Читать книгу When You Call My Name - Sharon Sala - Страница 7

The scream came without warning. Right in the middle of a dream he could no longer remember. Wyatt sat straight up in bed, his instinct for survival working overtime as he imagined Toni or the baby in dire need of help. In seconds, he was pulling on a pair of jeans and running in an all-out sprint as he flew out of the door.

He slid to a stop in the hallway outside the baby’s room and then looked inside. Nothing was amiss. He sighed with relief at the sight of the toddler asleep on her tummy with her blanket clutched tightly in one fist. She was fine, so Toni hadn’t screamed about her. That meant…

Fearing the worst, he crept farther down the hall, praying that he wouldn’t surprise a burglar in the act of murder, and wondering why on earth Lane Monday wasn’t raising all kinds of hell in response to his wife’s screams.

More than a year ago, Lane had taken down a man the size of a mountain to save his sister’s life. He couldn’t imagine Lane letting someone sneak up on them and do his family harm. Yet in Wyatt’s mind, he knew that whatever had made Toni scream couldn’t have been good.

The door was ajar so Lane or Toni could hear the baby if she cried. Wyatt pushed it aside and looked in. Lane was flat on his back and sound asleep, with Toni held gently, but firmly, within the shelter of one arm. Even from here, Wyatt could hear the soft, even sounds of their breathing.

“Thank God,” he muttered, and eased out of their room the same way he’d come in, trying to convince himself that he’d been dreaming. But it sounded so real.

He made his way through the house, careful not to step on the boards that creaked, and headed for the kitchen to get a drink. He wasn’t particularly thirsty, but at the moment, crawling back in that bed did not hold much interest. His heart was still pounding as he took a glass from the cabinet and ran water in the sink, letting it cool in the pipes before filling a glass.

The water tasted good going down, and panic was subsiding. If he stretched the facts, he could convince himself that his heart rate was almost back to normal. It was just a bad dream. That was all. Just a bad dream.

Wyatt.

“What?”

He spun toward the doorway, expecting Toni to be standing there with a worried expression on her face. There was nothing but a reflection of the outside security light glancing off the living room window and onto the floor.

Wyatt…Wyatt Hatfield.

His stomach muscles clenched, and he took a deep breath. “Jesus Christ.”

Help me.

He started to shake. “This isn’t happening.”

God…Oh, God…help. I need help.

He slammed the glass onto the cabinet and stalked out of the kitchen and onto the back porch, inhaling one after the other of deep, lung-chilling breaths of cool night air. When he could think without wanting to throw up, he sat down on the steps with a thump and buried his face in his hands, then instantly yanked them off his face, unable to believe what he’d felt.

His hands were cold…and they were wet. He lifted his fingers to his cheeks and traced the tracks of his tears.

“I’m crying? For God’s sake, I’m crying? What’s wrong with me? I don’t cry, and when I do, I will sure as hell need a reason.”

But anger could not replace the overwhelming sense of despair that was seeping into his system. He felt weak and drained, hopeless and helpless. The last time he’d felt this down had been the day he’d regained consciousness in a Kentucky hospital and seen the vague image of his sister’s face hovering somewhere above his bed.

He remembered thinking that he’d known his sister was an angel to have put up with so many brothers all of her life, but he’d never imagined that all angels in heaven looked like her. It was the next day before he realized that he hadn’t died, and by that time, worrying about the faces of angels had become secondary to the mind-bending pain that had come to stay.

Out of the silence of the night, a dog suddenly bugled in a hollow somewhere below Chaney Creek. The sound was familiar. He shuddered, trying to relax as his nerves began to settle. This was something to which he could relate. Someone was running hounds. Whether it was raccoon, bobcat or something else that they hunted, it rarely mattered. To the hunters, the dogs and the hunt were what counted.

He listened, remembering days far in his past when he and his brothers had done the same, nights when they’d sat around a campfire swapping lies that sounded good in the dark, drinking coffee made in a pot that they wouldn’t have fed the pigs out of in the light of day and listening to their hounds running far and wide across the hills and in the deep valleys.

He sighed, then dropped his head in his hands, wishing for simpler times, saner times. He wondered where he’d gone wrong. He’d married Shirley full of good intent, then screwed up her life, as well as his own.

And now this!

He didn’t know what to think. He’d survived a wreck that should have killed him. But if it had messed with his head in a way they hadn’t expected, then making a new life for himself had suddenly become more complicated than he’d planned.

Help. I need help.

He lifted his head, like an animal sniffing the air. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed to dark, gleaming slits. This time, he knew he wasn’t dreaming. He was wide-awake and barefoot on his sister’s back porch. And he knew what he heard. The voice was inside his head. He shivered, then shifted his gaze, looking out at the darkness, listening…waiting.

