A Gift of Thought

  A GIFT OF THOUGHT

  By Sarah Wynde

  Copyright Notice

  A Gift of Thought is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 Wendy Sharp

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph: © Sophieso | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

  Cover design: Wendy Sharp

  Visit me on the web at http://sarahwynde.blogspot.com/

  Dedication

  To our ghosts

  Linda Labar Sharp

  November 24, 1942 – August 6, 2011

  Malcolm Ferrier

  December 23, 1930 – September 6, 2011

  Sharon Mirr

  July 28, 1954 – November 23, 2011

  Michelle Saunders-Zurn

  April 4, 1967 – February 5, 2012

  We miss you

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Author Note

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  The airport was already decorated for Christmas.

  If Dillon had still been alive, he would have said something wry and sarcastic about the materialism of contemporary American society, about Christmas as an excuse to sell stuff, about cheap glitter being no way to celebrate light into darkness.

  As it was, he kind of liked it.

  He wished he knew what he was doing in the Orlando Airport on the day after Thanksgiving, though. The crowds were crazy. The lines wound back and forth, back and forth, through the huge open space with the gigantic screen of arriving and departing flights. As a ghost, Dillon didn’t have to worry about standing in line, of course, but he was following his father, Lucas, and he didn’t want to lose him in the chaos.

  For the first few years of his afterlife, Dillon had been trapped in the place he died: the backseat of a black Ford Taurus. He supposed he was lucky. At least he hadn’t died in a car accident. Eternity stuck in a smashed-up wreck sitting in a junkyard wouldn’t be fun.

  Instead, he’d died while hiding out in the car trying to jumpstart a psychic gift. Most of his family had one—his grandpa and his Aunt Nat could see the future, his dad could read minds, his Uncle Zane could find anything—and he’d been tired of waiting for his own to show up. He’d thought the prescription pills he’d stolen would make him hallucinate. Instead they killed him. He’d had plenty of time to think about what a stupid way it was to go.

  Last winter, though, he’d met a woman, Akira, who could see and talk to ghosts. She’d introduced him to some other ghosts, including Rose, who was pretty much his best friend now. Akira had also, although it was sort of an accident, broken his tie to his car. He was no longer trapped. He could go anywhere, do anything.

  He was a little nervous about it.

  Oh, sure, he was a ghost, so it wasn’t like anything really bad could happen. He couldn’t get cold or wet or hungry. And he was already dead, so nothing could kill him. But he’d seen that there were dangers for ghosts in the world, and Akira had told him stories. He just didn’t know whether he’d recognize trouble when he saw it.

  Plus, what if he got lost? What if he got stuck somewhere and couldn’t get home again? What if he ran out of energy and faded away?

  Being dead had done nothing to make Dillon less anxious.

  Still, he was determined. Life—or afterlife—had to have more to offer than watching television with Rose or hanging out at Akira’s lab while she worked. Despite all that might go wrong, Dillon was going to travel with his father for a while.

  Okay, so maybe traveling with your father didn’t sound ambitious.

  But as fathers went, Lucas was the mysterious type. Dillon didn’t really know him. He’d been raised by his grandparents, and for most of his life Lucas had been a “swoop in for an action-packed weekend before disappearing again” father.

  Not that Dillon was complaining. He hadn’t even seen his mom since he was a month old. She’d dropped him off at his grandparents so they could babysit and never came back. Dillon didn’t really blame her for leaving. She’d been awfully young, his dad even younger. He didn’t like to think about it, but when Dillon died, he’d already been older than his dad was when Dillon was born.

  A wide-eyed little boy in Mickey Mouse ears was staring at him. Dillon paused and grinned at the perplexed look on the boy’s face, wondering if the boy could actually see him. Then he realized that Lucas had gotten several people away and hurried after him.

  It wouldn’t be a big deal if he got stuck at the airport, he told himself. His home town, Tassamara, was hours away by car, so it’d be a long walk. But, hey, he had nothing but time. Still, he’d rather not lose his dad quite so early in their trip.

  He wondered if he should send his dad a text to ask where they were going.

  That was the other thing Akira had done for him. She’d helped him find a way to cope with the worst part of being a ghost: not being able to communicate with anyone. After much practice and many destroyed electronic devices—his Aunt Grace bought them in bulk when she learned what he was trying to do—Dillon had succeeded in manipulating his own ghostly energy to send text messages.

  It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Grace found stories of ghosts who tried to communicate using radio waves. Supposedly someone had even invented a device that let spirits combine audio clips to send messages, although it didn’t seem to work very well. Akira had a theory that the digital signals used by cell phones, computers, and e-readers required less power and were easier to create than audio transmissions, but Dillon didn’t care how it worked as long as it did.

  Unfortunately, long conversations were out. Dillon could send a few words, even sentences, but his energy was limited enough that he hadn’t bothered to ask where they were going that morning. Anywhere would be more interesting than his car.

