Brilliant, shit for brains, Rene thought for the millionth time as he finished pumping gas. Real goddamn charming. Another Romance Novel Hero moment.
Tessa had stormed off for the convenience store, and it hadn’t taken a fucking genius to see the tears in her eyes, the wounded bewilderment. He’d just made a big deal out of nothing and broken her heart.
His grandmother’s words reverberated in his mind, as apropos now as they had been nearly forty years earlier: “You push everyone away—anyone who tries to love you. Tu êtes un couillon!” You’re a fool.
He returned the nozzle to the pump and pressed a button to print his receipt and stop the machine’s incessant beeping. Life, he realized, was full of friendly little reminders. A chime on a gas pump so you didn’t walk off without your receipt. A vibrating battery in your prosthetic leg to let you know it was time for a recharge. A memory imbedded so deeply in your brain, it replayed itself at every eerily similar moment.
“Quel est le problème avec tu, laissant cette fille marcher hors d’ici?” Odette cried inside his mind, and she may as well have been speaking about Tessa. What’s the matter with you, letting that girl walk out of here?
He folded the receipt, tucking it in the back pocket of his jeans and felt a strange, nearly electrical tingling run through him, like the hint of a cold draft seeping through a crack beneath a door. He’d felt it several times since pulling into the gas station, but never as strongly as he did at that exact moment. Someone was behind him, close enough to raise the hairs along his forearms. Someone like him.
Tessa.
He turned, his shoulders hunched. “Look, pischouette, I’m sorry. I was a real ass and I…” His voice faded as he realized in surprise that no one was there. A maroon Jaguar was turning out of the parking lot just as a white Chevy Blazer turned in. It was a busy morning, with people walking in and out of the store, cars parked or idling along the rows of gas pumps. He scanned all of the passing faces but didn’t see Tessa.
That’s funny, he thought. I could have sworn she was there.
He waited by the car for a few moments, until the morning heat began to get to him and his shirt began to stick to his back between his shoulder blades with a light film of sweat. A glance at his watch told him they’d been at the gas station for a good fifteen minutes at least.
Tessa, we need to get on the road, he thought and when she didn’t answer, he began to get irritable with her again, despite himself. She was making him sweat—literally—by taking her damn sweet time. She had to know her words had hurt him, cut him to the quick in fact, and she was leaving him out there to suffer a bit more, to twist the knife in a bit deeper.
He gave her another minute—which to him, felt like thirty years—and then frowned, walking into the store. Two can play this game of yours, pischouette, he thought, browsing along the snack food aisle and grabbing three Hostess cherry pies. He tucked a bag of barbecue pork rinds atop these, then went to the cooler section and grabbed a bottle of sweetened iced tea.
“How’d you hurt your hand?” the cashier asked, making idle conversation as she rang up the food.
“Got shot yesterday,” Rene replied, drawing a dubious, if not withering glance. “Say, chère, where are your bathrooms?”
“Outside and around the corner to your left,” the woman replied, reaching beneath the counter. “Here. You’ll need the key.”
Rene cradled the brown paper sack with the food and drinks in the crook of his injured left arm and walked out the front door, back into the oppressive heat. He followed the sidewalk to his left and around the building, meaning to knock on the door to the ladies’ room and try to convince Tessa to come out. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just kick the goddamn door down and drag her out.
He stopped in surprise to see the key to the women’s restroom lying on the ground just outside the closed door. Beside it was an unopened Snickers candy bar, Tessa’s favorite. She’d told him this only last night, back before he’d gone and fucked everything up.
“My grandmother would always bring these back for me and my brothers and sister when she’d go on trips away from the farm,” she’d told him as she’d unwrapped one and taken a wolfish bite. He’d grabbed it for her from the motel vending machine, and had found it cute, if not sort of sexy, the way a string of caramel had drooped down over the curve of her bottom lip to drape momentarily against her chin. “One for each of us, and we’d all sit on the floor of her bedroom and eat them together.”
Rene leaned over, hooking the restroom key ring with his finger, picking it up off the sidewalk. He rapped his knuckles lightly against the door before trying the knob. “Tessa? You in there, pischouette?”
When she didn’t answer, he frowned and set the bag on the ground. He knocked again, louder this time. “Tessa, it’s Rene. Open the door or I’m coming in.”
