Marie laughed. “She’s not leading you to your doom, Malichai. You’ll like it.”
“I don’t know, Marie, she keeps talking about surfer boy. I don’t know if I’m ready to meet someone she refers to as ‘surfer boy’ and then laughs that amazing laugh of hers.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it.” Marie made a shooing motion with her hand and Malichai took the hint, walking down the dark hallway to the front door.
The day was going to be another beautiful one. He went straight down to the sand and began a brisk walk, getting a feel for the grains beneath his feet. Next a slow jog. His leg did seem as if it might be getting stronger. The doctors had agreed walking in sand and swimming would be good for him. They were certain both would help strengthen the muscles.
When he was running in the sand, he wasn’t convinced the muscles were his problem. Sometimes, when he tuned in to his leg, trying to feel the issues, it felt as if the bones had tiny fractures, little cracks that ran along like fault lines refusing to knit back together. When he thought that way, he would panic and have to stop, bend over and breathe deeply. Then he’d remind himself it hadn’t been that long since he’d been shot multiple times. It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot in that leg, although the first time he’d healed without a problem. Was having already been shot in that same leg causing some problem this time?
Amaryllis came up behind him, not making a sound, another reason for him to think she was a GhostWalker. With his head down, breathing deeply, he took her into his lungs before he actually saw her. She also moved through the sand easily, whether she walked, jogged or ran. She never stumbled or complained about how difficult it was. Running in sand was always a workout, yet she didn’t raise a sweat.
Amaryllis put her hand on his back. “Are you okay?”
“Little panic attack, nothing serious.” He answered her honestly. He tried to be as honest as he could with her. “Sometimes, I worry that my leg isn’t going to heal properly, and they’ll pull me. I’m a soldier. I don’t know any other life. My family is my team. I know that sounds crazy, but I can feel these cracks like spiderwebs spreading out over my bones.”
She didn’t laugh at him or try to argue. “Really? You should have told me. Come sit down on one of the lounge chairs.” She pointed to the chairs laid out along the beach. “No one is up this early.”
He straightened and looked out to the ocean, a smile forming. “Babe. Seriously? Who are all those nuts?”
“Surfers. They aren’t going to care if we use a lounge chair. They wouldn’t know what to do with one.” She took his hand and tugged.
It was the first time she’d taken his hand instead of the other way around. He was good with that and willing to follow her anywhere. She led him to a woven, brightly colored lounge chair and had him sit, stretching out his legs.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said. “I’ve always been able to ‘feel’ what’s going on inside a person. Their muscles or bones. Most people don’t believe me, but I can.”
“Don’t know why they wouldn’t believe you. It’s a known fact that some people are born gifted. Do your worst.”
He felt her gaze on his face. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at her. All that made him want to do was kiss her. He framed her face with both hands. “Don’t look so scared, honey. I believe anything you want to tell me because you’ve always been honest with me.”
Her gaze skittered away from his. He wanted to comfort her and tell her it didn’t matter if she’d escaped from Whitney’s hellish experiments. Good for her. He couldn’t do that because he wasn’t supposed to know about Whitney’s experiments. He was a soldier on vacation.
She indicated for him to pull up his loose track pants. He did so, reluctant for her to see his leg, getting them just above his knee. The shots had ripped into him from the side, tearing up his leg as if trying to open a zipper into muscle and bone. The scars were raw and ugly, going all the way up to his hip.
Amaryllis gasped when she saw the raw, shiny wounds. “Malichai. How did you survive this?”
He shrugged. “I was bleeding pretty bad and slapped field dressings on the worst of the wounds to slow them down. My brother Rubin carried me to the helicopter. He worked on me the entire time. I was lucky the doctors were there with blood and whatever else they needed to keep me alive until they could land. Ezekiel, my oldest brother, operated on me. He was able to keep me from bleeding out until we got the orthopedic surgeon. Even then, it was a bit of a fight.”
He downplayed it but had the feeling she knew that was what he was doing. If Rubin hadn’t been a psychic surgeon, he would have been dead. Had they not had his blood on hand, he wouldn’t have made it. There were a million things that could have gone wrong for him. He’d been lucky.
Her hand hovered over his leg and he immediately felt warmth that quickly turned to a raw blazing heat. More than once he’d experienced this same kind of thing when Joe helped him. He watched her face, not her hand. At once he could see her eyes, the difference. Those blue, blue eyes that turned inward. He’d only seen that once before, with Joe. Amaryllis was a psychic healer, and they were very rare. If Whitney knew she had that gift, she would have had no option but to escape if she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life being taken apart or in his breeding program.
His leg suddenly felt on fire, as if flames licked up his bone from his calf to his hip. It was a flash-fire. Hot and fast burning. It took every ounce of discipline he had not to react, to not drag his leg away, out from under that terrible heat.
She suddenly pulled her palm away from his leg and sat abruptly on the lounger as if her legs had given out. It took a few minutes with Amaryllis first staring down at her hands and rocking back and forth, breathing deeply and then looking out to the ocean and the surfers there.
Malichai waited patiently for the verdict. When she turned to look at him, he didn’t like what he saw on her face. He rubbed his hand down the leg. The fire had slowly subsided, but he still felt the aftereffects.
