Lost Bird Read online

  “They live out there, now,” John added, holding up his keys and clearly displaying the key ring. “We love football. I think they’re subtly rubbing it in our faces that the Cards were better than the Bucs last year.”

  “Nearly every year,” Oscar added with more than a hint of snark in his tone.

  Holy Goddess, her panties were already soaked, and she’d only spoken two words to them. She didn’t know whether to focus on Oscar’s killer blue eyes, or John’s sweet brown gaze, either one already deadly to her powers of speech and concentration, but even more devastating when combined.

  She swallowed. “Um, let’s get a table.”

  Fortunately, it worked out that they were seated at a booth and the men, without asking, both slid into the same side, leaving her free and alone in the other.

  Great. Won’t need to keep making them move for my bathroom trips.

  Which she took the first one almost immediately, cleaning herself up and splashing water on her face after she washed her hands.

  When she returned to the booth, they were both thankfully up and getting their first round of food. She went and got hers, mindful of how much she piled on her plate. She’d barely eaten all day despite her hunger, her nervous stomach still firing threats across her lower intestines’ bow every time she even so much as nibbled on anything.

  After she’d sat down again, she dug out her notebook. “Right. Let’s start with have you guys actually seen anything happen at the house?”

  It was hard for her to focus and be all business when all she wanted to do was curl up between the men and their plush, blue-velvet auras.

  How can I literally go years with only a handful of lascivious thoughts, and here I am practically drooling over these two?

  “Us? No. Aunt Tammy has been keeping her log like you told her to,” John said. “She’s reported things moved twice, and seeing the lights three times.”

  “Have either of you gone back into the woods to see if anything’s there?”

  “No. We haven’t been there when it’s happened, either,” John said.

  “My people hiked out of the wilderness,” Oscar quipped. “I’m not hiking back into it.”

  “Your people?” John asked, staring at him. “You made yourself bacon for breakfast. And is that not ham on your plate now?”

  She wanted to bust out laughing at the two of them and their banter.

  “Yeah, well, you know I don’t like the woods,” Oscar said, now a little red in the face.

  “He had an unfortunate encounter with a squirrel when he was a kid,” John explained to her. “Bounced off his head while we were in the woods. Freaked him right the hell out.”

  “It fucking attacked me.”

  “It didn’t attack you,” John said. “It didn’t even scratch you.”

  “Quit picking on the woodland-challenged,” Oscar muttered.

  Okay, that did it. If she wasn’t in love with the two guys before, she was close to it now. She could feel the brotherly energy between the men even through their good-natured exchange.

  “I have to admit, other than being outside to shoot skeet, I’m not much of a sportsman, either,” she said.

  * * * *

  Oscar didn’t resent being the focus of John’s friendly teasing because he suspected he knew exactly what his friend was up to. John wanted to try to put Sachi at ease, try to make her laugh. Oscar knew if he could see how nervous Sachi appeared to be, it had to be painfully evident to John. John was, admittedly, the more emotionally in-tune of the two of them.

  Sabrina his ex-wife notwithstanding.

  And they’d made her smile. They’d coaxed at least a little of a sparkle into those beautiful blue eyes of hers.

  “I’ve never shot skeet,” Oscar said. “Is it hard?”

  She shrugged and pulled back her long, black hair. “It’s not hard to me, but I’ve been shooting for over thirteen years. Have you ever shot before?”

  “Paintball.”

  John laughed next to him.

  But even more importantly, Sachi smiled again. “Not exactly the same thing.”

  And that’s why, twenty minutes later, both men were sitting, enraptured, as she talked about the fine art and sport of shooting skeet.

  Her notebook lay unused next to her except for her initial notes.

  She seemed to realize she’d gone off-topic. “Sorry,” she said, an adorable pink blush filling her cheeks. “I’m kind of a skeet geek.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Oscar assured her. “It’s interesting. Do you think you could teach us?”