Still nothing. His frown deepened and he used the key to unlock the door. He felt his heart shudder to a sudden, dismayed halt when he found the bathroom empty, Tessa’s purse upturned on the floor, her belongings scattered across the chipped gray linoleum.
Viens m’enculer. Fuck me.
He turned, letting the door slam behind him as he rushed around the front of the building again. He looked around frantically for any sign of her, opening his mind, straining to sense her. Tessa! he called out. Tessa, where are you?
He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t breathe. His heart hammered in his chest, and a thousand horrifying images flew through his mind—the strung-out kid from yesterday…
He survived somehow. He wasn’t dead and he followed us here, grabbed her!
…the Brethren Elders…
Did they block our telepathy somehow and keep hidden from us? Did they take her?
…any number of potential circumstances, each more horrendous than the last.
Christ, she’s been abducted…beaten…robbed…raped…
Oh, viens m’enculer, the baby!
Tessa! he shouted mentally, darting in and around parked cars at the gas pumps. Tessa, open your mind! Tell me where you are! Tessa!
There was no sign of her. No one he spoke with, no one he stopped had seen her. The cashier remembered her, but hadn’t seen her since she’d left with the bathroom key.
“Do you want me to call the police, honey?” she’d asked, because Rene’s alarm must have been apparent in his face. “There’s a state police post just up the—”
“No.” He’d shaken his head, cutting her short. “No, thanks.”
As he said this, he had held the cashier’s gaze, opening his mind and reaching out to hers. He hadn’t said another word aloud, but hadn’t needed to. In that moment, one reflexive, split second, he’d eradicated the woman’s memories not only of him and his inquiry, but of Tessa, as well. The last thing he needed was for her to call the police and report a missing person, despite his insistence not to. The police do not need to be involved in this.
He returned to the ladies’ room and collected Tessa’s things, her cell phone and lipstick and whatnot off the floor. He didn’t know what else to do. He felt exactly as he’d felt when he’d been shot in Vietnam, when the initial pain had worn off, and he’d been left with a handful of his own entrails, his gut blown open. Then, as now, he’d reacted mechanically, his brain utterly on bewildered autopilot.
Christ, what have I done? he thought, distraught. Why did I have to take so fucking long in the store? What if that’s when it happened? What if she screamed for help and I missed it? She wouldn’t have even fucking been in here if I hadn’t been such a jackass, if I hadn’t picked a fight with her.
Tessa! He opened his mind again, straining to sense her. Tessa, please, tell me where you are!
And then it occurred to him.
The birds.
There were trees around the convenience store and telephone wires lining the street. He was literally surrounded by birds.
Rene left the bathroom and stood out in the sunshine, closing his eyes, tilting back his head and opening his mind. He called to the birds as he had since he’d been a boy, sensing the fluttering, darting impressions of their thoughts within his mind. There were dozens and he summoned them, sending them out, flying in all directions. He could see through their eyes, rapid-fire, overlapping images in his mind of the sprawling New Mexico landscape around him, miles covered in literally the blink of an eye. The birds swooped and darted along the interstate, and one car in particular drew his attention—a maroon Jaguar.
I’ve seen that car before, not ten minutes ago, he thought. It was here at the gas station. It drove right past me.
When he saw through the bird’s eyes that the car had a Kentucky-issued license plate, his brows furrowed, his hands closing into reflexive fists. Son of a bitch, they took her, he thought. The Elders—those bastards. They found us.
He sent the bird in more closely; the Jaguar was accelerating but through the bird, he caught a quick, heartbreaking glimpse of Tessa in the passenger seat, her eyes tearful, a thin crust of blood beneath her nose. There was only one other person in the car that he could see; a man who didn’t look much older than Rene, and sure as hell not like anything he’d ever consider an Elder.
But he’s Brethren, he thought, as the car sped away and the bird was only able to follow now from above. He’s got to be—those tags are from Kentucky. If he’s not one of the Elders, then who the hell is he?
Even as he thought this, he realized.
“Martin was a horrible man,” Tessa had told him. “He hated my grandfather and punished me because of it. He’d punch me, slap me, knock me to the ground. He’d take off his belt and whip me with it, leave me black and blue…sometimes so much I couldn’t even walk.”
