by K. J. Emrick
So what didn't he want the police to find?
"Got it," Shane called out from the bathroom.
Jon looked over at Darcy quickly, nodding his head in that way that told her he wanted her to stay put. Then he caught Neilson by his elbow and practically dragged the man to the tiny bathroom off the kitchen, through a green door beside the refrigerator.
"No, man," Neilson protested. "It's not what you think, it's not what you think!"
In spite of Jon motioning for her to stay in the grimy livingroom, Darcy followed close on his heels, anxious to know if they had found Megan like her spirit had asked her to. She wanted Megan to be able to find peace and not be tied to the world of the living anymore. She steeled herself to see one more dead body. She was prepared for that.
She wasn't prepared for what she saw.
Misty Hollow was a small town, full of small town problems and people who knew each other and knew everyone's secrets and their problems and all of their comings and goings. Not much happened here. Or at least, that was how the town looked. If you weren't looking too closely.
In spite of the lazy appearance of her hometown, Darcy knew there were bad things that happened here. Murder. Kidnapping.
Drugs.
In the bathroom, laid out around the sink, were scales and plastic baggies with white powder in them, and thin glass tubes a few inches long with scorch marks around their tips.
Shane picked up one of the baggies of drugs. "Looks like this is what our friend Nielson here didn't want us to find. I guess he isn't our guy after all."
"I told you I don't know what you're talking about," Nielson protested. "I don't know where Megan is!"
"Doesn't mean he's not involved," Blake whispered in Jon's ear so only Jon and Darcy could hear him. "He's a drug dealer. He could be Megan's killer. Maybe she found out what Nielson here was into."
It made sense, Darcy supposed. Nielson had been hiding this from everyone. If Megan had found out, it definitely could have gone the way Blake was suggesting. Nielson could be their killer.
There was something about all this that was nagging at her. She twisted her aunt's ring on her finger, around and around, like she did whenever something worried her. In the back of her mind, a thought was forming. Something here was off. What was it? Did Nielson have something to do with Megan's death?
There was one way to find out. Something only she could do.
Shane had pinned Nielson's arms behind his back as he protested that the drugs weren't his and he didn't know anything about Megan and they had no right to arrest him and on and on. From his duty belt, Shane produced black metal handcuffs and fit them around both of the scrawny man's wrists.
Darcy stepped in closer and made sure Shane and Blake's attention was on the drugs, not her, as she let her hand brush against Nielson's, making it look like an accident.
Sometimes, when she touched someone, her abilities flooded her with images and memories that the person carried close to the surface of their mind. Not always. Sometimes it didn't work at all. Sometimes it just happened. Other times, like now, she had to concentrate and insert a little of her own life force to make it work.
But work it did.
Time stopped as a vision came to her. This apartment. Two days ago. Maybe three. Through Nielson's eyes she saw Megan sitting on the ratty green couch in the living room, sobbing uncontrollably, her shoulders shaking and her cheeks wet with tears.
"I'm sorry," Megan said, her long blonde hair falling forward to cover her striking brown eyes. "I shouldn't put this on you, Niel. I just didn't know who else to turn to. I couldn't trust Blair with this—"
The world around Darcy lurched forward again as Nielson pulled away from her with a start. "Hey! Don’t touch me. Get off me!"
Shane and Blake both snapped their heads up, the close space of the bathroom making for a moment of uneasy tension until Jon pulled Nielson out, pretending to be the one the drug dealer had been talking to. "Don't tell me what to do, Mister Daye. You're under arrest. Get used to being touched. Shane, Blake, log all that stuff before we start collecting it."
"Jon," Darcy whispered to him as they stepped back into the living room, "Megan was here. A few days ago."
Nielson overheard her. "What? How do you know that!"
"Well, for one thing," Jon told him, pushing him down on the couch, "you just told us."
Looking sheepish, Nielson slumped back against the torn cushions, his hands trapped behind him. He was being arrested for a pretty serious drug crime, and he'd just let slip that a missing girl who just happened to be his ex-girlfriend had been in his apartment just days ago. Not to mention his earlier comments about how he hated Megan for leaving him.
