by Hinze, Vicki
Sandy stuffed the cigar into an overflowing ashtray he kept on his desk for appearances, then stood, curled a beefy arm around her shoulder, and squeezed reassuringly. “Dr. Zilinger didn’t tell me you were back in town.”
“I haven’t called her yet.” Caron hugged him back, feeling self-conscious. Parker Simms had the most intense gaze she’d ever seen. And the most sinfully gorgeous gray eyes. Long, thick lashes and black-winged brows.
“Ah, then I was wrong.” Looking relieved, Sandy sat down again, retrieved the cigar and lazily sprawled back. The chair springs creaked. “This is a social call.”
She wished Simms weren’t here, wished she could talk freely to Sandy and openly explain the situation. Outsiders just didn’t understand. For the most part, she supposed, her gift frightened them—though she had a hard time imagining Parker Simms being afraid of anything. The man seemed more likely to incite fear than to suffer from it.
“I wish this was a social call, Sandy. Until three days ago, it would have been.” She let him see the truth in her eyes. “But not anymore.”
“What happened?” He rocked forward, picked up a pen and held it poised over his blotter.
She looked at the scrawls in the margin, unable to watch him during the telling, or at Simms during the objecting. “Can we speak privately?”
Simms didn’t move. She hadn’t figured he would.
Sandy rubbed his jaw. “Parker’s here for a purpose, Caron. I haven’t forgotten what happened last time. He can help...if you’ll let him.”
He couldn’t help. For some reason, the man strongly disapproved of her, and he made no bones about letting her know it. His body language was as expressive as a chalked blackboard. “I work alone,” she reminded Sandy.
“I’m staying, Ms. Chalmers.” Parker glanced at his watch. “Accept it, and let’s get on with this.”
“Ease up, Parker.” Sandy frowned, then motioned to a chair and softened his voice. “Come on, Caron. Talk to me.”
Caron stayed where she was. She hadn’t asked for Parker Simms’s help. His hostility, whatever the reason for it, wasn’t her problem, and she slid him a hard glare to let him know it.
He didn’t so much as blink. Disappointed, she focused on Sandy. “Three days ago, the sensations started coming back.”
“Sensations?” This from Simms, complete with a frown in his voice.
“The feeling of being on the brink,” she explained. “Of something big about to happen.”
“What?” Curiosity replaced the frown.
“I didn’t know, I just had the feeling.” She forced herself to be patient, looked up at him, and immediately wished she hadn’t. His grimace could stunt growth.
“But you found out,” Sandy said.
She nodded, then leaned back against the wall, lifted her chin and stared at a water spot on the ceiling. “That afternoon. I was checking out at the grocery store. I handed the cashier a fistful of coupons. ‘Customers and their damn coupons,’ she said.”
“I don’t get it.” Sandy shrugged. “That’s rude, but not odd.”
Caron slumped, dreading Parker’s reaction to this. She deliberately refused to look at him so that she wouldn’t see it. “The woman hadn’t said a word.”
Understanding dawned in Sandy’s eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” Caron rubbed her temple. “She was cracking her gum, and I was looking at her lips. They hadn’t moved.”
“You heard her thoughts,” he said softly, sliding the cigar into the ashtray.
Hearing Parker’s sigh, she winced inwardly. “Yes,” she answered Sandy, knowing they both knew exactly what her hearing the woman’s thoughts meant. Caron’s time without imaging, her time of freedom and peace, was over.
The “gift” was back.
“What did you do?” His voice had an odd catch in it.
She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Flatly denied that it was happening again. Refused to accept it.” She’d cried all the way home, too, mourning the loss of her normal life in Midtown, and her students, who deserved a teacher who wasn’t distracted by visions. She didn’t want the gift. She’d been blessed enough.
Sandy leaned forward. “Could you?”
“What?”
“Refuse to accept the images?” Parker said, interrupting them. Muttering his impatience, he propped his elbows on his knees.
“I tried.” She had. But by the time she’d stored the chicken noodle soup on the pantry shelf, she’d known she had to help. That was when she’d first “seen” the little girl...and when all hell had broken loose inside her.
