The Treasure Seeker Page 18

  Victor glanced back at Ry. “Are you sure about this?” He rubbed a finger over his mustache. “If you’re wrong it could mean Clarence’s life.”

  Another chill hit Ry. “I’m sure,” she replied. “Please hurry.”

  “Ross,” he said into the mike, “how many people have shown up to help search?”

  “I guess there’s about a hundred.”

  “Split them into four groups,” Victor instructed. “You take one group and get over to Ms. Rollins’ place and start looking around. Find out where that donkey is. I need to know.”

  There was a brief silence, “What am I going out there to look for?” he asked.

  “Clarence Reed.”

  “Um. Sheriff, that’s nearly twenty miles from where—”

  “Just get out there,” Victor yelled. “Gomez,” he continued. “You take a group and go over to Ralph Dink’s place. Brock and Pierce you two grab teams and come in from the east and west sides of that area. I want everyone to converge on that big ridge that runs across the back of Dink’s property. There’s a lot of brush out there so go slow. I want every inch of that area covered. Make sure you have flashlights and a flare gun. It’s going to be dark soon. If you find him, shoot off a flare. Alma, are you there?”

  “I’m here, Sheriff.”

  “Send a couple of ambulances out here. I want to be ready for whatever happens.”

  He set the mike down and put the car back into gear. After a few miles, he parked the car at the edge of road by a field. The rain grew heavier. It seemed determined to fight them every inch of the way.

  Victor tried to convince Ry and Doreen to stay in the car. When they refused he found a couple of slickers in the trunk and gave them to the women. “Sure you’re up to this?” he asked Ry again.

  She nodded. “Let’s go.”

  “You tell me if you see anything remotely familiar,” he said as he took a flashlight and a flare gun from the car. “We’ll spread out about six feet apart and make our way straight toward that ridge over there.”

  They began to walk. As the rain continued to beat down on them, Ry began to worry. What if she had made a mistake? After all, she had never been able to prove her visions were accurate. Dr. Price claimed he had found his dog, but she had still had the second vision. Her body began to ache. Each step became more difficult. Because of her, Victor had moved the entire search twenty miles away from where they had originally estimated Clarence might be. Common sense told her the elderly man couldn’t have possibly walked this far. Because of her, Clarence might be dying within a mile of the nursing home with no one there to find him.

  Ry looked at the sky. It must be after four. It would be dark in a couple of hours, less if the cloud cover continued. As soon as darkness fell, their chances of finding Clarence decreased greatly. He was too frail to survive the night.

  They trudged through rain and muck shouting for Clarence and straining to see or hear any sign of him. Ry’s heartbeat accelerated each time Victor’s radio crackled. After about an hour, she began to see small flickers of light. She stumbled but managed to stop her fall by grabbing onto the branch of a scrub oak. The lights she had seen were those of the other searchers. They were all converging on the ridge. Any hope of finding Clarence was quickly evaporating. Darkness began to settle over them. Ry wished she had a flashlight. Soon she would have to depend completely upon her hearing. The pain in her stomach grew until she could hardly walk. Why had she butted in? Victor was a great sheriff. He had protected the county for more years than she could remember. What had made her assume she could help?

  A pain so intense she fell to her knees struck Ry. She tried to stand, but her arms and legs could no longer lift her. She fell facedown into the mud. It took all her strength to turn her head enough to breathe. Again, she felt the burning pain and weakness of old joints and muscles. Only vaguely aware of her mom and Victor trying to help her, she managed to grab Victor’s hand. “He’s nearby,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “Hurry.”

  Victor looked around frantically. “Clarence,” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Help him, Mom,” Ry pleaded.

  “I’m not leaving you, Rylene. Honey, I’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

  “Mom, he’s dying. Please, help Victor find him. He’s nearby.”

  Ry saw the struggle in her mother’s tear-filled eyes. She tried to reach for her, but she could no longer lift her arms. She closed her eyes against the raindrops that felt like stones being hurled against her aching body. A brilliant red glow seemed to burn through her eyelids. She scrunched her eyes tighter against the light and tried to fight the black void threatening to engulf her. The cold ground stole the last bit of warmth from her body. She felt herself slipping. She could no longer fight. All she could do was watch as the dark void crept steadily closer.

  “Rylene, they found him.” Her mom was patting Ry’s face. “He’s alive, honey.”

  Ry gave in and let the darkness take her.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Ry opened her eyes, she was no longer freezing.

  “We really have to stop meeting this way.”

  She blinked until the face above her finally came into focus. It was June, the Emergency Medical Technician, who had removed the splinters from her cheek after the shooting.

  “How’s Clarence?” Ry asked.

  June’s face sobered. “He’s in bad shape, but thanks to that anonymous caller, he has a chance.”

  Ry started to ask about the caller, but stopped when the back door to the ambulance opened.

  “How is she?”

  Ry recognized Kate’s voice. “I’m fine,” she replied. She started to sit up, but June stopped her. “Where’s Mom?”

  “With your dad,” Kate said as she moved to stand behind June. “They’re waiting outside in his truck. In fact, your entire family is waiting out there.”

