Chapter Five
For a torturous second, his breath was a whisper against my lips. Everything inside me screamed, and just when I thought he was going to kiss me, he pulled away. His back grew stiff and his shoulders tightened.
“James Kingsley?” A man’s voice startled me. He wasn’t much taller than me and had a wiry gait. “The woman inside told me you’d left.”
“She was right.” James turned his back to the man and grasped my hand. Pulling me to his side, led me back in the direction of the gallery.
“If I could just have a minute,” he said, his footsteps falling in sync with ours.
“I don’t think so.” James’s stride lengthened. He kept his attention on the walk ahead, but his body was tense as if preparing for a fight.
“Keep walking,” James said to me.
“It’s just a few questions, and you can get on with your night,” the man said.
James shook his head, and nervous, I glanced behind me to see that the man had slowed to a stop. When I thought he’d given up, another man stepped from the shadows ahead of us. He was larger than the first—thicker—and he didn’t move. It was the stillness that had alarm bells ringing.
We paused, and fear pricked the skin at my neck. James’s gaze shifted between the man at our back and the one now approaching from the front.
“What’s going on, James?” I asked, my voice betraying my fright.
“We need to run.”
He didn’t waste another second. With my hand in his firm grasp, he turned to the right and ran. I wasn’t expecting the sudden movement and stumbled. James slowed long enough for me to catch my footing before he pulled me into a sprint across the street. I glanced back and wished I hadn’t. Both men were in pursuit.
“They’re following us,” I breathed.
“Come on,” he said and picked up his pace.
We hooked a sharp left and ran down a side street. Taking another right, James ducked between two buildings.
“Shit,” he breathed as we neared the end of the alleyway.
We skidded to a stop, and James slammed his hands against the brick wall that blocked our exit. Blood pumped in my ears, and panic gripped my insides as the nightmare that was my vision became a startling reality.
“This isn’t happening.” A strangled scream slithered inside my throat. “It’s not real. None of this is real.” My voice broke over the last as I frantically searched for another escape.
James caught me to his chest and pressed his hand against my lips. “Shh. Listen, you have to promise me something.”
His words were too familiar, and they caused a violent reaction. I shook my head until I pulled myself free from his grasp. Tears welled in my eyes, and I gasped. “I can’t do this again. I can’t watch this happen again.”
“Abby, listen, there isn’t time.”
A clatter of footsteps stole my attention. James was right, there wasn’t time. The two men rounded the corner and slowed to a stop. We were trapped.
“If you tell us where it is, we’ll leave you alone.” The wiry man’s voice was calm, his breath hardly labored as he approached.
James shook his head with confusion. “Tell you where what is?” he asked as he stood in front of me.
The man pulled a folded paper from his pocket and threw it at James. It floated to the ground at our feet. Against a glossy backdrop were several portraits, one of which I recognized. It had been hanging in the gallery this evening.
“You’re James Kingsley, yes?” The thick man asked. “And you painted that portrait?”
James didn’t respond. He stood frozen, like he hadn’t heard the question.
“Where’s the necklace?” The wiry man asked as he pointed to the fallen paper. “The one from the painting.”
“The necklace?” James looked between the two men. “Are you serious?”
“We want to know where it is, and we want you to tell us. Now.” The thick man’s breath was coming in exhausted gasps.
“The necklace doesn’t exist. It’s a drawing. I made it up.”
The two men looked at each other and nodded simultaneously. As if knowing what was coming, James grabbed me by the arms and threw me to the side. “Get out of here,” he yelled.
I landed on my bottom with my back against the wall. I’d listened to James the last time, and as a result, I’d sat in a hole while he was murdered. I couldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—do it again.
A thin hand grabbed me by the neck, and the smell of sweat and aggression assaulted my nose. As he pulled me to my feet, a scream tore at my throat and blood pooled in my cheeks. I twisted in his arms and slammed my heel onto his foot, but instead of loosening his grip, he doubled forward, folded me into his middle, and tightened his arms.
With a fistful of my hair, the man pulled me upright in time to see James sidestep the thick man. He swung his fist wide and connected with the man’s jaw, but instead of letting him fall, James caught him by the head and forced the man’s face into the upward lift of his knee. Something crunched, and the man crumpled to the floor. James spared less than a second to make sure he didn’t get up again before he turned.
“James!” I screamed. He ran toward me, his eyes wild, but the rage dimmed and burned out as he stuttered to a stop a second later.
