Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) (14 page)

“This heart,” I say, pointing at it, gasping, “it-it led me to my mother.”

Creek braces my shoulders with his hands. “Robin,” he says seriously, “what did you see?”

I can tell Creek’s worried by the flinty look in his eyes. Staring again at the ruby heart, I flinch as if it holds a bizarre movie screen.

“I-I went
inside
it,” I begin. “The minute I thought about my mother, it somehow grabbed me and took me in a cloud of red smoke to where she is—with Martiya’s help, I think. If I can trust what I saw, Alessia’s in the mountains north of us, maybe fifteen miles from the vineyards by our camp.”

“The
Dolomiti
,” Creek nods, wrapping his arms around me again. “Those are the mountains the gypsies mentioned.”

He clutches me like I’m his everything—as if he feared he’d lost me for a moment—and I have to admit that I relish melting in his arms. It feels so good to be naked and needing each other, in exactly the same way.

“But Creek,” I whisper in his ear, “Alessia’s not in an institution like the letter said. At least, not the way we think of one. It’s more like a convent of some kind.”

“The convent for crazy nuns?”

Creek pulls away from me and gets off the bed, walking to the front of the wagon and grabbing our clothes. He hands me mine and slips on his pants. “That’s what I heard the gypsy men whispering about while I was shoeing horses,” he says, putting on his shirt as well. “It’s a place where the church sends nuns who have too many—well, let’s just say—visions.”

Reluctantly, I sigh and slip into my blouse and skirt, following his lead and realizing this might be the end of our honeymoon for the night.

Creeks walks over and cups my cheek, sensing my disappointment. “We have to be ready to move again by dawn, Robin, through the gypsy byway that no one can see. Do you know where to go? Did your, um, episode reveal that?”

I shudder.

Episode
—

God help me, I’m a chick who actually has episodes
.
Weird visions like the crazy nun of Venice. And for whatever reason—probably because he comes from a spooky trailer park—Creek seems to be completely okay with that.

Nevertheless, he stands tall and gazes at me, and there’s an odd look on his face that I don’t recognize.

“You’re a
Thagarni
now, aren’t you?” he says with a resignation in his voice that’s heartbreaking, as if he knows he has to share my fate with a destiny I don’t completely understand.

“Yeah, I-I guess I am,” I reply, recalling Martiya’s words. I nod heistantly.

Without warning, Creek’s large hands ball into fists. His face darkens and he glares into my eyes.

“But you know what?” he says. “You’re also my
wife
. And to my mind, that pretty much trumps everything.”

In that rubber band way he can snap from hard to soft, he gazes down at the stone upon his chest, brooding for a moment, before I see his fists relax a little.

“Now come on,” he sighs, nodding at the bed. “We’ll sleep in our clothes for a bit longer and head out at the first light of dawn.”

I wake to the smell of smoke.

And I’m coughing uncontrollably.

For a second, I pat my hands down my body, wondering if I’ve accidentally entered Martiya’s realm and the ruby heart again in my dreams. But when I look around, I see flames licking at the edges of our wagon.

“Robin!” Creek cries in a hoarse whisper, hacking. He grabs my hand so hard it hurts. “Follow me—we have to escape. Now!”

With lightning speed, he tears us from the bed and feels his way through the wagon to find a trap door beneath the table—I should’ve known the gypsies would have a quick getaway hatch like Granny Tinker! Creek lifts it up and we drop outside to the grass below in the darkness. It’s only been a couple of hours since we fell asleep—not even dawn yet—but it’s pretty clear to me that de Bargona’s men have found us.

Search lights scan through the smoke over our heads, but we slither like snakes along the grass until we reach the woods and bolt for a tree.

All of a sudden, I hear a huge crash followed by the sound of gunshots and running horses.

“Shh,” Creek whispers, wrapping his palm around my mouth, knowing I’m scared and it’s hard not to scream. “Climb the tree.”

