LITMIR.BIZ

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a guide.

      She was almost stunned when she realized she was no longer running nearly straight uphill, but had leveled out some twenty feet ago. She had reached the apex of the mountain and now stood in a huge, broad, night-darkened clearing.

      No house broke the line of her vision, and tall, imposing cliffs rose high above an inky black horizon. The black could only mean one thing: the land dropped off sharply. She and her son were standing on what felt like the very edge of the world. Beyond the clearing on her left were a series of small, craggy hills that dropped sharply, leveling out to form the cliff edge. And judging by the width of the black strip, the cliff hovered above an abyss that might cut through the very heart of these mountains.

      Had the gas station attendant knowingly sent a woman and baby to a wrong location? Was he, even now, behind her on that treacherous road somewhere? Or had she taken a wrong turn, gone right instead of left? Surely he’d said take the first dirt road to her left?

      Tears of frustration, fear and abject despair stung her eyes. She blinked them back determindly. If she started crying now, she might never stop.

      Just then lightning arrowed across the sky and illuminated the clearing, revealing the harsh face of the rock wall beyond the abyss, and the craggy hills facing her. Incredibly, the lightning also revealed a pair of massive wooden doors set into the lowest of the rocky hills that descended to the cliff edge.

      Dear God, she thought. He lives in a cave?

      Small flashes of lightning continued to flicker from behind heavy clouds, lighting the clearing with red, gold and blue flares. And still Melanie stood staring at the imposing set of doors, the narrow portal that stretched in front of them.

      She looked back over her shoulder at the dark, muddy road she’d traversed to get to this spot. It looked even more imposing and dangerous from this vantage point than it had coming up.

      Drawing a deep breath of the misting air, she told herself that she’d come this far, she wasn’t about to turn back now. She needed Teo Sandoval’s help. And nothing was going to make her leave without pleading her case before him. Nothing.

      She straightened her aching shoulders, ignored her icy-cold and muddy feet, and pushed her sodden hair from her face. Crossing the twenty or thirty yards leading to the set of wooden doors, she knew how Puss ‘N Boots must have felt, or Beauty upon reaching the Beast’s castle—utterly terrified and equally determined not to show it.

      All too quickly Melanie reached the narrow portal heralding the doors. She stepped up two wooden steps and crossed the rough planking after pausing to scrape some of the mud from her shoes. Chris’s toys stayed in midair at her side, as unaffected as ever by Melanie’s tension, the wind, the misting rain or the lightning. Would the sight of the toys affect Teo Sandoval’s decision to help her? Or would it make him even more determined that she leave without his aid?

      She hiked Chris up and closer, tucking him securely beneath her head, cradling him, as much for her own security as his. Then she rapped on the massive doors. Her knuckles against the heavy wood made about as much noise as a whisper in a crowded room.

      Using the flat edge of her fist, she pounded the door in a repeated series of three loud bangs. No one answered. Teo Sandoval didn’t appear. She waited for a few seconds, then redoubled her efforts. Still no answer.

      She stood irresolutely for about a minute, not knowing what to do. She had focused so thoroughly on the trek to get here that she’d never once considered what she would do if he was either not at home or refused to answer his door. If, indeed, this even proved to be his home.

      On the portal was a rough, hand-hewn bench and after a few seconds spent staring blankly at it, Melanie realized she was eyeing it as a place to spend the night. Nothing on earth was going to drive her back down that road, and no matter how cold it might get during the night, at least the portal offered some protection from the rain. And she could confront Teo Sandoval by the light of day.

      A creak beside her made her turn. One of the massive doors slowly, ominously, swung outward. As dark as it was outside, she would have expected light from inside to spill across the floor of the portal, but instead, in some strange optical illusion, it appeared to her that the dark from the inside snaked out, spreading across the wooden planks, seemingly defying the laws of physics and filling the already shadowed portal.

      It appeared no one stood behind that open door, and Melanie found herself holding her breath. No more, she thought. She could take no more.

      “What do you want?” a gruff voice asked, the tone menacing.

      Melanie couldn’t seem to speak. Now that the moment was at hand she felt that nothing on earth could persuade her to enter this strange and forbidding dwelling, if indeed, dwelling it was.

      Chris stirred in her arms, one baby hand sliding upward to cup her lips. Automatically she pressed a kiss into that tiny palm. The simple gesture, the sheer banality, the sweet honesty of a mother’s kiss for her beloved child, steadied her as nothing else could have done.

      She’d come so far, so desperately, and now she was actually in the company of the one man who could possibly make the universe spin correctly again. She couldn’t leave. Not now.

      The shadows in the doorway, strengthened by flickering lightning and elongated by the unseen mountains looming above the house, shifted and realigned, and Melanie realized that Teo Sandoval had stepped into the open doorway and was standing not three feet in front of her, watching her closely.

      His dark hair, long and as black as the night, blended with the shadows, as did his swarthy face and dark clothing. But she could easily see his odd, pale blue-gray eyes and knew he was studying her intensely even as he didn’t reveal a single clue to his own thoughts.

      She needed him so much, had sought him out for so long, that she felt tears prick her eyes. Don’t make me do this, she wanted to tell him. Don’t make me beg.

      “You have to help me,” she said abruptly, and only realized—after she’d closed her mouth—that she hadn’t voiced it as a plea, but as a rough command.

      She clung to his gaze as if his remarkable eyes were the only thing between her and drowning. Again she felt that brush of his inner self, if not his thoughts. Alone, he seemed to project at her, not as a state of mind, but rather as a state of permanent being. Searching quickly, lightly, she intuited no hint of self-pity or despair, only fact, unequivocal and unconditional.

      She swiftly closed the tenuous bridge between them, sealing him off, not willing to let this powerful telepathic and telekinetic man know the full extent of her desperation, the need that had been housed in her so long it felt perfectly at home in her. The depth of that need had nothing to do with Chris, nothing to do with the PRI, but she knew if she opened to him, he would read it all.

      She’d read the files on him. She knew he could pluck any thought, any emotion, from an unblocked mind. Without leaded hood, no human being was closed to him. Except her. Her own skills made it possible to close herself off to him.

      But it was tempting to let him see what the PRI would do to her son. Surely that would turn the tide in her favor. Surely he would be unable to refuse helping her if he knew.

      After a timeless moment or two his expression shifted, as did his body. For a split second his image hung in the air—a dream, an unsmiling Cheshire cat, face wary, eyes shuttered—then he melted back into the shadows.

      “Don’t!” she called swiftly.

      “Don’t what, señora?” he asked. His tone mocked her.

      “Don’t send us away,” she said.

      “I told you not to come, that I help no one,” he said.

      “I had to,” she said fiercely. “There isn’t anyone else I can turn to.”

      “You came to the wrong man, señora,” he stated flatly, and at that moment Melanie believed him. But belief didn’t dampen her need for his help, her determination to enlist it.

      “The

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