Mystic Danger 2: From the Ashes (4 page)

Jake sniffed the air and looked at the sky. Another storm. Great. And as for Rance? He doubted he’d ever forget the son of a bitch. His Native cousins, Hawk and Daniel, who had been at the marina earlier and had kept him from slugging Colin, would get a kick out of this when he told them later. Daniel would want to meet Rance, and Hawk would round up the rest of their tribe to help track him. It would irritate them to think that an outsider, a white man, would know so much about their family.

“You say we’re going back for your car?” he asked.

Rance nodded.

“Then where did you go when you bailed on me yesterday?”

“I wandered into a cavern not far from the lake.”

Jake pondered his answer for a moment. “And how did you get cleaned up?” He indicated what Rance wore. “You were half-drowned when we first met. Where did you change, bathe? How did you get to the marina today?”

Rance placed his hands on her hips. “I may have lost my car, but I haven’t misplaced my mind.” He fished into his jacket pocket and produced a cell phone. “I paid for the car rental in advance, just as I paid for this. I plugged in the numbers I’d need and dialed the one for a taxi service. That’s how I got from wherever the hell I was yesterday back to my hotel and how I got from the hotel to the marina. Satisfied?”

“No.” Jake snorted and shook his head. “You have a quick, handy answer for everything. No, I’m not satisfied. How did the taxi find you? You didn’t know where you were!”

Rance’s voice wavered, and for a moment Jake thought he would cave in, come clean with whatever scam he had going. “I’ll admit that this all sounds rather strange.”

“Buddy, you have redefined the word for me.”

Rance held up his hands, stressing the favor. “Let me finish. I’m used to getting around as a blind man, so there are certain precautions I have had to take without sight. I may be able to see now, but I still rely on old habits. One of those is to make sure I have a back-up plan. Phone numbers. Maps.”

Rance opened the massive shoulder bag he carried and pulled out items one at a time and tossed them on the bench nearest Jake. “A writing tablet and pen. Extra batteries for my cell phone. I take photos with the phone’s camera so that if I forget anything, I can backtrack through the photos to see where I’ve been.”

He laughed nervously. “I’m terrified of becoming lost, of getting off course. O-o-of losing my way or getting attacked or something.” He chuckled. “Big as I am, shit like that worries me. Do you know that I am one of the few legally blind—which I guess I’m not any more, I need to let authorities know so they can change my paperwork—that has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do?”

So much for thinking he’s just full of excuses
, Jake thought. Nobody could make up anything that convoluted. “If you’re a black belt, why fear getting attacked?”

“Because all I’ve ever kicked are posts or mats. I’ve never had to actually fight anyone.”

Jake thought a moment. “Okay. Back to the car.”

“I ran from the boat in the direction—I thought I was running back towards my car, but I wound up at the cavern. Some man was in there, and he looked like he’d been digging. He had a shovel and was wearing gloves like people wear when they garden. Anyway, he told me where I was, and I called the cab.”

“From the cavern?”

Rance nodded. “Yes.”

Jake looked at the things Rance had retrieved from the knapsack. “You’d better put that back—a good wind could scatter some of it.” He still wanted to know how Rance had obtained his information. Even if Jake wasn’t Sean and Haley’s natural son, there was no doubt he was Native. Considering Sean wasn’t his biological father, there was a strong chance he was full blood, like Hawk and Daniel. Intriguing. More than that, it was perplexing that Rance purported to know so much.

“Okay,” Jake said, drawing on a thread of their conversation. “If you know so much about my sister and our conversation, tell me what she knows of my biological family.”

Rance didn’t appear to even consider before answering. “All Sarah knew was what she’d found out on her own when she snooped in Haley’s journals. Your birth mother went to a boarding school for Indians. Sarah felt she was one of the girls at the school since you were born there.”

Jake’s curiosity piqued. “I was?”

“You didn’t know?” Rance smiled, but his eyes had a faraway cast. “I see the birth certificate through Sarah’s eyes. But I don’t see the father’s name. I just see…no, that’s not right. It’s a delayed certificate, or a replacement. I don’t see the original. What I’m seeing is—I think it’s the doctor’s personal notes.”

Jake’s mouth went dry. “Who was the attending physician?”

Rance shook his head. “There wasn’t one. The girls—they all did this, helped with the birth. He recorded what they told him. This is some sort of file, probably your medical chart, and the notes are in diary form, something he just wrote down. Your mother—rather, Haley—has it somewhere, and Sarah found it.”

Rance cocked his head at an odd angle, as if trying to see or read something. “I see his signature. Dr. Mason Rogers.”

Then his brow furrowed, and he frowned, as if remembering something else. “He was the man, the other…”

“He was killed when my sister was shot,” Jake finished for him. “He was beside her. Her brother-in-law, Colin’s brother, was close enough to get hit as well, but Doc was right there next to her.” Then he took a deep breath. “Bullshit.”
Like I’m buying any of this? C’mon!

Rance straightened his spine. “Excuse me?”

“So you’re saying that the man who was assassinated alongside my sister was also the doctor at my birth?”

Rance sighed. “He wasn’t present at your birth, not like you mean. Weren’t you listening?”

This time, Jake gave a hard, cold laugh. “You could have read about the murders in the newspapers.”

The blond’s gaze was unwavering. “I didn’t. I couldn’t even see at the time.”

