Again Read online

  Again

  Again

  Sharon Cullars

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks go to the following who provided encouragement and sometimes sanity throughout the completion of this book: Sabrina Collins, who told me to write another book when I was discouraged from a first attempt; Desiree Dawson, Alexandra Tschaler and Beverly Johns who were enthusiastic readers and gave me much needed critiques. To my agent, Janell Agyeman, who read the first draft and believed in it enough to take me on. And to the Kensington staff who made this final book possible: Kate Duffy, Hilary Sares and Sulay Hernandez.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Prologue

  New York—January 1880

  T he nearly arctic wind bit through his wool coat, chilling flesh and blood. But even the cold could not quell the fetid smell of the open sewer a few feet away. The heat of human waste sent up a vapor visible in the chilled air. Reeking garbage marred the frozen snow drifts piled along the alley floor. Intent on his purpose, Joseph barely noticed the odors. He squeezed his fingers together, trying to get the blood to flow. His leather gloves provided little protection against the unusually cold day.

  It wouldn’t be long now. He had been waiting nearly forty minutes, yet he knew this alley was where he would find the one he sought. Joseph had studied his quarry for nearly a month now, ever since the coward skulked back into town thinking it was safe to do so. Joseph had passed money around to keep ears and eyes open around the wharfs, piers, and the streets. Three weeks ago, his investment paid off. Charlie Rhodes was back in town. Word on the street was that the man had crossed into Jersey, hiding out until everything had blown over.

  For a time, the grisly murder of three men at the warehouse played on the front pages of most of the New York papers, the details glorified for the rabid readers. But with each passing week, and given the low pedigree of the victims, eventually the curious and the sensation hounds found other news to sniff after. Work at the warehouse had resumed and blood was washed away, leaving no reminders of the deaths that had taken place there. It was as though nothing had ever happened.

  As though his world had not been torn away, leaving him no foothold.

  He knew Charlie took this way home from the job he had gotten as a stevedore. The route was a lone shortcut through the alley a few feet from the hovel Charlie shared with a decrepit prostitute named Sally. Hardly anyone ever came this way, wisely afraid of robbers or mischief makers. Which made Charlie a fool. And which worked into Joseph’s plan. A plan he had decided on after Rachel was found.

  Nearly a month ago, a dock worker discovered Rachel’s body frozen in the East River. By chance, Joseph came across the article in one of the daily periodicals. The other papers hadn’t bothered to report the discovery. Even in the one paper, Rachel’s death had been summed up in very few words, a toss-away among news about the invention of something called a light bulb and the ever-growing media parade surrounding the Kiehl murder. The poisoning death of the eighty-one-year-old dowager had horrified the city. A Miss Catherine Zell was set to stand trial for the murder. But no one would stand trial for Rachel’s death. And with the discovery of her body, Joseph’s decision had crystallized within him. No, there would be no hue or cry for the death of a Negro woman, no matter how wonderful or beautiful. And most of those who cared about her either had no power to bring her justice or were too cowardly to come forward. So in the end, he realized what he had to do.

  There was something else driving him, also. A half-remembered dream…or rather dreams…that had been recurring lately. Dreams ensconced in a past that he couldn’t decipher but that piqued his suspicions about the workings of this world as well as the one beyond. That gave him hope.

  As for these past two months, he had played his part well. Son to his father, friend to his cronies…masks that at one time he had worn comfortably. Lately though, the masks had begun to chafe like a hair shirt against the skin—prickly, burning, painful…or more like the bars of a prison which he had come to realize enclosed him as much as they once had his mother.

  A sudden movement made him turn. A ball of gray scurried out of sight around the corner of a shack a few doors down. He breathed again, not realizing that he had stopped altogether. His pulse was racing. It was just some vermin scrounging for food. He heard its pathetic foraging in the snow, searching for discards from its human counterparts. In that second, his mind wandered as he thought of the rat. It was a second that almost cost him. He turned at another sound and saw the lone body rounding the northern corner of the alley. The newcomer’s feet crunched against the snow and the man wheezed into the lapel he held against his face, half hiding his features. Still, Joseph recognized him and knew that his wait had finally come to an end.

  It was an early evening and the sun hovered among slate clouds, the sky dimmed by a pall that had settled over the city this winter. A pall that reflected the lifelessness within himself. Today was Friday. Appropriate. Rachel had died on a Friday.

  Joseph stepped away from the building where he had been half hiding in wait. Charlie Rhodes stopped abruptly, his body stiffening at the sudden appearance of a stranger before him.

  “Yeah? Whatcha want?” Charlie barked, his voice phlegmy. Then his mouth gaped and his eyes bulged with sudden recognition. He put a hand up as though to ward off the devil himself.

  “Oh, oh, noww, noww, wait, you…you got it all wrong!”

