Tangled Souls (28 page)

Gavenia’s mouth dropped open. “What is this, Pooh?”

“Don’t play innocent. You’re doing all this on purpose. Look at your hand!”

Gavenia refused to look down. She knew the hand was quaking.

“You wear it like a badge of honor. Don’t you know how that makes me feel?” Ari didn’t wait for an answer, but plunged ahead. “Guilty, that’s how I feel. Is that what you want? Well, you’ve got it.”

“Why would I want you to feel guilty?” Gavenia snapped, grabbing on to the bedpost for support.

“Because you kept me from being taken by those perverts. I never would have survived in that steel cage. I never would have had the guts to escape. They would have . . .” She faltered and stepped backward, unsteadily. “You fought those guys off and gave me time to escape. If not, I’d be dead.”

“Ari, I never—”

“No, you’ve never said it, but I feel it every day of my life. My sister could have died because of me. If you hadn’t told me to run . . .” She looked away, wiping tears from her eyes.

“They needed two girls for their plans,” Gavenia said solemnly.

“What?”

“Two. That’s why they didn’t kill me right off. They were trying to find another girl.”

“You never told me that!” Ari said, stunned.

“There was a lot I didn’t tell you.”

Her sister’s face twisted from confusion back to anger. “Well, we’re a pair, aren’t we? We switched places all those years ago. Now you’re too scared to do anything, too frightened to defend yourself even when you’re in the right.”

“And you’re too blind to see you married a man who ran you like a top, who remade you in his own image,” she shouted, gall in her voice.

Ari’s eyes flared. “Damn you!” She swung out the room, her feet pounding down the stairs followed by the crashing slam of the front door. Paul hadn’t been at her side during the entire confrontation; Ari’s seething anger had driven him away.

Gavenia sat on the bed with a trembling breath. She clenched her fists but it didn’t keep the memories at bay.

They’d been in the park next to their aunt’s house, always a safe place. Gavenia was five years older than Ari and had been assigned the task of keeping her ten-year-old sister safe. As Ari ran to catch an errant Frisbee, a van had pulled up along the curb and a man had stepped out. Something about him had frightened Gavenia, and the moment he moved toward her sister, she’d shouted for Ari to run. In the end, it had been Gavenia who’d been kidnapped.

She’d spent three days in a cage in the woods. Once she’d escaped, but had been caught almost immediately and returned to her prison. Her captors, one old and one young, hadn’t raped her, but she knew they would once they found another girl that fit their specifications, however sick those might be. She also knew this wasn’t the first time they’d committed this hideous crime.

Seventy-two hours later she’d been found in that cage courtesy of Llewellyn, who had never given up hope. She could still remember him crying as he helped her to freedom. Despite that joy, her tormentors had escaped and continued to kidnap and kill. They’d never been caught.

Her sister was right—from the moment Gavenia was freed, she’d collapsed into herself. If she took no risks, nothing bad would happen every again. She’d carefully constructed her life, choice by choice, all with one thing in mind: staying safe. The accident in Wales had proven her theory didn’t hold water. Life was dangerous no matter how hard you tried to hide from it.

Welcome to the real world
, Bart whispered from his place near the window.

“Did you hear all that?”

He nodded.
So did most of LA.

“Is she right? Am I an emotional cripple because of . . . ?” Gavenia couldn’t say the words.

Do you think you’re an emotional cripple?

“Don’t answer a question with another question,” she said. “I know that tactic. It’s called reflection. Lucy uses it on her patients.”

Really?

She opened her mouth to protest and then let it go. Her hand continued to flutter in her lap. The trembling had begun the day after she’d been pulled from the cage. The older man had made her hold hands with him while he talked to her. He’d made her do other things as well, always with that hand and it was now a permanent reminder of that horror. She’d prayed it would rot off, and her prayers had been ignored. Lucy said she needed to exorcise her demons, and then it would stop shaking.

But you haven’t. Isn’t twenty-two years long enough?
Bart asked, watching her closely.

“Eternity isn’t long enough.”

Then you’ll be forced to deal with this in the next life.
Gavenia’s eyes widened in astonishment.
That shouldn’t surprise you. It’s the way it works.

“Goddess,” she said, and rubbed her face wearily.
One thing at a time.
“So what do you think I should do about . . . that,” she asked, pointing to the pile of newsprint on the floor.

A coward dies a thousand deaths. . . .

“Meaning?”

What have you got to lose?

“It could get worse.”

You didn’t think that the night you broke out of that cage and escaped into the woods. You fought back.

“That was different.”

Was it?
Bart challenged, moving a few steps closer to her.
Life is a series of tests, Gavenia. Some are bigger than others, but all are important.

“What about you? Do you get tested?” she growled.

Her Guardian nodded.
Sometimes I pass them.
He faded from view, leaving behind the sunlight streaming through the window in long, airy shafts.

Gavenia limped into the bathroom and tried to turn the faucet in the shower. Her jittery hand made the task difficult. Angered, she slammed it against the tile with a loud thump; pain catapulted into her shoulder. The hand convulsed into a fist, the nails digging into her palm like barbed wire.

“I hate you!” she shouted, sinking to her knees on the chilly tile floor. “I hate you!”

