Forbidden Read online

  Mike tossed a thick manila folder onto his cluttered desk. “So are all of these folks. From kids to old folks. Teens who ran away. Kids who disappeared in the night. Some pedophile neighbor took a hankerin’ to ’em. Or their dad picked ’em up one day after school before Mom got there. And bam—they disappeared. For good. No trace. Nothing. Grandfathers who wandered out of the nursing home. Aunts who went to the grocery store and never returned home, their car found on some deserted road. Wives, husbands, daughters, sons, grandkids all searching and desperate to find these missing folks. Some have been missing thirty years. This Amish widow ain’t the only one, my friend. So good luck.”

  Good luck was right. It was like finding the right straw hat in a pile of Amish ones. Rachel wasn’t the only one missing though. But the likelihood of finding Rachel seemed more hopeless than all these other folks combined. All these missing folks had recent pictures, stats listing their weight and height. A few who had been missing for a while had drawings of what the person might look like after all these years. But for Rachel, there wasn’t even a starting photograph, just Hannah’s description: “blond, blue eyes, a smidgen shorter than me.”

  Knowing what Akiva was and his modus operandi, Roc figured Rachel was already dead. Negativity had nothing to do with his prediction. It was a simple probability. And it was Roc’s fault, the way Ferris’s death was his fault too…and Josef’s…and Emma’s. The list was long and growing.

  Driving back, he thought about his own wife, the lost years, the empty hours. A raw ache of grief surged upward and hopelessness stole over him. Levi and Hannah had made a bad mistake asking him to search for Rachel. What use was he anyway? What was the point? He’d search and eventually some kid would head out to a creek to do some fishing and find an abandoned sneaker, then a hand…It always ended the same.

  A flash of a neon sign caught his attention, and he steered his Mustang toward a liquor store to buy a bottle of rotgut. The brand or year didn’t matter.

  He returned to the bed-and-breakfast where he’d been staying on and off for the past six months. When he first arrived in Pennsylvania, the NOPD had been footing his bill, but after they cut him off, Roc had bunked sometimes with Roberto, sometimes with Mike, and occasionally in his car. But tonight, he needed a soft bed, and his usual room was available.

  “Need help with your luggage?” the redheaded teen, Suzy, asked.

  He shook his head and took the key. She wore black nail polish. “You still into vampires?”

  She grinned. “Werewolves.”

  He tilted his head. God help him if the next battle he had to face was against giant wolves.

  “And angels,” she added. “They’re cool.”

  “The chubby kind with harps?”

  “No, the kind with gigantic wings and big, honkin’ swords.”

  “Swords, huh? Now that’s something I could use.” He retreated toward the door, ready to get in his room, eager to drown his depression.

  “I think you’re really a vampire fan,” she said.

  He shook his head. “If I ever saw one, I’d kill it.”

  She laughed. “Just don’t let one bite you.”

  He turned, backing his way through the screen door. “Why’s that?”

  “Then you’d be a vampire.”

  “Is that what it takes?” he teased.

  “Has some sort of venom or something…I don’t know what…gets in the blood.” The girl kept telling him about vampires like she was an expert. Maybe she was. Maybe she should be the vampire hunter. He stepped out into the cool night air.

  A sidewalk led around the two-story house to his rented room. His foot caught on the edge of the concrete, and he stumbled. A hand stuck out and righted him, and Roc gazed up into the face of a tall man. Fear took hold of Roc in a split second, until the man’s eyes—golden, not black—registered on him.

  The stranger had a smile like a star. “You all right there?”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  Roc rushed on, irritated for not seeing the stranger before. He didn’t like surprises. He should be more alert. Pay closer attention. But once again he was a failure. A failure at saving Emma. At finding Rachel. He fumbled with the key, shoved it into the slot, and the door finally gave way. He pulled the bottle from inside his jacket and took a long pull, then let the door close behind him. Clunking the bottle on the nightstand, he chucked off his jacket, gun, and stake. He tried to yank off his boots, finally having to sit down on the bed and tug hard to release his foot. Then he flopped back onto the sun-dried pillowcase and breathed in the summery scents, which he promptly drowned with more whiskey.

