A Touch of Murder Page 9

  “I love it,” Leah said softly. “Here with you, like this. This is as close as I have ever been to heaven.”

  Mika kissed her again, a deep, soul-felt kiss. “See the waterfalls?” Mika gestured in the direction of the cascading water. “I heard there’s a cave behind them.”

  “Really?” Leah’s eyes twinkled with glee as she led her horse closer to the river. “How does one get to it?”

  “I think one would shed one’s clothes and swim to it.” Mika grinned devilishly.

  “Why, sweetie,” Leah said, giggling, “I do believe you’re trying to take advantage of me.”

  “Every chance I get, ma’am.” Mika smiled. “Every chance.”

  They tied their horses where they could graze and placed their clothes over their saddles. They splashed into the water. Leah squealed when she hit the icy water. Mika immediately wrapped her arms around Leah and pulled them deeper into the pool. “Would you prefer a hot spring, Your Majesty?” Mika laughed as she caused the water around them to bubble and become warmer.

  “That is much better, my angel.” Leah hugged Mika tightly as they bobbed up and down in the water.

  They swam into the falls and found the cave on the other side. “I wonder where it goes.” Leah tried to look deeper into the darkness.

  “Why don’t you light it up and see?” Mika encouraged her.

  The cave instantly filled with light. They followed it. The twisting passageway led deeper, taking them underground. Suddenly it opened into a huge, cavernous room.

  The floor was solid rock, shiny from use by an ancient people. “Whoever passed through here last certainly cleaned it thoroughly,” Mika noted.

  “Did you know this was here?” Leah asked as she looked around the enormous cavern. She ran her fingers over ancient cave drawings.

  “No,” Mika answered. “But I like it. This can be our getaway place.”

  “Getaway place?” Leah tilted her head to one side questioningly.

  “Yes.” Mika laughed. “You know, when the house is overrun with children and grandchildren, we can sneak in here and make love.”

  “I think we should try it out,” Leah suggested. “You know, just to see if it works for us.” She nodded toward a smooth place on the cave floor, and soft sheepskin rugs and blankets materialized.

  After they made love, Leah lay in Mika’s arms, enjoying the warmth of Mika’s body heat. “Yes,” she hummed, “this will do nicely.”

  Mika lay in the darkness, listening to Leah breathing. Mika didn’t know when Leah had ceased to light the cave but liked the total darkness. Leah pleased all Mika’s senses. Mika could smell the sweet, soft scent of Leah’s hair. The taste of her was still fresh on Mika’s tongue and lips. The feel of Leah snuggling into her for warmth was indescribable. Only Mika’s sense of sight was lacking in the blackness of the cave, but she could see Leah’s beauty clearly in her mind’s eye.

  ##

  A shrill scream jerked them from a sated sleep. “Mika!” Leah clutched her, quickly clothing them and transporting them to their horses.

  To their horror, a cougar was circling Hera. Zeus had broken his lead rope and was kicking at the big cat as Hera tried to break free of her tie. Suddenly, without warning, the cat sprang at Hera. It instantly froze in the air.

  Mika whirled toward her wife. Leah had thought so much faster than she had.

  “What,” Leah hissed. “You don’t want me to kill it, do you?”

  Mika shook her head as Leah made the cat disappear, sending him far away from them and their terrified horses. She slowly approached the animals, talking to them in soft, soothing tones. She caught their lead lines and held them, stroking them and calming them.

  Mika had simply watched in awe. Leah was incredible. Leah led the horses to Mika. “We should be going back. We need to get back before the hands wake.”

  Mika lifted Leah onto the back of Zeus then easily swung into her own saddle. Reaching out to take Leah’s hand, Mika instantly transported them to the stables.

  As Mika dismounted her horse, Leah swung her leg over the back of Zeus and dropped the distance to the ground. “Umph,” she huffed as the drop knocked the breath from her body. “That was further from the ground than I anticipated.”

  “Either let me lift you down,” Mika instructed, “or let yourself down magically. Zeus is pretty far from the ground.”

