“If there is a hidden passageway behind that bookcase, I give you permission to drop the mic and walk away,” I said when he put his hand on a large copy of War and Peace.
Jason looked over his shoulder with a half smile. “The house used to be part of the Underground Railroad.”
Tilting the book out released some sort of latch and a section of the bookcase shifted, the edge popping out a couple of inches.
“How did I miss this?” Kai said, walking over to study the faux book.
“To be fair, you weren’t looking for a secret room,” I said.
Jason gripped the edge of the bookcase and swung it into the library, revealing a small staircase. Jason took the lead, Moss and I followed, and Kai brought up the rear. The staircase was so narrow, both Jason and Kai had to walk with their shoulders canted to the side.
We reached the top landing and followed Jason as he headed down a short hall that opened up to the attic. Just as he stepped through the doorway, a loud buzzing cut through the silence. It was accompanied by a rapid, electric tick-tick-tick!
I froze, startled, and Kai bumped into me from behind.
I recognized the sound. I had my own stun gun tucked under Bluebell’s front seat. Something I’d forgotten about until that moment.
Jason let out a garbled cry and crumpled to the ground. Kai shoved me behind him and reached toward his gun holster for a weapon that wasn’t there. Moss stayed silent but readied his stance for action.
Guard.
Before any of us could react further, a woman’s voice said, “Jason? What the hell?”
“Jesus H. Christ, Ronnie.” Jason was barely able to choke out the words, but they held considerable heat. I guess the guy might have been irritated by being bushwhacked twice in one day—and by women, no less.
Kai eased forward and I could see from the hall landing into the dimly lit attic.
Ronnie stood over Jason. She was holding the stun gun and looking pretty pissed.
Answering his attitude with a bit of her own, she demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, you crazy Cajun!” Jason rolled onto his hands and knees, then sat back on his haunches. Wincing, he sucked in a pained breath, then let out a string of what I was sure were a lot of Cajun curse words.
“How was I supposed to know it was you, eh?” Ronnie jammed her fists on her hips.
“You told me to come,” Jason fired back.
“I sent you that message days ago. And I didn’t think you’d bring friends.” She motioned toward where Kai and I stood and noticed Moss. “A wolf?”
I eased around Kai and said, “I’m Grace, that’s my dog, Moss, and this is Kai—he’s with the Jacksonville Police Department.” I turned and gave him an expectant look, and he slowly removed his ID badge and held it up so she could see.
She squinted at the badge. “Jacksonville, Florida?”
“We can explain what’s going on from our end if you’ll tell us what you know.”
“Well, for starters, Mamere has been kidnapped.” She directed this comment to Jason, who was slowly climbing to his feet.
The anger on his face drained away instantly. “I know, cher.” He reached out and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. The gesture was so intimate and at odds with his behavior a moment before, it took me a second to adjust.
Ronnie’s shoulders dropped, and tears sparkled in her eyes.
“Come here.” He pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.
“Um, am I reading this wrong,” I murmured to Kai, “or are they more than friends?”
He shook his head with a bemused smile. “I knew that the second she tased him.”
“Really?” I hated feeling like I was always a step behind when it came to reading people.
Now that there wasn’t any drama unfolding in front of me, I had a chance to look around the attic.
The space was huge, running the length of the entire house. There were stacks of boxes and other things you’d expect to find in an attic. The area closest to the backyard had been cleared of the typical storage detritus, and there was a small bed and bedside table with a lamp.
Ronnie had a nice little hideout here. With strategically timed trips downstairs to the kitchen and bath, she’d rarely be exposed to any neighbors or prying eyes.
Jason released Ronnie and stepped back to look her in the eye. “We’re going to find Hattie, okay? These folks have been looking for you. They have information we might be able to use.”
Ronnie nodded, brushed the tears from her cheeks, and turned her attention to us.
Kai brought up the photos of Anya and Barry on his phone and asked Ronnie if she recognized either of them.
She shook her head and I exchanged a look with Kai. Obviously, Ronnie wasn’t the woman Cornelius had seen being strapped to a table. The next logical assumption was it had been Hattie.
“Does your mamere have a yellow dress?” I asked.
“I don’t know, why?”
“We think—”
Kai interrupted before I could explain further. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”
I frowned at him. He met my gaze and shook his head. Obviously, he didn’t want to tell Ronnie that her grandmother might be enduring some sort of torture at the hands of a nutjob. Maybe he was right. Upsetting her wouldn’t help anyone.
“What’s going on?” Ronnie asked, looking back and forth between us. “Who are those people? Are they the ones who took my grandmother?”
“The only thing we know for sure is that they’re looking for you,” Kai said. “Why don’t you tell us what happened and we’ll see what we can piece together.”
She looked at Jason, and he nodded—indicating that she could trust us, I suppose.
