A Gift of Thought Read online

  Sylvie smiled at her, and held out a hand. Rachel reached for her backpack and pulled it up to her lap, unzipping the front pocket, and reaching inside.

  “You’re supposed to be wearing it,” Sylvie said, as the car joined a line of slow-moving cars trickling through a circular driveway.

  “It’s not like I ever go anywhere without my pack,” Rachel replied, pulling out a small circular device. She handed it to Sylvie who adeptly popped it open.

  “Not the point. It needs to be on your person at all times.”

  “Except when you’ve turned it off?” Rachel’s tears were gone now, and her tone almost mischievous.

  Sylvie’s lips twitched. “Even then. Which is only when you’re absolutely safe,” she added, before saying to James, “Alarm or just dead?”

  He looked disapproving, but answered. “Just dead. That noise is fu—is annoying.” He caught himself before he swore and Sylvie grinned at him as she did something that Dillon couldn’t see to the device, and then handed it back to Rachel.

  “Put it in your pocket,” Sylvie ordered. “And you do not leave the school building.”

  Rachel nodded, a reluctant smile tugging at her lips.

  As the car reached the front of the line, Sylvie looked out the window, seeming to scan the environment. Dillon looked out the window too. Was this a girls’ school? There were teenage girls everywhere, pouring into the front doors of the brick building, but not a boy in sight. Wow.

  “We’ll be back within the hour,” Sylvie told Rachel. “I’ll come get you for the security check, and you can stay with us while I ‘repair’ your alarm.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Clear?” Sylvie said to James. He, too, was scanning the scenery, looking carefully in every direction.

  He nodded. “Clear.”

  “I think so, too.” Sylvie nodded at Rachel. “Go ahead. We’ll see you soon.”

  Hmm, thought Dillon. His mom was only going to Starbucks. She might even be going to a drive-through. He could spend the next hour with her in the car, probably almost silently, or with Rachel in a school filled with girls.

  The choice wasn’t hard.

  *****

  Sylvie watched Rachel until she disappeared into the school, then leaned back against the car seat.

  “To Starbucks, James,” she said in a mock posh accent.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied, shifting into gear and pulling out. “You’re going to get us into trouble if you keep that up. That’s the third time this year.”

  “I know. Ty would flip.” She grimaced, thinking about how Ty would react. Ballistic wasn’t the word. She’d just disabled Rachel’s alarm and GPS tracker, the one that would alert the security team if Rachel moved outside a prescribed area. When they got back from Starbucks, she’d go into the school and notify the principal that she needed to investigate the equipment failure during Rachel’s free period. The principal might frown at her, but in McLean, Virginia, home of the CIA, private schools took security seriously. Rachel would be allowed to join them.

  “I don’t get why you do it. The kid’s a brat,” James complained.

  Sylvie smiled at him. She loved James. He didn’t understand and it didn’t matter: he backed her up 100%, anyway. “Then there came the color green,” she quoted to him, reciting a chant that she knew he knew.

  “Yeah, right,” James scoffed. “She’s mean, all right. But she ain’t no Marine.”

  “No.” Sylvie looked out the window. “But she reminds me of what it felt like.”

  “Boot camp? She’s a spoiled rich kid at the fanciest school in northern Virginia,” he protested. “They’re not doing ten mile marches between classes.”

  “Might be easier,” Sylvie answered, still staring at the passing scenery. She didn’t like Rachel. It was almost impossible to like Rachel. But she’d never sensed anyone unhappier. The girl was living in a world of despair, and if a Frappuccino and a chance to escape from school for forty minutes lightened that darkness for a minute or two, Sylvie was willing to take a few chances.

  James turned into the parking lot of Starbucks. Every space was full. “You’re buying the coffee.”

  “No problem,” she agreed, reaching for the door handle. “You want some frou-frou drink?”

  “Damn straight. I’ll take one of those peppermint things.”

  “Ick. You’re such a girl, James.”

  As she entered the coffee shop, his call of ‘sexist pig’ still ringing in her ears, Sylvie was smiling. But then her smile faded. From outside, the textures of the people in the crowded café blended together like the multiple instruments in an orchestra playing a single tune. But now that she was inside, she could hear the individual notes.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Closest coffee shop to Rachel’s school,’ Lucas answered.

