Ryder watched the cards in the mirror turn smoothly through his fingers. He palmed the six and regarded the mirror closely as the queen of hearts slid behind the three of diamonds, flipped, turned, and then, all so fast that he would have missed it if he hadn’t been doing the trick himself, the queen slid in front of the king of hearts, right where he needed her for the finale of the trick.
Control. It all depended on his control. The tricks always had…control.
Slipping five cards out of the deck, he made one vanish with a wave as he picked up a second card, making it vanish and continuing until five cards had disappeared, leaving only his face staring back at him from the mirror. Then, his right hand rising and moving, the cards flashed in sight, one by one.
He frowned. He was too slow on the back palm.
Laying the cards in a circle, he flexed his fingers.
Josie Birdsong’s hands were short, square, their competence witnessed by the garden she tended like a shrine.
Even now, hours later, he still felt the imprint of her small hand across his forehead like a brand.
Picking up the pack of cards, he worked them quickly, riffling the pieces, shuffling them overhand and finishing with a dovetail shuffle as he watched the mirror.
The lights of the rotating silver-ball chandelier sparkled on the shiny silver cards. In the depths of the mirror behind his reflection, the tiny specks of light glowed white and red and blue, flashing and twirling as his fingers manipulated the cards.
He shut his eyes, letting the pads of his fingers move swiftly over the cards, concentrating on the rhythm, the count, the touch of the cards.
Her skin had been as slippery smooth as the cards turning and moving through his agile fingers. Lust, ugly in its nakedness, had pounded in his blood as he’d touched her. With that brief touch, he’d wanted her enough to take her right there on her candlelit porch, satisfy that rush.
But there had been the visions.
The images of the blood in the sand. The glimpse of a child’s face coming into view as he’d held Josie close, her body soft, warm against the coldness that never seemed to leave him.
Over everything, driving him to her in spite of the images swirling around them, had come that sharp sting of sex, hot and needy.
In the grip of that sweetest drug, he’d forgotten all the reasons not to touch her, forgotten everything except the need to draw her closer, to fill the emptiness in his soul with her scent, with her.
There had been a poignant, aching hunger, too, a hunger that went beyond the barb of sex. The hunger surprised him. It had been so long since he’d experienced tenderness toward anything. Even now as he played with the cards, the remembered sweetness of that hunger seemed alien.
His, hers, he couldn’t remember, but the hunger had its own kind of pain.
Caught between the rush of desire and the torment of the visions, he’d clung to her, his pulse beating thick and urgent in his groin, life pounding in him while the images of butchery behind his eyelids melted, merged, became one horrifying sight that faded with the brush of her hand across his forehead.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the card he held.
The ace of spades.
Death.
He’d meant to turn up the queen of hearts.
Fanning the cards across the mat on top of the folding table positioned in front of the mirror, he looked for his mistake.
He’d broken his focus and screwed up.
Control.
Shutting his eyes again, he brushed his fingers across the edges of the cards, letting the sensitized tips of his fingers speak to him, show him the card. He slowed his breathing and timed the pass of his hands over the cards.
Speed and dexterity were everything. Sleight of hand was harder than the illusions. With the illusions, once you knew the gimmick, the process, you worked on the presentation.
He had to practice all the time for the tricks requiring sleight of hand for their illusion.
Flying over the cards, his index finger stopped at one as he registered the subtle difference. Memory. Dexterity.
Control.
Yes, there it was.
He opened his eyes and looked at the gaudy red and gold of the green-eyed queen of hearts.
Josie’s gray-green eyes held too much pain and loss for one woman to endure.
But he couldn’t help her. He was the wrong man at the wrong time. He would only hurt her.
Stupid to think he could get away with going anywhere near her in the first place. He still couldn’t explain what had pulled him to her cabin night after night even before she’d come pounding at his door. Stupid, hell, dangerous. To both of them.
He’d have to keep reminding himself of that fact. He would destroy her. Or himself.
He was no longer sure whether he cared what happened to himself, but he didn’t want any more deaths on his hands.
With a flourish, he twirled the card through his fingers and presented it to the mirror, bowing to his grim-faced reflection. “And there you are at last, queen of my heart, love of my life. Found you, you clever little tease.”