Sandy frowned, clearly perplexed. “So you can refuse them, then?”
He was hoping for a way out...for her. But, though she appreciated his concern, there wasn’t one. Not one she could live with, anyway. “No, Sandy. I can’t refuse them.”
“That would be too convenient.” Parker’s voice held a condescending smirk she thoroughly resented.
Sandy rubbed his jaw, then his nape, studying her for a long minute. He put down the pen and laced his hands across his desk. “I’m going to be blunt here, Caron.”
“Okay.” Hadn’t he always been?
“Can you handle this?”
Though it stung, it was a fair question. One she had been asking herself since her first inkling that the images were returning. She’d agonized, rationalized, but no matter what path her thoughts had taken, all roads led back to one. “I don’t have any choice.”
“Of course you don’t.” Parker grunted, making it clear that he’d meant the exact opposite of what he’d said.
That was the one. The proverbial back-breaking straw. Who did this guy think he was? She frowned at him and held it so that he wouldn’t miss it. “I’m sorry you don’t approve, Mr. Simms. But I haven’t asked for your approval, or for your help, so could you can the sarcasm?” She slid her gaze to Sandy. “This is hard enough without a stranger’s censure.”
Simms lifted his brows, but said nothing.
His hostility had her angry and nervous inside. She needed a minute to get herself glued back together. She pushed away from the wall and peeked out between the dusty Venetian blinds. “Can you believe this rain? It should be snow.”
“You know New Orleans doesn’t get much snow,” Sandy said, “not even this close to Christmas. And you don’t seem fine. Maybe you ought to give Dr. Z. a call.”
“Later.” Hearing the steady rap of his pen against his blotter, she turned back toward Sandy. “When there’s time.”
His faded eyes lit with compassion. As if knowing she wouldn’t welcome it, he shifted his gaze. “Look, I know that last case was hard on you,” he said, avoiding speaking Sarah’s name. “Finding her like—like that. Well, I know it was rough.”
Caron stiffened and tried hard not to recoil. Parker, too, had tensed. Just the indirect mention of Sarah had Caron remembering what had happened—and reliving it.
Images flooded Caron’s mind. Images of Sarah’s battered body, unnaturally twisted, lifeless and cold. Images of flames sweeping up the walls, engulfing the building where Sarah had suffered and died. And images of the empathy pains, so staggeringly severe that she nearly had died with Sarah.
Her stomach folded over on itself, and Caron shuttered her thoughts. Still, her hands shook, and her knees were weaker than her aunt Grace’s tea.
Afraid she’d fall if she didn’t sit, Caron plopped down in an old chair wedged between Sandy’s desk and the wall.
Parker looked at her from around the corner of the file cabinet. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Caron assured him. “I’m fine.”
He lifted a brow and spoke to Sandy. “She looks a little green around the gills.”
If she’d had the strength, she would’ve slapped him. The man didn’t have a compassionate bone in his body.
Sandy held his silence and rocked back, rubbing his chin. The split leather cushion swooshed under his weight and creaked when he rolled clos
er to his desk to reach for his glasses. He draped them over the bridge of his nose and propped his elbows on his desk pad. “What do we have this time?”
This time.
Would there be more times? Or was this one a fluke? Swallowing hard, Caron dropped her shoulder bag onto the floor. Again she wished that Parker Simms were anywhere in the world except Sandy’s office. After this, the man would add “flaky” to his list of her sins.
Resentment churning her stomach, she looked at Sandy and began disclosing the facts. “A nine-year-old girl. Brown hair. Green eyes. Frail.”
“Caron?” Sandy stiffened, his voice tinged with reluctance.
He was afraid for her. Afraid she couldn’t handle the pressure or the empathy pains. So was she. But she had to take whatever came—for the little girl. Caron schooled her voice, but it still sounded still faint. “Her hands are...bound.”
“Oh, God.”
Caron looked up and met Sandy’s gaze. It was all there for her to see. Fear for her. Raw terror for another victim—a younger Sarah.
“Do you have any proof?” An angry white line circled Parker’s lips.
“Let her tell the story, Simms.” Sandy’s tone carried a warning, one Simms would be wise to heed.
