To Touch Poison (20 page)

“I don’t like this.” Loyria shifted in her chair. “Stealing all of her memories from the first four years of her life. That’s wrong. And how will we ensure she finds this letter? What if she never follows the clues we leave for her?”

“Millie will see to it, daughter. She prepared the envelope. See how the postmark is a bit smudged. Our Ni…Everly will be intrigued, and her curiosity won’t allow her to ignore such an interesting discovery. It is our responsibility to lead her back here.”

James handed the letter to Makani. “This is not something I know how to deal with. I don’t like it. Keeping secrets from our daughter. It’s wrong.”

Loyria leaned into him, both to comfort and seeking comfort in return. “It’s like if she ran into a busy street, James. We’d run after her, tackle her to get her out of harm’s way, maybe hurt her in the process, but not as badly as a ton of metal traveling at fifty miles an hour. It’s the better of two impossible choices.”

She moved away, looked into his eyes. “We have to do everything we can to provide all the facts she’ll need to protect herself. I created a cache site near the Amazon camp that holds the equations for the toxin, the antidote, and my healing formula. They’re obviously not perfect, because I still haven’t been able to purify them, and guarantee consistent results, but I’d always planned to give her the coordinates when she was old enough. To let her chose whether to continue my work or not. But that place in the Amazon, it has to be the last clue she finds. And that means we’ll have to set up a, oh, God, it will be like a scavenger hunt. Like a game, only with a potentially lethal outcome.”

Tears slipped down Loyria’s cheeks.

Makani patted her daughter’s hand, then passed her a wad of tissues. “It’s…difficult. But remember you have twenty years, more or less, to share with Everly before any of the secrets begin to unfold. A lot can happen in that time. But the one thing that must not happen is for Everly to find Aukele and me, and her home here. Not until after all of us but Aukele have moved beyond the veil.”

Loyria and James clung to each other until Aukele appeared in the doorway. “It is done. You must be ready to travel when your government transportation arrives. Niele will sleep until you arrive at your destination. Does anyone know where that will be?”

Easing out of James’s arms, Loyria blew her nose, then wadded the tissue in her fist. “North Carolina. Fred didn’t say exactly where.”

Millie and Harlan burst into the kitchen. “We found the device.” Harlan offered it to James. “Small bombs like this often have signatures. You might be able to trace—”

“It was most certainly Fion Connor,” Loyria interrupted. “But we’ll probe until we know for sure. And this should be one of the items we cache for Ni…Everly to find.”

“Everly?” Mille’s forehead wrinkled.

Loyria choked down a fresh flood of tears. “Niele’s new name. How are we ever going to bridge the gap between what she doesn’t remember, and waking up in a strange place?”

“She will remember some things, daughter. I was…specific when I set the triggers in her mind. She will recognize you and James, Millie and Harlan, her love for cinnamon, and most everything that doesn’t include Makani, me, or Hawaii.” The transition will not be that difficult. Everly,” Aukele moved his mouth around a bit, like he was savoring the taste of her new name. “Everly Gray will be groggy, in and out of sleep. You’ll have several chances on the flight to mention your new home, show her pictures, acclimate her. The state she’s in is a lot like sleep walking. She’s aware, but won’t remember it later.”

“Do you have pictures?” Millie asked. “I’d like to see where we’ll be living.”

Harlan reached behind his back and slid an oversized envelope from his waistband. “Fred left this with me. It might be what you’re looking for.”

Millie opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of photographs. “Could be.”

Makani stood and peered over her shoulder. “Oh, yes. That’s their new home.”

Too numb to be curious, Loyria turned to James. “Let’s go and sit with Everly.” Her gaze traveled around everyone else in the room. “Could we all just go and sit with Everly? This the last time we’ll be together, and…” her voice broke.

LOYRIA SETTLED ON THE SOFA
with Everly’s head in her lap, James held his daughter’s feet, and everyone else gathered around, passing the photographs of the Grays’ new home from one to the other.

