The Thorndykes 1: Dispossessed (25 page)

Nothing had made any difference to the way she felt, the emptiness of each day. She prepared Drew’s latte by rote, having passed her barista training with flying colors.

Missy was buying the bar in Taken. She’d adopted Digger too, and the hell of it was Lucille missed the dog as much as almost everything else. Almost.

Lucille wanted to know how Missy was, how her friends at home were doing, but she couldn’t even check on them online. Nathan had made it clear. If by some weird coincidence anyone recognized her, she was to tell them she was in Witsec. The Talents would wipe the person’s memory of her. She didn’t want that. She’d go along with the Witsec story.

She’d thought that about Ryan Wheeler.

Drew took his coffee with a word of thanks, and as always she wouldn’t let him pay for it. “You won’t make money that way,” he said with an easy smile.

“You’re family.” Their cover story was that they were brought up together despite being cousins. It made their closeness believable. None of the regulars, many of them from the local police station, thought anything of the fact that Drew stopped by every day and they exchanged friendly banter. It kept her sane, stopped her thinking about Jay, and Taken, and what could have been.

Drew tossed a newspaper down on the counter. “Here, I’m done with this. Do you have a trash can back there?”

“Sure.” She glanced at the paper, then caught by a few words, took another look and shoved it in her bag.

Later that evening in the privacy of her apartment, she pulled out the newspaper and read it cover to cover before she finally returned to the front page.

It wasn’t every day that a copy of the
Taken Gazette
came her way. It usually came out on special occasions like this one. A gala pullout for Founder’s Day. She didn’t care, and she tossed that part aside. One John Deere looked a lot like another as far as she was concerned.

She settled to read.

A couple of paragraphs, that was all, reporting the conclusion of the Wheeler Ranch Tragedy. The inquest. It said that Ryan Wheeler had become “unnaturally obsessed” with her and had murdered his family when they ordered him to stop seeing her. After he held her at knifepoint, the sheriff was forced to kill him.

Like that it sounded almost mundane, except that for a month after, the media had been all over the story. Members of the press had descended on Taken, interviewing anyone who would talk to them. Plenty had talked. Nothing interesting happened in the sleepy Texas town, so a local family wiped out by one lunatic in a weekend made for the story of the century. It went national.

Several TV stations had run specials on the crime. After watching one Lucille had turned off the TV and avoided the others. She’d become a brunette, thanks to the drugstore, and wore her hair in a sleek bob. As Nathan had told her, if she didn’t act furtive, nobody would connect her with the redhead who’d caused such passions in Texas. She’d even changed her accent—modified it, rather. She told people she was from Dallas and that she’d studied at Saint Paul, liked Chicago, and stayed on. Nathan had arranged the papers and the records. She was Lucy here, a name she’d never answered to before.

A different person. One who rarely wore jeans, who spent her weekends visiting museums and theaters. Who had dated men, but they never got past her front door, and she always walked past theirs.

She never saw Nathan these days either, though he owned a club here. He was one of Chicago’s wealthy men, not in her league at all.

The proceeds from the sale of the bar came to her and Drew by circuitous means. A legacy from the aunt who’d raised them both, apparently. She didn’t know what had happened to her personal belongings. They hadn’t allowed her any; she hadn’t even had time to upload her family albums before she left. They’d lived quietly for three months while the Thorndykes arranged their new identities, then moved to Chicago. Everyone had been so kind. She hated it here. She hadn’t known what loneliness meant before she moved to the big city, but if Jay had come with her, she could have enjoyed the experience. As it was, nothing seemed to matter.

She got up and ambled to the window, staring out at the buildings on the other side of the road. While her place wasn’t a luxury top-class place like the ones by the river, she had a great apartment, better than her last one. She should be enjoying this.

But she couldn’t forget him. Nothing she did stopped that. His mind was blocked to her, but sometimes she imagined him close. Greatly daring one day, she’d gone to an Internet café and looked up his name. He was still at his ranch helping the police. He’d made an offer on the Wheeler place when nobody else would touch it. Said he’d demolish the ranch house and incorporate the land with his.

That meant that Department 57 could inter the bodies of the dead and give them proper burial without hindrance. He was right. Nobody could provide the help he could because he lived there.

