Page 24

24

Lila hadn’t slept so well in weeks. Here in this vast bed, wrapped in Bear’s arms, she was safe from Allison Casey, safe from all her worries and fears.

She dreamed of snow drifting across fields, soft and silent. The beauty made her heart ache and tears run down her cheeks. The tone of the dream shifted when she turned and found herself in the forest where she’d run the truck off the road. She caught sight of a magpie, a flash of white and black, landing on top of a boulder. It held something in its beak, something important, if she could just see what it was…

After a couple of hours, she woke up with a start, details of her accident flooding her mind. Run and hide. That was the phrase that had come to her right before she’d crashed Bear’s truck. It had felt as if the man from the drawing had been saying it to her. But that man was long gone. If he was still alive, he’d be even older than Paulina—in his eighties, most likely. Who was he?

Bear was fast asleep next to her. She was curled on her side, facing him, while he lay on his back, his massive chest rising and falling. He’d pushed the comforter down to his hips; he must run hotter than her. He had a fair amount of hair curling across his sternum and down to his belly. His skin was a dark coppery-gold shade, lighter where the sun didn’t reach, darker on his arms and neck. He was a work of art. Next to him, she felt like…well, like a magpie landing on a boulder, finding a moment of rest in a bewildering world.

He opened his eyes and a smile touched his lips. “Hi.”

Her anxiety eased at the sound of his deep rumbling voice. She should bottle that sound up and dose herself with it in moments of stress. “Hi.”

“Did you sleep?”

“I did, a bit. You’re an excellent sleep aid. Even better than sleeping pills. A doctor prescribed Xanax for me once, and all it did was give me the most terrifying nightmares. If only he’d known the answer was sex with you.” She slid a finger through a curl of his hair and watched it spring back.

“Available any time,” he said in a drowsy rumble that sent a thrill to her lower belly. But they had other things to deal with right now, no matter how much she might want to drown out everything except this beautiful naked man.

“I remembered something. The drawing that Paulina gave me, of that man…Right before I drove off the road, I was looking at it and it spoke to me. I could hear the man saying, Run and hide, little girl. Run and hide. That’s the same thing that the vandal wrote at the train station, right? And that was where Paul Anthony Bowman was hiding out when they caught him?”

Bear stretched his arms overhead and let out a sigh. Watching his muscles flex under his bronze skin, she was tempted to forget the eerie moment and dive back into sex. “Back to work, huh?”

“I just wanted to tell you in case I forget again.” She shivered. “It couldn’t have actually been him, right? He’s probably long gone.”

“Probably.” He sat up and scratched at his jaw, where dark scruff was beginning to show. “Maybe it was your brain making another connection between the past and the present.”

“Hmm. ‘Run and hide’ is a pretty common phrase. Maybe it means absolutely nothing, just my goofy brain latching onto something. Most of the time, I have no idea about the things it comes up with, what they mean, or why I’m seeing them. It can be maddening.”

He touched her hair, smoothing it away from her face. “Frustrating.”

“You have no idea. Do you know how many times I wished I could just be normal? Just go to some doctor and tell them to fix my brain so it worked like everyone else’s?” As soon as she said that, she bit her lip, wishing she could take it back. She sounded like a child when she complained like that.

But he didn’t react, other than continuing to stroke her hair.

“And I know that everyone’s brain is a little bit different. I understand that. I know about neurodivergence and all the ways that one brain can function differently from another. Some people have sensory issues, there’s the whole autism spectrum. I just wish my particular brain wasn’t so…confusing.”

More silent stroking. The tension eased out of her.

“Okay, I’m done whining about my lot in life.” She gave him a crooked smile. “I swear I don’t usually do that. I just have my weak moments.”

“I don’t mind.” His dark eyes held no criticism, just acceptance. His stomach rumbled. “There’s some potato soup downstairs. Interested?”

Potato soup. She wanted to burst out laughing. Why did that sound like the perfect antidote to her moment of self-pity? “Sure.”

He rolled out of the bed, treating her to another look at his magnificent form. “For the record, it didn’t sound like complaining.”

“What did it sound like?” She slid from under the covers, shivering in the cold, and pulled on her clothes as quickly as possible.

“Coping.”

“You don’t think I should know how to cope by now? I’ve been like this for thirty years.”

“I think you do. Maybe sometimes it’s harder than other times. Just like with everything. No need to be so hard on yourself.”

Fully dressed now, he reached out a hand to her. “Come on, I want to hear more about what you saw and heard. But I also want soup.”

He’s a gem, Lila thought as she followed him down the stairs that connected the upstairs apartment to the kitchen prep area of the bar. Like someone panning for gold in the river, she’d come to the wilderness and stumbled across a gem.

Bear heated up the soup on the propane stove while Lila cut pieces of bread from a loaf that Eve Dotterkind had baked as a trade. The Formica counter dated from at least the 1950’s, and the stove was a shade of avocado that would have been retro if it didn’t also have baked-in grease stains.

