“Good morning ladies. Am I interrupting a meeting?”
“We just finished,” Grayce said.
Hollie made her way across the room with her street swagger and attitude. She slowed when she got close to Davis and inspected him from his polished loafers to his Armani speckle print tie. “Some fine rags. You applying for a job as an undertaker?”
Davis’ deep laugh caused his suit to tighten across his broad chest.
Hollie had given Davis the short shrift when he had first brought Mitzi to the office. Her meth-cooking father had made Hollie wary of men. Grayce was convinced it was Davis’ devotion to his ex-girlfriend’s poodle that won over her touchy office assistant.
“No, I’ve got a big meeting with the chief today and then a dinner meeting.”
Hollie quietly closed the door.
“You didn’t tell Hollie that you’re going to be promoted to captain today. She’d be impressed.” Grayce teased.
Davis crossed the room in three long, powerful strides. He wrapped his arms around Grayce, peering into her eyes. “Honey, I’m sorry I had to desert you last night.”
“You didn’t desert me. You had a fire.”
“Aunt Aideen read your tarot cards after I left, didn’t she?”
Grayce nodded. She didn’t plan to go into too much detail about the reading since she hadn’t processed the experience yet, and she didn’t want Davis to be upset with his aunt. She was a big girl and could handle dire warnings.
“Did she scare you? I know how sensitive you are. If she did anything to upset you…”
Grayce bit on her lower lip to hide her amusement at the idea of Davis taking on his formidable aunt.
“Your aunt did read my cards, but she didn’t scare me.” Grayce avoided sharing the subsequent nightmares.
“Did she predict you would meet a tall, dark, handsome man?”
Grayce swallowed hard. Did Davis already speak with his aunt?
“And once he saw you, he’d fall at your feet?” Davis tightened his grip on Grayce’s shoulders, pulling her against his hard body.
Grayce looked up into his laughing eyes. “I fell at your feet, if you remember.” At her interview as an arson witness, she had landed flat on her back on the fire station floor when the heel of her Jimmy Choo had wedged into a crack. “You weren’t sure if you even liked me at our first meeting.”
“You’re so wrong, Grayce. I’ve always liked you…from the minute I caught a glimpse of you lying on the floor with your short little skirt hiked up on your thighs.”
A blush crept up her face with the low rumble of pleasure in Davis’ voice and the memory of Davis reenacting his fantasy about her little skirt.
He traced her cheekbones with his thumb, following the burning path down her cheeks. “When your face gets flushed, all I can think about is making the rest of you flush. His breath got ragged. “I’ve got to stop, or I will embarrass myself.” His thumb traced the outline of her lips as his eyes lightened in arousal. “I can’t believe I can’t see you tonight.”
“You’re going to have a great time with your friends from your old investment company.” Davis had left his career as an investment banker when he father was diagnosed with cancer.
There was a discrete knock on the door.
Grayce pulled back, and smoothed the collar on her blouse. “My first patient must be here.”
“They were in the waiting room when I came in. Why is there a big guy, police or ex-military in your waiting room?”
“A policeman? I don’t know what he does for a living, but he must be Angie’s brother.”
“I already don’t like him.”
“What? You haven’t met him. How can you not like him?”
“Because you’re going to be nice to him, and he’s going to be immediately as smitten with you as I was.”
Aunt Aideen understood her nephew’s suspicions when she had warned Grayce about Davis’ reaction to the Knight of Swords. His ex-girlfriend’s betrayal had left an indelible scar of mistrust.
“You’re the only one I want smitten.” She pulled on his tie.
“And I am.” His open mouth brushed along the fine hairs on the side of her face.
“Time to see Mrs. Hines.”
“She has the missing daughter, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why you let that cold hearted b…” Davis stopped himself. He had better control than Hollie but shared her sentiments about Emily Chow.
“Davis, we’ve already had this discussion. I’ve got to go.”
“My dinner with my former colleagues will go late. These guys know how to enjoy themselves. But I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“I’m really looking forward to the Mariners game.”