He slid the card into the pack, and then, folding the cards together first, he spun them into the air where they rounded the top of the mirror before coming back to tumble into the crystal case he held with in one hand.
As he lifted his arms up, flinging them wide, the box became a scarlet-and-gold origami bird that once more changed, this time into a white dove that fluttered and settled on the rim of the mirror.
He scowled as he saw that he was still too slow in this part, the lack of practice clear to him in the slight hesitation that would reveal the trick—
He arced the last card in a furious throw. The card clinked against the chandelier, sending it spangling and whirling in a kaleidoscope of rainbows.
The dove cooed.
“So, babe, was it good for you?” Annoyed with his clumsiness, he leered at the dove, his mouth in a sardonic twist.
Betsy lifted a wing and tucked her head under it, preening.
“Well, babe, it wasn’t good enough for me. Not by a long shot. I messed it up big-time.” Ryder turned away, pacing to the shuttered window and back, jamming his hands into his pockets and swearing in a long stream.
He was so cold, but a thin line of sweat ran down his spine. Lately he was cold all the time.
He couldn’t stand the look of his face in the mirror any longer, couldn’t stand watching the endless repetitions of cards flashing before him. Most of all, he couldn’t stand the look in his eyes. The fear that shifted in and out of focus even as he watched.
The man he saw in the mirror couldn’t begin to think about appearing on a stage anywhere, not even in front of a bunch of kids, much less an audience filled with paying customers.
He disgusted himself.
Holding his hands straight out, Ryder watched their faint tremble as he picked up the cards again and faced the unforgiving audience of the mirror.
In its depths, a tiger’s eyes glowed hot yellow at him over the thick coils of a rattlesnake. He thought he heard the deep-throated roar of the white tiger, the dry rattle of the snake.
With the twitch of his hands, the cards snapped, flew helter-skelter around him and clattered in a silver rain to the bare floor.
Illusions.
Magic.
He’d said everything was a trick.
What if he was wrong?
Standing on the corner of Church and Palmetto, Josie was trapped behind the crush of people waiting for the rest of the circus parade to pass. Coming out of the library, she’d been caught in the press of bodies pushing closer to the street. A tall back cut off her view of the calliope wagon, but its raucous music carried over the applause and squeals of the children lining the street.
One little girl hunkered down at the edge of the near curb, her feet right at the edge, her whole body quivering. The seat of her purple-and-white-checked playsuit bounced, settled, bounced as the calliope and caravan of elephants came around the corner.
Clumped on top of her head with a rubber band, her straight brown hair hung in a skinny, limp ponytail above her freckled neck. She was Mellie’s age, had ridden the school bus with Mellie.
Josie looked away.
Such a fragile neck, a small thing. Vulnerable enough to break your heart.
Clutching her purse to her breasts, its strap falling toward the ground, she refused to allow herself the luxury of thinking about vulnerability and heartbreak.
The man blocking her view turned and moved to the left, his powerful body throwing a long silhouette over the freckle-faced girl. His work boot trod on Josie’s toes.
“Oof.” She dropped her purse and bent to pick it up.
“Sorry, Miz Conrad. Didn’t see you standing there.” Ned Dugan dipped his bearded chin toward Josie as he reached for her purse with one thick arm. His thick fingers wrapped around the leather strap, he asked, “How you doing?” His voice dropped, became more private, taking on a secretive tone as he patted her shoulder. “Things been going okay for you, out there all by yourself?”
“Yes.” Reaching for the strap, Josie tugged her purse free.
Ned had been Mellie’s Sunday-school teacher for the last two years. “I know it’s been real tough for you these last months. We sure miss Mellie.”
“I’m fine, Ned. You’re very kind. Thank you.” Tension coiled in her stomach. She didn’t want to talk about missing Mellie. She didn’t want Ned Dugan patronizing her with his concern.
He bent lower, cupping his hand around Josie’s shoulder.
She stepped back.
And felt foolish as his forehead wrinkled in bewilderment.
Ned was Ned. A toucher. A comforter. He took his religion seriously. Today, though, he seemed too earnest to her, too solicitous. Had his concern always been so intense? Or was she becoming irritable with everyone? Whichever it was, he was making her uncomfortable. She didn’t want him touching her.
