by Kay Hooper
“Not that I know of.”
“Except for me.”
He waited until she looked him in the eye, then agreed. “Except you. But I’d say the possibility of anything happening to you because of that is very slight. Cassie, I don’t doubt that when word finally gets out about you, there’ll be suspicion. But in all honesty, even a panicked town would have to be totally out of its collective mind to suspect you of three especially vicious murders. It doesn’t always take muscle to kill, but Jill studied karate as a kid, and Ivy quite obviously fought like a wildcat. You couldn’t have killed them, and it’s obvious.”
“A reasonable argument. But the need to blame that grows out of panic is seldom based on logic, and you know it.”
“I know it. Even so, I doubt anyone will seriously suspect you. Oh, they’ll look at you and talk about you and wonder, and you’ll probably get at least a few nasty phone calls accusing you of being a witch or worse, but I don’t believe this town will condemn you as a killer.”
Cassie returned her gaze to her coffee.
“He’s the one you have to worry about. That madman out there. The threat to you is from him.”
“I know.”
“I talked to Matt about it this afternoon, and he’s agreed to say nothing to anyone about you helping us. Neither will I, of course. The longer we can keep it quiet, the less chance there is of the bastard finding out about you.”
She smiled faintly. “So you think we’ve got—what?—forty-eight hours or so before the whole town knows?”
Rueful, he said, “About that, probably. Secrets do tend to get out in small towns.”
“Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
“Just be careful, will you, please?”
“I will.” She raised her cup in a small salute. “Thanks for sending out the security people, by the way. The place is like a fortress now.”
“I wish I could believe it would keep you safe.”
Cassie met his gaze fleetingly and set her cup on the counter with a sound of finality. “I’ll be fine.”
Ben might have obediently taken his leave, but she reached up to brush back a strand of hair, and once again the gesture drew his attention to her bandaged hand.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
Cassie looked at her hand, where a thin line of red stained the white gauze. “Damn.”
He put his cup on the counter and stepped toward her, reaching out without thought. “Let me look—”
She took a step back. “No. No, thank you. I can take care of it myself.”
Ben forced himself to stand still. “Cassie, you’re so tired, I seriously doubt you could read anybody right now. But whether you can or not, somebody needs to look at that cut. Me or a doctor, take your pick. I can have one out here in half an hour. Of course, he’d probably insist on a tetanus shot. They usually do. Better to be safe than sorry, they say. Me, on the other hand, I’d more than likely just put on fresh antiseptic and re-bandage it. But it’s your choice.”
Cassie stared at him. “Did anybody ever mention that you can be officious as hell sometimes?”
“Matt likes to mention it.” Ben smiled.
She smiled back, if a bit tentatively. Then she drew a breath and visibly braced herself. “All right.”
Determined not to make a big deal out of it in his own mind as well as hers, Ben asked briskly, “Where’s your first aid kit?”
“In that cabinet by the back door.”
“I’ll get it. Sit down at the table and start taking the bandage off, okay?”
By the time he joined her with the kit, she had the gauze unwound, revealing a long, thin slash across her palm that was bleeding sluggishly.
Cassie said, “Funny, I didn’t notice before. The cut exactly follows my fate line. If I were superstitious, I’d probably worry about that.”
“Do you tell fortunes too?” Ben asked lightly, removing what he needed from the first aid box.
“I’ve never been able to predict the future. I told you that when we met. But my mother could, and I was told Aunt Alex could.”
“Really? I heard a couple of odd stories about her seeming to know things she shouldn’t have known but just chalked it up to rumors. She was so seldom in town that few people knew her except to say hello.”
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know the extent of her abilities. My mother refused to talk about her, and her own instances of precognition were few and far between.”
“So her principal ability was like yours, the ability to tap into another mind?”
“Yes.”
Judging that the time was right, Ben said, “Let’s see that hand.” And immediately added, “So, do you have a secondary ability?”
Cassie’s hesitation was almost imperceptible. She placed her hand palm up in his and said steadily, “If I do, I haven’t discovered it yet. But then, I haven’t looked.”
Ben held her cool hand in his and kept his gaze on it as he wiped fresh blood from the wound, but virtually all his attention was focused on her voice, his awareness filled with this first physical touch. “Why haven’t you looked? Afraid of what you might find?”
“Let’s just say that the primary ability is enough to deal with. I don’t want another.”
Ben nodded, then said, “I don’t think this is deep enough to need stitches, you were right about that. I’ll put on some antiseptic and a fresh bandage. You said you cut it on a broken glass?”
“Yes. A clean glass. So no fear of tetanus.”
Ben opened a tube of antiseptic and began to apply the cream to her hand. Unwilling to allow a silence to grow between them, he said, “Earlier, you referred to your ability as ‘the sight.’ That’s an ancient name for it, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. It was always called that in my family.”
He glanced up from her hand. “Always?” She was looking at him with an unusually steady gaze, her eyes impenetrable and her expression calm; he had no idea whether she was able to read him, and he didn’t feel her gaze as he sometimes did. Was it because she was actually touching him?
