Forbidden Territory

by Paula Graves

  Irritated, he checked the clock. Almost four. Walters’s plane would have touched down by now and Baker would be with him, calming his fears. Baker was good at that.

  McBride wasn’t.

  He was a bit of a loner with secrets himself.

  As he started to close the computer file, his phone rang again. He stared at it for a moment, dread creeping up on him.

  Abby Walters’s photo stared up at him from the desk.

  He grabbed the receiver. “McBride,” he growled.

  Silence.

  He sensed someone on the other end. “Hello?” he said.

  “Detective McBride?” A hesitant voice came over the line, resonating with apprehension. Lily Browning’s voice.

  “Ms. Browning.”

  He heard a soft intake of breath, but she didn’t speak.

  “This is Lily Browning, right?” He knew he sounded impatient. He didn’t care.

  “Yes.”

  Subconsciously, he’d been waiting for her call. Tamping down growing apprehension, he schooled his voice, kept it low and soothing. “Do you know something about Abby?”

  “Not exactly.” She sounded reluctant and afraid.

  He tightened his grip on the phone. “Then why’d you call?”

  “You asked if I’d seen Abby this morning. I said no.” A soft sigh whispered over the phone. “That wasn’t exactly true.”

  McBride’s muscles bunched as a burst of adrenaline flushed through his system. “You saw her this morning at school?”

  “No, not at the school.” Her voice faded.

  “Then where? Away from school?” Had Ms. Herrera been wrong? Had Lily slipped away from the meeting, after all?

  The silence on Lily Browning’s end of the line dragged on for several seconds. McBride stifled the urge to throw the phone across the room. “Ms. Browning, where did you see Abby Walters?”

  He heard a deep, quivery breath. “In my mind,” she said.

  McBride slumped in his chair, caught flat-footed by her answer. It wasn’t at all what he’d expected.

  A witness, sure. A suspect—even better. But a psychic?

  Bloody hell.

  Chapter Two

  Heavy silence greeted Lily’s answer.

  “Are you there?” She clutched the phone, her stomach cramping.

  “I’m here.” His tight voice rumbled over the phone. “And you should know we don’t pay psychics for information.”

  “Pay?”

  “That’s why you’re calling, isn’t it?” His words were clipped and diamond hard. “What’s your usual fee, a hundred an hour? Two hundred?”

  “I don’t have a fee,” she responded, horrified.

  “So you’re in it for the publicity.”

  “No!” She slammed down the phone, pain blooming like a poisonous flower behind her eyes.

  The couch cushion shifted beside her and a furry head bumped against her elbow. Lily dropped one hand to stroke the cat’s brown head. “Oh, Delilah, that was a mistake.”

  The Siamese cat made a soft prrrupp sound and butted her head against Lily’s chin. Jezebel joined them on the sofa, poking her nose into Lily’s ribs. Groaning, she nudged the cats off her lap and staggered to her feet. Half-blinded by the migraine, she made her way down the hall to her bedroom.

  The headaches had never been as bad back home in Willow Grove, with her sister Iris always around to brew up a cup of buckbean tea and work her healing magic. But Willow Grove was one hour and a million light-years away.

  The phone rang. Lily started to let the answering machine get it when she saw Iris’s face float across the blackness of her mind. She fumbled for the phone. “Iris?”

  Her sister’s warm voice trembled with laughter. “I’m minding my own business, drying some lavender, and suddenly I get an urge to call you. So, Spooky, what do you need?”

  The warm affection in her voice brought tears to Lily’s eyes. “Buckbean tea and a little TLC.”

  “Did you have a vision?” Iris’s voice held no laughter now.

  “A bad one.” Lily told her sister about Abby Walters. “The detective on the case thinks I’m a lunatic.” She didn’t want to examine why that fact bothered her. She was used to being considered crazy. Why should McBride’s opinion matter?

  “What can I do to help?” Iris asked.

  “Does your magic work over the phone?”

