Exposed (24 page)

Who had she been? What had she loved? Ivan realized he had no idea who Betty had been beyond a tall, red-haired woman who’d once bought flowers from his family’s market stall when others shunned them. She’d loved the peonies and lilacs, Ivan remembered.

With a final grunt, Kent and Clayton hauled Ivan up over the edge of the chasm. Clayton met Ivan’s eyes for a second, and in that second, his face fell.

Ivan couldn’t look at the others. He didn’t want to be the one to say it. To utter the word “dead.”

Without looking up, without saying a word, Ivan walked through the silent, shocked group and out into the dawning sun.

Teddy and Clayton walked in silence beside Ivan. He knew they were there to help him carry Betty, but Ivan couldn’t let her go.

They walked in silence across the bridge and through the town. Ivan carried Betty’s body all the way to Dr. Pinkerton’s clinic. Clayton pounded on the door until the old doctor appeared, eyes still bleary with sleep and a dressing robe pulled on haphazardly.

Somewhere behind them, someone shouted out, asked what was going on. Ivan was only dimly aware of Bo Erikson trying to get answers before Teddy loudly told him to mind his own business and beat it.

Dr. Pinkerton opened the clinic door wide and ushered them in. Ivan followed Clayton, barely seeing where they were going.

“Son?”

Ivan shook away the fog clouding his mind and stared at the doctor. They were standing in the exam room at the back. 

“Son, I need you to lay her down.”

Gently, Ivan laid Betty down like she was a china doll. Jesus, her eyes. Her eyes were still open. Ivan reached out and closed them for her, and no one protested.

Dr. Pinkerton felt for a pulse, checked for any sign of life. Then he sighed deeply. The sigh was all the confirmation Ivan needed. He stumbled backward, a deep exhaustion creaking through his joints and felt all the way into his very marrow.

Teddy volunteered to go to her family. “Not that I have any damned idea what to say,” he mumbled.

Ivan followed him out, though Clayton stayed behind to talk with the doctor. The two men parted ways at the clinic door.

At the edge of the town square, Bo Erikson was waiting. But his insistent voice was nothing but a jumble of sounds in Ivan’s ears. Ivan said something in Russian before he realized he wasn’t speaking English and left Bo staring at him.

What did it matter? Betty was dead, like Jan Clarkson before her. Ivan slumped onto a concrete bench in the town square and watched the sun rise.

What in the hell were they playing at? In a matter of months, two people were dead. Whatever had happened to them, no matter how right it felt to Ivan when he used his power … they were all in danger.

His mind snapped to June, and Ivan sat bolt upright.
June
. She admitted her power hurt her. What if she was hiding just how much. It’d be just like her to downplay her own pain to keep others happy. 

Unbidden, a vision of carrying June like that, of her lifeless body, invaded Ivan’s mind. It nearly brought him to his knees. God, if he lost June. 

His feet were pounding over the bridge before he knew it. His heart pounding a rhythm that demanded he find June. Hold her and make sure she was alive and well. Hold her and tell her that she was more than just a passing infatuation.

Ivan climbed through the hole in the fence and burst into the mine, but it was nearly empty. Only Meg and Will remained. They stood close together, their arms entwined and Meg’s forehead pressed into Will’s chest. They were whispering together, their voices thick with worry. They pulled apart quickly when the wooden slats slammed behind Ivan.

“I need to find June.”

Meg smiled sadly at Ivan. “She’s gone.”

Ivan’s heart skidded to a stop. “What?”

“She already went home.”

Ivan nearly laughed in relief, but then he remembered Betty. Was Teddy knocking on her family’s door right now? He remembered her with a younger sister. God, he hoped that girl wasn’t the first to hear.

Ivan slumped back heavily against the wall of the mine and let his head fall into his hands.

It was important to Ivan that he give Betty’s little sister the bouquet of lilacs. The flowers were past their season, but he’d used his power to create the arrangement just that morning. The purple flowers were in full bloom, their scent sweet and delicate.

The girl was standing at the door to the church between her parents. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her face blotchy from crying. But she accepted the bouquet with a ghost of a smile.

“Betts loves lilacs,” she said thickly.