  His thoughts swirled downward into dark places, drifting past understanding and consciousness. He glided in and out of sleep, sometimes not even aware of which world he entertained. Emma floated along beside him for a while until turbulence separated them. He lunged for her, tried to grab her hand, but he woke himself instead.

  He sat up in bed, blinked at the darkness enfolding him. Sweat stuck his clothes to his skin, and he tugged off his shirt and hurled it across the room. Then once more, he turned back to the bottle for comfort. Each swallow carried a wave of guilt and remorse, and the grief pulled him under the surface.

  When he awoke again, spluttering and coughing, the room undulated around him like a giant wave rippling across the bed and dresser and television. A light at the end of the bed made him squint, and he struggled to sit upright, bracing a hand against the mattress to keep from toppling over. He blinked against the light, which slowly solidified into a form…a form of a man.

  Roc tried to remember what he’d done with his Glock. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Pay attention, Roc,” the man said in a gruff voice, a voice that sounded too familiar to be dismissed.

  Roc’s throat closed as if a fist gripped it. “Dad?”

  Remy Girouard glared at him from the end of the bed. He had a wiry frame and pale, watery eyes. Years of drinking and hard living lined his face. “You’re not finished yet, son.”

  “What would you know about that?”

  “Get up, Roc. There’s a life depending on you.”

  Then the image flashed brighter and disappeared. Roc blinked against the sudden darkness. His elbow collapsed, and he fell back against the bed, breathing and sweating heavily. A sob welled up in his chest, and he choked and coughed. He rolled sideways and grabbed the bottle off the bedside table. After gulping the rest of the whiskey, he fell back against the pillows, feeling the bed jounce and time ripple around him in concentric circles of dreams and visions.

  ***

  Eyes blinked at him, and he jerked open his own, but he could still see them: black eyes staring, leering, glaring. Among the dark orbs were Emma’s, her gaze solemn and calm. And there was another pair: blue and pleading. Rachel.

  A pounding woke him next. The cacophony crashed against his skull. Then the door swung open. The heat of the night poured inside, and Roc stared at the shape of the man in the doorway, blinking and trying to register where he was, what he was doing, what was happening. His limbs felt weighted, as if he couldn’t lift even his little finger. Nor did he care to fight or struggle anymore. Resigned, he tilted his head back, exposing the vulnerable place along his neck as his heart pummeled his rib cage.

  The man stepped quietly into the room and closed the door behind him. Roc had seen many expressions, from joy to frustration and from fear to anger, in those particular eyes, but he’d never seen this particular look before. The eyes tilted downward at the corners. The mouth stretched wide in neither grin nor grimace. “Feeling sorry for yourself?”

  Roc grabbed for the bottle, missed, and grabbed again. “Toasting Ferris.” And Emma. And Rachel. And maybe even his dad, for it had to be his father’s ghost who had visited him earlier. “And all the dead on my account.”

 
“How selfish can you be?”

  Roc blinked slowly, trying to sort through what the priest had said. Finally, he took a long, slow drink of whiskey. “There’s a glass in the bathroom. If you want some, you better hurry.”

  “You’re selfish, Roc. Wallowing here in self-pity.” Roberto lifted a giant-sized chip bag off the table and dropped it.

  Roc didn’t even remember eating chips or buying them. Had he driven to the store? Or were those from his car? Maybe the redheaded teen—what was her name?—had gotten him food. He didn’t know what day it was or how long he’d been drinking. He wasn’t sure which scared him more: not knowing or knowing too much.

  The priest didn’t give him time to answer or defend himself. “Trying to kill yourself with all this drinking, I suppose. And stoking your ego, which is bigger than I would have imagined. To think you have some ability to cause someone else’s death when you didn’t even lift a finger.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t lift a finger.” His words slurred, and he drained the rest of the bottle. “So why bother?”