Slowly, his hands lifted, palms out in a gesture of surrender. From the corner of my eye, I saw the wiry man’s arm rise. In his hand, now stretched in front of me, was a gun, menacing and black, and in front of the barrel was James. I stared at his finger poised on the trigger, and an inevitable ending became clear. James was going to die, and this time, I had a front row seat.
“Tell me, did you make her up, too?” The man pulled me tight against his body. He was breathing heavily through his nose, the sound too loud at my ear. I twisted my head away, hating the way his breath grated against my skin.
“I don’t know what to tell you.” James’s voice was calm and quiet. “It’s not real. Now please, let her go.”
The man turned his face into my neck and inhaled. I leaned away and swallowed the bile rising in my throat.
“What’s your name, love?” he asked, his words hot against my ear.
“Abigail,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Abigail, Abigail—Abby.” His voice was strangely vacant of emotion. “Why don’t you tell me? Where’s the necklace?”
James’s eyes were glued to the man at my back. He was moving ever so slightly from foot to foot, and his fingers twitched at his side. When I didn’t respond, the man tightened his grip in my hair and gave my head a shake.
“I’ve never seen it before,” I whimpered.
He released me so fast I staggered a step. I looked up in time to see his hand slice through the air. The man struck my cheek in an open-handed slap that left my skin feeling as if it had been peeled from my face. I screamed in response and blinked against the automatic tears that formed. James barreled forward and had the man on the ground a second later.
“Go!” James yelled through gritted teeth.
He straddled the man and rammed his elbow into his face. The air inside my lungs evaporated, and I stood in paralyzed horror. Anger like I’d never seen radiated from James in waves, releasing a violence that was both terrifying and beautiful.
Movement to my right caught my attention. The thick man James had left crumpled in a forgotten heap lifted his head. His nose was crooked, the bone visible at the break. He stood, and from his side, he pulled a weapon and pointed it at me. I thought about running, but my feet were glued to the ground. At least it wasn’t James. I wouldn’t be able to watch him die. Not again.
“I’m sorry,” I said to James. Our gazes locked, and the gun went off. My hands flew to my ears, but there was no pain. I turned to the gunman and watched in horror as he fell dead at my feet.
A single bullet hole had pierced the back of his skull, and a gurgled gasp ripped from my lips. Standing behind the dead man was Mack. I looked to where James stood, his hands covered in blood, and back to Mack, whose gun was still in his hand. At that moment, I didn’t know who was more dangerous.
My jaw trembled, then my hands, and within a blink my entire body was vibrating with a mix of a hundred emotions. James moved first, and I collapsed in his arms.
“Just breathe,” he said as he lowered me to the ground. Tears came immediately, along with heaving, gasping breaths.
“You’re okay now.” He crushed me to his chest, and I buried myself against him. My body was heavy and limp, and then I felt nothing at all.
My heartbeat thumped in my ears. A crumpled heap lay ten feet in front of me. It was him, and I knew I shouldn’t hope, but I did. I needed to.
I ran to his side, my footfalls uneven, and fell to my knees.
“James?” I whispered. My voice sounded broken. “Can you hear me? Wake up. Please, wake up.”
I reached for his shoulder, rolled him onto his back, and gasped at the sight. I pressed my hands to my mouth. His face was unrecognizable under deep blue and black bruises. An almost inaudible groan escaped his lips, and my heart flipped with relief.
“Oh thank God,” I breathed. “I’m going to get help. Just hang on. Please, hang on.”
“Abby?” His voice was weak.
“Yes, I’m here.” I grabbed his hand and placed it in mine.
“Listen to me,” he began. “You need to run and hide. If they find you—”
“I’ll be fine—we’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“No.” He clenched his teeth and groaned. “I put it in your handbag.”
“What?” I grabbed my purse. “What did you put in here?”
“Just promise you’ll hide.” His eyes, almost impossible to see under the swelling, were desperate. “Get out of town—tonight. Don’t let them find it.” He coughed, and small drops of blood burst from his lips and stained his chin red. Something was wrong.
I let go of his hand and pulled the lapels of his dinner coat open. “No,” I cried. “No, no, no!”
A stream of blood trickled from a bullet wound just over his heart. I pressed my hands against it to staunch the flow, but it was no use. Blood seeped between my fingers at a rate even I knew was fatal.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “Please, don’t cry.”
I nodded and clamped my lips together in an effort to keep my sobs silent. His lids grew heavier with every blink, and his breathing slowed.
