Always

by Jude Deveraux

  “That left hook of yours could mess up some very expensive plastic surgery.”

  Greg’s eyes glittered. “I can tell that all you’re going to do is make jokes, so just go. I’ll see that you’re escorted out.” He began straightening papers on his desk.

  “You were always able to get to me, weren’t you?” Jack said softly. “As kids you used my who-cares attitude to get me to do whatever you were afraid to do.”

  “Which is why I’m now safely behind a desk and you’re on the streets. We’ve always made a perfect team.”

  Jack dabbed at the cut on his eye. “I take it that your psychic is to be here today and that’s why I was brought in.”

  “She—” When the phone on his desk rang, Greg picked it up, listened, then hung up. “She’s here now, just arriving.”

  “Get out the incense and the crystal balls.”

  Ignoring him, Greg went to the blinds and looked down at the lobby. “There she is.”

  Jack looked but he saw no one who he thought could be Greg’s so-called psychic. There were half a dozen female agents, all of them looking as though they were trying to solve some earth-shattering case—which they probably were—but no one who looked like a clairvoyant.

  Greg nodded toward a woman at the counter. When she turned as she pinned her visitor’s badge, Jack looked at her. She was small and curvy, with short strawberry-blonde hair. From where he was standing she looked to be a knockout. For a moment he thought that it might be rewarding, so to speak, to work with her.

  He watched her walk toward the grand staircase that many agents preferred over the elevator. As she walked, she lifted her hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture he’d seen before.

  “I know her!” Jack said. “Or at least I’ve seen her before.” As he tried to remember, he glanced at Greg and saw that his face was red all the way to his ears, and his mouth was so tightly closed his lips were gone.

  Uh-oh, Jack thought as he looked back at the woman. Was she someone he had had an affair with? There were years of his life that were little more than a blur. After he’d run away from his father he’d spent years in a drug-induced haze. In the four years since he’d been sober he’d met many people he’d once known but now didn’t remember.

  “It was Houston, wasn’t it?” Jack said. “I met her in Houston and we…” Trailing off, he kept watching the woman and thinking that that wasn’t right. Had he ever been to bed with a psychic? Some woman who said she could read minds? Tell fortunes? Or, as Greg said, make people take off their clothes?

  Jack watched the woman reach the head of the stairs and turn toward them. When she did, newspaper headlines flashed across his mind. “The Hillbilly Honey Suspected of Murder,” he saw.

  Jack dropped the blind. “Is there a back way out of here?”

  “I’d like for you to stay and meet her,” Greg said firmly.

  Jack shot him a look. “You want me to stay and meet the Hillbilly Honey? She killed her husband for his money. And her sister-in-law.”

  “She didn’t. We have proof that she didn’t. She was—”

  Jack snorted. “She wasn’t there? Right, of course she wasn’t. Greg, I expected more of you. Just because she wasn’t there doesn’t mean she didn’t kill them. Look at the facts: Poor white trash marries into a rich family and a year later the rich husband dies.”

  “She’s spent years searching for them.” Greg took a deep breath. “She’s not what the public thinks she is, and she hasn’t done what they think she has.”

  Jack looked at Greg sharply. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”

  “She’s done some things,” he said quietly. “I’ve not seen her do anything except, well, heal my shoulder, but I’ve read the reports. There’s a possibility that she can freeze people in place.”

  “Then she sticks a rock on them and heals them. A great party gag. Look, Greg, I’ll help find my father but I’m not working with a so-called psychic. You let her feel all the photos she wants and I’ll even listen to what you tell me she’s said, but I want nothing to do with the little gold digger.”

  There was a light knock on the door. “She’s here, so sit down and behave yourself or I swear I’ll call my mother.”

  Throwing up his hands in defeat, Jack took a seat as Greg opened the door. Right away he saw why Greg and this woman’s husband, and maybe the entire FBI, were taken in by her. She looked much younger than she probably was, and she had an air about her that made her seem innocent and vulnerable.