Shaking her head free of the antipathy springing up in-side her, Josie dug deep for the fast-disappearing strands of civility and made herself smile. “Tell Lettie hello for me.”
“I sure will.” He hesitated and then ran his hand through his beard, tugging at the springy light brown hairs. “She’d love to see you sometime.” The curls wrapped around his fingers, moving with a life of their own, like a nest of small, twining snakes.
“Yes, well, one of these days.”
Ned was a good man.
Everybody said so.
Still, Josie couldn’t help her involuntary withdrawal.
He’d been the first one to visit her after Mellie’s disappearance.
He’d stayed too long, his tenor voice rising and sinking, rising until she thought she’d scream when all she’d wanted was to be alone to think and grieve, to let silence enter her and give her the peace his droning voice denied her, a peace she had yet to discover.
“Miz Conrad, you give me a call now, hear? Like I told you before, if there’s anything Lettie and I can do, you let us know. You can count on us. Anytime, understand?” A fleck of spittle dried at the corner of his mouth.
“Yes, Ned, I sure do. I’ll call if I need anything. Immediately. I will.” Josie found herself nodding her head so vigorously that her braid whipped around her, threatening to fly up and slap her in the face if she didn’t stop bobbing her head like one of those dogs on car dashboards. Anything to speed him on his way. Unable to stop, she found herself bobbing her head again, manufacturing an enthusiasm embarrassing in its phoniness. “Don’t let me keep you,” she added, using her elbows to work her way to the right, away from him, as he still seemed reluctant to turn around and leave her. “Bye, Ned,” Josie said brightly, and seized the opportunity to slip through a momentary opening made as a teenage girl plastered herself against the frame of the earring-studded, too-cool adolescent male with the half shaved, half ponytailed hairdo.
“Sorry,” she muttered in her turn as she bumped the cuddling twosome into an incendiary position.
“No problem, ma’am” came the boy’s deep voice, and his studied indifference didn’t quite conceal his delight.
The girl giggled. “Jimmy Joe, stop that! Right this moment. Or I’ll tell your mama on you!”
“Go right ahead, darlin’, ’cause I’m not gonna tell your mama on you,” Jimmy Joe groused, his voice cracking this side of manhood.
Josie tried to work her way down the curb line, but she was stuck, the crowd shrieking as the horses came into view, their plumed heads held high, the spangled and glittering bridles winking and sparkling in the sun.
Uneasy, feeling as if someone were watching her, she looked over her shoulder.
She’d forgotten about the parade when she’d decided to see if she could find any information in the library about Ryder Hayes. Like a magnet, the thought had slammed into her brain and stuck there, tight, giving her no rest until she’d searched through the microfiche. Skimming them, she’d copied the articles, and her curiosity grew with each article about Ryder and his amazing illusions.
The articles troubled her.
She’d stuffed the copies into her purse and stepped out into the blaring tumult of the parade, her thoughts lingering on the man presented in the clippings.
That man pushed the limits.
Like Houdini, to whom he was compared, he used his own skill and agility in many of the spectacular feats, enticing the audience to a kind of bloodlust.
In the light of day her nighttime encounter with Ryder on the porch had been like a dream, all disconnected emotions, no thought, only those inchoate feelings, hot and intense and immediate.
Suddenly her skin rippled as if someone stroked it.
The tip of her braid moved across her breast as she turned her head and looked straight at Ryder Hayes. Even masked by the dark lenses of sunglasses, his gaze met hers.
Her nipple puckered as if he’d reached out and touched it with one long, clever finger, intimately, with purpose.
The din of the parade vanished, and there was a long moment of silence, of nothing except the sensation of his touch on her, brushing her skin into shivering awareness.
Bubble gum scents of cotton candy and the buttery tang of popcorn swirled and mixed with the richer, earthier scents of horses and elephants, mixed with the acrid smell of urine-soaked straw from the open-caged lions.
Holding her gaze, he pushed his sunglasses off his face and into the thickness of his hair. She thought there was an edge of mockery in his casual gesture, a note of teasing.