The men locked gazes.
Parker didn’t back down.
Sandy blinked rapidly three times, then turned his chair toward the computer on the stand beside his desk and positioned his fingers on the keys.
She heard him swallow. “Bound with what?”
His tone told her that Sandy, the man, had buried his emotions. Sandy, the cop, had stepped in. Caron took comfort in that. “Rope.” She squeezed her fingers around the cold metal arms of the chair. “A greasy rope.” Her wrists twinged. She looked down, half expecting to see black grease marks. But, of course, there were none.
Sandy began to type. “Paint me a picture.”
It was as hard as the telling itself, but Caron forced herself to look Parker Simms right in the eye. It was obvious that he didn’t believe her. But that was his problem, not hers. “She’s huddled in the corner of an old wooden shed— the wood’s slick, weathered. Sunlight’s slanting in, between the slats. Inside it’s maybe eight by ten—no larger.”
“What’s inside?” Sandy’s voice was hoarse.
Caron couldn’t concentrate. Parker’s gaze had gone black. It was disturbing, seemingly reaching into her soul.
She closed her eyes and blocked him out. The images grew sharp. A spider crawled up the far wall, then onto a shovel caked with dry mud that hung there from a shiny nail. “Lawn tools,” she said. “Rusty cans of paint and insecticide are on a shelf above the little girl. There’s a big bag of—” the writing was faded, and Caron strained to make out the letters “—Blood Meal.” That was it. “It’s on the floor, propped against the far wall. That’s where she’s huddling.”
The steady clicking of the keys stopped. Sandy gulped down a swig of coffee. “What’s she wearing?”
From his grimace, the coffee was cold. “Blue jeans,” Caron said. “The color of Mr. Simms’s. They’re ripped over her left knee.” She paused and felt her own knee through her white linen slacks. No pain. No burning from a scrape. The frayed fabric was worn, not ripped. The girl’s knee was fine. “And a yellow T-shirt.”
“Anything written on the shirt?”
“There’s an emblem, but I can’t see it. Her hands are curled to her chest.” Cold? No, she wasn’t cold. Caron scanned the image, then closed her eyes to heighten her perception. “Black sneakers—muddy. And yellow socks.”
He keyed the last of what Caron told him into the computer. “What about height, weight, distinguishing marks?”
“She’s sitting down and curled, but about four feet, and maybe sixty-five pounds. She’s fragile-looking, small-boned.” Caron pushed herself to sense the girl’s emotions, her physical condition, opening her mind to the images. Her stomach churned. Pain flooded it. Fevered and flushed, she felt dizzy. The smell of mud and chemicals grew stronger and stronger, until she couldn’t breathe. She snapped her eyes open and gasped.
Sandy jumped up and touched her shoulder. “Hey, take it easy, Caron.”
“I’m okay.” She took in great gulps of cleansing air. The expression on Sandy’s face warned her that the second she left his office he’d be calling Dr. Z. to express his concern that Caron was still suffering from trauma-induced psychic burnout. “She’s sick, Sandy. Very sick.”
“Was she beaten, bruised—anything else?” Parker asked.
How could Simms sound so calm and unaffected? Again Caron sensed his disbelief, his hostility toward her. “No.” Her head was clearing. “Just sick.”
She dabbed sweat from her forehead. “I don’t know about the man.”
“What man? Now there’s a man?” Parker grunted. “What next? Flying saucers?”
“Damn it, Simms, knock it off.” Sandy looked back at Caron and gentled his voice. “Tell me about the man.”
She closed her eyes and again saw his face, his piercing eyes. They were green, and as ice-cold as Parker Simms’s.
She blinked and focused on Sandy. Her voice rattled. “I imaged him on the way over here. He might not even be connected. I’m not sure yet.”
Then it hit her. The little girl had dimples. So did the man. “No, they’re connected. He’s her...father.” That didn’t feel quite right. Not at all sure she was interpreting properly, she hedged. “Maybe. There is a connection.”
Sandy moved back and watched the computer screen. “We’re coming up empty. Ready to look at some pictures?”
