Sizzle and Burn

  “That wasn’t in the file,” he said aloud. He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

  “I suppose it would have been kind of embarrassing for a hotshot J&J agent to admit that the only way he was able to get to his target was to seduce and manipulate the target’s sister. Doesn’t sound like a real heroic, manly thing to do, does it? More like sneaky, underhanded and conniving.”

  He took a deep breath. “Maybe that’s not how it was.”

  “According to Andrew, that’s exactly how it was.”

  He said nothing.

  Raine stopped outside a door. “Now, at least, I know why Aunt Vella cried so hard that night. She trusted the man she loved and he betrayed her.”

  “I’m sorry, Raine.”

  She gave a visible start. Her hand stilled on the doorknob. “That’s what he said.”

  “Who?”

  “Wilder Jones. Aunt Vella held me in her arms while the men from J&J tore the place apart. All I remember was the noise and the flash-lights and the way Vella was raging and crying. I didn’t know what was going on. I was terrified.”

  “Hell of an experience for a kid to go through.”

  “One of the men—it must have been Wilder—stopped in front of Vella and me. He said, I’m sorry, Vella. She screamed at him. Called him a lying bastard. He ordered someone to take us out of the building and put us in the backseat of a car. The next thing I recall was hearing an explosion. The night sky was suddenly filled with flames, and Aunt Vella wouldn’t stop sobbing.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “One of the men drove Vella and me back to our house. That was the end of it. I never saw anyone from J&J again until you showed up at my door in Shelbyville.”

  He exhaled slowly. “I can see how you came by your opinion of the agency.”

  “After that night Aunt Vella developed a serious phobia about fire. She never burned a single log in the fireplace in the Shelbyville house. Even burning candles made her nervous.”

  She opened the door and moved into a small foyer. When she flipped on the light, two cats appeared out of the darkness, one silver and gray, the other a mix of brown and gold shades. She put her purse down and scooped up a cat in each arm. The combined purring sounded like a couple of miniature Harley-Davidson engines.

  “This is Robin,” she said, indicating the brown-gold cat. “The other one is Batman.”

  He rubbed each cat behind the ears. “I can see why you named them after a couple of superheroes. With those markings around their eyes they look like they’re wearing masks.”

  “I got them from a shelter when they were a few months old. Their pasts are a mystery, just like Batman’s and Robin’s.”

  “Like your own?”

  “I seem to be learning a lot about my own past now that I’ve started hanging with you.”

  “That’s the reason you’re calling a halt to the hot sex, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “You’re afraid that history might repeat itself.”

  “I just think it would be best if we kept things on a businesslike footing from now on. Good night, Zack.”

  She closed the door.

  He stood there for a few seconds, listening to her throw a couple of bolts. Then he went back downstairs to his car.

  Twenty-one

  The homeless man was curled up in the limited shelter of the motel’s dimly lit breezeway. He had covered himself with a ragged purple blanket and an insulating layer of newspapers. Zack stopped a short distance away. The man’s face was hidden by the blanket pulled up over his head. The sole of one running shoe poked out from beneath the lower edge of a newspaper.

  Some street people were so disturbed by their own unstable thoughts that they radiated a kind of chronic psychic chaos in the form of an aura that even nonsensitives could often detect. Zack opened his senses cautiously.

  He waited a couple of seconds but didn’t get any crazy vibes from the homeless man. He removed his wallet from his back pocket and took out a five-dollar bill. He dropped the money into the curve of the man’s body where it would not be visible to an opportunistic street thief. The night guard in the small pickup that patrolled hourly would be around soon. The sleeper would be shaken awake and sent on his way. With luck he would notice the five.

  You weren’t supposed to give money to street people. It was a safe bet that the cash would be wasted on booze or some other form of self-medication. But it was always possible that the sleeper was one of those unfortunates who had been saddled with a strong psychic talent that eventually drove him to alcohol and the streets. If enough people labeled you crazy, the prediction usually came true.

  He walked past the sleeper, heading for the locked wrought-iron gate that secured the side entrance closest to his room. Who was he to deny the sleeper whatever it took to dull the sharp edges? After the really bad cases, he went home and used a little scotch and solitaire to hold the visions at bay, himself.

  He switched his thoughts back to Raine. Objectively speaking, it was probably a good thing that she had not invited him to spend the night. He needed to do some serious thinking. That didn’t make the prospect of going upstairs to an empty bed any more appealing but it did force him to concentrate on the job.

