Soul Survivor Page 6

  She was sure he’d come back. Two things he and Kai, his half brother, had in common were their father and stubbornness.

  Inside, she walked through the vestibule, her mind noting the fern and other plants near the glass door. She was always forgetting to water them and brown leaves littered the floor. Tessa had told her to stick to growing cactus, but Keva loved the flowing green fronds and feathery roots of the fern, the trailing, variegated leaves of the ivy. They had been around, even with her poor care, for over ten years. Very few things, plant or human, stayed with her that long.

  Making a mental note to water the fern and its companions before she left, she crept into the main living area. Ripples of apprehension ran down the back of her neck as if ice cubes had been dumped inside Rife’s shirt.

  Everywhere she looked, yellow tape crisscrossed the room. The furniture, piles of books, TV and computer were all exactly as they always were. As though the house’s inhabitants had just been there and left, but would be right back.

  Numbered signs sat on tables, on the floor, and several were even taped to the wall. On closer inspection, Keva realized each small, white paper marked blood splatter. Her nose stung with the metallic smell of her kinswomen’s death.

  Her already unsettled stomach turned over when her gaze landed on the outlined bodies on the floor near the altar. Each outline seemed to glow and even though each was nothing more than chalk, she recognized the shape of her individual family members. Her heart squeezed with pain.

  Feet heavy as lead, she moved through the tape and around the signs to get closer. As her eyes traced every outline, she murmured the women’s names under her breath. “Tessa Walking Stick. Liseli Bloom…”

  The air around her thinned. Continuing to walk the circle, she hummed a short prayer song, calling the spirits to her. The first verse ended and she started the next. Near the end of the third verse, the air cooled, chilling her skin with its temperature as well as the women’s spirits, that dimly materialized one by one.

  Fear and confusion dominated their energy, sending more cold shivers down Keva’s back.

  Talking to spirits was not the same as talking to living beings. First she had to calm their souls and reassure them. Music had always worked best for her so she switched her humming to a song of safety, keeping her voice low and soft as she chanted the sacred words she’d learned at her mother’s knees so long ago.

  The spirits responded and the rippling waves of frenetic energy swirling around her slowed. Closing her eyes, Keva mentally reached out, calling each woman by name again. The feathery lightness of their spirits touched her but none responded with a mental answer. Keva tried again. Once more, she felt feathers on her skin, signaling they heard her. However, none of their voices appeared in her head.

  “I need to know what happened here,” she murmured to them. “I can’t remember and I need to. You must help me remember.”

  She stood stock still for long minutes, soaking in their embraces, but nothing came. Then, like a burst of air from an air gun, they pressed against her hard for a second and left.

  Frustrated, Keva opened her eyes. She was shaking from the cold and from the drain on her still-healing body. Contacting spirits took a healthy dose of energy even on a good day.

  Behind the sofa, Rife and Chee stood watching her.

  Chee motioned at the outlines with his chin. At least he was not the skeptic his grandson was. “What did they say?”

  She shook her head, tears burning the back of her eyelids as she stared at the chalk outlines. “I can feel their spirits, and they’re angry and scared, but it’s like they can’t talk. Something is binding their voices.”

  Rife glanced around as if looking for the spirits himself. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Why don’t you go get some clothes so we can get out of here. You’re contaminating the crime scene.”

  It was useless to stay any longer. Keva wasn’t sure what form of magic was binding the women’s spirits from speaking to her, but she would figure it out. Before she could address their spirits again and try to heal them, though, she had to recharge herself with food and sleep.

  Ignoring Rife’s uneasiness and Chee’s curiosity, she left the sanctuary.

  Her body felt drugged again, this time from exhaustion. Struggling to control the shakes, she moved zombielike down the hall to the last room at the end. Stepping inside her bedroom, she froze.

  In the center of her bed lay a tiny, cloth doll. The face blank, it nevertheless seemed to be staring at her. Accusing her.