Luckily, I have some experience from living with Creek near Bender Lake. I hitch up my skirt and scale several limbs in a flash. Creek passes me swiftly and gives me a yank with arms so strong that my boots are dangling in air. With one big swoop, he nestles my body onto a thick limb beside him, steadying my waist for support.

“It’s okay, we made it,” he whispers, and it’s then that I recall his words from dashing across rooftops in Venice:
Most thugs are stupid—they don’t bother to look up.

I’m praying that’s true, because as two burly men go from wagon to wagon, tipping them over or setting them on fire, then shooting their guns in air as a fear tactic to make people come out, I’m petrified their search lights will spot the other gypsies as well as us, high in this tree.

But no dice.

Gypsies are hardly strangers to harassment, and the people from the camp spread as fast as ants, disappearing into the darkness of the woods like we did. Within seconds, all that’s left in the center of the camp is Zuhna. She stands alone in their searing bright light, leaning on a gnarled walking stick.

“Dove si trova la pietra!”
one of the men demands. All I can see of him is a dark suit—and a gun.

But Zuhna doesn’t flinch.

“Non qui,”
she replies coolly, shaking her head.

She boldly picks up her walking stick and waves it at the camp at no one there. Several wagons are on their sides and a couple are in flames that reach high in the night sky.

I’m in awe of her bravery.

But when one of the men jabbers at her insistently in Italian and then walks up to Zuhna and hits her with his pistol, I hear Creek spit through his teeth: “That’s it—”

And before I can get a word in, Creek is gone.

Down the tree and back into the camp.

He slinks in the shadows cast by the men’s search lights as if he were made of darkness itself.

And as the same man hauls off and hits Zuhna again so hard this time that she falls to ground like a ragdoll, in short order, that man’s head is knocked against his partner, who falls with him as well.

Zuhna cries out.

Not in fear, more like a warning. But it’s no use—

I hear a loud pop-pop.

And instantly, my stomach sickens.

I want to hurl.

Though my hands are covering my eyes, I feel frozen—unable to breathe or think. Cautiously, I peek through trembling fingers at the two large bodies that are lying in the camp, their backs glowing in the search lights. Creek has Zuhna engulfed in his arms, and he’s rocking her and smoothing her hair, speaking quietly. In spite of the horror of his violence, my heart goes out to him.

Of course he’d grab the gun and shoot those men!

After years of watching his mother’s boyfriend abuse her in childhood without being able to do a thing about it, Creek wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of protecting a woman now.

And there’s no doubt in my mind those men would’ve killed Zuhna.

Nevertheless, tears stream down my cheeks.

Two bodies—two men dead—who were willing to do anything to get the ruby heart from around Creek’s neck.

Zuhna was right. It’s already proved to be one hell of a burden.

As the other gypsies slowly come out of the woods to approach the camp, timid as deer, I scramble down the tree and run to Zuhna’s side.

“Come on,” I say kindly to her, grasping her by the arm and picking up her stick. “Let me take you to one of the wagons or trailers that wasn’t harmed. You can rest while the men dig graves. Creek and I will clear out right away. If anyone tries to bother you, say you never saw us—you have no idea what happened to those men—”

“No!” Zuhna hisses back at me.

She rips her arm from my grip and grabs the walking stick, pointing with it at the meadow beyond the woods. “I will burn them right there—where they killed Martiya and her lover. Where they transgressed against my people.”

The venom in her voice sends chills through my body, and I know there’s no arguing with her. She yells a command in her gypsy tongue at her men. Within seconds, they’re towing a burning wagon toward the meadow, followed by others who’ve lit old branches like torches. They pick up the men’s bodies and throw them inside the wagon. I watch in horror as the meadow becomes an inferno, in the very same place where Martiya met her end.

And I can’t hold back anymore—I lean over and vomit what’s left of my wedding feast to the ground as the smell of burning flesh rises in the air.

