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  Amber Sky

  Cassia Leo

  Gloss Publishing LLC

  AMBER SKY

  by Cassia Leo

  cassialeo.com

  * * *

  Copyright © 2019 by Cassia Leo.

  First Edition. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Cassia Leo.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  1. Middle of Nowhere

  2. Shadow & Shine

  3. Cloud of Dust

  4. Don’t Apologize

  5. Secret Machinations

  6. The Wrong Way

  7. A Performance

  8. The Last Supper

  9. Tomorrow’s Promise

  10. Walker & Cassidy

  11. The First Time

  12. Violent Tremors

  13. Hidden Stash

  14. Echoes

  15. Ask Me Anything

  16. Playing Tricks

  17. Amber Sky

  18. Follow Me

  19. Teddy O.

  20. You Knew All Along

  21. Do It

  22. Shadow

  23. Shine

  Epilogue

  Preview of Dirt

  Also by Cassia Leo

  About the Author

  Playlist

  Chapter 1 - Middle of Nowhere

  “Girl from the North Country”

  Bob Dylan feat. Johnny Cash

  * * *

  Chapter 2 - Shadow & Shine

  “The Courage or the Fall”

  Civil Twilight

  * * *

  Chapter 3 - Cloud of Dust

  “Circles”

  Ludovico Einaudi, Greta Svabo Bech

  * * *

  Chapter 4 - Don’t Apologize

  “You Are a Memory”

  Message to Bears

  * * *

  Chapter 5 - Secret Machinations

  “There’s a Ghost”

  Fleurie

  * * *

  Chapter 6 - The Wrong Way

  “Into the Well”

  Mree

  * * *

  Chapter 7 - A Performance

  “Rescue My Heart”

  Liz Longley

  * * *

  Chapter 8 - The Last Supper

  “Here With Me”

  Susie Suh, Robot Koch

  * * *

  Chapter 9 - Tomorrow’s Promise

  “Tomorrow’s Song”

  Ólafur Arnalds

  * * *

  Chapter 10 - Walker & Cassidy

  “Ice Dance”

  Danny Elfman

  * * *

  Chapter 11 - The First Time

  “Her Joy Was Complete”

  Sleeping At Last

  * * *

  Chapter 12 - Violent Tremors

  “Forces of Attraction”

  Jóhann Jóhannsson

  * * *

  Chapter 13 - Hidden Stash

  “The Funeral - Live Acoustic”

  Band of Horses

  * * *

  Chapter 14 - Echoes

  “Glimpses of You”

  Tracey Chattaway

  * * *

  Chapter 15 - Ask Me Anything

  “Lost”

  Liza Anne

  * * *

  Chapter 16 - Playing Tricks

  “This Light”

  Rose Cousins

  * * *

  Chapter 17 - Amber Sky

  “Letters from the Sky”

  Civil Twilight

  * * *

  Chapter 18 - Follow Me

  “Madness”

  Ruelle

  * * *

  Chapter 19 - Teddy O.

  “Blinding”

  Florence + the Machine

  * * *

  Chapter 20 - You Knew All Along

  “Evergreens”

  Violents

  * * *

  Chapter 21 - Do It

  “Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) - Acoustic”

  AURORA

  * * *

  Chapter 22 - Shadow

  “Dear God”

  Lawless, Sydney Wayser

  * * *

  Chapter 23 - Shine

  “On the Nature of Daylight”

  Max Richter

  * * *

  Epilogue

  “To Build a Home”

  Cinematic Orchestra

  Listen to the playlist on Spotify.

  Listen to the playlist on YouTube.

  Middle of Nowhere

  I don’t know how I ended up on Route 120 in Middle-of-Nowhere, Pennsylvania. All I know is my phone stopped picking up a cell signal about the same time the sun went down twenty miles back. Now my brilliant navigation system is dying on me, flickering and flashing in the darkness like a dying star. I thought technology was supposed to prevent us from getting lost.

  It seems lost is my default setting these days.

  I should probably turn around, but I have a bone-deep sense I’ve been down this road before, and it leads somewhere beautiful. In fact, I’m sure of it. This looks exactly like a road we traveled during a family road trip about two decades ago.

  Man, what I wouldn’t give to be twelve years old again. To be sitting in the tobacco-scented backseat of my dad’s Volvo, the backs of my thighs stuck to the leather seat with sweat, the hot summer air blasting my face through the open window. A green blur of trees streaking past us as we suffered through my father’s piercingly dead-on impersonation of Bob Dylan. I’d gladly relive my awkward, gangly transition into puberty—and the countless heartaches that had come and gone since then—for one more chance to beg my dad to change the radio station.