  Sylvie joined the line at the counter, refusing to look around her. He might be here but she didn’t have to acknowledge him.

  ‘You were bound to show up eventually,’ he continued.

  Sylvie gritted her teeth. Ty would scream himself hoarse if he heard that. And damn it, he’d be right. She’d gotten careless if she was so predictable.

  ‘We have to talk.’ His feelings were a mess, she realized dispassionately. The calm, practical Lucas on the surface was barely holding his chaotic emotions under control.

  “A peppermint mocha, a Frappuccino, and a black coffee, just straight coffee,” she told the clerk. It was always easy to get the weird drinks at Starbucks, hard to get the simple ones. ‘No, we fucking don’t,’ she thought at Lucas. ‘You didn’t want to talk at the mall the other night. Why now?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he thought back at her. ‘What mall? No, never mind, that’s not important. Have you seen Dillon? Heard from him? Akira’s freaking out. She wants to come up here but Zane doesn’t want her flying when she’s pregnant.’

  Sylvie frowned. Had Lucas made any sense at all? Or was he talking pure nonsense? She moved down the counter to the space where drinks were served. ‘Zane?’

  ‘Gone insane. Protective’s not the word. Paranoid. Obsessed with the idea that since she’s already died once, they’re living on borrowed time.’

  Okay, Sylvie had no idea what Lucas was thinking about. Without moving away from the counter, she did a slow turn, as if she was casually shifting positions. The blur of feeling from the crowd was hard to separate into individual pieces, but she spotted Lucas immediately. He stood in the corridor that led to the bathrooms, placed where no one coming in the front door could spot him. He hadn’t shaved, and maybe he hadn’t slept either. It didn’t matter; just the sight of him sent a melting shiver down Sylvie’s spine. Damn him.

  He looked like a Floridian still, she thought. A little too tan, his leather jacket a little too lightweight for the wintery DC weather. But hot as hell. The easy charm of the privileged teenager had become much more compelling on the man who looked as if he rarely smiled.

  She hated the way he could make her feel, truly she did. “Could I get a tray, please?” she asked the barista, already planning.

  ‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ she thought at Lucas.

  ‘Right, of course not. Sorry, I should . . .’ The thought came through clearly, but then the emotion around it made it blurry, as if it was all feeling, no words.

  Sylvie frowned. What the hell was going on? What was Lucas doing? This wasn’t like him. He sounded almost desperate. And Lucas didn’t do desperate.

  ‘It’s Dillon,’ Lucas continued. ‘He’s not talking. Is he with you?’

  ‘You told me he was dead!’ Confused wasn’t the word. Sylvie’s fury must have shown on her face because the boy behind the counter took a step backward before pushing her drinks toward her.

  She picked up the tray, her hands clenching white-knuckled on the cardboard, and took the two steps to the condiment bar. Should she? Shouldn’t she? Oh, God, this was petty of her. But her back to Lucas, sh
e took the top off the plain coffee cup, trying hard not to think about what she was doing.

  ‘No, no, I mean, yes. I mean—we have to talk. I can’t explain this way.’

  ‘Is he dead or isn’t he?’ Sylvie tried to think the words as clearly as she could. She could sense Lucas approaching, moving past the counter, closing in on her.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Then there’s nothing to say,’ she interrupted his thought, turning quickly, and letting the tray jerk upward, as if accidentally. Coffee spewed out of her open cup, splashing onto Lucas. As the hot liquid hit, he reeled backward in surprise and she slid her foot forward to catch his heel and tug his foot toward her.

  It worked beautifully, as precisely as if she’d choreographed it. As he stumbled backward, crashing into the man behind him, she straightened the tray, catching her still half-full coffee cup before it tipped completely over, and turned to the side, avoiding Lucas’s forward rebound as he tried to recover from being tripped. The man behind him was protesting as Sylvie murmured, “So sorry, so sorry, let me get you a towel,” and kept moving. The barista was leaning over the counter to see what was happening, the woman at the nearest table standing, exclaiming, as Lucas tried to avoid falling onto her.

