Chapter 10
Branches banged on her window yet again. Issa listened to the scratching against the glass. Although the sound carried an odd note, she didn’t sense any fear coming from Roash. Ever present, he stayed at her side—sometimes on the headboard, sometimes on the bed, other times on her shoulder. She wondered if he knew what her nightmares were and came to give her comfort. She wondered if he understood how much his presence helped. She hoped so. Just to know he’d survived those assholes filled her heart with light.
Now hopefully she could find Humbug. She knew many men were attached to their dogs. But if there was ever a cuddly stuffed animal—but in a live form—it was Humbug. She adored him. She’d had him for nine months. Nine months where he enriched her life every single day.
She stared dry-eyed at sunlight outside the window. The days were rolling into nights, rolling to days, and she had no idea of the passing time.
A sound at the door had her slowly rolling onto her back so she could see who leaned against the frame. Eagle held a cell phone in his hand. “Who is Stefan?”
She frowned and racked her brain. “No idea.”
“He knows you.”
She stared at Eagle for a long moment. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“I know what your last name is now. McGuire. I know you belong to the falcon club, but you don’t have your own falcon. And I know nobody has seen you there for a few months.”
She gasped as images filled her mind. “Oh my,” she said, and she broke out in a big smile. “McGuire is my name, and the man you spoke with is Tom.”
Eagle nodded, took a few steps forward. “He seemed like a nice young man.”
She smiled. “In many ways, yes. He has a very young-sounding voice. He’s in his mid-forties.” She watched a whisper of a smile cross Eagle’s face. “I know. When I first heard him speak, I thought he was a teenager. So tell me about Stefan.”
“I’m not sure what to say. There was a phone call, and I couldn’t hear anyone for the static. It happened three times. On the third time it was like I could hear numbers through the phone or through my mind, or I’m just crazy.” He waved the phone in his hand. “And that’s all too possible. Nothing about this is straightforward or simple.”
“What number?” she said, trying to bring them back on track. He was obviously perturbed over something, but she had no idea what.
“Thinking it was a phone number, I dialed it. And the man who answered was expecting my call. He said his name was Stefan. He was calling on behalf of,” he paused, looked at her, and said, “are you ready for this?”
She frowned. “Just get on with it. He’s calling on behalf of whom?”
He took another step forward, his gaze hard and inflexible, as if he could dredge through the recesses of her mind to get the answers himself. “He was calling on behalf of Humbug.”
She gasped, and her face lit up. “That’s wonderful!”
Eagle looked at her. “And how do you figure that it’s wonderful?”
“He must’ve found him. Humbug has a name tag on his right foot.”
“And how would he know to phone me?”
She blinked. And blinked again. She gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know. Didn’t you say you run a raptor center? Maybe he looked it up. Besides, that’s not the point.” She froze. “He does have Humbug, right?”
Eagle’s voice dry, he responded, “Not quite.”
*
In fact, he wasn’t sure it was safe to tell her at all. Because it was just a little too bizarre.
“What do you mean?” she snapped. “This really isn’t something I care to joke about. Humbug is very close to my heart.”
“Apparently he’s special in many ways,” Eagle said as he still tried to figure this out in his mind. “Stefan didn’t have a ton of information.”
“What information did he have that was so cryptic?”
“He said he had heard from Humbug, and Humbug was in distress and was looking for you.” He leaned forward and glared at her. “You did say Humbug was an owl, right? Or is he your lover, some crotchety old man whose name would actually fit him?”
And damn if she didn’t blink at him again. The slow blink of huge eyes in her face that reminded him of the damn birds outside. Especially the owls.
“What exactly did he say?” she asked slowly. “He said he heard from Humbug?”
“Yeah. I would put him down as being completely crazy, except for the owl’s damn name.” While he watched, she turned her head to stare outside.
“Fascinating.”
“Oh, no, that’s not quite the word I would use,” he said. “Nothing since you arrived has been fascinating. Daunting, perturbing, disruptive, unbelievable, any number of other related terms I could use. Fascinating isn’t one of them.”