  In all honesty he had no clue if John wanted to shoot skeet or not. Frankly, at that moment, he didn’t care. He knew he wanted to shoot skeet. With Sachi, at least. Her love for the sport telegraphed through her every word, the way her face lit up while she talked about it, everything.

  Maybe she enjoyed what she did for a living at Many Blessings, but they were witnesses to her true passion being laid out before them.

  He desperately wanted to be a part of that.

  Wanted her to look at him like that.

  * * * *

  John hadn’t told Oscar about what Brad revealed to him that day in Many Blessings. In fact, he hadn’t said a word about it to anyone, chalking it up to a poor guy who obviously had some…issues going on.

  But now…now he wasn’t so sure.

  Sachi was a beautiful field of gravity drawing them in, her own self-contained force of nature.

  He was happy to fall to her pull.

  Shoot skeet? Hell, why not. If she’d said her hobby was identifying mushrooms or counting paint chips, and described it with the same level of joy and enthusiasm, he’d gladly try those, too.

  Maybe there was more to life than he could see with his eyes. The way Oscar seemed drawn to her, the fact that she’d possibly be open to a poly relationship—maybe it wasn’t too crazy a series of circumstances to lead the three of them to a happily ever after they could call their own.

  He hoped it wasn’t.

  Because the more time he spent in Sachi’s gravity field, the more he realized he didn’t want to break free. He wanted to be there with her, watching her, listening to her. Hell yes, he was attracted to her, but it was more than that.

  Much more.

  It was her.

  All of her, every bit of her.

  Chapter Ten

  Sachi spent a restless night torn between fantastically sexy dreams about Oscar and John…and horrific nightmares about Jacob and Jackson Clary. One dream had her sandwiched in between John and Oscar and enjoying sexy time, but then the men morphed into father and son and she awoke with a scream locked in her throat, her body covered in a cold sweat.

  When she finally sat up in bed a little before six that morning, she felt too bleary for coffee to cure. After using the bathroom, she pulled on her robe and headed out to the kitchen, where she’d heard her dad getting ready to go to work.

  “I don’t understand how you can do early mornings every morning,” she muttered as she leaned against the counter.

  He frowned, head cocked as he stared at her. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

  “Just…bad night.”

  “Dreams?”

  She gratefully took the full coffee mug he handed her and nodded as she sipped.

  She didn’t want to fill him in on the yin of that freaking yang, the sexiness that accompanied the nightmares.

  That would be too…weird.

  Not to mention she was still trying to sort it all out herself. There was a long, winding road between going out to dinner with two guys and calling what she had with either of them a relationship.

  Mostly because only a psycho, creepy stalker, Facebook meme-worthy lady would call what she had with the guys at this stage a “relationship.”

  And what the hell was up with the cardinals? It was getting a little ridiculous, although in a way it put her mind at rest somewhat.

  All she’d have to do was overcome her fear and speak h
er damn mind to them and hope they didn’t shoot her down with too much laughter or scorn.

  It’s going to be a loooong day. Especially considering the investigation, weather allowing, would last well into the early morning hours.

  Once her dad left for work, Sachi refilled her coffee and headed for the shower. She suspected this would be one of those days she wished she had a caffeine IV plugged into her arm.

  Even that might not be enough to keep her on her feet, much less on her toes.

  She stood in the shower, head resting against the wall and the water drumming against her scalp, and thought about her dinner with the men.

  It embarrassed her to realize she’d spent most of the evening monopolizing the conversation with skeet talk when she’d been there to talk to them about Tammy.

  Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I wanted to spend time with them. Even if it’d just been sitting on a couch with them and watching TV, I would have been happy.

  Well, tonight would be the first test. To see if they could find any trace of activity that they couldn’t debunk. Then again, if it was a natural phenomenon, at least it would show Tammy wasn’t imagining it.