  Silently, he watched as Greg made chitchat about the beautiful spring weather. She glanced at Jack and Greg made a cursory introduction. Jack didn’t get up, just nodded in acknowledgment, and she looked away.

  Jack watched them as Greg poured her a glass of ginger ale. The Hillbilly Honey, Jack thought. There wasn’t much in life he hated more than a gold digger. He had sympathy for drug addicts and even some murderers, but for people like his relatives and everyone who’d sucked up to him when they’d learned he was rich, he had no sympathy.

  Wonder how she did it, he thought as he watched her and Greg sit down. She was across from the two men, and as Jack looked at her expensive clothes, he wondered what she’d done to get into the exclusive Montgomery family. In his father’s wealthy set, the Montgomerys were known to keep to themselves. They were often referred to as “the clan.”

  But somehow, this woman had used her curvy little bottom to worm her way into the Montgomery clan. Then she’d killed her husband. And her sister-in-law. Had the sister been an accident? Or had the woman been on to her?

  Jack looked at the “honey” as she chatted with Greg and smiled. It was a plane wreck, wasn’t it? Wonder what she did? Fuel line? A few gauges tampered with? Had she done it herself or paid someone? No, she probably did it herself. Women from her class knew how to use screwdrivers and wrenches.

  So what’s she done with all the money? he wondered. Men? Or did she like women? She probably had a father who beat her as a kid so she’d probably turned to women.

  Sociopath, he thought. Cares about no one or nothing. Her hard-knocks life had made her incapable of love.

  “Excuse me,” he heard the little honey say.

  Still smiling, feeling as though he’d seen through this charlatan, he watched her stand up and take a step toward him. Obviously, she couldn’t stand that there was a male in the room who wasn’t fawning over her.

  When she stood before him, he looked up at her pretty face, then down her body. She had on a conservative dark suit but it only accentuated her curves. She’s one hot little number, he thought as he looked back up at her face.

  Wham! In the next second she drew back her hand and struck him across the face hard.

  For your information I married my husband for love, she shouted at him so loud that his head rang. And I didn’t kill him or his sister. Putting her hands on the arms of his chair, she leaned into his face. But I have killed people. I made their heads explode. Would you like for me to do the same to you?

  Try it! Jack shouted back at her. In the next moment he felt a sharp pain in his head, but he looked at her and concentrated on her eyes, and he kept the pain from becoming unbearable.

  Seconds later, she stood up straight and looked down at him. Someone is protecting you, she said, then she turned on her heel and left the room before Greg could move to stop her.

  It took Jack a few moments to recover himself. She’d hit him on his sore mouth and it was bleeding again. “So much for your psychic,” he said as he went to the sink to wash his mouth.

  In the mirror he caught sight of Greg sitting absolutely still on the sofa. Why wasn’t he jumping up and running after the woman? Or at the very least telling Jack what he thought of him?

  “Greg?” Jack said, turning to look at his friend. When Greg didn’t so much as blink, Jack grabbed his shoulders, then instinctively drew back. Greg’s muscles were tightened into rigidity. Jack took his friend’s shoulders again and pushed him down ont
o the couch—where his legs stayed bent into a sitting position.

  What could have caused this instant paralysis? he wondered even as he ran to the phone to call for an ambulance. But in the next second Greg’s body relaxed and he whispered, “Don’t call.”

  Jack ran to him, but Greg brushed him away, then sat up, rubbing his arms. “What the hell did you do to her?”

  At that, Jack went to the bar and poured himself some bourbon. This day had been too much for him. First he’d been told to go to Wrightsman’s jewelry store and steal a necklace from an undercover agent and that he’d be brought in. He had not been told of an overzealous clerk who’d looked at him like she wanted him for breakfast, and he hadn’t been told he was going to have to fight three policemen while wearing handcuffs. And he had definitely not been told about any pigeons using his body as a platform for a mating dance.

  “I didn’t say a word to her before she hit me,” Jack said after he’d downed a double shot of bourbon.