She waved a hand in his direction as if dismissing his concern. “That’s because you’re the kind of man who only believes what you can see in front of you. If you can touch a table, and it looks like a table, and it functions like a table, you’ll lock into thinking it’s a table. Whereas, if I see a table, touch a table, and use it as a table, it still has the functional ability of being something completely different. For example, if I throw matches on it, it becomes a source of heat. But if you always let it be a table, the table you might be forced to sleep on for a night, it will never be a bed. You see what you see and nothing more.”
“And how is it that you would see Humbug?”
“He’s a snowy owl, extra-large, with a bum wing. I found him injured in the fields. At the time I assumed he’d escaped from a predator. But he is also cranky. He likes things the way he likes them. He wants the food he wants. He likes his comforts the way he wants them. And, if you want him to go outside and do something for fun, he’s very much back to being Humbug.”
Eagle stared at her and, despite himself, started to laugh. He pulled a chair up close beside her bed and sat down. “So how the hell did Stefan hear Humbug? How does he know Humbug is in trouble?”
She slowly glanced his way and then back to the window again.
And he knew instinctively she was hiding something. “Spit it out. Nothing but mystery had shrouded your visit from the beginning. I’d like to know some things for sure. How does Stefan know about Humbug?” Eagle demanded.
Her voice was so low he had to lean closer to hear her repeat it. “He might be able to hear Humbug.”
Eagle stared at her. “So, a man might actually hear Humbug’s cry-in-the-night type of thing?”
She winced. “I don’t mean hear in that sense.”
He groaned. “In what sense do you mean?”
“Maybe Stefan is psychic.”
He knew he lived out in the middle of nowhere, and he knew he’d turned his back on humanity, but some things he couldn’t turn his back on. And that was some of the stories he’d heard over the last decade. They weren’t stories you read in the newspaper. But they were stories you heard through special friends in certain law enforcement departments. He bolted to his feet and raced to the kitchen, grabbed his laptop, and returned. He had the laptop, notepad, and Stefan’s phone number as Eagle sat beside her. He typed in the name to search and up came dozens of articles. He checked the bottom row to see Google had matched fourteen pages of online data to Eagle’s search criteria without even clicking again. “Shit.”
“What did you find?” she asked.
He watched her pleating the blanket front, fear and worry spilling into her fingers. “He is a psychic. A very well-known one.”
She frowned. “I don’t know him.”
“Is there any reason why you should? Are you psychic?” A look of horror crossed her face, and he chuckled. “I’ll take that as a no.” He dropped his gaze to the laptop and said, “He lives on the West Coast.”
“Not exactly neighbors,” she said drily.
“How far could Humbug fly?”
“Barely at all. From the kitchen table to the couch. From one fence post to another. And, if he was going in a straight line, you can guarantee he’d end up in a forty-five-degree angle on a downward slope,” she said. “He’s funny, cuddly, smart—sometimes,” she qualified. “He’s also very silly and very inept. He would not survive on his own for long.”
“So, considering we don’t know how long you were held against your will, and the only thing I have to go on is the falconry club time frame, are you sure no one would notice you were gone?”
“No, not after my mother died.”
“She died on August 26, just over five weeks ago.” So she’d been held for, at most, five weeks. No wonder she was in such rough shape. To survive that showed stamina, mental strength, and a fight to live. He loved that about her.
She paused, swallowed hard, and added, “If Humbug found a place to get food on a regular basis, and he was warm enough, he could survive. Of course he’d need water as well.”
“How is it that you have anything to do with these birds?”
“They are my passion. I specialized in animals for my education. Animals and their environment,” she said, fatigue in her voice. She shifted deeper into the blanket again. Her head relaxed.
Fascinated, he leaned forward. “Why birds? Why did you specialize in birds?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she whispered. “They chose me.”