Caron nodded and picked up her purse. From under her lashes, she stole a glance at Parker. He’d pulled his chair away from the wall. And, sitting sprawled with his elbow propped on the armrest and his chin cupped in his hand, he looked bored and irritated. He hadn’t bought a word she’d said.
Caron sighed inwardly. She’d met his kind before—one too many times. “No photos of runaways,” she told Sandy. “The girl’s not a runaway. She was abducted.” She could feel herself breaking out in a cold sweat.
Abducted. Just like Sarah James.
Tapping his pen, Sandy abruptly stopped. “Any idea of where from?”
Caron knew exactly. “A store on the west bank. The corner of Belle Chase Highway and Twenty-first Street. There’s a shopping center there, a reddish brick building. She was behind it on her bicycle. It’s lavender.”
“They’re coming fast, aren’t they?”
She nodded, resigned. The images were coming very fast. And Simms’s expression had turned to stone.
Sandy added the latest info to the rest in the computer. “Do you have a name?”
She paused, waited, but nothing came. It hadn’t with Sarah, either, not until later. “No.”
“We’re still dry here.” He nodded toward the monitor.
“Nothing?” Caron frowned. “The child was abducted. How could there be nothing in the data bank? Her parents—somebody—had to notice her missing.”
“There’s nothing here.” He raked his hair with a burn-scarred hand—another legacy of the James case.
“Maybe she wasn’t abducted.” Parker let his hand drop to the armrest. “Maybe none of this is real. Maybe you’re—”
“I wish the images weren’t real. You have no idea how often I’ve wished it.” Caron leveled him her best hostile look. How could any man so gorgeous be such a narrow-minded thorn in the side? “But they are.”
Compassion flitted over his face. He clamped his jaw and squelched it. “At the risk of sounding sarcastic, let me ask my trivial question again. Do you have any proof?”
She flushed heatedly again. For a second she’d thought he might come around, but he hadn’t. He was no different from the others. She lifted her chin. “Nothing you can touch, see, smell or feel, Mr. Simms. Only the images.”
Parker looked at Sandy. “And there’s no missing-person report?”
Grim-faced, Sandy shook his head. An unea
sy shiver rattled along Caron’s spine. Before now, there always had been a report. That there wasn’t one now had her feeling grim, too. Grim and uncertain.
Parker stood up. “As far as I’m concerned, that covers it.”
Caron tried hard to keep her temper in check. Not only was the man insulting and rude—he might as well have called her a liar straight out—his negative feelings were unjustified. That infuriated her. “Look, Mr. Simms—”
“No, you look, Miss Chalmers,” he cut in, his voice cold and steady. “It’s a simple matter of logic. If your child were missing, would you file a report?”
“Yes, I would, but—”
“Well, there you have it. Right from the psychic’s mouth.” He leaned against a file cabinet and cast her an acid look that she would have thoroughly enjoyed knocking off his face. “No report, no abduction. And no case.” With an annoying little shrug, he straightened. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have real work to do.” Refusing them so much as a nod, he walked out of Sandy’s office.
Caron glared at his retreating back. “You’re wrong, Parker Simms. Dead wrong!”
He didn’t stop, or turn around.
“Parker has a point, Caron.” Sandy said on a sigh. “Are you sure about this?”
After all their years together, Sandy doubted her. That hurt. “Yes, I’m sure,” she snapped. “Do you think I want to see this child dragged through hell? Do you think I’m looking forward to being dragged through hell with her?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that...” His face tinged pink. “You and I both know you had a really close call with—with the James case.” A desperate edge crept into his voice. “You nearly died, Caron.”
He looked down at his desk pad, his eyes unfocused. “It’s been a year today.”
A year ago today, they’d found Sarah James. Dead. A surge of bitter tears threatened. “I know.” How could she not know? She’d never forget. Sarah’s killer being in prison didn’t help at all.
“Could you be getting your wires crossed because of it?”
His question was valid. Caron had nearly died. During the week-long investigation, she’d followed up on the leads she’d imaged, and her health had deteriorated quickly. The more deeply engrossed in the case she’d become, the more acutely she’d suffered every atrocity that Sarah James had suffered at the hands of her captor. And Sarah James had been tortured.