  They put away the tack and horses then headed for the hacienda. Mika caught her hand and pulled Leah closer to her. “I miss the children,” she said softly, “but the past two weeks have been incredible. I hate to go back.”

  “I know, darling.” Leah leaned her head against Mika’s arm. “This time with you has been wonderful, but we will always have our secret cave.” Her eyes sparkled as the moonlight danced in them. Mika leaned down and kissed her.

  ##

  Leah awoke to find Mika sitting on their private patio, drinking coffee. Slipping on a gown, Leah joined her. She noticed Mika had a second cup of coffee sitting on the little patio table beside her. “Coffee,” Mika said. Leah silently settled onto Mika’s lap.

  Leah was surprised that Mika didn’t immediately kiss her. “Is everything okay?” Leah asked.

  Mika bit her bottom lip as if searching for the words she wanted to say. “Yesterday,” Mika began slowly, “your reaction to the cougar was so much faster than mine. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do. I…I hesitated. If you hadn’t been there, the cougar would have buried its claws in Hera before I acted.”

  “That’s not a bad thing.” Leah kissed Mika lightly. “You have always been more cautious than I. You always think before you act.”

  “That slight hesitation, that split second, could mean the difference between life and death.” Mika seemed to be thinking out loud. “The longer we’re on this Earth, the more dangerous it will become for us.”

  Leah nodded. “Darling, you are the one who taught me how to react with my mind, without any use of body language.”

  “No,” Mika insisted. “It’s not that. You simply react faster than I. Your mind processes a situation and reacts instantly. You don’t waste time weighing the pros and cons of the problem, you simply fix it.”

  “Does this bother you?” Leah’s heart stopped beating as she awaited Mika’s answer. Leah only wanted to please Mika. Leah thought she was doing the right things.

  Mika cocked her head and a slow, beautiful smile spread across her lips. “No. No. It doesn’t. I am just surprised that a witch is so much my equal. Just imagine what you will be able to do in two thousand years.” Mika pulled Leah tighter and kissed her with all the wild abandon of one who had just discovered she was married to the sexiest woman in the universe.

  Leah liked Texas. She liked making love on their private patio with the Texas sun bathing their naked bodies in warmth. She liked making love in their swimming pool. She had loved the cave where they could make love with wild abandon, not worrying about being heard or seen. Yes, Texas might be where they would make their permanent home. The birthplace of all their future children.

  ##

  Just for the fun of it, they began a kiss in their Texas bedroom and ended it in their New York bedroom. “Wow!” Mika exclaimed as she clung to Leah. “That was dizzying in more ways than one.”

  Leah smiled as she looked around their penthouse. She sent their elevator down to the first floor, then pushed the intercom and let her children know they were home.

  Within minutes, the elevator door opened, and beautiful children of all ages poured into their living room. After many hugs and words of endearment, the children began to settle around the room. “Tell us about Texas, Mom.” Rachel hugged Leah for the umpteenth time. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it.” Leah’s smile confirmed her declaration. “It was heaven.”

  “Tell us about the house! Do we have horses? Is there a river? Will we have our own rooms?” The children spent the next two hours grilling their parents about their new home.

&n
bsp; The intercom dinged and the cook called them to dinner.

  “Remember,” Mika reminded her children, “we must tell no one where we are moving or when we are leaving.”

  “I invited Amber to join us for dinner,” Adam informed them.

  “I invited Jennifer.” Sara smiled.

  As they reached the dining room, Amber and Jennifer joined them.

  “Did you have a good vacation?” Jennifer asked as the family settled around the table.

  “We did.” Leah smiled happily as she thought about the last two weeks with her wife.

  Mika glanced at her eldest son when she noticed Amber’s hand resting on Adam’s thigh.

  “Okay,” Mika spoke to her tribe. “Youngest to oldest, tell us what has been going on in your lives while we were gone.”

  Athena and Luke, five, told about learning to make a volcano using vinegar and baking soda.

