Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes #3)(106)

I swallow hard.

He turns to stare at me. ‘Are you falling for him?’ His voice is hard and cold.

I think of Jake’s skin pressed against mine, his tongue tracing an erotic path to my ear, his lips whispering, ‘I love you, Lily. I never believed anybody could be as beautiful as you.’

‘No. Of course not. This is just a job,’ I say, my insides twisted in a hard knot.

He looks at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Good. Because you are a servant of the Crown and our best hope to bring Crystal Jake and his criminal enterprise down.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I stand to leave.

‘Keep your wits about you, Hart,’ he cautions.

I don’t turn back and I don’t allow myself to think of Jake. I walk away with the sound of my feet echoing on the hard floors and Luke’s beautiful, helpless face in my mind.

To be continued…





CRYSTAL JAKE: BOOK 2





O Mother, I have made a bird of prey my lover,

When I give him bits of bread he doesn’t eat,

So I feed him with the flesh of my heart.

—Shiv Kumar Batalvi





ONE


Lily ‘Hart’ Strom

If I should die before you, cremate my body and commit my ashes to the ocean.

—A note from Luke Strom to his sister

A month after my brother’s remains were brought home in an earthenware urn, my father and I—my mother was still too distraught—took the container out to sea.

I remember that day well.

The sky was cloudy, the light tinged with pink. Windless. At the pier the driver of the chartered boat held out his hand, weathered to leather, to help us in. My father and I sat side by side on plastic cushions. I jammed my hands into the pockets of my wind jacket and my father lovingly cradled the urn. Neither of us spoke. The motor began and we sliced cleanly through the water, the cold salty morning air buffeting us, flattening our clothes against our bodies, and tearing at our hair.

When we were three nautical miles out, the driver cut the engine, and the boat began to gently drift. For a few seconds the air held only the sounds of water lapping against the sides of the boat and the whispered creak of wood as my father and I moved toward the rail. The sea was a gray blank, quiet, waiting. Like a cemetery.


I stood beside him while he opened the mouth of the urn and undid the knot of the plastic bag inside. We each took a handful of the pale gray ash. One last touch.

‘Oh, Luke,’ I whispered brokenly, unable to reconcile that handful of dust with the living breathing being I had loved so dearly. When we were young we had been like Siamese twins, sharing one heart. Inseparable.

Without warning, it began to drizzle. I raised my eyes at the sky in surprise. Was it a sign? A final goodbye? Luke had always loved the rain. When he was young he used to cartwheel in it. Laughing, happy Luke. But the arms of my memories were cold. He was too young and sweet to die.

I began to cry.

Thousands of water droplets struck me and mingled with my silent tears as I stood perfectly still, fist stretched over the railing. I was aware of my father opening his hand, and the cloud of ashes pouring from it. As if that was not enough of a magic trick, he took the plastic bag out of the urn, and upended its contents into the sea. I watched Luke blossom in the water, temporarily disarmed by the gentle beauty of his new form. Finally I understood why they call incinerated bones white flowers in India.

My father turned to me.

I swallowed hard. I had no magic tricks up my sleeve. I had nothing.

Gently he nudged my arm. ‘Let him go, Lily,’ he urged, his voice lowered and solemn.

I looked up at him blankly. His blond eyelashes were wet with rain or tears or both, and in the milky light his eyes seemed paler than I had ever seen them. I noticed the deepening lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Poor Dad. Somehow life had defeated him, too. I felt the first flash of helpless anger then.

With his left hand he wiped the damp strands of hair away from my cold cheeks. ‘It will be OK,’ he promised. He had no idea how hollow he sounded. His eyes flicked down meaningfully to my hand.

I nodded in agreement. Of course, it was what Luke wanted. And yet I could not open my fist. The drizzle became a freezing steady rain that plastered my hair to my head, and ran down my neck into my clothes, making me shiver. I could hear my father’s voice in the background, like a distant buzz, pleading with me, but still I would not let my brother go. I could not. My hand was red and frozen tight.

Finally, my father pried his fingers into my tightly clenched fist and forced my hand open. Numb with horror, I watched the rain turn the ash into gray mud on my palm and wash Luke away forever.

On our way back the clouds opened to reveal a sky as brilliantly blue as my brother’s eyes had been. So blue you could have wept.

I did.





TWO


I fell apart after that. No one could understand how painful it was for me. No one. They had absolutely no idea about the sharp teeth of guilt tearing at my insides, or the inescapable sorrow that wound itself around my heart like a thickly muscled anaconda tightening its hold every time I exhaled.

I had not been there for him.

My dreams became footsteps that kept taking me back to his killing ground. In my dreams I stood at his window, pale, limp, my hair waving like seaweed in water, and watched him push the needle into his arm. I was the witness. I was there to see the stair I had missed in the darkness.