“I’m pretty fucked, aren’t I?” He tried to be realistic.
“I think it can be fixed, but, Malichai, something chewed that bone up. It’s still doing damage. Either there was something chemical in the bullets that hit you, or you reacted very poorly with those field dressings you used. You could have been highly allergic to one of the compounds used. Whatever it is, it’s trying to eat through your bone.”
He rested the back of his head against the lounger. “Can you fix it? I don’t think a doctor can. If they could have, they already would have. I’ve had three operations already.” He forced his voice to be matter of fact when inside he was screaming. He couldn’t lose his leg.
He had to contact Joe fast. Even if Amaryllis thought she could fix it, why hadn’t it worked when Joe had worked on him? But even more so, Rubin? Rubin’s gift was so powerful, they literally hid him from everyone. There could be no whisper of what he was capable of or every faction would be after him. There would be no way to protect him. Rubin had worked on him on more than one occasion. Why hadn’t it worked? Now, he was past worry and on to terrified.
“I discovered that weird little ability I just showed you when I was around fourteen and one of the girls was very sick.”
“Girls?” He ventured the question cautiously, mostly because if he didn’t and she realized what she’d just said, she would wonder why he hadn’t asked.
There was the briefest of hesitations. “I’m sorry, didn’t I tell you? I grew up in an orphanage. My parents abandoned me when I was first born. Those of us who weren’t perfect babies grew up and went to school there.”
“I had no idea orphanages still raised children. I suppose they must. Was it difficult? Or did you like it?” He didn’t bother to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
“I liked it. Two of the girls didn’t. They felt . . . less because of it. There
were six of us raised there, although not really together. I was lucky and spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the cook. It was fun and I picked up things fast. In that respect, I was able to excel in school and just about anything I chose to do.”
“Are you still in touch with the other girls?”
For the first time she looked at him directly, her gaze moving over his face, a touch of suspicion in her eyes. “Not really, why?”
He shrugged. “They’d be your family. I never go more than a couple of days before I check in with Ezekiel or Rubin, with any of my brothers.”
“You didn’t have a sister?”
He shook his head and rubbed his aching leg. She immediately began to massage the cramping muscles. Her hands felt warm—they felt magic. The cramping stopped almost immediately.
“You have a gift, Amaryllis. My leg aches quite a bit and for the first time in a long while it feels better.”
She hesitated. “Malichai, I can try to fix the damage that’s being done to your leg, but I’ve never really tried anything that severe. I think you should call your doctor and get them to do an MRI, something that will reveal the damage to the bone. If you don’t do something soon, there’s a possibility something could go really wrong.”
He knew that. Subconsciously, he knew it before he’d ever agreed to take a vacation. He supposed he’d really come there to think about his future and what he’d do if he lost his leg. He’d allowed himself to be distracted because the last thing he wanted to do was face his reality. The leg had started off fine during all the physical therapy, feeling strong and sound and little by little it had begun to ache. And then hurt. His gut had begun to give him that alarm that always told him when something was really wrong.
When he was a boy, he’d worried about losing a limb. Every time he’d gotten a cut and an infection, that had been his biggest worry, although he’d never shared it with his brothers. The worry had carried over into his career when he was carrying out the wounded with their many losses of limbs. At first, when his leg just ached, he’d told himself it was his old paranoia; now, with Amaryllis clearly concerned, he was more worried than ever.
“The docs have done everything they know how to do,” he admitted. “I don’t have any more options.”
She remained sitting very still, her hand on his leg gently rubbing up and down the ragged scar tissue, a soothing gesture that was comforting.
“Can you do something?” He had to be careful, not act like he knew too much about the kind of gift she had.
She hesitated. “I don’t honestly know, Malichai. I don’t have a lot of practice and I’m not very good at toning it down. It feels like a lot of power, almost too much. Okay. Too much. If I do something wrong and damage the bone further . . .” She trailed off.
“You think I could lose my leg.” He had to say it out loud to someone. It seemed ridiculous there on the beach with the ocean rolling in the background.
Amaryllis bit her lip and then nodded. “I don’t know. Maybe, but I don’t want to carry that responsibility. I’ll have to think about it, maybe practice on something first. There’s so much heat . . .” She trailed off, looking up as a tall, gangly man with a surfboard tucked under his arm came bounding up to them like a shaggy collie.
“Amaryllis. Dude. You should be ridin’ the waves. They’re perfect today.”
His blond hair looked darker slicked back, the salt water still dripping.
“Malichai, this is my friend Dozer. Dozer, this is Malichai.”
Dozer shoved out his fist to do a bump. “Gnarly scars, man. I saw some on a man who had a shark take him down, but they weren’t even close to that. Cool.”
Malichai resisted pulling down the material of his pants. He wasn’t five.
Dozer beamed at him, his teeth gleaming almost as white as his hair. “What’s the good word?”
“Nice morning,” Malichai observed, uncertain what one said to Dozer. Amaryllis, from the way she introduced Dozer, had made it clear he was her friend. “Everything good?”