“North Carolina,” Harlan said. “Should be able to have a garden, a good one, where we can see to growing those plants you’ll need for your research, Loyria.” He grinned. “Guess I’ll be calling you Miz Gray from now on.”

Makani rubbed her eyes, then thumbed through several of the photos. “Well, then. Isn’t that a turn of events? My father and his mother, bless their missionary souls, came from North Carolina. We’ve always thought it best to let them rest in peace without much mention. Father passed soon after I was born, and my Mamma always said it was a blessing.” Makani sniffed, held Loyria’s gaze. “Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence you chose the name Loyria. And this might be one of the better places to hide you. It’s a large expanse of land, must be almost the size of this property. Looks like there are large tracts of farmland around it, but few neighbors. With the proper security system, it should be as close to a fortress as we have here.”

Loyria stroked Everly’s unruly red curls away from her daughter’s too-white face. “I hope she wakes soon…”

The thwhop-thwhop-thwhop of a helicopter interrupted her, and pure terror pounded in her head. “It’s only been two hours. Fred isn’t supposed to be back yet.”

James shot up from the sofa, and headed outside. “Harlan, with me. Everyone else, stay put.”

Makani closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. “It’s your transport, daughter. You will travel over the next twenty years, quite extensively. I hope and pray that on some of those trips you’ll be able to stop here and spend a bit of time with us.” Tears flowed freely when she hugged Loyria for what might be the last time.

“If it doesn’t endanger Everly, I’ll be here. I promise. I love you, Mom.”

James jogged into the living room. “It’s time. They’ve spotted Fion nearby and need to get us out of here.”

Loyria shook her head. “I can’t believe one woman is screwing with all of our lives like this. I thought people like Fred eliminated those kind of threats before they—”

“If they did that, honey, they’d lose their only connection to exactly what she’s doing, and what she knows. Sanctioning her is too great a risk.” James hugged Makani and Aukele, and then cradled Everly in his arms. “There are no words to thank you for everything you’ve done. I promise to protect your daughter and granddaughter with my life.”

Aukele reached for his granddaughter, cupping her head in his palm. “We will protect this place, granddaughter, hide it with all the magic of Huna until you’re grown and ready to accept your heritage.”

He kissed her forehead, and then Loyria’s. “Stay safe, my daughter.”

Loyria shared a final hug with her parents, and then ran from the room, eyes blinded with tears.

Damn Fred anyway.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Cary, NC

June, 1998

LOYRIA COULDN’T TAKE HER EYES
off Everly. She’d be eighteen in a few short months, and yesterday she’d graduated from high school. They’d have this summer together before she headed off to college, and the joy, the luxury, of sharing the summer with her daughter bubbled deliciously in Loyria’s heart. Life was so…tenuous.

“We’ve had a wonderful eighteen years with her, though, haven’t we, honey?” James always knew what she was thinking. Had always known.

“I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I thought I’d hate it, living here instead of in Hawaii, but it’s been good. Millie and Harlan have been a godsend, and we’ve had a chance to set everything up for Everly.” She reached for James’s hand, needing his stability and comfort.

Everly was skimming her fingertips over the broad leaves of a magnolia tree. Loyria shivered. There was so much knowledge in plants, and her daughter had inherited her natural affinity to for them. Would the flora give her the answers Loyria had been searching for all of her life, or would Everly chose not to listen to the stories they held within their roots and leaves?

“Do you ever wonder what she learns when she touches the plants like that?” James’s question was punctuated with anxiety, and hung awkward between them.

“She says they tell her a story.” Loyria squeezed his hand. “Just like we do every time she touches us. Those magic fingers have been quite the parenting responsibility, haven’t they?”

“Um-hmm. A responsibility for her as well. But she’s grown into her gift fairly well, and there haven’t been any negative effects from the formula you drank.” He cocked an eyebrow at his wife. “Unless you’ve both been hiding something from me.”