“Oh, Christ,” Rene whispered, aghast. He hurried for his car, clutching Tessa’s purse in his injured hand and digging his keys out of his pocket with the other. Oh, Jesus, he thought. He followed her somehow, found her, took her. That son of a bitch is her husband.
He drove like the proverbial bat out of hell, throwing the little Audi into gear and leaving rubber from his tires seared against the pavement. It hurt like a son of a bitch to close his injured hand around the steering wheel, but as he floored the accelerator and headed for the interstate, he gritted his teeth and bore it.
Martin Davenant had found Tessa, and it didn’t take a wealth of imagination to figure out what he had in store for his runaway bride.
He’d punch me, slap me, knock me to the ground. Tessa’s words kept reverberating in his skull, brutal knife points scraping at his heart. He’d take off his belt and whip me with it, leave me black and blue…sometimes so much I couldn’t even walk.
He’d never tried to drive before while maintaining a mental link with birds. It took all of five seconds to realize there was no way in hell he could make it work. The main problem was that birds weren’t like human beings. Their thoughts were simple, their memories limited and most of their brain capacity was reserved for instinct. They didn’t have distinctive personalities to distinguish them from one another, and the only way Rene could tell one bird’s point of view from another was if he held an exclusive and unbroken mental connection with them. Which, as he discovered, was impossible when one was trying to drive.
He realized this at about the same time the Audi drifted across the center lines of the two-lane highway leading to the interstate ramp, and headlong into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer. He wasn’t watching where he was going because his mind was fixed on the flurry of images he was receiving from the bird still tailing Martin’s maroon Jaguar. When the eighteen-wheeler blasted its horn at him, Rene jerked, severing the mental connection with the bird in his startled fright.
“Viens m’enculer!” he cried, wrenching against the steering wheel, cutting the Audi back into its rightful lane. The semi flew by, close enough for the wind off its trailer to rock the little sports car violently, and Rene was pretty sure he wasn’t only imagining the hand thrusting out from the window of the cab—the one balled in a fist with its middle finger strategically pointing skyward.
“Christ,” Rene whispered, his voice breathless and shaky. In fact, his whole damn body was shaking and it took him a long second before he realized he’d lost the bird. And therefore he’d lost Tessa, as well.
“Goddamn it.”
He hadn’t seen the Jaguar get on the interstate, so he had no idea which way it had been traveling. But he had a pretty fucking good idea. This interstate only goes two ways, he thought. East and west. And that pony farm of Davenant’s sure as shit isn’t west of here.
And with that, he turned the wheel, sending the Audi whipping down the entrance ramp for the eastbound lanes, racing back across the New Mexico countryside in the direction from which he’d come the day before.
Interstate 10 might have only gone two ways, but a hour and a half later, as he stood beside his car, parked on the shoulder, Rene wondered if maybe he hadn’t picked the wrong goddamn one.
“Viens m’enculer,” he said, then uttered a hoarse little cry and smashed his fist against the roof of the Audi.
His left fist. The one with the gunshot wound.
“Owwww, goddamn it!” Rene howled, clutching his hand against his belly and staggering backward as pain lanced through the entire left side of his body. When it had subsided down to a dull, throbbing ache and he could breathe again, he stumbled back toward the car and leaned heavily against it.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. For at least the millionth time, he opened his mind and strained to sense any hint of Tessa’s presence whatsoever. He didn’t expect to feel her and was no longer dismayed or disappointed when he couldn’t. Where are you, pischouette? Give me a sign, a thought, a big “fuck-you-Rene”—anything. Come on, Tessa. Help me here.
He’d fought traffic as the interstate had cut through the heart of El Paso, and was now somewhere south of the city, just past exit 42. Did they stop in El Paso for some reason? he wondered because he’d seen no sign of the maroon Jaguar. They can’t still be ahead of me somehow. I’ve been driving damn near ninety miles an hour all this time!
“Where are you, Tessa?” he asked as traffic rushing by on the interstate sent a smart, hot breeze flapping into his face. Jesus Christ, am I going the wrong way? Could they be going west instead? But why? Martin Davenant wouldn’t know where Brandon is, where he’s going, and Tessa sure as hell wouldn’t tell him.