  “Why bother?” Roberto snatched the bottle from him. “Because lives are at stake! Are you going to let Ferris die in vain?”

  “Is that v-e-i-n?” Roc laughed and saluted the priest with the bottle. Roberto’s image wavered before him, and the starkness of his black-and-white collar blurred into gray.

  “Did Levi call you?”

  “Levi?”

  Roc nodded, which made the room tilt and do a slow roll.

  “Are you talking about Levi Fisher? Akiva’s brother?”

  “Yeah.” Roc forced himself up off the bed, tripped over a boot, and stumbled forward. The room kept moving even when he remained still…or almost still. He couldn’t steady himself. He sat on the edge of the bed and bent forward in case all he’d poured into his body came right back out. He braced his head with his hands as if he could make the spinning stop. “She’s missing.”

  “Who’s missing?” Roberto demanded. “Hannah?”

  Roc shook his head then decided against the maneuver. He slumped back against the headboard. “Her sister. Rachel.”

  “This the one that lost her husband?”

  “Yeah.” His head throbbed, like when his dad had taken a baseball bat to it.

  Suddenly Roberto was moving around the room in fast-forward motion. He plopped a wet rag at the back of Roc’s neck and stuck a warm Diet Coke in his hand. “Drink up. Sober up.”

  “What for? It’s a lost cause.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you’re a lost cause too. If I were feeling nice, I’d let you wallow in self-pity, but right now you have to go find this woman. She’s pregnant, right?”

  Roc took a sip of the warm Coke and bubbles worked their way back up his esophagus.

  “I know what Akiva wants with her,” Roberto said.

  “Yeah, a snack.”

  “No. She’s not dead.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “She’s in danger. And her baby is in more so.”

  Roc tried to follow not only what the priest was saying but his movements around the room. His eyeballs ached and pulsed. “I’ve done all I know to do. I don’t know where to go, where to look.”

  “Maybe you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  Roc sat straight up, tilted, then straightened. Wait, was that why his father had come here? Did Remy know something? Was he trying to lure him back to New Orleans?

  It seemed the only place Roc knew to go.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was like a graveyard for Mardi Gras floats.

  Rachel followed Akiva through a maze of pathways around the float carcasses and buildings, which looked like oversized caskets. Moonlight slanted onto the abandoned or forgotten floats, gleaming off the skeletal frames, the pieces looking like jagged teeth and splintered bones. As they rounded the corner of a warehouse, each of her steps felt as if they could be her last. They’d been on the move for days, drifting, running, hiding. Today had seemed as long as a year, the minutes and hours piling up inside her, weighting her limbs and eyelids.

  After they had left Akiva’s New Orleans apartment, they’d toured the city streets until the sun disappeared beyond the horizon and night settled in. At times, Akiva had raced through yellow and red lights, and at other times puttered through green ones. His fancy car wove in and out between cars and trucks. He’d press the gas pedal, and the car would shoot forward; then he’d slam on his brakes, and Rachel would jolt forward and back until her stomach knotted and shoulders tensed.

  They’d found tiny motels and stayed only briefly, long enough for Rachel to wash and doze, stretched out on a lumpy mattress. Then they repeated each day the drive through and around the city. Akiva’s intensity had frightened her.

  She dared to ask: “Are we lost?”

  “No!”

  “Are we looking for something…for—?”

  He’d slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Just let me think! All right?”

  And so she’d remained quiet and still, not wanting to attract his attention or fury.

  This city’s night was different than Promise’s, where quiet tucked the farms and businesses in around the edges, and the stars shone brightly in the night sky. New Orleans was noisy and intense with neon lights, honking cars, and blaring sirens. The warehouse district now absorbed the city lights and sounds like the scientific oddity she’d heard about back in school—a black hole. She felt alone, helpless, and at the mercy of Akiva, who was not her friend as Jacob once had been.

