Cold Touch

by Leslie Parrish

  It was vile, twisted . . . and sickeningly smart.

  Mick Tanner apparently hadn’t noticed Gabe’s thoughts had wandered. “And what about the fact that the main suspect is the guy who tried to kill her, and now, despite the police reports from the time that say he’s dead and gone, she’s claiming he’s still alive? You think they’re going to be fine with that, admitting somebody screwed the pooch twelve years ago and let this psycho get away?” He rolled his eyes. “Sorry, friend. We all know that’s not gonna happen.”

  He was seriously not liking this guy. That did not, however, mean Mick was wrong. In fact, his theories about the reaction Gabe would get to this were probably dead-on. Olivia was a former victim, and anybody might think she was looking for payback or resolution to her own crime. And, yeah, ass covering was alive and well at city hall and in the PD.

  Hell. Nobody else at the station was going to touch this one with a ten-foot pole. Frankly, he was a little surprised Ty was still here. Then, again, considering how solicitously his partner was hovering over Brooke Wainwright, he somehow suspected an ulterior motive.

  Brooke was an engaged woman, but engaged wasn’t married. And her fiancé seemed like a real dickhead. So Gabe certainly wasn’t going to be the one to warn Ty off.

  “We can help. Let us,” Mick urged.

  “What is it you think you can do?” he asked carefully.

  Mick lifted his hand, displaying the gloves, like ones a race-car driver would wear.

  “I saw them,” Gabe replied, his tone dry.

  “They’re hard to miss,” the other man said with a grin.

  “I assume it’s to keep you from touching something you don’t want to touch?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So why don’t you use something a little less obvious, like a doctor’s glove?”

  “What, and get mistaken for a proctologist all the time? No, thank you,” Mick said with an obvious eyebrow wag, trying to keep the mood light.

  Julia chuckled, as did Olivia. Gabe didn’t. This guy wasn’t answering any of his questions. “So, back to the point. What exactly do you do?”

  “I know things.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re all psychic.”

  “I’m not,” Julia said from across the room. “I don’t have a psychic bone in my body.”

  Well, at least she admitted it.

  “I’m not really psychic, either,” Mick said. “I can’t tell the future.”

  “So what is your trick?” Ty asked, sounding halfamused, half-interested.

  Mick glanced at Olivia. “Do you mind?”

  “Your call,” she said with a shrug.

  Mick nodded, looked around the room and didn’t seem to see what he wanted. Saying “I’ll be right back,” he walked out of the den, heading to the formal dining room, which looked like it was all set for the queen and her family to sit down for tea. Gabe had glanced in there yesterday and hadn’t liked the heavy, antique furniture, room-darkening drapes and prissy, rose-patterned china displayed in a glass-front hutch. It didn’t suit Olivia, who, though feminine and graceful, was in no way prissy. Not with the steel she had running through her spine.

  When Mick came back, he was carrying a cup. One single rose-patterned teacup.

  “Don’t you dare drop it,” Olivia warned him. “That thing’s valuable.”

  “Hey, no hinting,” Mick said. Putting the cup down, he took off one of his gloves.

  Gabe took a step back, having a sudden, vivid memory of what had happened that afternoon when Liv had torn one fingertip off hers. From beside him, he felt the brush of her hand. He looked down at her, sitting on the edge of the couch, and she mouthed, “It’s okay.”

  Yeah, he hoped so. Because he sure as hell wasn’t carrying this guy upstairs and climbing into bed with him.

  Across the room, he saw Ty leaning forward on his chair. Brooke was doing the same thing. Julia, obviously used to this dog-and-pony show, wasn’t even watching, instead staring at something out in the hallway. Frankly, he didn’t want to know what it was.

  Once his right hand was ungloved, Mick reached down with the left one, picked up the teacup, and deposited it in his bare palm. Fortunately, he didn’t start to shudder, shake, or scream. He only scrunched his eyes shut, then nodded.

  “Well?” Olivia asked.

  “Your grandmother, she liked her tea with lemon but no milk.”