  Her mind suddenly assaulted with dozens of old memories, she staggered, falling to her knees. Her and Kai’s lost child. Lost at Enann’s hands. He’d left the doll there as a reminder of just what he could do to her.

  Her womb cramped hard with the phantom pains of the miscarriage.

  Covering her mouth, Keva screamed.

  Chapter Ten

  Rife’s heart shot into his throat at the sound of Keva’s scream. Running toward the hallway, he dodged furniture, evidence and markers and jumped the crime scene tape like a hurdler. In her bedroom, he found her kneeling on the floor, a cloth doll pressed to her face as she rocked back and forth, crying and whispering to it.

  Falling to his knees beside her, he scanned the room instinctively for the killer even as he reached for her. “What is it?” he demanded, his heart still beating in triple time. He rubbed her back, fighting the urge to simply wrap his arms around her. “Did you see him? The killer? Is he still here?”

  She shook her head, giant tears spilling down her face and falling on the doll. A strand of her hair stuck to her cheek and her lips pressed together as she tried to restrain her grief.

  Rife’s gut twisted. Reaching out, he brushed the hair from her cheek and softened his voice. “Tell me what happened.”

  Chee rushed into the room behind them as Keva held the doll up to Rife like an offering. Rife glanced at the smooth deerskin-covered object, wanting to make sense of it, but having no idea what it meant to her. Adorned only with painted symbols, it appeared to be nothing more than a baby’s toy, one a mother had sewn to comfort her child at bed time.

  But as Rife scanned the symbols on the tiny body, his gut twisted again. Two of them matched ones on the bodies of the dead women.

  And now, Keva’s fingerprints covered it.

  Damn it. Without turning, he spoke to Chee. “I need an evidence bag.”

  As Chee left the room to grab one from his vehicle, Keva’s eyebrows drew together. “Do you not recognize this?”

  The desperation in her voice, in her face, made Rife examine the doll again. She wanted him to take it, but he didn’t want to further contaminate a possible piece of evidence with his own fingerprints, so he kept his hands on his thighs. He did, however, make a show of looking it over thoroughly and giving an honest attempt at identifying it.

  Unable to give her the answer she wanted, though, he sagged back onto his heels and shook his head. “Why would I recognize it, Keva?”

  She closed her eyes, seeming to draw away from him and into herself as more tears squeezed out from under her lashes. Pressing the doll back to her face, she said something to it Rife couldn’t understand. Something in a language she’d used earlier in the living room trying to talk to the spirits of the dead women.

  What he did understand was the intense grief radiating from her. It filled his pores, overwhelmed his senses. Made his heart speed up and his fight instinct kick in. While Keva might believe she was the only one who could stop the killer, his body, mind and soul thought differently. She needed him, needed his protection.

  For a second, the room swam like it had when he’d seen that wicked vision of Keva by the fire. He fought it off, blinked hard and shook his head.

  The room stopped spinning, but Keva was still hugging the doll and murmuring to it like it was alive.

  “Hey,” he whispered as he grabbed her arms and gave into his instincts to wrap his arms
around her. With care, he pulled her into his embrace. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She folded into him, her sobs escaping as he rubbed her back and stroked her hair. It felt so natural, this. As if he’d been by her side forever and done the very same thing before. Familiar. Completely, one-hundred-and-ten-percent familiar.

  A minute passed as Rife explored, and promptly discarded the feeling. He always got sucked into his cases and this was no exception. His life had gotten more and more complicated lately and being back in Wolf River had triggered something deep in his psyche, that was all. Perfectly understandable.

  And Keva was a desirable woman. At that moment, with her soft, warm body curled into his, he wanted to run his fingers over every inch of her skin. Breathe her scent deep into his body. Murmur reassurances. Find some way to comfort her.

  Keva’s sobbing eased. She snuggled further into his lap, her eyes closed, the doll resting between their chests and cradled between their heartbeats. Her hands went round Rife’s neck and she laid her head on his shoulder, her lips touching the skin of his throat and warming it with her breath.

