by Hinze, Vicki
He eased off her shoes, then stepped back and looked at her. His heart swelled. She looked so...peaceful.
That thought had him frowning, narrowing his eyes. He hadn’t noticed it before, but when Caron was awake, she never looked peaceful. Why was that?
When she’d been teaching at Midtown, she’d seemed happy. Personally, he’d thought her life a little lonely. She didn’t have any close friends, just her students, her mother and her aunt Grace. But her relatives were in Mississippi, too far away to visit more than once a month.
Her lashes fluttered, but Caron didn’t open her eyes. Was she dreaming? She was a likable person. A bit testy when people were slow to catch on to what she was telling them, but likable. She was dynamite-looking, yet she emitted a strong signal that discouraged men from getting close.
He let his gaze wander around her room. A bulletin board with drawings the kids had done nearly covered the far wall between a dresser and a desk. She had welcomed her students with open arms and an open heart; even from a distance, Parker had seen that clearly. He looked at the pictures. One drawing faintly resembled a frog, and it conjured up the memory of her playing leapfrog with the kids. She’d been in her glory. Her hair in a swinging ponytail, her oversize pink sweater flopping around her thighs, her laughter... He could still hear her laughter.
It was getting harder and harder to reconcile the woman Harlan had believed her to be with the Caron Chalmers Parker was coming to know.
Thoughtful, he glanced back. Curled on her side, she was sleeping comfortably. Tempted to crawl in beside her, he turned and headed for the door.
Halfway there, he paused for a long second, then turned and walked back. Before he could think of all the reasons he shouldn’t, he bent over and placed a tender kiss on her forehead, then left the room and softly closed the door.
Caron heard the click and smiled. What he’d been thinking she couldn’t tell; her hormones were humming, and the shield hiding his thoughts was firmly in place. But that tender kiss told her his thoughts hadn’t been bad ones, and for now that was enough.
Parker was coming around. He might not believe her just yet, but he was coming around. And Misty was sleeping soundly. Caron could rest easy for a time. She scrunched her pillow and let herself drift off.
For the first time since Sarah James’s death, Caron forgot to remind herself not to dream.
Chapter 6
Parker stood in the dark at Caron’s living room window. Staring down at his Porsche, he hoped it would still be parked there in the morning—unstripped.
Rubbing his neck, he walked back to Caron’s bedroom door. In the morning, she’d be mad as a hornet at him for staying. But he couldn’t leave. What if she got sick again?
His hand on the knob, he bent to the door and listened. No noise. Nothing stirring. He peeked in and saw her curled on her side, in the same position she’d been in hours ago.
Winding back to the sofa, he bumped his shin on the corner of the coffee table and plopped down, then shifted and squirmed, trying to find a comfortable position. But he’d already proven that six feet of man couldn’t get comfortable on five feet of sofa.
He propped his head on the armrest, scrunched up his legs and, giving up on finding a place to put his arm, crooked it over his chest. Man, he’d be stiff for a week.
A lump tortured his spine. The sofa had more lumps than his mother’s gravy. Helga, now, could make good gravy. His stomach growled, reminding him that he’d missed dinner.
He closed his eyes and recalled the Thanksgiving Helga had been down with the flu and his mother had cooked. Classic rubber turkey; dry as dust. Megan had wrinkled her freckled nose and demanded their mother promise never to cook again—except for baking cookies. He chuckled softly and wondered what Caron’s Thanksgivings had been like. Her days after school had been very different from his. She’d soaked up every detail of his tales like a love-starved sponge.
Knowing that she had been starved gnawed at his stomach. He gave it a rub, but the ache didn’t go away. “You’ve got it bad, Simms,” he told himself. “Really bad.”
The red light pulsed, setting the raindrops beading on the sign to flame. “Rue de Bourbon,” Caron read, knowing that she was dreaming, that this had all happened before...the night Sarah James died.
But this time it would be different. This time the spellings on signs wouldn’t confuse her. This time Sarah wouldn’t die.
