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Part Three in the riveting romantic thriller about a family on the run from a deadly past, and a first love that will transcend secrets, lies and danger...
Betrayed, heartbroken and determined to save her family, Tessa Carson refuses to give in to Tristan Walker’s pleas for forgiveness. But her own awakening psychic gift won’t let her rest until she uncovers the truth about her family and her past. And Tristan is the only one who can help her sift through the secrets to find the truth hidden in all the lies....
Run to You
Part Three:
Third Charm
Clara Kensie
www.miraink.co.uk
Dedication
To K:
I.H.Y.D.
Contents
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Acknowledgments
Playlist for Run to You
Q & A with Clara Kensie
About the Author
Excerpt
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Did you hear me, Tessa?” Tristan said.
I’d heard him. He’d just told me that Dennis Connelly wasn’t the killer, my parents were.
I heard him say it, and I tried to tell him he was wrong, that he was lying, but shock and fury and disgust formed a block in my throat, choking off my words, cutting off my air.
“Some of what your parents told you is true,” Tristan said. “Your father was a journalist. He used his press pass to meet politicians and businessmen. Your mom was the special events director at a hotel. She knew when politicians and important people were coming. Your dad used his press pass to meet them too. Then he’d watch all of them with his remote vision. If your dad saw them do something unethical, your parents would contact them anonymously and demand money from them. That’s how they made so much money. Blackmail. Not writing a newspaper column and planning parties.”
I blinked again, slid farther away from him. He was lying. He had to be.
And yet he continued. The putrid, rotten lies, each one worse than the last, came spewing from his mouth like vomit.
“If the victims refused to pay, if they called the police or started investigating who was blackmailing them, your mother would use her PK to give them heart attacks or brain aneurysms. She’d kill people and make it look like a car accident, or illness or suicide.”
I stared at him and tried to let the words sink in.
But they wouldn’t.
Because they were lies. All of them. Every single one.
“I’m so sorry.” He reached for me, but I slapped him away and scrambled off the cot.
“You said you would never lie to me again,” I seethed through clenched teeth. “And that is the most vicious lie I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m not lying. I wish I were.”
“That man came to our house to kill us,” I said. “My father watched him slice open two people with his mind.”
“Dennis Connelly has one psionic ability, and that’s telepathy. He cannot slice people open with his mind,” Tristan said. “Your parents built him up to be some kind of all-powerful, indestructible super-villain. They demonized him to keep you scared and obedient.”
I cringed. That lie was the worst of all. “They would never do that to us.”
“We have evidence.”
“No, I have evidence.” I yanked my shirt up. “That man, that monster, did this to me.”
He touched his fingers to the scars and I flinched. “He didn’t even know you were cut until I told him last week. He thinks you must have gotten cut on broken glass when your father pulled you from the car window.”
“Does he deny trying to kidnap me too?” I tried to growl it, to sound strong and menacing, but my voice came out high and uncontrolled.
“He did put you in his car,” he said. “But he wasn’t kidnapping you.”
“How is locking me in his car not kidnapping?”
“Eight years ago,” he said, “one of our sensors was in Washington, trying to find psionic people. Doing his job. He walked by your dad at a coffee shop and sensed he had some kind of psionic ability.” Tristan sighed and rubbed his eyes. “So the APR sent Dennis and his recruitment team to your house to talk to him. If they found evidence of psionics, they planned to invite him to the APR for testing and possible employment. While Dennis was outside talking to you, his team went inside to talk to your parents. He put you in his car when he heard what was happening in your house.”
I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “And what, exactly, was happening in my house?”
“Your parents were killing his partners, Tessa. He was just trying to keep you safe. Then he went inside to help his team, but it was too late. Your parents attacked him, too. Your mom gave him a heart attack. He barely escaped alive.”
The cell fell silent.
His words echoed in my mind, each one like a punch to the chest. I stumbled to the wall and sank to the floor as waves of dizziness brought back the fog. “Liar,” I managed to squeak, before the fog took me away.