“Not me. I think there’s a lot Everly doesn’t talk about. And I have to wonder how many of our secrets she’s accidently bumped into when she touches us. We’re good at hiding things. Have had too many years to perfect the art of prevarication and hiding, but I think she sees a lot more than we know. Maybe more than she recognizes, as well.”

“All of the cache points are in place, honey. We can’t do more than that to protect her and prepare her. Hopefully, she won’t spend her life running and hiding like we’ve had to.”

Loyria smiled at him. “It shouldn’t be too much longer before she travels to Hawaii to meet Aukele. I wish I could be there to see…”

James’s sigh was long and deep. “At least another ten years before that happy reunion takes place, I think. Our Everly isn’t ready yet, honey. Look at her face. So filled with wonder and curiosity. There’s not much tempered steel there, not enough to face the ugliness we’ve been fighting since before she was born.”

Loyria shrugged off his comment. “The steel is there, visible every time she touches something and doesn’t like the images she sees. Determination is as strong as her curiosity. We’ve taught her to foster both of them…in spite of her rather intense response to the psychological testing Fred insisted on.”

“If I’d known they were going to try and break her…” The threat still resonated strong in James’s voice, even after fourteen years of successfully shielding Everly from everything having to do with Fred.

“We probably shouldn’t have allowed the tests to be conducted at all, but we had to know, James. Had to be sure her magic fingers weren’t a dangerous manifestation of the formula. The guilt that my work, and the
incident
, might have harmed her…I couldn’t live with that. With not knowing.”

He grinned at her. “You’re a fixer. It wasn’t so much the unanswered questions, as your motherly instinct to fix all of her bumps and bruises.”

Loyria elbowed him. “You got me. After Everly starts classes at the university, I’m going to visit Makani and Aukele. I’m always afraid it will be for the last time, but those moments we spend together are so damn precious. Even if they increase the danger to all of us, I just can’t give them up.”

“I’d never ask you to. Come on, let’s get our daughter, round up Millie and Harlan, and celebrate her graduation. Wonder if she’ll like the baby blue truck we got her?”

“Are you kidding? She’s gonna love it. I’m the one who’s getting gray hair. Letting her loose to explore God knows what, and with the ESP in her fingers…it’s a mother’s nightmare. There’s no telling what she’ll get into.”

“You think our job as parents isn’t quite done yet?”

Loyria huffed out a contented sigh, and then offered James a brilliant smile. “We’ll be parenting Everly for the rest of her life. That’s what the cache points are all about. She’s stuck with us watching over her.”

Everly turned to wave at them through the window, cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Hurry up. You guys are seriously slow, and I’m dying of hunger. Pizza awaits, people. Pizza awaits.”

James held up a ring of car keys with a large tag that read EVERLY GRAY attached to it. He wiggled them at her.

Those blue eyes dilated to almost black, and her wild mane of red hair streamed behind her as she ran into the house and into her parents’ waiting arms.

SOME TIME LATER…

Toquay, UK, 2013

Fion Conner

I STROLLED INTO MY RESTAURANT,
oblivious to the shock awaiting me. I wanted to check on Cait, to be sure we were okay after our disagreement the night before. And there she was, beautiful as ever, a serving tray balanced on her shoulder. My Cait shouldn’t have to work serving the likes of tourists.

I trailed my daughter’s movements, waiting for a chance to corner her and finish our discussion. And it led me right to…her. The redhead. I shifted behind the hostess stand, and gripped the edges so tightly they cut into my palms. Blood seeped from my skin. I was spilling my blood for the bastard child. And for sure this was the offspring of my former colleague, Xola Muerte. Or Loyria Gray, as she’d been known at the time of her death.

A chuckle clogged my throat. Escaped.

Cait heard me. Glared at me, remnants of anger blazing in her eyes. And then she hustled into the kitchen and came back with a brochure for the abomination that Loyria Gray had birthed.