Chapter 9
“H ow do you know that wasn’t for real?” Taryn asked, laughing at the cheekiness in her tone. Alex frowned, and she took it as a cue. “I’m fine,” she replied, with a wave of her hand. “I’m just relaxing, and I think you’re right on point. Some of that energy flowing through me was Cassie’s. Some of the frustrations, that sense of being unable to do anything is still there,” she added, with a knowing smile, “but I feel less like going over there and pounding Jeff into the ground.”
“Well, that’s good,” Alex said warily.
“Are you sure? Now you’re looking at me as if I’m about to jump your bones.”
He burst out laughing. “And again, I’m not sure I’m against it. I just want to know it’s you talking and not that little girl.”
“Jesus, I sure as hell hope not,” she muttered, glancing over at him with a smirk. “Still, getting to know somebody while we’re cooped up in a vehicle like this is pretty intense.”
“Which part? Your former surprise statement or this later one?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say jumping somebody’s bones was at the top of my list when I got here.”
“No, but maybe you haven’t had the same experience I have.”
She smiled. “I won’t embarrass you anymore.”
“Is that what I am?” he asked, laughing. “You think I’m embarrassed?”
“I don’t know,” she conceded. “I think you aren’t certain about me. I think you’re worried that I’m not who I am and that anything I say and do is not really me.”
He studied her and then nodded. “Yeah? Any reason why I shouldn’t consider that? I am ready to give it a shot.”
She sighed. “Okay, so that little girl is definitely in my headspace. We both know that, but she’s not telling me to say that I really like you, or that I want to see you again while we’re in England, or that jumping your bones was only half joking,” she admitted, along with a nervous laugh. “I get that it’s definitely not the topic for here and now, but something just came over me.”
“Yeah, that’s the part I’m worried about,” he stated.
She glanced at him, smiled, and added, “I don’t mean Cassie.”
“If you say so, but is it somebody else?”
“No way,” she replied. “Walking along the creek released all that tension and energy, which was necessary because these other restraints have been holding me back for too long. Seemed to be a good time to release all those thoughts somehow too. So, whatever is going on inside me, letting some of this go also lets go of other aspects of my personality that I’ve been working on for a long time but didn’t think I would ever get there.”
She pondered that for a moment. “So, whether it’s healing, or whether it’s interference from other people,” she added, “there are definitely some good benefits to this release .”
“If you say so,” he muttered, but his tone was still hesitant as he studied her.
She smiled and then decided to let him off the hook. “If I’m embarrassing you, that’s okay. You can tell me that you’re not interested, and I’ll stop teasing you.”
“It’s just that it came out of the blue,” he clarified.
“Did it really though?” She gave him a wry look. “You’re telling me that you haven’t felt some of the energy between us?” she asked. “I’m not saying instant sexual attraction, but I think there was definitely interest. I like you and everything I’ve seen about you. I’m single. You’re single.” She frowned and asked, “Wait. Are you single?”
“Yes, I’m single,” he replied in exasperation, “but I’m not used to meeting people on jobs.”
“Ah. See? That’s the whole honor system you’ve got in place.”
He shook his head. “No, but it sounds as if you were letting go of some of these stressors in your life, and it’s letting you become a little more unfettered, and you’re not exactly sure what you’re dealing with.”
“Sure, and, because of all that, you’re also a safe person to tease,” she muttered.
“Safe?” he asked, turning to look at her.
She nodded. “I guess the thing I wasn’t expecting is that I trust you.”
He gave her a slow smile. “Thank you. That makes me feel good.”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure you should thank me for it because that just means I’ll push a little bit more.”
“I didn’t realize you even had a problem that you’re trying to work on,” he shared, “so go ahead and push away. I don’t mind.”
“You won’t react?”
“Of course I’ll react,” he stated. “That’s why you’re pushing, isn’t it? To see what kind of reaction you get? You won’t know until you try. But you’re right. I also like you,” he claimed boldly, “and, if this is happening because of all this energy floating around,… and it’s helping to heal something inside you, fly at it. Just don’t let it interfere with what’s going on in that house—or vice versa.”
She stared at him, her gaze shooting back to the house, and nodded. “Good point. It’s all about them.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “Just because it’s all about them doesn’t mean you don’t get the benefit too. There is nothing quite like massive rushes of energy to settle you and to help you release old wounds. The worst thing you could do is hang on to those wounds. They can hurt you each and every time they resurface again, and that’s just not healthy. And neither is it something we want.”
She gave him a crooked smile. “It’s not what we want?”
“No, it’s not.”
His tone was firm enough that she believed him. She sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up any of that.”