“No, but you had plenty of time to read once you received Sarah’s corneas, didn’t you?” Jake’s tongue ran away with his thoughts, and he was past caring that he came across as rude. What he had just heard sounded ludicrous. He’d been willing to give the other man the benefit of the doubt, but what Rance had just suggested was too far-fetched.

The blond’s hands waved expressively. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get one of these operations? Then there’s the long healing process. Graft failure can occur even years after the surgeries, and I’m on eye drops and medications for the rest of my life. I’d been legally blind for some time, so it’s not like I couldn’t cope with that. What I
didn’t
bargain on was the cellular memory, as it’s called. Feeling as if I was losing my mind. Wondering what the hell happened to the poor woman whose corneas I got.” He paced, and Jake could tell he was frustrated. “It’s not like I signed up for this, thinking, yeah, I’d just like to screw with somebody, because I’m bored and have nothing better to do now that I can see.”

Rance turned from him, obviously disgusted, his shoulders heaving with each intake of breath.

Jake felt a twinge of guilt. He didn’t need to be a bastard simply because he couldn’t wrap his own mind around what Rance was saying.

“I’m sorry.” He waited but got no response. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t be so judgmental.”

Rance turned to face him once more. “I don’t mind your preconceived notion that I’m loony. What bothers me is that you’re the one who is supposed to help me. Sarah chose you, and I don’t have a clue what it is I’m supposed to tell you so that we can finish this for your sister.”

“What do you mean?”

Rance continued. “I felt an instant connection with your mother, but the strongest is with you, and you’re the one who seems to dislike me the most. I don’t know what to do with that, because I still owe Sarah, and I still have something she wants me to do for her. I guess I’ll know when we get there, when the opportunity presents itself. Until then, we’re stuck with one another, because I’m not leaving until I’ve done what she wants.” He thumped one fist into his other hand. “Do you hear me? I’m not leaving until she’s satisfied.”

Jake’s hands shook, and he felt feverish. So close…yet so far away. Rance had no way of knowing the information he’d just shared, and Jake couldn’t come up with a logical explanation. But everything Rance had said had happened as Jake remembered. He wondered, though. Did Rance know the rest?

“Okay, white boy. What other Cherokee words do you know besides the one for phoenix?”

Rance held out has hands as if offering him a gift, only there was nothing tangible there. “I could hold all my knowledge of you and your family in the palm of my hand.” Then he touched his chest. “Or here. In my heart. I don’t know how many words—they’re just words. All I can tell you is that the feelings are innumerable, indefinite, defying any label or number you could assign them. What do you call what you do? I don’t know a word, Cherokee or English that describes the changes that occur when you transform from this…” Rance indicated Jake’s mortal body then let his fingers flutter upward. “To that, whatever it is you call your spirit animal. But you do it, don’t you?”

Now, Rance had his attention. Jake stopped steering and locked the column, since they were in the middle of the lake and there was nothing to hit. Going to Rance, he grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him close, staring into his eyes. “Are you real, or are you some demon who just looks like an angel or a god? What do you want?” He shook Rance.

Rance’s fingers locked about Jake’s upper arms, digging into his flesh. “I’m as real as you are, just as human. I’m not possessed, and neither are you. Although knowing what I now about you, you just might be a bit more odd than I am.” He laughed, a small sob mingled with an almost hysterical chortle. “Let me tell you about another memory I inherited with these eyes. You’re at the lake, swimming, having such a great time. Then you slipped and hit your head on the side of the dock where you were running and diving, and you must’ve been in great pain.”

Rance’s eyes took on the gaze that both thrilled and chilled Jake.

“I heard you yell, and you went beneath the surface of the water. Then just as Sarah started running, you resurfaced, only…it wasn’t you…and it was. You were the bird.” Rance’s eyes grew rounder, his voice more animated. “You shot straight upward as if jet-propelled, and you circled, squawking like a wounded animal. Because you were.” He focused on Jake’s face, and his eyes softened.

“There’s no way you could know that. No way.” Jake shook his head.

Rance, as always, seemed to sense what Jake was thinking, which was unnerving in itself. “Jake, just kiss me, damn it. I am not Sarah.” He grinned, and it was the first genuine smile Jake had seen on him. “Think of me as a ventriloquist who never knows what his dummy is about to say.”

Jake felt his world tilt. He became aware of everything in his universe at once. The man he held, who clung to him. The sounds of water lapping at the black hull of his boat. Birds overhead. A fish jumped not far from them, and the small splash made a tinkling sound.

He felt the slight chill as the sun became covered by clouds, and his hands registered that Rance was shaking as well.

“I can’t.” He dropped his hands from Rance’s shoulders.

“Can’t kiss me?” Rance sounded disappointed.

“It’s not what you think,” he excused himself. “I don’t see you as my sister.”

Rance nodded. “Now, it’s my turn to call bullshit. First, I’m practically invisible, and now—”

“Mister, you were never invisible.” Jake felt the tightening in his groin as his cock registered a memory or two of its own, and his throat felt so constricted he could barely finish his thought. “For what it’s worth, I’ve always…seen…you.”

Rance nodded wordlessly.

“You came to fulfill some obligation to my sister, right?” Jake turned and went back to the helm. “Once you’ve accomplished whatever it is you need to do, we’ll deal with what’s between us. Okay?”