Divorced, Desperate and Dead

by Christie Craig

  Then the guy dropped to his knee and pulled a little black ring box from his coat pocket.

  Cary studied the look of sheer joy in her eyes. She loved the guy. Tears, not bad tears, but happy tears, filled her eyes and she said something to the guy on his knees. Cary couldn’t hear what she said, but he could tell from her expression, she was going to say yes.

  Suddenly, the image started to fade. And he realized she’d pulled her hand away. The lack of warmth and the gentle weight of it leaving his palm felt wrong.

  He blinked and found himself back in the strange room, looking at Freda, a woman with purple hair. She was smiling and staring back at him.

  “You,” Freda said. “You look like that actor. The crazy one who played the Lone Ranger.”

  He nodded, still feeling half out of it. “Yeah. I’ve been told . . . Yeah.” Taking a deep breath, he glanced at the girl sitting next to him. She was staring at the floor, as if feeling the same thing he did, her breathing quick. He ducked his head down a little closer. “You okay?”

  She shook her head. “No. That was awful.”

  “What? What was awful?”

  “The boy. The teenager. He was . . . shot in the head.” She looked at him, her gaze filled with empathy. “You’re a cop, right?” she asked.

  The image of Marc flashed in his mind. He nodded. “Yeah.” He paused. “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have had to see that.”

  “Neither should you,” she said, and for some reason the fact that she cared felt odd.

  “True,” he said as he continued to study her. “Do we know each other?” You would think he would have remembered a pretty face and body like that, but the odd déjà vu feeling . . .

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  They didn’t speak for a few minutes. “What did you see?” she asked.

  He remembered the vision he’d had. “You’re married.” For some reason, he didn’t like knowing that. He looked down at her hand, suddenly realizing he hadn’t noted a ring.

  A good reason, too. Because there wasn’t one there. He suspected there was a story to that.

  “No, I’m not married,” she said.

  “You got engaged. A guy got on his knee and proposed.”

  “You saw that?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked away. Her dark brown hair, up in a ponytail, swayed across her shoulder. He remembered his earlier vision of her chatting with a friend before getting hit by a truck. “Was he the Jerry guy, the one you said sucked in bed?”

  She cut him a cold look. “I didn’t say he . . .”

  “You kind of did. Well, you said Bob was better.” He grinned, and when she looked insulted, he added, “Sorry. I was just . . . making small talk.”

  “That’s not small talk,” she said.

  It sounded like it was, he thought, but kept it to himself. Somehow, he suspected she deserved better than that guy. Maybe like he’d deserved better than Korine.

  He looked around again at the crowd and suddenly wondered if he’d be able to read their thoughts as well. Turning to the little old lady with the cane next to him, he smiled. He casually reached for her hand.

  “Hi,” he offered with his most charming smile.

  He waited for a vision to happen, but nothing came except her cane. Right across his head.

  “Get your hands off me, you pervert. I’m old enough to be your grandmother.” She held up her cane as if to whack him again.

  He pulled his hand away. “I didn’t. I wasn’t trying . . . Sorry.”

  When he sat back, the beautiful brunette next to him gave him a look and her blue eyes sparkled with what looked like humor.

  “What?” he asked her in a whisper.

  She leaned in. “Did you get anything?”

  “Nothing but a lump.” He rubbed his head. “I wonder why it only happens with us?”

  “Hey . . . you . . . you with the cane. I’ll swap seats with you,” Freda, the one who said he looked like Johnny Depp, spoke to the woman next to him.

  “Why?” the woman next to him asked.

  “Just ’cause.” She grinned back at Cary, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

  “You want his hands on you, don’t ya?” The woman pointed her cane at Freda. “You hussy.”

  Cary couldn’t believe his ears. “Whoa. I wasn’t—”

  “Hey . . .” Freda said, still talking to the woman pointing her cane out. “This might be the end. Why not live a little?”

  “I wasn’t trying anything,” Cary insisted.

  He heard a sweet sound come from beside him. He looked at the young woman, and she had her hand over her lips, laughing.

  “You think it’s funny?” he asked, leaning in.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It kind of is.”

  He looked at her and her blue eyes sparkled. She was pretty.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said in a low voice, and he meant it. Seeing her eyes lit up with something besides panic was kind of nice. Suddenly, he realized he didn’t even know her name. In the first vision, her friend had called her by name, but he couldn’t remember it. He’d been a little swept away by the whole Bob reference.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Chloe Sanders. Yours?”

  “Cary Stevens.” He held out his hand to her, eager to learn a little more about her. Curious to what vision he’d get next.

  She looked at his stretched-out palm and then up into his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  Disappointment did a lap around his chest. She wasn’t the first woman to tell him no, but normally he didn’t give a damn. For some reason, he did now. What was up with that?

  He dropped his hand and shrugged, hoping to hide his disappointment. “And here I thought we were getting along.”

  “We are,” she said. “But . . . there’s no reason to push it.”

  “Push what?” he asked, and looked right at her. Then it occurred to him the reason why she might not want to touch him, and it could have nothing to do with him and everything to do with . . . “Because you saw Marc?”

  “Marc?” she asked.