The words echoed in the small room. As she leaned against the shower door, she thought she could hear her captor’s brutal laughter. He didn’t care if she hated him or the mark he’d left on her body. He’d had all the power.

“Just like Jones,” she whispered.

Before he could comment, Avery explained, “I want you to wear it at all times, even when you’re sleeping. Do you understand?”

His friend’s tone of voice generated a shiver, one O’Fallon barely repressed. “I assume you’ve blessed it.”

The priest hesitated and then nodded. “Yes. It’s been . . . thoroughly blessed.”

Odd way to put it.
O’Fallon closed his palm around the cross and listened to what it had to say to him. Love, warmth, security, the voices of monks, the clear blue skies of Ireland . . . No . . . not skies . . .

He opened his hand to find Avery studying him. “Gavenia’s touched this, hasn’t she?”

The priest nodded. “She brought it to me last night. She had her . . . deity . . . bless it and asked me to have Saint Bridget do the same.”

“I see.” O’Fallon mulled that over. Was he comfortable wearing something the witch’s goddess had blessed?

As if knowing his dilemma, Avery added, “I anointed it with holy water, and it spent the night in Saint Bridget’s hands.”

If Avery’s okay with it . . .
“I bet Rome would just love this.”

A glare. “I know what’s best for my flock.”

O’Fallon raised his hands in surrender.
Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off priest.
Dropping his hands, he kissed the cross and placed it over his head, letting it fall under his shirt. It tingled against his skin.

“Thank you, Avery,” he said quietly.

“Just be careful.”

“Oh, I will.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“I am. I intend to find Bradley’s killer and I want Glass behind bars.”

Avery grew pensive. “As your confessor, I would remind you that vengeance is the Lord’s purview.”

“And as Adam’s father?” O’Fallon asked.

“As Adam’s father?” The priest rose from his seat and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Nail the bastard.”

A fine, crisp morning greeted O’Fallon as he stepped outside the church, and he took a deep inhalation, savoring the moment. He listened for the voices, though in his heart he knew they wouldn’t be there. Instead of the horror of the night before, he was welcomed by the reassuring sounds of car horns, chirping birds, and a driver trying to cajole a traffic officer out of a ticket. Rubbing his fingers over the top of the cross, he whispered, “Thank you, Lord.”

* * *

“What do you mean I can’t sue him?” Gavenia demanded, a scowl on her face. “He’s lying, Llewellyn; we both know that.”

“Yes, but that means jack in court.” Llewellyn inserted a neat stack of papers inside a folder and placed it on the side of his broad desk. “What sort of evidence do you have?” he asked.

“Well, nothing but—”

He waved her off. “Come on; you worked in this office—you know what you need to present a case. Do you have anything that proves his mother was murdered and that he knew of it before he ran the article?” Llewellyn challenged.

“Well, no . . .”

“If you can prove prior knowledge, then we can go for libel. If not, you’re out of luck.”

She opened and closed her mouth in rapid succession. “Damn.”

“Precisely.”

“What if I find the proof?” she asked, her hand gripping the cane so tightly her fingers blanched.

“Then that bastard’s balls are mine.”

Gavenia cracked a grin and he followed suit.

“Let me see what I can find out,” she said.

He swung himself around the desk and unexpectedly gave her a big hug. His aftershave brought back memories of the night he’d pulled her out of that death trap, taken her away from those who would have ended her life. Her own father had abandoned her and her sister when she was nine, but Llewellyn had always been there.

Had she ever thanked him?

Gavenia hugged him hard. “I’ve always thought of you as my father,” she said. He pulled back, and the expression on his face was priceless.

Llewellyn placed a peck on her cheek and his eyes grew moist. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

“I never thanked you for finding me. I—”

He placed his finger on her lips, gently silencing her. “No need; I understand.” They broke apart when his intercom reminded him the next client was waiting.

She paused at the door, sad the tender moment had passed so quickly.

“I’ll be waiting to hear from you,” he said. “Now go get what I need to file suit.”

* * *

The newspaper receptionist had a well-practiced monotone.

“Mr. Jones is in a meeting. You’ll need to wait here,” she said. In front of her was the accursed paper, turned to the page with
the
article. The woman studied the picture and then looked up at the original. A sneer lit her face.

“How long do you think it will be?” Gavenia asked, resisting the urge to snatch the paper and grind it into pulp on the exquisitely polished marble floor.

“I have no idea.” The woman’s sneer grew. “You’re the so-called psychic, aren’t you?”

Gavenia ground her teeth and parked herself on a sofa. Bart sat nearby, dressed in a fifties-style suit and black-rimmed glasses. She leaned over to catch the name on the tag above his breast pocket: Kent.

Got a pair of tights and a cape under that suit, mister?
she asked, repressing a chuckle.

Wouldn’t you like to know?
he replied, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Gavenia’s patience proved nonexistent. “Enough of this,” she said, and headed toward the bank of elevators. After scanning the directory, she pushed the button and waited. The elevator arrived quickly.

She shot a quick look at the gatekeeper. The gate dragon was too engrossed with a UPS delivery man to notice the psychic was on the loose. “So far so good,” Gavenia said, entering the elevator.