Deadly Forecast

  The whole thing made me sick to my stomach, and yet I couldn’t help looking at the crowd. Something was drawing me to them, in particular to one young man with curly black hair, pale skin, and red swollen eyes.

  Dutch flashed his badge to several people in those familiar blue jackets with “Homeland Security” silk-screened on the back; then he motioned me up the walk, but I hesitated. “Abs?” Candice asked.

  I didn’t answer her. Instead I shuffled past the front walk and headed toward the young man standing alone and slightly removed from the rest of the crowd. He saw me coming and shifted uncomfortably. I could tell he’d been crying and my heart went out to him. He looked away and moved farther down from the crowd.

  “Hey,” I said when I was just a few feet away. “You’re Rita’s son, aren’t you?”

  The poor kid didn’t even acknowledge me. Instead he just stared hard at his front lawn, as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

  For several seconds I didn’t quite know what to say. Rita had asked me to look in on her son and I could feel his terrible sadness and it broke my heart. But approaching him would require delicacy…something I’m not especially known for.

  “What’s your name, honey?” I said to him. His eyes flickered to me, then away.

  “No comment,” he muttered, and I wondered if he’d already been approached by a reporter.

  I could feel Dutch and Candice right behind me, obviously letting me take the lead. “Okay,” I told him, “I’ll do the talking, and you can just stand there without saying a word. That all right by you?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a free country.”

  I wished I knew his name—it’d go a long way to making this easier—and then something weird happened…. I never get names…. Okay, well maybe once or twice a year I may get one, but they sure don’t come easy to me. Anyway all of a sudden the name Brody clicked into my head and I knew it was his. “It’s Brody, right?” I asked, mentally crossing my fingers.

  His eyes flickered to me with a hint of surprise, but then his gaze darted right back to the lawn. Still, I knew I was on the right track.

  “You’re probably wondering how I knew that,” I said.

  He glared at the grass.

  “I’m not a reporter.”

  He glared harder.

  “I work with the FBI.”

  Not a flicker of interest.

  “But I’m not an agent. I’m a psychic consultant.”

  His eyes came back to me, and this time they held my gaze. “For real?”

  I nodded. “For real.” Doubt clouded his expression. I took my phone out of my pocket and tapped at the screen. When I had what I wanted on the display, I showed it to him. “See?” I said. “That’s my Web site. I take personal clients along with occasionally helping out the FBI.”

  Brody took my phone and I said nothing while he skimmed the text. He then handed me back the phone and said, “I get feelings sometimes.”

  I cocked my head. “You mean, intuitive feelings?”

  He nodded sadly and his eyes welled with tears. “This morning I tried to talk my mom into taking the day off. But she said she was booked solid and she couldn’t.”

  His lip quivered and his face seemed to crumple in on itself. I handed Candice my cane and held my arms open wide, and Brody sort of shuffled into my embrace. I hugged him for a long time, trying with all my might to hold in my own tears, but it was pointless. His heartbreak was so raw, and so painful, and so guilt-ridden, that it just tore me apart. “I’m so, so sorry, honey,” I said to him. I could feel Dutch place a hand on my back and Candice hedged in to stand shoulder to shoulder with me.

  At last, Brody stepped back and we both wiped our eyes. “Do you have any place you can go?” I asked.

  Brody nodded toward his house, but he was still too overcome to speak.

  “Is anyone going to stay with you?”

  He shook his head.

  I turned and looked at Dutch. We couldn’t let this kid stay in his house by himself after what’d happened to his mom. Plus, Homeland Security was currently trashing his home. I didn’t think they’d pick up after themselves either.

  “You hungry, son?” Dutch asked gently.

  Brody shook his head, but then I heard his stomach gurgle.

  I took his hand. “Come on, sweetie. You’re coming home with us until we get this all settled.”

  Brody wavered and he pointed to the cluster of Homeland Security agents currently rifling through his home. “They told me to stay here.”

  “Leave it to me,” Dutch said, and off he went in search of the agent in charge.

  Meanwhile Brody looked like he was ready to bolt. I had a feeling all this was just a little too much for the poor guy, and Candice must have noticed it too, because she said, “It’ll be a tight fit, but I think the four of us can squeeze into the Porsche.” She winked at me and I caught on right away. The mention of a ride in a Porsche might be too tempting for a young man to resist.

  “Brody should sit up front,” I said. “Dutch and I don’t mind cuddling in the back.”

  Brody looked from Candice to me, and I nodded toward her bright yellow car. His eyes widened. I had to hide a smile. “Try not to drive too fast this time, Candice,” I said with a wink back at her.

  “It’s no fun unless I open her up, Abs,” Candice said. “But I’ll try to keep it under a hundred, for you guys.”

  I felt Brody’s hand tighten slightly around mine. Good, he was coming along, and then we all heard yelling. I turned to see a man shouting at Dutch, while my fiancé calmly stood in front of him with his arms crossed and a look on his face so hard it could cut diamonds.

  “I think we should head to the car right now, actually,” Candice said, moving to take up Brody’s arm from the other side. We wove our way through the crowd, and luckily no one tried to intercept us. After getting in, we waited anxiously for Dutch, but he didn’t seem to be close to ending the argument he was having with HS.