  The scene inside the Starbucks was still crazy as Sylvie slipped into the front seat of the car with a sigh of satisfaction. Okay, it was petty, but it had felt damn good. And maybe Lucas would think twice the next time he tried to text her any back-handed compliments.

  “What happened in there?” asked James, glancing over at Sylvie as he pulled out of the parking lot and onto the roadway. “You’re as revved as if you just robbed a bank.”

  “You say that as if you know what it looks like. Were you a getaway driver during your mysterious past?” Sylvie said the words lightly, but her heart was racing, she was breathing a little too fast, her cheeks were flushed. Yes, she was revved. What had Lucas meant? Did this have something to do with why he was searching Chesney’s study?

  “Don’t you wish you knew,” James retorted. “I’d be a good one, though.”

  Sylvie smiled at him. “You can be my getaway driver any time.”

  Could Zane be in trouble? Sylvie knew who he was, of course. He’d been a gap-toothed little kid back in the day, but a lanky adolescent when he and Lucas showed up on her doorstep a few years later. It was just like Lucas’s luck that his little brother had a gift for finding the lost. Not that Sylvie had been lost, of course.

  “I prefer to stay on the right side of the law.” One hand on the steering wheel, James reached over and grabbed his peppermint mocha. He took a gulp. “Ahhh, delicious.”

  “Girl,” Sylvie drawled her response to their running joke, but it was automatic, most of her brain still obsessing on Lucas’s words. He’d been making no sense at all.

  And why did he want to talk to her now? Okay, she’d ignored his phone messages, but that text he’d sent was hardly urgent. And he must have been in the mall the other night: the only way he could have gotten that new phone number was if he’d been close enough to hear the thoughts of the sales clerk assigning it to her. Why hadn’t he approached her then? Why hadn’t he answered her when she tried to talk to him?

  “Seriously, though,” James said, shooting her another glance as they paused at a stop light. “What’s got you so wired?”

  She shook her head, but answered without thinking. “Just this guy.”

  “Oho!” James responded with delight. “What guy? Tell me more. All the deets. Leave nothing out.”

  Sylvie gave a puff of laughter. “No, not like that,” she said, waving off his words. Well, not really like that. It was strange to look at Lucas and realize that he still did it for her. Weren’t people supposed to outgrow their high school loves? Shouldn’t she be able to see him and think, wow, he’s gotten old, instead of feeling breathless?

  James pressed for more, but Sylvie ignored him, still trying to puzzle out Lucas’s behavior. Someone was pregnant, she’d caught that much. But that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Chesney. Or she supposed it could, but ew. If that was the connection, she didn’t admire the unknown woman’s taste.

  As James pulled up in front of the school, Sylvie finally let go of her preoccupation. Maybe Ty’s background check on Lucas would turn up something interesting. And if not, she’d probably see him again soon. She doubted that pouring coffee on him was going to deter him for long.

  Exactly as Sylvie expected, the principal looked disapproving at the idea of letting Rachel out of the school building but didn’t resist Sylvie’s calm persistence. Sylvie waited for Rachel outside her classroom door. As the bell rang and uniformed girls streamed through the hallway, though, Sylvie frowned.

  The girls coming out of Rachel’s classroom felt wrong: too bright, too excited, too giggly. Something must have happened. And then Rachel emerged and Sylvie’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Rachel also felt bright, much more so than the promised Starbuck’s treat deserved.

  “Rachel, I need you to come with me for a security check,” Sylvie said, using a formal voice for the sake of any nearby teachers. She tried not to let her curiosity show as they walked together through the hallway, but Rachel was close to skipping. And the feeling . . . was it joy?

  She wanted to ask, but not with others around. And outside, of course, they walked silently. Rachel knew better than to speak to her bodyguard when they were in the open. Even though they were on the school grounds, Sylvie continually scanned for potential threats.

  As she opened the car door for Rachel to slide inside, though, Sylvie couldn’t resist any longer. “So anything interesting happen this morning?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rachel replied. “It was the best.”

