Chapter Three #3
He nodded though she thought he didn’t know what she meant at all. “Sometimes,” he said, “it’s for yer own sake that ye canna recall. Sometimes we take ye out before.”
“Before impact?”
“Aye. ’Tis a mercy sometimes.”
“Is that what happened to me?”
“’Twasn’t me. Marguerite, I suppose, had her hand in it.”
“Marguerite?”
Connor glanced around as if half expecting her to appear. “Ye asked about my supervisor once. That would be her.”
“But I saw you there last night.”
“After,” he conceded. “Time travels in a different lane there. It’s no’ like here where everything follows an orderly line. Time hardly matters where I’m from.”
“Is that why you keep looking at that dial on your wrist?”
Stuffing his hand into his pocket, he looked away toward the scene of the accident. “I thought you wanted to look around.”
He wasn’t about to tell her anything personal.
Anything that meant anything to him. Emma gritted her teeth and got to her feet.
Well, two could play that game. She started down the hill, slipping a little on the dew-slick grass with her one still-bare foot.
Maybe she’d find her shoe around here somewhere. That seemed the least she could do.
At the bottom of the hill, heaviness pressed on her as she scanned the ground.
There were bits and pieces of her car still scattered around, but the scene had already been gone over by the police, as evidenced by the little orange flags poking out of the ground where they’d found items of interest. She broadened her scope, walking much farther away from where her car had landed, not even sure what she was looking for.
She spotted something glinting in the sun in the long grass.
It was hers. A tall, gold, crystal-studded thermal cup with her agency slogan inscribed on the front.
Emma James Realty—When What You’re Looking for Is Home
Apparently, the police hadn’t done a stellar investigation here. What else had they missed?
The cup was dented now, broken, and more than a few of the rhinestones had been knocked off.
She’d loved that cup. But looking at it now, lying alone in the middle of this grassy slope, it seemed…
embarrassing. Unnecessary. She was suddenly glad the police had missed it.
Why had she put rhinestones on a thermal cup anyway?
She couldn’t pick it up, so she left it where it was.
Connor was walking across the way, brushing aside grass with the toe of his boot.
Every now and then, their eyes would meet across the field and she would quickly look away.
Even now she felt him watching her as if he were trying to figure her out.
Or musing on that secret he seemed to be keeping about her.
Something about their past history? Which didn’t make any sense to her.
It was none of her business what had him so bent about her. But his attitude wasn’t irrelevant. Not only because they were stuck together until this situation resolved but because she depended on him to help her now that she was stuck here somewhere between her life and…death.
That thought sent a shiver through her. Who could have imagined that she’d be here today, picking through the remnants of an accident that had nearly—maybe—stolen her life?
Just yesterday, everything had been going so well.
She’d had her life under control, with big deals in the offing.
She’d had Aubrey home with her again after being gone for so long at school, working at the agency for the summer.
Today the company would have all left for a fabulous, all-expenses-paid Fourth of July vacation to Turks and Caicos.
It struck her then that not a single one of her employees had boarded that plane today for their well-deserved vacations, despite having fully paid tickets in their hands. Instead, they were all sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, waiting to see if she would live.
A sob worked its way up her throat as Connor’s words came back to her. No one said anything about fair. Indeed. Nothing about this whole situation seemed fair, least of all that Aubrey should be somehow in danger because of her.
She sniffed. Pull it together, Emma. No use getting emotional now.
That won’t help anything. She was going to figure this out.
She had to figure this out. Flicking a look back at Connor, she saw he was watching her again.
Drat. She definitely didn’t need him to see her get emotional.
He already thought she was a waste of his time.
He reached down and picked up something in the grass, studying it in his palm.
“What is that?” she called.
He proffered his palm, but she was too far away to see. “This yours?” he asked, arriving beside her in a blink of an eye.
“You have to stop doing that,” she said of his warp speed arrival.
“Sorry,” he said, holding out the object he’d found in his flattened palm. It was a seventies-style peace-symbol necklace, made of real silver, that bore a gaudy-looking green stone at its center. A bit of memorabilia—not worth a dollar, probably, but invaluable to her niece.