  I tap haphazardly at the “buttons” on the navigation screen, and the display flutters back to life. I smack the steering wheel with sheer delight, letting out a whooping holler of relief.

  But the relief is short-lived.

  In a flickering flash of light, the navigation screen dies, along with what seems like the entire electrical system in my car. Inside the cabin, I’m plunged into total darkness. Outside the car, the forest becomes a sea of black through which I’m hurtled at fifty miles per hour, nothing but the spiny, silvery shadows of trees to roughly sketch out my proximity in space.

  Before I can right the steering wheel, the road disappears beneath me, and I’m suddenly and violently bumping along rough terrain. With no light to guide me, my panicked mind quickly surmises I’ve veered off the road. By the time I get my bearings and attempt to slam on the brakes, while also wrenching the steering wheel sharply to the left, it’s too late. The right side of my car slams into something even more solid than the darkness.

  My eyelids flutter as I regain consciousness.

  There’s something in my eyes.

  I’m moving.

  No, someone is moving me.

  Blinking furiously against the sticky substance in my eyelashes, I reach up to wipe my eyes when a sharp pain shoots through my shoulder and discharges into my neck and chest.

  I cry out in pain. “Help!”

  “Don’t move!” a gruff voice commands.

  “I can’t see! I’m blind!”

  “You’ve got blood in your eyes!” the man shouts back.

  The top of my thigh bumps into something that feels like the bottom of a steering wheel. The bitter stench of gasoline saturates my nostrils. The man grunts as he seems to pull me out of the car.

  Tossing me up in the air a few inches, he adjusts my weight in his arms. I yelp at the momentary weightlessness, a sensation I recognize from my nightmares. But his grip on me is tight and assured as he carries me away to God knows where.

  As I begin to contemplate where he might be taking me—an ambulance?—my limbs grow cold and weak. My hands tremble, my head becomes heavy. The stabbing pain in my shoulder dulls as my consciousness ebbs with the rhythm of my savior’s footsteps.

  I wake to the sound of my own moans. Trying to open my eyes, I am panicked to find my eyelids glued shut. My shoulder blazing with fiery pain.

  “I can’t open my eyes,” I rasp, a dry ache throttling my larynx.

  “Keep still, and I’ll wipe your eyes again,” the gruff voice says, much gentler this time.

  I can feel I’m lying on something soft, perhaps a hospital bed. But if I’m in the hospital, why does it smell like mothballs?

  I flinch slightly as he sweeps a warm washcloth over my left eyelid. The cloth reeks with the sharp, metallic tang of blood. My shoulder explodes in pain again as I try to reach toward my face.

  Laying my arm over my belly, I whimper. “What’s wrong with my shoulder?”

  “I reckon you sprained it. I was just fixin’ you a sling when you woke up,” the man replies as he continues wiping my other eye.

  The smell of blood dissipates as he finishes wiping my sticky lashes. I take that as permission to open my eyes, but I’m almost afraid of what I’ll find. If he was fixin’ me a sling, that means we’re not in an emergency room—at least, not the kind of ER I want to be in.

  I open my eyes slowly, blinking a few times
to dislodge the lashes still stuck together on the outer corner of my eye. Looking up at the dimly lit, rusted tin ceiling, I clench my teeth to keep from crying out in fear.

  “You okay there? I…I got some of this here pain medicine. I ain’t used it in some years, but I reckon it still works.”

  My lips tremble as tears slide down my temples. “Where am I?” I choke the words out of my parched throat.

  He sighs, and I finally turn to look at him, ignoring the dull ache in my neck. His eyes lock on mine for a split second before he looks down at his feet. His dark hair is hidden beneath a dark-green baseball cap, just as his face is hidden beneath a dark beard. But the visible features are striking: his sharp cheekbones and strong brow look almost out of place juxtaposed with the smooth, ageless appearance of his fair skin.

  “You’re in Momma’s room,” he whispers.

  Something about the words and the way he spoke them feels ominous; as if it’s a dark secret.

  I shiver as I reach up with my good arm, my left arm, and wipe at the tears sliding down my face. “Did you call for help? Is someone coming?”

  He glances at me before looking away again. “No, ma’am. We’re over a hundred miles from town. And I… I ain’t got no phone.”

  My gaze bores into him, taking in the cleanliness of his red plaid button-up and jeans. He doesn’t look like he wants to hurt me. In fact, he almost looks more afraid of me than I am of him.

  He stares at the bottle of aspirin, which sits on top of the clunky oak nightstand, as if he was waiting for me to lash out, to deal out some sort of punishment for not having a telephone.

  “I’m thirsty. Can I have some water?”

  He looks back at me, a glimmer of something, possibly hope, in his blue eyes. “Of—of course. I’ll be right back.”