  “This is the South, darlin’; that’s how all the best people take their tea,” Julia drawled. “Come on, you can do better than that. Impress us, hotshot.”

  Mick chuckled, not offended. “Okay. Wait.”

  A long silence, then he spoke again. This time, his voice was a static monotone, like he was describing a series of boring pictures in his mind. “You’ve never sipped anything out of this cup, Olivia. Your mouth hasn’t been on it, though your hand has. You’ve washed it, cleaned it less than a month ago, but it hasn’t held anything except dust for at least ten years.”

  Olivia nodded once, though Mick’s eyes were closed and he couldn’t see her do it.

  Gabe crossed his arms over his chest, still waiting to be wowed.

  “The last time it was really used was at a bridge luncheon in January of 1999.”

  “My grandmother loved bridge, but she stopped playing when my grandfather died.”

  What rich, old Southern woman didn’t play bridge?

  “A woman named Agnes Bedford drank out of it,” Mick added. “She wasn’t very happy. She and her partner, Bitty Bates, just couldn’t get it together.”

  “Agnes and Bitty were my grandmother’s best friends. Debutante class of 1933.”

  Okay, a little more interesting. But he still wasn’t convinced Mick didn’t know Olivia well enough to know the names of . . . her dead grandmother’s friends? Hmm.

  “Your grandmother used the set for her bridge club meetings because she knew ‘the girls’ were all so impressed by it. Something about where it came from. . . . Other than that, it was used once a year at Easter, and children under fifteen weren’t allowed to touch it.”

  Brooke laughed softly. “I used to stick my finger on the plates when she wasn’t looking.”

  Gabe couldn’t deny growing more interested, but the skeptic in him could still come up with a rational explanation for all of this. The late senator and his wife were very well known; her best friends might have been mentioned in society articles that Mick could have seen. What old lady didn’t like to lord it over her friends a little with her best china, and who wouldn’t insist that the kids not touch it?

  “Tell us something you couldn’t possibly know,” Olivia charged, correctly reading Gabe’s skepticism.

  Mick nodded. “It is a family heirloom, a wedding present to your great-great-grandmother. The wedding was . . . umm . . . spring of 1863, I think?”

  Interesting? Or utter bullshit?

  Olivia rose to stand beside him, frowning at his lack of faith.

  “That’s right, Mick.” Then she took Gabe’s arm and pulled him with her as she walked over to a bookshelf on the far wall. Still silent, she reached up, pulled down a leather-bound book marked “The Wainwright Family: A Genealogy” and put it into Gabe’s hands.

  He guessed that rich, old Southern families did things like print up entire books about their family history. If anybody were to do that for his family, it’d have about two pages, the only names in it being his, his mother’s, his grandmother’s and his grandfather’s. His mother had died when he was nine, his grandmother six months after that. As for his grandfather, well, he was too mean to be courteous enough to die and leave the earth to better folks. Gabe had never met his father—his mother wasn’t even allowed to mention his name once her daddy had let her “come crawling back home with her no-good little bastard” when she had no place else to go. Gabe had been about two at the time.

  So, yeah. Fuck genealogy.

  “Tell me the ancestor’s name, and then tell me who gave her the gift,” Olivia ordered Mick, fro
m across the room, though her attention remained on Gabe.

  While Mick concentrated, Olivia flipped the pages, stopping on one with an old, tintype-style wedding photo of a very dour-looking man and his equally constipated-looking, frumpy bride. Gabe couldn’t help whispering, “The happy couple?”

  With a smile tickling her lips, Olivia nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Shh.”

  “Uh, seriously, Liv?” Mick said. “Your great-great-grandmother’s name was Bathilda?”

  Olivia tapped the tip of her finger on the caption beneath the photo.

  Bathilda Chester Wainwright.

  “Her father was German,” Olivia said. “Yes. Now, who gave it to her?”

  Mick thought a second more, then said, “Cool!”

  “Who was it?” asked Ty, obviously intrigued.