When the first weak rays of sunlight changed the sky from black to baby blue, Wyatt got to his feet and walked into the house. It had taken all night, and more soul-searching than he’d realized he had in him, but he knew what he had to do.

Somewhere down the hall, Joy babbled, and Toni laughed. Lane smiled to himself at the sound, buttoning his shirt on his way to the kitchen to start the coffee. He walked in just in time to see Wyatt closing the back door.

“Up kinda early, aren’t you, buddy?” Lane asked, and then froze at the expression on Wyatt’s face, grabbing him by the arm. “What’s wrong?”

Wyatt tried to explain, but it just wouldn’t come. “I need to borrow one of your cars.”

Lane headed for the coffeepot, giving himself time to absorb the unexpected request, and wondering about the intensity of Wyatt’s voice. Yet refusing him was not a consideration.

“It’s yours,” he said.

Measuring his words, along with coffee and water, Lane turned on the coffeemaker before taking Wyatt to task. “Mind telling me where you’re going so early in the morning? This isn’t exactly Memphis, and to my knowledge there’s no McDonald’s on the next corner cooking up sausage biscuits.”

“I’ve got to go,” Wyatt repeated. “Someone needs me.”

Lane’s posture went from easy to erect. “Why didn’t you say so? I’ll help.”

Wyatt shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. Hell, for that matter, I don’t understand. All I know is, last night while I was wide-awake and watching dark turn to day, someone kept calling my name.”

The oddity of the remark was not lost on Lane, but trespassing on another man’s business was not his way.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Lane asked.

Wyatt eyed his brother-in-law, wondering if he would understand what he was about to say.

“I think, back to where it all started,” Wyatt said quietly, remembering the woman outside of the hospital and the way he’d heard her voice…and she, his. He’d ignored it then. He couldn’t ignore it any longer.

“Back to Kentucky?” Lane asked, unable to keep surprise out of his voice.

Wyatt nodded.

Wisely, Lane stifled the rest of his concerns. While he didn’t understand what Wyatt was trying to say, he trusted the man implicitly. He swung a wide hand across his shoulder and thumped him lightly on the back.

“Then let’s get you packed,” Lane said. “It’s an all-day drive.”

Wyatt had been on this road before. Last winter. And with no destination in mind. This time, he knew where he was going. He even knew why. What he didn’t understand was the pull that drew him down the road. The closer he came to the great Pine Mountain, the more certain he became that he was on the right track. He drove relentlessly, stopping only when necessary, compelled to reach Larner’s Mill before nightfall. He couldn’t get past the increasing panic he felt, or the fact that he was listening for a voice that had suddenly gone silent.

The sun was halfway between zenith and horizon when he pulled into Larner’s Mill, but the relief he imagined he would feel was not there. In fact, the urgency of his quest seemed to have taken on darker overtones. An unsettled feeling had taken root in his belly, and try as he might, there was no rational explanation for the emotion, other than the uncertainty of his quest.

When he pulled into the parking lot of the small community hospital and got out, he found himself wanting to run. But to where? Instead, he took a deep breath and entered through the emergency room doors.

A nurse glanced up from a desk near the door. “May I help you, sir?”

“I want to talk to one of your doctors,” Wyatt said.

She slipped a fresh page on a clipboard and held a pen poised above the lines.

“Your name?” she asked.

“Wyatt Hatfield,” he said.

“And what are your symptoms?”

“I’m not sick. But I was here before. Last winter, in fact. I had a car wreck during a blizzard. I was…”

“I remember you,” she cried, and jumped to her feet. “Dr. Steading was your doctor. You were the talk of the hospital for some time.”

“Why was that?” Wyatt asked.

“You know,” she said. “About how lucky you were to have had that donor show up when she did. With such a rare blood type, and the blizzard and all, there was no way we could access the blood banks in the bigger cities as we normally might have done.”

The expression on Wyatt’s face stilled as he absorbed the nurse’s unwitting revelation.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. I am one lucky man.” He gave her a smile he didn’t feel. “So, could I talk to Dr. Steading? There are some things about the accident that I don’t remember. I thought maybe he could give me some help.”

“I’ll see,” she said, and shortly thereafter, Wyatt found himself on the way through the corridors to an office in the other wing. When he saw the name on the door, his pulse accelerated. He knocked and then entered.

“Dr. Steading?”

Amos Steading arched one bushy eyebrow, and then stood and reached over his desk, his hand outstretched.

“You, sir, look a damn sight healthier than the last time I saw you,” he said, his gravelly voice booming within the small confines of the office.