Creek stands beside me, stoic, as if he’s seen worse. His hand gently massages my back, but he says no words to soften the harshness of this . . . of
our
. . . reality.

“Go,” Zuhna says, turning to me as I wipe off my mouth. “Go now. We know what it’s like to have our camps burned to the ground. It’s part of gypsy life, of being travelers. And de Bargona will never admit that those were his men. We’ll say they were gypsies who died in the attack. If you want to free your mother,” she taps the stone at Creek’s chest boldly with her stick, “then follow your star.”

Free my mother?

By following the star . . .

Zuhna’s words tell me the de Bargona’s letter was right. Alessia
is
locked up in an institution, unable to leave. It’s just different than the white walls and padded cell I imagined. And those star-like cracks in the center of ruby heart are all I have to find her.

Creek is hiking beside me in the darkness along the secret gypsy path. And even though I know he’s tough as nails and can handle anything that comes our way, I feel strangely naked without Zuhna’s wisdom to guide us—and without the handgun Creek used to defend her. But the gypsies insisted on taking the men’s guns to fence through the black market so none of us could get caught or be traced to the de Bargona’s, and also to make a pretty penny. Creek says they’ll need the cash for new wagons and repairs, which is the least we can do for hiding us. We let the guns go.

Nervously, I roll the ring Creek gave me around my finger as we hasten by moonlight down the gypsy trail, with only two old coats that the gypsies gave us plus the clothes on our backs.

And a scarf over my head that says in gypsy culture that I’m a “married” woman now.

To a thief—and a killer.

Shivering a little, I can’t help wondering if this is the first time Creek has taken someone’s life.

When he taps me on the shoulder, it makes me jump.

“Robin, we’ve reached the edge of the vineyards,” he says, pointing at the rows of grapevines that extend beyond us in the moonlight. “Past here, we start climbing into the mountains. They’re huge—we need to know where your mother’s convent is.”

He slips the stone from his neck and hands it to me, silver necklace shining in the moonlight.

“Here,” Creek pauses, “hold this and concentrate.”

The stone is cold in my hands, but not nearly as cold as the feeling that still riddles through my bones.

“Creek,” I whisper, because it’s way too hard for me to spit these words out any louder, “there’s something . . . you’ve never told me—”

“You
know
I love you, baby,” he cuts in with a sigh, as if all I need right now is reassurance. “And our last name’s Flynn. I told you the truth—”

“No,” I interrupt, swallowing back a stone in my throat. “Creek,” the heat rises up my cheeks, and I pray to God I don’t hurl again, “h-have you ever . . . killed . . . anybody before this?”

Creek is absent in the dark.

I don’t know how he does it, but it’s as if his soul retreats to a silent dimension in shadows, like he was a figment of my lonely imagination all along. I can’t see him in the moonlight all of a sudden among the trees, and it makes me feel like I’ve fallen down a black hole. Like I don’t know who he really is—who
we
are—

But then I sense a warm kiss on my forehead.

“Only those who deserved it, baby,” Creek whispers, his voice shrouded in night. “I promise.”

The ruby heart lies in the middle of my hands, cool as the night air around us.

I’ve got my eyes closed, trying to concentrate.

In my mind, I picture Alessia with long, curly hair and brown eyes like mine. I should be imagining her in a nun’s outfit, repeating Hail Marys in that convent so I can figure out how to find her. But for some reason, I keep wondering what life was like for her at Turtle Shores. Did she and my dad kiss there in the moonlight under the stars, after he snuck her out from her boarding school? Did she let her hair fall loose, tumbling like dark lace around her shoulders? Did they run barefoot together in the soft sand by the shores of Bender Lake and skinny dip, the way Creek and I did?

All at once, I feel a warm breeze through my hair, odd for this time of night on the gypsy trail. And rather than my soul being sucked into the cracks of the ruby heart in a whoosh, I feel like I’ve become a part of that tender breeze. When my eyes flutter open, instead of darkness, I see Creek in broad daylight by the lakeshore.