Lying in Wait
Sitting in the car outside a pub and banquet hall meant for busloads of tourists, Charlie could barely stem the rise of panic in his chest, but he was determined to be brave for Rune. Unfortunately, his electronic plane ticket was in a fake identity that Dr. St. Augustine had provided for him, and he’d left the matching fake passport behind at the hotel. He’d never had a chance to go back and get it without tipping off Lilah of his whereabouts on the previous night. He had maybe five euros left in his pocket, and no other type of identification.
Dr. St. Augustine had insisted that he and Lilah not carry anything that would give away their real identities, so now he found himself alone in a foreign country, no passport, no money, no way to prove who he really was, let alone why he had a plane ticket under a fake name. He’d thought more than once about facing Lilah to apologize, to recover his passport, to retrieve the credit card under his fake ID, and most of all, to determine if there was any way he might find an opportunity to hold The Lost Teachings and change his destiny.
Blinking at the early rays of sunlight, Rune yawned, then closed her eyes again and curled up in the passenger seat of the car. He had driven all night, gotten lost three times, and he was exhausted. It didn’t help that Rune had slept with her head in his lap. Charlie did his best to drive on the side of the road that was “wrong” to him and keep a decent-enough speed both to get them across Ireland overnight and not alert any authorities. He didn’t have a driver’s license with him or any ID at all. Being questioned by anyone in authority would cost him, at a minimum, the time he needed to find Lilah on the Cliffs of Moher and beg her forgiveness before she returned to Florida with the artifact.
He couldn’t remember anything being so bad in his life ever, not even when he’d stood in front of a church, looking down the long aisle as the organist played “Here Comes the Bride” and a flurry of white lace ran for the exit. This was worse, or at least it felt that way. All those same feelings resurfaced. The ones of being left behind, the ones of everyone knowing he had done something wrong, the ones of him getting just what he deserved. He didn’t appreciate his ability to run away under such circumstance or to hide from judgment.
What a failure he had been—out of money and out of options, so that there was no way of following Lilah across the country and finding her without turning to Rune’s brother for help. Rune had gone alone, which made him feel even less of a man, but she had insisted that Marco wouldn’t treat him well.
“If he sees you, he might even kill you,” she had said.
Charlie wasn’t afraid of Marco, but Rune was, and in the end, Charlie had given in to her pleas to let her handle the matter as an issue between siblings. She’d returned well after midnight and picked him up on a street corner in a borrowed car. Marco hadn’t hurt her, at least not physically, but one look at her and Charlie knew she had been crying.
She had called Charlie her hero, again and again, for every time he had been able to help her. He was no hero now. He was a failure. Everywhere he turned, he failed.
He had already ruined everything with Lilah, and now he stood to lose Rune as well, the one person left on the planet who still seemed to look up to him. She had come back instead with a proposition for him from her brother: it was time for Charlie to join the family, to prove where his loyalties stood. Marco could arrange travel for both Rune and Charlie back to the States. All Charlie had to do was find a way to get The Lost Teachings and hand it off to Rune. For his trouble, Marco had lent Rune his car and given her a handful of bills just short of five hundred euros.
“A gesture of good faith,” Rune had said. “From my brother.”
Charlie liked that idea even less than the prospect of being beaten or killed by the man. Borrowing a car and money from such a bastard reeked of selling his soul.
“Rune.”
He didn’t say it loudly enough to wake her. She slept fitfully, her unbruised cheek against his left thigh as he leaned against the driver’s door. Somewhere outside of Dublin, they’d switched places and he’d driven, yawning, for the west coast of Ireland, toward County Clare. He knew Lilah would go there, even without Dr. St. Augustine’s instructions. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d leave Ireland without seeing the Cliffs of Moher for herself and some mythical city she was always gushing about. He hated that Lilah was mad at him, but it couldn’t be helped. There was no way he could make both women happy, but at this point, he would gladly settle for making one of them happy and the other willing to be in the same room as him.
Rune moaned in her sleep, something about Marco. She didn’t seem terrified so at least it wasn’t a nightmare.
“Shh. It’s okay.”