  “President and Mrs. Jefferson Davis,” Mick said. “Old Jeff himself picked up this very cup to examine it when shopping for the gift in Richmond.”

  Again, Olivia tapped something on the page. It turned out to be a list of the guests who had attended the wedding. The honored president of the Confederacy and his wife were right on top.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Oh,” Mick muttered. His eyes flying open, he put the cup down suddenly, as if needing to get it away from himself.

  “What?” Gabe asked.

  Mick’s jovial demeanor had faded, his smile no longer conveying a good mood. In fact, his suddenly clenched jaw said it was anything but. “The whole box was wrapped in lace and tied with blue silk ribbons,” he said, his tone dripping distaste, “by Mrs. Davis’s house slave, who dropped one of the matching cups. She didn’t have a very good day.”

  Everyone fell silent for a moment. Then Ty asked, “Is he for real? Seriously, for real?”

  Gabe was wondering the same thing. But he couldn’t deny the evidence was strong; he was holding the book right in his hands. There was no way Mick could see it. There certainly had been no time to set this whole thing up as some elaborate scheme, nor did he think Olivia ever would. He’d already accepted the fact that he’d seen evidence of a true, inexplicable phenomenon yesterday in that examination room. How could he deny it existed in this form?

  Yeah, this might be for real. Crazy, impossible. But real.

  Mick tugged on his glove, not saying anything more, then sat on the couch, remaining silent. Suddenly it hit Gabe how tough it would be to have an ability like that. How difficult it must be to go out in the world, unable to touch anything without fearing some random object’s dark history would overwhelm you at any given time. He’d once read that paper currency was one of the dirtiest things you could touch because it had been handled by so many people. God, how would this guy even manage to pay for a cup of coffee without a glove on his hand?

  The very idea of it saddened him, and he found his instinctive mistrust toward the man fading. No, he wasn’t ready to toast marshmallows and sing “Kumbaya” with anybody Olivia worked with, not if, as he suspected, they exploited her abilities to her detriment. Still, he couldn’t deny he felt sympathy for Mick Tanner. Olivia could avoid touching human remains for the rest of her life if she chose to. Mick didn’t have the luxury of never touching anything.

  Mick looked over at him, the twinkle gone from his eyes. They held a long stare, during which the man silently admitted that it was just like Gabe was imagining. Bad. Painful. Ugly.

  But also, Gabe suspected, very useful when it came to solving crimes. Especially when it came to solving cold crimes. Like this one.

  It could never be as bad as what Olivia already went through to help solve this case.

  He thought about the case, thought about the evidence, thought about the murdered boy. He also thought about the information he’d read in Olivia’s file early this morning, before he’d come here to pick her up to take her to the family brunch. The file had mentioned evidence gathered at the scene after Olivia’s rescue. A cigarette butt. An old spoon. The broken tip of a knife. All normal items but items that could very well tell a story if only the right man was there to listen to it. And the right man was practically begging for the chance to listen to it.

  “So what do you think, Detective?” asked Julia, as if sensing he was waffling.

  What did he think? Hmm. He thought he was actually giving this some serious consideration. He thought he was about to take an off-the-wall chance he would never have considered two days ago. He also thought he might live to regret it.

  Before he went any further and actually decided, though, he needed to make a few things clear. He stared at the owner of eXtreme Investigations. “This would be totally off the record.”

  She lifted both hands, holding them palms out. “Not a problem.”

  “I mean before and after. I don’t want to see some newspaper article next week about how the Savannah PD is now working hand in glove . . .” he glanced at Mick, “no pun intended, with your company. And any kind of payment is out of the question.”

  Julia rose, lifting one dark brow over a dark eye. “Olivia is one of us. We’re here for her, not for you, not for any money and not for the company. Understand?”

  “Got it,” he said, glad they had laid it all out. He had suspected as much, but it was better to be up front about what was expected of everyone in this situation.

  “Let’s start by giving it a day, okay? Tomorrow, totally outside regular office hours, just some like-minded people putting their minds together to work on a problem.” That sounded perfectly reasonable . . . and like something that might not cost him his job.