  Greg staggered over to the telephone and pushed a button. “Is she still in the building?”

  From the expression on his face, Jack knew the woman had left. “Shouldn’t I be the one you feel sorry for?” he asked. “I was just sitting there, minding my own business, and she hit me. Then while I was bleeding, she threatened to kill me. She—”

  “She didn’t say a word to you,” Greg said, standing up and flexing his legs.

  “Is that how we’re going to play it? She didn’t say a word to me? Okay, fine by me. It was stupid anyway. She said she’d made people’s heads explode.”

  Greg blinked a couple of times, then sat back down. “I wondered what happened in those tunnels.”

  “Tunnels?”

  “Yeah, she and her husband and her mother and some others cleaned out a bunch of murderers in Connecticut. They called themselves a coven and the ring-leader said she was a witch. Whatever they were, they were a nasty bunch.” He ran his hand over his eyes. “They stole kids. Little children. They kidnapped Darci’s husband when he was three, but he escaped so the woman—the witch—went after the rest of the family. We believe she killed his father, and after his mother gave birth, she killed the mother and kept that child for her own.”

  Jack poured himself another bourbon. “But you guys finally got her, right?”

  “No!” Greg said sharply. “They did. Only we couldn’t figure out how the witch and her cohorts had been killed. There wasn’t a mark on any of the four people, but the autopsies showed that their brains had been…destroyed.”

  “I see. And you think she—What’s her name?”

  “Darci Montgomery.”

  “You think she did it? Destroyed their brains?”

  Greg was quiet for a moment. “Jack,” he said, “Darci didn’t say anything to you and you didn’t say anything to her. Not out loud anyway.”

  “You need this more than I do,” Jack said, handing him the drink. “The woman hit me, then shouted at me so loud my ears hurt. I answered her back just as loud, then she said…”

  “What?”

  “She said, ‘someone is protecting you.’ She couldn’t mean my fellow FBI agents because—”

  “Jack, I’m telling you that the two of you never exchanged even one word out loud. Whatever was said between you was done in your minds.”

  “Telepathy,” Jack said, smirking. “Thought exchange.”

  Greg didn’t answer, just looked at Jack in speculation. Like the good agent he was, he was thinking how he could use this ability in his cases. Jack could go into situations with no wire and he could relay every word that was being said to Darci. She could tell them what was going on as it was happening. If Jack was in too dangerous a situation he could call for help through Darci.

  As for Jack being “protected,” that rang true. He and Jack had always had a strong bond between them and several times they’d rescued each other. Well, actually it was Jack who’d been in trouble and Greg who’d come to the rescue. Once when they were in high school together, Greg had “heard” a voice in his head telling him to run to the parking lot. The voice had been so insistent that he’d left class without permission and run as fast as he could. He’d been in time to stop three guys who were in the middle of beating up Jack. Later, the doctor said that a couple more kicks and Jack might have lost a kidney. As it was, it was three months before he recovered.

  Greg had always “heard” Jack, but not the other way around. Of course, it was always Jack who’d been in physical danger. Greg had only needed rescuing once and that had been when he’d been accused of cheating on a test. Jack had been the one to figure out who had done it and how. When Greg called him a “genius,” Jack said, “No, it was weird, but it was like I could see into your classroom and I could see who had done it. I saw that he’d taped the notes onto your desk, and he read them from the back row with his new glasses.” Upon investigation, the glasses turned out to be a form of binoculars the kid had bought at a spy store.

  “What’s that look for?” Jack asked. When Greg didn’t respond, he took a step backward. “I’m not a freak. I’ll go undercover in the drug world; I’ll go into prison and find out whatever from your worst criminal, but I will not work with some voodoo princess. That kind of stuff—”

  He broke off because they heard a shout from the lobby below. They went to the window and looked through the blinds. Darci had reentered the building, but since she’d already checked out and wasn’t on the appointment book, she’d been asked to leave. When she ignored the request, the agent had put his hand on her arm. He’d yelled when his hand felt as though it had been set on fire. When two other agents tried to grab Darci, they, too, jumped away in pain.