Nielson knew he was in serious trouble. It was written all over his face. Jon shifted his weight in a subtle way, and Darcy knew he was ready to pounce.
"Okay, Mister Daye. Here's the way I see it. You're already looking at prison. The question is whether you want to go up for a long time, or a short time. If you have information I need then I can talk to the District Attorney's office and tell them how helpful you were."
He bent closer from his waist, his smile predatory. "And we both know you have information I need. How about you save us some time and just give it to me?"
Nielson's face flushed a harsh red that made his complexion look even worse. "Fine, Mister Super Cop. You got me. Megan was here. On Wednesday. Imagine my surprise when my ex knocks on my door crying hysterically and saying I'm the only one she can trust. Like nothing had ever happened. Ha! That crazy little mixed up, no good—"
Jon snapped his fingers in front of Nielson's face. "Focus for me, Mister Daye. Why was Megan so upset?"
"She said she was in trouble. Said someone was trying to ruin her life."
"Did she say who?"
Nielson shook his head, slumping down more. "No, she didn't. And I didn't ask, because I just didn't care. I thought she'd come back to me. I thought maybe she realized she'd made a mistake by taking up with a woman. Nope. Wrong again. She flat out told me she was still in love with that Blair chick and she'd never come back to me. That was when I kicked her out. She can't just come in here and mess with my mind, man. No chick's going to do that to me."
"Wait," Darcy said, ignoring most of Nielson's idiotic rambling. "Why did she come to you with this? Why not go to her girlfriend?"
The scraggly man's lips turned up in a sneer at the word girlfriend. "Yeah. That's what I asked her, too. She wants to share the sheets with a girl that's on her, not me. But Megan said she couldn't trust that Blair chick. They'd had a fight or something and she was going to move out for a while."
Jon and Darcy traded a look.
"Hey, man," Nielson insisted, "it's true. That's what she said. Figured it was my chance to get her back, but she said she didn't want to stay here. She just wanted my help."
"Help with what, Mister Daye?" Jon asked. "No offense, but you don't look like you can take care of yourself, let alone anyone else. What did she need your help for?"
Pressing his lips tightly together, Nielson looked straight at Jon, refusing to answer.
"Look, Mister Daye, I can't charge you for something if there's no complainant. If you gave her money or even drugs, I can't charge you for that. You've got nothing to lose by telling me what she wanted your help for, and like I said, maybe you'll gain some help for yourself with the DA's office."
Nielson chewed that over, then finally nodded his head. "Yeah, sure. Sure. See, I have access to certain things that Megan felt she might need. Things that could help her solve her problem."
"Things?" Jon sounded skeptical. "What sort of things?"
"Guns, man," Nielson explained. "Megan said she needed a gun. So I gave her one of mine."
***
When Nielson said he gave Megan one of his guns, Darcy knew that meant there were others in the apartment. She'd been right. After a judge signed a search warrant to make everything legal and proper, Shane and Blake reported fin
ding packaged drugs in the bedroom closet, along with three handguns and a pump action shotgun.
"Good to know the kind of people living in our neighborhood," Jon said, scrubbing a hand back through his hair, leaving it mussed. It was a gesture he did sometimes when he was getting frustrated. Like now.
Booking Nielson Daye on charges of drug and weapons possession had taken the rest of the morning. Nielson swore that Megan promised to pay him for the gun when she got back. He didn't know when she would be back, or where she might have gone, or who might be after her. For now, Nielson represented a dead end.
He didn't know Megan was dead. That was the thing Darcy kept coming back to.
While they were tidying up the paperwork on Nielson they hadn't been able to do anything else on Megan's case, and now it was noon. They still needed to talk to Megan's girlfriend Blair. Darcy had hoped to make it out to talk to Megan's parents today, too, or at least speak to them by phone, but it looked like that might have to wait until tomorrow.
For now, she and Jon had both agreed it was time for lunch.