Charlie brushed her bright pink-red hair from her cheeks. Near the scalp, her hair was blonde, her natural color. He wasn’t sure why she’d chosen to dye her beautiful hair or pierce her nose and ears. She might look completely different with a makeover. But then, if she did, he wouldn’t have met her. She never would have come to him with complaints that he’d copied her look and name for the Rune O’Maney avatar for his virtual library on Fourth World.
What a fluke! But in a good way.
She was sweet and in trouble, and if he had a type, that was it. Particularly the “in trouble” part. He’d been able to help her, to save her—thus far—from her awful brother. He wasn’t sure if he was in love with her but if he ever settled down, Rune was certainly an option. He was falling for her, though, if he hadn’t already. Her affection for him was clear, and her touch was everything he’d been searching for. Rune reminded him of Daphne in the early days of their relationship when she’d needed him. Before she’d regained her health and told him she was done with his foolishness. Back when she was grateful that God had brought him into her life as the perfect match for a kidney transplant, and he’d saved a stranger and then asked her to marry him. He might’ve married her, too, if he’d not stood her up at the rehearsal dinner to help a stranger with a flat tire in a thunderstorm. That one good deed had cost him Daphne. She’d told him that night after their guests and family had left that she was tired of being put second to every person in the world who asked anything of him, now that she had her health back. She wanted to be first in his life, and she’d said that if he needed to save everyone else that badly, maybe she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life married to someone who couldn’t put her first unless she was in trouble.
She’d gone to the church, still undecided, but when he stood next to the altar and his best man and waited for her to make an appearance in a cloud of white lace, she’d made up her mind. All the bridesmaids were already at the front and looking back with him at her. The wedding guests had turned to see why the organist kept playing the same notes over and over with more emphasis every time, and finally Daphne had stepped into the foyer. One look at him, and she’d turned and fled, out the arched doorway with the bright sunlight behind it.
Afterward, everyone talked about how sad it was for Charlie. Such a great guy. Such a compassionate and loving man. How ungrateful of her, they said, to break his heart after he’d given her a kidney. No one understood why Daphne had walked away at the last possible moment. No one except him, and he refused to think about it.
Instead, he’d accepted Dr. St. Augustine’s job offer and moved the next week. He’d run away, hid, started a new life in a remote Florida city. Lilah had helped him through his pain, and honestly, he wasn’t sure he would have survived without her. She’d insisted on keeping their relationship more physical than emotional, and he’d been grateful for that, but eventually, he’d come to love her and one day, after she’d made stupid mistakes with Jakin Crutchfield, she’d realized what a catch Charlie was. They’d shared only a couple of ecstatic months together before that fateful message from Rune, teasingly accusing him of stealing her identity for a virtual librarian in an online universe.
He was so confused. He was on the verge of losing everything, and Rune was all he had left. He couldn’t lose her, too. Without her, he might as well fling himself off a cliff—and there were some doozies of cliffs nearby.
Leaning his head against the driver’s window, he blinked out at the green fields and distant sea he’d been watching since sunrise. At some point, Lilah would pass this way. He didn’t know what kind of vehicle or if she’d be alone, or if she’d have the artifact on her or safely stashed away, but somehow, some way, she would come to see the Cliffs of Moher. She’d wanted to walk the entirety of the trail along the clifftops, though he doubted she’d try it in the heavy wind that howled along the coast today. Their first conversation had been about the cliffs and stories her long-dead mother had told her, from the Annals of Ireland and rare books, the types of dangerous fairytales that taught curious children to grow up wishing to see the modern source of those old stories.
He stared out at the sea, toward the Aran Islands, and wished he had time and money to take Rune out there on a boat, to see the islands firsthand. The sun had come out but only in fits and bursts, and he knew he’d need to leave soon if he stood a chance of finding Lilah. He’d found a safe place to park at a large pub in a small village called Doolin, but Lilah was likely to pick the trail to the Cliffs of Moher up at the visitor’s center a few miles south of here.
Sniffing, he frowned down at Rune, then realized the smell was from his own skin. Today was Saturday, and he hadn’t showered since Thursday night before he’d first slept with Rune. He hadn’t slept much either. The jet lag, wine, lack of sleep—it was all too much. He inhaled again and got a whiff of Rune, not on her but on his own shirt. He’d spread his jacket over Rune to keep her warm on the drive to County Clare, but this smell was more of sex than sweat.
