Cold As Death (The Mira Morales Series Book 5)

by T. J. MacGregor

  Maybe, but she didn’t think so. She was pretty sure she would have picked up something like that in her contact with him. “I think his migraines are connected to what he can’t remember about his own kidnapping and to the things he has done over the years. What do you know about the casting director for Bluff?”

  “Not a whole lot. Mom had some articles she’d saved about her death. She supposedly drove over the side of a cliff because she’d been drinking. That was the official verdict. I think it happened a couple of weeks into the shooting of Bluff. So he did all this to get back at my mom because he didn’t get the male lead?”

  “Basically, I think that’s it, yes. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. I think his father made him feel like a failure at everything. Once he was older, he started fighting back to prove to himself that his father was wrong about him. He was apparently a success in Silicon Valley, but he failed in Hollywood, and he never forgot it. It ate away at him.”

  “Then why am I still alive? Why hasn’t he… killed me? That would be the ultimate vengeance against my mom.”

  “I’m not sure, but my guess is that he likes playing God. It makes him feel that he succeeded at what he set out to do.”

  “Can I ask you a, uh, personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “When he brought you in here, your face was so bruised the skin on the right side was almost black. I could tell you were in a lot of pain. But now you seem okay and the swelling is gone and the bruise has nearly faded. How’s that possible?”

  She appreciated the way he phrased his question. Instead of exclaiming that it was impossible, he asked how it was possible. “It’s one of my body’s peculiarities. But this time it took a lot longer than usual.” Hours.

  “But how’s it work? I mean, it’s like, incredible, okay? I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Sheppard had asked her the same thing many times over the years. How’s it work? Explain it to me. What’s involved? These conversations usually plunged into chaos quickly because, bottom line, all she had were theories patched together from books, conversations with Nadine, and her own experiences. She didn’t have a simple answer. And while Adam was a bright kid who probably had read many of the same books she had, this wasn’t the time or the place for a discourse on quantum physics. Movies could explain it just as well.

  “You saw Carrie, right? And The Fury?”

  “You’re saying it’s a kind of telekinesis?”

  “That’s my theory?”

  “Like Ellen Burstyn in Resurrection.”

  “Similar. Burstyn healed herself and then was able to heal others. I can’t heal other people. I mean, sometimes it happens because I inadvertently take on their symptoms, their aches and pains, and my body transmutes them. Right now, for instance, I have a headache from working on you.” She rubbed her temple. “Right there. And here.” She touched the spot between her eyebrows. “Just like you. But it’s not like I can put my hands on someone with cancer and they’re healed. It’s more like self-protection.”

  “Suppose you’re stabbed? Or shot? Or you get MS or cancer or AIDS or something like that?”

  “I got shot last Christmas and my body couldn’t handle it. I flatlined briefly and ended up having several surgeries.”

  She pushed up the hem of her shorts and showed him the scar on her upper thigh. “And I don’t know about disease. I’ve never had a disease.”

  “Do you get colds?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, and sinus infections and I go to the dentist. I had my tonsils and appendix taken out when I was a kid. This isn’t like X-Men.”

  He rubbed his hands over his thighs, nodding, pensive. “So you’re an anomaly.”

  “Exactly. For lack of a better word, that’s what I am.”

  “You ever read Colin Wilson?”

  In all her years in the book business, no teenager had ever asked her about Colin Wilson. She suddenly saw Adam in a much different light. “Yes. Have you?”

  “The Outsider, the Occult, Mysteries… Those are my three favorites.”

  Mira had read The Outsider, Wilson’s 1956 classic, when she was a year older than Adam, and it had explained more about who she was than anything Nadine ever told her. She was the outsider, the outlier, the weirdo, the factor X that Wilson had written about. The fact that Adam apparently identified with Wilson in the same way made her realize she had underestimated him. His body might be thirteen years old, but his mind, his spirit, his very soul were ancient. Like her, he straddled two worlds. He was psychic and didn’t realize it and his raw talent probably surpassed hers. She guessed he’d been seeing the dead long before Joy Longwood had appeared to him and that in the cosmic scheme of things, the kidnapping was his wake-up call. His initiation.

