from the sun, bowed over the stream. They weren’t there now. Only the whispering still tugging her forward.

She walked unerringly toward the entrance. Vines coiled up and through the stone, embracing the building before threading through the trees that canopied above. With each step the air grew cooler, the ground softer. She reached the cavernous doorway and pushed back the vegetation in order to go inside.

Two stairs carved from the same stone that made the walls led down to the main arena. It was square—perfectly square, she realized with a start—and on the opposite wall a long table ran its entire length. She headed for it without thinking, ignoring the dirt clinging to her boots, but halfway across the main floor she froze.

The whispers were now voices. She didn’t just feel them. Now she heard them.

“This, we bring. This, we give. This, we ask. In your name…”

It wasn’t one. It was many. All female. Speaking almost in unison, almost a chant.

Remy edged closer to the table—the altar, she somehow knew. The sudden scent of flowers made her choke. She coughed, trying to clear her lungs. It didn’t work. Her head spun. The room tilted and dipped until she stumbled to her knees, clawing at the loose grit of the ground in a vain attempt to get it to stop.

“Don’t. Don’t let him do this, you can’t let him…”

The query tumbled out of her mouth, in spite of the growing effort it took to breathe.

“Let who do what?”

The voices separated then, each taking their own color, their own timbre. They spoke over and around each other, chaotic rather than a unified chant. But one certain word came through, loud and clear.

“Help…”

A strong, familiar hand gripped her shoulder, and the voices disappeared like smoke. “Remy?”

The stasis locking her lungs and limbs lifted. She whipped around, fists already forming to strike out. Her eyes met Nathan’s, and the instinct to fight disintegrated as quickly as it had come.

“Tell me you hear it.” She watched his face. “Tell me I’m not cracked.”

He paused for a moment before shaking his head. “No. I don’t hear anything.” He cupped her face, his thumb brushing over her cheek. “What did you hear?”

Maybe she was cracked. Maybe it was the heat finally getting to her brain. But she couldn’t lie to him, as appealing as the notion to pretend none of it had happened was.

“Voices. Girls’ voices. I heard them halfway here, and now…” She swallowed. She was parched. “But they’re gone now.”

“I don’t think you’re cracked. Do you know what this place is?”

She shook her head but then said, “Someplace safe. I know that much.”

“It’s the Silver Maiden’s temple. Olivia…well, it’s a long story, but Olivia saw it and she described it to me. I didn’t think you’d go off and find it on your own, though.”

“I wanted to take a walk. Get some thinking done. I wasn’t looking for it or anything. I just…found it.”

“It’s okay. I was scared when I woke up and you were gone. Isaac didn’t answer his phone this morning, and then Olivia told me…” Nathan smiled. “But it’s nothing. You’re fine.”

“I’m sorry.” Rising to her feet, she threw her arms around him, seeking out his mouth with her own. He responded immediately, returning the embrace. He held her more tightly than usual, almost painfully so, but she didn’t argue, clinging to him with her own desperation.

“I want to go home,” she said when she pulled away. “I want to get away from this place.”

“I want to go home too. We’ll get back to Buenos Aires tonight and fly out tomorrow morning.” He kissed her forehead. “How does that sound?”

Not soon enough, but it was the best she was going to get. “You don’t have to meet with Cora anymore?”

“I think we’ve got all we need from her. And if not, she’s just a phone call away.”

Did they have all they needed? She still didn’t have the assurances she needed, but she did have something else. She had girls she didn’t know asking her for help she didn’t know how to give. Were they the same girls Gabriel had taken? Were there others? She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Answers might be found within the temple, but this was the last place she wanted to be.

She wanted to be home.