Cassie nodded slowly. “It’s like one of those stories you see in fiction. I’m not the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, but the sight has been in my family for generations, almost always handed down from mother to daughter.”
“What about the sons?”
“There haven’t been any in the last few generations of my mother’s line. Further back, I’m not sure. According to the family stories, it was a female gift exclusively.”
Ben smiled. “Maybe to level the playing field?”
“The boys got the muscle and the girls got the sight?” Cassie smiled as well. “Maybe.”
He returned his attention to her hand, putting a clean gauze pad in place over the wound and then winding gauze around her hand to secure it. “So if you have a daughter, she’s likely to be psychic.”
“I suppose,” Cassie said.
With more reluctance than he wanted to show or admit to himself, Ben released her hand. “All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He kept his voice light. “So, could you read me?”
Cassie didn’t answer for a moment, gazing down at her hand as she flexed the fingers slowly. Then she looked up, a very faint frown between her brows. “No. No, I couldn’t.”
“Not at all?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. A very… closed book.”
Ben was a little surprised at first, but then wondered if he should have been. “Like I said, you’re probably too tired to read anybody tonight.”
For an instant her eyes seemed to bore into his, and he felt that touch again, still cool but so firm this time that he almost glanced down to see if she had reached across the table and laid her hand on his chest.
Then Cassie was smiling just a little, and her voice was casual. “You’re right. I am tired.”
“I’ll go, and let you get some res
t.”
Cassie didn’t protest. She walked him to the front door. “It would probably be a good idea for me to see Miss Jameson’s house tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick up anything, but I should try.”
“I’ll come get you—since you’re without a car. Early afternoon all right?”
“Yes, fine.”
“Good. Sleep late, okay? Get some rest.”
“I will. Good night, Ben.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Cassie watched him until he reached his Jeep, then closed the door and locked it, and set the security system. She went back to the kitchen, put away the first aid kit, and rinsed out the used coffee cups, the actions automatic. She hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, but wasn’t hungry now and definitely didn’t want to bother fixing anything.
Her hand ached, but that was her own fault. It hadn’t been hurting until she’d dug her nails into the gauze to reopen the wound just before calling Ben’s attention to it.
For all the good it did.
She hadn’t really suspected Ben of being the killer, but she’d seen too many outwardly decent men with black souls to discount anyone, at least until she was able to see inside their minds. Unfortunately she had not been able to read him—and she was afraid it was not because she was tired.
He had walls, solid and strong ones.
The kind of walls that few nonpsychics ever needed to build unless they had experienced some sort of emotional or psychic trauma.
Had Ben? Was there, in that seemingly open and honest man, some secret hurt or experience that had left him guarded and wary at the deepest levels of himself? Nothing in his background suggested that, but Cassie knew only too well how inadequate was the public information about a life lived.
It was the most likely explanation, that Ben’s walls came from some injury or bitterly learned knowledge in his past. The only nonpsychic guarded minds she had encountered had owed their walls to trauma rather than to design.
He was not psychic.
He was also not the killer.
Cassie owed that certainty partly to her psychic ability. It had come to her as she had watched him gently examine her hand—the sudden memory of the killer who had stood over Jill Kirkwood, gloved hand raised to plunge the knife into her body.
His sleeve had fallen back, revealing his wrist, and on the inside had been a distinct scar.
Ben had no such scar.
It was a relief, but Cassie was not much cheered by it. She dreaded the coming days. Though Ben had shown some awareness of and sensitivity to the fact that this was and would be an ordeal for her, he couldn’t really understand what it would cost her.
But he’d been right in telling her that if she remained in Ryan’s Bluff, she had to help them. Not only because it was her responsibility to help, as her mother had drummed into her from childhood, but also because she was in line to become a target for this killer, and stopping him was the only way to save her own life.
She was tempted to run. More than tempted. But Ben had also been right in pointing out that there were monsters everywhere. Besides, she had found the first real peace of her life in this place, and gratitude also drove her to help.
If she could. If anyone could.
Cassie made herself a cup of hot tea and soaked for a while in a hot bath, not thinking very much about anything. Then she went to bed early, praying she wouldn’t dream.
That particular prayer went unanswered.
Oh, Christ, he hated the dreams!
Why wouldn’t they leave him alone?
And the voices.
Why wouldn’t they stop talking to him?
He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted to rest.
Why were they making him do these things?
His hands smelled like… coins. His clothes. He thought his hair did too. Like coins.
Like blood.
Shh. No more voices.
Not tonight.
No more dreams.
He was so tired.
FEBRUARY 22, 1999
It was Sheriff Dunbar who came to get her the next afternoon, and he looked no happier about it than Cassie felt.
“Ben got tied up in court,” he said by way of a greeting. “He’ll meet us at Ivy’s place.”
“I see.”
“If you’re ready, of course.”
