Between Darkness and Daylight (33 page)

When she reached her room, she closed the door and leaned against it with a sigh of relief. She shut her eyes and tried to get her bearings, to shut out the pain. Her hipbone felt like it was on fire.

Warily, she turned towards the mirror hanging on back of the door. As she pulled off her top, she watched the skin near her collarbone turn red before her eyes. Next, she pulled her leggings down to her thighs and immediately saw the abrasion on her hipbone, the bruise turning bluer by the second.

Immediately, she knew this all had something to do with Zane, knew he'd been hurt—somehow, somewhere.

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Nova had to call, to find out what was going on with him and if he was okay. After striking out so many times on his cell, she had spent the previous evening and most of the morning, before going to temple with her mom, hunting up Zane's mother's number in North Carolina.

Replacing her clothes, she garnered the courage to call a perfect stranger, but staggered against the door as a vision rocked her. She closed her eyes and the scent of new-car and leather infiltrated her lungs.

Something pressed firm against her chest and the vehicle came to a grinding halt.

She saw Zane behind the wheel of a blue late-model car, and Ransom in the passenger seat beside him; it seemed like she was in two places at once—in the car with them, and outside looking in—undergoing the past and present simultaneously.

Nova realized she'd experienced the car accident downstairs before it had actually occurred, and now was at the scene with Zane and his nephew, the collision unfolding before her mind's eye like a video recording.

For the love of Pete, this is confusing, not to mention scary!

She'd have to wait to call him, if what she was seeing and feeling was real time. There was no way she'd be able to reach him now and didn't know if she wanted to talk to him under the circumstances. At least the need to reach him wasn't as urgent. She knew he was alive and relatively okay.

Nova opened her eyes, still plagued by the vision, her "normal" first sight doubled and blurred by her second sight. She closed her eyes tight again and focused on the setting; she could feel Ransom shaking Zane's arm, yelling for his uncle to wake up.

She'd thought he was okay, but God help her, maybe he wasn't.

A third person was there, standing on Zane's other side, an impatient but worried look on his face. The driver of the other car?

She waited, afraid to open her eyes to that horrible, disorienting double vision. She watched the trio as Zane finally came around, staring straight ahead…directly at
her!

Could he actually see her? Nova wasn't sure. She tried to reach out to him with her mind, to glean his feelings, his thoughts and reactions to the 230

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accident, and was relieved when he finally turned to Ransom and said:

"Thanks for making me put on the seatbelt, Ran."

Then her second sight went black and the scene disappeared. She squeezed her eyes tighter to see if she could retrieve the images, but nothing came through.

Fine. He was gone, for now, but she knew he was okay, just not exactly where he was or what the final outcome of the accident had been.

Would he go to the hospital now? How badly had he been hurt? If her wounds were any indication, not too seriously, but enough to be bothersome to an active and physically fit specimen like Zane.

She'd give him a few hours before she took a chance and called his mother. She didn't want to worry the woman with her first contact, especially when she wasn't completely sure of the accuracy of what she had seen. After all, her visions had never been that clear and immediate before. Could she trust this one?

Nova shook herself with determination. She knew what she had seen, knew it hadn't all been in her mind, that it had happened, was happening.

She
would
call. It no longer mattered if Zane didn't want to hear from her; he was going to whether he wanted to or not. He owed her for the pain radiating through her torso, and he owed her for scaring her half to death.

* * * *

The visions came fast and furious after seeing the collision, and not all of them involved Zane and Ransom or the accident.

She'd had a few sporadic flashes of Zane at the hospital, getting examined while Ransom looked on, then later, on his cell at some car rental place (the contraption obviously in working order, the rat!) and then assuring his mother that he and Ransom were okay and on their way.

She'd thought she'd gotten used to the periodic onslaught on her internal perceptions, but there was a disturbing element to her newest vision, and it didn't involve either Zane, his wife, or Ransom.

Something in Nova's heart recognized them, recognized their

connection to Zane. Like her visions of him, this trio—a mother and her young boy and girl—was in danger, held hostage by a crazed, knife- and
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gun-wielding man. And also like her visions of Zane, she couldn't get a clear image of this man—at least not his outside image.

But his insides? She was all too familiar with his black heart and soul, even recognized the hunting knife he waved under the woman's eyes.

This particular vision always blanked out on the woman's hysterical whimpering, her young children crying for their daddy to stop hurting their mommy.

The fact that the man threatened his own children and their mother reminded Nova of just how dangerous this stranger was, how much danger Zane and Ransom were in.

And don't forget yourself. You're in just as much danger as they are,
maybe even more. Do you really think you're going to come out of this
unscathed and smelling like a rose?

That was her cowardice talking again and she refused to listen to it this time, even if it meant staying away from Zane. Especially if it meant that.

* * * *

Refreshed after taking a nap and watching a bitter-to-the-end bowl game with her dad, Nova went back to her room, closed the door, and finally punched in the number she'd been dialing in her head for the last twenty-four hours.

A woman with a light southern accent picked up the phone after three rings, her voice pleasant and musical over the sound of raucous male voices in the background.

"Hello, is this the Youngblood residence?"

"Well now, that depends on who you're looking for."

Here goes nothing.
Nova took a deep breath and slowly released it.

"I'm looking for Zane."

"And whom should I say is calling?"

She had the strange sense that Zane's mother was enjoying this little game of cat–and-mouse. Well, she could play along as well as the next jilted girlfriend.

"This is Nova…Nova Foxx."

"So you're the little Ms. Thang who's got my son wrapped inside out."

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Oh God, what had Zane told his mother about her? Not that whatever he'd said could be half as bad as what she deserved. She just didn't think he was the type to kiss and tell.