“I love you,” he said. His chest rose once, twice, and after the third, his eyes lost focus and turned vacant.
I shook him. “James?” There wasn’t a response. “James!” A sob escaped, and I fell over him like I’d been punched in the stomach. My fingers grasped at his shirt, and I screamed.
He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be gone.
I said it over and over, thinking somehow that would make it true, but he didn’t move and he didn’t speak. He was gone. I stared at his face, and with shaking fingers, I touched his cheeks, his chin, his mouth, and then traced those same features with my lips. How could this have happened? Why had this happened?
I grasped my metal-plated handbag with trembling fingers and lifted the clasp. Wrapping my hand around the only foreign object inside, I pulled it out and recognized the handkerchief immediately. It was white linen and a monogrammed B adorned the corner. I’d seen these handkerchiefs dozens of times; they were James’s favorite. I unfolded the lump of fabric while my breath hitched and heaved.
In my hand was a necklace. I gripped it by the chain and held it out to better see what James had died to protect. It was a yellow stone, bigger than I could’ve imagined, in the shape of wide pear. The top was encrusted with white diamonds that feathered into a bottleneck shape where the delicate chain attached.
This one thing could’ve saved James’s life, and the anguish of that realization tore my heart in half. Why had he hidden it with me? I wanted to throw it and watch it break into a thousand pieces. Instead, the shriek that erupted scarred my throat and burned my lungs. I laid my head against his blood-soaked chest and curled into his side, where I sobbed until there weren’t tears left to cry.
With a gasp, I opened my eyes. James was holding me tight, my face pressed to his chest. I sat up and checked my hands and then his body for blood. James searched my face and brushed my tangled hair from my eyes. “Are you okay?”
Heavy breaths poured from my lungs as I pressed my hand against his heart. The beat was strong, and feeling it calmed the fright still lurking. “Fine. I think.”
Mack was standing over the man he’d shot, talking into his phone. “Get Alistair here now,” he barked before hanging up.
“Mack.” My voice was raspy and raw. “What’re you doing here?”
He looked at me a second before his phone rang.
“Saving the day. What else?” But the humor of his words wasn’t mirrored in his voice. He lifted his phone to his ear. “McCormack,” he said before turning his back on me.
I didn’t remember much after that. Mack had questions, but mostly for James. They spoke quickly and in angry tones. I threw up at some point, but all the other details were fuzzy.
James helped me into his truck, but how we got from there to here, wherever here was, escaped me. I was holding a drink, something warm, and James was pacing the length of a strange living room. He reminded me of a caged lion, tense and lethal, but it didn’t scare me, even though it probably should’ve. I’d seen the violence that lived within him. Gracie had been right. He did have another side.
“Where are we?” I asked.
James stopped pacing and turned to me. “My place.”
I looked around for the first time. James’s home was small and old, yet remarkably clean. The only light came from a single lamp that lit the room with a dim yellow glow.
“It’s not much—” He broke off and gestured to the room. I followed the path of his hand and saw the crack that ran up one wall. The ceiling dipped above me, and the wood floors sloped to the right.
The crumbling house fit him. “It’s fine. It’s perfect, actually.” I wrapped my hands tightly around the hot mug. “What happened out there?”
He took a ragged breath. “I don’t know. Not really.”
“Why didn’t we talk to the police? Why aren’t we being interviewed now?” I felt the furious rise of panic as it clamped my ribs together.
“McCormack’s taking care of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s with the FBI.” My jaw dropped, and his head pulled back in question. “You didn’t know?”
I stared down at my cup and reached for every memory I had where Mack talked about his job. “He never mentioned it. He said he worked in security.” My thoughts were spinning, and I took a sip of whatever was in my mug.
“Hot chocolate?” I asked.
“It was that or tequila.”
I clenched my teeth, and my jaw ached under the strain. “I think I’d like tequila.”
He shuffled into the kitchen and came back with a bottle and two small glasses. He set the them on the scuffed coffee table and poured, and after sliding one in my direction, he picked up the other. I was pretty sure shooting tequila would be a horrible idea—I hated tequila on a good day—but my hands wouldn’t stop trembling, and I couldn’t stop seeing James’s eyes, dead and vacant, like the man Mack had shot. I wanted to forget everything that’d happened tonight, and tequila seemed like a good place to start.