  Ry tried to sit up again and found she had wires attached to her. “Can you get this off me?” she asked June.

  “No.” June pushed her back again. “Lie down and stay there for a while longer.” She moved toward the door. “Kate, you keep her company while I go let her folks know she’s fine.”

  “Tell Dad to go on home,” Ry said. “I’ll catch a ride with one of my brothers.”

  “Tell them they can all leave,” Kate said. “They were out there searching, and they’re wet and cold. I’ll take her home.”

  June nodded briefly and hopped out of the ambulance.

  She noticed that Kate still looked tired. Dark circles smudged her eyes and there was an unusual listlessness in her movements. She considered asking what was going on, but hesitated. “You’re wet too,” Ry pointed out instead.

  “I’m fine,” Kate said as she sat down on June’s stool. “I can’t imagine what possessed your mother and Victor to let you go out there. You should be home in bed.”

  “I wanted to help.”

  “Why are you so dang stubborn?” Kate asked, clearly upset. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  Ry didn’t know how to respond. An awkward silence fell between them. She heard Kate take a deep breath.

  “I received a call from Wilma Brown this afternoon,” she said. “She said the claims adjuster’s finished and you can start cleaning up anytime you want. She’s supposed to call me back tomorrow with the settlement figures.”

  Ry sensed that Kate was struggling to control her anger. “Good. I was wondering how much longer it was going to take.” Ry fought the urge to pull the wires off and sit up. She fidgeted as silence once more filled the ambulance.

  “I ran into your friend, Nicole, again the other day,” Kate said. “She seems nice.”

  Ry stared at the ceiling of the ambulance and wondered if Kate had met Ann also. “She is nice.”

  “Your mom sure seems to like her.”

  “Yes, she does. She invited her to dinner last Sunday.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to attend,” Kate
said. “There was a last-minute shift change, and I had to work.”

  “That’s fine. Mom understood.” Ry tried to think of something to say. “Are you still living with your parents?” The question sounded disapproving. She gave herself a mental kick. So what if Kate was still living with her parents? Wasn’t that exactly what she was doing herself? It wasn’t as if Kate could go back to their place. Before she could say more, Kate surprised her.

  “No. I found an apartment in that new development over by the hospital.”

  “Dad’s company worked on some of those buildings,” Ry said. “He mentioned they were nice places.”

  “I didn’t realize your family had worked on them.”

  Ry sensed something in Kate’s voice. “So, I guess you’ll move now.”

  Kate looked at her sharply. “Why would you say that?”

  “It’s no secret you never approved of my family.”

  Kate’s mouth flew open. “I never approved of them? Don’t you have that reversed? Your family never approved of my father or me.”

  Ry frowned. “Why would my family disapprove of your father?”

  “God, Ry, are you really that dense? When your family got together, all they could talk about was the greedy Republican Party doing this or that. How a working man couldn’t catch a break because of them. It was a fairly easy conclusion to draw that your family didn’t care for mine.”

  Ry started to deny the accusations but stopped. Part of what she had said was true. Her family was blue to the bones Democrat. She had once joked that it had been easier to tell her parents she was a lesbian than it would have been if she’d had to tell them she’d turned Republican.

  Yet another awkward silence fell between them and lasted until June returned several minutes later. She looked at the two women and shook her head. “How are her vitals?” she asked.

  Kate checked the machine monitoring Ry’s vital signs. “She’s still stable.”

  “In that case, I guess it’s safe to let you go home.”

  Ry sat up. “Good. Get me loose from these wires.”

  June took her time removing the leads to the machine.

  “Maybe I can still catch one of my brothers.”

  “No,” June said. “I’m sorry. They left before I came back inside. I told them you were stable, and Kate was taking you home.”

  Ry stared at her, wondering if June had deliberately waited until they left. She shook off the ridiculous thought. Why would June care who drove her home? She glanced at Kate, who was busy rolling up the wires. Was she regretting making the offer to drive her home?

  Ry retrieved her boots and sat on the cot to put them on.

  Kate squeezed past June. “Ry, I’ll wait for you outside.”

  When Ry stepped out of the back of the ambulance a couple of minutes later it was Victor, not Kate, she found waiting on her.

  “I told Kate to go on home. I needed to talk to you,” he said. “Come on.” He turned and left, leaving her no choice but to follow.

  When Ry got into the car with him, he was on the radio.

  “That was Alma,” he said. “She’d just gotten off the phone with the hospital. Clarence has pneumonia, but the doctors seem to think he’s got a decent chance to pull through, barring complications.”

  “That’s good to know,” Ry said.

  Victor eased the car onto the road before he spoke again. “Do you want to tell me what happened this afternoon?”

  Ry stared out the side window. “I don’t exactly understand it myself.” She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Since I was shot, I sometimes see or sense things.”

  “So this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened?”

  “Victor, you’re not going to try and have me committed or anything, are you?” She turned to face him.

  He glanced at her quickly before returning his attention to the road. “Are you hearing voices?”

  “Sometimes I do,” she admitted.

  He hesitated a moment. “What do they tell you?”

