Beyond the Past (2 page)

Chapter 3

Gabby hugged her friend at the door and Rachel swooped into the living room, her white teeth gleaming against her mocha skin, her black hair in the biggest afro she could conjure. Denim covered her long, slim legs, and she wore stiletto, thigh-high black boots. Her form-fitting leather coat kissed the top of her boots, and a white turtleneck hugged her ample chest while large gold hoop hearings hung from her ears.

“How’s my girl?” Rachel asked, sliding off the coat.

Gabby smiled. Rachel liked to look perfect wherever she went, even to drink wine and watch TV with a friend. Her reasoning was that she never knew where she might meet her future husband. Even if she ever found herself in an accident, she wanted to look good for the paramedics or doctors.

Gabby had met Rachel in a yoga class right before Lucas disappeared, and they’d become fast friends. Rachel had been her rock while the police questioned her on Lucas’s whereabouts, and had been instrumental in helping her to finally realize he’d left for good.

“I’m good. How was your day?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. She worked as an executive assistant to a CEO of a software company, and didn’t particularly like the job or her boss, but adored the paycheck. “Fine, but girl, I’m damn happy it’s Friday!”

After pulling out a bottle of red wine from her Louis Vuitton bag, Rachel dropped the purse on the couch next to her coat. “Let’s drink up. I can’t wait to see what those bitches in Beverly Hills are up to.”

Gabby laughed as they made their way into the kitchen. Rachel grabbed the wine opener out of the drawer and had the cork popped a moment later. Gabby pulled down two wine glasses, and Rachel poured.

“This tastes good,” Rachel murmured after taking a sip.

“It does,” Gabby agreed, and opened the refrigerator to pull out a vegetable tray and ranch dip.

Rachel made a face, indicating her distaste. “I don’t want vegetables. Do you have any chips?”

Gabby laughed and moved to the pantry. Rachel had one ‘free’ day per week from her diet, and apparently, it must be today. Gabby kept a bag of chips tucked away just in case.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” her friend murmured, pouring more wine into her glass. “Let’s sit down.”

They sat on the dark brown couch, and Gabby set the bag of chips and the container of dip on the coffee table. She shoved a chip in her mouth and reached for the remote.

“Oh! Wait! Before we get started, I wanted to tell you I have a new client for you,” Rachel said.

Gabby set down the remote and settled back into the couch. She always loved hearing about new business. “Who is it?”

“You remember my friend Cherri, right?”

Gabby nodded.

“She’s got a new co-worker and he’s looking for a house. I told her all about you, and we’re meeting them tomorrow for drinks.”

Gabby narrowed her gaze at her friend, not like the “he” part of that sentence. Rachel had been relentlessly trying to set her up on dates for the past two months, telling her nothing would put Lucas in her rearview mirror better than a good lay. Gabby wasn’t interested in getting involved with another man, but she was definitely interested in a potential new client.

“What side of town is he looking on?”

“I don’t know. I told her we could all meet tomorrow and get the details then.”

“Okay.” She reached for the remote. It seemed innocent enough and not like Rachel had intended to set her up for a date.

As they watched the housewives, she smiled. Yes, she’d just sold a house, but it would be nice to stay ahead of the bills. It had been a bit difficult since the military had cut off Lucas’s benefits, and she worked her butt off to keep afloat. Another sale would definitely put some extra cash in her pocket. She’d never have as much money as the women on TV, but it seemed things just might be picking up for her.

Chapter 4

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Brody Teller whispered to Lucas as he gazed up at the starlit sky. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Relax, man,” he said. “It’s the same shit we do all the time.”

Lucas may have tried to calm Brody’s nerves, but the truth was, he felt it as well. He wiped sweat from his face, hating the damn humidity and simply wanting to be dry, for a change.

As he studied the makeshift building in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle through his night vision goggles, he wondered what kind of horrors had taken place within it. Their source had said the building was used as storage for raw heroin, and possibly a stopover for human traffickers. He didn’t care much about the drugs, but the human trafficking really pissed him off because it usually meant women and girls being bought and traded. He didn’t understand cultures where the fairer sex got no respect.

Something buzzed by his head, and he swatted it away. Man, he hated all the damn bugs and the stench of rotting plants. He couldn’t wait to finish this assignment and get the hell out this country.

