Healing Hands

Chapter 2-3

She walked into the living room of the vacation condo the Delmonico clan had provided for her and let out a sigh of pure relief. Although they’d offered to let her break up the trip with a night in Las Vegas, she’d wanted to avoid wasting any precious time and press on toward Lake Tahoe, and so had done the entire eleven-hour drive in one very long day. By the end, she’d been drooping but also triumphant, since the farthest she’d ever driven before was the four-hour trip to Tucson.

It had been way too late to even think about going to a restaurant to get something to eat, but someone had thoughtfully put a few containers of yogurt in the fridge, along with several breakfast burritos in the freezer. Laurel grabbed one of those and nuked it in the microwave, knowing it was probably a stupid idea to eat when the hour was close to midnight, but also knowing that she needed to put something in her stomach. Her last meal had been a burger grabbed at an In ’N’ Out in Vegas, and that was hours and hours ago.

She still couldn’t quite believe she was here. Jake had made his objections — among them that Laurel was Addie’s maid of honor, and therefore shouldn’t be skipping off to Lake Tahoe with the wedding only a little more than a week away — but in the end, Connor had overruled him.

“You put her on the Trident team for a reason,” the primus had pointed out. “Since there’s no way you can go, and Laurel is a healer as well, it just makes the most sense for her to check things out. Besides, the Delmonicos will keep an eye on her.”

Because that was the other crazy thing. Not only had Theresa, the prima of the Delmonicos, given Laurel permission to go poking around on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, she’d also said her own clan would give her any support they could. She told Connor that no one in the area had sensed a strange warlock anywhere around, and if there really was one on Delmonico land, then they wanted to know about him just as much as Laurel and the Wilcoxes did.

After that, the arrangements were made more quickly than she could have imagined. The very next morning, she was driving her Jeep Renegade westward on I-40 so she could cut through Kingman and go from there to Vegas before continuing north and west. It had been a grueling drive, but it had been worth it.

Or at least, she hoped it would be worth it.

She sat down on the couch with her burrito and a glass of water. A TV had been mounted above the stacked stone fireplace, but she was too tired to bother turning it on. No, she’d have her burrito and some water, and then go to bed. Luckily, the condo was a single story, and so she wouldn’t have to worry about dragging herself and her luggage up the stairs.

As she’d driven, she’d made plans for her first day in the area. First, she’d drive over to Carson City so she could talk to Cole Michelson, the reporter at the Carson City Courier who’d covered the story of MaryJo Gaffney, the woman whose broken leg had miraculously healed itself. Yes, it was a Saturday, but Jeremy’s hacking had discovered that apparently Mr. Michelson worked weekends and had his days off midweek. Jeremy had also dug up the address for Alison Crewe, the blogger, but Laurel thought it might be better to talk to the reporter first, if only because he wouldn’t think it too odd that someone might track him down at his place of business. Alison Crewe, on the other hand, probably would be mildly freaked to learn that someone who’d read her blog had popped up on her doorstep.

Theresa Delmonico had given Laurel the contact info for several Delmonicos in Incline Village, so she knew she was covered in case any emergencies came up. But she doubted she’d need to reach out to anyone. From what she’d seen as she drove in, the little town seemed very quiet and very, very prosperous. If there was a low-rent neighborhood in the area, she sure hadn’t seen any evidence of it yet.

And it would be nice to get some driving in during the daylight hours. It had been full dark when she got here, with a waxing moon giving some idea of the luxuriant pine forests on either side of the highway, along with a shimmer to her left that she guessed was the water of the lake, but she hadn’t been able to see much more than that.

She really wanted to get out and explore. Being granted the freedom to go wherever she wanted in another clan’s territory was a novel experience, to say the least, and Laurel intended to make the most of her current situation. And since her little Jeep had four-wheel drive, she knew she could go pretty much wherever the clues to the mysterious healer might lead her. Of course, once she found him, that would only be the start. They would still have to figure out which clan he belonged to.

But that was Jeremy’s job. He’d done amazing work tracking down the various families of the people they’d liberated from the Special Enforcement Division’s facility in Virginia where the Daedalus Project had been housed, so Laurel knew he’d be up to the task of locating this healer’s clan. He would be one more person they could add to their database of orphan witches and warlocks who’d been restored to families they didn’t even know they had.

Getting a little ahead of yourself, Laurel, she thought as she munched down the last of her breakfast burrito. You still have to find the guy.

But her spirits were high. Against all odds, she was here in Lake Tahoe, entrusted to handle this task on her own. And all right, she knew she could reach out to the Delmonicos in Incline Village if she ran into any problems, but even so, a lot of this was resting on her shoulders, and her shoulders alone.

She really hoped she wouldn’t screw things up.