I grabbed the glass and swallowed the contents as fast as I could. When my empty glass clinked against the table, James refilled it and poured a second for himself. Together, we drank, and I coughed at the burn. James didn’t say anything, and when I recovered, he topped them off again.
“That man, tonight, had a picture of one of your paintings,” I said.
He nodded as he pulled the paper from his pocket and held it out to me. I took it and traced my portrait with my finger.
“He seemed to think that necklace was real.”
I shivered, not wanting to think about where else I’d seen that necklace, but once the idea had come, I couldn’t brush it away. This wasn’t a sickness. What I was seeing was real somehow, someway.
“I’ll be right back.” James moved silently from the living room and disappeared down a hallway. He came back a minute later with a sketchpad in hand.
“Flip to the end,” he said, handing me the book.
I turned the heavy pages one by one, looking at the drawings, each one better than the next. They were a series detailing the construction of an elaborate necklace. One that contained a light yellow center stone, slightly pear-shaped but wider. At the top of the stone were intricate rows of white diamonds.
I flipped to the last page and took in a breath that stalled in my throat. Something sour rose in my stomach, and I had the sudden urge to gag. On the paper was a sketch of a hand, and dangling from the fingertips—my fingertips—was the necklace. The only difference between this sketch and the vision I’d had tonight was the absence of dripping blood.
“I need some air,” I said, pushing the notebook aside and walking toward the back door. I yanked at the handle, but it caught in the frame and wouldn’t budge. James came behind me and pushed the door closed. With practiced ease, he turned the knob and simultaneously lifted up. When it creaked open, I pushed myself outside, taking in deep breaths of the freezing outdoor air. James stood next to me, calm and quiet while everything inside me spun out of control.
“How have you seen that necklace?” I asked him, my voice rising in pitch with each word. I clenched my hands at my sides.
“You know how,” he said, moving to stand in front of me.
“No, I don’t.”
“It just came to me. The same way your image came to me. I don’t know how I thought of it—it just was.”
I couldn’t stand still. Wringing my hands with anxious energy, I paced the yard until I reached a lopsided swing set standing in what was left of the grass. I sat on the flat wooden swing and grabbed the rusted chains.
“Abby, you’ve got to talk to me.” James sat on his heels in front of me. “You’ve seen the painting. Why did that sketch upset you so much just now?”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Jesus, this isn’t seventh grade. I’m not going to be scared away. You’ve seen what I can do. Tell me.”
I thought of my mother and the way I ignored her ramblings like they meant nothing. If hers were anything like mine then they probably meant a great deal. James scrubbed his face and with a frustrated sigh, pushed his hands through his hair.
“I have visions—or dreams,” I said. His movements stilled, but he didn’t turn toward me. “I see things that may or may not have happened. Well, not really see them, it’s more like I’m living them, or re-living them.” My voice faded to a barely audible whisper. “It sounds ridiculous. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
He blew out a breath and nodded. “And that’s where you’ve seen the necklace? In these visions?”
“I saw it tonight after Mack…” I swallowed, my throat tight and swollen.
“It’s okay,” he said, placing a gentle hand on my knee. “What else have you seen?”
I thought of him lying on the ground, bleeding a slow death. I thought of how broken I was, so full of fear and panic and sadness.
“Have you seen me?” he asked. His voice was soft like he already knew the answer.
I nodded not trusting my voice. James let out a heavy breath, and he looked away.
“I had my first vision the night we met at the bar. Flashes come and go, but when we’re together, I see them more frequently. They’re more vivid.”
He stood and pulled me to my feet. His thumbs lightly traced my palms before his hands ran up my arms to twist in the hair at my neck. Every touch made me ache, and each second he didn’t kiss me felt like dying. I wanted him, needed him, in a way I never had before.
I ran my hands up his chest, and his muscles jumped as my fingers climbed. I dragged my hands over his shoulders and down the length of his tightly muscled arms until I touched the smooth but wrinkled skin of his hands. I pulled them away from my face and watched as our fingers entwined. His knuckles were raw and bloody, and the expression he wore was just as fierce.
He leaned close, and I closed my eyes. My entire body, lit with anticipation, exploded into flames when his lips pressed against mine. His hands ran down my back, and I melted into him. This moment was like nothing I’d ever experienced, it was just a kiss, but somehow it was more than that. It was like coming home.
He trailed his lips across my cheek before he pulled away, and I dropped my head against his chest, listening to his heart beat wild and strong.
“Come on,” he said as he turned us back toward the house. “There’s something I need to show you.”