  Her head ached now in a way that had nothing to do with Adam’s discomfort or their situation. Lights burst inside her skull, an explosion so brilliant that if it were physical, it would blind her. She shut her eyes, her breathing shifted. The brilliant light gradually faded enough so that she could see several of the myriad paths that would open to him as a result of this experience.

  If he survives.

  And that was her job. To make sure that he escaped, that he survived, that he went on to achieve his potential. There was a message here for her too, but she didn’t know what it was. Even as she thought this, she could feel a block of information pressing against the edge of her consciousness, but couldn’t quite seize it.

  “Adam, I need to know what’s coming up for us. The easiest way for me to find out is to read you. Would that be okay with you?”

  “Mom swears by you.”

  Hey, how encouraging. She had done such a great job of finding Adam that she had to be snatched to do it. “I’d like you to start talking about everything that has happened to you since you were taken, okay? And at some point, I’ll take your hand.”

  “So it’s like downloading music or information.”

  A psychic download. “Yeah, something like that. Start with the night he took you.”

  He began to talk, his voice quiet, even, steady. Mira shut her eyes. She used the alternate breathing technique that Nadine had taught her when she was too young to understand that it brought both hemispheres of the brain into sync with each other. When the shift in her awareness occurred, she flowed into the slipstream of Adam’s voice.

  His world, for all its access to privilege, wasn’t like the movies. It wasn’t the world of Spielberg or Lucas. It wasn’t Wayne’s World. Adam had grown up with a huge rift between him and Paul, the result of several past lives in which Suki had been central to their hostility toward each other. Their relationships to Suki in these other lives had been vastly different—in one, she was a man and Adam and his father were sisters who loved him. In another, the three of them were siblings. In yet another, Adam had been Suki’s father and Paul had been Adam’s daughter. The intricate web quickly became confusing, and she pulled back from this path of information.

  She was seeking a deeper connection between Adam and Spenser and it didn’t necessarily originate in a past life. She suspected that before Adam had been born, his soul had agreed to experience something dramatic and emotionally wrenching that would alter the course of the lives within his immediate family and open him psychically.

  That Spenser had lived where Adam was living now, in the Mango Hill house, wasn’t enough of an attractor. But suppose Spenser, like Adam, had never known his birth father. Suppose the man who’d taken Spenser believed the boy was his son, just as Paul Nichols believed that Adam was his son? And suppose Spenser’s kidnapper, like Nichols, was oblivious to the truth? It was the kind of pattern that could act as an attractor, she thought, but she didn’t have any idea if it was true for Spenser and the man who had kidnapped him.

  And how the hell did she fit into this picture? Why had she attracted this sort of experience?

  Because it involves a child.

  Yes, that was part of it. But the deeper pat
tern—paternity—didn’t apply to her. The man she knew as her father—a science-fiction writer who, like her lawyer mother, was largely clueless about Mira—was her blood father. Of course he was. Her parents had been married for forty-four years, since her mother was a twenty-year-old college student and her father was a twenty-one-year-old graduate student in the engineering department at the University of Miami. Her mother had turned sixty-three in July; her father would turn sixty-four in August. There was no mystery here, nothing hidden from her.

  Or is there?

  “Mira?” Adam whispered.

  She opened her eyes and realized she was gripping Adam’s hand.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to clutch your hand so…”

  “The room’s getting cold,” he whispered.

  The temperature plummeted just as quickly as it had in Adam’s room at home, minus the poltergeist activity. Nothing moved, the air seemed to be sucked free of sound. Frost gradually formed on the windows. Mira pulled the quilt off the bed and pulled it around herself and Adam as they lowered themselves to the top of the cooler. Static filled her head, she could see her breath now, and moments later two forms began to take shape in the middle of the room. “Can you see this?” Mira whispered.