* * *
“Tessa?” Tristan’s voice broke through the fog.
I didn’t move. I wanted—needed—to stay in the fog for a while longer.
“I need to tell you something else. About Dennis.”
“No more.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m holding anything back.”
“I can’t handle anything else right now. Please.”
“Okay. When you’re ready.”
* * *
We hadn’t moved in hours, it seemed. I remained huddled in a ball in the corner. Tristan sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, head hung low.
Finally he took a deep breath. “Tess—”
“Don’t say it.”
“I need to—”
“I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it. Please don’t say it.”
But whether he said it or not, I already knew what he wanted to tell me. Forbidding him to say the words wasn’t going to change it.
I gave a stuttery sigh of defeat. “He’s your father, isn’t he?”
Please, please tell me I’m wrong.
But he didn’t. He just nodded. “Dennis Connelly is my father.”
Perhaps knowing I was about to cry, he opened his arms in an offer of comfort. I shook my head and pulled myself into a tighter ball and cried alone.
* * *
“How did you know?” Tristan asked from the cot when my tears had slowed to sniffles.
I sniffled one more time. “Back in your kitchen. Kellan called you Junior.”
“Ah.”
I put my head on my knees. I just wanted to go back in time, back to Winterball. I wanted to go back to the running path. Back to laying on his bed with his head on my stomach.
But there was no going back. I was here, locked in a cell with the son of Dennis Connelly.
Tristan was the son of the man who’d tried to kill me. The son of the man who’d chased my family out of thirteen homes in eight years. The son of the man who would soon come and finish the job he started.
I was in love with Tristan Connelly.
“Oh God...” Dennis Connelly’s son leaped off the cot and scooped me up, rushing me to the bathroom and bending me over the toilet just in time. He knew I was going to throw up before I did.
He held my hair back as I vomited for the second time since Kellan had kidnapped me.
No, the third. I had a flash of screaming, screaming so long and so hard I choked and threw up all over his white shirt with the pink embroidered horse, and started screaming again.
But now I was too tired, too broken, to scream anymore. I coughed the last of the vomit from my mouth, and he handed me a plastic cup of water from the sink. “Sip and spit.”
I did, and he guided me back to the main cell. He tried to bring me to the cot, but I pulled away and slunk back to my corner. “Just leave, Tristan. I don’t want you here.”
He walked away but only to sit on the cot again. “I’m not leaving you.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The door to the cell slid open and I startled, lowering the fog, certain it was Dennis Connelly. But it was just a guard, holding a plastic tray. A gun hung in a holster on his belt. I’d seen him before somewhere; his yellow spiky hair looked familiar. I raised the fog again but kept it close.
Spiky Hair nodded to the tray. “Breakfast.”
Breakfast. It was the next day. I’d been in this cell for over twenty-four hours.
Tristan took the tray and placed it on the cot. “Thanks.”
“Congrats on the mission, Connelly,” Spiky Hair said. “Nice job.” His gaze flickered to me in the corner.
Tristan’s face reddened. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
The guard left, the door sealing itself shut behind him. Tristan held out a plate for me, but I shook my head. “How do I know it’s not poisoned?” I was imprisoned by a killer, after all.
He took a large scoop of scrambled eggs from one plate and ate it, then did the same with the other. “Nope. Not poisoned.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and moved from the floor up to the chair. He placed the plate on my lap. I looked with distaste at the eggs, toast and orange slices. “Are my parents getting the same meal?” Mom would hate this breakfast. Rubbery yellow eggs and white bread. She would’ve used egg whites and whole grain.
“They’re probably still unconscious. It takes a long time to neutralize someone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Their psionic abilities are being taken away.”
“You mean, so they can’t escape?”
“And so they can’t hurt anyone.” He looked pointedly at me, as if silently adding, So your mother can’t fly you into a wall anymore.
