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      Find the beauty, Emily would say.

      Now too dark to see, Aiyana could still hear. Ignoring the scurrying of a small creature on her right, she filtered the sounds until she found ones that soothed.

      A breeze whispered through the trees above her, singing songs of longing. Nearby, a stream laughed sweetly, trickling over rocks. She closed her eyes and let the breeze and running water rock her into a gentle doze, but when she slept, she dreamed about things sneaking up on her, about hands pawing at her, about rocks burying her.

      A great clap of thunder startled her awake. Darkness shrouded the land. Nothing stirred. How long had she slept? It felt like the middle of the night.

      The heavens opened. It started to rain hard and fast.

      * * *

      PERSISTENT KNOCKING ROUSED Cody Jordan from a troubled sleep. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Home, but not home.

      Where was he?

      Oh, yeah. Back in Accord, in his childhood bedroom, not in his big house in LA. At thirty, he was back where he’d started. Talk about eating humble pie.

      Thoughts of yesterday’s and last night’s marathon sixteen hours on the road from LA to Colorado—a brutal drive—swirled in. Loneliest drive of my life.

      Mile after endless mile through the darkness had echoed the bankrupt emptiness of his life.

      Someone pounded on the front door downstairs. Ah. That’s what had awakened him.

      He reached for the jeans he’d dropped on the floor last night and hauled his sorry bag of bones out of bed. A full-body stretch worked out some of the kinks.

      Swift footsteps alerted him to his parents rushing down the stairs.

      He stumbled to his old desk, took a moment to touch the small blue urn and said a brief prayer. He turned away before he broke down.

      In the bathroom he splashed cold water onto his face. Too bad he couldn’t wash away the past. Strong coffee and a hot shower might help.

      Heading downstairs to find out what was going on, he noticed Mom and Dad were already at the door letting someone in.

      Hearing him on the stairs behind them, they turned and glanced up.

      “Cody!” his mom exclaimed, rushing to him with a rib-crushing hug. “You came home. I’m so glad.”

      He suffered the hug stiffly. He no longer took affection. He no longer gave it.

      His mom released him by increments. He disliked how her eyes probed, how she needed to see into his soul. No. That was open to no one but him. Even then, most days it was closed off. Better that way.

      “When did you get in?” she asked, her expression sober and loving.

      “About two this morning.” His tone forbade further questioning. Gently, he extracted himself from her hands on his arms and avoided her penetrating gaze. He knew what she saw when she studied him, a son too old and worn-out for his years.

      “What’s up?” He directed the question to Salem Pearce, who stood in the foyer.

      Salem lived in Accord. He and Dad were good friends. Dad had given Salem his first job as a teenager, probably thirty years ago.

      Where was the time going? He glanced at his parents. Laura Cameron and Nick Jordan were institutions in the town of Accord, and well respected. Mom was in her early seventies. Had Dad turned seventy, too? Cody couldn’t remember.

      He directed his attention to Salem and the open door. Outside, the rain he’d driven through last night had abated, but a gray curtain of cloud absorbed light. He glanced at the clock on the mantel in the living room. Six thirty and it still looked like nighttime.

      “What are you doing out here this far from town at the crack of dawn?” Cody’s voice came out morning rough.

      The frown and the anxiety on Salem’s face set Cody’s alarms into overdrive. Salem was normally as serene as an empty pond, but Cody knew still waters could roil beneath the surface with this guy. Once Salem got upset, it ran deep and strong, slow to heat up but even slower to cool down.

      “It’s Aiyana.”

      Salem’s eldest daughter. Cody hadn’t heard that name in a long time.

      Images flashed of hair as dark as a raven’s wing and clear, tanned skin taut over high cheekbones. Even now, his fingers had an imprint of desire, an itchiness to run through hair that had hung straight and thick to her waist.

      He had never acted on his desire. She’d been too young. But they had meant something to each other once upon a time. A lifetime ago.

      “She’s missing,” Salem said.

      Cody had been leaning against the newel post with his arms folded across his chest, flushes of memories warming his raw soul, but straightened away at Salem’s words, his hands falling to his sides.

      “Missing?”

      Don’t worry, he told himself to defuse his burgeoning fear, she’s no longer a vulnerable teenager. She’s a grown woman who can take care of herself. Yeah? Tell that to her dad who looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

      “What do you mean, missing? Since when?”

      Salem rubbed the back of his neck. “Since yesterday. She went hiking in Paintbrush State Park, but didn’t come home last night.”

      Cody stilled. His first instinct, in the heat of panic, was to run out the door to find her. A cooler head had to prevail. They needed to organize and be smart.

      Even so, a witchy dread whispered through him.

      Cody’s mom directed them toward the kitchen. She turned on the coffeepot.

      “Sit,” Cody’s dad ordered Salem.

      “Thanks, Nick.” Salem fell into a chair he edged away from the kitchen table.

      “You’ll have something warm before you go back out there,” Nick said. “I’m assuming you’ve already been.”

      Salem’s limp hands hung between his spread knees. “Yeah. When she didn’t return last night we went to the park after dark.”

      Laura turned on the pendant lamp hanging over the table, highlighting how haggard Salem looked. A handsome man with warm Native American skin, at the moment he looked like death warmed over.

      Parched, Cody poured himself a glass of water straight from the tap and gulped it down. It tasted pure and clear.

      In LA, he’d filtered his water twice, once from the faucet and again with a Brita. Here, even without filtering, the water tasted fine. Better than fine.

      He’d missed the simple pleasure of purity, of clean air and uncomplicated food.

      LA appealed to all kinds of people, but it had never been Cody’s СКАЧАТЬ