A statement of power and control.
He folded his arms across his white-shirted chest and then, looking away, Ryder nodded, releasing her.
Sounds rushed in.
The calliope passed with a rootin’, tootin’ blare, and an elephant trumpeted to her right, the sound shrill and savage.
Behind her, someone bumped into her and an elbow, sharp and heavy, jostled her. Off-balance, Josie jumped. Her foot slipped on the curb and she pitched forward toward the street.
“Josie!” A voice carried over the roar of the lion and the squeals of the elephant, and she twisted and stretched out her hand.
Later she would wonder whether she was reaching for the hand that went with the voice or trying to brace herself.
Her bare knees scraped against the concrete and her hand slid along the road surface, her palm stinging and burning as stones and grit shredded her skin.
His head lowered and his tree-thick legs swinging sideways, the lead elephant galloped toward her.
“Holy sh—What the hell happened!”
“Nicki! Come back here!”
On her knees in the street, Josie saw a flash of purple and white as the girl darted off the curb.
The piggy eyes of the elephant were wild, rolling back in its head.
Nicki and Josie were right in the path of the rampaging elephant. Its ears fanned wide at the sides of its head and bounced with each lurching stride.
“Nicki!” The scream was as shrill as the elephant’s piercing squeal.
Glancing back at her mother, the girl stopped. She looked up at the elephant and back, unable to move.
Josie scrambled to her feet. Suddenly the elephant halted, his head swaying. His thick legs swinging with a speed that terrified her, he galloped to the far side of the street, butting a man standing there, rolling him on the street as people screamed and ran.
Looping her arm around Nicki, Josie clutched the child to her as the elephant swerved back toward them, trumpeting and tossing its head.
“Come on, honey. Hold on. I’ve got you,” Josie murmured as she felt the hot breath of the beast wash over her. She shoved the little girl behind her. Less than a foot away, the quivering end of the muscular trunk was like grasping fingers.
Something flicked against the end of the snout, fell to the ground. The elephant squealed again, its agitation at a pitch. It raised its trunk high, the convulsing end closing and opening, flexing.
In that instant, Josie turned and scooped Nicki up, running with her toward the curb and out of the elephant’s path. As she ran, the elephant returned his attention to them and lifted one massive foot. Its trunk plucked a streaming tip of Josie’s skirt and pulled.
“Run, Nicki!” Josie urged the girl. She tried to lift Nicki and toss her to the sideline, but burying her face in Josie’s neck, the child clung to her, the tiny sobs louder than the elephant’s squeals.
Bending forward, Josie struggled against the strength of the clenching trunk. The needlelike hairs of its body pricked her skin.
Something else snapped against the elephant’s snout and fell, landing at Josie’s feet.
Distracted, the elephant freed Josie from its grasp and sent its quivering, inquisitive snout toward the ground, searching for the red-and-gold playing card inches away.
The joker.
Josie lifted her head and saw Ryder Hayes, a hundred feet away, flowing toward her from his position across the street. Like the wings of a dark, avenging angel, the sides of his black linen jacket belled out with the swiftness of his stride. His right thumb was over a card, his index finger pressed along one corner, his middle finger somewhere under the card as he snapped the card toward the elephant’s flank.
Irritated and confused, the joker still grasped in its snout, the elephant turned its head left, right.
Josie was afraid to move. Terrified that her movement would again draw the attention of the enraged mammal, she stayed still, her arms curled around Nicki as Ryder, his long legs scissoring the distance between them, came closer.
With each step he flung another card toward the elephant. Shoulder. Buttock. Leg. Flank again.
As Ryder strode toward him, the elephant backed up, advanced, its massive head swaying as it focused its attention on him, on the swarm of irritants he flung. But as Ryder continued moving toward it, the elephant began a steady, high squeal, backing away but still too near Josie.
The last card popped against the haunch of the elephant, spinning it away from Josie and Nicki.
With Nicki in her arms, Josie leapt for the curb and the nearby buildings.
Behind her, Ryder’s lean arm fastened on her waist. Half lifting, half pushing, he carried her with him. Josie felt the flex and release of his muscled thighs against her hip, her rear end, their power a disturbing reassurance in the mad sprint for safety. His strength kept her moving even as the elephant pivoted and bumped into her, his head knocking her sideways.
