by Ladew, Lisa
His phone rang and he knew it was Brody. He answered it automatically, ready to try to pick his brother’s brain a little bit more.
“Brody?”
Silence on the line for a beat, and then a woman’s voice spoke. “This is Mr. Shepherd, I presume? No, I am not Brody. My name is Agnes Gabriel. Your brother insisted that I speak with you. Quite rudely actually, I must tell you. But that doesn’t surprise me. You Americans seem to think rudeness is your birthright.”
The voice was clipped and the accent British. West blinked in surprise at the words, which he thought were rather rude themselves, but the tone they were delivered in was warm and teasing. West felt himself responding to the warmth and decided he liked this woman already. He would give her a chance – even if she couldn’t help, maybe his brother was right and she knew someone who could.
“I’m sorry my brother was rude, Mrs., uh, Madame Gabriel. I explained to him how important this was to me, so maybe he was just responding to that.”
“Mmm, yes, that could be. So what exactly is it that you want from me, Mr. Shepherd?”
“Please, call me West.”
“Okay, West then.”
West poured out the entire story, starting slowly, but gaining speed and intensity as his words began to flow. He didn’t think he could make her understand exactly what he needed, and how people’s lives could depend on Katerina gaining some measure of control over her abilities, without telling her everything. Well, almost everything. The mind-blowing sex he kept to himself.
West spoke nonstop for twenty minutes, and then took a few deep breaths, waiting to see what she would say.
“West, I’m not certain that I can help you.”
West felt crushing disappointment spread through him. He was running on very little sleep, and he didn’t know how much more he could deal with.
“Knowing our story, can you think of anyone who could?”
“No, in fact, if I can’t help you, there is a good chance that no one can.”
“So you’re willing to try then?”
“Yes, but my consulting fees do not come cheap.”
“Name your price,” West said, willing to pay anything and not caring if she knew.
“Ten thousand dollars plus travel expenses.”
West didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll double it if you can be here tomorrow.”
Chapter 7
Lance hauled Svetlana’s body out of the bomb shelter with the help of a pulley and winch system he and his brother had designed. On one hand, he hated the pulley and winch system because it ruined the perfect seamlessness of the barn floor - if anyone ever looked around in the barn it would be obvious that there was something below the boards. He could unhook it so the rope wasn’t laying out in the open, and sometimes he did when he was going to be gone for a long time, but anyone observant would still be able to discern its intended use because of its strange location. Or so he thought. On the other hand, he had many reasons to love the pulley and winch system. He never would have been able to haul Svetlana up the ladder on his back.
Lance set the winch and pushed the body on to the solid ground. Behind him, thunder boomed in the distance. Now he could smell the coming rain in the air, and the late afternoon sun had disappeared, throwing long shadows on the walls of the barn. The storm was going to be a big one, but he ignored it. He wanted to get Svetlana’s body into the freezer quickly, before it decomposed any more. As he worked, his thoughts kept returning to the investigators in charge of the murders he and his brother were responsible for. Officer Blaise Cornwall, that fucking spic, was too big for his britches. Lance had a little surprise planned for him that would knock him down to size and remind him that just because he was a cop, didn’t change who his family was, or the mistakes they had made in the past. Lance wished he could be there when Cornwall got his surprise. He knew how much Latin men worshiped their mothers. Plus it could play hell with Cornwall’s ambitions to be Chief someday. Lance didn’t care if Cornwall ever made chief or not, but if he could distract Cornwall enough to hinder his investigation, Lance would be very happy.
And Detective Gagne dammit, if only he could come up with something on Detective Gagne. But Gagne didn’t seem to have any family or friends, all he ever did was work. Lance suspected he was a closet peter puffer, but he hadn’t been able to find out for sure. He sure would love to get something good on Gagne though. Gagne was a pretentious prick with no people skills for sure. Lance was an equal-opportunity hater; he despised just about everyone who wasn’t his brother.
Thoughts of Frank, laid up in the hospital, when he should be here helping, made Lance grunt in irritation. It was all that fucking Katerina Holloway’s fault. Which brought him full circle back to why he was doing this again: to terrorize Katerina. Now all he needed was to get something on that big firefighter who was always with her. Gerald Shepherd, but his friends called him West. Lance had checked every source he knew, but so far that guy came out as clean as a whistle.
Lance dragged Svetlana across the barn floor towards the big chest freezer they kept out here for short-term storage. He’d leave her in here overnight, but no longer. He had to decide what to do with her. Outside, the rain began to fall-large, heavy drops hitting the side of the barn and sounding very loud to Lance in the wide open space. He bent over and pulled Svetlana into a sitting position, then reached behind himself to open the freezer. The barn lit up as lightning struck outside and thunder immediately crashed. Lance had time to think how close the strike must’ve been before he felt the electricity transmitted into his fingers from the metal shell of the freezer. It was only a small shock, but it affected Lance in a unique way. An observer would have thought him to be a man having a heart attack, and about to fall to the ground. His face was frozen in a rictus of surprised pain. His body was rigid, unmoving. He was still half bent, one hand underneath Svetlana’s arm, and the other reaching behind him, touching the freezer. He stayed that way for a good three or four minutes, his brain doing its own peculiar reset.