“I got a call from her the other night,” Ronnie said. “I was on my way home from work. She sounded really upset and told me I had to leave town right then. She wouldn’t say why. Then she told me not to use my phone.”
“Your phone? Why?” Kai asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Just that if anything happened to her she wanted me to know that she loved me. She believed in me.”
Ronnie’s voice dropped to a raw whisper on the last words. She pressed her lips together and tried to blink away a sudden rush of unshed tears. It didn’t work. The tears spilled over and she impatiently wiped them away. “That’s all she told me before she hung up. I tried to call her right back but the line was busy.”
“Then you came here?” Kai asked.
Ronnie nodded. “I don’t have a car so it took me at least fifteen minutes. By then, she was gone.”
“Did you call the police?” he said.
“No,” she said defensively.
“I’m only asking because there was a 911 call from this house on that same night.”
“There was?”
“The caller hung up before the dispatcher picked up. It was written up as a crank call.”
“Stupid cops,” Ronnie said, which invoked a frown from Jason.
“They didn’t even look around?” Jason asked.
“They did,” Kai said. “The officer reported the house was locked and there was no response to his knock and no sign of a problem.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Ronnie scoffed. “Except that she’s missing.”
“So why didn’t you call the police?” Jason asked.
“I called you,” she snapped. “I knew the cops wouldn’t do anything.”
“When you got here,” Kai said, “did you see anything unusual?”
“I knew something had happened because the platter from the kitchen had been knocked off the wall. I didn’t know what to do. I was so upset I forgot Mamere told me not to use my phone and sent Jason a messag
e. You didn’t come,” she said, looking up at him. “I don’t know, I kind of freaked out. I thought something had happened to you because of the text I’d sent, so I trashed it.”
“What? Your phone?” I asked.
She nodded.
“But you called Layla, too.” I saw Ronnie’s surprise that I knew this, and so I explained. “We tracked her down. She’s safe. So is Coco.”
Ronnie relaxed a little. “Good. I was more careful when I contacted her. I used the phone at the coffee shop down the street.”
“I did come,” Jason said. “It was late, but I was here.”
Her face softened as she looked up at him. “It must’ve been while I was at the coffee shop. It was so weird not having a phone. At first I kind of panicked.”
“I understand, believe me,” I said.
“But then it was sort of liberating. No one knew where I was. I could try to figure out what had happened to Mamere.”
She turned and walked to the other side of the room, stopping at a desk made up of two steamer trunks topped with an old door. Standing on tiptoes, she reached up to turn on a utility lamp clipped to one of the beams. The light revealed a large map sitting on the table next to the gable window. The map covered most of the table’s surface. It actually reminded me a lot of our monkey map.
Next to the map Ronnie had taped notes and a few newspaper clippings. Kai immediately walked over to study the display.
Ronnie watched him for a moment, then turned to face me. “You were here last night.”
I nodded. “I guess you saw Moss?”
I glanced at my dog, who’d decided it was time to inspect something on Jason’s pant leg. Or rather something on his leg that Moss could smell through his jeans.
Liniment of some sort. I wondered what had caused his limp, but decided it wasn’t important. Jason glanced down at Moss and did something unexpected. He held out his hand and said in a quiet voice, “Hey, boy.” After a few seconds Moss gave a swish of his tail. Jason returned the friendly gesture with a pat on the head.
Well, darn. I might have to learn to like the guy.
I looked back at Ronnie. She’d angled her head and was studying me intently. Then, something strange happened.
The air didn’t stir, but a wave of subtle heat pulsed over me. Like a dream of a desert breeze.
“What was that?” I asked her.
She shifted her gaze to Jason, shook her head, and started to turn away. I reached out to touch her arm.
“Ronnie, what was that?”
She stared into my eyes, a little crease forming between her eyebrows. Then she said quietly, “You can’t hear me?”
I arched a brow at her. “Of course I can hear you, you’re standing two feet away.”
With another quick glance at Jason, she motioned for me to follow her toward the far end of the attic.
“What are you?” she asked in a whisper.
“Huh?”
She reached out and grabbed my hand. “I can feel it. You’re a telepath, right?”
Whoa.
“Uh—yeah. How did you—”
She talked over me. “Then why can’t you hear what I’m thinking?”
“Oh, it doesn’t work with people.” She looked completely confused, so I added, “I talk to animals.”
“Seriously?” I was having a hard time interpreting the look on her face. She either thought it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard or thought I was kidding.
“I need a chocolate,” she said abruptly, walking back to where the men were standing. “My stash is in the kitchen. Do you guys want anything?”
She didn’t give them a chance to respond. “Grace, why don’t you help me grab some drinks?”
With her hand firmly clamped on my wrist, she dragged me down the secret staircase. Moss followed on our heels, wondering why we were suddenly rushing around.
Go?
Nope, just following a crazy girl.