  “The boy.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I don’t want to see that again.”

  But the way she said it told him it wasn’t just about seeing a body. Then, just like that, he understood what it really was. She didn’t want to get close to him. The fact that he wanted to get a little closer to her was odd, because normally he would be the one wanting to avoid any kind of personal entanglement.

  Well, besides the kind of entanglement people did when naked. He looked down and cut his eyes slightly over to study her without being caught. As he’d first concluded, she had a great body. A little on the short side. Probably around five feet and five inches, lean with lots of curves. Her breasts were a little small, but considering she wore a tight sports bra that hid a lot, they were probably perfect.

  Her long brown hair, worn in a ponytail, looked soft and slightly curly. Her best feature, however, was her face. One of those clean, pretty faces. Large almond-shaped eyes, light blue with darker blue rings. Lashes thick and long. He’d bet she never wore makeup on those. Her nose was cute. Small. Not too small, but perfect. It fit her face.

  Her mouth? Sexy. Wide lips, rose colored. He’d bet she could kiss and do all kinds of things with that mouth. Without warning, his mind took him there. To her and him and . . .

  “What?” she asked.

  Shit. He realized he’d stopped peering at her under his lashes and was downright staring. And even worse, he was sitting in a room filled with senior citizens, who like him, could possibly be dead. And he was fantasizing about her in a way that was about to pitch a tent in his jeans.

  “Nothing,” he spit out. He picked up a magazine, set it in his lap to hide the growing body part, and returned to flipping pages the way he had been when she walked in.

  Five minutes later, boredom had overtaken him just like before she came in. He’d felt her staring at him a couple of times,
but he’d tried to ignore her. It wasn’t working. He sucked at ignoring pretty women. After Korine’s little stunt, he’d vowed to give up women for good.

  That hadn’t worked out too well. So he settled on dating only those who wanted the same thing he did—just sex. A good time with no commitment.

  Who would have ever guessed that would get old? He hadn’t. Hell, even admitting it to himself sounded insane. But it had.

  He closed the magazine and looked at Chloe again, who had returned to staring at him.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “With what?” She squinted her eyes in confusion.

  “With Jerry. What did he do to hurt you?”

  She shook her head, looking uncomfortable with the question. “Nothing.”

  “Liar.” He accused. “I saw you when he asked you to marry him. You were in love with him. He might have sucked in bed, but you didn’t care. You were so in love you glowed. He had to have done something, or you’d be wearing his ring.”

  He glanced away when a bell rang. Or maybe it didn’t ring, but chimed, like a soft church bell.

  “That’s it,” said Beatrice Bacon. “Someone’s going back.” Her faded gray eyes met his as if her announcement affected him. “Time’s up. And you didn’t even get to first base.” Her gaze shifted over to the seat next to his.

  He looked back at Chloe, but she wasn’t there.

  Vanished.

  Gone.

  His gaze shot to Beatrice. “What happened? Where did she go?”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Damn it. And one thought whispered through his head. He wanted Chloe back.

  Chapter Three

  “We got her back,” a voice echoed in Chloe’s ears. “Pulse is a little low, but she’s breathing. Let’s take her in.”

  Chloe opened her eyes when she felt herself being lifted. She was on a stretcher, something tight around her neck. Reaching up, she touched a neck brace and then she felt someone take her hand.

  “She’s coming to,” the same voice said.

  Forcing her eyes to focus, she saw the man staring down at her. He had dark hair and for a second she thought it was . . . the Depp lookalike. Her mind spun, remembering Room Six and the senior citizens.

  “Can you tell me your name?” asked the man moving beside her.

  She blinked. Took a deep breath and it hurt. But she forced her name out of her lips. “Chloe.”

  “Do you remember what happened, Chloe?”

  She nodded and felt the neck brace again. “The girl, the little girl, is she okay?”

  “Thanks to you, she wasn’t hit. I saw the whole thing.”

  She closed her eyes and she saw his face. Not the paramedic, but Johnny Depp. No, not Johnny. What was his name? Cary . . . Cary Stevens. A dream, she realized. A crazy, really bizarre dream.

  “Chloe?” She heard her name being called out again and she recognized the voice. “Sheri,” she said.

  Sheri’s face appeared over her. “You’re going to be okay,” she said, but her friend had tears in her eyes. “I’ll see you at the hospital. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Chloe said and she remembered what one of the little old ladies had said, If it ain’t your time, you go back.

  • • •

  “I’m fine, mom,” Chloe said a few hours later. “Cancel the helicopter.” And if you called the pope, cancel him, too. She stared at Sheri standing at the foot of her hospital bed, looking a bit guilty.

  Chloe understood why her friend had called Chloe’s mom. They had a pact neither of them would call each other’s parents unless the other one was dead. Unfortunately, Chloe had been dead . . . for about one minute.

  Just one. Not long enough to visit a waiting room and have conversations with Johnny Depp lookalikes. So there was the evidence to prove it had just been a dream.

  “How can I not come home?” her mom whined. “You were hit by a car.”