It was dark, after midnight. Cold and rainy. Blustery winds whipped at electrical lines strung down the street, at tree limbs, making a shimmering, eerie sound.
Driving slowly down the street, Caron saw the man in dirty jeans leaning against the lamppost, his booted foot propped. He tugged the bill of his cap low over his eyes and took a drag from the cigarette cupped in his hand. Its tip glowed orange.
She saw the bar, the sign above its door. Two men ambled out, a woman between them. Her hair was long and black, dusting the hem of her short skirt. They were drinking from paper cups, laughing, celebrating Christmas.
Caron was not. She was frantic, fighting for breath, her arms aching as if her blood circulation had been clamped off too long. Her head swam, her breasts and thighs burned as if branded by white hot pokers, and her jaw throbbed. Sarah had been struck. Again.
Caron veered right, pulled up to the curb and parked.
“No,” she told herself, feeling herself tossing on the sheets. On some level, she knew she was in her apartment, in her own bed, asleep. She could feel the cotton sheets, stiff from the clothesline, pricking at her back. She knew, and yet this was too real, too different, to be a dream.
She felt the car’s cold metal door handle against her hand. Heard it snap open. Saw the rain splattering onto the street. She screamed at herself. “Don’t get out. Don’t go in. Sarah is not here!”
But she did get out.
And she did go into the bar.
Hot tears blurred her eyes, pooled, then tumbled down her face. “I made a mistake,” she cried. “It was the street sign, not the bar. It was the street—” Deep sobs grew to hopeless wails. “Sarah! Oh, God, please! Please, I made a mistake!”
He heard something.
Groggy, Parker opened his eyes. His shoulder was numb. He grunted and half rolled, half fell off the sofa.
“I made a mistake!”
Caron? He jumped up and ran into her room.
He heard her sobs. Deep, pitiful cries of despair, anguish and regret. “Caron, what’s wrong?” He moved to the bed and reached for the lamp to turn on the light.
“No, don’t,” Caron said. “Don’t.”
He sat on the edge of the mattress. She rolled toward him and put her hand on his knee, shaking hard. He covered it with his. “What’s the matter? Are you sick again?”
She didn’t answer.
Parker rubbed her arm, her shoulder. At some time while he’d slept, she’d put on one of her flannel gowns. He was coming to like them. “Talk to me.”
“It won’t help. It...happened.”
Her voice, weak and thready, tugged hard at him. He wanted to hold her, but did she want to be held? She needed it, he decided. He needed it, too. Seeing her like this tore him apart and made him ashamed. Shifting around to lean against the headboard, he pulled her into his arms. “Come here, Caron.”
When she snuggled close and buried her head against his chest, he knew he’d done the right thing. God, but he hated feeling her tremble. He rested his chin on her head and whispered against her hair. “Shh...it was just a dream... Don’t cry, talk to me. At least trust me with your dreams.”
“It wasn’t just a dream.” Her voice was a mere wisp of sound. “It was—”
A loud crash of thunder rolled overhead, shaking the walls, and it began raining again. Parker waited for her to go on, stroking her delicate shoulders and her spine. Shadows played on the ceiling. Watching them, he wondered. Why did holding only Caron Chalmers, of all the women in the world, feel so right?
“It was another
case,” she finally said. She cleared her throat, but tears still choked her. “A year ago, I imaged a woman. A very beautiful woman. She had blond hair and green eyes and a beautiful smile.”
Sarah. His heart nearly stopped. Caron was telling him about Sarah! He forced his voice to be calm. “What happened?”
“I was trying to find her. She was so pretty, and so...scared.” Caron’s tears seeped through his shirt and wet his chest. “She’d been at the mall, Christmas shopping. She’d bought a wood carving—a mallard drake. I imaged it.”
He’d seen it. It had been returned with Sarah’s personal effects—her Christmas gift to Harlan. Parker’s heart ached.
“A man hit her from behind in the parking lot, dragged her into a van and took off. He took her to this seedy place. It was dirty and smelled sour. He lived there.
