Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Julian…”

  He held up a hand, stopping her. “No need for hard feelings. I’m sure you’ll find Melanie and help her. I’m going to go finish the article I have coming due. You have my number, if there’s something you need from me. But…try not to need anything.”

  Siobhan wasn’t the type to beg, even though she suddenly felt strangely inclined to do so. She nodded tightly. “Fine. Yes. Just let me pay you back for the dinner you picked up for us.”

  “No need.” Julian headed toward the door, then stopped and turned back, looking at her. “By the way, General Tso’s chicken? You might as well just shock your taste buds with bitter, sour, and sweet triggers all at once and call it a day. Not a very refined choice.”

  With that last missive, which she didn’t quite understand the significance of, Julian walked out the door, down the hall, and then left the building, the door swinging shut loudly behind him.

  “Why couldn’t you have been that loud walking in?” Siobhan muttered, flopping down into her chair and resting her elbows on the desk as she dropped her head into her hands.

  It was true that Julian rubbed her the wrong way, but she hadn’t meant to damage their relationship so much that he just walked away altogether. Why was it such an insult that he was the opposite of what she wanted in a man? People had preferences—that’s all. It didn’t have to be so personal.

  Oh hush, Siobhan. You know you screwed up. Maybe he wasn’t your destined soulmate, but he was a decent guy trying to do the right thing, in his buttoned-up sort of way.

  She groaned and sat up, reaching for the General Tso’s chicken container, which had also become a target of Julian’s disdain in the end, and dug in. Whatever taste-bud sensors it was triggering, she liked it, and she needed something good after the day she’d had.

  An uneasiness churned in her stomach, and she couldn’t shake the guilt and regret that she felt. But after devouring most of the container of saucy, breaded chicken, she forced herself to get it together.

  “Okay,” she said out loud to no one. “You think you’ve had a shit day? Think about what’s waiting for Melanie What’s-Her-Name whenever this creep gets a hold of her. Focus on that, Siobhan. Come on. Do your damn job. Forget about that guy.”

  It was as easy as that, she decided. Put Julian out of her mind and focus on the woman who was in danger. That was what she was trained to do. And in exactly one hour, she’d give herself a break and go stretch her golden wings high above Boston. There was nothing better to work out the remnants of a bad day than letting her truest self take over, sending her soaring.

  Chapter Ten

  Julian

  “Damn it all to fucking hell in a handbasket!”

  Julian’s coworker in the cubicle over turned toward him in her swivel chair, her eyebrows arched. “Julian? Uh, everything okay?”

  “No,” he said, rubbing his forehead as he tried to readjust to the real world after sinking into his third vision in as many days. “I’m not feeling good, Trish. I think I’m going to go home and try to sleep it off.”

  She frowned as she studied him, her round face a mask of worry. “You look pale and sweaty. You’re too young to have a heart attack. You hear me?”

  “I’m not having a heart attack,” he assured her, getting to his feet and pocketing his phone and his keys. “You want to let the big guys know that I’ve gone home? I really want to just slip out of here.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she agreed, leaning back in her chair and resting her hands over her rounded stomach. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the reaction to your latest food writing article, right?”

  He gave her a look. “No. It doesn’t.”

  “Because a few bad reviews don’t change anything, you know. You’re still really great at that kind of thing, and people love your articles.”

  She was trying to be nice, but all he really wanted to do was escape. Still, he forced himself to smile. “Thanks. I appreciate the support. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Not if you’re having a heart attack.”

  Julian didn’t bother to respond, taking leave of his office building as quickly as he could. The hot, still air was a welcome relief after the perpetual chill inside the building, and he had no problem leaving his car in his designated spot in the parking lot and walking down to the subway station to catch a ride to the port. He could come back for his car later, once his head had cleared a bit.

  Boston’s subway was nothing like the huge, intricate, well-timed underground system in New York, but Julian found one of the green stairways to the lower level of the city quickly and slipped into the cool shade just as the subway came rushing into the station. He boarded, but didn’t take a seat, nodding to the three women who had boarded with him to sit instead as he leaned up against a pole.

  Only when the subway began to move again did he let his mind consider the vision he’d just had.

  The room was dark and the only sound was the high-pitched giggling of the figure hunkered down on the bed, his knees pulled up to his chest as he rocked himself back and forth. In the darkness, Julian could just make out the shape of the dresser by the window, the chair in the far corner, and the nightstand that sat nestled against the right side of the bed, the other side of the bed pressed up against the wall.

  There was nothing to decorate the walls, and the window was covered with wide-slat blinds that peeked through heavy curtains. Nothing about the room was warm or inviting, and although the basic furniture of a bedroom was in place, it felt more like a dungeon than anything else.

  “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” the man sang to himself, shaking his head as he rocked. “What a bad boy. What a bad, bad, bad boy I was! I’m in trouble now.”

  More giggling echoed.

  Even now, in the bright lights of the subway car, the sound made shivers sweep over Julian’s whole body. It was the creepiest thing he’d ever seen, and the image had now come to him for the third day in a row.