“Liar.” He squeezed her. “But I’m looking forward to having you at the game.”
He pressed a sweet, tender, see-you-later kiss on her lips. “Don’t be too nice to the Hines guy.”
“Good luck with your meeting.”
In a few strides, he was gone.
Chapter Three
Angie rolled to her side and then onto her knees. Everything was black and silent, the only sensation a putrefying smell, like burning flesh. Burning flesh? How did she know the smell of burning flesh?
A sharp pain cut between her eyes; bile rose from her gut to her throat. Icy chills pricked her skin. Shit, she fought against the black cloud descending, struggled not to pass out. She stayed on her knees with her neck flexed, waiting out the rolling nausea.
She searched with her hands on the uneven floor, striking the concrete block propped next to her. Where was she? Dazed, she tried to concentrate. She searched for a memory. Nothing came. It hurt to think. Her head throbbed as if she’d been hit with the butt of a rifle.
She pushed to standing and waited for the room to stop swaying and for her head to stop pounding.
She was glad for the darkness since she knew that light would hurt like a son of a bitch. Concrete blocks and bags of garbage surrounded her feet.
Niggling at the back of her mind was a flitter of a memory. She slowly walked toward the light coming through the back door. She swallowed against the gag rising in her throat.
Throwing open the back door, she walked into the sunlight. The pain hit her right between the eyes. Holding onto the doorknob, she waited as the nausea receded.
She stood on the porch, scanning the back yard, searching for a reason why she was in this hellhole.
Chapter Four
Grayce was in her worst nightmare, and unfortunately she was wide awake.
Aunt Aideen’s prediction had sprung to life in her office. Hunter Hines, like the Knight of Swords, with a dark brooding look and military bearing, conveyed impending threat. Sparks of perilous premonition bristled down her spine.
His black, non-descript clothes didn’t hide his impressive bulk. Over six feet tall, with the neck of defensive lineman, Hunter Hines was a warrior. Grayce could imagine him as a medieval knight wielding a broadsword.
Grayce listened to his mother with one part of her brain as she tried to sort out the implications of his strange appearance.
“Emily Chow believes that Ossie will tell you where Angie is.” Mrs. Hines fervently believed that Grayce could glean the whereabouts of her missing daughter from the cat clutched close to her chest.
“I want to help, but the reporter has exaggerated my abilities,” Grayce said.
“When I treat animals with acupuncture, I’m communicating, but I’m not having a conversation.” She never shared or tried to explain her intuitive ability to heal animals. “I’m balancing the animal’s energy to help them heal.”
Hunter Hines wasn’t buying any of this. Giving no hint of sharing his mother’s grief, he sat stiff and glared at Grayce across the desk. His contemptuous stare and defiant jaw were aggressive and spoke louder than words.
The older woman stifled a sob into her twisted Kleenex. The raw whimper interrupted Grayce’s carefully constructe
d explanation. “Mrs. Hines, I’ll do my best to see if I can learn anything from your daughter’s cat.”
Grayce walked around her desk and touched Mrs. Hines hand. “Ossie is a beauty.”
Mrs. Hines’ lips moved upward into a trembling smile. The cat’s ears flicked up at the sound of her name.
She spoke directly to Hunter in her most business-like voice, trying to gain control of her need to recoil from his unsettling presence. “How long has Ossie lived with your sister?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t lived in Seattle for years.”
Oblivious to her son’s brusque reply, Mrs. Hines answered, “About four years—she just appeared on Angie’s deck, obviously starving…just a wee thing.” Mrs. Hines spread the gray cat across her lap. “Can you see all her leopard spots?”
The cat’s black spots ran in a straight line along her spine. Black stripes etched up her nose and encircled her bright eyes, evoking the look of an exotic Egyptian queen.
“She’s some fancy breed called Ocicat. That’s how Angie picked her name.”