He’d even taken a few women out, being photographed at the Houston Symphony and caught in a clinch in a nightclub.

Lucille didn’t look anymore. It hurt too much.

He’d told her he loved her. She’d believed him. She’d given him everything, offered him all she had, and he’d rejected it in the cruelest possible way. Closing the paper, she got to her feet. She crossed the room to the shredder and fed the newsprint into it. Her past went down with it, sliced into unreadable ribbons.

Nathan told her he might have to move them on again, but frankly she didn’t give a fuck. She’d achieved a sense of numbness that she could tolerate, and she’d go along with that. Nothing else seemed possible.

When her doorbell rang, she frowned. She wasn’t expecting anyone tonight. Glancing into the camera by her door, she saw Nathan and wondered. Did he have news?

She wouldn’t find out by leaving him moldering on her doorstep. She pressed the buzzer and let him in.

He wasn’t alone. As usual on the rare times he visited her, he kissed her on each cheek, then stepped back as if tempted to do more. Just his way, the charm that had become an innate part of the reason he got through so many women. Nathan seemed determined not to let himself get involved with anyone. Not that Lucille cared.

The woman with him took Lucille’s breath away. Dark glasses obscured most of her face, but her pointed chin appeared familiar as did the red hair cut into an expensive, stylish bob. She was staring at Lucille, smiling. Slowly, she removed the sunglasses, revealing eyes so similar to the ones Lucille saw in the mirror every morning that she couldn’t doubt the identity of her caller. “Mom?”

The woman winced. “Trixie. That’s my legal name now. Never ever call me that.”

“Sorry.” Her mother? Her freaking
mother?
Lucille fought to gain control over her emotions. Older Talents took situations like this for granted, they had to. Otherwise how could they survive past their first hundred years? She had to learn. Besides, next to the hole at the center of her life, this didn’t matter. She gave a smile she wanted to make insouciant, like the sophisticate she wasn’t. “New identities make things difficult.”

“It’s not that,” Trixie snapped. “Look at me. Do I look like anyone’s mother?”

Certainly nothing like the long-haired, nature-loving woman Lucille remembered. This person was high maintenance. She carried an oversize purse with a designer label, and her shoes had the familiar red sole Lucille had seen in fashion magazines.

“I thought we weren’t going back—”

Nathan gave her mother an exasperated glare. “I told you. This isn’t becoming a habit.”

“Oh, why not? Nobody connects us. I left that godforsaken town fifteen years ago, and look at me. Who’s about to connect us now?” She swept a hard gaze over Lucille. “You turned out well.”

Remembering her manners, Lucille invited them in and offered them a drink. At least Nathan could have one. He took a coffee, nothing alcoholic, although he looked as if he needed a stiff drink. His usually sleepy expression had changed to irritation and concern. She understood why, but like her mother, she didn’t see why she shouldn’t meet the woman who’d abandoned her and her brother. And ask the simple question she’d always longed to know. Not that it seemed important anymore.

“Thanks. I think. So why did you go?”

Trixie took a seat, gracefully sinking into one of Lucille’s comfortable chairs, tilting her shiny, beautifully waxed legs to one side. Lucille plopped down on the sofa next to Nathan. Nathan drank his coffee. “Because, darling, I got bored. You know Talents are perennially bored. It comes with the territory. I spent all that time being a nature girl, and fifteen years is plenty. Your father bored me too. In a place like that, I could hardly have an affair, could I? He was devoted to me, darling, and while I found it a novelty for a while, his constant declarations grew tedious. I prefer a little adventure.”

Lucille hated her now. She’d destroyed the memories of the gentle woman Lucille remembered and the care she took when she and Drew were tiny. All that, gone. She owed this witch nothing. “I can do fidelity. Why can’t you?”

Nathan shot her a sharp look but said nothing.

“Because I choose not to. I was much older than your father— Did he tell you he was a mere baby? He didn’t realize how little everything matters to us in time. As a Talent ages, the emotions become less acute. In a way it’s a relief, because my passions wore me out.”