I blinked. “She didn’t mean to hurt me, Tristan.”
He swallowed his eggs. “I know.”
“She would never hurt anyone. There’s no way my parents did any of the things you said.”
He said nothing to that.
In a display of loyalty to my mother, I pushed aside the eggs and toast, and ate only the orange slices. But because I was weak in both body and spirit, I betrayed her again by eating the eggs. “Does it hurt to be neutralized?”
“No. It’s like blowing out a candle. In fact, your dad’s headaches will probably stop.”
That, at least, was a tiny bit comforting. But my mom’s PK was as much a part of her life as me, or air. She couldn’t survive without it, or want to.
Thank God Jillian and Logan weren’t here. My parents were right to send them away before driving up here. They wouldn’t want to live without their PK either.
The cell door opened again and I jolted, my fork clanging to the floor, and again I lowered the fog. A dark-skinned woman in a lab coat entered, a thick green binder in one arm. “Hello, Tessa. I’m Dr. Sheldon. Do you remember me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She was the one who’d put her palm on my forehead and looked inside my mind. She was gentle. Warm. “Can I see my mom and dad now?”
She tilted her head. “Sweetheart, do you understand why your parents are here?”
“No.” I didn’t understand anything anymore.
“I told her,” Tristan said. “But she won’t believe me.”
Dr. Sheldon clucked. “I wouldn’t want to believe something like that about my parents either.” She patted the binder. A series of letters and numbers was printed on the spine: CARS0520. “But we have evidence.”
So Dr. Sheldon was a liar too.
“Any news about Tessa’s brother and sister?” Tristan asked. “Did we find them yet?”
They were still looking for Jillian and Logan?
“Let’s see.” She opened the binder and flipped through the pages. “Their parents gave them all their cash before sending them away on foot. We have an agent watching the house in case they return, but so far no one knows where they are.”
“We’ll find them for you, Tessa,” Tristan said. “I promise.”
Impossible. Jillian and Logan were too smart to go back to our house. They knew better than to return to Twelve Lakes. With all our money, and without me to ruin everything, they could run forever.
“Poor kids,” Dr. Sheldon said. “They must be very frightened.”
Terrified, I was certain. Jillian was probably disguising her terror with anger. Logan was probably not bothering to hide it. But the important thing was they weren’t imprisoned in this horrid APR place, being neutralized. As long as they weren’t here, they would be okay.
Dr. Sheldon held up her palms. “Stand up for a minute. I need to examine you again.” She placed one hand on my forehead and one on the back of my neck, then closed her eyes.
I tried to think about nothing. Just empty space. Fog. As nice as she was, I didn’t want her inside my mind. Tristan was being nice too, and I couldn’t trust him.
After a few minutes, she took my chin in her hand, a frown on her face and alarm in her eyes. “I don’t know what it is that I’m seeing deep in that mind of yours, Tessa, but I don’t like it. You have me very worried. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here for a while.”
She made some notes in the file. “Completely neutral,” she muttered with a pitiful shake of her head, then closed the binder and tucked it in the crook of her arm. With a warning to Tristan to watch me carefully, she left, taking the binder with her.
* * *
Hearing all those awful lies about my parents and the guilt over causing all this misery to everyone I loved made me despise myself. Before Tristan could even offer a comforting word, I went into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. It was the only place I could go to escape from him.
I shed my clothes and stepped behind the shower curtain, then started the water. I washed myself again, scrubbing as hard as I had last night.
When I was five and Jillian was six, we were on a softball team. The Dragonflies. We were the best team in the league, and my sister was the star player, no surprise. She hit every ball. It wasn’t until I hit three home runs in a single game that our parents realized Jillian had been using her psychokinesis to control the ball the entire season. They made her stop. It wasn’t fair, they’d said. It wasn’t right.
My parents were ethical. Moral. Honest.
They had not blackmailed anyone. They had not murdered anyone. They had not lied to us this whole time.