He snapped out of it in an instant, shooting straight to a standing up position. Svetlana’s upper body fell to the ground and Lance looked at it as if he had never seen it before. Confused as to who and where he was, Lance backed gingerly away from the body. He looked around, and recognized the old barn. Uncle’s farm. A memory came back to him suddenly, of a dream. In fact, it was of the dream that had set him on his current path. In it, he stood before a woman who was bound to a chair in front of him. The woman was looking at him in awe, as his body filled with an explosive white light. The light was energy and his body and mind were being transformed into a higher state by the energy. This particular dream was hard for him to remember well, even though he had written it down the morning after. He could read the words but not feel the power of the light and the emotions it brought with it. But now he remembered. His heart beat swiftly and adrenaline coursed through his system as the intensity of the dream settled in on him.
He had actually had this particular dream a few times during the summer when he turned twelve. That was the summer that he and Zippy had been separated. Zippy had gone to live with their aunt and uncle on this farm. Lance had gone to live with a foster family in Westwood Harbor. Their father had Done Something. Lance could never remember what the something was, but it was something bad enough that the judge never let him and Zippy return to live with their father, not that Lance minded. He could remember almost nothing of that summer, and he couldn’t remember if the dream came for the first time before or after the police took him out of his father’s house and put him in the foster home. Zippy didn’t know what the something was either. He’d been away, picking blueberries at the neighbor’s farm for pocket money, and when he came home the Something had already happened. Zippy wouldn’t talk about it. When Lance asked, Zippy only froze up and looked scared, even as an adult.
As Lance’s thoughts and memories filed back into their correct order, his gaze fell upon the body of Svetlana. What h
ad he been thinking? Even if he didn’t know yet if Gagne liked to take it up the ass or not, he had a brilliant way to fuck with him right here. Svetlana was perfect. Lance could plant her in a way that was certain to connect her with Katerina, certain to fuck with Katerina too, yet the investigators would see she had died of an illness and it would instantly throw a body-sized wrench into their neat little conclusions. He could see them now, questioning and re-questioning the medical examiner. Are you sure there was no paralytic in her system? What exactly killed her again?
Lance smiled and began his preparations.
Now, he was having fun.
Chapter 8
West came awake slowly. He’d peeked in on Katerina the night before and seen her breathing deeply, eyes closed, with the bottle of sleeping pills next to her on the nightstand. Thank God.
He had eased his body onto the bed next to her, on top of the covers, just wanting to be close to her. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he had, and now it was morning. Gingerly, he lifted his arm from Katerina and rolled lightly off the bed. She could sleep as long as she wanted, but he needed to make sure Madame Gabriel would be getting in OK.
He headed to the kitchen, started the coffee, and checked his phone. No messages. He texted his brother and thanked him for setting them up with Madame Gabriel, then he scrambled half a dozen eggs and sat down at the breakfast table, wondering if he should tell Blaise what he was up to. Madame Gabriel would be there in two hours if everything went well. He couldn’t help but pin an awful lot of hopes on what would happen today. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was expecting, but if they got some insight into Katerina’s current emotional state and how they could stabilize it, he would consider it twenty thousand dollars well spent. In a nervous flash, he realized that Katerina didn’t even know Madame Gabriel was coming. What if she refused to talk to the British woman? West had never even considered that. And now it was all he could think about. He finished his breakfast and walked slowly down the hallway. He needed to prepare her, but he wasn’t looking forward to it.
He peaked in the door and saw Katerina sitting up on the bed. She looked rested and almost happy. West smiled and pushed the door open.
“Hey sweetness, did you sleep good?”
Katerina looked at him warily, as if she were expecting some double meaning behind his simple question. She must’ve decided he meant nothing by it, because she smiled back. “Yes, those sleeping pills were a good idea, thank you.”
“I had another good idea, I hope. I called my brother in Los Angeles -”
Katerina interrupted him. “Brother? You have a brother? Why did I think you were an only child?”
West crossed to the bed and took Katerina in his arms, delighted that they were having a calm and normal conversation. “I’m not sure, I guess I’ve never mentioned him. His name is Brody, and he’s eight years younger than I am. He finished business school a year ago and now he’s running the family business.”
Katerina looked at him strangely but didn’t say anything. West dropped his lips to her neck and kissed lightly, feeling her shiver underneath his caresses. He kissed a trail around her collarbone as he thought about the look she’d given him. Then he realized why. They’d never talked about his family business. They still barely knew each other. And yet they had been through so much together.
“I guess I never mentioned the business either. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but first let me tell you why I called him. I wanted to ask him if there was such thing as a counselor to psychics – someone who helps them figure out how to use their powers.”
Katerina groaned and pulled away from him. “God I hate those words.”