  “They always seem to be people who have died and…”

  “Holy crap.” He shot her another quick glance. “Are you joking?”

  Ry rubbed her thumb across the back of her hand. “No, I’m not. It seems to be people who have died and left something unfinished.” She told him about the letters she had mailed that morning.

  It was his turn to take a deep breath. “Have you told your folks about this?” he asked.

  “No.” She thought about the conversation she’d had with her father. He knew there was something different about her. “I’ve been trying to find a way to tell them.”

  He gave a short laugh and shook his head. “Well, I think you did this afternoon. Your mom is pretty upset.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset her. I couldn’t help it.”

  He smoothed his mustache. “The reason I wanted to talk to you was to tell you people started asking how I knew where to look for Clarence. I said it was an anonymous call from a trucker who’d picked Clarence up. That’s probably what really happened. It had to be a stranger who picked him up. He certainly didn’t walk out there, and everyone around here knows him. Anyway, I said this mystery trucker got worried and called me after Clarence insisted on being let out in the middle of nowhere.” He glanced at her. “I didn’t know what else to do. You know if the truth gets around, people will start looking at you differently. There’s no telling how far it could go.”

  “I know. I’ve sort of thought about that. I appreciate you covering for me and I’m sorry I put you into a position where you had to lie.”

  “Ry, I’m not worried about a little white lie. You saved Clarence’s life. If it hadn’t been for you, it might have been months before we found that poor old man’s body. He wouldn’t have made it through the night.”

  She rubbed her hands again. “My parents have been through so much already with this shooting. I’m just not sure they’re going to want to hear more.”

  He stared at the road ahead for a moment before he spoke. “Your folks are levelheaded. Your mom was there today. She saw the same thing I did. You just need to open up and tell them what’s going on. Let them help you, when they can. There’s no need for you to try to handle all this on your own.”

  “You’re right.” The dashboard lights cast a dim red glow across them.

  “Do you mind talking about what happened?” he asked. “I mean what do you see and hear?”

  She listened to the hiss of the tires on the rain-soaked road. How could she describe what happened to her without sounding like a nutcase? She couldn’t stop the involuntary flinch when the radio suddenly squawked. He lowered the volume slightly as she explained what she had experienced.

  He shook his head. “You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of things like this. There’s a woman over in Harris County who can sometimes see things before they happen. She’s actually helped the police a couple of times. They never release her name, but my brother-in-law’s on the police force there and he mentioned her. There was another woman in California who does the same thing.” He frowned. “I wonder if there are any men who are able to predict the future.”

  Ry tried to move the conversation away from her. “My brothers always seemed to know exactly when Mom was going to show up to get someone to take out the garbage. They were never around for that.”

  “Now, you sound like my wife,” he said and grinned.

  They rode in silence until he turned onto the road leading back to her parents’ house.

  Ry could see the lights through the living room windows. As they drew nearer, she saw several vehicles parked in the driveway.

  “Looks like your brothers are all here,” Victor said as he stopped the car.

  “Would you like to come in for some coffee?” Ry asked.

  “I have to get back and start doing the paperwork.” He sighed. “The never-ending stream of paperwork, worst part of the job.” He turned to her. “Besides, I think
this is going to be a long night for you and your family. Best if you get in there and get started.”

  “Thanks for the lift.”

  He gave her a quick wave and drove away.

  As Ry walked across the yard, she tried to anticipate how her family would react if she told them about her new ability. Her parents had already experienced the incident with the earring and knew something was going on. Her mom would have certainly told her dad everything that had happened with Clarence Reed, but she wouldn’t have mentioned it to the boys. Or at least Ry didn’t think she would have. Daniel had already had a preview, but would still be suspicious of her trying to pull a prank on him. Lewis would be his usual stoic self and not say anything unless asked directly. James was the unknown factor. How would he react to something so esoteric? He was the responsible, dependable one. His world was composed of black and white. The one thing she was sure of with all of them was that they loved her unconditionally.

  When Ry reached the door, she took a deep breath. She didn’t need any sort of psychic powers to know what she would find when she stepped inside. They would all be sitting around the kitchen table quietly talking. But she opened the door to a sound she had never heard. They were shouting, not the easy-going, loud boisterous noise that her brothers occasionally resorted to over a basketball or football game but ugly, angry shouts. She ran into the kitchen and arrived just in time to see Lewis grab James’s collar.

  “Lewis!” Her scream froze the room. “What are you doing?” All eyes turned toward her. She received a worse shock when Lewis suddenly released James and rushed toward her.

  “What the fuck are you trying to pull?” he shouted.

  Her father’s voice boomed through the room. He was warning Lewis about using that sort of language in his mother’s house, but Ry was too terrified to feel any shock over Lewis’s language. All she could see was an insanely enraged man looming over her. She was only vaguely aware of Daniel and James grabbing Lewis and dragging him away from her.

  “What’s going on?” she asked in a voice that she could barely hear herself.

  Lewis glared at her. “What is it with you?” he spat. “Why do you always have to be different? Being the spoiled little princess wasn’t enough for you. You had to spit in all our faces and become a lesbian. Then you get yourself shot and become a fucking psychic.”