“It just caught me off guard, but energy is like that. You know how, when your friend just comes out of therapy and tells you all about the stuff she’s going through, and you’re thinking, It’s just the healing process ?… Yet some of it seems so ridiculous. Still, when you go home later that night, and, while you’re all alone, all this crap of your own comes boiling up.”
“Ah, right.”
“Energy is just energy,” he stated in a simple tone, “and once you start healing… Did you send healing energy to Cassie and her brothers?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I did. Why?”
“Because then it comes back to you,” he declared. “So your body figures it needs healing as well and is working on your own issues.”
She winced at that. “ Great , not what I intended.”
“No, it may not be what you intended,” he acknowledged, giving her the gentlest of smiles, “but, once you start the process, that energy just keeps on firing.” He was deadly serious, and she needed to understand it too. “So, the more you can process, the more you can clear out, all the better. And, yes, I can be a sounding board, if need be.”
“I would hope to do some of this without a sounding board.”
“In that case,” he asked, “do you have a notebook, something you can write down the crazy thoughts that, to you, will seem stupid and made up but are really coming from deep in your psyche?”
She frowned at him. “How do you know any of this?” she asked, frustrated to be so near him and having such a private conversation.
He shrugged. “My sister had trouble for the longest time,” he murmured. “I learned a lot from some of the stuff she went through.”
“Interesting, but none of this is what I thought I needed to do today.”
As if hearing the humor in her tone he smiled. “Sometimes we don’t know what we need. However, when the opportunity presents itself, the best thing we can do is listen.” And, with that, he pulled his duffel bag from the back seat and dragged out a notebook, handing it to her, along with a pen. “Here. Just write down anything and everything that’s coming up. It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s pertinent or not. Just let it fly.”
“Is that ever so easy?”
“Make it so for you. By the end of it, maybe you’ll like it, maybe not. Anyway, you can always rip up that piece of paper and throw it in the creek.”
“You think that’ll do anything?” she asked, staring down at the notebook, feeling like a fool.
“I know it will,” he declared. “We used to do that for my sister all the time, and it was just amazing to see what happened. You opened up yourself in order to heal somebody else, but that healing energy came back to you. Now it’s sending a message loud and clear that it’s time for you to work on you.”
“Why the hell does that not sound appealing?”
“It’s mostly hard work,” he admitted, “but that’s your job. To work on you.”
She swallowed hard, but she opened the notebook and stared at the blank page. As she did so, words poured through her mind, and she started writing.
*
Alex didn’t expect the notebook to have quite the immediate impact on Taryn that it did. Yet, considering she had been connected to Cassie and had been sending out healing energy, it did make a loose kind of sense. He sat and kept an eye on their surroundings, with another on his phone, doing research. Meanwhile, the words just poured through her fingers via a pen and onto the page in front of her. He was amazed to see it work, no matter whatever sent him in the direction of making that suggestion to begin with. Regardless, some dam had been released within Taryn.
When she finally lowered the pen, her hands were shaking.
He reached into his bag of goodies they had picked up at the convenience store and handed her a granola bar. “You’re getting pretty shaky,” he murmured. “This should help.”
She accepted it, ripped apart the package, and slowly chewed the snack bar.
Realizing it was a good idea for himself as well, Alex opened another, and they both sat there in companionable silence, chewing away. He waited for her to say something, but she was obviously still caught up in whatever she’d been working on, and that was good. He didn’t want to pressure her into feeling or thinking that she was forced to share anything with him.
When she sighed once and yet again and then a third time—the last one being this huge release, almost right from the soles of her feet—he knew that she had accomplished something major. He held out his hand.
She immediately put hers in it and whispered, “Thank you.”
He nodded. “When there’s healing energy,” he murmured, “take advantage of it. It’s never there to hurt you. It’s always there to help. Sometimes we don’t even realize how badly we’re hurting, until we do something like this, and then we are shocked to see all the garbage that comes up.”
“And yet it does seem to be so much garbage,” she noted. “I had no idea all this stuff was sitting in there, just waiting to burst out.”
“Because you didn’t know you had buried it. You ignored it, and that’s fine and dandy, until you can’t anymore,” he shared. “In a case like this, where Cassie started talking to you telepathically about a subject that you too had experienced, the dam opened up everything for you. So, it’s not right or wrong, but I would say that it’s a good thing.”
She smiled, and he saw the tears in her eyes and knew what was to come. He immediately cleared the space between them and opened his arms. She sobbed once, twice, and then the dam broke, and she threw herself into his arms, and he just held her close.
He hadn’t expected anything like this to happen on a job, but, hey, if it helped ease the pain in Taryn’s world, Alex was all for it. He tucked his chin on top of her head and just let her grieve. When she finally calmed down, she sobbed several more times and then muttered, “My God, I don’t know the last time I did that.”