  Although the room was dark and he couldn’t see the man’s face, he knew for sure that it was the same man he had seen with Melanie. The voice was the same. The high-pitched tone and the inappropriate giggle. He’d heard them both before as the man degraded the naked woman he had stolen from her family and chained to a pole in a warehouse.

  What a bad boy. What a bad, bad, bad boy I was!

  Those words circled around and around in Julian’s mind, even when he squeezed his eyes to try to shut them out.

  Did those words mean that he had taken Melanie now and she was dead? Was that why he had been a bad boy? It made Julian sick to think what the woman might have suffered at the man’s hands, and although when he had righteously stormed out of Siobhan’s office, his own personal feelings hurt and his indignation fully engaged, he had felt that he was right in saying that he had done his due diligence, now he wasn’t sure.

  He’d bailed on Melanie, all because he couldn’t get along with Siobhan and she didn’t like him. If he had stayed, could his visions have somehow helped? What if he had gone back to Ophelia? Could he have seen something more—something that would have led them to Melanie?

  It was all he had been able to think about since the night that he’d walked out on Siobhan, firmly putting her in her place for the comment he’d overheard her make to her redheaded friend. He’d tried to write his food-blog article, but for the first time, when he’d published it, it had tanked. People wrote that it was boring, poorly researched, inadequately described, and made them want to do anything other than try the food he’d recommended.

  Julian knew they were right. His heart hadn’t been in the piece, and neither had his mind. He had decided that he could ignore this unasked-for gift that had been bestowed upon him after crash-landing in the Grand Canyon, but maybe the reality was that he couldn’t. Maybe this was his life now.

  Did he really have the right to complain about it, given that he was still alive and Melanie might not be?

  His stop came, and he exited the subway,
walking with the crowd up to street level again and wandering toward the pier. The smells of cooking seafood wafted toward him, and all around him people were still celebrating summer, holding on to every last day of warmth before the Boston winter took hold of them again. The water shimmered and danced in the sunlight, and people fished and boated, laughing and calling out to each other.

  The pier was always a happy place to be, and Julian had always felt at home there amongst the business of it. There was always new food to try and inspiration for his next article, and it broke up the relative monotony and loneliness of his days to wander the busy sidewalks after a day at work.

  Today, though, the atmosphere didn’t make him feel better. In fact, it made him feel worse, and he found that everywhere he turned, he was looking for Melanie’s terrified face in the crowd, hoping against hope to see her somewhere, alive and well and with her family.

  Someone called out for a Melissa, and his heart leaped as he turned in that direction, his mind replacing “Melissa” with “Melanie,” and the woman answering her friend’s call gave him a funny look as she passed by, clearly not understanding why he looked at her with such eagerness.

  “I’m not a creep,” he muttered after her, dragging a hand over his dark, smooth, slicked-back hair. “I’m just a guy with visions…”

  His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and, not thinking much of it, Julian pulled it out and looked at the screen. His eyebrows lifted in surprise as Caroline’s name and number flashed on his screen. He hadn’t heard from her in ages…

  After pausing for a moment, he swiped the call to answer it and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Hi, stranger. Come meet me for dinner. I’m only in town tonight.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Siobhan

  Melanie had been at the grocery store for almost two hours, and Siobhan was running out of places to hide so that the woman didn’t get the very accurate impression that she was following her everywhere. While Melanie had two very good excuses for taking almost two hours to do groceries—James and Jack, the two kids tugging on her arms, riding around on the back of the cart, and disappearing every time Melanie turned her back—Siobhan did not, and she was starting to get strange looks after wandering around the aisles again and again, not putting anything new in her cart.

  But it was worth it if it meant making sure that Melanie didn’t end up in the clutches of the man from Julian’s vision.

  Once Siobhan had put her mind to it, it hadn’t taken her long to track Melanie down. Social media made locating people much easier, and she had cross referenced the information they had on her with the many Melanie Facebook accounts with Boston locations. Once she’d found the right one, it was easy enough to figure out where Melanie might be, and she had spent the last twenty-four hours following the woman around while Moira and Eamon continued to try to find the man who, if Julian’s visions were predictive, would soon take Melanie for his own purposes.

  All Siobhan could do until then was make sure, from afar, that Melanie stayed safe.

  Walking down the aisle parallel to Melanie and her kids, Siobhan paused to pretend to be invested in the nutritional properties of different brands of pasta, biding her time before she started following Melanie again. But when she set the pasta box down and turned her cart around, there were Melanie and the two boys right behind her. Melanie gave her a strange look, as though she was beginning to get suspicious, and Siobhan smiled to try to diffuse the concern, then quickly walked away.

  Siobhan took her cart down another aisle and abandoned it there, mentally apologizing to the grocery staff for all of the products that they were going to have to put it away. But it just wouldn’t be good strategy to keep following Melanie around the store. She would, instead, wait for her outside, somewhere discreet where she had a clear view of the exit.