“It’s east,” he told himself, shoving his hair back from his brow. “It’s east, goddamn it, they have to be going east. I just haven’t caught up to them yet, that’s all.”
Since he was still for the moment and didn’t have to worry about plowing headlong into oncoming traffic, Rene closed his eyes and opened his mind again, this time reaching out to the birds. He’d never tested himself, never pushed the limits of his abilities, and figured now would be as good a time as any. What the hell, he thought, widening the scope of his telepathic range for miles in all directions like a big, broad, mental umbrella.
The effect was immediate and staggering; he didn’t know how many birds he’d inadvertently stumbled upon, but from the looks and feel of things inside his skull it was thousands of them, if not ten thousand, all crashing into his brain at once.
“God…!” he gasped, buckling at the waist, nearly crumpling against the side of his car. He shoved the heel of his hand against his forehead, his brows furrowed, his teeth gritted as he struggled to make sense of the maelstrom of thoughts he was picking up from the birds. He saw what they saw, felt what they felt, heard what they heard, and it overwhelmed him in a dizzying internal cacophony. It was so disorienting, nearly painful, he moved to break the connection, to close his mind.
And then he saw it—a low-slung maroon sedan. His mind had come across a hawk floating on a thermal draft over the interstate; through its small but sharp eyes, he could see the telltale, shield-shaped red and blue sign with the unmistakable numerals, 10, emblazoned across the center. As the hawk swooped over the maroon car, Rene caught it with his mind, simultaneously breaking his mental bond with all of the other birds and focusing solely on this one. The hawk circled the highway in a broad circumference, following the sedan until it drove past a landmark by which Rene could orient himself—a ramp for exit 49.
Son of a bitch, they’re less than ten miles ahead of me!
Rene jerked himself out of the hawk’s brain and hurried around to the driver’s side of the Audi. He didn’t bother with a seat belt, and only barely bothered to swing his prosthetic leg around and out of the way of his left foot—this only out of necessity, because he needed the space to reach the accelerator. When he’d bought the car, he’d been told it was electronically limited to topping out at 130 miles-per-hour. Guess it’s time to find out for myself, he thought grimly, as he put it in gear and roared back onto the highway.
He didn’t hit 130, but came awfully damn close. He might have reached it, had he not seen the maroon sedan parked in the emergency lane just before the ramp for exit 55, its emergency flashers marking a pulsating, staccato beat. As he approached, he watched a man get out of the driver’s seat and jog around toward the passenger’s side, where upon he opened the back door and leaned inside, all but disappearing from Rene’s view.
Rene stepped on the brakes, slowing the Audi and pulled it to a sliding, skidding halt in the gravel-strewn lane behind the sedan. Along the way, as he’d been driving, he’d wrestled with the steering wheel using his injured left hand—gritting his teeth against pain the whole time, as he’d forced himself to curl his fingers about the wheel—and fished his Sig Sauer P228 out of the glove box with the other. He held the pistol—loaded, cocked and potentially lethal—in his lap and didn’t even bother turning off the Audi’s still-growling engine after throwing it in park.
He got out of the car and walked toward the sedan, his stride wide, his pace brisk, his brows narrowed with murderous intensity. Davenant hadn’t even noticed him yet, still too fucking busy with whatever he was doing in the backseat. When Rene drew closer and heard the hoarse but distinctive sounds of someone screaming, shrill and nearly sobbing, he moved even faster, raising the gun to level it at head-height.
“Get your fucking hands off her,” he seethed, ignoring the pain that ripped through his arm as he clapped his left hand against Davenant’s shoulder. He jerked the other man backward and spun him around, slamming him against the car door frame. He shoved the business end of the nine-millimeter into Davenant’s face, flattening his nose beneath the steel muzzle.
And then realized.
He’d never seen Martin Davenant in his life, but was willing to bet the man wasn’t traveling with a wailing infant in the backseat. A second glance now revealed what he’d been too seized with emotion to realize before—the car he’d been following wasn’t a Jaguar at all, but a Hyundai, the sleek silhouette of the sedan similar, but not identical, to Davenant’s.
Viens m’enculer, he thought, watching in dismayed horror as a pale pink pacifier dropped from the man’s hand and bounced to the gravel and dirt below.
“Oh, Christ…!” the man whimpered, his eyes enormous and nearly crossed as he gawked at the pistol against his nose.