“Don’t you ever eat upstairs?” she asked him as he stirred the pot of soup. At least the pot was from the modern era, stainless steel and chef quality.

“I used to, before you came along.” He grinned at her, looking so relaxed he could have been five years younger than at the start of the night. “Now it’s easier just to eat what the bar is serving.”

“I don’t know if you should be thanking me or cursing me for that. You need to eat more than soup.” She pulled a covered butter dish from the fridge.

“That reminds me, a guy stopped by the bar yesterday and said he heard I might be looking for kitchen help. He’s a line cook looking to spend the winter here. He has experience running restaurant kitchens and thinks we could do more in terms of serving food.”

“You mean we might get an actual professional to make our soup?” She loved that idea, since her experience was limited to a four-month stint at a Souplantation.

“Maybe. I told him I had to talk it over. With you,” he added, as Lila looked at him blankly.

“With me?”

“We have a small team here. You, me, and a couple of part-time backups. I wouldn’t make a change without consulting you.”

She felt a smile spread across her face. In all her checkered job history she’d never been given that kind of respect, though in fairness, she hadn’t deserved it. This was the longest she’d ever stayed at any job.

“It’s an interesting idea,” she said. “When’s he coming back?”

“Later this week. He’s looking for a place to stay. He left a resumé, you can look it over.”

“Very professional. It’s a good thing I didn’t need a resumé when I applied for the job. If I had one, it would probably be several pages long.” She filled two bowls with soup, and headed for the swinging door that led to the bar area, where they could sit at a table. Bear followed behind her.

“Frankly, I was just happy someone was interested.” He was teasing her. Bear, so stern, so serious, was teasing her. She loved it. Facing him, she pushed the door open with her hip and backed out of the kitchen.

“If you’d known then what you know now,” she teased back, “you probably would have taken down that sign until I was long gone. Now here you are serving soup and—” As she stepped out of the kitchen and into the bar, a cold feeling of dread swept over her.

Something was wrong. The wrongness clutched at her stomach. She wanted to throw up. But time was doing weird things, or maybe her body was, because everything was moving at the pace of a glacier. Slowly, so slowly, and she was trapped there between worlds—between the kitchen and the bar, between light teasing and dark foreboding, between Bear and whatever was about to come.

Bear pushed her head down, as if he was shoving her underwater. On the floor behind the bar counter, she gasped, struggled for breath, coughed. You’re not in the water , one part of her brain screamed. You’re fine. But another part was screaming and struggling to breathe.

The bowls fell from her grasp and rolled across the floor. She knew it wasn’t the most important thing—they didn’t even break and she could clean up the mess—and yet she tried to scramble after them.

She hit Bear’s leg as she reached for a bowl and the solid feel of his flesh acted like a slap in the face. Bear’s here. It’s okay. Whatever’s going on, he’s dealing with it. She hauled air into her lungs and focused on sensory details to ground her. The faint smell of lemon in the Murphy’s Oil soap they mopped the floor with. The hint of onion in the spilled soup. The rough fabric of Bear’s canvas Carhartts. The taste of Eve’s rye bread from when she’d tried a bit of the crust. A distant rumble that slowly resolved itself into Bear’s voice.

“It’s okay, Lila,” he was saying. “It’s safe to stand up now.”

Nice of him to say, but she’d be the judge of that. As her thoughts cleared, she checked in with the pit of her stomach, where that cold dread had emanated from a few moments ago.

The light around her changed as Bear flicked the switch. That helped. Things didn’t look quite so eerie now. Bear was right, she could stand up, but things were not back to normal, not according to her stomach. But she didn’t want Bear to have to deal with this situation—whatever it was—alone, so she forced herself to rise up.

“What…what is it?” Her voice came out in a croak.

“Probably some kind of Halloween prank.” He showed her the cable strung from one wall of The Fang to the other, crossing the entire table area. A sheet hung from it, as if it was a laundry line. But it wasn’t just a sheet, she saw when she looked more closely. It was a dress, a housedress, marked with splashes of blood, or a red substance meant to look like it.

“A prank?” she said dubiously. Would she have reacted that way to a mere prank?

“Some people around here get carried away at Halloween. It’s only a week away, maybe they’re getting warmed up.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “Are you okay? It must have given you a shock.”

She wasn’t sure if she was okay, so she just gave him a weak smile. “I didn’t even see it. You pushed my head down.”

“Yeah, it came at us when you pushed through the door. That must have triggered it. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t want you to get hurt. Sorry, did that scare you too?”

She shook her head. The thing that had scared her…it wasn’t anything still in this building.

Bear moved away from her, toward the ghoulish dress hanging from the cable. That dress…she peered at it more closely, noticed the pattern of faded blue roses along the hem. Was that a replica of Allison Casey’s dress? Or was it…could it be…the very same dress?

She grabbed Bear before he could get too far away. It was hard to get her throat to release the words. “Bear, don’t touch it. It might be evidence.”

“Hm?” He frowned back at her, but at least he wasn’t dismissing her out of hand.

“It’s not just a prank. I think it’s a message.”