“I know,” Ivan. He didn’t know what else to say. He shook Betty’s father’s hand and entered the church.

Up at the front near the casket, Clayton and Cora sat with Meg and the rest of the Briggs family. Ivan tugged at the sleeves of his suit coat and adjusted his tie—borrowed from his father. He felt self-conscious dressed up like this, like his ill-fitting suit made it all the more plain that he didn’t belong here. 

He’d made it two steps into the sanctuary—a place he’d never been, just one more way that marked him as
other—
when he heard an angry hiss behind him.

“You got some nerve showing up here,” a man said.

Ivan’s footfalls froze, and he turned.

Bo Erikson leaned against a pew at the back of the church, arms crossed over his chest. A few rows up, Butch Murphy turned his face to the disturbance. Next to him, Veronica, Kent, and Don refused to look at Ivan.

Bo stood and took a step closer. “I saw you with that girl. Saw you carry her dead body up to the doc.”

Mourners streaming in through the front doors paused to listen. Ivan’s face burned red, but he kept silent. This was not the time for confrontation. Not when Betty’s family was so close by.

Bo huffed a mean laugh. “Yeah, you thought I’d keep quiet about that, huh? Doc says it was the sickness that got Betty just like with Jan, but it seems awful late for that. I heard you, boy. I heard you talking Russian.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ivan said, his voice low with warning. He planted his feet and stared at Bo.

But the man set his jaw and nodded at people gathered nearby. “The Soviets are going after our young people, our future,” Bo said, his voice growing louder. “Independence Falls needs to protect itself from the threat.”

Ivan felt someone come stand beside him and glanced over to see Clayton and Will. 

“Ivan isn’t a threat any more than you,” Clayton said.

“How’d a pretty boy like you know a threat? I was in Korea. I saw how those Commies act.”

Butch spoke up, and Ivan’s blood boiled.

“Sokolov attacked me the other day when I tried to question him about his loyalties,” the brute lied. “We have no idea what he did to Betty.”

Ivan snapped his eyes to Don, Kent, and Veronica, but the cowards remained silent. 

“You’re lying,” Ivan insisted.

But behind him, all around, the crowd of mourners were talking, whispering. The suspicion rushed together in a chorus of awful wings, the sound of crows descending on prey.

“We’re at a funeral, for Christ’s sake,” Ivan said with a glare at Butch and Bo.

“You see?” Bo pointed at Ivan. “He’s godless, taking the Lord’s name in a holy church.”

Ivan backed up one step, then another. He’d just wanted to pay his respects. He didn’t want this, didn’t deserve it after crawling down into that pit and holding that poor woman’s corpse. Jesus, what would this do to Betty’s family?

Outside the church doors, the Carrolls had bowed their heads together and were turning toward the sanctuary. 

He had to get out, before people caused a scene, before this became about him instead of about Betty. Whispers and accusations chased him out the door.

Out the door and straight into June. He wanted to fall against her. To hold her close and never let go.

“Ivan, what’s the matter?” There was worry in her eyes.

He sat down hard on the church steps as the doors swung closed behind him, shutting him out. Ivan dropped his head into his hands.

“I carried her … her body,” he muttered almost to himself. “I felt the life go out of her. How can anyone think I’d kill someone?”

Next to him, June’s hand was warm and steady on his knee. At the bottom of the church steps, cars passed, people walked … people who could see them sitting close. Yet June didn’t make a move to create distance between them.

June squeezed his knee. “They’ll realize who you really are, Ivan. They’ll see you like I do.”

Ivan sat up straight, grabbed June’s hands between his own. He had to know …. “If I had to leave, would you come with me?”

Clouds passed through June’s eyes, and she looked away from him. “I don’t think it’d ever come to that. You’re guilty of nothing.”

“Guilt has nothing to do with it sometimes. If I left ….” He looked at her, and his breath caught in the back of his throat when those big, brown eyes met his.

“I would.”

“Come to the mountains with me tomorrow. Please. I need to remind myself why I’m still here.” Ivan pulled her hands to his chest and dipped his head to kiss her knuckles. “I normally go alone, but I need you there with me.”