Wyatt caught the handshake and grinned. “I suppose I feel better, too,” he said.

Steading frowned. “Suppose?”

Wyatt took the chair offered him, and tried not to show his uneasiness, but it seemed it was impossible to hide anything, including an emotion, from the grizzled veteran.

Steading persisted. “So, did you come all this way just to shake my hand, or are you going to spit it out?”

Wyatt took a deep breath, and then started talking.

“I know I was in serious condition when I was brought in here,” he said.

“No,” Steading interrupted. “You were dying, boy.”

Wyatt paled, but persisted. “The reason I came is…I need to know if, in your opinion, I could have suffered any residual brain damage.”

Steading frowned. That was the last thing he expected to hear this man say. His eyes were clear and bright, his manner straightforward, and he’d walked into his office like a man with a purpose. None of this hinted at any sort of mental disability.

“Why?” Steading asked. “Are you suffering memory loss, or…”

Wyatt shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”

“So…?”

“So, I want to know what exactly happened to my head,” Wyatt growled.

“You had one hell of a concussion. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d gone into a coma.”

Wyatt started to relax. Maybe this would explain what he thought he’d heard. Maybe his head was still lost in some sort of fugue.

“But you didn’t,” Steading added. “After surgery, you pretty much sailed through recovery. There’s a lot to be said for a young, healthy body.”

“Damn,” Wyatt muttered beneath his breath. One theory shot to hell.

This time, both of Steading’s eyebrows arched. “You’re disappointed?”

Wyatt shrugged. “It would have explained a lot.”

“Like what?” Steading persisted.

The last thing he intended to admit, especially to a doctor, was that he was hearing voices. They’d lock him up in a New York minute. He changed the subject.

“I understand that I was given transfusions.”

“Transfusion,” Steading corrected. “And damned lucky to have that one. Whole blood made the difference. I’m good, but I don’t think I could have pulled you through surgery without it, and that’s the gospel truth.”

“I’d like to thank the person who cared enough to come out in such a storm. If it wouldn’t be against hospital policy, could you give me a name?”

Amos Steading’s face fell. He rocked backward in his chair, and gazed at a corner of the ceiling, trying to find the right way to say the words.

“If that’s a problem,” Wyatt said, “I’ll understand. It’s just that I’m trying to make sense of some things in my life, and I thought that retracing my steps through that night might help.”

“It isn’t that,” Steading finally said. “It’s just that you’re about a day too late.”

Wyatt straightened. An inner warning was going off that told him he wasn’t going to like this.

“That young woman…the one who gave you blood…she, along with her family, died sometime last night. I heard about it when I came in to work this morning.”

Oh, God! Oh, no! Was that what I heard…the sound of someone crying out for help?

Wyatt’s voice broke, and he had to clear his throat to get out the words. “How did it happen? Was it a car accident?”

“No, a fire at the home.”

Wyatt shuddered, trying not to think of the horror of burning alive.

“Yes, and a real shame, too, what with her and her brother so young and all. That night when the EMT dragged her into the room where I was working on you, I remember thinking she was just a kid. Wasn’t any bigger than a minute, and all that white blond hair and those big blue eyes, it’s no wonder I misjudged her age.”

It was the description that caught Wyatt’s attention. He’d seen a woman who looked like that. A woman with hair like angel’s wings, whom he’d mistaken for a girl until an errant wind had moved her coat, revealing a womanly figure.

He blanched, and covered his face in his hands. There was something else about that woman that had been unique, and only Wyatt was privy to the fact.

Somehow, when his guard had been down and his defenses weak, she’d insinuated herself within his thoughts. He didn’t know how it had happened, but after what he’d just heard, he was firmly convinced that she’d done it again last night, presumably at the point of her death.

“My God,” he muttered. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows upon his knees and stared at a pattern on the carpet until the colors all ran together.

“Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” Steading said. “Are you all right?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I didn’t really know her. It was her kindness that I wanted to acknowledge. It’s a damn shame I came too late.” And then he had a thought. “I’d like to see. Where she lived, I mean. Do you know?”

“Nope, I can’t say that I do. But you could ask at the police department. Anders Conway could tell you.”

Wyatt stood. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, Dr. Steading. Thanks for your help.”

Steading shrugged.

Wyatt was at the door, when he paused and then turned. “Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“What was her name?”

“Dixon. Glory Dixon.”

A twist of pain spiked, and then centered in the region of Wyatt’s heart. “Glory,” he repeated, more to himself than to the doctor, then closed the door behind him.

“Damn,” Amos muttered. “In fact…damn it all to hell.”