  When she’d first come to New Orleans with Jacob, Rachel had experienced the raucous celebration of Mardi Gras. Jacob had been enthralled with the booze and drugs so easily bought and consumed right on the streets, but she had been stunned by the freedom the partiers had shown: dancing in the street to the suggestive music, shouting and calling obscenities, unbuttoning shirts, flashing body parts, couples kissing and groping right out in the open.

  Jacob’s eyes had glittered with excitement, and he’d bought her piña coladas until her world tilted, and she’d clung to his arm as she teetered on high heels she’d bought on their journey into the South. He’d pulled her into a darkened alley, where they bumped into another couple, the woman’s bare legs locked around the man’s pale hips. The darkness hid Rachel’s red-hot embarrassment, but Jacob had made some remark, more apology than anything, and pulled her farther into the shadows.

  With her senses whirling from the alcohol and pounding music, she’d tasted the bourbon on Jacob’s tongue. His hands probed and pressed against her as his pelvis ground urgently against hers. Arguments had surfaced in her mind, only to be swept away by the waves of alcohol drowning her questions and hesitations and the stirrings of pleasure his fingers erupted inside her as he’d unzipped her tight-fitting jeans and slid them down her thighs. The warm night air had caressed her bare flesh, and she’d given herself over to the moment and Jacob.

  There, right there in the alley with the smells radiating from the garbage bins, was the first time they’d “done the deed,” which was how Jacob had referred to it. She ignored the way his careless remark nettled her. The fact was she hadn’t been a virgin when he’d taken her in the alleyway, nor had she been his first. Later at the motel, she’d teased him. “You can’t think of a better phrase, Mr. Poet?”

  He scrutinized her for a moment, his gaze sliding over her as if he was unbuttoning her blouse one button at a time. He moved her back toward the bed, until her knees bumped the mattress, and she sat. Formally, he knelt before her. When he’d spoken, he’d used a deeper, reverent tone he utilized when quoting a poem—“‘A sweet disorder in the dress…’”

  He lifted her foot and braced the sole of her high heel against his thigh. “‘Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown into a fine d
istraction—’”

  His finger slipped beneath the strap at her heel and slipped the shoe off her foot. As he quoted more, he drew a line along her calf, making the skin along her arms pucker. “‘An erring lace, which here and there enthrals the crimson stomacher—’”

  He massaged her muscles, cupped her foot in his hands, and bathed her skin with his gentle, tender touch until flutters tickled her lower belly. “‘A cuff neglectful, and thereby ribbands to flow confusedly: A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat—’” Slowly, his hands skimmed upward along her legs, behind her knees, along her. “‘A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me than when art is too precise in every part.’”

  A few minutes later, breathless and languid, she lay beneath him, stretched out on the bed, and whispered in his ear, “That’s a mighty long way to say I want…”

  “To get it on? Or off?” He laughed and rested his head against the curve of her shoulder, his weight blanketing her. “The poem’s called ‘Delight in Disorder.’”

  Her hand slid down his back and rested along his narrow hip. “I like that. It fits.”

  He nudged her with his groin. “It sure does.”

  He had been full of questions. Do you like this? What does this feel like? And boldly, he’d told her what he wanted. But the sex had meant nothing more than two teenagers exploring and experimenting. She hadn’t loved Jacob any more than he had loved her. His heart remained with Hannah, just as hers had no other name etched on it than Josef. While she’d been in a strange place, doing things Josef would not approve of, she hadn’t been the same plain girl from Promise, Pennsylvania. How could she ever have garnered Josef’s attention anyway?

  The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to leave home or Josef. She’d hoped telling him she was going to New Orleans with Jacob Fisher would push him into some sort of a declaration. But it hadn’t. He hadn’t said anything to her at all, and a part of her heart crumpled. She’d already told Jacob she’d go, so she went.