  You’re dreaming. If this thing goes south you can kiss your job goodbye.

  He ignored his inner pessimist. “Ty, you really up for this? You know we’re walking on thin ice here, right?”

  “I know, but you bet I’m in. This dog will hunt.”

  Gabe shook his head and tsk-tsked. “Not so good that time.”

  Ty grinned. “Well, how about, ‘Why, yes, partner, that’s a fine idea. I’d be happy to.’ ”

  “That’s better,” Gabe said, ignoring everyone’s confusion. If they were going to spend time with Ty, they’d figure it out soon enough. Or, as Ty would probably put it, right quick.

  “So, that’s it?” Julia asked. “We’re agreed?”

  Gabe turned the whole situation over in his mind one more time, considering what his lieutenant would have to say, what the press would make of this. But in the end, he came back to the same thing: If it helped get justice for that murdered boy and peace for Olivia, and helped prevent more people from being hurt, how could he possibly refuse to even try? “Okay, I think we’ve got a deal.”

  He only hoped it was one he didn’t live to regret.

  After a few more minutes’ conversation, they all agreed to get a fresh start in the morning at the eXtreme Investigations offices. Julia left first, with Mick following her out. Ty was next. Then it was just him and Brooke, standing on either side of Olivia by the front door. Liv’s sister eyed him like he was some despoiler of innocents.

  “Thank you, Brooke,” Olivia said, giving her sister a soft kiss on the cheek, setting their departure order without actually putting it into words.

  The blonde frowned, looked at Gabe, then back at her sister. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Olivia insisted.

  Brooke licked her lips nervously, as if unsure she should say anything, then did, anyway. “Have you, you know . . . done it yet?”

  Gabe stiffened, shocked that the sister would ask that with him standing right there.

  “No, but I promise, I will,” Olivia replied.

  He suspected he’d gotten the wrong impression about what Brooke had been asking. The woman confirmed that by turning her attention toward him. “You make sure she does what she needs to do to let this go. Understand?”

  Again, the mouse had become a lion. Funny what family loyalty could do to a person. Then Brooke left, and it was just him and Olivia, standing in the front hall. There probably
should have been some awkwardness, considering that several hours ago they’d been kissing passionately in her bed. But there was none. Gabe was too focused on Brooke’s comments to even stress about what had happened earlier. “What did she mean by ‘let it go’?”

  Olivia cleared her throat. “I have to let go of what happened today.”

  He got it at once. “You mean, when you touched the remains?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means you can let it go? Get it out of your head entirely?” he asked, incredibly relieved. One of the things he’d been dwelling on while she’d slept earlier was the thought that all these things, these dark, awful deaths, never fully left her consciousness. Which would be enough to break anyone, sooner or later.

  “No,” she replied, “it’s not like that.”

  Hell. “So what is it like?”

  She tilted her head, visibly considering how to describe it. “It’s . . . I guess it’s like going to therapy. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been.”

  “It’s been recommended by a woman or two over the years,” he said, his voice dry.

  The rejoinder got a tiny smile out of her, as he’d intended it to.

  “But no,” he added, “I’ve never been on the couch.”

  “I have. And what I do now, to get out from under this, is something like what I used to do then. First I accept it, embrace the fear and horror of it. Then I wash it away, clean it from my mind, and allow myself to feel triumph over having risen above it.”

  He only stared. He’d been hoping for some psychic magic trick, something that would erase this from her memories, and she was talking about channeling that dumb book The Secret? Positive thinking and all that crap?

  “I know it sounds . . .”

  “Wait. You accept and embrace it?” he asked, focusing on that part of her explanation.

  Olivia turned away from him, walking slowly back toward the den, not asking if he wanted to stay. As if she just couldn’t stand up and have the conversation any longer.

  He followed, of course. This time, when she sat down on the sofa, he was the one who went to the wet bar. He poured her a glass of cranberry juice, splashed some club soda in it, as he’d seen her do, then brought it over and handed it to her. “Drink. Breathe. Then we’ll talk.”