Wyatt navigated the winding road with absentminded skill. He’d gone over the side of one Kentucky mountain. It was enough. Remembering the directions he’d been given, he kept a sharp watch for a twisted pine, aware that he was to turn left just beyond it. As he rounded a bend, the last rays of the setting sun suddenly spiked through a cloud and the waning light hit the top of a tree. Wyatt eased off the gas. It was the pine. He began looking for the road, and sure enough, a few yards beyond, a narrow, one-laned dirt road took a sharp turn to the left. Wyatt followed it to its destination.

The clearing came without warning. One minute the road was shadowed and treelined, and then suddenly he was braking to a sliding halt as his fingers tightened upon the steering wheel, and his breath came in short, painful gasps.

“Dear God.”

There was little else to say as he got out of the car and walked toward the blackened timbers. Yellow police tape was tied from tree to tree and then from fence post to the bumper of what was left of a pickup truck—a vivid reminder that death had occurred here.

The fact that the shell of a washing machine and dryer still stood, while a house was gone, seemed obscene, too vivid a reminder of how frail human life truly was. Smoke continued to rise from several locations as cross beams and a stack of something no longer identifiable smoldered. An unnatural heat lingered in the cooler evening air.

Wyatt stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the weight of despair that hung over the area. Last night he’d heard a cry for help and had been unable to respond, and yet when he’d needed help most, she had come. The burden of his guilt was almost more than he could bear.

“Ah, God, Glory Dixon. It was you, wasn’t it? I am so, so sorry. If I had known, I would have helped.”

“Do you swear?”

Wyatt spun. This time the voice he just heard had been behind him, not in his head. And when a young woman walked out of the trees, he thought he was seeing a ghost. It was her! The woman from the street!

He looked over his shoulder at the ruins, and then back at her, unable to believe his own eyes. Suddenly, a puppy darted out of the woods behind her and began pouncing around her feet. Wyatt stared. He’d never heard of a ghost with a dog.

He stood his ground, fighting the urge to run. “Are you real?”

Glory sighed, and Wyatt imagined he felt the air stir from her breath. And then she was standing before him, and he looked down and got lost in a silver-blue gaze. An errant breeze lifted the hair from her neck and shoulders, and for a moment, it seemed to float on the air like wings. Once again, Wyatt was reminded of angels.

“Why did you come?” Glory whispered. “How did you know?”

The sound of her voice broke the spell, and Wyatt blinked, trying to regain a true focus on the world around him. Unable to believe his eyes, he grasped a portion of her hair between his fingers. Although it was silken in texture, there was nothing unearthly about it.

“I heard you call my name,” he muttered, as he watched the hair curl around his finger.

Glory gasped, startled by what he’d revealed, and stepped back. Dear God, did I give him more than my blood? Have I given away part of myself?

Then drawn by the horror she couldn’t ignore, her gaze shifted to the pile of blackened timbers, and without warning, tears pooled and then tracked down her cheeks in silent misery. Wyatt groaned and opened his arms, and to his surprise, she walked into his embrace with no hesitation.

In his mind, holding her was like trying to hold sunshine. She was light, fragile, and seemed to sway within his arms with every beat of his heart. Her shoulders shook with grief, and yet her sobs were silent, as if the agony just wouldn’t let go.

“I’m so sorry about your family,” Wyatt said softly, and closed the gap between his hands until she stood locked firmly within his grasp. “But everyone’s going to be so happy to learn that you survived. As soon as you’re able, I’ll take you back to town.”

She went limp, and for a moment, he thought she was going to faint. Instead, it seemed more of a physical retreat. Sensing her uneasiness, he immediately turned her loose.

“I can’t go back. Not yet,” Glory said quietly.

Wyatt couldn’t hide his surprise. “Why ever not?”

“Because this wasn’t an accident. Because someone tried to kill me, and my daddy and brother suffered for it.”

Before he thought, Wyatt had her by the arms. “What the hell do you mean, ‘someone tried to kill me’? Are you saying that this fire was set?”

“At first it wasn’t a fire, it was an explosion. The fire came afterward.”

Unable to look at him, she turned away. He was bound to doubt. Everyone always did.

“Well, hell,” Wyatt muttered. “Then you need to tell the police chief. He’ll know what to do.”

Glory spun, and for the first time since she’d walked out of the woods, Wyatt saw a light in her eyes and heard fire in her voice.

“No! You don’t understand! They’ll come tomorrow…or the next day…to go through the ruins. When they do, they’re only going to find two bodies, not three. And then whoever it was that did this will try again. I need time to try and figure out what to do.”

Wyatt frowned. “What do you mean, whoever did this? I thought you knew.”