  Joseph smirked. “Do I?”

  The man began backing away, shaking more from fear than the cold. “Noww, noww, it wasn’t me what planned the thing, Joseph. I didn’t want no part of it. I tole ’em…I tole ’em all it was a bad deal. But that lousy dago, Roberto, he was the one that wanted you dead. And the others, too. It was all them. Not me, Joseph. I just…I just went along ’cause they made me. You gotta believe me.”

  Joseph’s hatred made his voice clipped. “All I believe, Charlie, is that you are a liar, a coward, and that you are about to die.”

  “No!” Charlie yelled out. Joseph advanced as Charlie continued backing away in panic. The predator steadily rounded on his prey, assured that there would be no escape.

  Joseph saw Charlie reach inside his coat pocket. He had been expecting it. But he was quicker. He had his knife out before Charlie could clear the ragged tears of his pocket. In two steps, Joseph closed the space that separated them and shoved the blade deep into the other man’s stomach until only the Victorian bone of the hilt was visible.

  Charlie’s eyes widened in pain and horror. Joseph, his soul as cold as his body, felt nothing as he pushed the blade in deeper, as blood spurted out on h
is gloved hand. Then he pulled the blade free and Charlie’s body fell slowly to the ground, his eyes vacant in death. Joseph dropped the knife next to the dead man, blood splattering the snow.

  For a few seconds, Joseph stared down at the man who had become his obsession since Rachel’s death. Since it seemed his own life had ended.

  He bent, reached inside Charlie’s pocket. He pulled out the cheap, dulled-blade knife that Charlie hadn’t been able to retrieve.

  Joseph knew how the accounts of his own death would read. That he had died in a common knife fight. There would be speculation why someone of his station had died so casually. Those who knew him well would guess that it was his debauchery that finally caught up with him. And for once, his father would not be able to sweep away the scandal. Joseph felt a slight satisfaction at the thought.

  At least suicide would not be linked with his name. As it hadn’t been linked with his mother’s.

  Joseph cursed the dullness of the blade. It was going to hurt like the dickens. But it had to appear that there had been a fight. There could be no suspicion of any self-inflicted harm so he could not use his own knife. He opened the coat, tore off a few buttons to make the struggle seem authentic.

  He placed the blade at the silk of his waistcoat. Hesitated for a second. The sky had darkened in a matter of minutes. It would be night soon. More than likely he wouldn’t be discovered until the next morning, if then. The alley rat would have a meal at least for the night. But these things did not bother him. He was beyond all that. Beyond this life.

  He shoved the knife through the material, through the taut skin of his belly. The pain seared, paralyzing him. Immediately, his breath became fire in his lungs. He fell to his knees, his remaining thoughts of her. Remembering. Praying. Hoping.

  As he lay taking his last breaths, he smiled a little. Because if his dreams meant what he had begun to realize, that he had lived before, that he had known Rachel before in another incarnation, then he was destined to meet her…again.

  Chapter 1

  Chicago, 2006

  I n the darkness, Tyne thought she heard him whispering to her. It came like that at times, both memory and fear, followed by a tears-and-sweat struggle to maintain her reality, to know he was not actually there in her room ready to claim her.

  She raised her head from her pillow and listened. But the only sound was the distant throb of a motor that grew steadily louder as it approached then ebbed away, leaving her alone again.

  Her eyes searched the shadows and found nothing. Still shaky, she let her head fall to the pillow, her forehead sprouting beads of sweat in a room that was sixty degrees on a cool Chicago night. She willed her heart to slow to its normal pace. Emptying her mind of threatening thoughts, she lay quietly until her eyelids grew heavy and consciousness began to die away. Finally she succumbed to the somnolent pull of a tired body and mind.

  The dream world quickly sealed her into a vacuum of shapes and faces, a reality recognizable only on a visceral level. Images flitted one after another until her journey reached the last scene, the non-variable in her nightly excursions. Again, she found herself sitting at a long table laden with food she could see but not smell. People, some known, others not, sat talking and eating. The women wore evening gowns, the men, tuxedos. April and Donell sat toward the other end, their heads together in conversation. Everything played as it had before, except this time Eve chattered incessantly in Tyne’s ear, some nonsense she couldn’t understand. Tyne looked down and saw she was wearing the same green strapless evening gown, a color that shimmered against the latte of her skin. She reached to pick up her fork to taste the leathery meat on her plate, but at that moment, as always, a man’s hand fell hard on her bare shoulder. She looked up from her seat.

  The table and guests faded away, leaving Tyne and the stranger alone. She stared up where his face should be but saw nothing but a dark void, an abyss into which her soul threatened to fall. She sat trembling, waiting. He reached out to her, the glint of the knife flickering under the light. It touched her throat lightly.

