Indelible (48 page)

Trevor moved to talking distance. “Where’s the child, Evan?”

The young man turned from the sky to him, his ravaged face a testament to his torment.

“Where have you put him?”

“He is before you.”

“Stop playing games.”

Evan cocked his horned head. “You think this a game?”

“I want the child.”

“You’re too late. His candle has burned.”

Trevor said, “You can stop this now. You hurt the others, but—”

“I hurt no one.”

“You dropped that toddler in the street.”

“Negligence put him there!” He gripped his head.

“You took pictures.”

“To prove. To convict.” A breeze billowed the cape.

“And Michaela?”

“You were supposed to save her.”

“You put her in mortal danger.”

“You should have taken to the air and borne her to earth.” Trevor shook his head. “I’m not an angel.”

“I’ve seen you in my dreams.”

“Your dreams are dark and twisted. An infant in a tree?”

“His needs were nothing to them. Careless custodians. How precarious the fates of their charges.”

Trevor frowned. “So, you what, instructed them?”

“Yes! But there are so many. And I’m weary.”

“Of making people suffer as you suffered?”

He hung his head. “You have ears but don’t hear.”

“Tell me where the child is.”

He slowly spread his wings. “He is before you.”

The realization sank in. The boy in the photo. “Evan …”

Eyes closed, he tipped off the edge, cape fluttering.

Trevor saw him hit the slope, roll and catch in a crook of the stone, then begin to slide. This was no intentional terrain, no groomed slope, but he aligned his skis and plunged down the white and rocky edge of the basin.

Stopping took every fiber of strength and skill, and even so, he crushed his hip against a stone. After throwing himself onto his chest, he grabbed Evan’s wrist with a death grip.

The kid’s eyes opened, torches of despair. “Let go.”

“I’m not letting go.”

“It’s over.”

It would be, if he fell.

“Stay with me, Evan.” He stretched one arm back and tugged the
zipper of his pack enough to grab rope. In the seconds he let go and looped the rope around Evan’s head and shoulders, they both slid a foot. Trevor dug the splayed edges of his skis into the snow and tightened his grip.

“If what you said is true, you helped other kids. You woke people up.”

Evan gave a slow blink. “Too many. Can’t find them all.” He groaned. “Ribs.”

His adrenaline was spent, pain awakening. Shock would follow. Trevor couldn’t reach his phone without letting go again. The pitch was too steep. He’d have to trust them to find him, not on the ski run as he’d said, but over the cliff.

Natalie said he made miracles, but he was only human. An ache opened up. God hadn’t had the best from him for a long time. But only he had power over life and death. Trevor made his appeal.

Cold crept into him from the ground, sank bitter fingers from the air. The snow stopped falling, but as the sky cleared, the temperature dropped. Locked together, he held Evan’s dulling eyes and demanded, “Stay with me.”

“Hurts.”

He said, “What happened to the boy in the swamp?”

“His mother heard him screaming.”

“That’s good. That was smart.”

Evan’s lids sank.

“Who else?”

They fluttered open.

“How many others?”

“So many. Everywhere. No one sees the danger.”

“But you showed them.”

His voice rasped. “I showed them.”

Trevor started to speak, but his words were lost to the beat of helicopter blades. He jerked a look over his shoulder as it came close and hovered, and then he saw Whit descending with a stretcher on a cable.

Together they secured Evan McCabe into the stretcher. Looking up, he could see Jonah in the chopper, assisting the waiting paramedic as the cable drew the injured youth into the air. The cable returned to draw Whit up, and that would be capacity.

Whit’s hollering was lost to the blades and engine, but he was obviously saying to wait for the helicopter to return. Yeah, not happening. Trevor gripped Whit’s arm and grinned, then let go and leaned into the slope.

In the copter, Jonah shook his head as Trevor took off down the mountain. Well, if anyone knew how to do it …

“Chief?”

He turned to paramedic Charlie Boyer and noticed the kid trying to talk.

“For just a moment,” Charlie said and lifted the oxygen mask.

Evan gasped. “Where is he?”

“You mean Trevor? He’s taking his own route.”

The kid’s chest heaved. “He flew?”

Jonah half smiled. “You could say that.”

Evan’s eyes closed, his face settling. “I knew it.”

Charlie replaced the mask. He and Jonah shared a look. As angels went, they could do worse than Trevor MacDaniel.

Trying to keep her mind off what Trevor might be doing, Natalie watched the archived footage she found hidden away. All the races, the interviews, the personal interest stories, and run after run after run. So much of his life on those slopes. Trevor was every bit the star Fleur described.

But that wasn’t the man she knew. His confidence had been arrogance. His determination, cutthroat contention. The passion and commitment he now used to help people had been channeled into beating his competition and winning, winning, winning. It made a champion. But not a hero.