Grayce focused all her attention on the spotted, agouti cat. In comparison to Napoleon, her Maine Coon cat, all cats appeared tiny. Grayce estimated by the long sleek body that Ossie weighed approximately five pounds. Her striking markings and her Abyssinian posture reflected impressive breeding.
“Ossie’s usually not this friendly to other people. She only warmed up to me while Angie was deployed in Afghanistan. Angie always said Ossie was her soul-mate and understood everything she said.” Her voice quivered. “That’s why I thought you could help us.”
“I’ll do my best. Why don’t you move to the treatment chair, and I’ll treat Ossie on your lap where she’s looking very comfortable.”
Hunter rose with his mother and waited while she moved to the overstuffed, chintz chair. His chiseled face registered no warmth for his distraught mother. He couldn’t be the Knight of Swords since he wasn’t in the least chivalrous, but she could see him in a uniform and wielding a gun.
With Mrs. Hines and Ossie settled in the large overstuffed chair, Grayce walked to the supply cabinet in the spacious office overlooking the Lake Washington waterway. The view of the water always helped to center her before a treatment.
Taking out the needles for her acupuncture treatment, she breathed deeply to diffuse her nervousness. She recognized her own anxiety when faced with other’s hopelessness. She felt driven to try to alleviate the painful grief, but the brother’s presence was altering the healing space.
Hunter’s direct stare in the reflection of the glass cabinet doors shot spikes of foreboding up her neck. She needed to take control of the churning energy.
She took one last cleansing breath and turned toward the mother who waited for Grayce to perform a miracle. Grayce modulated her voice to the warm, soothing tone she used on agitated animals. “Please, Mr. Hines, there is no need to stand while I treat Ossie.” She pulled a chair next to the treatment chair. He moved the chair to the side of the treatment chair to give himself a better angle for watching Grayce work.
She couldn’t allow him to distract her from Ossie and her hope to ease Mrs. Hines’ pain. She knelt in front of Ossie who was stretched across Mrs. Hines’ lap and pitched her voice into a soft lyrical cadence. “You’re lovely, my friend. You must be missing Angie.”
Tears formed in Mrs. Hines’s eyes. Grayce heard Hunter shift in his chair. She took another deep breath and ignored the intense resistance and threat exuding from Hunter Hines. She concentrated on Ossie. The cat’s only response to Grayce’s presence was a blink of her unfathomable bright green eyes.
Grayce ran her hand several inches above Ossie’s back, evaluating the energy along the cat’s spine. Her hand slowed over the lung points. She wasn’t surprised by the intense heat radiating over the center of emotion. She kept her hand steady and absorbed the energy of the sticky lung points. Ossie needed treatment for the reactive lung points and balancing of her kidney and spleen points.
Grayce slowed her mind and, breathing to connect to her deep quiet space, placed the first thin filliform needle into the crown of Ossie’s head. A burst of heat shot through the needle into her hand and a shadow floated in the periphery of her vision. Ignoring the moving blackness creeping closer, she focused on Ossie’s treatment. The excessive heat was a symptom of Ossie’s stagnant chi.
Grayce moved to treat the sticky lung points. With placement of the needle, the shadows in the periphery crowded and narrowed her vision. An incessant throb began behind her eyes. She closed her eyes for a brief second to stop the pain and the rolling shadows. She drifted in a sea of dark bleakness until she heard a man’s voice.
She opened her eyes to find Hunter Hines standing over her. “Quite a show, Dr. Walters.”
Disoriented with an agonizing headache, Grayce stared up at the aggressive man.
“I apologize.” She didn’t know what had happened to her, but she refused to explain.
She ignored Hunter and consciously visualized a ball of incandescent light exploding like a fiery comet into the healing space. One part of her brain registered the fact that the shimmering ball resembled Aunt Aideen’s crystal ball. She’d think about the implications later. She refocused on the bright light shooting from the ball and then imagined the lightness spreading into her hands and into the needles in Ossie’s body.
With placement of the needles down Ossie’s back, the spotted cat went into a deep, calm sleep.