  Every atom in Rife’s body rejoiced at the feel of her body molding into his.

  Every cell in his brain screamed, no.

  As his arms tightened around her, obliterating the last of the space between them, he mentally castigated himself, even as he enjoyed the slide of skin over skin, the way their heartbeats fell into a similar rhythm, the way the very particles of his being accepted the truth. He’d fallen for his witness, hook, line, and delusional schizophrenia.

  This is what I get for taking a vacation.

  Chapter Eleven

  Deeply shaken, Keva curled up on the love seat in James Chee’s living room and stared at a collection of photographs arranged in the dusty bay window. Most of them were school pictures of Rife. A few showed him as a toddler with a woman who had to be his mother, another one of him in the center of a group of boys in graduation gowns, his cap askew on his head. There were no pictures of a father, but several of him and Chee, holding up a string of fish or heads bent over the yellow Chevy truck.

  In the first half dozen or so, he was smiling at the camera, a front tooth missing in one, a healing cut through his left eyebrow in another. His hair was trimmed neatly and his shirts had collars on them.

  Starting at around ten, the light in his eyes was gone. The smile too. His hair grew successively longer as he aged and his shirts lost their collars in favor of ragged T-shirts.

  Earlier, while Rife had consulted with his boss at Quantico on the phone, Chee had peppered Keva with questions about her shaman skills and her history. He was particularly curious about where she was born, where she grew up, the culture of her tribe. He was friendly and charming, and for a moment, she’d almost let her guard down and told him everything. It would have been a relief to share her secret with someone who might actually accept it as true, but even believers in the mystical and magical had limits, and her story was so out of the realm of believable, she’d been scared to lose Chee’s friendship. And she wished now she’d spent more of their time together asking him questions about Rife instead of dodging questions about herself.

  In the kitchen, Rife and Chee argued over Keva’s sanity in whispered voices. They thought she was sleeping, and at times, listening to Rife describing her inability to grasp reality, she wished she was.

  The knife. The doll she’d sewn while pregnant with their child. Even her. Rife had seen and held the signposts of Kai’s life and death and still his soul had not awakened. Maybe she’d been wrong that Kai had been reincarnated body and soul, but what about the shared vision they’d had in the kitchen?

  It was Kai’s vision, not hers. She’d gone over it and over it and knew her memory differed from the vision because it was from her point of view. The memory she’d shared with Rife was Kai’s version of the binding ceremony, where she’d bound their souls for all eternity.

  And if Rife could conjure that up, the binding spell still held his soul.

  So why didn’t he remember everything? Why didn’t he remember her?

  Keva sighed in tired exasperation. If the binding ceremony and the doll, the precious surrogate for their dead child, did not trigger Kai’s soul to awaken, nothing would.

  And that meant Rife St. Cloud was now her enemy.

  Chee’s voice rose above a murmur in the kitchen. “Quantico’s warped your mind and smothered your heart, Rife. Hunting down killers has made you go dead inside.”

  The clock on the wall ticked by the seconds before Rife spoke. “It started long before I became a profiler.”

  “Your mother would be ashamed that you’ve lost touch with your beliefs.”

  Keva heard a note of sadness under Rife’s dismissal. “They were never my beliefs. I don’t believe in magic, the supernatural, or whatever you want to call it. I believe in what I can see and touch with my own two hands. As a cop, you should be the same way.”

  Chee grunted his disgust. “You shame me as well as your mother. And now this, with Keva.” There was a long pregnant pause. “Even I can see there’s a link between you two. A link between you and the killer. But you refuse to acknowledge it. Don’t you get it? You brought her back to life. You, Rife. That was real. I saw it.”

  Rife’s sigh conveyed the same bone-weariness Keva felt. “Make me a sketch of the guy you saw at the church. I’ll run it through NCIC and Quantico and see if it hits anything.”