  I texted him that we were all in the car, waiting for him; then I watched him glance at the phone and type a reply. Immediately his text hit my phone. It read, GO!

  From the backseat I put a hand on Candice’s shoulder. “Dutch says he’ll catch up with us later.”

  “Awesome,” she said, pulling out from the curb and carefully navigating the street full of people, cars, and news vans.

  Once we’d turned the corner, she headed straight to the highway and opened the car up to speeds well over ninety. I gripped the side handle and whispered a few light prayers (Please, oh, please, God, don’t let us die!) and after a little while she slowed down and got off the expressway.

  “That was so cool!” Brody said. I could feel that his sadness and heartbreak had lifted just a fraction, and was immediately grateful to my best friend for it. Candice drove to the house Dutch and I were renting (in less than a month we’d be moving into our new, permanent home). She then dropped Brody and me off while she went to pick up a pizza.

  Dutch called right after I’d gotten Brody settled on the couch with a Coke, some chips, and the remote. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

  “We just got home. Candice went for pizza and Brody seems to be doing okay so far.”

  “Do you have a game plan?” he asked me.

  “Nope.”

  “Glad to hear you’ve thought this through.”

  “I’ll come up with something. Do you want me to send Candice to pick you up?”

  “Brice and Gaston are on their way over here. HS didn’t inform us that they were searching Rita’s place. They’re supposed to keep us in the loop about everything they do, and this isn’t going over well with Gaston.”

  I felt out the ether and knew that things were about to get very ugly…for Homeland Security. “How late do you think you’ll be?” I asked. It was already going on six o’clock and that familiar worry began to seep into my chest about Dutch’s safety.

  He sighed. “Hopefully I’ll be home by nine. Have Candice co
me back over here to drop off your keys so I can get one of my guys to drive your car home. Meanwhile she can pick up a change of clothes for Brody. And could you try to find out if he’s got any relatives that can take him in? He should be with family at a time like this.”

  I smiled. Underneath that hard exterior, Dutch was such a softy. “I’ll work on it, cowboy. Do me one favor, though, in return?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Keep your vest on and get home as soon as you can.”

  “Done,” he said, and at last I could hear the humor in his voice. “Love you, dollface, even though you drive me crazy sometimes.”

  “Ditto, cowboy.”

  After hanging up with Dutch, I called Candice and filled her in. She came in the door with a giant pizza about ten minutes later; then she was on her way again back to Rita’s house.

  I let Brody eat his six slices in silence while he watched HBO. At last he seemed full and without looking at me, he said, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  After another bit of silence he said, “So, are you really psychic?”

  “Yeppers.”

  “Like…how does it work?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know that anyone knows exactly how it works, but I have a theory. Do you want to hear it?”

  Brody inhaled deeply. He looked drained, but still, he clicked the mute button and said, “Yeah. I do.”

  I waited for him to turn to me and then I started talking, and while I talked, I felt out the ether all around him, looking into his own future. “My theory is that every living thing gives off a unique energy. We create our own electromagnetic current, and like a force field it surrounds us. Some people can see this current, and they call it an aura. To them it’s sort of like the northern lights, bands of beautiful colors pulsing with energy.

  “Within that aura, I believe that we’re carrying all our hopes, thoughts, feelings, wishes, fears, anxieties, and bits of our futures. It’s the future part of your aura that psychics like me—future forecasters—can focus on. I send my own electromagnetic current out into the ether and pick through yours, and that’s how I gather information. For instance, that’s how I know you won something recently. An award or an accolade of some kind, but why you’ve kept it a secret, I’m not quite sure. Further, there’s a bit of money attached to the award, and again, why you’ve chosen to keep it a secret is beyond me.”

  Brody was staring at me in astonishment. It took him a minute to find his voice. “I won a scholarship,” he said.

  I smiled. “I thought it was something like that. You should be very proud of yourself. You’re crazy smart.”

  Brody’s gaze dropped to his lap. “I didn’t tell Mom.”

  I bit my lip. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  “I was saving it,” he said. “She’s been so freaked-out about cash lately, and she really wants me to go to college. Her birthday is in two weeks and I didn’t have any cash to get her anything, so I thought I could surprise her with this, but…”

  Brody’s voice trailed off as he realized his mom was never going to make it to her next birthday. His eyes welled up and I reached out my arms and squeezed him tight. “Why didn’t I tell her?” he asked me.

  I had no answers for him. “I think you were trying to do something really nice, Brody.”

  He pulled back from me. “Now she’ll never know,” he said. His forlorn face broke my heart.

  I held his hand and said, “I don’t think I believe that.”

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve and eyed me with a puzzled expression. “What?” he asked.

  I wavered for a long moment before I said, “Today, when I went to the beauty shop after the…after the fire, I felt your mom’s spirit. She asked me to check in on you.”

  Brody’s brows knit together and he stared at me hard. I could tell he was trying to determine if I was for real or feeding him a line of bullsh—er…baloney.