  She really didn’t want to be the reason that sweet woman was sent to a nursing home. She really wanted to find something, anything, that they could show pointed to what Tammy was experiencing, supernatural or not. Plenty of able-minded people mistook natural causes for supernatural phenomenon. Happened all the time.

  Julie, please. Send me a sign if you can hear me. Tell me I’m not making a huge mistake.

  By the time Sachi reached the store a little after seven, she’d already downed four mugs of coffee at home and carried her huge sixty-four-ounce travel mug that Mandaline had dubbed “The Barrel.”

  Sachi only broke out “The Barrel” when she was seriously low on the energy scale. It was actually a convenience store refillable mug meant for cold drinks, but it worked equally well for coffee.

  In fact, Mandaline’s eyes widened when she saw it. “Uh-oh. What happened?”

  Sachi dumped her purse into the cabinet in the office and slammed it shut with her foot as she took another sip. “I went and ate dinner with them and had a nice time. That’s what happened.”

  Mandaline followed her out of the office. “Then why do you look like a zombie?”

  “Because I didn’t get much sleep.”

  Mandaline’s eyes widened even more at that statement, but the sound of Ellis coming down the stairs halted more questions.

  “Hey, Ellis,” Sachi said.

  He came to a sudden stop and turned, concern on his face. “What’s wrong? What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I was just about to find out,” Mandaline said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Sachi stared at them. “What?”

  “You didn’t call me chief,” he said, putting down his suit jacket and laptop on one of the comfy chairs in the showroom. “Tell us.”

  Her face growing red, she gave the briefest of summations of dinner, the cardinals, and her dreams.

  Ellis nodded, while Mandaline looked relieved. “So, you’re all right?” Ellis asked.

  “You don’t need to go all Perry Mason on anyone, no,” Sachi assured him, her snark firmly reined in. “But thank you for the thought. I appreciate it. Chief.”

  He stepped over and hugged her. “Okay. Just making sure.” After giving Mandaline a quick kiss, he gathered his things and let himself out the front door, locking it behind him since it wasn’t opening time yet.

  Mandaline grabbed Sachi’s hands. “Dreams?”

  “Yes, dreams. Seriously, I might need your help tonight. I don’t know if I can do this.” In the light of day, she was once again wondering if she wasn’t making a horrible decision by allowing her heart to soften for the men.

  “You’ll have Brad, Anna, and Mina. You’ll be okay.”

  “I might not be conscious by then.” A yawn punctuated her comment.

  “You can take a nap upstairs this afternoon.” She gave Sachi another hug and returned to the office.

  “You just have an answer for everything, doncha, witchypoo?” Sachi groused at her.

  Mandaline simply waved in reply.

  Mandaline drove Brad to their house that morning so he could do a little work there as well as grab a quick nap of his own. They were getting close to being able to live in the house full time, now that the mold problem had been corrected and completely cleaned up. He wanted to put another coat of paint on their bedroom walls during daylight hours, to make sure he didn’t miss anything before they started moving furniture in there that weekend. The rest of the renovations could continue while they lived there.

  Sachi spent the day trying to throw herself into her work. She managed a brief nap at lunchtime, but it did nothing to resolve the mental cloudiness she felt.

  Sachi knew her friends were looking forward to having their house done, but for her part she’d miss knowing they were right there all the time. The house was only a few minutes away, but even when Mandaline took a rare day “off,” she was still usually right upstairs.

  Just like Julie had always been.

  A lot of things had changed around Many Blessings for all of them in a very short amount of time. Julie’s murder, her own almost-murder, Mandaline and the guys coming together—it was almost too much to process.

  They were supposed to have one of their unofficial coven meetings at the store that Saturday night, more a potluck gathering of friends than a mystical circle of magick despite its name.

  Maybe I should invite John and Oscar. It wouldn’t do any good investing more of her heart in them if they had a problem with what she did and believed.