Grayce rotated the needles, sending healing light and harmony toward Ossie.
Grayce leaned back on her heels after finishing the treatment. Her head ached. She rarely got headaches and never during a treatment. She tried to reconcile her headache and the dark lights with the treatment. Ossie’s chi wasn’t depleted, which would indicate despair or deep grief, and that made her hopeful that Angie wasn’t dead. But what had caused her headache? Dr. Z, her mentor, had said her abilities were expanding. Maybe they were expanding her brain against her cranium.
Mrs. Hines whispered as Ossie slept on, “I can’t believe Ossie let you put needles into her head.”
“Acupuncture is usually very relaxing.”
Mrs. Hines’ anticipation and desperation were palpable. “Did you learn anything about Angie?”
Grayce had known this moment would come, but it didn’t lessen the discouragement sitting in her stomach. And as she had anticipated, she had nothing to offer about Angie’s whereabouts. All she had accomplished was to intensify the older woman’s pain and confuse herself.
“I’m sorry. I got nothing specific from Ossie. Nothing that would be useful in your search for Angie.”
Hunter stood as if ready to leave. “Why am I not surprised?” His derisive voice darted through the silence.
She stood and faced the towering man. “I don’t think we should give up yet.” She looked down on the seated woman and cat. “From my treatment, I perceived that Ossie is upset by Angie’s disappearance, but what gives me hope is that Ossie isn’t deeply grieving. There is always an induced stress which is hard to differentiate from grief when an animal comes into a strange office.”
Grayce ventured a look at Hunter. He hadn’t changed his soldier’s ramrod posture or his pinpoint glare. “I’d like to treat Ossie in her own space. I might be able to detect something more.”
“What?” Hunter’s bass voice echoed in the large room.
Grayce wouldn’t be deterred by one antagonistic man, not after prevailing against an arsonist and a murderer. She ignored Hunter’s outrage and spoke to Mrs. Hines. “I can’t promise you anything. But I’d like to treat Ossie once more before giving up.”
The older woman stared up at her son. Grayce heard her quiet plea. “Please.” He took a moment before he nodded at his mother. No words of comfort, no solace offered to his grieving mother.
When Mrs. Hines and Ossie left the room to make their appointment, Hunter turned back toward Grayce, his voice low and menacing, “I don’t know what game you�
��re playing, but stay out of my way.”
* * *
Grayce flopped into her chair after the Hines’s departure. She wished her offer to treat Ossie had been led only by her compassion for the grieving mother. But anger and suspicion about Hunter Hines and the need to prove him wrong had pushed her into an impulsive plan. How was she going to discover anything different about the grieving cat in Angie’s apartment? Unlike Mrs. Hines, she knew she was no psychic.
Chapter Five
Hot, bubbling water swirled around Grayce’s feet. The eucalyptus salts didn’t mask the harsh smell of the acrylic chemicals in the tiny nail salon on Broadway. Grayce leaned back into the faux leather massage chair and tried to release the lingering tension from last night’s dreams.
A smirking Hunter Hines changed into the Knight of Swords and chased her through dark alleyways in Pioneer Square like her real chase by the Russian mob. She wanted to believe it was an anxiety dream, but she knew it was a premonition of coming danger.
James, seated in the massage chair next to Grayce, showed the tiny Vietnamese woman a bottle of white nail polish. “What do you think, Lon?”
Lon stopped scrubbing the bottoms of his feet. She nodded and said in a soft voice, “Very nice.”
James and Grayce always requested Lon and tipped her generously after they had heard her life story. Lon had fled Vietnam and an abusive husband. She now lived in White Center and rode two buses to get to her job. Her salon earnings supported her and her two children.
James showed Grayce his color choice—a pearly white.
“White toenails? A little sedate for Gay Bingo,” Grayce said.
Both had been a bit too unusual for the their high school scene in their elite school, and as under dogs often do, she and James had bonded in their 10th grade chemistry class. They had remained close friends ever since.
The Grayce Walters Romantic Suspense Series Page 31