“She was tied up—her hands, like Misty’s,” Caron went on. “Once, she sawed through the rope by dragging it across the metal frame, again and again. But he found out. He chained her. Sometimes, when I imaged her, I could see the room she was in, see her chained to...to that bed.”
Caron’s voice cracked. “I’d been looking for her for three days. There wasn’t a break—no rest. And I was so tired. At night, he would be there. And he’d do...horrible things to her.
“The first two days, she fought him. She tried so hard to be brave. But on the third day, she got so...quiet.”
Parker squeezed his eyes shut. The coroner’s report confirmed that Sarah had been tortured for three days. A sick feeling burned like acid in Parker’s stomach. He wanted to tell Caron to stop, wanted to shove the ugliness, the gruesome truth, away. But he couldn’t. He had to hear it from her. His eyes burning hot, his face wet, he tightened his hold on Caron. Whether he meant to soothe her or himself, he wasn’t sure, but he began sweeping her scalp with long, gentle strokes.
Caron sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Then I saw the sign—Rue de Bourbon. The street name doesn’t have the ‘de,’ and I didn’t catch that it had been painted in. I told Sandy. There was a bar with that name off of Desire Street. We went there.” She shuddered. “Oh God, Parker,” she cried, her brittle voice cracked. “We went there!”
He wanted to tell her the truth, tell her that she didn’t have to explain. He knew what had happened. And he knew it haunted Caron; he could see that clearly now.
Deep sobs racked her slim body. “The red light confused me. The bar had a flashing red light. We went inside. It was smoky and dark and the smell of beer and sweat made me dizzy. I saw an image and felt a stabbing pain in my throat. My neck burned. I—I started gasping. I tried to tell Sandy it was a traffic light. That we were in the wrong place. It was the street, not the bar.”
She gulped in ragged breaths, then went on. “But my throat—” She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t tell him, Parker. And...and she died.”
Again Parker felt the pain, the hollow emptiness that had carved out his insides, the anger that Caron’s interference might have slowed down the police investigating hard evidence that might have saved Sarah. And again Parker felt the bitterness that had filled him at the morgue when Harlan identified Sarah’s body. He’d never forget seeing her like that. Bruises muddying her arms and legs, her face. Cigarette burns peppering her breasts and thighs. And never, not if he lived a thousand years, would he ever forget the jagged wound splitting her neck. Her throat had been slashed.
Caron’s sobs eased, and Parker brushed at his face with the back of his hand. He was shaking as hard as Caron. Would remembering ever get easier?
“I found her too late.”
Parker’s hand stilled on Caron’s shoulder. Cold dread seized his chest. “You saw her?”
She nodded against his chest. “I scribbled down that it was the street. Sandy took me there, and I pointed out the house. He told me to stay in the car, but I couldn’t.”
“You followed him in.” The dull ache behind Parker’s eyes began to throb, and he dropped his lids. “Ah, Jesus, Caron...” The need to shield her had him tightening his hold, pulling her closer until she nearly draped his chest.
“I don’t know what happened after that. The last thing I remember was walking into that awful room and seeing her on the bed.” Caron shuddered. “I woke up at Dr. Zilinger’s institute. They told me two days had passed.”
Her voice had calmed now, so much so that the dull tone had knots forming in Parker’s stomach. “Did you remember?”
She hesitated a long time before answering. “Yes, I remembered,” she said, dragging in a ragged breath that heaved her shoulders. “I still remember.”
Caron had had this dream before, he realized. Many times. Whether she suffered from a guilty conscience because she pretended to be psychic when she wasn’t, or because she was psychic and she’d made a mistake that might—or might not—have cost Sarah her life, Parker wasn’t sure. But guilt was guilt. And that he understood.
Caron had seen Sarah in the hellhole where she’d been tortured and murdered, not in a sterile morgue. He wished he could have spared her that. He wished he could have spared Harlan, too. The word devastating didn’t begin to describe what they had suffered. God, poor Harlan. Sarah had been his wife! To see his wife that way. How that must have twisted him inside.