Cassie thought that if he were any more polite, his face would break. “I’m ready. Just let me lock up.”
Five minutes later they were in his cruiser and headed toward town. And the silence was vast.
Despite her casual words to Ben, Cassie was hyper-aware of the sheriff’s suspicion and mistrust. She had formed good relationships with a number of cops over the years, but it was true that the first reaction tended to be the sheriff’s, and it was always difficult for her.
In the beginning it had deeply upset her that her first role in an investigation was invariably that of suspect; hardheaded and rational cops viewed her descriptions of crimes and victims as obvious proof she had been present in the flesh, and they were difficult to persuade otherwise. It was often only when cast-iron proof in the shape of unbreakable alibis surfaced that some policemen learned, if not to trust her, then at least to believe she was no killer.
As far as Matt Dunbar was concerned, a fair alibi for at least one of the murders was obviously not good enough. Either that, or…
“You think I’m conning Ben, don’t you? That I’m conning both of you.”
“It crossed my mind,” he replied bluntly.
“What would I have to gain?”
He sent her a quick glance, and his smile was cynical. “How should I know? Maybe you’re after fame. Or maybe you just like playing with people.”
Cassie felt a spurt of amusement. “Let me guess. Somebody dragged you into a lot of fortune tellers’ tents when you were a kid, right?”
“Close, but no cigar. Let’s just say I’ve known a few people in my life who were royally taken by con artists posing as psychics.”
Amusement dying, Cassie said, “I’m sorry. No wonder you’re suspicious. But I’m not like that, Sheriff. I don’t sit in a tent or a room hung with velvet and gaze into a crystal ball. I don’t tell anybody how to make their life better, or claim to see a tall, dark stranger in their future. I don’t pick lottery numbers or racehorses, or the sequence of cards at blackjack. And I never, ever take money for using this… gift of mine. Didn’t all those testimonials give you pause?”
“There’s more than one way to con somebody. And more than one reason to do it.”
“Meaning I conned them? All those rational, suspicious cops? Do you really believe that?”
Dryly he said, “I think there’s at least as much a chance of that as there is that you’re genuine.”
“So I’m definitely on probation as far as you’re concerned.”
“Definitely.”
Cassie nodded. “Some people are never able to accept psychic ability, and some are afraid of it once they realize it’s real.” She turned her head and looked at him thoughtfully. “But it would make things easier on both of us, I think, if you could begin to believe that it’s not a con.”
“And how do you propose to accomplish that? Going to tell me what color panties Abby had on last night?”
“Green,” Cassie said. When he glared at her, she grimaced. “Sorry. I know you were being sarcastic. But it was practically branded on your forehead in neon, Sheriff. If you want to test me, you’ll have to do better than that.”
“Test you,” he said slowly.
“Why not? You won’t be the first to do it, and I expect you won’t be the last. You can go the old think-of-something-I-couldn’t-possibly-know route, or you can get more inventive, spring a test on me when I’m not expecting it. I don’t really care. Just bear in mind that there are psychic abilities I definitely don’t have. I can’t foretell the future, and I can’t move anything with my mind.”
“You can just crawl into somebo
dy else’s mind.”
“Some minds. Not all.” She hesitated, then said, “I can’t read Ben.”
“Not even when you touch him?”
“Not even then.”
The sheriff was silent for a moment, then muttered, “That rings truer than anything you’ve said yet.”
She looked at him curiously. “Really? Why?”
It was his turn to hesitate, but then he shrugged without answering.
Cassie didn’t push him, because his thoughts were so clear he might as well have spoken aloud. He was thinking that Ben had never let anybody really get close, from the time they were kids. That his old man was one of those emotional tyrants you read so much about, especially in stories set in the South, a highly respected judge himself with an iron will and the absolute conviction that his word was law. Matt suspected that one of the reasons Ben had stepped down from the bench himself was that his father had died and so was no longer able to influence his only son.
Cassie rubbed her forehead and tried to shut off the easy connection with the sheriff, but before she could she was also gifted with the information that Ben had been a late child born of the old judge’s second and much younger wife, Mary—whom Matt thought of as one of those pretty, childlike women who would either fascinate a man or else drive him mad.
“Headache?” the sheriff asked.
“You could say that,” Cassie murmured, resisting the impulse to tell him to stop thinking so damn loud and wondering if Ben had any idea that here was one friend whose shrewd understanding nevertheless left him wondering what it was that Ben Ryan wanted out of life for himself.
A closed book indeed.
The sheriff was silent for several minutes, then muttered beneath his breath, “Green panties.”
“They were, weren’t they? And bra to match?”
“Yes. Dammit.”
SEVEN
The blood in Ivy Jameson’s kitchen had dried, and the smell of it was musty and faint. But it remained a scene of violence, and Cassie was overwhelmingly conscious of that the moment she stepped through the doorway.
“We have the murder weapon,” Sheriff Dunbar said from his position inside the room to the right of the door. “If it would help to touch it?”