“That is why she wasn’t added to the will. They were waiting until they knew she would not be taken away,” I said with wide eyes.
“They never got their answer. One week after Cadence was added to the documents that stated Gran would be her guardian if something happened to them, they died.”
“You think she was planted here. That whoever did that assumed when that was filed that she was on the will. Are you telling me that shell of a girl who could not even smile or stop trembling was a ploy?”
“We have no idea what role Cadence had in this. Your parents had psych evaluations along with physical ones done. She was abused, that was clearly stated. We just don’t know where she came from.”
“So either Cadence has always known this or Rasure has used this information to toy with her, to make her feel unwanted or unloved.”
“We’ll never know. Gavin figured that out before we died. Actually, the day we died he got an email from one of the investigators he uses. He never had a chance to get anything out of her. We were too focused on figuring out Rasure.”
“Where is Gavin?”
“He was supposed to be with her. He was hoping that he could catch her off guard.”
“Well, now we are.”
I turned to charge out of the room. When we reached the stairs and started to climb down, the shocking pain of razor blades cutting our souls in two thrust us back.
“What the f—!” Mason bellowed.
I caught my breath and crawled to the steps; the salt line was back and thicker than before.
“Rasure is keeping us up here,” I said as I rushed back to my room and started to tear through my drawers. I knew I had a mini-fan in there that I had used for white noise when I could not sleep. Thankfully, there were still batteries in it that worked.
Mason was trying to blow the salt, but not nearly enough of it would move to break the line.
“Move,” I said as I angled the fan at the line. All that did was make the fine salt fill the air. This was not the only step it was on, the fan had picked up salt on the next three. I knew it had to be on every step, and walking through this cloud would be agonizing.
“All right then...she wants to play, we’ll play,” Mason said as he reached to pull me up and back to my room.
He opened the glass doors that were basically huge windows that led to a ledge that was a few feet wide.
“Um...iron,” I said, looking at the bars that outlined the brick ledge.
“Don’t tell me that is worse than salt.”
“I haven’t tried it yet,” I said, a little apprehensively.
He looked back into the room, out past the balcony, then up. “Come on,” he said as he started to climb the bricks that were set out from the others.
“We need to go down, not up.”
“Right. We’re going to jump over this.”
“Are you crazy? We are, like, four floors up!”
He let out a laugh as he climbed to the side, giving me room to climb up. “What are you afraid of, Indie? Dying?”
That caught me off guard for a second. That was not the first time he’d said that to me. Every time he pushed me to climb higher, jump into a shallower pool of water or canoe down insane rapids, that was his battle cry. He said it was because I’d told him not long after we met that we were all born to die.
He laughed under his breath. “Born to die,” he said, edging to the side. “You had that part right.”
Accepting the challenge, I started to climb up after him, just like I always did before.
When I reached his side and looked down, my anxiety took over and everything turned to ice.
“We could use a soft landing here. Why don’t you think about who made you blush before?” he taunted in his familiar lighthearted tone.
Right when I went to slap him, he grabbed my hand and pulled me forward with his jump. For a second, we were flying. I saw flashes of when we had done this before, how he held my hands as we fell through the air. He used to cover my eyes so I would not know how far the fall was. His theory was that if I didn’t know how dangerous something was that I would be able to jump freely, that if I jumped freely I would learn that it was okay to feel the adrenaline—a rush. He always told me that that was fire, and I needed fire. When it came to cliff diving, he was right. I never turned the water we were diving for into ice, and I was usually so stoked that I just did something that insane that it would not turn frigid until the adrenaline wore off.
Seconds later, we landed on the snow.
“You are the most unpredictable predictable girl I have ever met.”
“You do realize that statement makes no sense,” I said as I stood and dusted the snow off me.
“Perfect sense—most of the time, I never know what you are going to do.”
“Exactly when am I predictable, then?” I asked, dusting him off.
He reached for my chin so I would have to look up at him. I felt my heart hammer wildly in my chest. I may be acting like I know what I’m doing, that death cannot stop me, that I’m clear and cool-headed, but when I looked into Mason’s eyes or the others, I felt grief. I didn’t want to say goodbye to them, and every second with them very well could be my last. Rasure would have officially crippled me for eternity if she managed to divide us.
“When you’re back against a wall, when there is no way out—that is when you’re predictable.”
“In the war of life, that is a weakness.”
“No,” he said, letting his hand fall and his boyish smile come alive. “You’re predicable because there is no doubt that you will win—you will find a way around what is in front of you, one loophole, and that loophole is only obvious to those who know you best, who have dared to get inside your head.”
“Are you telling me that you can see my next move all over my face?” I said with a blushing grin.
“I’m telling you that I’ve got your back, that we will get through this. I have watched every move you’ve made out on our little summer adventures. On instinct, I know what way you’re going before you do most of the time.”