Above her, the red madness in the elephant’s eyes took her breath away. Ryder shoved her forward. “Don’t stop, Josie, no matter what,” he yelled. “Keep moving! Faster! Over there!” He pointed to the corner.
Over her shoulder she saw him turn and scan the chaos behind him as he urged her toward the wide sweep of the stone steps of the First Federal Loan and Mortgage. His narrow hand pushed against her ribs as he shoved her up the stairs of the bank where they stopped and looked down on the scene below them and to their right where people flung themselves under cars and behind light poles as the elephant lumbered first one way, then the other. A wake of screams and panic followed the beast.
The elephant handlers struggled to corner the beast, to bring his rampage under control. Horses were rearing, pawing at the air as their riders hung on with grim-faced determination. The lion cages rocked on their wheels as the elephant smashed past them, its frenzy intensified by the deep-throated roars of the lions.
“Mama!” Nicki leaned toward the white-faced woman who snatched the child from Josie’s arms.
“Nicki, Nicki,” the woman wailed. “I told you to stay on the curb! You never listen!” Her voice was filled with the terror of what had come so close to her daughter.
Ryder’s arm stayed around Josie’s waist. She felt the cold press of each of his fingers through the thin fabric of her blouse. She wanted to lean back against him, absorb his strength.
She didn’t.
She knew better than to depend on someone else’s strength.
But, oh, she needed to lean against Ryder’s hard chest and rest for a moment. Simply rest.
Instead, she straightened her shoulders, her eyes stinging at the sight of Nicki curled against her mother, the small child trusting in the adult strength.
The mother choked out “Thank you” in their direction, but her attention was all on the tear-streaked face of her child as Nicki sobbed in her arms.
A shot rang out and Josie flinched. Ryder’s fingers dug into her waist.
A high-pitched squeal.
A second shot.
Screams.
As the elephant dropped, falling on its side, Josie felt the reverberation in her stomach, a sickness of the soul at the sight of the enormous body lying in the street, its huge front foot lifting and then dropping to the ground. A sound she could only describe as an unearthly groan came from the elephant as its huge head twitched, struggled to rise.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, stricken by the creature’s efforts.
“Don’t look,” Ryder said and cupped her head to him, bringing her around to face him where he tucked her under his chin.
Gratefully, Josie shut her eyes and breathed in the starchy scent of his shirt. His hand was gentle against her fevered neck, his fingers cool on her scalp where they stroked through the cap of her hair.
A final shot rang out.
“Shh,” Ryder whispered over her head, his cool fingers sliding through her hair, tangling with the welts of the braid. “Shh. It’s over now, Josie Birdsong.”
It was as if she were underwater, looking up at the phantom shapes of another world, the cool darkness moving in front of her, shading everything and distorting images until they seemed unreal, imaginary, while the darkness grew deeper, taking her down as Ryder held her close and stroked her hair with his clever fingers.
As he murmured something and shifted, she stepped into the wedge of his legs, seeking heat where there was ice, needing light where there was only darkness and confusion and that thread of sound calling her.
Her voice? His?
Someone else’s?
Such a tormented sound in all the dusky clouds.
Lifting her head, Josie saw the spasm contorting his face, the thin, white line of his mouth. “Ryder?” She touched his cheek, traced the slope of its bones down to the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t look at her. His gaze was fixed on his hands. “Blood. On everything. The clothes, the sand.” Raising his hands, he backed away, staring all the while at his upturned palms. “Too much blood,” he muttered. “There wasn’t supposed to be any blood.”
“Ryder, stop it,” Josie whispered. The grimace on his face terrified her as much as had the wild eyes of the rogue elephant. “What are you talking about?”
“The boy.”
The boy?” she said through dry lips. “Eric?” Appalled, she couldn’t look away from Ryder. The angles and planes made by his bones showed under his skin, and in the harsh light, the sharp bones of his face suddenly became alien.
Her earlier suspicions were right. Ryder Hayes was somehow connected to Eric Ames’s disappearance.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Josie took a step forward, one back.
