Somewhere I'll Find You (45 page)

Paige.

****

Biting her nails, Paige weighed her options. 
Either she could
allow Alistar to tear the cottage apart to try and buy time, or she could lead him outside, convincing him that what he was searching for lay there.  She knew that Michael was out there, somewhere. If he came across Alistar
,
it would be all over
.

If I lead him outside, I might be able to get away from him while he’s distracted.
  “
Look, it can’t be in here, it must be outside,” she coaxed, shivering as his cold eyes swiveled to hers.

“You have to know where they are, tell me!” he ordered. 

The gun waved wildly towards her as she edged away.
  “Alistar, look – I don’t
know
where they are.  Michael hid them!  I know he didn’t hide them in the house because I’ve
looked
everywhere – from the attic to the cellar.  But he took them away and hid them
someplace
, so they must be outside.”

For a moment, Alistar paused to consider her words.  Nodding, he gestured with his pistol for her to move ahead of him, heading toward the outdoors
, and Paige hoped, her chance at freedom
. 

Edging along the f
oun
dation, she took deep breaths of sea-scented air that seemed like ambrosia after the closed fea
r-driven stench of the cottage.  It hadn’t been long
before
Paige spotted a break
in the vine-covered low wall of the house.  It was ringed in shadow, but her gift was sending pulses out at her. 
Are they there?  Is that where Michael put them?  I think that’s a
storeroom
over there,
Paige thought, though she wasn’t sure.  She’d never been in it; this side of the house was one
that
had not yet received the extensive repairs and remodeling she’d put into place in most of the rest of the home.
 

Careful to look away from the opening, she turned, swatting at Alistar, “I can’t find anything with you breathing down my neck
.”  She knew that it was a waiting game now, and whoever had the better timing would win.

He paused for a moment before stepping back with a sardonic bow that was marred by the muzzle of the gun leveled at her chest.  “As you command.  You know,” he murmured casually, “I’ve noticed you’ve become quite helpful now that
your
lover boy isn’t here with you."

“Shut up,” she snapped, mindful of the gun still tracking her moveme
nts.  “Let me look about, and
try to be quiet.  All I want is to find those papers, and end this . . . end it all.”

Making a great pretense of studying the lawn, she considered her option.  If she was going to make a break for it, she knew it would have to be soon. 

Sensing her thoughts, Alistair’s fingers dug into her arm as he scanned the horizon.  “Just in case,” he mumbled,
but his footsteps marked
the thin lawn
with a shuffling tread
as his grip grew looser.
  Paige stole a glance over her shoulder and saw that the almost-vacant expression of before had climbed into his eyes once more.

Now!

Paige heard the urgent voice, felt its familiarity even while Alistar continued to scan the horizon.

Now!

She recognized the voice that was urging her onward with every ounce of persuasion he could muster. 
Erik,
she thought in a daze.
Erik Fletcher – dead for decades and yet I hear his voice in my head.  I’m not only hearing voices, I’m hearing his voice. 
But the insistence in the voice was underscoring the danger she was in.  Tossing logic aside, she listened as he spoke again.

You have to move now!

Saying a prayer to whatever god was listening, Paige jerked free of Alistair’s
feeble
grip and bolted forward.  Seconds later, she disappeared behind a shoulder-high wall of fallen gran
ite hunkering down there to listen.

Michael was circling the hill, cursing the precious seconds that he had spent in deliberate concentration.  He couldn’t be certain that he had discovered all the traps when he heard the sharp report of gunfire, followed by the shrill cry of a woman in pain.

Paige
.

Hammering forward, he made little effort
to conceal his position.

Blood oozed from Paige’s arm.  One of Alistar’s bullets had sent a sliver of the wall racking into her skin. 
The cut was not deep,
but the pain had
been enough for her to cry out.

So as Alistar pounded past her, skidding towards the beach, Paige bolted backwards, ignoring her pain and his curses.  Reaching the cellar door, she dug frantically at the ground, twisting vines that choked the door moving aside as if freed by an invisible hand.  The handle to the large, heavy door gleamed dully in the sunlight, opened with surprising ease.  Trying not to think of the creepy residents that lived inside, she crouched in the darkness as Alistar’s shadow brushed by.  As he did, she touched on his fear and fury and with it came the hint of unseen voices that carried past the vast distance of time.