  She woke with a start. Sweat trickled down her temples. The digital clock on the nightstand read a little after two, only minutes since she last drifted off. She had a few more hours to get through. Yet she didn’t know if she would make it out of the nocturnal web this time. Or the next. One night her heart would simply stop and she would be trapped in her dream world forever.

  “You yawning again? Musta been some night. How was he?” Gail smirked. Tyne winced. Gail defined herself by her blatant carnality and referred to herself as an “open sista…Big O, that is.” Words often tumbled carelessly from her lips. Tyne turned around to the cubicle that faced hers and held up her middle finger. The older woman threw back her head and laughed, causing her medium-length, auburn-by-the-box hair to swing stiffly around her shoulders. Tyne sighed and turned back to her computer.

  “Girl, you wouldn’t tell a soul if you was getting some. Ms. Born-Again-Virgin.”

  “Mind your business, Gail,” Tyne warned over her shoulder. “Besides, the way I hear it, you’re getting enough for me and half the female population as it is. Might do you good to abstain for a while.”

  A few cubicles down, she heard Rhoni cackle, obviously listening. Tyne wondered at her lie. She hadn’t heard any gossip about Gail. It just felt good getting a dig in.

  Gail harrumphed, mumbling beneath her breath. Tyne smiled to herself, at the same time wishing she had an office instead of a cubicle that sat in a maze of disjointed walls, which didn’t provide even the illusion of privacy. She often had to modulate her voice whenever she made a personal call, knowing that Gail, Lem, Rhoni or any of her other nearby co-workers might be listening in.

  Not that her life was fascinating. A researcher and copy editor at the Chicago Clarion, a small black community newspaper on its last legs, she hardly lived life on the edge. As for her social life, her last relationship had been a couple of years ago and had ended rather badly. Hardly something to divulge to her nosy coworkers. She believed in keeping her personal business to herself. Which made her business that much more intriguing to the busybodies who peppered their lives with the goings-on of other people. Yet they knew more about her than she liked. She shook the flurries out of her head and got back to work.

  A few minutes later, in the middle of typing her report for Stan, she hit the Enter key. Nothing. She hit it again. Still nothing. The computer sat frozen. “Damn!” she muttered. She hadn’t saved the document for some time and would probably lose several paragraphs if she rebooted.

  “Lem,” she shouted over her cubicle, “could you come here, please?”

  Lem shouted back, “Be right there.”

  Alem, or Lem as he was known around the office, was the official copy editor as well as the unofficial tech guru. Everyone knew to call him whenever anything broke down, which kept him pretty busy. Being a two-fer on one salary made him indispensable to the paper since it kept down some of the staggering overhead. In the end, this would prove a boon for Lem. Rumors going around now predicted that heads were going to roll, as the paper’s circulation had dropped 40 percent from a couple of years ago. Making matters worse, the Clarion had just lost a major advertiser this January and stood to lose three more. But if there were going to be any survivors among the carnage, Lem would definitely be one of them. Everyone else, including herself, was dispensable.

  Within a minute, he loomed—there was no other word for it—at the entrance to her cubicle. Six feet five, Alem Gebre always had a smile, his teeth luminescent in a walnut-complected face, his Eritrean heritage evident in the broad forehead and slightly flared nose.

  “What’s going on?” he asked with an accent that always made Gail and a few of the other women suck air through teeth, lick their lips, and, Tyne suspected, clinch their crotches. Yet to Tyne, Lem’s cocksure confidence was a turn-off.

  “Help,” Tyne mock-pleaded. “My computer’s locked up again. I don’t want to lose this report.”


  Lem shook his head. “And I bet you didn’t save, either.”

  “Yes, I did…well, sort of. But it’s been some time, and I’m going to lose a lot of input.”

  Lem came in and Tyne moved out of her chair to let him sit down. He pressed a series of key combinations and then shook his head.

  “Nope. The only thing I can tell you is that we may be able to retrieve something from the auto save files. I have to reboot. Sorry. After that, I’ll search through your temp files, see if I can find the last save.”

  Tyne closed her eyes in frustration, mentally castigating herself for her stupidity. This had happened before; she should have remembered to save every five minutes. Especially on this ancient equipment. The Clarion hadn’t updated anything since 1998.

  The screen flickered as Lem did an Alt-Ctrl-Del and the Microsoft 98 logo appeared. The dialog box asking for user-name and password followed.

  “Your call here.” He moved aside, and Tyne sat and plugged in her personal info. After the computer entered Windows, Lem again took the seat, went into Windows Explorer and did his thing. His nimble fingers tapped a rhythmic litany on the keys that had her temporarily hypnotized. She watched him and an unbidden thought of long, tapering fingers moving along her flesh, caressing slowly, softly, each finger pursuing its own rhythm, coming together in a tingling chord….