They had not.
I ran my fingers over the scars on my belly.
Shattered glass.
No.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dressed in my gray prison uniform, I shuffled out to the cell. I stopped short at the sight of Melissa and Philip—no, Amy and Heath—standing with Tristan. Instantly on guard, I lowered the fog, just a bit. Amy and Heath had been in on Kellan’s plot the whole time. Any kindness they’d shown me in Twelve Lakes was fake.
“Oh, Sarah,” Amy said, wringing her hands. “We’re so sorry.”
“Her name is Tessa,” Tristan said.
“That’s right. Tessa.” She brushed my cheek and I flinched. “I just want to check your injuries.”
“I’m fine,” I said, stepping away.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said. “I’m a healer. And Heath’s a safeguard. He feels awful he couldn’t protect you from Kellan. We both do. He sent us away Friday night and said he didn’t need us anymore. Neither of us knew he was going to do what he did.”
Heath, sighing regretfully, shook his head.
“Heath’s a bodyguard?” I asked.
“Not just a bodyguard,” Tristan said, “A safeguard. He protects people from physical and psionic harm. That’s why your dad couldn’t see me with his remote vision.”
So Tristan wasn’t one of the five percent who were immune to my father’s mobile eye after all. No wonder Heath was always around.
Heath clapped Tristan on the back.
“Hey, man. Thanks,” Tristan said, shaking Heath’s left hand with an awkward laugh. The knuckles on his right hand were bruised and swollen.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Amy sighed. “We’ll leave you alone. We’re just glad you’re safe now, Sarah—I mean, Tessa.”
I didn’t reply, and they turned away. The door sealed shut behind them.
“That day, when I pushed you away from the falling tree?” Tristan said. “The tackle fractured your collarbone. Amy healed it.”
I remembered how she’d run her fingers over my collarbone as I’d sat on her kitchen table, and how the pain had disappeared. “Oh.”
“And Heath was so upset about what Kellan did to you, he punched him.”
“He did?”
“While you were sleeping yesterday. He safeguarded his thoughts, then walked up to Kellan in the lunchroom and punched him in the face. Dislocated his jaw. The healers fixed Kellan right away, but Heath won’t let anyone heal his hand, not even Amy. He’s proud of those bruises.”
Heath had never even spoken in my presence. The idea of that sweet, shy man punching Kellan in my defense filled me with vengeful glee.
Tristan’s duffle bag lay open on the floor, another of his sweatshirts folded on top, this one white with royal blue lettering and a lightning bolt. On impulse, I slipped it over my gray prison top.
“You can make holes in the cuffs if you want,” Tristan said. “You did on my other one.”
“I did? I’m sorry.” I looked down at the sleeves. I’d already started rubbing the fabric with my thumbnails.
“It’s okay. I like it when you do that.”
“Lilybrook High Lightning,” I said, reading the sweatshirt.
“I went from the Lilybrook High Lightning to the TLC Thunderclouds.”
“You told me you were from Milwaukee.”
“Milwaukee is about four hours south of here.”
I traced the blue letters with my fingertip. “Are all the kids in Lilybrook undercover agents?”
He laughed. “No. Most kids in Lilybrook are just regular kids. But the people who work here at the APR are all psionic, and usually their kids are too. We can work here as interns once we’re in high school. I was interning in the lab back in March when Kellan asked me to help him out with his new case. He wouldn’t tell me any details, just that I’d have to live in a town called Twelve Lakes and wait for a family to move in, then befriend the kids to find out if anyone in the family had psionic abilities. I accepted the job. Being an investigator for the APR was all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“What about school?”
“I was a senior just weeks away from graduation. I had straight As and I already had enough credits to graduate. The APR arranged it so I could finish my senior year by correspondence. But I had to enroll as a junior at TLC because we didn’t know how long we’d have to wait for your family. When you still didn’t come by the end of summer, I had to postpone college and be a senior again.” He sank to the cot, chin in hand. “Taking this job was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
I refused to be impressed or to feel sorry for him. “I’m sure your father gave you lots of advice.”