She had to wonder who he’d be if that banner hadn’t torn free and ruined his knee. He’d called winning a drug, and, curled into the smushy leather recliner, she’d just observed the junkie. Maybe the family friend had done right to pull a shattered teenage Trevor back to the slopes.
Without a channel, the ferocity she saw might have been self-destructive. In a wholly different way, it still had.

Only in losing it all, had he found his core, his conscience, his capacity for good. Dominance did not become him. Deprivation tempered and refined, gave him beauty, nobility, the qualities a confused mind—and hers—had rendered angelic.

Smelling his cologne and his own musky sweat, she twisted around. “You’re back!”

He pressed his hands on her shoulders, jutting his chin at the screen. “What are you doing?”

“Watching you.”

“That’s enough! Meet me in the Jacuzzi.” His hands and face looked chapped. He limped badly.

Heart rushing, she pulled on a suit and went into the place he let himself be vulnerable. Moments later, bracing with his arms, he lowered himself into the opposite end. She prepared herself for awful news, another Michaela—or worse.

“Trevor?”

Eyes closed tight with pain, he leaned his head back and adjusted his leg.

“Please. Tell me.”

“We got him.”

“You found the child?”

His eyelids raised half mast. “Eleven years late.”

“Evan?” She leaned into the churning water. “You got Evan?”

He spoke slowly, deemphasizing what she knew had taken heroic effort.

Looking into his face, the strongly hewn jaw, thick-lashed mossy eyes, tender mouth, pain-creased forehead, she said, “He could have gone to the authorities. When he got away, he could have gotten help from dozens, hundreds of people. But he stayed lost—until he found the one he trusted to bring him home.”

Trevor swallowed. “I wish you hadn’t watched that footage.”

“Do you think I can’t tell the difference between then and now?”

His lips parted, but he held the thought.

“You know what I see?”

He winced as though it might be painful.

“I see children who know their dad will never walk away. People who live because someone risks his life for them. Aches and injuries and wrinkles. Probably a replacement knee.”

He had fixed on her as though she were the one with his wrist in a death grip on a snowy pitch. He shuddered as she pushed throught the water to him, took his face in her hands and kissed his eyes, between his brows, one defined cheekbone, and his mouth. “I imagine our life, Trevor.” She rested her hand on his heart. “And I want it.”

Charging after Cody, he’d though of nothing but snatching the child from a formidable foe, cheating death of one more victim. His need to protect pitted against the animal’s primal instincts. If Ellis entered his mind, he wasn’t aware of it. None of Nattie’s family on the trail registered, not even she. He’d been put there for one thing—to save Cody’s life.

Evan sought him out—God only knew why. His thought stalled. God
knew
why.

Maybe he was the besieged hero standing between darkness and innocence. Was that so bad? Maybe there were miracles, and mere men could participate. That he could love was a miracle. That Natalie loved him, even greater. Maybe what seemed unredeemable could be forgiven, if he forgave himself.

She’d been telling him that one way or another since they met.

Water dripped from his hands as he pulled her into his arms. “Well, if that’s what you want …”

She snuggled in, reading as much, he was sure, from the rasp in his voice and the throb of his pulse as his face would have told her. “But let’s be clear. If there’s an angel here, it’s you, Nat.”

“Keep telling yourself,” she murmured. Then laughed.

Readers Guide

1. With her gift, Natalie is able to transfer the faces and emotions of people she sees to a sculpture with uncanny accuracy and insight. How do these sculptures affect the people who see them? Natalie says she sees people as God sees them. Do you agree with her? What would Natalie see if she looked at you?

2. Throughout the book, Trevor is referred to as a hero by everyone but himself. How does Trevor see himself? What aspects of his personality and lifestyle are unherolike? How do these aspects affect his heroism?

3. Natalie has spent much of her life set apart from other people because of her eidetic memory. How does that change when she moves to Redford? How do the events of
Indelible
change Natalie and her outlook on life?

4. Each of Evan’s sections begins with lines from
Paradise Lost
, and his copy of the book is his only possession. Why do you think Evan identifies with this story? Who is he identifying with? What part does Trevor play in Evan’s personal
Paradise Lost
? Do Evan and Trevor fulfill their roles? How does the story of
Paradise Lost
fit with the book’s overall themes?

5. Natalie loses her eidetic memory after a head injury. Despite being almost a handicap throughout her life, she mourns its loss. Why? How does she cope with this change? Do you think her memory comes back, or do you think its absence is permanent? If the latter, how will this affect the other aspects of her life, such as her art?

6. For most of the book, Evan’s motivations are shrouded in mystery. What did he intend to achieve by endangering those children? What were his plans for Trevor? How do you think Evan’s story will end?

7. What effect does Fleur’s friendship have on Natalie? What effect does she have on Evan? How much of this stems from her blindness, and how much simply from who she is?