that didn’t quite make contact.
“Yeah, look—I need to get back to the job.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“Let me know if you get any more on our killer—or the victims.”
He pushed the door open and went out, hurrying, like someone escaping from a trap.
She wasn’t sure why she followed him. But she did. And when she stepped onto the sidewalk, she felt as if she’d collided with an electric fence. Energy sizzled along her scalp and crawled over her body, just beneath her skin. Even her bones seemed to vibrate. As if it were frantically batting at a bombardment of tennis balls, her tired mind tried to give names to the overwhelming emotions ricocheting inside her head.
Watching…watching…
Waited…searched…so long!
Found you!
Glee!
Victory!
Success! At last!
The only thing she knew for certain was that someone was watching. Watching with riveted attention and avid interest, a focus so intense it felt like a laser beam. Watching Wade.
A few dozen yards down the block, the police detective was getting into his car. She called out to him—a croak, at first, then louder. “Detective Callahan—Wade! Wait—please!”
He turned to look at her across the roof of his car. He was frowning because his heart was beating way faster than it had any reason to, unless he wanted to count having just scared himself silly, coming so close to telling a woman he didn’t know or trust things he’d never told another living soul. Right now half of him wanted to ignore her, jump in his car and get the hell out of there, get back to dealing with things he knew were real, and knew what to do with—like facts and evidence and witnesses. Dead bodies. Those things he understood.
Fortunately the other half reminded him that he’d just told this woman to let him know if she picked up anything more on his killer—or his victims. And even if he wasn’t sure whether he believed in her “gift,” the department had made her part of his team, and it behooved him to listen to what she had to say.
He watched her hurry toward him, breaking into a run the last few yards so that she arrived breathless and pink-cheeked, reminding him once again of a high school cheerleader.
Except, as she came close, he got a good look at her eyes, and against all reason and everything he thought he believed in, his skin began to crawl. He’d seen that look before.
Damn, he wished he didn’t have to ask it. But he did. “What is it? Radar pick up something?”
A pained smile flashed on and off like a light with a bad connection. “It was…someone was here, Wade. Just now. I think he’s gone, though…”
She didn’t look around, as anyone else would have, to see if she could see someone lurking in the vicinity. No—this lady closed her eyes and went still. Looking inside her own head. It gave him cold chills.
“What do you mean, someone was here? This have anything to do with—”
“No—I mean, no, not the case. At least, I don’t think so. But…he was watching you, Wade. It was like…he’d been waiting. Looking for you. For a long time. And now he’s found you. He was so…happy about it. Gleeful.”
Well, hell. What was he supposed to say to that? He ducked his head and ran a hand over the crisp stubble of his short-cropped hair while he thought about it, then lifted it up again when he heard her say softly, “You don’t believe me.”
She was standing with her arms folded, and he got the impression she was shivering, or trying hard not to. Even though she was on the opposite side of the car from him, he felt a thoroughly ridiculous urge to put his arms around her and warm her. Anything to get her to stop.
“Nah, look, it’s not that,” he said, trying to smile when what he felt like doing was grinding his teeth. “It’s just—look, thanks for the heads-up, okay? You said whoever it was is gone now, right?” She nodded, and he was relieved that her eyes were vivid and focused again. Although he had a feeling the image of those eyes would be staying with him for a while.
“Let me know if he comes back,” he said, and he got in his car and headed back downtown.
Pride made him wait until he’d turned the corner before he checked his rearview mirror. Well, hell. He was involved in a murder investigation, after all, and it was a long way from being his first. Not too much of a stretch to think somebody could take a notion to come looking for him with revenge on his mind.
It wasn’t much of a stretch, either, for a so-called psychic looking for a way to convince a skeptic to think of that, too.
* * *
Tierney watched the detective’s car until it had disappeared around the corner at the end of the block, absently rubbing her arms even though the chill that always followed an impression had already faded. She turned and went back into the gallery, frowning uneasily and wondering whether she’d done the wrong thing, telling Detective Callahan about the entity she already thought of as The Watcher. He was already teetering on the edge of disbelief, and passing along an impression so vague and meaningless was bound to only increase his skepticism. Especially since she hadn’t gotten any sense that The Watcher meant any harm.
The Watcher. From the objectivity of ten minutes removed from the experience, she replayed that extrasensory bombardment over again in her mind, searching for any signs of malevolence or danger. She couldn’t recall anything negative in it at all—quite the opposite, in fact. She kept getting that overwhelming sense of success achieved after great effort. Triumph. Intense glee. Profound relief. Joy.
What it reminded her of, she realized, was an image from a television miniseries she’d seen years ago, about a black American man searching for his roots in Africa. She’d never forgotten the look on the man’s face—an actor, of course, but no less emotionally intense, at least for her—when he heard at last the old griot, the verbal historian, recount the familiar story of how his ancestor had been taken by slavers. The man’s incredible, overwhelming joy as he cried out, “I’ve found you, you old African! I’ve found you!”
Yes. It was that kind of feeling. So vivid it shook her, brought tears to her eyes and goose bumps to her skin even now.
Laughing at herself, she dashed the tears from her eyes, rubbed away the goose bumps and went back into the gallery. She walked slowly among the paintings, soaking in their sunlit freshness and tranquility one last time before climbing the stairs to her apartment…and the darkness that was Jeannette.
Ed Francks was on the phone when Wade walked into the squad room. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and muttered, “See the boss,” as he jerked his head in the general direction of the hallway that dog-legged off the main squad room.
Wade nodded, tossed his jacket over the back of his chair and tucked in his shirttails as he headed for the office of the homicide division chief. It was more automatic than necessary; the current chief wasn’t a stickler for spit and polish. The only thing that impressed Nola Hoffman was closing cases.
Nola, being five-ten and a little bit—six feet in the high-heeled pumps she always wore—and carrying more weight than she probably wanted to, was more than impressive enough to fit her title. It didn’t hurt, either, that she had skin the exact color of Hershey’s milk chocolate, a neck about a foot long topped off with a perfectly shaped head that was covered with maybe half an inch of fuzz the color of vanilla ice cream and the face of an Egyptian pharaoh. She was referred to as “Boss” to distinguish her from the head of Special Cases, Allan Styles, who was just about Nola’s direct opposite in every way. Styles was known as “The Chief” to his face; what most of Wade’s fellow homicide