  Still, he was surprised to wind up in a public airport. His dad traveled a lot but not usually on commercial flights. The family company, General Directions, owned several planes: one fancy corporate jet that could cross oceans and a few smaller private planes for shorter hops. What was wrong with using one of them?

  Lucas swung his bag onto the conveyor belt, and placed the contents of his pockets into a plastic bin. In the requisite security ritual, he slipped out of his shoes, and dropped them and the coat he was carrying into another bin. Pacing forward barefoot, he stepped through the gate of the metal detector, the bored TSA agent barely registering his presence. But as Dillon followed him, the detector started beeping wildly.

  Oops.

  The guard waved Lucas back while Dillon waited on the other side of the detector. If Akira had been here, she might have explained what happened scientifically, but it looked like his ghostly electromagnetic field energy messed with the metal detector. Next time, he’d walk around.

  Lucas walked through the detector again, his expression revealing nothing of his thoughts. Dillon wondered whether his dad realized what had happened and that Dillon had set off the machine. This time the detector was silent.

  Too silent, Dillon
realized, as the guard frowned and gestured to another uniformed man. While the second security officer ran the handheld wand over Lucas’s clothes, the first held out a hand for his travel documents.

  Lucas passed them over without comment, then smiled and said to the guard in front of him, “Busy day today. You guys should get holiday pay.”

  “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” said the guard, finishing with his scan and straightening up.

  He stepped back and away, and glanced at the first guard who shrugged and handed Lucas’s paperwork back with a casual, “Here you go, Mr. Murray. Have a safe flight.”

  Murray?

  Lucas’s last name was Latimer, just like Dillon’s.

  As they walked away from the security checkpoint and boarded the monorail that would take them to the gate, Dillon’s mind was racing. Why was his father traveling under a fake name?

  What the hell was going on?

  *****

  Guarding Rachel Chesney was a pain in the ass.

  Sylvie kept her face impassive, her hands tucked behind her back, while she listened to Rachel’s father rant. To keep her mind occupied, she considered exit strategies. The room only had one door to an outside hallway: could she get her charge out of one of the two tall windows if she had to?

  Probably not while Rachel was puking, she admitted to herself. Not without a climbing harness and much more time than they’d have if armed intruders were banging on the door.

  So in the absence of a quick escape, how would she defend the space? The suite had an entry foyer, small, but if she lifted the sofa onto one end, she could shove it against the door. It was a sleeper sofa, so it’d be heavy, but it looked doable, and it would definitely slow down incoming assailants.

  With Rachel already in the bathroom, huddled against the toilet, Sylvie would have to put her back to the bathroom door and take out the enemy head-on. Probably better to drag Rachel into the living space and move her behind the bed, Sylvie decided. No one would get upset about a little vomit on the floor if they were under attack.

  Not the way her father was already upset about her very public puke in the hotel ballroom, anyway.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Ms. Blair?” Raymond Chesney finally snapped. His usually pale, benevolent face was flushed with fury, and the brown eyes behind his round glasses were blinking rapidly.

  Oh, goodie, he’s going to let me speak, Sylvie thought, before saying, expressionless, “As I told you when you hired me, sir, I’m a bodyguard, not a babysitter.”

  “You’re supposed to take care of her!”

  “Close protection on a teenage client requires the establishment of a trusting relationship.” Sylvie didn’t let her eyes drop from their focus on the glint of Chesney’s glasses. It was a trick she’d learned that let her look as if she was maintaining eye contact. Raymond Chesney was a wealthy man and a force to be reckoned with in Washington. She shouldn’t—wouldn’t—let him bully her. “I can’t do my job if I’m viewed as an adversarial authority figure.”

  “Stopping a fourteen-year-old from doing vodka shots is hardly adversarial!”

  “I protect my charges from outside threats, sir, not from themselves.” Sylvie kept her voice neutral, although inwardly she was scoffing.

  Right. Now he objected. She hadn’t seen him complaining when he sent his daughter off to ‘hang out’ with the nineteen-year-old son of one of his pet politicians. What did he think a nineteen-year-old would be doing at a party like the one going on downstairs? He was lucky it hadn’t been anything worse.

  Of course, she would have intervened if Rachel had been in danger. And she had, in fact, stopped Rachel from having a fourth drink. She just hadn’t realized that three drinks would be enough to put the girl under the table. But there was no reason Chesney needed to know any of that.

  “Ha,” Chesney snorted. He turned to Ty Barton, the leader of the security team, and said, “From now on, Lydia’s on party duty. Get Rachel home. We’ll discuss this again later.” He took a quick glance in the mirror, smoothed his hand over his balding head, and tweaked his black bow tie before turning and stalking out of the room.

  “Sylvie,” Ty started.

  “Total lightweight,” she interrupted him. “Three drinks, I swear. And the guys were drinking from the same bottle, so it wasn’t spiked.”

  Ty sighed. In his mid-forties, he was tall, blond, and handsome, in impeccable physical condition, and the perfect image of a professional security expert. But he was also damn good at his job and an old friend. “He’s going to want me to fire you, you know.”