  “Was that scary?” Leah asked, laughing at their wide-eyed expressions.

  “Oh, no, Mommy.” They both giggled. “It was fun.”

  Ten-year-old Eve and Paul informed their parents that they had been accelerated to the seventh grade. Leah had been notified by the school that it was going to happen. It happened with all her children.

  “That’s marvelous.” Their mother beamed at the two. “You are so smart.”

  “If we do well in the seventh grade,” Paul added, “we will have the opportunity to accelerate to the ninth grade.”

  “Oh my!” their mother exclaimed. “You will only be twelve and in the ninth grade. That is incredible.”

  Fifteen-year-old Hannah and Mark announced that they would be entering their senior year next year.

  “My brilliant babies.” Leah’s smile lit the room. “You are all growing up so fast.”

  “We don’t want to graduate from New York High School,” Hannah said, and Mark nodded in agreement.

  “We want to graduate from,” a glance from Mika told them to be careful, “wherever we move.”

  Regina and Matt, twenty, announced that they had received full academic scholarships to complete their doctorates from fifteen different universities.

  “To how many did you apply?” Mika asked.

  “None!” they said in unison.

  “The video game we invented went viral,” Matt explained. “We need to talk to you about that, Mom and Mika. We have a huge royalty check we need to deposit somewhere.”

  “Anyway,” Regina took over her brother’s story, “the computer/Internet people are hounding us to go to work with them. Of course we want to complete our doctorate, but they want to give us grants in exchange for our commitments to work for them.”

  “All of this over a game.” Leah laughed.

  “Not exactly.” Regina and Matt exchanged guilty glances.

  “What?” their mother demanded.

  “We wrote the code to reinstall navigational control over the United States Department of Defense Weather Satellite and designed a firewall no one could penetrate,” Matt explained.

  “How did anyone even know you could do that?” Leah rose from her chair. She had a feeling she didn’t want to hear their answer.

  Both Matt and Regina sat with their heads bowed. Neither wanted to answer their mother. This wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “Because we hacked it to gain control over the most powerful satellite so we could see where you and Mika were.” Regina didn’t raise her head. She didn’t want to see the wrath in her mother’s eyes. “We just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Leah cringed. Thank heaven we made love in a cave and not out in the open, she thought. …but we did make love in the swimming pool.

  “You took over the Defense Department’s satellite so you could watch your mother and me?” Leah clarified.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The twins nodded.

  “What did you see?” Leah asked tentatively.

  “You and Mika riding the most beautiful black horses,” Regina answered.

  “When, exactly, did you do this?” Leah’s eyes turned darker.

  “Two days ago. Then Homeland Security showed up at the university and took us to a federal building and threatened to put us in jail.” Matt grimaced.

  “We convinced them it was an accident and they watched while we corrected the problem. Their programmers couldn’t do it.” Regina jumped to her brother’s defense. “Then Matt told them their security program to protect the satellite from hackers was very poor.”

  “We designed an impenetrable firewall for the satellite,” Matt added. “As of yesterday, no one has been able to hack it.”

  “Chancellor Landon told the feds we were child prodigies and were harmless. He said we were brilliant and far advanced beyond our classmates,” Regina chimed in.

  “What would you have done, if they hadn’t released you?” Leah glared at her errant children.

  Matt shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “We would have just trans—”

  “No!” Mika bellowed as she slammed her hand on the table, rattling plates and silverware. Everyone at this table knows what we are, she thought, except for Jennifer. I am not certain what Sara has told her.

  Matt bowed his head lower. He didn’t want to see Mika’s face. Mika rarely reacted violently to anything. A silence settled on the diners.

  “So, let me guess,” Mika said, frowning, “your largest grant offer is coming from the federal government.”

  Both nodded dejectedly. If Mika wasn’t going to defend them, their mother would mete out their punishment. Their lives were about to become very unhappy.