  “She’s not alone,” Adam whispered back.

  If either of them had been wearing watches or there had been a clock in the room, Mira knew that the hands would be spinning or stopped altogether. Instead, the light bulb in the floor lamp blinked off and on. The computer went dead and whirred to life again. The static in her head abruptly ceased and a man and a woman materialized like characters in a Star Trek episode who had been beamed from elsewhere, their images wavering, strange, then gradually solidifying so they looked almost real.

  “Holy shit,” Adam breathed. “It’s never been this… this real before. This clear. Who’s the guy?”

  “My dead husband.” Mira didn’t move as Tom and Joy came over to them. Her heart ached at the sight of him, but she was angry that he only showed up in times of stress and crisis. “Unless you’re here to open the door, Tom, you and Joy can leave.”

  “I don’t just show up in a crisis, Mira,” he said. “I’m with you more than you realize, but you block your awareness of me when life is good.”

  Emotion swelled in her throat, she swallowed it back. “Then what do you want, Tom?”

  Joy Longwood spoke, her voice surprisingly soft, feminine, melodic. “To apologize for the trouble I caused in Adam’s room. I only wanted to show Adam’s mother that I’m not an imaginary playmate. And I need to apologize to you, Adam, for not protecting you the way I had hoped.”

  “You should’ve told me the whole story,” he said.

  The closer they came to Mira, the more electrified the air became. The hairs on Mira’s arms now stood up, her skin tingled and tightened, as if she had outgrown her own body. She felt strangely uneasy and sensed there was another layer to all this. She got to her feet, interposing herself between Adam and Joy, and held out her hand. “Give me the truth,” she said to the woman.

  Joy glanced at Tom, as if asking for his permission or advice. Joy had been dead much longer than Tom, Mira thought, but seemed to understand far less than he did about what was allowed.

  “It’s okay,” Tom said. “She has done this before.”

  Joy raised her right hand, as if to pledge her allegiance to truth or country. Mira raised her right hand as well and Joy touched her palm to Mira’s.

  The touch wasn’t like that between two living people. There was no warmth, no grasping of fingers, no sliding of flesh against flesh. The sensation that tore through Mira was unlike anything she’d experienced before, as if lightning ripped into the top of her skull and blew it off completely. She couldn’t wrench free of it. Images poured into her, shocking in their clarity, intimacy, agony, and horror. Her nervous system short-circuited; she thought she smelled smoke and the stink of her own flesh burning. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, her brain went into lockdown, all her psychic doors slammed shut, and she fell away into darkness.

  Chapter 22

  Fatal Attraction

  Thanks to the already soggy ground, the rain had turned many streets in Old Town Key West into shallow rivers. Finch didn’t want to risk having the car stall out, so he parked three blocks from Eden’s, on a street that was more elevated. He trekked barefoot through the rain, his umbrella slanted into the wind, and went over what he would say to her. He knew that he could convince her to see things his way. It was just a matter of playing the part of concerned lover and friend, as he had in the beginning of their relationship, when he listened for hours to all the intimate details of her affair with Paul Nichols.

  Her apartment was at the back of a wooden two-story house built in the days before Key West had become a tourist travesty. It was 750 square feet, with a tiny porch that looked out upon a garden the size of a potted plant and a small wooded area beyond that. The single bedroom was no larger than a stamp, the plumbing in the cramped bathroom leaked, the kitchen was barely large enough for two people to move around in comfortably. But at nearly a grand a month, it was considered a steal.

  As Finch turned onto her block, the flooded sidewalk was lit here and there by lights from apartments powered by generators. The steady, noisy chug of the machines created a grating undercurrent of sound to that of the rain, like a garage band competing with an orchestra.

