Chapter Seven
Cell phones were beeping and chiming all around Daniel. He’d found the most isolated seat in the lounge at Frankfurt and tried to bury himself in a magazine.
He didn’t want to think about what he had done this morning.
He hoped the complete lack of any vision when he took her hand meant he’d kept Francesca from getting on that doomed train.
But what if he was wrong? What if it wasn’t that train, but the next one?
What if he had actually made her take the wrong train?
And what about everyone else on board? All the doubts had nearly driven him to do nothing at all, but his instincts had guided him differently. He hoped they were right.
He had called Nick, way too early in the morning, and told him as much as he could.
Maybe, just maybe, Nick could use his connections to figure out a way to alert them to the potential danger, whatever it was, assuming Nick could figure out exactly which train she would have taken out of Parma.
He had thought it looked like an earthquake, but it might have been a bomb or a landslide or something else entirely.
She might have been going home, or she could have been heading back to the university.
He should have found a way to ask her and then… And then what?
He couldn’t focus. Everyone was talking on their phones or chattering anxiously with those around them while checking their text messages. There was a surge of people toward the TV monitors situated around the lounge.
He closed his eyes. Damn. It had happened, hadn’t it?
He sat up, straining to make out anything in the conversations. When he finally heard something in English, the word reverberated in his ears—earthquake.
He sank back into his chair. For a moment, he wished he could reach inside his head and rip the damn gift out. The lounge shimmered as if heat waves were rising from the floor. He tasted his espresso coming up for a visit in his mouth as something throbbed behind his eyes.
Rubbing a hand across his face, he pushed himself up out of the chair and walked to the nearest television.
He was too far away to hear the broadcast, but he could see the video and pick up pieces of conversation around him—namely Lunigiana and dead. He thought Lunigiana was an area somewhere south of Milan but wasn’t certain.
Daniel pulled out his cell, then realized there was nothing to talk to Nick about now. Damn. He could wait to hear the details about how badly he had failed. How he had failed to save all those other people on that train.
Though he had experienced the moment firsthand in his visions, the sight of the passenger train pushed from its track by the earthquake, its cars twisted and crumpled, still made his stomach turn.
Daniel went to the nearest bathroom, pulled off his gloves and splashed cold water in his face until his stomach stopped roiling. All those people on that train—people he couldn’t save. And had he even managed to save Francesca?
When he’d decided to try Mel’s hangover cure, an espresso doctored with Fernet-Branca this morning, he’d seen the front page of a newspaper on the counter.
The same front page he’d seen in his vision.
He had known then that it was going to be today—and maybe, if he could keep Francesca from getting on that particular train, she would be safe. She had to be.
He frowned at his haggard expression in the mirror, pulled on his gloves and returned to the lounge to find his plane finally boarding.
Once on board, he would find out more details about what had happened.
And he could get in touch with Nick and make sure Francesca really was safe.
And Mel. He would check on Mel too. Just to be sure.
As he walked down the jet bridge, he thought about their time together.
It had been a kaleidoscopic feast for his eyes and his soul, accompanied by moments of terror and confusion.
And at the center of it all, like a luminary around which all the planets whirled, was the tiny dynamo that was Mel Noblett.
He was still smiling as he settled into his seat and one of the flight attendants leaned over. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Coffee, please.”
Mel had tasted of coffee last night. Coffee and sugar and chocolate. The heat of that kiss still whispered against his lips.
With a start, he realized it might have been a bit more than a kiss. He frowned at the holes in his memory, but he recalled that she seemed enthusiastic when she returned the kiss. What had happened next?
Great. If he had tried to make a move on her in his hotel room when she was just trying to help him, no wonder she had run off before dawn.
Daniel reached into his hidden travel pocket and fished out her business card. She must have tucked it in there last night. On the back, she had written out the hangover remedy with a big smiley face and signed it Melissa.
The smiley face was a good sign.
The flight attendant set a fragrant cup of coffee on his tray table. “Here you are.”
“Thanks.” He gave her his most winning smile, knowing he would hit her up for a lot more during this trip.
He didn’t really want to sleep again…ever.
The damn prazosin hadn’t worked and he was out of the stuff Grace had given him, but it hadn’t really worked either.
Waking up with a blinding headache on a plane when he needed to make connecting flights was not his idea of fun.
Mel had found out more about him than he had about her in their wild day together, although he had gleaned a bit.
She loved small convertible cars and driving with the wind in her short hair.
She lived in an RV. She made jumping origami frogs and spoke Italian like a native.
She lit up a room whenever she walked in and could wrap any waiter around her little finger.
She wanted to drink prosecco on a hotel balcony overlooking that piazza where the duke with his bees gazed off into the distance at his lost love. She was a terrific tour guide.
He recalled that moment in front of the great cathedral when the world around them had disappeared and there had been nothing but Mel, with that luscious, ripe mouth of hers, looking up at him with something like desire in her eyes. A desire that matched his own.
He took a long gulp of the steaming coffee.
He didn’t do relationships. Not anymore. He had risked too much letting Mel get so close. Stupid of him to be so reckless, especially around a reporter. He had been careful for so long.
Since Diana.
Think about something else.
He finished off the coffee. He could see what the latest news was on the earthquake. He yanked his tablet out of his satchel, then remembered he couldn’t connect until after takeoff. Dammit.
Diana.
With a grim smile, he reminded himself that Diana was alive. Alive and in love—engaged. The ring on her finger and the smile on her face the last time he had seen her had been a relief. Alive and happy.
How could he complain about a gift that had saved the life of the woman he loved? The woman he had wanted to bring home to meet Grace and Pops.
His damn gift had shown him endings before, but it didn’t distinguish between catastrophes.
So many endings, none of them happy. Even relationships were dissected.
At first, it had been funny, in a grim sort of way, as one girlfriend after another walked or stalked or ran out of his life.
It was as if his dreams were telling him his love life was a lost cause.
Because of that, he tended to have shallow, meaningless relationships, hoping to avoid endings by not having any real beginnings.
Then there was Dr. Diana Morgan…
“Perhaps I should bring you a carafe after we take off?” The flight attendant leaned over to pour him another cup.
Daniel started. “Oh. Yes. Sounds good.”
With Diana, there had been no traumatic dreams of a breakup. He had gradually let down his guard and let himself fall a little in love, and still nothing. No ill omens or preview of it ending. Not until they had ended up in bed together.
Then he’d dreamed of Diana’s death.
Then he’d seen Diana die in his arms, in a car crash somewhere in the mountains. His car. His mountains. He had watched her bleed out in spite of his best efforts. He’d felt her stop breathing, and yet, at the same time, he had been sleeping next to her, very much alive.
He’d fought the vision at every turn, trying to shut it off, but it had kept him pinned to the moment and forced him to watch everything. He awoke scrambling off the bed and onto the floor, still trapped in the vision, unable to focus on anything through the pain.
After convincing Diana that it had just been a nightmare, he had waited until the headache eased enough for him to relax.
Then he had gone back to bed with her, only to have the same horrible dream again.
This time he had fought his way free before he saw Diana die, but when he awoke, the headache had been much worse, and it had lasted longer.
Diana never understood why he broke off their relationship. And there were times that he didn’t either. Surely there was a way around it. What if he never drove a car with her as a passenger? What if he never took her into the mountains? What if?
He couldn’t take that risk. The damned gift had never shown him how to stop anything he saw from happening. This was the only way he could be certain to stop Diana’s death.
That had been the first time a vision had caused him so much physical pain, but ever since, the headaches had become more pervasive and lasted longer.