Nova heard the older woman chuckling on the other end,

embarrassment scorching through her right before Zane's mother spoke again.

"Don't fret none, Nova. I'm just pulling your leg. It's the holidays.

They put me in a playful mood."

Nova didn't think the holidays had anything to do with Zane's mother's humor. The woman was probably always this fun-loving and irrepressible.

She heard Ransom's young voice then, shouting in the background that if that was Nova on the phone, he wanted to speak to her.

"Seems you left quite an impression on my Ran-man."

"He's left quite an impression on me, Mrs. Youngblood."

"It's Youngblood-Baldwin. But you can just call me Adair, or Addie's fine, too."

"Addie, I don't know what Zane told you, but—"

"Actually, he hasn't told me anything. I just know my son. And he's fretting deep about something. Usually when he gets like this, it's because of some young woman. But I haven't seen him this down since his high school sweetheart jilted him for an 'older man' right before he went off to college. He was in it pretty deep with her and…"

Nova waited as Adair took the phone from her ear. She heard the muffled sound of the older woman talking to someone in the background, and her heart hammered as she recognized the vague sound of Zane's voice, sensed his aura close by, as if she could reach out with a hand and touch it. Instead, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind as she had during the car accident, wondering if he'd feel her. She waited a second and had an indistinct impression of his chagrin, and then denial, followed by a sharper image of him backing away in shock as he felt her mind-touch. She could actually visualize him distancing himself from her—physically and emotionally—his brow crinkling in confusion as he stared at the phone in his mother's hand.

She shouldn't have pushed him! Was she trying to alienate him before she even had a chance to talk to him and explain?

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Nova's eyes shot open with the realization of her violation, of how she had invaded Zane's privacy and that it hadn't been the first time. Could she blame him from shrinking away from her? She'd do the same in his place.

Adair came back on the line. "That's Zane just getting back from the bathroom. Wants to know who I'm telling all his business to."

"Addie, I—"

"Do you think I'm telling you all his business? Because I would have thought you'd know some of this basic stuff already, unless my boy has been his usual close-mouthed self. Not that I want to pry into y'all's business now. Never mind my tongue."

"I think you probably deserve an explana—"

"Don't need or want one, baby."

Nova smiled at the term of endearment, wondered if all mothers referred to their grown children the way hers and Zane’s did.

"You want to speak to Zane now?"

"If I could."

"Hmph. He's over on the other side of room waving his arms at me. I guess all the desperate hand signals are supposed to mean something to me."

Nova didn't even have to close her eyes this time to picture Zane doing just as his mother described, could clearly see him, eyes blazing, doing the cut sign across his throat to stop his mother's gossiping. He could probably forget getting any cooperation, if his mother was anything like hers.

She listened as Adair pulled the phone from her ear, evidently offering it to Zane, and could hear him and his mother going at it about him not wanting to take the phone.

"Don't be rude. I raised you better, Zane Youngblood."

Nova laughed as he finally took the phone from his mother with a heavy groan. "Zane?"

"Hi."

He sounded like a young child forced to be polite and talk to an older relative he'd never met before, instead of the man with whom she'd been so intimate more than a week ago.

How had he allowed so much distance between them? Okay, so she hadn't been completely honest with him, but there had been no malice in 234

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her game. He couldn't blame her for evil intent, couldn't blame her for something over which she had no control.

"You must really be psychic to have tracked me down here," he murmured.

Nova was surprised he said the term out loud. She sensed his ambivalence—acceptance, doubt, and sarcasm all warring. "Nothing psychic, just good old fashioned ingenuity. I looked up your mother's number."

"Ahh."

"You left me no choice, not answering your cell phone." She hadn't meant it to come out like an accusation, but Zane didn't seem to notice her piqued tone.

"I didn't turn it on this trip."

She wanted to ask him why, but thought he was entitled, knew instinctively that he hadn't wanted a replay of those scenes with Ransom, when the hospital, and later Detective Leary, had reached him at home with unwanted news.

"I called to see if you were okay, Zane."

"I am."

Nova didn't think she could take much more of his monosyllabic responses. She could feel his efforts to be detached and cool across the telephone line, feel the strain of acting against his nature. He wanted to confide, open up to her; she could feel this, too, but knew that she'd have to be the one to
make
him open up.

"I had a vision."

"A…? Wait, hold on."

She listened as he spoke to someone in the background and asked them to hang up when he got to another room. Several long moments past before he got back on the line.

"Okay, we can talk now."

"I thought that's what we were doing." She pictured him in cloak-and-dagger mode somewhere in his mother's house behind a closed, maybe locked door, and far enough away from the rest of the people in the house that he didn't have to worry about being eavesdropped on—much like her, closed up in her bedroom.

"Zane, did something happen to you on the way to your mother's?"

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"You tell me."

“Are you testing me?”

“Not at all.”

“All right, fine, smart-ass. You were in a car accident on the way to your mother's, weren't you?"

He gasped on the other end and Nova pictured him pulling the phone away from his ear to stare at it before he came back with, “Yeah, uh…we had a little fender bender coming in from the airport. Nothing serious."

The hell it wasn't. My hipbone still hurts, Mister.
"It was serious enough for a trip to the emergency room.”

"How do—?” Zane took a deep breath on the other end and said, “It was just a few bruises. It's nothing."

"So I guess that’s why you didn’t tell your mother.”

“I didn’t tell my mother because she doesn’t need to know.”

Her dander rose at the warning tone in his voice, as if he thought she’d blackmail him with telling his mother about the accident unless he…unless he what? Forgave her?

Now she knew why Ransom was able to keep her secret so well and hadn't told his uncle about her sketch: secrecy ran in the Youngblood family, at least among its men.