  Finch was struck by the sight of her building just ahead, barely a silhouette in the rainy dark and yet somehow menacing, as though it held unimagined horrors. He suddenly felt that he should immediately turn around and walk fast, very fast, back to his car, return to his house, pack up, and disappear. He actually stopped right where he was, ankle deep in water, and considered it. But that wasn’t how the game was won, he thought, and ran the remaining distance to Eden’s building.

  He hurried along the side of the building and onto her porch. The door was open and Eden stood just inside, fussing with her purse, her raincoat. In the glow of electric lanterns, she looked old, used up, ravaged. Her lustrous copper hair was wild, frizzy, exploding from the sides of her head with a kind of wild abandon. “There was nowhere to wait for you outside without getting drenched,” she said, and tossed him a hand towel so he could dry himself off.

  Finch set the umbrella against a small bamboo cart that held fresh fruit. “I had to park three blocks away. Let’s wait a few minutes until this downpour lets up.” He shut the door with his foot and rubbed the towel vigorously over his face and arms.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Spense.”

  “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea, Eden. Once it gets out into the press—and it will—it could jeopardize his son’s life. It may be just what the kidnapper’s waiting for.”

  “Why do you say that? He may be dead already, for all we know.”

  “I don’t think he’s dead. That isn’t what Paul wants.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He pulled out a chair for her, then one for himself, and sat down. “Let’s talk about this for a few minutes.”

  She remained standing. “I want to get going.”

  It irritated him that she wouldn’t sit. He stayed where he was, making it clear that he wasn’t budging. “Consider this, Eden. It’s possible that Paul arranged the kidnapping of his son as a publicity ploy, to revive his career and…”

  “What? That’s totally ridiculous. Paul loves Adam, he would never do…”

  “Yeah, he loves him so much he was screwing around with another woman on the night he was supposed to be home because his wife was out of town. C’mon, his career took a nosedive years ago. Why do you think he’s teaching about directing instead of actually directing? No one wants to hire him. He’s a has-been, for Chrissake, but all this publicity could change that for him.”

  “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this bullshit. It’s …”

  “Let me finish,” he snapped.

&
nbsp; She looked stunned that he spoke to her with such sharpness.

  “If I’m right about Paul and you go in there claiming to be his alibi, then it’s possible the police will consider you an accessory.”

  Her frown threw her forehead into a chaos of lines, pinched her eyes at the corners, and turned her mouth into a parody of itself. It was obvious that none of what he’d said had occurred to her. Finch, certain he had dented her resolve, rushed on.

  “It makes sense, Eden. Think about it. Think about how devious he is, how often he had to lie just to be with you. There’s even another, worse scenario. You go in there claiming to be his alibi and he turns the tables on you, swears that he ended the relationship with you and that you got back at him by taking his son.”

  She threw her arms out. “You see a kid here, Spense? I didn’t do a damn thing to Paul or to his son.”

  “I know that, but the cops won’t.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes, she sank into the chair with a kind of tragic resignation, and the tears spilled. “I…I just want to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing is to protect yourself by staying out of it.”

  She rubbed her hands over her face, her nails bright red against her soft skin. “I feel so stupid.” A hesitant smile, unbearably sad. “What would I do without you, Spense?”

  “I can think of one thing you can do with me,” he said, touching her hand.

  “I’m really not in the mood for that right now.”

  “I’m not talking about sex. Pack a bag. We’ll go somewhere.”

  What am I saying?

  “You mean, like, on a vacation?”

  “No. We’ll move somewhere together.” Really? Am I ready for this? “We’ll go on my boat. There’s nothing to keep you here.”

  “The houseboat?”

  “I’ve got another boat, with a cabin. It’s comfortable, we can go anywhere. Do you have a current passport?”

  “Yeah, but… Where would we go?”

  “Wherever you want.”

  Eden looked as if her fairy godmother had just told her that with one sweep of her wand, any wish she had would be granted. “New Zealand. I’ve always wanted to go there. Is that too far?”