“The last time was when that little girl was bawling her eyes out,” he stated, with a note of humor. “Yet this time, I think it was all about you.”
She nodded. “It was definitely all about me, but it just seems so foolish to think that I was hanging on to all that.”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s foolish or not, no judgment here,” he declared. “Just lots of peace and acceptance.” She smiled. When his phone rang, disturbing the atmosphere, she laughed. He quickly silenced the ringer, checked the Caller ID, but didn’t answer the call.
Rubbing her face, she pushed her hair back. “God, I’m such a mess. You have no idea how much I would appreciate a shower right now.”
“You and me both,” he agreed. “If it was any other day, I would suggest we head to that creek and skinny-dip.”
She burst out laughing. “If it was any other day, I would take you up on it.”
He flashed her a bright grin. “So there, now we have something we can do when we head back to Terkel’s.”
“What, run around his place, streaking?” she asked, laughing even more. “Somehow I don’t think they’ll appreciate it.”
“I have no idea, but I don’t think they’re stuck on physical bodies back there,” he pointed out. “So much soul work happens in that group, so I imagine it’s pretty incredible. It must also be a huge adjustment every time somebody joins them,” he noted thoughtfully. “The energy of the new person would have to be absorbed into the general collective energy, and people would have to work on their own shit in order to get along with everybody else. I can’t imagine, and yet I really want that experience.”
“I really want it now,” Taryn declared. “And I think it would be perfect for Bruce.”
“Maybe, yet I don’t know how the kids will react to all that energy housed in one big space.”
She smiled up at him. “Kids are kids. They will adapt, especially if all of them are gifted too.”
“The way you adapted?” he asked.
She nodded slowly. “It took a long time. It really took quite a long time for Bruce’s mother to get inside my heart, but I don’t know where I would have been without her… and Bruce too. Then his mother died from a heart attack not long ago. His father died in a car accident soon afterward, leaving only him and his sister. Now his sister is gone too. Mary had a hard time, losing both her parents almost at once. Maybe that’s when she started fighting with her husband. I don’t know, but it all fell apart for her somewhere around that same time, and I can’t imagine what the last of her life must have been.”
Alex’s phone vibrated now. He looked at the screen. “That was Levi calling before, and again now. I should take this.” He quickly answered. “Hey, sorry I missed your call.” He looked over at Taryn and smiled.
She sniffled and settled into the passenger seat of the car, closing her eyes and trying to relax, yet hearing bits and pieces of the conversation.
“They’ll move in tonight,” Levi told Alex. “The question that I have, and I’ve been trying to get a hold of Terkel to ask him, is whether this Jeff guy has any ability that’ll make him paranoid and potentially jump the gun before anybody has a chance to get there.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did,” Alex replied. Then he quickly related what happened down at the creek.
“Good God, how close were you to his house?”
“We weren’t close at all,… at least one mile away. The creek is completely deserted and on public land owned by the government. So it’s not as if we were trespassing on Jeff’s property or anything, squatting rights or not. I’m pretty concerned about his mind set now.”
“Did Taryn hear back from her latest email to Jeff’s ad to buy the children?”
Alex turned to her. “Levi is asking if you’ve had any response to your latest email on the ad.”
“Oh, right, let me check again.” She quickly brought it up and shook her head. “No, there’s nothing.”
Alex hit Speaker now for the rest of this conversation.
“Okay,” Levi said, “one more thing. We think we’ve pinpointed the missing father. I’ll send you his coordinates. You may be the closest man to him, FYI, unless he goes on the move again. In the meantime, keep a closer eye on responses to Jeff’s ad, will you? Set a notification so you’ll get an alert.”
“Will do,” Alex noted.
Taryn winced and quickly got busy changing the settings on her phone, while Alex ended the call with Levi. “I’m sorry, I should have done that to begin with. I’m not very good at this stuff. I’m sure Levi probably thinks I’m an idiot.”
“It’s fine,” Alex stated. “Nothing’s gone wrong so far, although now we have Jeff’s brother possibly in the mix, and we don’t know yet if he’s involved in this. We’ll figure that out soon enough. I don’t know what Jeff’s problem is, but he is definitely getting more unstable. But the time frame for an entry to rescue the kids is set for tonight, so, as long as everybody realizes that, we just have to keep them here until then.”
“Sure, and I suspect that, as paranoid as Jeff was earlier, he’s already trying to get out.”
“Maybe, but will he get out and move the kids, or will he just run and abandon the kids and save his own sorry ass?”
“Well, I would prefer the latter,” she replied. “At least that would give the kids a fighting chance. However, since Jeff apparently considers them a valuable financial asset, you and I both know he won’t leave them behind.”
“Unless… Jeff’s brother, the father to those kids who just abandoned them, decides to take over the sale of his own children.”