  Iris laughed. “It’s not magic, you know. It’s just—”

  “A gift. I know.” That’s what their mother had always called it. Iris’s gift. Or Rose’s or Lily’s.

  Lily called hers a curse. Seeing terrified little girls crying for their daddies. Broken bodies at the bottom of a ditch, rain swirling away the last vestiges of their life-blood. Her own father’s life snuffed out in a sawmill across town—

  “Stop it, Lily.” Her sister’s voice was low and strangled. “It’s too much all at once.”

  Lily tried to close off her memories, knowing that her sister’s empathic gift came with its own pain. “I’m sorry.”

  Iris took a deep breath. “Do you want me to come there?”

  “No, I’m feeling better.” Not a complete lie, Lily thought. Her headache had eased a little. Just a little. “Sorry I called you away from your lavender.”

  Iris laughed. “Sometimes I listen to us talk and understand why people think the Browning sisters are crazy.”

  Lily laughed through the pain. “I’ll visit soon, okay? Meanwhile, don’t you or Rose get yourselves run out of town.”

  Iris’s wry laughter buzzed across the line. “Or burned at the stake.” She said goodbye and hung up.

  Lily lay back against the pillow, her head pounding. Jezebel rubbed her face against Lily’s, whiskers tickling her nose. “Oh, Jezzy, today went so wrong.” She closed her eyes against the light trickling in through the narrow gap between her bedroom curtains, trying to empty her mind. Sleep would be the best cure for her headache. But sleep meant dreams.

  And after a vision, Lily’s dreams were always nightmares.

  BY FIVE O’CLOCK, the sun sat low in the western sky, casting a rosy glow over the small gray-and-white house across the street from McBride’s parked car. He peered through the car window, wishing he were anywhere but here.

  When Lily Browning had hung up the phone, his first sensation had been relief. One more wacko off his back. Then he’d remembered Andrew Walters’s demand and his own grudging agreement. Call it following every lead, he thought with a grim smile. He exited the vehicle and headed across the street.

  Lily Browning’s house was graveyard quiet as he walked up the stone pathway. A cool October night was falling, sending a chill up his spine as he peered through the narrow gap in the curtains hanging in the front window.

  No movement. No sounds.

  He pressed the doorbell and heard a muted buzz from inside.

  What are you going to say to her—stay the hell away from Andrew Walters or I’ll throw you in jail?

  Wouldn’t it be nice if he could?

  He cocked his ear, listening for her approach. Nothing but silence. As he lifted his hand to the buzzer again, he heard the dead bolt turn. The door opened about six inches to reveal a shadowy interior and Lily Browning’s tawny eyes.

  “Detective McBride.” She slurred the words a bit.

  “May I come in? I have some questions.”

  Her face turned to stone. “I have nothing to tell you.”

  McBride nudged his way forward. “Humor me.”

  She moved aside to let him in, late afternoon sun pouring through the open doorway, painting her with soft light. Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she skittered back into the darkened living room, leaving him to close the door.

  Inside, murky shadows draped the cozy living room with darkness. When McBride’s eyes finally adjusted to the low light, he saw Lily standing a few feet in front of him, as if to block him from advancing any farther.

  “I told you everything I know on the phone,” she said.r />
  He shook his head. “Not quite.”

  Her chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. Finally, she gestured toward the sofa against the wall. “Have a seat.”

  McBride sat where she indicated. As his eyes adjusted further to the darkened interior, he saw that Lily Browning looked even paler than she had at school earlier that day. She’d scrubbed off what little makeup she’d worn, and pulled her dark hair into a thick ponytail. Despite the cool October afternoon, she wore a sleeveless white T-shirt and soft cotton shorts. She took the chair across from him, knees tucked against her chest, her eyes wary.

  Her bare skin shimmered in the fading light. He stifled the urge to see if she felt as soft as she looked.

  What the hell was wrong with him? He was long past his twenties, when every nice pair of breasts and long legs had brought his hormones to attention. And Lily Browning, of all people, should be the last woman in the world to make his mouth go dry and his heart speed up.