  I held his gaze and felt around in his energy some more. I had the urge to prove to this kid that I was for real and that his mother’s spirit had really connected to me. It was the only way I knew to comfort him. “Arizona State, huh?” I asked him as he continued to look at me skeptically.

  His eyes widened.

  I smiled. “It’s a good school, Brody. Except for the fact that it may have a reputation for being a party school. Still, I think that you’ll do really well there. But you need to respond soon. There’s a deadline, right?”

  Brody cleared his throat. “November tenth,” he said. “I applied for early admission.”

  “And there’s more money headed your way too,” I said, still reading his energy. “You applied for more than this scholarship, if I’m not mistaken.” I held up five fingers, looked at my hand, then added one finger from my other hand.

  Brody gasped. “You’re freaking me out!” he said. But I knew he wasn’t really scared. “How’re you doing that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not hard, honey. You definitely have a predilection to the intuitive. I could give you some pointers.”

  “Can you tell me what my mom said, first?”

  I squeezed his arm. “Of course, although I didn’t have a chance to talk to her for more than a few minutes.”

  “Why not?”

  Inwardly I winced. We were getting into a delicate area here. “She only hung around long enough to find someone who could hear her and get a message to you.”

  Brody seemed to accept that, thank God, and motioned for me to continue. “Well, she said that she was worried about you—about who would take care of you now that she’s…now that she can’t look after you.”

  Brody’s gaze dropped back to his lap again. “I guess I can’t stay at the house by myself, huh?”

  “Don’t you have any other family? Your dad, maybe?”

  “He’s out of the picture,” Brody said with no small measure of bitterness. “He dumped my mom the minute she told him she was pregnant.”

  “Yeah, but that was nearly eighteen years ago,” I said gently. “Maybe your dad would feel differently about you now?”

  Brody’s gaze lifted and his eyes were hard. “Doubt it. He was married when he started dating my mom. He fed her a bunch of shit about how he was divorcing his wife and promised to marry my ma, but the minute I show up, it was all too real for him or something and he just dumped her. He sends her a support check once a month, but that’s it.”

  I felt a little better hearing that there’d be at least a little money continuing to come in for Brody to help pay for his expenses. At seventeen, he’d definitely be allowed by the state to live on his own, but I worried about where he’d stay, because I doubted his dad’s child support check was large enough to cover his mom’s mortgage payment plus utilities, food, clothing, etc.

  “Extended family?” I asked.

  Brody shrugged. “My mom’s parents are both dead, and she has a sister in Wisconsin, but they got into a fight about seven years ago and they haven’t talked since. No way would my mom want me to go live with her.”

  I searched the ether again and all of a sudden I had the answer. “You’ve got a buddy you hang out with, right?” I asked. “A kid you help with his homework, right?”

  “You mean Greg?”

  I nodded only because I figured Brody’s first guess was probably the right answer. “His mom’s super nice, right?”

  Brody nodded. “Greg’s dad cut out on him too. Mrs. Dixon and my mom hang out sometimes and talk about raising us without a dad around. They’ve bonded over it or something.”

  I smiled. Brody’s energy was blooming with new hope and a new home for him. In my mind’s eye I saw him packing a suitcase and being received into a small but loving home with his buddy. It filled me with relief. “Does Mrs. Dixon know what happened today?”

  Brody took out his phone and handed it to me. There were two dozen voice mails and sixty-three texts on the display. “I had to turn it to silent,” he admitted. “I was too choked up to tal
k to anybody and mostly the only people calling were reporters anyway.”

  I tapped the contacts tab and scrolled down to the Ds. “Would you mind if I called Mrs. Dixon?”

  Brody leaned back against the cushions and closed his eyes. He looked completely wiped out. “Go for it. I’m just gonna rest my eyes for a sec.”

  In the time it took for me to dial Mrs. Dixon and briefly speak to her about the possibility of taking Brody in—something she was very glad to do—the poor young man had fallen into a deep sleep.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Dixon,” I said to her as we were wrapping up the call. “We’ll keep Brody here for the night and drop him off to you in the morning.”

  Dutch came in as I was laying a blanket over our houseguest. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

  I moved to my fiancé and wrapped my arms around him. “He’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  Dutch kissed the top of my head and hugged me back. “I’m still mad at you, you know.”

  “I can live with that.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I’ll bet.”

  “I just couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, Dutch. It’d kill me.”

  My fiancé leaned back and tilted my chin up with one finger. “And you think I could handle it any better if something happened to you?”

  “I only know that the best chance we have of keeping each other safe is to work together,” I told him. The truth was, I didn’t know that. The dangerous energy surrounding Dutch was like a moody tempest, shifting and swirling and never quite letting me define its source or direction. But sticking to him like glue and working the case was the only reasonable thing I could do, so I wasn’t about to back off.

  “Okay, sweethot,” he said after gazing into my eyes for a long moment. “It’s you and me. Till death do us part.”

  I shuddered involuntarily, and that horrible feeling of doom seemed to sink all the way into my bones.

  “You cold?” Dutch asked, pulling me close for a hug again.

  I squeezed him tight. “Very.”