“I don’t think you’re alone in that.”
“No. Gavin, too,” he assured me. We both knew that I never let Wilder in the way I let them in because Wilder and I never saw eye-to-eye. He had told Mason once that their way of getting to me didn’t work, so he was going to try his own way.
I needed to move away from this topic. “Let’s crash this mourning party,” I said with a smirk as I started to walk around the house to where I was sure everyone was gathering.
Every light in the manor was on downstairs, and through the open windows I could see people in almost every room. The issue was that when we had jumped, we had landed feet past the iron gate that outlined the garden and trees against the house, so when we reached the window outside the great room we couldn’t get close enough to see Ben, Cadence, or anyone else for that matter.
“We could always go in through the front door,” I said with a sigh, seeing my element of surprise vanishing.
Mason reached out for the iron gate, but on reflex I grabbed his arm.
“It can’t be worse than the salt, and that only lasted a second. We need to see where everyone is—how they are interacting,” he argued.
Mason always had a theory about pain, too, that it was instant and over too quickly to matter. He believed in adrenaline, that it would always come to the body’s defense.
“You don’t know that. For all we know, it could be lethal to us now,” I argued back.
“Well then, your guardian angel will show up and help us,” he said as he scaled up the gate in two huge strides. I heard him groan, swallowing the pain. He took in a few deep breaths and then turned to look at me with his unmistakable grin. “I have dealt with worse pain than that.”
“That is not saying much. How many bones have you broken?” I asked sarcastically.
“A few. I promise, it’s not bad. It burns.”
“Burns?” I questio
ned, knowing I was by no means afraid of warmth.
He nodded once as he gathered some snow from the bushes and rubbed it across his hands.
I held my breath, closed my eyes, and squeezed through the wrought iron bars. I felt the burn, even heard the singe of flesh as I passed through, but he was right. I felt the salt on the inside, but this was exterior pain, one I could deal with if I had to, but most definitely not for a long period of time.
“That’s my girl,” he said, reaching for my hand.
We pushed through on the bushes making our way to the window. He was taller than me, so he could see into the windows that were over my head. Not breaking his stare, he let go of my hand and held his hand out flat, a silent gesture I was used to seeing him give me. It was his subtle way of telling me to climb.
I put my foot on his hand and used his shoulder to pull myself up, then I leaned forward to grab the ledge. He didn’t even flinch under my weight. I’d used him as a ladder a thousand times before so he was used to the feel of me. When rock climbing, he would always push me up first, then take the more challenging path to get to the next level.
A beat later, he had climbed up next to me.
I felt sorry for my family as I gazed at them through the window. Every one of them looked so sad as they moved through the crowd with their little hors d'oeuvre plates and glasses of wine. As the crowd shifted, I saw Rasure against the back wall. I dove behind the brick barriers as Mason did the same on the other side.
He nodded, telling me I could look safely. He could see more from where he was.
My uncle Jamison was on one side of Rasure, and Cadence was on the other. Friends were walking by them, offering standard words of condolences and sympathy. Cadence never looked up at any of them. She looked so scared, so alone next to Rasure. I couldn’t figure out how she was standing in that room and had not heard them speak her name, mention that she was in the same boat we were all in. But then I saw Ben. I saw him staring at her from a few feet away. At first I thought it was just the angle, that he surely could not see her if he could not see me, but a second later he took a glass of wine from a tray that was passing him by and walked it over to Cadence. She looked up, and that was when she took the wine from him. Right then, a burning rage I’d never felt before consumed me, and left me feeling utter betrayal for the first time in my life.
Of course, Rasure took the glass from Cadence and said something harsh to him, something that made Ben turn bright crimson with anger.
Rasure put her arm around Cadence and led her out of the room. After quickly finishing the drink in his hand, Ben pulled out his phone and made a call as he went to leave the room through the other door, the one that led to the front foyer. I was sure he was going outside.
“Why do I get the feeling that Cadence made it out of that lake with nothing more than a bump on her head?” I seethed.
Mason didn’t seem nearly as shocked, but he was definitely just as mad. “Had my suspicions,” he said as he jumped down and held out his arms for me to jump.
“You thought this was going on and didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know anything for sure, but I have a pretty good memory and I know that the first go around on this loop we are in that she got her lines wrong.”
“Lines?”
“The first go around, we all did exactly what we did the first time, but she didn’t. At least once she answered a question before Gavin asked it, then took the key seconds before she had the time before. That made us think, that gave us the feeling that something was off. That’s why I didn’t flip out when you told me we were dead. That whole time your friend Skylynn and mystery man were in there, we were watching her, trying to figure out how she would play into it all. You never moved out of the spot you were in or the pattern you followed until that boy touched you. Just before he did, you should have moved to the left to pour a drink for a customer. That was where you were standing when Gavin’s uncle came in. They pulled you out of the loop, and when they did they pulled the rest of us out, too. We were able to move freely in the illusion, but Cadence kept her role, her words, and stance the same as we moved through the last part of that illusion. Even when Gavin and I were trying to ask each other if we were both seeing this the same way, she kept acting out her lines—it was ridiculous, really, watching her argue and struggle with herself.”
