crystallized.
Now when he looked into the angry face of the mayor, he wondered what secret they had shared before he left Main-field. He felt as if a noose were tightening around his neck. Each day brought only more questions and suspicions about who he was. He found himself pulling Linese closer to his body. He wanted her near him so he could protect her. But from whom? Himself?
Chapter Four
C hase limped off the porch and into the hot dusky evening. The mayor’s words rattled around inside his head like a stone in an empty bucket. His temples throbbed and his stomach twisted from trying to bring forth hard facts, when nothing but smoke and doubt filled his mind.
The Texas thicket was alive with night sounds. Chase found his eyes traveling toward an overgrown path that disappeared into the tangled overgrown foliage. Something about the almost invisible path beckoned to him. He walked to it and stared while a strange feeling of déjà vu sluiced over him. Without knowing quite why, he pushed his way through the plants and went onward, stopping occasionally to let his instinct take him on a journey his mind had forgotten but his gut still knew. He had to move branches out of his way, yet some forgotten part of his brain knew that a path did indeed lie beneath the thick growth, whether he could see it or not.
The verdant foliage trapped the heat beneath a canopy of leaves. Chase unbuttoned his shirt and pulled the long tail from his trousers in the hope it would be cooler. The farther he went into the unknown thicket, the darker the night became, but still some feral intuition showed him the way. He neither stumbled nor faltered while he pushed on.
He stopped and looked back. The glow from Cordel-lane’s lamps was far behind him now. He was alone, with vague sensations of having traveled the path before.
The pain radiating from his hip forced him to halt sometime later. Flying insects fed on every exposed inch of his skin, but it was too sticky to consider rebuttoning the shirt that hung open and loose. He slapped a mosquito on his neck and saw a flicker of light through hanging vines clinging to the willow and hickory.
“Will-o’-the-wisp,” he muttered, but he found himself watching the uneven trail of illumination dancing through the trees with keen interest. Some buried part of him knew those flickering lights were his destination and not some mystical trick of swamp gas or flitting winged critter.
Chase walked, slower and more deliberately now, toward the source of the flame. When he was no more than a stone’s toss away, he saw a group of men in ribald discussion. They turned and recognition flooded him, along with a large measure of dread.
“It’s about time, Chase, we were beginning to think you weren’t going to show up,” The mayor’s voice boomed out. “But I was pretty sure you would after our talk today.”
Chase stepped into the circle of orange torchlight and found himself in the company of the same men who had come to see him at the Gazette. He now realized what the man’s exaggerated wink signified. The splintered recollection he had at the Gazette, of the mayor’s face in the same eerie glow of light, came back to haunt Chase.
He had met with them here—before he went to war.
The certainty of that past deed sent chills trailing down Chase’s spine. He knew if he did not tread carefully these men would learn his secret.
“I wasn’t sure I remembered how to get here.” Chase told them a sliver of truth and watched their reactions.
“Sure, Chase, whatever you say.” The mayor chuckled at what he thought was a joke. “Now tell us what you’re up to.”
Chase focused on the faces of the men. A dim memory appeared in his mind. For a brief flash, he saw them as he had seen the mayor in his forgotten past. And as he remembered them, a feeling of shame wended through him. The men were dark spectres of past sins. A sick feeling of guilt, or something much like it, twined its way
Chelsea Roy
Sax Rohmer
Pamela Des Barres
Roger MacBride Allen
Vince Flynn
David W. Menefee, Carol Dunitz
John Daulton
Susan Elia MacNeal
A. G. Henley
Eliza Gayle