  He forced himself to speak. “How long have you been a teacher at Westview Elementary?”

  She answered in a hushed voice. “Six years.”

  He wondered why she was speaking so softly. The skin on the back of his neck tingled. “Is someone else here?”

  Suspicion darkened her eyes. “My accomplices, you mean?”

  He answered with one arched eyebrow.

  “Just Delilah and Jezebel,” she said after a pause.

  A quiver tickled the back of his neck again. “What are they, ghosts? Spirits trapped between here and the afterlife?”

  A smile flirted with her pale lips. “No, they’re my cats. Every witch needs a cat, right?”

  “You’re Wiccan?”

  A frown swallowed her smile. “It was a joke, Lieutenant. I’m pretty ordinary, actually. No séances, no tea leaves, no dancing around the maypole. I don’t even throw salt over my left shoulder when I spill it.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. The lines in her face deepened, and he realized her expression wasn’t a frown but a grimace of pain.

  “Do you get headaches often?”

  Her eyes swept down to her lap, then closed for a moment. “Why are you here? Am I a suspect?”

  “You called me, Ms. Browning.” He relaxed on the couch, arms outstretched, and rested one ankle on his other knee. “You said you saw Abby Walters—how did you put it? In your mind?”

  She clenched her hands, her knuckles turning white.

  “Why call me?” he continued. “Do I look like I’d buy into the whole psychic thing?”

  “No.” Her tortured eyes met his. “You don’t. But I don’t want to see her hurt anymore.”

  He didn’t believe in visions. Not even a little. But Lily’s words made his heart drop. “Hurt?”

  “She’s afraid. Crying.” Lily slumped deeper into the chair. “I don’t know if they’re physically hurting her, but she’s terrified. She wants her daddy.”

  McBride steeled himself against the sincerity in her voice. “How do you know this?”

  Her voice thickened with unshed tears. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I have a door in my mind that wants to open. I try to keep it closed because the things behind it always frighten me, but sometimes they’re just too strong. That’s what happened today. The door opened and there she was.”

  Acid bubbled in McBride’s stomach, a painful reminder of too much coffee and too little lunch. “You actually saw her?”

  Lily nodded slowly. “She was crying. Her face was dirty and she was afraid.”

  “Can you see her now?”

  Her quick, deep breath sounded like a gasp. “No.”

  Tension buzzed down every nerve. “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Please…” She lurched from the chair and stumbled against the coffee table. A pair of cut-glass candlesticks rattled together and toppled as she grabbed the table to steady herself. Out of nowhere, two cats scattered in opposite directions, pale streaks in the darkness.

  McBride’s heart jumped to hyperspeed as he hurried to Lily’s side. He caught her elbow. “Are you okay?”

  Her head rose slowly. “Go away.”

  “You can’t even stand up by yourself. Are you drunk?”

  “I don’t drink.” Her head lolled forward, her forehead brushing against his shoulder.

  “Drugs?”

  He could barely hear her faint reply. “No.”

  He wrapped one arm around her waist to hold her up. Her slim body melted against his, robbing him of thought for a long, pulsing moment. She was as soft as she looked, and furnace-hot, except for the icy fingers clutching his arm. Her head fell back and she gazed at him, her eyes molten.

  Desire coursed through him, sharp and unwelcome.

  Ruthlessly suppressing his body’s demands, he helped her to the sofa, trying to ignore the warm velvet of her skin beneath his fingers. “What did you take for the headache?”

  “I ran out of my prescription.” She lay back and covered her eyes with her forearm, as if even the waning afternoon light filtering through the curtains added to her pain.

  “I can call it in for you. Do you have any refills left?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  He should go, and to hell with her. It was probably another con. But she wasn’t faking the pain lines etched across her delicate face. “I can call a doctor for you—”

  “The prescription bottle’s in the drawer by the fridge.” Tears slid out from beneath her forearm.

  Her weak capitulation gave McBride an uneasy feeling as he headed to the kitchen to find the prescription.