  He disappears out of the tiny bedroom and into a dark hallway, his footsteps trailing off as my fear grows. Maybe that glimmer of hope is nothing more than hope for my compliance. I should try to escape now that he’s gone.

  My heart pounds against my aching chest as I use my left arm to throw off the thin crocheted blanket. But when I attempt to sit up, the pain in my clavicle nearly strips me of my consciousness again. I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth against the pain. The tears return, along with a painful lump in my throat, as I realize I’m trapped. I can’t travel a hundred miles to the nearest town on foot.

  My eyelids snap open as I suddenly remember I have a cell phone in the car. I just have to make it to the crash site.

  I sit up in bed, pressing my lips together to stifle my screams. My shoes are gone. I can’t even remember what shoes I’d been wearing. I slide off the mattress onto the dusty wood floor. I’ll have to go barefoot.

  I take one step when the sound of the man’s footsteps comes to me from the dark hallway. In that split second, I consider bolting out of the bedroom and, hopefully, toward the front door, then out into the woods. But if this man means me harm, he’ll surely catch me. And if I do manage to get away, he will have no obligation to help me if I get lost out there in the dark forest.

  Sinking back down onto the bed, I remain seated as I wait for him to enter. He seems surprised—and maybe a bit worried?—when he finds me sitting up. He doesn’t comment on it, though. He silently hands me the amber glass of water.

  I sniff the liquid, confirming the lack of odor before I gulp down the whole glass. I know some poisons are odorless and tasteless, but I’m in this man’s hands now. What he does with me is beyond my control until he goes to sleep.

  Tonight, while he sleeps, I’ll creep outside and attempt to find my car. Maybe the crash site isn’t too far if he was able to hear the collision from inside his house. Then, I’ll find my phone and pray for a cell signal, despite the fact I haven’t prayed in more than a year.

  “You want one of these?” he says, lifting the bottle of aspirin off the nightstand.

  I nod and hand him my empty glass. While he’s gone fetching me more water, I lay back on the bed, not bothering to pull the blanket over me again. The pain in my clavicle is too bothersome for me to notice whether I’m cold or otherwise uncomfortable.

  When he returns with the water and aspirin, I gulp down four tablets and shut my eyes. Exhaustion seeps into every fiber of my muscles as I begin to feel woozy. Maybe he did poison me. Or perhaps I have a concussion.

  I think of the myth I’d heard as a child that you shouldn’t go to sleep if you have a head injury, or you might die. It’s not true, but it is a frightening enough prospect for me to wonder if perhaps, by going to sleep now, I’ll be taking the easy way out…like my father.

  Shadow & Shine

  I’m not the type to scare easily, nor am I prone to night terrors. But I wake in the middle of the night with a start. The room is as dark as my thoughts. It takes me a moment to realize I’m screaming. Not just a regular scream; a cover-your-ears-and-double-check-the-integrity-of-the-china type of scream. And as suddenly as I wake, my vision floods with blinding white light.

  “Are you okay?” the same gruff voice asks, though I can’t see where he is.

  I pull the cover over my face, trying to block out the light and muffle the screams that seem to come from somewhere other than inside me. Though the man can’t see me under here, I nod my head to let him know I’m okay. I don’t need him fussing over me all night.

  By the swiftness with which the ceiling light turned on, I suspect he was standing near the wall switch next to the bedroom door when I screamed. I will never escape if I don’t convince him I’m well enough to be left alone.

  “You didn’t tell me your name,” he remarks, and I think I detect a tinge of disappointment in his voice.

  I pull the covers down, and slowly open my eyes as the bare bulb hanging above the bed burns into my retinas. “Shine. The—”

  “Shine?” he says curiously. “Your name is Shine?”

  I was going to complain to him about the light shining in my eyes, but if he wants to believe my name is Shine, I won’t correct him. The less he knows about me, the better my chances are of maintaining a safe distance.

  Just because this man saved me doesn’t mean he wishes me no harm. The man is living in the middle of nowhere with no phone and probably no internet. I’m injured and lost. The perfect victim. I will not fall into his trap no matter how kind he pretends to be.

  “Well, Shine. I’m…I’m Shadow.”

  My gaze flits toward him only to find he’s no longer standing near the door. He’s sitting in a rickety wooden chair at my bedside now and staring at the floor.

  He’s lying.

  The probability his name is Shadow is about likely that my name is Shine. But I’ll play along.

  I lick my lips as my mouth begins to feel parched again. “I’m thirsty,” I declare—more like demand. “I mean, can I please have some more water?”

  I don’t want to sound ungrateful to this man who’s saved my life and taken me into his home. My mother would shudder at my bad manners. I have to change my attitude, to make him believe I don’t fear him, or he might never leave my side.