  “Well,” Mika said calmly as she pulled Leah back into her chair, “no one ever said having genius children would be easy.” Besides, it will be to our advantage to have people in high places in the government, Mika thought. Mika smiled her wonderful smile, and all was right, again, with their world.

  Leah turned her eyes to Rachel and Jacob, waiting for their report.

  “I don’t think we can top that.” Jacob laughed, trying to take the heat off his younger siblings.

  His good-natured comment set off a howl of laughter around the table. Try as she might, even Leah couldn’t keep from smiling.

  “As all of you know, Rach and I will complete our doctorates this year. My gorgeous sister has been accepted into the astronaut program and I will move into the realm of politics.”

  “New York politics?” Mika asked quietly.

  “No, in another state.” Jacob smiled. “One I believe you will like. I must pass the bar in that state. I have already passed the bar for New York.”

  “He has been offered a job at a very prestigious law firm,” Rachel added.

  “And, after graduation,” Jacob took up the oratory, “our sister will be orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station. How’s that for a vacation?”

  “Wow!” Mika exclaimed. Leah smiled and nodded.

  “She will begin her astronaut training in October at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas. She has been selected to lead the discovery team to a new planet,” Jacob concluded.

  Leah surveyed Jacob and Rachel. They were uniquely beautiful. Their thick black hair and olive-colored skin were perfect backdrops for the most glorious blue eyes she had ever seen—Mika’s eyes. Both had a way of drilling into one’s soul with those eyes. Like Mika’s eyes, they usually twinkled and sparkled with happiness, but when angered or lied to, they could become the coldest icy blue imaginable.

  All her children were wonderful and unique in their own ways. They were all prodigies and overachievers. She loved them all so much.

  “I don’t suppose being twenty-six exempts us from show-and-tell, does it?” Adam teased.

  “You know it doesn’t.” Leah grinned.

  “We have found artifacts and proof that will change some religions as we know them,” Adam informed them. “Dr. Townsend says we must be extremely careful about how we present them. He believes there will be a concentrated effort to destroy what we have f
ound because the supporters of a certain religion will not want the information made public.”

  “I heard rumors of DNA.” Sara raised a questioning eyebrow at her brother. “Not that my brother would give me a heads-up on that one.”

  “Yes,” Adam said breathlessly. “We think we have the DNA of Christ. We are waiting for the report. Here, this is for you. I trust you.” He shoved a flat plastic box into Sara’s hands. It was sealed, but transparent.

  “It’s a spike!” Sara exclaimed.

  “We are pretty certain it was used to nail Christ to the cross.” Adam looked around at the silent faces seated at the table. “There is blood and what appears to be a tiny bit of skin on it, Sis. You know what to do with it, but wait until I receive the DNA report from our lab. I want to compare their results with yours.”

  Sara nodded in agreement. Her body was tingling with anticipation. “This is an incredible discovery.” She congratulated her siblings.

  “We have heard from everyone but you.” Leah smiled at her eldest daughter.

  “I’m like Jacob.” Sara laughed. “I don’t think I can top that.”

  “Go on,” Jacob encouraged her, “tell them what you have been up to.”

  “After we talked,” she nodded toward her parents, “I began pulling together a list of all the equipment I will need. Mika, it is extremely expensive.”

  Mika shrugged and nodded for her to proceed.

  “The WHO is more than agreeable to letting us obtain our own funding and work as we see fit. I have made a list of the scientists I believe we need to accomplish our goal. So basically, I’m ready when you are.”

  Her parents smiled and nodded in agreement.

  “I am leaving for Geneva next week,” Sara continued. I will spend a little time there then begin a tour of the third-world countries that are the most overpopulated. Once I have a good grasp of the situations we are facing, I will know how to proceed to solve the problem.”

  Jennifer’s head snapped around to catch Sara’s eye. She knew Sara was going to Geneva, just not so soon. Her heart lurched at the thought of the beautiful scientist leaving.

  Her parents nodded in agreement. Both were impressed with their children’s confidence that they could solve any problem they tackled. They always had.