Callous
. In a blinding flash, Lucille realized something she should have known already. Talents weren’t all the same. She’d met more of them since coming to Chicago. Nathan had given her introductions to places where they sometimes met when they wanted to make contact, and introduced her to several figures who could help her. Some of them were as old as this woman, as old as Nathan. As old as Jay. Some had been with the same partner for several generations and didn’t want to move on. Love lasted.

It was as if she was emerging from a thick fog where she’d had to concentrate on walking without falling over, a task too difficult to achieve without working at it.

However old her father was, he wouldn’t have done what this woman did and left them.

Because her mother showed no inclination to leave, Lucille asked her, to keep her talking, what she did for a living. “I make movies, I pose for photographs, and I run a few girls. And I dance. You know, burlesque.”

Nathan snorted. “You do not do burlesque, Trixie. Straight down-the-line porn.”

Trixie shrugged. “Yes, okay. But I’ve made it popular, and I’m making a shitload of money from it. Letting men fuck me on screen? If I’d known it was that lucrative, I’d have taken it up years ago.” She lifted her brows and glared at Lucille. “What? Are you condemning me? Should I have stayed in that backwater forever?”

Lucille wanted her to go. “Why did you bring her?”

Nathan put down his cup and scrubbed at his chin as if he’d find answers there. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, his attention skating past her to a point over her left shoulder. “She’s curious. And she called you a hick.” It had to be more than that.

“What about my identity?”

Nathan sighed. “She insisted. Nobody will connect her with the woman from Taken, not now. She has all the ID she needs to prove she’s never been anywhere near Texas.” He paused. “She said if I didn’t bring her, she’d come on her own. I couldn’t risk that.”

So her mother had blackmailed Nathan into bringing her. So why, after all this time, had she decided to reconnect with at least one of her children?

Lucille knew she looked nothing like a hick—and wondered now if that had bored Jay back in Taken. Or would, in time. Perhaps he was right, and she needed more experience. She might keep him better. Then she remembered the times they’d laughed together, played together, shared a meal, and whatever she did, however much experience she gained, she’d still be Lucille. The woman he’d fallen in love with.

It came flooding back, filling her with remembered joy.

She needed answers. “Why did Jay send me away?”

“It wasn’t safe, and Jay decided to stay.” His answer came promptly, as it should. He’d rehearsed it enough.

“He just decided I bored him? He said he wasn’t good enough for me. He said he loved me, Nathan. Why would he hurt me like that?”

Trixie gave a tinkling laugh. “Are you kidding me? This is Jay Trevino we’re talking about? Aka Lord Trevithick? Shit, that man has money to burn, girl, and as far as I know, he’s never let himself get that deep with anyone. He might slum for a while with you, but he sure as hell wouldn’t stay with you.”

Nathan ignored Trixie and watched Lucille, frowning in thought. “He said that? Yes, I knew, but I didn’t think he’d said anything. Not that it matters. For the last century Jay’s had a chip on his shoulder a mile wide. He’s not good enough for anybody. I don’t know what made him that way, because sure as hell he didn’t start out like that, but there you go. He’s bad for you, Lucy. He’s done things you could never understand.”

She didn’t care. “I won’t have to,” she said. “I only have to cope with who he is now. Not what he was.”

“You don’t have to
cope
with anything. You can’t go back; you know that.”

Indignation filled her. “Why can’t I?”

Nathan gaped at her.

“Why can’t I go back?” she repeated. “Tell me.”

Nathan recovered his senses to say, “He’ll only send you back here. He won’t do it, Lucy.”

“What if I make him?”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

She knew exactly how. The idea came to her in a blinding flash. She turned to her mother. “You owe me, and don’t even pretend you don’t. You left me far too early, and you abandoned a brokenhearted husband and two kids who had no idea what it meant to be Talents. Shit, we never met hardly any. He kept us locked away. Well, I’ve learned, and one of the things is that when I want something, nobody is going to hand it to me on a silver platter.”

Her mother shuddered. So that was where the allergy came from.

“Sometimes I just have to reach out and take,” Lucille said firmly. “So I’m giving you a choice. You do one thing for me, or I’ll go into the porn business. How about that?” She snapped her fingers. “Nathan can tell you how good I am, and what my body looks like. I can do it.”