  Sylvie slid in next to her. Reaching over the seat, she grabbed the drink from the front and passed it to Rachel, then held out her hand for Rachel’s alarm. “Yeah?” she prompted, when Rachel didn’t seem inclined to continue.

  Rachel was almost shivering with glee, her cheeks pink, as she took a long slurp on her Frappuccino. “Marlie Eversoll got in trouble.”

  Sylvie’s eyes met those of James in the rearview mirror. She could feel that he was as taken aback as she was. She’d never seen Rachel happier and it was because another girl had gotten in trouble?

  “You don’t like her?” she asked, as she popped open the back of Rachel’s alarm and re-set the battery. Then she winced as Rachel’s feelings flooded over her. ‘Not like’ was much too gentle a way to describe Rachel’s opinion of Marlie Eversoll. Sylvie’s hand tightened on the GPS tracker in automatic reaction.

  “She’s okay,” Rachel said, a belated caution entering her voice. “It was just funny.”

  “What happened?” James asked from the front seat.

  Rachel looked at him, a little doubtful, but then let the story spill out in a rush of words. “Her phone kept ringing. We’re not allowed to have phones in class. She didn’t get in trouble the first time, but then she told Mrs. Walden she’d turned it off. It rang again, and Mrs. Walden got real mad at her for lying. Then it rang again, and Mrs. Walden gave her detention for a week. She talked back. She talked back to Mrs. Walden! And then she got sent to the office.”

  Hatred and happiness made for a strange and not particularly pleasant mix of emotion. But on top of Rachel’s feelings, Sylvie almost caught words. ‘Pathetic? Facebook? Slut?’ What was this?

  Wait, words? Sylvie turned her gaze to the window. Lucas had to be out there somewhere, close enough to be affecting her. She didn’t get words when he wasn’t nearby, just sensations. Her eyes scanned the road, looking for a car that might be parked, a pedestrian that she might recognize.

  ‘Lucas?’ It was a call, not simply a thought. But no answer came.

  Her eyes narrowed as she passed the GPS tracker back to Rachel, her attention still focused outside the car.

  James picked up on her uneasiness. “What are you looking at?”

  She shook her head. The words we
re gone. If Lucas had been nearby, he’d moved on. She let Rachel take her time with the drink, but then insisted on walking her inside. As she returned to the car, her eyes swept the surroundings, looking for anything out of place.

  ‘Lucas?’ She tried again, but got no response.

  But she paused, car door open, one hand resting on the roof, as a nondescript beige car parked across the street caught her attention. The distance was too great for her to feel the emotions of the occupants, but it looked as if two men were sitting in the front seats. She glanced back at the door of the school. Could Rachel be in danger?

  And then she shook her head and got into the car. Whatever this was, it didn’t have anything to do with Rachel.

  “What’s all that about?” James asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvie answered, not trying to hide her uncertainty. “I think I need to call Ty.” She pulled out the phone he’d given her.

  “Ah, you’re not planning on telling him we let the kid play hooky, are you? ‘Cause it’s almost Christmas and I don’t much want to get fired today.” At the exit to the parking lot, James checked both directions.

  “Go left. Left,” Sylvie ordered, looking up from the phone.

  “What? Why?” James turned to the left without waiting for an answer.

  “I want to go past that . . . ah,” Sylvie said with satisfaction. They’d driven alongside the beige car which was pointed in the opposite direction, and she’d caught a burst of frustration from the men inside. “That car’s going to follow us,” she told James. “You might want to lose them.”

  She found the number for the security room in the house and tapped it, as James accelerated away. The phone rang once, twice, then Ty picked up.

  “What’s up?” he asked, not bothering with a greeting.

  “I’m not sure,” Sylvie answered. “Did you find out anything about Lucas?”

  Ty chuckled. “More or less.”

  “What does that mean?” Sylvie asked. The amusement in Ty’s voice didn’t make any sense.

  “I found out that he has higher-placed friends than we do,” Ty answered. “Fortunately, Gibbs is cool with it. Apparently getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night impressed his girlfriend. And one of the guys who did the dragging told him to apply for a job with them, that he did good work.”