She shivered as the hair on the back of her neck began to rise.  Instinctively
,
she reached out to where Michael had placed the documents.  And again, there were the voices – only this time
,
they came with a flood of haunting memories that were not hers. 

“Jenny,” she whispered, feeling the lingering fear of a woman long since dead, touching on the fire of a love that would not die.

And then she knew.  This was where the members of the studio had placed Jenny’s body while Daniel
took
Erik
home
.

Paige could only watch in shocked silence as the details of what had transpired unfolded before her eyes. 
Jenny was just dumped here.  She was never even given a proper burial.  She was just tossed down here like garbage.  No wonder Erik couldn’t rest. 
Not only was her killer allowed to remain free, but also Jenny was classified as nothing more than another Hollywood hopeful without the guts to stick it out.

All the while, Paige knew that Alistar
had
watched
the events unfold, keeping his part in things to himself, locked away
in gleeful silence.  She could see him as clearly as if he were standing there instead of searching for her on the beach. 

A whisper of a sound teased at her senses as her hand drifted to the bundle of yellowing papers that Michael had tucked safely in that cellar.  Paige swallowed before bringing
the papers to her chest. 
Closing
her eyes
,
she felt the bend and shift of time.  Moments later, the walls fell in around her, and she found herself staring at Jenny through Alistar’s eyes.

* * * *

He had waited – it was something for which he had a great talent.  Straining through the gloomy rainfall, his eyes finally caught
the shape of Flanagan and Erik
as the director practically carried the grief stricken actor to a waiting car.  Erik was a broken man and somehow Alistar knew that Erik would spend the rest of his life relieving that night and wondering what might have been.

Gloating silently, he eased down into that same cellar, looking down at Jenny, as she lay as calmly on her cold bier as if asleep.  He was forced to stop; even in death, there was a vibrancy to her that commanded his attention.  Bending down, he touched the gleaming locks that flowed about her, his eyes widening in surprise as a strand curled around his finger a
s
though they still had life flowing about them.  Reaching for a
pocketknife
, he carefully cut the strand, cursing himself as he turned away.  It was on that night tha
t
the first of many voices be
g
an whispering their malice.

* * * *

Voices.

They reached for her over time, those voices.  Their hold was strong even as Paige jolted back to the chaotic cacophony of the twenty-first century, still blinded by the past as her heart raced. But those other voices, calling to her from decades past, were still instructing, still explaining.  She understood so many things now. 

Michael’s odd behavior in the attic and elsewhere
had to have been
due to the
influence
of the director
who
had loved Jenny enough to stand silently by as she fell in love with Erik.  Perhaps Daniel had been reborn in this life, and some
strange
karma had called for his return to earth as someone with Michael’s background and handsome looks.  But if this was so, she thought giddily, trying to follow the twi
sting path of her logic, who made up the rest of the cast
?

Erik can’t come back; he hasn’t moved on.  And I’m not Jenny, even if Alistar believes that I am.  I don’t understand why I have these visions but I’m not Jenny.

She’d like to think that Jenny was at peace, that she had ‘gone to the light’, as the saying went, though Paige wasn’t certain that anything was that cut and dried.  But she had not time for musing as she looked down at the papers in her hands.  Papers for which
so many people had suffered
simply because of their existence.

I can’t let them fall into Alistar’s hands. I’ll wait for
Michael;
I know he’ll come for me.
Even now she could sense his presence, could feel the very force of his determination.  It raced through her like the beating of his heart.

“Paige?” The sharp whisper of Alistar’s voice almost surprised her into giving away her position as she
cringed back
at the sound of his footsteps just outside the entrance.  “You don’t have to hide from me any longer,” he crooned.  “Paige, do you remember how you trusted me?  How I insured that you had th
e best of care after your fall?
  How I visited you and always arranged for some little treat?  Your poor head is just muddled from all the balderdash that Sinclair has fed you.  Just come out and let me take care of you . . . I promise no one will hurt you again.”