  He was back in fifteen minutes, using the keys Lily had given him to let himself back into the house. It was a few minutes after six and night had fallen, cool and blue. He fumbled along the wall for a light switch, but couldn’t find one.

  Pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dark, he saw the pale sheen of a lampshade a few feet away, outlined in the glow coming through the windows from the streetlight outside. He felt his way to the lamp and turned it on. The muddy yellow circle of light from the low-watt bulb barely penetrated the darkness in the corner where it stood. But it was better than the unrelenting darkness.

  Lily lay on the sofa, her arm still over her eyes.

  “Ms. Browning?”

  She didn’t answer.

  McBride crossed to the sofa and crouched beside her, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest. She was asleep, without the benefit of the pills he’d just spent more than fifty dollars buying for her.

  No matter. She’d probably need them when she woke up.

  She shifted in her sleep but didn’t awaken. Waiting for her to settle back down, McBride gave in to the male hunger gnawing at his belly and let his gaze wander over her body, taking in the tempting curves and planes. At some point in her sleep, the hem of her T-shirt had slid up, baring a thin patch of smooth, flat belly and the indentation of her navel.

  Heat sluiced through him, unexpected and unwanted. Dragging his gaze from that narrow strip of flesh, he pushed himself to his feet and stepped away from her.

  He distracted himself with a quick, cop’s-eye survey of the living room. Clean. Spare. Simple furniture in neutral tones with just enough color to ward off boredom. He moved closer to the wall to study a framed water-color, a delicate rendering of a tulip in colors that would be subtle even with full illumination. A neat signature appeared in black appeared in the bottom right corner: Iris Browning. Mother or sister?

  Movement to one side caught his eye. A Siamese cat crouched, frozen, near a small iron plant stand, staring at him from between the leaves of a philodendron. McBride barely made out glowing turquoise eyes in a chocolate face.

  A shudder ran through him.

  Suddenly, a scream split the quiet, snapping the tension in his spine like a band. Off balance, he stumbled backward into the lamp, knocking it over. The bulb shattered, plunging the room into darkness.

  With his heart slamming against his rib cage, he turned to
the sofa, peering through the blackness. In the glimmer of light flowing through the window, Lily’s face was a pale oval, twisted into a horror mask by her wide-stretched mouth, her scream rising and swelling like a tidal wave, chilling him to the bone.

  LILY KNEW IT WAS NIGHT, black as pitch and deathly quiet except for whimpering sobs. She recognized Abby’s soft cries.

  “Abby?” she whispered.

  The child didn’t hear her, but stayed where she was, somewhere in the deep blackness, crying in soft little bleats.

  Lily knew she was dreaming, that by waking she could spare herself whatever lay beyond the door separating Abby Walters from her abductors. But she couldn’t abandon the little girl.

  She could almost hear Abby’s thoughts, the panicked jumble of memories and fears—Mommy lying on the roadside, blood streaming down her pale hair, tinting the golden strands red.

  Mommy, wake up! Am I going to die? Daddy, help me!

  Lily heard the rattle of a doorknob and the scraping sound of a dead bolt sliding open. Bright light sliced through the dark room, blinding them both.

  Abby screamed.

  A whistle shrieked.

  Second shift at the lumber mill. Daddy would be home soon.

  As she did every afternoon, Lily shut her eyes and watched her father wipe his brow with his worn white handkerchief, then reach for the switch to shut off the large circular saw.

  Bam!

  A log slipped loose from the hooks and slammed into Daddy’s back, pitching him into the spinning steel blade. A mist of red spun off the blade and spattered the sawdust on the table.

  Daddy screamed.

  Lily awoke in an explosive rush. Smothering blackness surrounded her, her father’s scream soaring, deafening her.

  Then she realized the scream was her own.

  Gentle hands emerged from the blackness, cradling her face. The couch shifted beneath her and a familiar scent surrounded her. Fingers threaded through her hair, drawing her against a solid wall of strength and warmth.

  She felt a hammering pulse against her breasts, beating in rhythm with her own racing heart.

  A low voice rumbled in her ear. “It’s okay.”