West looked at her quizzically.
“Psychic. And powers. I don’t want to be a psychic. And I don’t want to have powers. Makes me sound like some sort of a mutant from the X-Men.” She sighed. “I still can’t believe this is all happening to me.”
West hugged her closer. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“So I’m a freak. And you found a teacher for freaks?”
West held her at arm’s length and looked her in the eyes. “Katerina, you are not a freak. You are an amazing, beautiful person who has had some crazy stuff happen to her lately.”
“Keep saying it and I might believe it.”
West shook his head, almost wishing the anger was back. He’d rather have Katerina angry at him than hating herself. He didn’t know where all of this was coming from. He didn’t know how to make her feel better.
“I do have someone coming today, and I hope it’s okay. I should’ve asked you first, but you were sleeping.”
“It’s okay, I’m glad. At this point I’ll take any help I can get.”
West hugged her again, feeling hope bloom in his chest for the first time in several days.
***
A light knock sounded at the door a full twenty minutes before Madame Gabriel was scheduled to arrive. Katerina was in the shower so West went to the door alone. He peeked out the peephole and saw a woman who immediately perplexed him. Her hair was a wispy white, styled perfectly under a blue hat that matched her long blue dress. If West had to guess by her voice, he would have said she was fifty years old at the oldest, but the woman he was looking at was somewhere between sixty-five and eighty-five. She was small and slightly stooped, giving her the look of old age, but her face was relatively unlined, probably due to a surgeon’s knife. She reminded him of someone and he couldn’t think who. He unlocked the door and opened it wide.
“Madame Gabriel, thank you so much for coming.”
She held out her hand to him and smiled warmly. “Please, call me Agnes.”
West took her hand lightly, and as they touched, tingles radiated outward from her fingers into his palm. Her smile widened and West remembered wondering if she was nothing but an old fraud the day before. He wasn’t sure why that memory struck him, but he was suddenly certain that she knew he had thought it. He frowned, not wanting to start on the wrong foot.
West showed Agnes inside and held out a chair for her at the kitchen table. She sat in it primly, moving stiffly.
“Coffee? Tea?” he asked.
“Tea would be lovely.”
West started a pot of boiling water and it struck him who she reminded him of. The Queen of England! He laughed to himself and wondered if it was a look that she cultivated purposely.
He heard voices in the dining room and peeked out. Katerina had come out and was introducing herself to Agnes. Katerina seemed nervous and held both hands into her chest, as if she didn’t want to touch the woman. Good. West wanted to be there when that happened.
He called Katerina into the kitchen under the guise of getting her to help with the tea. He poured the three of them cups of peppermint tea and he and Katerina headed out to the dining room and sat down with Agnes. An awkward silence filled the room after West distributed the cups.
Finally, Agnes broke it. She held out her hand to Katerina. “May I?”
Reluctance obvious on her face, Katerina dropped her hand into the old woman’s.
The response was immediate. Agnes gasped. “You are so strong - and so open!”
West’s eyes went from one woman to the other. He hadn’t known what to expect, but this wasn’t surprising him. He watched Agnes’ face perfuse with high color. Her eyes were locked on Katerina’s, but Katerina’s eyes were narrowing as she stared back at Agnes. West was dismayed to see hostility building there. Katerina pulled her hand away and massaged it with the other one like Agnes had hurt her.
The color faded from Agnes’s cheeks immediately. She looked pale and powdered again.
“You get absolutely nothing when you touch an object? It’s only when you touch people?”
Katerina nodded.
Agnes held out a hand to West like she had to Katerina. This time when West put his hand in hers, he felt nothing, possibly because her attention was already turned back to Katerina. “Would you mind, just once m
ore?” She held out her other hand to Katerina who again reluctantly placed her own hand in it. Holding both of their hands, Agnes moved them together until their fingers almost touched. An electric spark arced hotly between their palms. West heard it in the air and imagined he saw it in his brain, blindingly white and forceful. Katerina twined her fingers in his, and he felt the electric humming sensation he’d felt twice before when touching her.
Agnes leaned forward, staring intently at their hands. “Does that always happen?”
“Not usually,” West breathed, thinking of the last time it had happened. He felt his body respond quickly to the thought of the passion of that night and tried to put it out of his head.
Agnes stared at him, a covert look on her face, and he wondered if she could see what was going through his mind. Two psychics in the house is one too many.
“The reaction between you two is fascinating. Did you know each other before the incident with the man on the massage table?”
Katerina and West shook their heads simultaneously. Agnes continued to look at and address West.
“Interesting, because if you had, I would wonder if you, West, had somehow sparked this ability in Katerina. I would imagine that she has always had it, but it seems like you make it stronger.”
She released their hands but kept her gaze trained on West. “You are a bit of a telepath yourself, West, but you are more of a transmitter than a receiver.”
West felt Katerina pull her hand away from his and he was sorry to feel it go. He rubbed his hands together and looked at Agnes. “What does that mean?”