“Teller, you and Tate move in for a closer look.” The command came from the team leader, Sergeant Garrett ‘Honey’ Bloom, through Lucas’s headset. He stood and moved with Brody in unison as they approached the warehouse.

He could feel the tension rolling off Brody, and tried to ignore it as he could barely contain his own stress. Brody was right—something felt off. He glanced around the area again trying to identify it, but saw nothing that set off his internal alarm.

The air shifted, followed by sudden silence. He reached out to grab Brody’s arm, but the building exploded, the bright light blinding him. Through his earpiece, Garrett yelled, “Abort! Abort!”

He fell to the shaking ground and tried to crawl away. Still completely blind, he hoped he was moving in the right direction, and not toward whatever remained of the building.

A hand landed on his shoulder, dragging him a few feet. Another explosion reverberated throughout the area, and whoever had him let go. Lucas tried to get to his knees, but a noxious odor overtook him, the smell of chemicals and rotten eggs causing such unbearable pain in his head, he momentarily prayed for death.

As he gagged from the scent, he rolled into a fetal position on the wet ground, wondering if these were his last moments on Earth.

The searing pain in his head debilitated him; the odor made it hard to breath.

He tried to inhale, desperate for fresh air, and then he passed out.

He woke with a start, unsure of his whereabouts. When he got his bearings, he rubbed his eyes, waiting for the hangover to set in and the memories to fade.

3 . . .2 . . .1 . . . and there it lay. The pounding in his head made him promise he would never drink again—a vow he knew he wouldn’t keep—and his stomach rolled.

Besides his blow-by-blow recount of the explosion that had changed him, he dreamt vivid images of death and destruction, which invaded his thoughts whether awake or asleep, and they always proved the same—someone being murdered.

He never recognized the victim, but at his core, he knew what he saw must be real, but it took place somewhere in the future.

The first time he’d realized his visions were real had been when he woke one night from a nightmare where a man was shot dead in front of a liquor store in downtown Portland, Oregon. Three days later as he’d read about the man being gunned down, he’d barely been able to hide his stress from Gabby.

The fact that he’d witnessed this man’s death before it happened scared the hell out of him.

He knew he’d come back a different man from Guatemala, after the accident there. The way he’d been discharged and how they’d moved Gabby and him to Portland let him know something must be up. But not until he began to see the visions did he expect he’d been fundamentally changed on a cellular level. After the first time he’d been able to verify the truth of the vision, he’d begun scouring the news online looking for more verification, and he’d found it.

The visions had been snippets of a person’s life; specifically, their death. They never lasted for more than a few seconds, but those seconds stretched on and on, making it seem like hours had passed, as if he watched a slow-motion movie, every detail of the death available. He saw the exact whereabouts, the details of the person’s face, and what they were doing seconds before death struck.

For a while after he realized what he was seeing would actually happen on some distant date, he’d tried to keep track of them, jotting down what he’d seen in a notebook. He scoured the Internet for hours trying to place a name with the face, time, and type of death he saw in his visions. What he would do with this information, he had no idea, but it became imperative that he match up the people in those mental images with names. He actually hoped that one day, maybe he’d figure out a way to find the person he saw in his flashes, and somehow be able to contact them.

But really, what would he say to them
? Somewhere in the future, you will die, so it would be a good idea to make some changes in your life?

Yeah, he didn’t see that flying too well.

He’d spent countless hours thinking about death, wondering if there truly was a plan for everyone, and even questioned his own belief in God.

He had seen the death of a member of his unit, Corporal James Freeman. In his vision, James had been executed with a bag over his head. To this day, Lucas had no idea if James still lived, or if he had died, and he hoped to God the man hadn’t perished in the way he had seen. James had been the youngest in the unit, an Alabama kid with an accent so thick, it had taken Lucas a week to understand a word he said. As they’d grown closer, he’d always thought of James as a little brother.

What hurt the worst in all of it—he couldn’t share anything with Gabby. The more he thought about his ability and its ramifications, he became more convinced he needed to put a lot of distance between them. She didn’t need to be caught up in his mind-fuck.

So one day, he’d simply left.

He sat up, having to take a leak, and peeked around the showroom for a restroom. Not that there would be any running water in the building, but he had to at least adhere to basic standards of civility, even though his life resembled anything but that.