She couldn’t stay. Couldn’t run. Not while there was a chance that he would tell her what he knew.
Not wanting to believe that he’d abducted the child, Josie didn’t know what else to think. She couldn’t believe that the man who’d rained pennies and roses into her lap, that the man who’d made it a point of honor not to force his way onto her porch could be capable of the kind of evil connected with the disappearance of the children of Angel Bay.
But people weren’t always what they seemed.
A smiling face and charm could mask corruption and evil.
“Ryder!” Josie grabbed his hand, stilling its restless movement. “Are you on drugs? Are you having a flashback of some kind? Tell me what’s happening to you!” she insisted, squeezing his hand so hard that her fingers ached.
A current of air moved, hot and dry, over her, the stirring of air that spoke of a coming storm.
Abruptly Ryder snapped his head in her direction and stared at her.
He’d looked at her with that same unfocused expression the day she’d gone to his house.
And she knew in that instant that something was terribly wrong.
His dark gaze was focused not on her but on some distant vision, some other place. Ryder was looking at a scene not visible to her.
Lifting their joined hands, he stretched them out, a triangular bridge from him to her, raising her palms with his, reaching out as if to touch something standing between them. His lips moved silently as he stood there, and she knew that whatever he was seeing, it was destroying him.
Over the bridge of their linked hands, Josie felt a current pass between them, growing more powerful the longer their hands stayed joined, and that current drew her closer to him, his agony mingling with her grief.
“It’s happening again, Josie Birdsong.” Ryder’s voice grated against her. “It’s your choice.”
Josie almost dropped his hand. He knew she was there, but his gaze was still fixed on that other scene.
In the narrowing space between their bodies as the air darkened like a dust storm, she saw shapes form, twist.
Heard a faraway voice calling her.
Not his.
Palm to palm with Ryder, her hand burned with cold as his fingers slipped between hers, closing over them, and she couldn’t free herself from a grasp that was as light as air.
She tightened her own grip and the voice grew more insistent, the shadowy shapes clearer.
This time, Josie knew she wasn’t dreaming, knew she wasn’t imagining anything, knew that Ryder heard what she heard, that he was there in the darkness with her.
She wanted to shut her eyes, to close them to the misty shapes in front of her.
She didn’t.
Needing to know what was happening, she didn’t look away from her hand linked with Ryder’s. She saw their hands blur one into the other, a flamelike brightness where they touched in the center of the shadows.
“Get away!” The voice was childish.
Not Mellie’s.
A boy’s.
Josie trembled. Bending her fingers over the back of Ryder’s hand, she gripped him and waited, her body vibrating like a tuning fork to the note Ryder struck.
She was cold, hot.
“You promised—” The childish voice rose higher. “I don’t like you—” And the voice ended on a long, drawn-out breath, the sound as soft as a sigh.
The sound made her want to weep. She wanted to touch the misty form in front of her that broke apart and drifted like smoke.
Gone.
The sun blazed against the white columns of the bank’s portico. Not comprehending, Josie looked up at the sky.
It was the same white-blue it had been for weeks. Cloudless.
She looked at Ryder.
Unsmiling, he was watching her, his narrowed eyes clear and guarded. His shirt merged into the dazzle of the bank’s marble, but Josie saw that he had clasped his hands in back of him.
“Crazy world, isn’t it, Josie Birdsong?” He leaned back against the building. “It was the same as last night, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “And at your house? I saw a child there, too?”
“I don’t know what you saw. I know we heard the same thing. A child’s cry.”
“Yes.” Rubbing her arms against the chill that slithered over her in spite of the blasting heat, Josie kept nodding.
“What happened in these past minutes doesn’t make a damned bit of sense, does it, Josie? I don’t have an explanation. Do you?” One thick eyebrow lifted as he braced one foot against the wall and balanced himself.
“No.” She looked down at her empty hands. She’d dropped her purse. It seemed easier to think about the purse than what had happened. “I don’t have an explanation.” She couldn’t allow herself to consider the possibility that exploded in her mind.
They had seen and heard the same things. Impossible. Nobody would believe her. She didn’t believe it herself. Didn’t want to. If they saw something that wasn’t there—She shuddered. Impossible.