Oh, God.
Had Lilah smelled Rune on him? Some women were like that, and territorial. Lilah didn’t seem to notice smell as much as she did emotional distance and preoccupation. She’d frequently told him that if a man’s energy wasn’t focused on her and had been, then it was focused on someone else. The last time she’d said that had been… Wednesday?
An orange tabby cat startled him with one giant leap onto the car hood. Charlie caught his breath and motioned at the cat to go away. Just his luck, Marco wouldn’t be a fan of pawprints. The cat meowed through the windshield, then jumped down and ran across the small parking lot toward the pub.
Two hours earlier, he’d left Rune sleeping and had run inside for pastries he could stuff into a bag and bring out to Rune for when she woke. It was a nice thing to do, and he was sure she would appreciate it when she woke. She appreciated all the little things he did for her in a way that neither Lilah nor Daphne ever had.
Careful not to wake Rune, he drained the last of his cup of coffee he’d gotten at the same time as the pastries, then started the engine and drove away. The countryside was beautiful, but he was nervous. He had no idea what he would say to Lilah. What could he say?
“Lilah, I came here with you to ask you to marry me on these very cliffs, but I met someone else.”
“Lilah, I’ve been leading you on for months, and I know I’m not ready to marry you because I’m still not over being left at the altar in Chicago last year, but there’s this new woman who needs my help.”
“Lilah, meet Rune, my new fiancée. I hope you and I can still be friends. I think you’ll really like her once you get to know her.”
Or the more immediate question: “Lilah, is there any way in hell you can overlook what I’ve done and let me see that artifact so I can fix everything, and you won’t hate me?”
Maybe she wouldn’t show at all. Maybe she was sick to death of Ireland and would hop on her plane today without a backward glance. And there was still the matter of how he was going to get back to Florida without a valid passport. Maybe he could still drive back to the hotel and claim the belongings he’d left in Rune’s room. He wasn’t sure how lost-and-found worked in Ireland, but shouldn’t it be the same everywhere?
You don’t just lose your passport and credit cards and not want them back. I still have a chance.
He was turning it over in his head when he pulled into the parking lot at the visitor’s center. The building was low profile, and a handful of tourist buses and cars dotted the parking lot, but everything around him was lush green, even in February with a chilling wind. He found an open place to park where he had a good view of both the entrance to the building and the sparsely populated trails. Some other day with better weather might have brought more tourists, but the cliffs were lonely today.
Charlie pulled the key from the ignition and pocketed the key. Then he leaned against the driver’s window. He closed his eyes for a split second, then forced them open with a start. He’d dozed off and wasn’t sure how much time had passed.
Oh, no. What if Lilah’s already been here, and I missed her?
He shook himself awake, but Rune only whimpered. He stroked her hair and she purred against him. She pulled her hand up to her face, oblivious to the diamond ring on her finger. It wasn’t right that she’d put it there herself, but in the heat of passion, he’d promised not to leave her, and she’d soon after taken the ring as physical proof of his loyalty.
Poor Rune.
The bruise on her face was less red today—more purple with a hint of yellow at the outer edges, but he couldn’t see it clearly from this angle. She looked like a sleeping angel who’d never known a second of abuse. He continued to stroke her hair as he peered ahead through the window.
Whoa.
Charlie straightened in his seat. A woman in a familiar black jacket had walked inside the entrance to the left. He couldn’t see her hair or face, but he knew by the movement of her body, by the way she walked. He’d studied her gliding movements for months while working next to her. She moved like a shadow after midnight.
Lilah.
He almost breathed her name. She had every right to hate him, even if she didn’t know the truth about everything. He had to forfeit any right to expect forgiveness. He had to choose. The center of the crossroads was no longer moving with him. He was being ejected from the crossroads, like it or not, and he had to make a choice. Today.
Charlie waited for Lilah to exit the visitor’s center. Twenty minutes went by, and he almost thought she’d slipped by him before he spotted the black jacket and familiar gait. He waited until she had passed his car.
Good. She hadn’t looked in his direction.
He opened his car door and extracted himself from the front seat, careful to put Rune’s head down on the seat so she could continue to sleep.
And then he ran as hard as he could after Lilah.
You’re reading The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →
© 2021 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.