They could have stopped for a quick sandwich at Helen Nelson's café in town, or ordered a pizza at the station, but Darcy was really in the mood for some more of the chicken and dumpling soup that she had made from scratch on Thursday. She'd doubled the recipe thinking it wasn't going to make very much, and because of that there were two containers of leftovers in the fridge. Jon had rolled his eyes when she told him what she wanted but had driven her back home with a smile on his face.
"Maybe a break is what we need," he said, thinking out loud. "You can tell me more about that vision you had, too, while we're away from everyone."
"There's really nothing else to tell," she said apologetically. They were pulling into the driveway now, and her mouth was already watering for the soup. "It's like I told you. There was just the one quick flash. I mean, I can try to get more from him if you want, but it's going to mean putting me in the interview room with him and getting him to be okay with me holding his hands for a while."
"Yeah, not sure I like that plan," he agreed, closing the driver's door and walking with her up the steps to their front door. "I think he gave me everything he could anyway. He really wants that deal from the District Attorney's office."
"Think he'll get it?" she asked, unlocking the front door and then stepping through into their kitchen. "The deal, I mean?"
"I don't know. Probably. The DA will offer him a plea to a lesser charge and then—"
It happened so suddenly that it took Darcy's mind a moment to catch up. Jon pushed past her, throwing his arm up across her chest as he did, pushing her down to the floor as he pulled his gun out of its holster in one smooth movement and pointed it at the person sitting at their kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee from Darcy's own blue ceramic mug. One of the mugs from her shop with her new logo on it, "The Mysterious Is All Around Us."
Jon kept his gun pointed levelly, three feet away from the woman in her blue denim top and khaki cargo pants. Her hiking boots were up on the chair across from her, under the table. Blue eyes the color of a summer sky watched Jon with amusement and absolutely no hint of concern. Tight blonde curls framed a face that Darcy recognized immediately.
Setting the coffee cup down on the table, she ignored Jon's gun and shook her head.
"Is this the welcome I get?" Running a fingertip across her lips, wiping away a drop or two of coffee, she sucked her finger clean with a quiet popping sound.
"JoEllen," Jon growled. "You better have a good reason for being in my house."
Chapter Five
JoEllen Meyers, retired contract killer, shifted in her seat to look around Jon to where Darcy was still hunched down on the floor. "Hiya Darcy."
Shaking her head, feeling foolish, Darcy stood up again, gently pushing aside Jon's protective arm. "Hi, JoEllen. How'd you get in here? The door was locked."
She quirked an eyebrow, as if to ask how something as simple as a lock was supposed to stop her. Then she turned back to Jon. "Do me a favor, will you?"
"I don't think you're in a position to ask for favors," he told her.
"Well, do me one anyway. Put the gun away before my son sees you? It took me a long time just to get him to sleep through the night without waking up screaming. Nightmares." She waited for several seconds while Jon stayed where he was. "Please?"
Finally Jon nodded, pursing his lips as he put the gun back into its holster. "Doesn't mean we're friends," he told her.
"'Kay." She smiled, apparently more sure of their friendship than Jon was.
Connor, JoEllen's son, had every reason to have nightmares in Darcy's opinion. Kidnapped by a psychopath, held as leverage against his mother, kept in a dark pit for days on end. She'd have nightmares too.
"Where is Connor?" she asked JoEllen.
"Asleep on your couch, for now. I hope that's all right?"
"Well," Jon said, sarcasm curling his lip, "if you're going to go to all the trouble of breaking into our house I guess you should at least get to use our couch."
Darcy barely kept herself from rolling her eyes. She'd forgotten how easily these two baited each other.
JoEllen stood up, bringing her empty coffee cup to the sink. "We had a long drive to get here. Connor needed a nap. I could use a solid eight hours myself, I just wanted to get us here as fast as I could."
"I'm betting you had a good reason, right?" Jon asked.
"What?" JoEllen said with a smile. "You don't think I'd come here just to see you?"