“It’s Aubrey’s,” she told him.
“’Twas near where your car landed.”
Emma inspected it. “She never takes it off. I can’t imagine what it’s doing here. It belonged to her mother, Lizzy. But Aubrey wasn’t here that night.”
“No, she wasn’t. Only you and those three others. Plus the emergency workers who came to help ye.”
“ Three others?”
“Countin’ the one who found you. The one who didna call for help?”
“How do you know about him?”
“I was standin’ right beside you that night after the crash.”
Emma’s lips parted in surprise. He’d seemed to appear from nowhere that night, but he’d been listening to everything. To those men talking on the hillside. That, she remembered. “You were?”
“Aye. Though I didn’t show myself to ye right away. I was waitin’ to…” He hesitated.
“To what?”
“To hear ye speak.”
She frowned. “And when I did?”
“Ye sounded like her.”
“Like Violet.” Not a question. She already knew the answer.
“Aye,” he said, pocketing the necklace. “Just like her.”
“And I look like her, too?”
He nodded, scanning her features and lifting his fingers to her face, touching a spot near her eye. “Mostly. A modern version. Except here. And here,” he said, pushing a strand of hair from her eyes. With that, he walked up the hillside partway, and she followed.
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
He shrugged but said nothing. Instead, he scanned the ground again nearby.
“Maybe I should be asking a different question,” she said, following him. “Maybe I should ask how I became your person? Why are you assigned to me if you have such strong feelings about her ? Bad feelings, that is.”
“’Tis a punishment, I ken,” he said but sent her a side-eye.
Emma sniffed and echoed his words under her breath.
What might have passed for amusement twisted his mouth, which also might have been the first time he’d nearly smiled at her.
“So, this Violet person. Was she an angel, too?”
He barked a humorless laugh. “Hardly.”
“So, then, before you were an angel, you were…?”
“A Scot,” he growled—rather proudly, it seemed to her.
“I was going to say human.”
He shrugged, acknowledging it. Reaching down into the long grass, he picked up something else that caught his eye.
She gasped. “My shoe!” She reached for the other half of her way-too-expensive brown-and-blue Gucci sandals, only to have her fingers pass through it. She let out a growl of frustration. “That’s just wrong. I can’t even put it on now that I’ve found it!”
“I suppose I’ll just have t’ keep judgin’ ye, then, for yer poor wee bare foot.”
Emma clapped a shocked hand to her chest. “Wait. Was that a joke?”
He made a face. “No.” But he still grinned as he turned away from her.
“I think we’re making progress, don’t you?”
For his part, Connor wouldn’t give her that. Yet. He looked up as a still-dappled fawn stepped into the meadow just beyond where they stood, her wet black nose in the air. She took a few tentative steps toward Emma.
“Look at that,” Emma whispered. “I think she sees us, too.”
“She does,” he answered. “They don’t fear us as they do mortals.” He reached his hand out to her, and she walked up to sniff it. As easily as one would pet a dog or a cat, he reached out to scratch her behind the ears. “We mean them no harm.”
Emma’s gaze went soft, surveying the accident scene. “A shame people can’t figure out that simple skill.”
“Aye, a true shame,” he said with an accusing look at her. Though the moment he uttered those, he regretted them. His kneejerk response to her was feeling considerably less deserved than it had been only hours ago because it was clear she had no memory of him at all.
His words were met with a weary expression. “We should go,” she told him, digging her bare toe into the long grass. “I thought I would remember whatever it was I forgot if I came here. But I…can’t. I’m sorry I dragged you here.”
“I believe ’twas I who dragged you,” he said.
Emma’s eyes went suddenly wide. Her face paled. “Oh!”
“Emma?”
She touched her hand to her head. “I—I feel—”
He reached for her arm as she swayed, but then she disappeared. Completely.
“ Emma? ” Connor whirled around, looking for her as the fawn scampered back into the woods, but she was gone. A sinking feeling hit him squarely in the gut.
There were only two reasons for her to vanish that way. And he liked neither one.