Dozer frowned. “Had some whack job in full diving gear grab my ankle and pull me off my board just now. It was on purpose too. I don’t understand these tourists anymore. There’s a big ocean out there. Why get upset because a few of us are riding the waves?”
Malichai sat up straighter, exchanging a long look with Amaryllis. “Is Dozer given to fantasy? Because if someone pulled him off his board and—” He broke off.
“Right here, dude, and no, I’m not given to fantasy. Some asshole in full scuba gear came off the shelf underwater right at me.”
“You’re telling us a diver caught your ankle and deliberately jerked you off your surfboard? What else did he do once he had you off the board?” Amaryllis demanded.
“I kicked him in the head before he got me off,” Dozer admitted. “At first, I thought he was a shark, then I got a good look at him. I’ve heard of divers messing with surfers, but he could have drowned me. He came at me a second time, like maybe he was going to try to take me under, but I punched him, right in his face mask. Three of my buddies swam over to make sure I was all right and he dove deep and was gone.”
Malichai didn’t like it. First, he’d read Anna’s lips and she wanted to tell the cops she’d overheard something worrisome. Then there was the artsy couple, one believing he’d overheard—with Anna—a group wanting to kill the maximum amount of people. Now, Dozer. “You hear anything recently, or see anything that bothered you, Dozer?”
Amaryllis slipped her hand in Malichai’s, threading her fingers through his and squeezing down gratefully. She liked that he didn’t just dismiss what Dozer was saying. He couldn’t. In spite of Dozer acting far younger than his age, he was more than a good swimmer. He practically lived in the ocean. If he said someone yanked him off his board and acted as if he was trying to drown him, it was most likely true.
Dozer shrugged, leaning on the surfboard he’d stuck in the sand. “I hear lots of things that bother me, but I went to see Miss Crystal the other morning. She hadn’t opened her magic shop on time. She’s kinda getting up there in age, you know. Just checkin’ on her. Man answers the door. Says Miss Crystal is gone for a few days, that she’s off vacationing with her son. I said she didn’t have a son. The man says he made a mistake, that she’s vacationing with someone she regards as her son and she’ll be back in a couple of weeks. I told him I was going to call the cops and have them do a well check. She doesn’t like to be away from her store. Guy was a liar and total asshole, but he’s the only one I can think of other than the diver.”
“Be careful,” Malichai warned. “Weird things seem to be happening around here.”
Dozer nodded, caught up his surfboard and made his way down the beach.
Malichai watched him go. “That’s going to teach me not to make snap judgments on anyone. I wouldn’t have thought he even knew what a well check was.”
“What are we going to do about Miss Crystal, Malichai?” Amaryllis asked.
“We don’t know anything is wrong yet,” he answered. “But I’m getting a little worried. Early this morning, around three, some visitors came to my room.”
Instantly her face changed. “Let me guess, that would be Linda, Lorrie and Lexie. The sinful, divine sisters. They tell enough stories about how they share their men.” She rolled her eyes and moved very subtly away from him. At the same time, she tried to slip her hand from his.
Malichai laughed as he tightened his fingers around hers. “The sinful, divine sharing sisters. I see. No, they didn’t come visit me, which is just as well. I wouldn’t like having to throw women out of my room, and I’d have to. I’m taken. This woman right here is everything I’m ever going to need. And I’m not into sharing. At. All. Man or woman. Just so you know. I would hope you wouldn’t be either.”
She drew in her breath and relaxed a little beside him. She didn’t protest
or agree with his assessment of being taken. “Who came to your room at three in the morning?”
“Burnell and Jay. They wanted my help. I guess I must look like a hit man or bodyguard to them. They were afraid of another one of the guests, he’s in room fourteen. Craig Williams.”
“Our southern gentleman. He is always unfailingly polite. A very nice man.”
“Apparently he stares at Burnell and Jay.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. He’s a really nice man.”
“Has he been here before?”
“No, this is his first time. He’s meeting a couple of old school friends here for a reunion of sorts.”
“You seem to know a lot about him.” Malichai didn’t like the suddenly cold feeling sweeping over him.
“I clean his room, remember? We talk sometimes.”
“I see.” The swamp was looking better and better to take his woman to. He might ask Cayenne to wrap her in silk, and drape more all over the walls to make it impossible to escape.
Amaryllis burst out laughing. “You don’t see anything. You should, but you don’t. I’m not looking at Craig Williams. I’m looking at you. I shouldn’t be, but I am. Now, tell me what you plan to do to figure out whether Miss Crystal is alive and well.”
“Dozer did say he asked for a well check. I think it wouldn’t do any harm to have Marie call them as well, but let’s wait a day on that. Two callers, and the cops might very well decide she’s a priority. Tomorrow I’ll pay a visit to the magic shop and inquire about my good friend, Miss Crystal.”
“I’ll go with you,” she offered immediately.
Malichai brought her hand up to his mouth and gently bit down on her fingertips. “I’m potentially setting myself up. After I make the inquiries, I’m going to go swimming in the ocean without scuba or snorkeling gear. I’ll make certain to let whoever answers the door know that’s where I’m heading next. If they make their try for me, we’ll know something is off and we need to bring in the cops.”