She shook her head.

“Then how do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

Glory lifted her chin, silencing his argument with a piercing look he couldn’t ignore.

“I see things. Sometimes I know things before they happen, sometimes I see them happen. But however my knowledge comes…I know what I know.”

Wyatt took a deep breath. He knew for a fact that he’d been hearing some things of his own. Right now, it wasn’t in him to doubt that she might…just might…be able to do more than hear. What if she could see? What if she was for real?

“Are you telling me that you’re psychic?”

“Some people call it that.”

Wyatt went quiet as he considered the ramifications of her admission.

“Why did you come to the hospital to help me?”

Her chin trembled, but her words were sure. “I saw your accident as it happened. I heard your cry for help…and because I could come, I did.”

Daring the risk of rejection, Wyatt reached out and cupped her face with his hand. To his joy, she withstood his familiarity, in fact, even seemed to take strength from the comfort.

“How can I thank you, Glory Dixon?”

“By not giving me away. By helping me stay alive until I can figure out why…and who…and…”

“It’s done. Tell me what to do first.”

Again, she swayed on her feet. Wyatt reached out, but she pushed him away. Her gaze searched the boundary of trees around the rubble, constantly on the lookout for a hidden menace. Fear that she would be found before it was time was a constant companion.

“You need to hide your car. Maybe drive it around behind the barn, out in the pasture.”

“Where are you…uh…?”

“Hiding?”

He nodded.

“When you’ve parked your car, I’ll show you, but we need to hurry. There’ll be no moon tonight, and the woods are dense and dark.”

Wyatt headed for his car, and as he followed her directions through the narrow lanes, wondered what on earth he’d let himself in for. Yet as the beam of his headlights caught and then held on the beauty of her face and the pain he saw hidden in her eyes, he knew he didn’t give a damn. She’d helped him. The least he could do was repay the debt.

A few minutes later, they walked away from the site, following what was left of a road overgrown with bushes and weeds. The air was already damp. Dew was heavy on the grass, blotching the legs of their jeans and seeping into the soles of their shoes. The bag Wyatt was carrying kept getting caught on low-hanging limbs, but Glory seemed to pass through the brush without leaving a trace. It would seem that her fragile, delicate appearance was deceiving. He suspected that she moved through life as she did through these trees—with purpose.

The pup ran between their legs, barking once from the delight of just being alive. He ran with his nose to the ground and his long, puppy ears flopping, yet a single word from Glory and he hushed.

Something silent and dark came out of a tree overhead and sailed across their line of vision. Instinctively, Glory threw up her hands and gasped. Wyatt caught her as she started to run.

“I think it was an owl,” he said gently, and held her until she had calmed.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually so jumpy. It’s just that…” Tears were thick in her voice as she pushed herself out of his arms and resumed their trek.

Visibility was nearly zero, yet Glory moved with a sure sense of direction and Wyatt followed without question. Night creatures hid as the pair walked past, then scurried back into their holes, suddenly unsure of their world. Wyatt heard the rustling in the deep, thick grass, and even though he knew what it was that he heard, he couldn’t prevent a shiver of anxiety. This was a far cry from the safety and comfort of the Tennessee home where he’d been recuperating. It reminded him too much of secret maneuvers he’d been on in places he’d rather forget.

He clutched at the bag over his shoulder and caught himself wishing it was a gun in his hands, and not a duffel bag. Twice as they walked, Glory paused, listening carefully to the sounds of the woods through which they walked, judging what she heard against what she knew should be there. After a time, she would resume the trek without looking back, trusting that because Wyatt had come, he would still follow.

Just when he was wondering if they would walk all night, they entered a clearing. Again Glory paused, this time clutching the sleeve of his shirt as she stared through the darkness, searching for something that would feel out of place.

The instinct that had carried Wyatt safely through several tours of duty told him that all was well.

“It’s okay,” he said, and this time he took her by the hand and led the way toward the cabin on the other side of the yard.

The night could not disguise the humble quality of the tiny abode. It was no more than four walls and a slanted, shingle roof, a rock chimney that angled up from the corner of the roof, with two narrow windows at the front of the cabin that stared back at them like a pair of dark, accusing eyes.

Glory shivered apprehensively, then slipped the key from her jeans. As her fingers closed around it, she was thankful that her daddy had kept this one hidden at the cabin, or she would have been unable to get inside the night before.

Wyatt listened to the woods around them as she worked the lock, and when the door swung open with a slight, warning squeak, she took his hand and led him through with an odd little welcome.

“We’re home,” she said.

As he followed her inside, he had the oddest sensation that what she said was true.