There was a woman in the front passenger seat, a woman who shrieked loudly now, her voice momentarily drowning out the peals of the unhappy baby. She all but scrambled over the center console inside the car, fighting against the restraint of her seat belt’s shoulder harness, trying desperately to throw herself protectively over the child.
Viens m’enculer.
Which turned out to be children—in addition to the baby, a little boy no more than three years old sat belted into a booster seat on the driver’s side, round-eyed and frightened as he blinked at Rene.
“Please don’t!” the woman screamed, trying to wrap her arms simultaneously around both the little boy and the bucket of the baby’s car seat. “Oh, God, please don’t hurt my babies!”
Viens m’enculer, Rene thought. Fuck me.
“Please,” the man said, his voice shaking, his hands raised. “Please…take whatever you want. Anything you want, mister. Just please…please don’t hurt my family. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” Rene whispered, lowering the gun. In that instant, he opened his mind, reaching out to both the man and his wife, calming them as abruptly and effectively as an intravenous sedative. The woman stopped screaming; she moved, sliding away from the children and back into her seat, her expression softened and nearly dull, her gaze distracted and dazed.
The man’s hands dropped limply to his sides and he stood there, blinking over Rene’s left shoulder like a marionette at the ready, waiting for someone to come along and pick it up by the strings. In that moment, Rene obliterated from their minds any memory of him whatsoever.
I’m sorry, he thought.
“Mommy?” the little boy inside the car whimpered. “Daddy?”
Rene leaned over to look into the car, and the boy shrank in his car seat, all wide and frightened eyes. The baby—a girl to judge by the fuzzy pink, ruffle-trimmed jammies—continued to howl, drumming her small hands and feet in indignant outrage.
The man’s name was Vincent Thomas. The woman was his wife, Yvonne. These were their children—Nathan James, who was two and a half, and Olivia Marie, who was three months old.
Rene knew these things because he could see them plainly in Vincent’s and Yvonne’s minds, just as he could see they’d been on their way to Vincent’s mother’s home in Alamo Alto.
Christ have mercy, I’m sorry.
“Hush now, petit,” he said softly, reaching into the car and brushing his fingertips lightly against the baby’s face. At this caress, the baby instantly hushed, blinking up at him with wide, glistening, curious eyes. Her skin was impossibly soft, nearly velveteen, flushed and warm to his touch. He could smell her; a sweet infusion of baby lotion, lavender soap and underlying these, the hot rush of her blood. He could feel her in his mind, the same sensation of sunshine and warmth that he’d felt when he’d touched Tessa’s belly, only stronger this time, more developed and cognizant.
“Her name is Olivia,” said the boy, Nathan. Rene was aware of his thoughts, as he was the baby’s, but made no move yet to control or manipulate either of them. Surprisingly, there seemed no need; Nathan’s momentary fright had likewise waned as Rene had touched the baby and now, seeming somehow satisfied that Rene posed no threat, the boy smiled at him shyly. “She dropped her binky.”
“Here.” Rene reached down, picking the fallen pacifier from the ground. “Why don’t you hold onto it for her then, petit?”
The painful realization that he’d missed out on this, that he might have built a life with Irene and raised their baby together, that they might have taken midmorning drives to Grandma’s house, left him nearly breathless with remorse and heartache.
“Is my daddy sleeping?” Nathan asked.
“Oui, petit. Daddy’s sleeping.” Rene smiled and nodded once. “But he’ll be awake again when I’m gone. Don’t you worry.”
He would have given anything—traded all of his money, every last fucking dime from his considerable fortune—to have someone say that to him, that magic, precious, powerful word: Daddy. He might have had a second chance for that; he’d thrown it all away with Irene, but he might have had it again with Tessa and her unborn child. If I hadn’t fucked things up. And oh, Christ, now she’s gone and I’m never going to get her back. I’ve lost it all again and it’s my fault.
He drew back from the car, seized with a sudden, powerful loneliness. “You forget about me now, petit,” he said, opening his mind again. “You and your wee souer, no?”
He saw the little boy nod, his gaze growing dreamy, just as his mother’s had. Only the baby, Olivia, continued blinking at Rene as he turned to walk away, her eyes bright and fascinated, her little mouth forming an endless series of oooos and aahhhs.