  “You don’t need Quantico to get a hit. The hits are coming fast and furious, pelting you from every side. You’re just too damn stubborn to open your eyes and see them.”

  In her mind’s eye, Keva could see the standoff in the kitchen, both men struggling with their love for each other as well as their individual beliefs. It was a struggle as old as time between generations. Keva had seen the same scenario play out over and over in her own family.

  A cell phone chirped, breaking the tension.

  Chee answered with a “yeah,” and before he said anything else, Keva felt a vibration in her throat. Two seconds later, he grunted and Keva heard the sharp clap of his phone closing. “Feds just arrived.”

  “Arrange another hour for me with our witness, will you?”

  The sound of Chee’s booted feet as he walked across the kitchen’s cracked and scuffed linoleum echoed into the living room before the back screen door screeched on its hinges. “You can’t catch a ghost, Rife, if you don’t even believe in them.”

  There was half a pause and then Rife’s voice, with a bit of swagger in it, responded, “You might be surprised, old man.”

  The back door smacked shut and a second later, Keva heard Rife throw the deadbolt. As his footsteps crossed the kitchen floor, sounding much like his grandfather’s, the pulsing in her throat expanded. She closed her eyes and fought to even her breathing.

  Male energy flowed into the room while she pretended to sleep. The rocking chair to her right squeaked, absorbing Rife’s weight. She felt his gaze, hot enough to burn her skin, skim her face, her neck, the open V of his shirt and then linger on her bare legs. His heat even touched her toes, making them want to curl.

  She held herself as still as she could, given the intense electricity crackling through her. It did no good.

  “Cut the act.” He kicked the worn love seat with his boot. “I know you’re not sleeping.”

  Opening her eyes, she glared up at him.

  He glared back and Keva’s throat closed up. “Look, I’m sorry about the doll. It’s evidence. I had no choice but to confiscate it and turn it over to Grandpops.”

  Keva held back the argument on her tongue. Just like she was hanging onto Rife’s shirt, somehow, some way, she’d get the doll back.

  He took her silence as resentful acceptance. “Tell me about this Enann character.”

  A realization clicked in Keva’s brain. “I never said Enann’s name.”

  Nothing about Rife’s expression changed. “I heard you say it—no, more like s
cream it—in my head at the hospital and at the church.”

  A ball of mixed emotions swirled in Keva’s chest. He’d just admitted he could read her mind. “You promised not to use telepathy on me.”

  “I never promised any such thing. And I didn’t use telepathy. I wouldn’t know how to use it, even if I wanted to. It just…happened.”

  She smiled despite her uneasiness. Telepathy or not, he still posed as much of a danger to her as the federal agents who’d just arrived in town. Her love for him would be her downfall, no matter how old and wise she was. “I’m surprised you admit it.”

  “Me, too.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his feet at his ankles. Lines etched the corners of his eyes. “Now tell me about this guy who took your Thunderbird and left the doll.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe he was real. Or anything I’ve said about my past. You just told Chief Chee I was nuts.”

  “Yeah, well, you believe the guy’s real, and the honest truth is, I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff in my time as a cop and as a profiler. Nothing—” he waved his hand in the air, “—magical or supernatural like you’re describing, but…” He shrugged and interlaced his fingers, laying his hands on his stomach.

  While he seemed suddenly open to her idea and nonchalant about Enann’s possible involvement, Keva’s throat vibrated hard.

  This was her chance to tell him the rest of the story. Their story. But his sympathetic and understanding act aside, she couldn’t forget that she was dealing with Rife St. Cloud. One-hundred-and-ten-percent federal agent.

  And she was hardly at the top of her game. As her throat kept warning her, that combination was a minefield. “I haven’t eaten all day. Maybe we could make some sandwiches first?”

  Rife pushed himself up in the chair and leaned toward her. All her senses screamed at her to back away, to get up and run.