He shook his head. “He was against it, even though Kellan told him it was a basic fact-finding mission and he’d arranged for a safeguard and a healer to be my chaperones. Combined with my warning premonitions, I’d be perfectly safe. My dad was still against it, but I was eighteen, so ultimately it was my decision.”
That’s right—Tristan was eighteen. He’d graduated high school. “There’s still so much I don’t know about you,” I said, “and you know everything about me.”
“That’s not completely true,” he said. “I didn’t know your last name until Friday night.” He said my full name aloud. “Tessa Carson.”
“Tessa Lynne Carson,” I added.
“Really? Your initials are TLC? Like the school?”
“Yep. ‘You’ll find TLC at TLC’,” I quoted Twelve Lakes Community High School’s slogan. “I guess you really did.”
He laughed. “TLC. That’s amazing.”
“Why?”
“My middle name is Lawrence.”
“Tristan Lawrence... Oh. We have the same initials.” I was quiet for a moment, and then I decided to be cruel, because for a moment I’d forgotten he was the enemy and his kindness was just another one of his tricks. “But I think for you, TLC stands for terrible, loathsome and contemptible.”
The light left his eyes, and he sank to the cot with a sigh. “I hope one day you’ll change your mind about that,” he murmured.
I just shook my head.
* * *
“You want me to believe my parents are criminals,” I said to Tristan after sitting in silence for a while. “That they blackmailed and murdered people.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to believe that Denn—that he isn’t going to kill us.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to believe the complete opposite of everything I’ve known for the last eight years.”
“Yes.”
“Even after everything Kellan did. Punching me, kidnapping me, holding me as bait. He made me watch his men shoot my parents. After all that, you still want me to believe that my parents are the bad guys.”
Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair. “Yes.”
“If I believe you,” I said, “that means my parents were lying to me.”
“They were,” he said.
“If I believe my parents, that means you’re lying to me.”
“I’m not lying to you.”
“But you did lie to me, Tristan Walker.”
He winced. “Yes.”
“So the only thing I can prove is that you are the liar.”
He slowly nodded his head. “What can I do to make things better?”
Nothing he did now could ever make things better. He’d lied to me. Used me. Betrayed me. Tristan was the son of Dennis Connelly. Killer’s blood coursed through his veins with every beat of his heart.
I studied him from the corner of my eye. Legs wide, shoulders slumped, elbows on knees. Head down. Dejected.
He turned his head to look at me, his eyes wide and sorrowful.
He was desperate as well.
I licked my lips. Tristan had used me; now I was going to use him. “There is something you can do.”
“Anything.”
“I need you to help me get that green binder Dr. Sheldon had.”
“Why?”
“Whatever evidence you claim to have is in that binder. I want to see it.” And then I would prove there was no evidence. Once I convinced him of that, I would get him to help my parents and me escape.
And then I would leave him behind forever.
He eyed me for a long moment, and I offered him a tiny smile.
“Okay,” he said. “Tonight. After everyone has gone home.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The alarm on Tristan’s phone rang at exactly eleven o’clock that night. “Ready?”
Holding my breath, I nodded.
He rang the buzzer on the intercom, and a few moments later a low voice crackled through the speakers. “Yeah?”
“We need a guard down here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just need a guard to let me out.”
The intercom went silent, and Tristan buzzed it again. “I’m not a prisoner. I work here. I’m an agent.”
“What’s an agent doing locked up in the Underground?”
“That’s classified.”
No reply from the intercom.
Tristan sighed. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“...No.”
“I’m Tristan Connelly.”
“So?”
Licking his lips, he glanced at me. “So, my dad is Dennis Connelly.”
I tried not to show him how much that upset me as the intercom clicked off.
When a few minutes passed without it clicking back on, I said, “He’s not coming.”