Persistence of Vision

  Chapter 4: Hypnotic Eyes

  Maggie wanted to sigh with exhaustion but didn’t have time. It must have been four hours since she and Marcus left her house. He’d set the pace and kept a firm hold on her hand, not allowing her to fall behind.

  They’d headed east. Maggie lived close to the foot of the mountain. As they headed for the passes and civilization became scarcer, Maggie became nervous. They were still in an area she knew well—she often hiked here—but how long would that last? The sun was not setting yet but would be soon, and Marcus showed no signs of stopping.

  The incline steepened as they headed into the hills, and the air got thinner. Maggie kept reassuring herself with thoughts of the gun, but she had no opportunity to get to it. Even when the gradient was practically vertical, Marcus climbed with one hand and kept hold of her with the other.

  When they reached more level ground—high enough that she could see the entire valley, including the rooftops of her neighborhood—Maggie jerked her arm away from him. He turned in surprise.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  He sighed. She was learning that he did that when he didn’t want to answer a question.

  “I told you—”

  “You told me nothing. You said we were in danger at my house. Given the dead guy in the kitchen, I believed you, but we aren’t there anymore. I’m not going any farther until you explain.” She crossed her arms and stuck her jaw out.

  Marcus glanced away, looking annoyed. “We aren’t safe here, Maggie. We’re probably being followed.” He stepped toward her. “I need to take you somewhere. I know we’ve been going a long time, but it’s not much farther.”

  “Where?”

  His hand dropped. “My team is waiting for us. Where they are is safe.” He glanced around, as if looking for a way to convince her. “I’m not very good at explaining things, Maggie. I don’t have a way with words as you do.”

  Maggie shrugged uncomfortably. She did have a way with words, but it bugged her that he knew that.

  “Anything I say is going to sound insane or just scare you. Please trust me a little further. When we get there, we’ll explain everything to you. I promise.”

  Maggie fought with herself. If she explained this situation to anyone else—her mother, any of her girlfriends, Jonah—they’d tell her to run screaming away from Marcus. And rightly so. Yet in this moment, she found herself wanting to take his hand.

  Behind Marcus two men emerged from a stand of trees. Maggie assumed they were hikers or campers and contemplated calling to them for help. Then she looked more carefully. Both of them sported the same awful haircut as the man who’d attacked her that morning, as well as the spider web tattoo over their eyes.

  The two men spotted Maggie and Marcus, and their faces did not make Maggie want to have tea with them.

  “Marcus!”

  Marcus’s head whipped around. When he turned back, there was no fear in his face, only urgency.

  He reached out and snatched her hand. “Maggie, run.”

  She tried to nod, but he was already dragging her along behind him. He forsook the level path all together and clawed his way up the face of the mountain. After a few minutes, Maggie pulled her hand away.

  “Let go. We’ll go faster.”

  He didn’t complain, and she managed to stay with him for a while.

  Forty feet above the path they’d left was another level dirt road. Maggie thought it might be the same one, and it simply wound higher and higher. It seemed to be what Marcus was aiming for.

  Climbing straight up became wearing, and Marcus got ahead of Maggie before they reached the higher road. He pulled himself up onto the level earth then turned and grabbed her arm, pulling her up. Her shoulders and torso made it up, and she was about to throw one leg onto the road and hoist herself the rest of the way when something closed around her ankle.

  It was a hand, a strong one, and it was going to pull her off the side of the mountain. She envisioned being thrown away from the face of the incline and bouncing down several hundred feet. Death would be merciful if that happened.

  She grabbed a deep-seated root for anchorage. It didn’t help. The hand yanked her ankle down, and all the root did was give her something akin to a carpet burn as it pulled through her hand. If not for Marcus’s grip on her forearm, she would have gone over the precipice.

  She gave up on the root and grasped his arm with both of hers, holding on for dear life. Marcus pulled something from his coat and leaned out over the drop-off. She couldn’t see what he had.

  Suddenly Maggie felt…bleary. She smelled burning flesh; then her ears were ringing. A white-hot pincer was drilling into her skull. She tried to scream, but the pain was too intense. Unable to hold onto Marcus anymore, she put both hands to her head, but the sensation didn’t stop—if anything, it increased.

  The world rang louder and louder. The pain grew so intense that her arms shook. Her throat was hoarse from trying to scream. She wished for oblivion.

  Then the hand fell away from her ankle. The sensation, which had come on gradually, was gone so suddenly it took her breath away.

  Marcus pulled her up onto the dirt road. She was panting. When her shoulders and torso were up, he grabbed the belt loops of her jeans and hauled her up the rest of the way. She lay down in the dirt, trembling and gasping.

  After a moment, Marcus leaned over her. He put his hands on either side of her face and looked intently into her eyes. She was still too overcome by the experience to stop him or even wonder what he was doing.

  He was looking at her but not seeing her. He gazed down, but his eyes were out of focus. Those eyes of his—amber with colorful flecks—were so strange and hypnotic… As he stared down at her, she felt better. Her nerves calmed, and her energy returned.

  After a moment, his eyes focused again. He was looking at her now, and she was very aware that she was lying on the ground on her back with him nearly on top of her. He was lying alongside her, but his body was right up against hers, and with him leaning over her and holding her face in his hands, it felt…intimate.

  She shrugged uncomfortably, and he dropped his hands from her face, resting them in fists on the ground on either side of her head.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, unable to find her voice.

  He hesitated another moment before pushing himself up and taking her hands. “Take it easy,” he said, gently pulling her into a sitting position. He watched her warily, as though she might explode at any moment. “Any headaches?”

  She shook her head. “What just happened?”

  “He grabbed your ankle, tried to hurt you.”

  She glanced at his hands, but they were empty. If he had a weapon, he’d already put it away.

  “How are you, Maggie? Are you sure you feel all right?”

  She didn’t want to tell him how shaken she was. Instead she crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down. She could see both men on the road below them, lying on their backs. They were stirring.

  “You didn’t kill them.”

  He joined her. “No. Only stunned them. If nothing’s broken, they’ll pursue us again. We have to keep moving.”

  He pulled her to her feet, chose a direction, and they jogged along the dirt path. Maggie didn’t protest. She was too shaken to do anything but allow herself to be led.

  She didn’t know who those men were, but she knew they were evil. She could feel that. She didn’t know anything about Marcus either, but something told her that he was the safer of the two choices.