Parker’s throat clogged with tears. It had twisted Harlan. Hadn’t he called Parker that Christmas morning and said that without Sarah life wasn’t worth living? Hadn’t he said that she’d been everything good in him, that he had died with her? He had been reaching out, crying for help.
But Parker hadn’t heard. He’d been confused by the signs...just like Caron.
He stared blankly at the ceiling. His voice thick, he gave Caron what he could give her. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was.”
“Why?”
“I made a mistake, and she died.”
A long silence filled the room. Rain pattered against the bedroom window, tatting against the pane. The drops beaded, glistening in the light from the streetlamp.
Caron felt guilty because Sarah had died. He felt guilty because Harlan had died. And Parker’s guilt deepened. Lying there in Caron’s bed, holding her in his arms, he realized what it was that had been niggling at the fringes of his mind since that first night at Decker’s: Caron had never lied to him.
But he had lied to her. He was still lying to her. She hadn’t given him Sarah’s name, but Caron had given him everything else.
The urge to tell her the truth, to tell her about Sarah and Harlan and the year-long investigation, burned on Parker’s tongue, begging to be spoken. But he swallowed the words, forced them back down his throat. They were tearing holes in his belly, but he couldn’t tell her. Not now. It was too late.
Though the evidence pointed in that direction, he wasn’t convinced she was psychic. She could have found and suppressed evidence pointing to Sarah’s whereabouts to protect her image. Sanders could have given her enough to send her in the the right direction. She was tenacious. All she would have needed was a thread. But she was carrying around a ton of guilt. She needed someone. And, though he had no right, God help him, he wanted to be the someone she needed.
Caron sniffed, rolled over, then cranked an eyelid open. Bars of light shining in from between the blinds slanted across the room and her bed. Her head ached, her stomach felt queasy, and memories of last night were rushing back to her. Parker. She’d told him about Sarah.
Groaning, she turned onto her side and reached for the covers. If he hadn’t been sure she was a certifiable flake before then, he surely was now. Her hands throbbed.
Misty. Caron kicked off the covers and dragged herself out of bed. Some awful smell that wasn’t coffee was coming from the kitchen.
Parker was still here. She should give him a hard time for staying, but the truth was, she was glad he had. After the dream, he’d held her. Safe, secure and content, she’d gone back to sleep. She usually paced the floors until dawn.
After a detour
into the bathroom she stumbled into the kitchen. Parker was at the stove, stirring something in a pot. Without a thought to her reasons, she walked up behind him, curled her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back. “Morning.”
“Morning.” He turned and brushed a kiss to her forehead, then cast her an appraising glance. “You should’ve slept longer.”
She moved to the cabinet, pried it open with her wrist, then reached for a cup. Pain bolted up her arm, and she whimpered.
“Here.” Parker grabbed a cup and filled it from the pot.
“Is it coffee?” She couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice.
He smiled. “Yeah, it’s coffee.” He turned her toward the table. “Sit. Breakfast is ready.”
She sat down in her usual chair. When he put the cup in front of her, she looked up at him. He was every bit as gorgeous first thing in the morning as he was at midday, and in the dark of night. Feeling like a frump, she pouted. It wasn’t fair. She felt like a zombie, like something the cat had dragged in, and was certain she looked worse. Yet he looked gorgeous.
She shrugged her sleep-tossed hair back from her face. “Thank you, Parker.”
Stirring the pot, he arched a brow. “For what?”
“Specifically?” With luck, maybe he’d let her off the hook. Considering she hadn’t yet had coffee, that would be the decent thing to do.
He nodded.
No such luck. Resigned, she winced against the light and looked up at him. “For being here for me last night. For giving a damn.” The muscles in her throat clamped, and her eyes burned. He’d been so tender and gentle, and she knew he’d cried with her. “For not skating out on me like Mike and Greg and my father did.”
So other men had hurt her, too, reinforcing what her father had done. Parker nodded, turned back to the stove and let loose a silent stream of curses. When he felt he could talk without betraying his resentment, he asked the question that had been on his mind all morning. “You have many nights like that?”