And damn if she didn’t fall asleep again. He checked his clock; it was almost eight. If she slept through the night, she’d be a lot better tomorrow. She was healing rapidly. He was astonished at how the bruises were quickly running through the different colors. Even her head wound looked much better, the edges growing together, and, although they still slightly puckered, they were already starting to close. He didn’t know how that was possible. It was too fast.
When his phone rang again, he stared down at it. That was way too many phone calls for him in one day. He answered it cautiously. “Hello. Who is this?”
“Stefan asked me to call.”
Eagle pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why?”
The beautiful light voice chuckled. “My name is Tabitha Stoddard. Apparently you need me.”
“For what?”
“I’m a sensitive. I pick up on animals’ energy, particularly when they are in distress. I run Exotic Landscapes, a refuge for animals. And I have deep intuitive connections with a lot of animals. But I don’t have a ton with birds. Stefan called to let me know Humbug is in trouble.”
“The bird can’t fly. I understand it’s a snowy owl with an injured wing.”
The woman’s voice softened. “Oh, poor thing. The fact it hasn’t been taken out by a larger predator is a good sign.”
“Not unless we have a way to get to it. When you say you have a deep intuitive connection, what the hell does that mean?”
That same laugh filled the air. “It means different things for different animals. I’m not trying to be cryptic. I’m not trying to be vague. Some people call me a psychic, but I’m very connected to the animal world. Stefan is connected to people.”
“And, even if I pretended to believe you, Stefan is the one who connected to Humbug.”
“True. But then Stefan is very different. He’s connected to the ethers. He does a lot of work on the divide between this world and the next.”
“Whoa. Okay, now that’s getting just way too far to the left for me.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically. “You’re much more the norm. Believe me. My gift has made my life difficult. Chances are you have never come up against someone like him or me. Regardless Stefan and I will continue to combine forces to locate or otherwise aid Humbug.”
“I have a falcon here that appears to be very connected to a person.”
“Oh, that would be interesting. It doesn’t happen to have some unusual markings on its left foot, does it?”
He bolted to his feet and walked back into the bedroom. Roash looked at him and cawed gently. And, sure enough, his left foot, the lower part was scraped clean. “I don’t know what you mean by unusual markings,” he said, a question in his voice. He wasn’t prepared to give her any more than that.
“Does it look like a band has been there, but it was removed, and the skin rubbed clean?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like.”
“Well, that’s a good sign.”
“How the hell can you say that? You just described a bird you’ve never seen sitting in my spare bedroom.”
“The real question is, and it is very important that you tell me the truth”—she took a deep breath and let it out slowly—“is there a beautiful woman with you as well who came with the bird?”
“Jesus.” That was all he could say. Anything else was beyond him.
“You need to keep her safe. She’s very special.” With that, Tabitha rang off, leaving him staring at the dead phone in his hand.
*
“We’re heading back out again to scope the land.”
“Wait.” The boss handed him a sheet of paper. “The owner of the property is ex-navy. He earned himself several medals in combat.”
Dylan’s heart sank. “How long ago?” Please let this guy be in his nineties and ready to drop. But he knew it wouldn’t be that easy. He’d seen a strong healthy male around the place. And that was the worst kind. Young men became protective when they found an injured female. And, if this one had skills, then this job just became that much harder.
“Make sure you take him out too.”
Dylan swallowed. “Is that wise?”
“If you can get the girl without killing him, then fine. But you’ll need to blow off his kneecaps to stop him from coming after us.”
“True.” Dylan grabbed his rucksack, nodded to the new guy, and headed to the truck.
“Blow off the guy’s kneecaps?” the other guy asked. “Is he for real?”
“Not only is he for real, he’ll do it to you too if he doesn’t like your performance. So keep that in mind.” Dylan didn’t want to see the look of shock on the man’s face. He’d seen it all before.
Sometimes the boss said things to the new guys to scare them.
Not this time though. Dylan had been given orders. Get the girl; cripple the owner for life. If that didn’t do the job, then Dylan was to kill him.
Really all that meant was he was to kill him outright.
Dead men couldn’t talk.