Once in the kitchen, Ronnie opened the fridge and grabbed a chocolate bar. Tearing open the wrapper, she broke off a piece and popped it in her mouth.
I recognized the brand. Organic, 73 percent cacao, non-GMO . . . It was one of Emma’s favorites—which meant it was expensive.
“A pricey habit,” I said.
“We all have our vices.” She offered me a piece and I accepted.
I have to admit—it was pretty delicious.
Never one to be left out in such situations, Moss came to sit in front of her.
Treat?
“Chocolate’s bad for dogs,” she said, but turned back to the fridge. “Can he have a piece of cheese?”
Cheese!
I sighed. “Sure, why not.”
Ronnie took out what looked like the remnants of a block of cheese and fed it to Moss. He inhaled the cube without hesitation and looked up at Ronnie.
Treat?
She raised her eyes to me.
“I feed him. Really.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s going on, Ronnie? Why did you really drag me down here?”
“Jason doesn’t know.”
“About?”
“You know,” she said as another piece of chocolate disappeared into her mouth. She talked around the food. “Have you told him?”
“Told him what?” She was losing me fast.
“That you’re telepathic.”
“Actually, it hasn’t come up. Ronnie, tell me what’s going on. Why did you drag me down here?”
“Jason doesn’t buy into the whole psychic thing.”
“I got that impression,” I told her. “But I’m not sure I understand. He’s known Hattie for years. He just thinks she’s a charlatan?”
“Pretty much. But in a sweet, grandmotherly way.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope, and she hasn’t done readings in years and never talks about it in front of anyone. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“So you do have an ability,” I said.
She nodded. “My mamere was helping me understand how to use it. It’s not easy. What I can do is unusual.”
I thought about what Will Besson had said about her uncle’s murder, and it clicked.
“You can find things,” I said. “That’s how you knew where your uncle’s body was. You didn’t witness the murder—you were just able to locate him.”
She nodded. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
I could only imagine. “I’m sorry, Ronnie.”
She lifted her shoulder. “I thought if I found him, the police would be able to catch who did it. What a joke. All they did was hassle me and my brother.”
“You can’t really blame them, at least for wanting to know how you knew where to look for the body.”
Ronnie glared at me and I decided to switch topics. “You said what you can do is rare. Is it hard to locate things?”
Relaxing, she took another bite of chocolate. “It’s called remote viewing. And I can only do it sometimes. But that’s not uncommon. Lots of people can find things. What I’m really good at,” she said, leveling her gaze at me, “is sensing psychic abilities in others. It kind of runs in the family.”
“Really?” I’d never heard of any other telepaths in my family, but then again, I’d never thought to ask.
“Back in the early 1800s one of my great-aunts could do the same thing. People from all over the parish would bring their babies to her to ask if the child was touched.”
“Neat.”
“You might think so, but after a while, people were scared of her. One of the babies she sensed was psychic was dumped into the bayou by its father.”
I stared at her, horrified.
“He thought it would turn into a rougarou,” Ronnie explained.
“Wha
t is it with the stupid werewolf?”
“People can be superstitious. Especially Cajuns.”
“And you really think Jason won’t believe you? Even if we back you up? Kai knows what I can do—he’ll talk to Jason.”
“Jason’s not like your boyfriend,” she protested. “He doesn’t get it.”
“It took some doing with Kai, too, I can promise you.”
“He’ll think it’s a giant waste of time.”
“Who cares what he thinks?” Obviously, she did, but I was betting she cared about her grandmother more. “Listen, if there is even the slightest chance you might find Hattie, shouldn’t you try?”
“That’s just it,” she said. “I’ve already tried dozens of times. I can’t get a read on her. At first, I thought it was just something wrong with me. The stress was messing with my head, or something. But when you showed up the other night, I knew without a doubt that you were like me.”
“See? Then you should try again. I have a friend who knows a lot about this stuff. We can call her. See if she can help.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Listen. We can figure out a way to get rid of Jason if you really want to. But for the record, I think you should tell him the truth.”
“Tell me the truth about what?”
Crap.
I met Ronnie’s eyes and hoped she could read the apology in mine. I tried to think of something diffusing to say, but one look over my shoulder at Jason told me that wasn’t going to happen.
“Jason . . . I—” Ronnie stopped and glanced at me. I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging nod. “There’s something I need to tell you. I want you to hear me out, okay?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and waited. Not the most open posture, in my opinion, but maybe he’d listen.
“I’ll let you two talk,” I said, and started out of the room.
“No. Grace, please stay.” Ronnie looked desperate so I did as she requested.
She turned back to face Jason. “You know how Mamere’s a psychic?”
Jason arched a brow. “Yeah.”
“Well, so am I.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m a psychic. Grace is, too,” she hastened to add, as if that would help her case.
“Ronnie, what are you talking about? You want to read people’s fortunes?”
Take the Monkey and Run Page 22