  Sylvie shrugged. “You can if you have to.”

  She wasn’t worried about losing her job. Working for Chesney was lucrative, but she could always find more work. Plus, Ty wouldn’t want to let her go: not only because of their shared history, but because he was one of the few people in the world who knew how uniquely qualified she was to be a bodyguard. Close protection security consultant, she corrected herself wryly. Ty really preferred it when she used the fancy name.

  Besides, Rachel Chesney was a spoiled brat. If Sylvie never had to listen to her whine again, she wouldn’t exactly be sad.

  “You didn’t do this on purpose, did you? To get out of going to parties for the next month?”

  “Absolutely not,” Sylvie protested. And then the corner of her mouth tilted up, as she added, “Not that I mind.”

  She hated working parties. The advance detail work could be interesting. She liked conducting threat assessments. But crowds gave her headaches and the biggest risk at the actual event—at least here in DC—was that she’d die of boredom while wearing high heels. And if she was going to die of boredom, she really wanted it to be in comfortable shoes.

  “All right.” Ty rubbed his face. “We’re short-staffed tonight.”

  Sylvie nodded. One of the three drivers on the team had quit a few weeks ago and his position was still open. Normally that wouldn’t matter, but two other members of the team were out with the flu.

  “If I send James with you—no, that won’t work.” Ty was thinking out loud.

  “I can drive,” Sylvie suggested. “I’ve done the training.”

  Ty considered the idea. It was irregular, but moving a charge on the spur of the moment was less risky than a regular outing. He’d never agree to let her drive Rachel to school, Sylvie knew, but there was minimal risk of ambush on an unscheduled trip.

  Ty nodded. “If she hurls in the car, you get to clean it up,” he added, with a spark of humor.

  Just then the sound of renewed vomiting came from the bathroom. Sylvie glanced toward the sound and said with a grimace, “I’ll give it a little longer before we head out.”

  *****

  The girl ate like a bird, Sylvie thought, baffled. Well, not like a bird—didn’t they supposedly eat their body weight in food every day? Rachel ate like whatever it was that ate almost nothing, which meant that logically there couldn’t be anything left in her system.

  But she looked like shit, her lipstick smeared, her black eyeliner running down her face, and her skin tone vaguely off-color. Girls her age shouldn’t be wearing eye make-up anyway, Sylvie thought. It was no wonder those boys didn’t realize she was out of her league.

  “Roll the window down if you think you need to throw up again.”

  They were on the GW Parkway, on their way to the house in McLean. Sylvie had waited an hour, and then gotten a helpful bellhop to half-drag, half-carry Rachel to the black Mercedes via the parking garage.

  “Not allowed,” Rachel mumbled, head against the headrest, eyes closed.

  “Just this once,” Sylvie said with a pang of sympathy. Poor kid. Still following the rules, even when plastered. “Just if you feel sick.”

  Rachel didn’t answer, and Sylvie stepped on the gas a little harder. She was breaking the ten-miles-over-the-speed-limit rule by a good fifteen miles, but she wanted to get Rachel home. Would she get pulled over? Automatically, she started planning her
approach to the cops if she did: hands on the wheel, friendly, but not too friendly. Should she admit to the various weapons in the car? Mention her employer?

  Her strategizing kept her busy until they were almost home. The gates swung open as the car neared them, and as Sylvie pulled into the long driveway, she couldn’t help a sigh of relief and another glance at Rachel. Sylvie really wanted to get her inside, and not only because she didn’t want to clean the car. All the alcohol ought to be out of Rachel’s system, but the girl didn’t look good. She’d feel better after a shower and something to eat.

  But as she reached the house, instead of pulling around to the garage, Sylvie hit the brakes, a trickle of adrenaline quickening her pulse. Someone was in the house—she could feel it.

  She looked up at the imposing brick façade with its Italian limestone trim. The floodlights had gone on automatically, spreading their warm and welcoming light over the double staircase that led to the front terrace, and the windows were dark, as they should be. It didn’t matter. Sylvie knew someone was there.

  She closed her eyes, the better to let her sixth sense work. This was the reason Ty would never let her go. Sight, sound, touch, feel, taste, and for Sylvie, something else: something that let her detect the presence of people and understand what they were feeling.

  For a bodyguard, it was a valuable gift.

  For a Marine, it had been priceless.

  Sylvie froze, hands tightening on the steering wheel. Damn it. She recognized that feel-flavor-sound. What the hell was he doing here?

  She licked her lips and glanced at Rachel, who was leaning against the car door, her head propped against the window, her eyes closed. She could back out, turn the car around, and run. But that would get complicated. What would she do with Rachel? And it was probably too late. If Lucas had found her here, he wouldn’t walk away.

  Reluctantly, her foot light on the gas pedal, Sylvie pulled the car around to the garage. He was in the second floor study, the one right next to the master bedroom suite. She’d get Rachel tucked away in her own bedroom and then go see what he wanted.