“Of course, Ivan. Of course I’ll go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

June

The sun was a yellow bobble in the jewel blue sky. June stood up tall, balanced on the pinnacle of rock upon which she’d scrambled. She pushed her sunglasses up onto the forest green silk scarf tied around her hair and let the sun stream down against her closed eyes. A soft smile spread across her face and she lifted her chin to the sun.

“‘Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures,’” she quoted from “The Three Musketeers.”

“This isn’t exactly hazardous,” Ivan said with a laugh from the base of the rock. 

It was the first he’d laughed, the first he’d smiled all morning. June’s heart warmed with the sound of it. Betty’s death had affected June as well, but not like it had Ivan. Beyond exchanging pleasantries, June had never been friends with Betty. She was older and into sports whereas June was a cheerleader. 

It was something else about the death that hit June the hardest … something she didn’t want to think about. Today was about helping Ivan, not about her own fears.

June pushed down the doubt, the terror of her own power and made herself smile again. After a moment, it was barely forced. 

She let her head fall to the side and opened one eye to look at Ivan. His plaid shirt was opened at the top and half untucked from his pants. He swiped the back of his hand over his forehead and reached up to help June jump down. 

“It’s hazardous for me,” she said, accepting his hand. The place where their fingers met spread wildfire through her veins. She didn’t let go when she landed. “I can’t believe I’ve never explored.”

Ivan squeezed her hand. “Why didn’t you? These mountains are littered with paths.”

June shrugged and twined her fingers through Ivan’s. “None of my friends really wanted to. I got my adventure in books.”

“I’ll go hiking with you whenever you’d like,” Ivan promised.

It made June smile, but it also made her realize how much her feet hurt. Perhaps she’d stick with re-reading “The Hobbit” for her hiking adventures. 

They’d set out into the mountains an hour ago, climbing through Jubilation’s shaded groves and open meadows. The trail they were following hugged the Breakneck River as it flowed down from Jubilation toward Lake Perseverance. Every once in a while, when there was a break in the trees, June could spy the windswept summit of Desolation brooding to the west. 

It was lovely … but just that hour had been a challenge. More of a challenge than June wanted to admit. Her feet ached from picking her way over loose stones and roots, and she’d scraped her arm on a tree branch earlier.

Yet the hard work made no room for the fear, no room for the horrible image of Betty, suspended above them. 

No, she couldn’t think of it. 

“I should have done this years ago,” June said, lifting her chin to stare up at the pine boughs arching overhead. A natural cathedral, their own private church.

Ivan walked backward, an increasingly easy smile pulling his lips wide. “But then you wouldn’t have me to show you around.”

“Who says I need you,” June teased. 

She grabbed Ivan’s arm and pulled him close. She pushed up to her toes and pressed a kiss into the hollow of his throat, but she didn’t linger. June turned away with a flourish and a grin over her shoulder and marched down the trail ahead of him.

Ivan groaned, his shoulders sagging, but he jogged to catch up with her.

The breeze was sweet, and up here above the town, meadows of vibrant wildflowers appeared between the aspens and pines. June pulled in a deep breath until her lungs pressed against her ribs. 

It was beautiful, but June wasn’t quite sure she was a “hiking” sort of girl. She’d spent more time picking the right outfit for the day than actually considering what they would be doing. Now, she wished she’d worn more sensible shoes. She’d borrowed one of her father’s old plaid shirts from when he’d been a bit more trim and tied it at her navel. With dark green cigarette pants and brown loafers, June had thought she looked the part of “outdoor adventurer” this morning, but now she wished she’d worn her old, leather Girl Scout boots instead. 

Along the trail, Ivan fell into step beside June. He reached down as they walked and plucked a little white flower from beside the trail. 

“Mountain Pearl,” he said. He handed June the delicate flower and she lifted it to her nose. 

The flower was shaped like a star, with waxy white petals and dark green leaves with scalloped edges. The center of the flower was fuzzy purple, but nestled at the very center shone a bright, white ball—the “pearl.” 

“It’s beautiful,” June said. She sniffed the flower again; there was a note of sweetness to the flower, but it was almost bitter and herbal. It wasn’t what she’d expected for so delicate of a flower. “You know, I’ve helped with decorations for the dance for three years, yet I’ve never actually held the flower up close like this.”