  Darci was holding something in her hand and she was looking up at Greg’s window. Pulling the cord, he lifted the blind all the way up.

  Neither Greg nor Jack said anything as they watched Darci make her way up the stairs toward them. Her focus never left the window, and she didn’t seem to be aware of the dozen or so agents who tried to stop her from climbing the stairs.

  With their eyes wide in disbelief, Jack and Greg watched as armed men and women fell away from her. Some stopped as they ran, seemingly paralyzed into place. The few who got close enough to touch her grabbed their heads in pain, falling to the floor, unable to get up. She knocked two female agents back against soft chairs, then kept them pinned there as though bound by ropes and gags.

  “I think she wants to see us,” Greg said with exaggerated calm.

  Chapter Three

  AS GREG WALKED TOWARD THE DOOR, HE WAS unable to believe what he’d just seen. He opened the door to Darci, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. What could he say?

  Darci held out her hand toward Greg, her fingers closed around something, then she walked past him to Jack. “You,” she said to him, extending her hand, meaning for him to take whatever she held.

  Greg thought that he’d jump through the plate glass window rather than take anything she offered, but Jack gave the woman a look that said, I’m not afraid of you, then took the object.

  It looked to be her car keys.

  “What do you feel?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Jack answered, looking at the set of keys. “BMW. Your dead husband buy it for you?”

  Greg didn’t know whether to admire Jack or think he was the biggest fool on earth to not be afraid of this little woman. “Could you…” he began, nodding toward the window and the incapacitated people downstairs.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Greg watched her relax and in the next second hell broke loose downstairs as people recovered themselves. Within seconds, three agents, firearms drawn, were at his door, and he had to send them away. By the looks on their faces, they would have shot Darci in an instant.

  When Greg got the door closed and the blinds drawn, he turned back to look at Darci and Jack. They were still standing, glaring at each other, Jack nearly a foot taller than she. He wondered if they were talking to each ot
her through their minds. He was tempted to go to the bar and grab the whole bottle of bourbon, but he made himself try to deal with what was happening—whatever that was. Darci Montgomery was out of his realm of comprehension.

  Mustering his courage, Greg went to the two of them. “You want to fill me in?” he asked.

  Jack looked at Greg. “Did you guys rehearse that downstairs?” he asked.

  “Rehearse?” It took Greg moments to realize that Jack was saying that he didn’t believe Darci had paralyzed anyone, that it had all been a play put on to…to what? To get Jack to believe a lie?

  Darci took the keys from Jack’s hand and held up one, a small, ordinary-looking key. “Do you recognize this?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Do you own something it could open?”

  “I make it a point to own nothing,” he said, smiling at her in a cocky way.

  Greg watched as Darci glared at Jack and he glared back, but nothing happened to Jack. There was no paralysis, no pain in his head, no hands feeling of fire. She can’t hurt him, Greg thought.

  “Who loves you enough to die for you?” Darci asked.

  “Every woman I’ve ever been to bed with,” Jack shot back, then put his hand on his ear. “Ow!”

  Instantly, Darci turned to Greg and said, “I didn’t do that.”

  “I would have seen you if you had,” Jack said, rubbing his ear.

  Greg decided that it was time for him to step in. Jack had agreed to help find his father, but it looked as though this extraordinary young woman was going to have to be involved also. “Jack,” Greg said, “why don’t you go downstairs and get something to eat?”

  “Limp green beans and lumpy mashed potatoes?”

  “Exactly,” Greg said as he made a call and arranged an escort for a “criminal.”

  At the door, Jack said, “Get it out of your mind if you’re thinking that I’ll work with her. I won’t.”

  Greg didn’t reply. He just wanted to hear what was going on with Darci and her car keys, but he knew that with Jack’s hostility in the room, she’d never tell him anything.