  Maybe that’s where she should have been all along, but there was no going back now. She got into her car and drove it to a parking spot near the exit, pointed toward the doors, and she hunkered down to wait. Surely Melanie couldn’t be that much longer. Surely.

  Her phone rang, and Siobhan picked it up, putting it on speaker. “Hey, Moira. News?”

  “Yeah, I just got done scouting out the last warehouse on our list, and I’m pretty sure that this is the one. Thing is—it’d be great if Julian, who actually saw it, could confirm. You know? Because garage-style doors, aluminum-tinted walls, and lots of boxes—well, that’s kind of how warehouses look.”

  Siobhan frowned. She knew Moira was right, but she hadn’t had contact with Julian since that first horrible day they had met. He had made it clear when he left that he wanted nothing to do with her, Melanie, or the case, and her pride kept her from calling him and telling him that she was sorry they had gotten off on the wrong foot and that they could work together.

  “Well, Julian has abandoned the case, so we have to make do on our own.”

  “Siobhan.”

  “Moira,” Siobhan retorted. “What can I do? He said he was washing his hands of it.”

  “Yeah, because you insulted him and he heard you. You seriously haven’t made that right yet?”

  Shifting in the driver’s seat of her car, Siobhan kept her eyes fastened on the doorway, hoping that Melanie would emerge and force her to end the conversation. “No, I haven’t made it right. All I said was that I wouldn’t want a man like him. It’s not a crime. And he clearly isn’t invested in any of this. So, we have to make do without him.”

  “Okay, give me his number.”

  Siobhan considered this possibility, having not thought of it before. “Why…?”

  “I’ll call him and make nice, then you and I can work the case together. I’ll deal with him and you deal with the other aspects.”

  Chewing on her bottom lip, Siobhan watched an elderly couple come slowly out of the doors, both leaning on the cart as they made their way to their car. Who was going to be with her at that age? At this rate, nobody. “That has potential.”

  “Good. Text me his number. And give me permission to apologize for you.”

  “Wait a minute…”

  “Gotta be done, Siobhan.”

  She groaned, gripping the steering wheel with her free hand even though the car wasn’t even on. “Gah. I’ll do it myself.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “That was your plan the whole time, and you know it.”

  “Not even going to begin to deny it.”

  Siobhan swore quietly under her breath. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll call him and tell him we need him to confirm the warehouse. For now, assume you’re right though and find out if they have any employees who match the guy we’re looking for.”

  “How do you expect me to do that, exactly?”

  “You know, flirt with the foreman.”

  “Oh God.”

  Siobhan smirked. “Like you haven’t done that before. Hey, my mark is on the move. Call you later.”

  Melanie and her boys had just walked out of the store, laden down with enough food and household items to last them for at least a month by Siobhan’s estimation. She waited until they had loaded it all in the minivan and pulled out of the parking spot, then Siobhan turned on her own car’s engine and slid into reverse, backing out slowly. Only when Melanie reached the stoplight at the intersection between the store’s parking lot and the main road did Siobhan begin to drive forward, keeping a good bit of distance between her and Melanie the whole time.

  Siobhan knew where they were headed, having followed Melanie home several times now. She took a slightly different route, crossing paths with Melanie now and then, never far enough away that she would miss it if Melanie decided to make another stop instead of going straight home. But Melanie didn’t, driving straight for her home on the outskirts of downtown Boston and pulling into her driveway, too busy managing the kids and the groceries to notice Siobhan’s car as it slid past her and parked several houses down.

  It was hard to believe that anyone wou
ld want to murder the simple, friendly woman who was going about her daily life, unaware of the potential danger that loomed ahead of her. But Julian had said that the man in his visions had personally hated Melanie and wanted her dead. There was something dark in that middle-aged mother’s life, whether she knew about it or not.

  Rolling her windows down to allow in a bit of breeze, Siobhan turned her car off. She stalled for several minutes, doing a visual sweep of the house—then doing it again. She checked her email on her phone, browsed the local news for any articles that might be linked to a crazed man and a warehouse, and then, when she could think of nothing else to keep herself busy and working, she pulled up Julian’s contact name on her screen and stared at it for a while.

  Why am I so reluctant to call him? So we didn’t click. So what? He’s a client. Get over it.

  She gave herself a mini-pep talk about all the very reasonable reasons to just make the call, get the job done, and continue on with her day, but Siobhan, normally the queen of action, was still hesitant.

  In the end, she had to force herself to press his name in her contact list, and her stomach fluttered uncomfortably as the phone rang once, twice, then three times.

  Was he not going to pick up? Really?

  Then the ringing stopped, and there was a click in her ear. “Siobhan. Hello.”

  The sound of his voice, every bit as rich and cultured as she remembered, only made her stomach twist more. “Hi. It’s about the case.”

  “I assumed as much, yes.”

  “Moira, my colleague, thinks she’s located the warehouse you described, but she wants you to confirm. Can you do that for her? You can just meet with her directly, if you want.”