"All right, you two," Darcy interrupted them. "Enough playful banter. Jon, you know she wouldn't be here if it wasn't serious. JoEllen, why don't you tell us what's going on?"
JoEllen leaned back against the counter in front of the sink and folded her arms across her chest. "I always liked you, Darcy Sweet. You look like a Barbie doll but you have this direct way of dealing with things. You face them head on."
"Um," was all Darcy could think to say right away. She twisted a strand of her hair and wondered what parts of her exactly compared to a Barbie doll. "Thank you, I guess. So what brings you to Misty Hollow?"
"Considering there's warrants out for your arrest," Jon muttered.
Darcy shot him a look, and he shrugged and fell silent.
"I know about the warrants," JoEllen said shortly. "There's exactly two of them. Everything else is just police agencies listing me as a person of interest. I've been dodging the State Police and the FBI ever since Bear Ridge. Here's the thing. When you live the life I have you don't make a lot of friends. When I was with Connor's dad, when I was trying to change my life and become someone new, I took on a new identity. Ellen Gless. That cover ID is still intact. It's not hard to do, when you know how. Connor knows me as Ellen Gless, too. I can avoid the authorities for the rest of my life if I want to. Me and Connor both."
"So what do you need us for?" Jon took the seat at the kitchen table that JoEllen had vacated and spread his arms dramatically. "It sounds like you've got everything figured out. We're actually kind of busy at the moment with a case, so if all you need is a place to stay for the night then Darcy and I will make up the guest bedroom for you and Connor and I'll make pancakes in the morning. How does that sound?"
Darcy wished that Jon would stop being so abrasive with JoEllen. They really did owe their lives to her. Even if she was a wanted fugitive. From the little bit of time she had spent getting to know JoEllen, Darcy was convinced she was a good person who had made bad choices in her life. She was working to fix those mistakes. That was good enough for her.
Still, Jon had a point. As nice as it was to see JoEllen again, given all the circumstances between the three of them, she and Jon really were on a schedule. They still had to interview Megan's girlfriend, and somehow find the time to drive out to Cider Hill and interview her parents, too. They didn't have time to just—
"Someone is trying to kill me," JoEllen said suddenly, cutting off Darcy's inner dialog and bringing down a silence so complete tha
t Darcy could hear the beating of her own heart.
***
"See, here's the thing," JoEllen explained to Darcy and Jon after going to check on Connor. "A cover ID is a great thing, unless someone figures yours out. Then your hiding place sort of begins to feel like a trap you can't get out of."
They were all sitting at the kitchen table now. Jon had made sandwiches from deli turkey and cheese on rye bread. Darcy took a bite of hers as she considered what JoEllen had told them.
One of her previous employers had found her hiding under her current identity as Ellen Gless. Darcy didn't bother asking why she didn't just ditch the cover ID and go back to being JoEllen Meyers. That name belonged to a hired killer. A hired killer with warrants for her arrest. Besides. Connor knew Ellen Gless as his mother. She couldn't just give that up and take her and Connor into hiding. It wouldn't be fair to him, especially in light of what he'd already suffered.
She was stuck between her current persona, Ellen Gless, and her real identity, JoEllen Meyers. Trapped in the middle with trouble on both sides. Either way she stepped, she was facing a world of hurt that could wreck both her life and Connor's.
Between a rock, and a hard place.
She needed help, and the first people she had thought of was a smart-guy police officer and his slightly psychic girlfriend.
Jon swirled the coffee in his cup and mumbled something about how they really didn't need this right now. Darcy kicked his foot under the table.
"So you just need some place to lay low?" he asked JoEllen, leaning down to rub at his ankle.
"Wow, Jon, look at you," JoEllen mocked. "Lay low? You're talking just like a real criminal."
"Well?" he said. "Isn't that what you're trying to do?"
She snorted and leaned back in her chair, her sandwich forgotten. "No, it is not. I'm not trying to hide. I'm trying to make a better life for my son. The life that we should have had with his father, together. I don't want to run from this guy whether he's trying to kill me or not."