  “I was bumped by a car.” Her mom, a full-blown worrywart, was on a cruise ship to Alaska. The first vacation she’d taken in five years, and the first since Chloe’s father had died. Her mom needed this. But when she heard about Chloe’s accident and was a day away from any port, she’d already looked into hiring a helicopter to pick her up so she could rush home to her only daughter.

  “You might need me. Who’s going to fix you chicken soup?”

  “I don’t need soup. Do I sound like I need soup? I’m fine. They aren’t even going to keep me in the hospital.” If you had to get hit by a truck and have the blow stop your heart, she highly recommended doing it less than a block from a fire station as a paramedic drove past.

  “I’m not even sore.” She went to sit up and flinched. Okay, that might have been pushing it. “Seriously, I’m fine. Do not come home. Enjoy yourself.”

  “Have they caught the person who hit you yet?”

  “No, not yet.” The cops had left right before her mom called. She’d told them everything she knew. Tomorrow she was supposed to go down to the station and give a description of the driver of the truck to a sketch artist. The image of his pale face was sort of stuck in her head.

  After five more minutes of convincing her mom that she didn’t need to come rushing back to Texas, she finally hung up.

  “Please don’t hate me,” Sheri said.

  “I don’t. But next time I die, make sure it sticks before you call my mom.”

  Sheri chuckled. “Oh God, Chloe, you scared the crap out of me.”

  “Sorry.” Chloe said. “I’ll try to be more considerate next time I get hit by a truck.”

  Sheri sat on the emergency room bed. “I didn’t even see the little girl run into the road.”

  “She ran on my side,” Chloe said.

  “Reporters called while you were down in X-ray and want to talk to you. I told them they would have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Surely something else will happen and they’ll forget about it,” Chloe said.

  “I don’t know,” Sheri said. “You really saved that girl’s life. I told them you’d be at your bakery. I mean, if they take a picture of you at the bakery, it couldn’t hurt business.”

  “You’re not turning this into a PR stunt,” Chloe said.

  “I’m not, I’m not even going to be there, but I’m just saying it can’t hurt.” Sheri looked at her. “By the way, the paramedic who saved your life also popped in while you were down getting pictures. I think he enjoyed giving you mouth to mouth.”

  “So he has a thing for dead chicks, huh?” Chloe asked.

  “You can joke, but you do realize you really did die. If the paramedic hadn’t been there . . .”

  “He was there. That’s what matters.” She didn’t want to think about what-ifs.

  “Don’t you hurt?”

  Chloe made a face and looked down the neck of the hospital gown. “A little. And I’m going to have purple boobs.”

  Sheri chuckled, then sighed. “The doctor said it’s a miracle that you didn’t break a few ribs.”

  “Yeah, a miracle,” Chloe said, thinking back to her dream.

  “Did you see anything?”

  “I told the cops what the driver looked like.”

  “No, I mean . . . when you were out. You know . . . light or heaven.”

  “No,” she blurted out, not wanting to admit to anything.

  “Nothing?” Sheri asked.

  “Almost nothing,” Chloe said.

  “Define ‘almost’?” Sheri asked and leaned forward.

  Shit! “It means . . . almost nothing. I just had a crazy . . .”

  “A crazy what?”

  “A wacko dream that had a guy who looked like Johnny Depp in it.”

  Sheri grinned. “Well, that’s almost heaven.”

  “It was just a dream,” she said and she believed it. She did. Room Six didn’t exist. Cary Stevens didn’t exist.

  • • •

  “You can’t do shit right.”

  J.D. wiped his sweaty palms on his je
ans. “She ran out in front of my truck.” He stared at Jax, the gang leader. Tattoos, some done by a real tattoo artist, and others from his stint in prison, flowed from his neck down, covering most of his body.

  But it was the guy’s eyes, bright, light green—almost yellow—that bothered him. And not even the color. It was the coldness in them that sent fear into J.D.’s gut. Those icy pools of green left no doubt that the guy could kill. He probably even enjoyed it. Then again, his eyes didn’t have to tell J.D. shit. He’d seen him kill.

  J.D. couldn’t help but wonder if his eyes looked like that now.

  “Have you read the damn paper, Ghost?”

  He hated it when they called him that. Because he was albino, the leader had called him that the first time he’d met him, and the name had stuck.

  “No, I haven’t.” He’d been too busy getting high, trying to erase the memory of what he’d done. Not so much the accident. That really hadn’t been his fault. But the cop he’d shot. The last J.D. had heard, he was still in a coma. But worse, was that guy, Tommy. J.D. might as well have done it himself. He’d been the one to tell Jax the guy was a snitch. And he’d been there, watched as Jax put the gun to his head. Tommy had begged him not to kill him. Then he looked at J.D. as if pleading for him to stop it. Before J.D. could say anything, Jax shot him.

  J.D. had gone off and puked, and the others had laughed. One of them, Pablo, had even videotaped it on his phone. How sick was that?

  Then they’d made J.D. stay there and wait on another guy to help him get rid of the body. Before help arrived, the cop had.

  “That damn cop is still alive,” Jax said. “And you left witnesses. A couple of kids who saw your truck.”

  “But they didn’t see me. I had on a mask.”

  “But you weren’t wearing a damn mask when you went and hit that woman. The news media claims she can describe you.”