  Although, if they were putting up with the investigation in the first place and supporting Tammy, they couldn’t have too much of a problem with it.

  She hoped.

  After lunch, when she’d come downstairs after her brief nap to get back to work, she stood alone behind the counter. She’d raked out the little tabletop Zen garden that sat on the counter before restocking one of the coffee machines.

  She heard a noise behind her and turned to see the little wooden rake setting on the counter, tines up.

  With chills racing through her, she stepped closer. In the sand was a smiley face.

  Sachi choked back a sob. “Is that my sign, Julie?”

  Ever since her death, Julie had left them little messages in the sand from time to time, usually for Sachi and Mandaline, although others had been recipients of them, too. In life, Julie had frequently drawn smiley faces or left brief, positive messages written in the sand for others to find.

  With trembling fingers, Sachi used her cell phone to snap a picture of the sand. Then she carefully raked it out again, leaving the rake tines-down at the edge like they usually did.

  She stared at the picture on her phone. “Thanks, Julie,” she whispered.

  Her stomach wasn’t necessarily completely on board with things yet, but her soul felt a little more settled. She’d asked Julie for a sign, for direction, and she’d received it.

  She had no doubts that if Julie wanted to warn her, she would have.

  * * * *

  It was still nearly two hours before dark when Sachi goaded herself into action. With her stomach in her throat, she took Mandaline’s keys and, with Anna and Mina’s help, loaded the Honda Element with their equipment. She’d have to go pick up Brad on the way.

  “Are you all right?” Anna asked her as the three women buckled their seat belts.

  “Yeah, just didn’t sleep well last night.” Sachi considered the women not just coworkers, but friends. Still, she wasn’t as close to them as she was to Mandaline, Brad, and Ellis, who were more adopted family.

  There were things she did not discuss with people who were only friends, even close friends.

  What she’d seen about John and Oscar, their auras and her dreams about them, fell firmly into the “do not discuss” category.

  Brad wa
s sitting on the steps to the kitchen doorway when they arrived. He climbed into the SUV’s backseat with Mina.

  “We ready for fun?” he asked.

  Sachi glanced in the rearview mirror at him before she backed the SUV up and turned around in their spacious yard. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means, Tarzan.”

  He grinned. “Oh, come on. You can’t be quoting The Princess Bride at me and be in a bad mood.”

  “Try me.”

  “She brought ‘The Barrel’ to work this morning,” Anna told him.

  He winced. “Yikes. Guess I missed that.”

  She met his gaze in the mirror. He arched his eyebrows and mouthed sorry at her before she put the vehicle in gear and headed down their driveway toward the road.

  They stopped for takeout in town and ate it on the way to Tammy Evans’ house. When she took the turnoff onto the driveway, her stomach once again lodged in her throat at the sight of the men walking out to greet them when they parked.

  I can do this…I can do this.

  She hoped her stomach could do it.

  Before dark had settled, they had their equipment set up in the yard and had run initial checks of EMF readings. Since it was an outdoor setting they couldn’t rely on drastic temperature fluctuations as evidence. They would be running infrared cameras, trail cameras, and motion detectors, as well as using a handheld FLIR thermal camera, in conjunction with several digital voice recorders to pick up any EVPs.

  Sachi wasn’t sure they’d find anything. Then again, it hadn’t rained in two days, a miracle considering the time of year, and Tammy had said it seemed like the activity picked up when it was dry.

  Sachi didn’t have any other correlation for that kind of activity, unless it did turn out to be supernatural and was related to Tammy’s deceased husband and son engaging in a little otherworldly gardening. It wasn’t uncommon for phenomenon to pick up during thunderstorms, the theory being that spirits drew energy from the charged atmosphere.

  Tammy had a screened back porch off her kitchen in the rear of the house that she volunteered as their base of operations. Sachi hoped that by being there with their equipment, instead of inside the house, it would make it easier for them to observe and respond to any phenomenon they might pick up.