“This same kind of incident occurred before, but we didn’t talk about it last night, did we? We were…diverted, perhaps. Are we going to talk about these episodes today?” The roughness and urgency were back in his voice, but he still leaned against the hot concrete wall, as casually as if he didn’t give a hoot in hell what she answered. He folded his arms across his chest, locking his palms flat against his sides under his arms as if he were in a straitjacket. “It’s up to you. I don’t care.”
“No?”
“Nope.” His mouth twitched, thinned.
“What you’re suggesting is—it’s crazy.”
“I agree. But then we’re both crazy, aren’t we?” He smiled, taunting her. “I mean, since we both heard something. Saw something.” Still smiling at her, he was a man with all the time in the world at his disposal. “Didn’t we?”
“If you’re telling the truth.”
“Looking for the gimmick, then, Josie?”
She nodded.
“Smart. But then I told you there was always a trick, didn’t I?”
She nodded again. “You could have an agenda of your own. Something you wanted. You could be working a scam. You could have a mini tape recorder in your jacket to make me think I was hearing one of the children. You might be a con artist.”
“I could be. But what if I’m not? What then?”
Despite his nonchalant pose, Josie registered the tension radiating from his lean body, in his eyes, in the clamp of his hands under his arms. He was coiled, waiting. Her answer was important to him, but he was making himself wait, giving her time to sort through her thoughts. She rubbed her arms.
His easygoing manner was costing him. She saw the effort revealed in the aggressive thrust of his chin, in the tight line of his mouth even as it lifted in the semblance of a smile.
“So, Josie Birdsong, what’s it going to be? A nice, civilized discussion of a fairly peculiar incident—” he broke off, frowning “—or three, actually. Can we manage that, do you think? Can you give me that much of your trust?” He rested his head against the bank, still watching her from under lowered lids.
Josie understood how important her answer was to him.
Not able to answer yet, she shrugged.
“We’re alone, you know,” he added gently. “No one’s here. No one’s going to think you’ve gone off the deep end.”
Her chin tilted up. “I wouldn’t care if they did. People will believe what they want to. What they think doesn’t change anything. I learned that a long time ago.”
“Did you?” The sympathy in his voice seduced her.
But she glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if Nicki and her mom had noticed anything.
When she turned around, Nicki and her mother had gone. She’d never seen them leave.
“They’ve been gone awhile.”
“Oh.” Her back to Ryder, Josie scraped a foot on the edge of the step.
“Josie,” he said, and air moved against her, “I have to talk with you. There are things I need to know in order to understand what all of these incidents mean. If anything. But if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit you want to talk with me. You’re curious about what’s happening, aren’t you?” He stood behind her and the smooth fabric of his slacks brushed the backs of her knees.
“What I heard—It doesn’t make sense.”
“No.” He shifted and the material slid across her skin, mixing up her thoughts.
She gripped her empty hands together. “I couldn’t have heard—”
“But you heard a boy’s voice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted and turned to him, her eyes filling with tears, that forlorn sound wrenching her. “And I think it was Eric’s voice!”
Ryder stepped back from her as she swiveled, her skirt whipping around his legs and tying them together. “So do I, Josie.” He shrugged and his white shirt tightened across his chest, revealed the flat muscles of his stomach. “I’ve heard other things, too, a word here, a sound there. Nothing like what happened last night or today. Fragments. And I don’t know where they’re coming from.”
“What do you mean?”
“The voices. The images. Every night. I see things, Josie Birdsong. I don’t know if I’m making the pictures up. Or if I’m remembering something I don’t want to remember.” His voice broke off.
“Or?”
“Or if—” he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes “—or if something impossible is happening. And it seems that I can’t find out alone. When I’m with you, there’s a power—”
“I don’t understand.”
“Guess what, lady green eyes? I don’t, either.” And he laughed, the sound empty and humorless. “But I’m damned if I’m going to stand back and not find out.” His expression was grim.
Josie understood that this time he wasn’t giving her a choice. He would make sure that she helped him whether or not she wanted to.
No matter what she said, no matter what she wanted, he intended to use the power of his will against hers, to bend her, one way or another, to his design.