As he walked around, the question rolled inside his mind. How much longer could he live on the streets? He’d met some people who had lived the life for more than a decade, but he didn’t have it in him. Living on the streets required a mental fortitude he didn’t possess. He found nothing romantic about his current situation. He didn’t suffer from mental illness as many of the homeless men and women did, and he often viewed their disconnect from reality as both a blessing and a curse; a blessing because they didn’t really understand reality, and a curse for the same reason. They had no idea what they missed.

Others he’d met had simply wanted to drop out of society. They’d wanted nothing from no one, and they didn’t want to give anything, either. These people found the life on the “open road,” as they called it, a good place to be, and they were also the ones who romanticized the lifestyle.

For Lucas, it had become a matter of survival, and keeping the woman he loved alive. If she didn’t know his location, they couldn’t hurt her.

He listened as he relieved himself into the dry toilet bowl and didn’t hear any howling wind. The storm must have passed.

Another thing he hated about being homeless—he never knew what the weather would bring. There could be two feet of snow covering the streets of Reno, but because he’d chosen this life, he could never be certain what he’d wake up to, especially during the winter. By his calculations, he’d been homeless about six months, and he’d arrived in Reno in the spring, which proved very pleasant. The summer had been hot, but in all honesty, he’d been through worse temperatures in the Middle East and the jungles of Guatemala. At least in Reno, it was a ‘dry heat,’ while in Guatemala, the warmth had been wet and sticky.

As he made his way to the loose plywood, he took a couple hits of his flask, the rum burning as it hit his gut. A craving for coffee and a Denver omelet set in, but he ignored it.

He pushed on the plywood and took a glance around before stepping outside. The cool, fresh morning air stung his face, but at least the sun shone and the wind had died down. Huddling in his jacket, he headed for the church down the street that fed Reno’s downtrodden every morning without fail. He needed a meal, stat.

His bones creaked, his head ached, and he couldn’t wait to suck back a cup of coffee. He’d actually had dreams of Starbucks since living on the street, and if he were lucky enough to actually get a cup of brew on this cold morning, it wouldn’t be anything close to the goodness Starbucks offered.

Rounding the corner, he cursed as he saw the line leading into the church. It looked like every homeless person in Reno had grown hungry and cold after last night’s storm.

He walked to the back of the line, not meeting anyone’s gaze. He didn’t want any trouble, and he knew from experience, people tended to get confrontational if he looked at them too long.

After a few moments of standing in line, a hand landed on his shoulder, and he closed his eyes. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning and his hangover still raged. He lacked the energy for a confrontation, so he took a step forward and the hand slipped off his shoulder.

“I’ve been looking for you for a while now,” the deep, familiar voice said, the recognition sending a chill down his spine.

Slowly, he turned around. “Garrett?” Had the rum caused him to hallucinate?

“That’s right, Lucas,” the big man said.

Garrett ‘Honey’ Bloom stood around six foot two and, unlike Lucas, hadn’t let his muscular physique go. His white teeth gleamed against his inky black skin, dark sunglasses covering his caramel-colored eyes, hence the nickname “Honey.”

“Let’s go.” Garrett grabbed his arm, but he pulled away.

“No.”

He didn’t know in what capacity Garrett was here. For all he knew, the man could be working for the government, the very people he ran from.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Garrett smiled again. “My brother, you look like hell, and you stink like a sewer. You need to be fed and cleaned up. And, you have some people looking for you, if you know what I mean. I’m here to help, and it seems like you could use quite a bit of that.”

Lucas studied this friend he hadn’t seen in almost a year. The man looked healthy, and had certainly fared better since the accident than he had. “I don’t know if I trust you or not,” he mumbled and reached into his pocket for the flask.

“I figured as much,” Garrett said. “Here’s the deal. I take you to Denny’s and get some food in you. You listen to what I have to say, and then I’ll buy you a good bottle of rum to fill that flask. You like what I say, you come with me. If you don’t, at least you’ve had a decent meal and you’re all set to be drunk for a day or two. What do you say?”

“How do you know I’m drinking rum?”

“Because it’s your favorite liquor and I can smell it.”

He thought it over. Denny’s sat two blocks away and he’d be in public as they walked over, so Garrett wouldn’t attack him or anything, then. He could use a good meal, his curiosity also piqued by what Garrett had to say. He really didn’t have anything to lose, as far as he could tell, and the coffee at Denny’s had to be better than the swill they served at the church.

“Okay,” he replied, and they walked away from the church.