“A wolf among sheep,” I said under my breath. Phoenix had warned me about this. I would bet that Guardian tried to heal us, and when he did he figured out he was missing one—he was missing Cadence. That is what he was telling Phoenix. Why would he not just tell me that?
“One that has been in place for a hot minute. Here is some food for thought: how can a girl who is obviously alive and well sleep with a ghost— see ghosts?” Mason asked with a sinful grin.
“She did sleep with Gavin, didn’t she?” I said with wide eyes.
Mason nodded once. “Right on cue...well, I heard it was not right on cue, but anyway, yeah.”
I charged around the house, ready to go in and face Cadence and Rasure, let them look like idiots in front of everyone as they talked to us. Cadence had just ticked off the wrong girl.
Chapter Thirteen
Just as we rounded the corner that led to the front of the manor, we slammed right into Gavin.
“Oh my God, man—I almost knocked you the hell out!” Mason said in a harsh whisper.
“Feeling is mutual,” Gavin said, urging us around the side of the house. “Ben is walking this way,” he said in a murmur as he crouched down.
He wasn’t dodging Ben, he was dodging the phony security guards that were standing on every corner of the porch, ones that could obviously not only see the dead but talk to us.
There were police officers standing next to the guards and a few other men in suits who I would guess were detectives.
“What is going on?” I whispered as I nudged Gavin.
“Ben issued a search warrant.”
“Based on what? Looking for what?”
“The key, I hope. A witness told him that there was an obvious struggle in my truck before we ever went off the road. I think he’s trying to figure out what we were fighting over. He knows he’s missing something, and he found just cause to search for it.”
“Thinking it’s the key is a long shot, though.”
Gavin glanced back at me. “Sophia was alive when emergency workers showed up. When they asked what happened, she told them what we were fighting over.”
“She was more aware than all of us put together, and yet she’s the one that is gone?” I asked in disbelief.
Gavin let out a sigh as sorrow filled his eyes. “The accident didn’t kill her, Mason saved her life. She died because at the hospital she was given a drug she was allergic to.”
“You’re freaking kidding me. How do you know that?”
“Ben. He was talking to that detective over there, who told Ben her parents wanted an investigation opened right as he handed Sophia’s statement to him.”
“Ben will figure this out—he’s smart,” I whispered as I tried to overhear what he was saying into his phone. All I could hear was the echo of the other side, and it sounded like a radio. I kept hearing people say, “Clear,” “Over,” and then finally I heard, “I have something.”
A few seconds later, Rasure charged out the front door of the manor, walked over to Ben, and slapped him across the face. I lunged forward, but Mason and Gavin held me back.
“You cold-hearted bastard! How dare you come into my home and search for anything? Do you have no sympathy? Your sister is in agony, broken into pieces, and you have the audacity to question her involvement? Indie and her friends were wild. I have witnesses that will clearly state that they were taking shots of liquor before they ever got into that truck. If she was struggling with them, it was to take control—to save her life. You are banned from the property. I’m taking a restraining order out on you this instant.”
“It is not your property. If you
wish not to see me, then you need to leave,” Ben said smoothly, with an all-too-polite grin that the Falcon children were known to have.
Before she could say another word, two police officers along with a detective walked over to Ben. On a white cloth, they were holding the cameras Mason had destroyed moments before.
“Where were these found?” Ben questioned.
“The girls’ room,” the officer answered. “We are sweeping the home for others.”
Ben looked sharply at Rasure as he spoke to the detective. “Find the feed these went to and have someone trace the purchase and work orders attached to these cameras. I want to know who was spying on my sisters.”
“In the process as we speak, sir,” the detective said, matching Ben’s stare, which was still firmly held on Rasure.
She turned briskly and called out my uncle’s name as she entered the manor again.
“We didn’t find any odd key or part of it, but it could take days for us to find something that small in a home this size,” one of the detectives said to Ben.
“Bring Cadence in for questioning. Make sure she knows we are moving forward with charges on money laundering, and…manslaughter,” Ben ordered.
“How many counts?”
“One so far,” Ben said as he nodded goodbye to the detective and went to speak to our brothers and sisters that were coming out to see why Rasure was having a meltdown.
“I guess you are not going to get anything out of her tonight,” Mason said to Gavin.
“I think it’s still on her,” Gavin said in an angry whisper.
“Would you have not figured that out, you know, the other night?” Mason asked with an audacious grin.