  First on the list of priorities that night was a call to Fallon Jones. It was unlikely that the news of Wilder’s affair with Vella Tallentyre all those years ago would affect the current situation but it constituted a missing fact in the file. Fallon should be made aware of it. He was forever harping on how even a tiny, seemingly insignificant detail could ripple through a case and cause an explosion. Chaos theorists called it the butterfly effect.

  Tiny, seemingly insignificant details.

  Small details like the sole of a new, clean, expensive running shoe poking out from beneath a blanket of newspapers.

  He heard the faint indication of movement behind him even as he started to turn around.

  The sleeper was wide awake, coming up off the bench like a striking cobra. The blanket and newspapers fell away, revealing an elderly woman with a helmet of gray curls. She wore a baggy, flower-print dress. In her right hand she gripped a small, folded umbrella.

  The frail senior citizen launched herself in a low, preternaturally fast rush, the point of the umbrella extended and aimed like a rapier at his midsection.

  Twenty-two

  It was for the best.” Raine switched on the automatic kettle, leaned back against the counter and looked down at Batman and Robin. “Last night in Shelbyville was just one of those things. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen again. Can’t let physical attraction interfere with this investigation.”

  Robin twitched one ear but on the whole did not seem interested in her analysis of the decision not to invite Zack into the condo. Batman was focused on the large ceramic biscotti jar. Andrew had given it to her. It was decorated with a cheerful blue-and-yellow Raffaellesco design and was one of the few touches of exuberance among her otherwise minimalist furnishings.

  She filled a tea strainer with some of the herbal tisane that she purchased from a local tea shop. The voices would be back tonight. It usually took a few days before they finally dissolved into the dark swamp where such memories were stored.

  She was in her nightgown and robe. The lights throughout the condo were turned down low. A Mozart concerto played softly in the background. Mozart usually worked. What worked even better was the loud, head-banging rock music played at Pandora’s favorite nightspot, Café Noir. But she didn’t feel like calling up her assistant and asking if she wanted to go to Noir. She wanted to be by herself for a while and contemplate all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

  “Life, as we know it, is changing,” she said to the cats. “Got to stay in control here.”

  Batman meowed softly and continued to stare at the biscotti jar. Robin wandered over and joined him.

  She raised the lid of the jar. Robin’s tail flicked. Batman concentrated harder, probably using some kind of weird cat psychi
c power on her to encourage her to take out a treat. It was working.

  “Have you any idea what it was like to finally meet a man who actually understands how it feels to hear the voices in my head?” She selected two of the cat munchies inside the jar and replaced the lid. “Last night was the combined result of the aftereffects of adrenaline and the thrill of knowing there is a sexy man out there who knows I’m psychic and who doesn’t think I’m creepy.”

  Batman meowed again.

  “Okay, okay.”

  She gave the cats their snacks. They set to work on them with polite greed.

  The water in the kettle began to boil. She switched off the pot and poured the hot water into a mug. The gentle, soothing aroma of the herbs in the strainer wafted upward.

  “One thing about blackjack and sex with Mr. Jones,” she announced to the cats, “they definitely took my mind off the voices last night.”

  Batman finished his treat and looked hopeful.

  “You know you only get one at night,” she told him.

  The cats gave up trying to use their psychic powers on her.

  She removed the strainer from the mug and set it on the small dish beside the kettle. Carrying the mug in her right hand, she went into the living room. Her black ballet-style slippers made no sound on the bare hardwood floor.

  The translucent origami shapes of the wall sconces cast a subdued glow across the low black leather sofa and chairs. The gas fireplace was outlined in gleaming black tiles. A deck of cards stood waiting on the black granite coffee table. Two elaborately designed climbing trees for the cats, complete with secluded sleeping quarters and a cat gym, stood near the window that overlooked the condo gardens. Batman and Robin liked to look out at the view.

  The only colorful objects in the room were the three art glass sculptures. Each was positioned on a white pedestal and lit with a tiny, low-voltage halogen lamp suspended from the ceiling.

  Gordon and Andrew complained that the place, with its white walls, uncarpeted floors and black furnishings, looked like a modern art gallery or a meditation center. But she liked the calm, tranquil, uncluttered effect. On bad nights it was an antidote to the voices.

  She went to stand at the window, mug in hand, and looked out at the condominium gardens. She wondered if Zack had gone to bed yet or if he was on the phone to Fallon Jones, trying to find out more about what had happened between Wilder and Vella. She could tell the revelation that the two had been involved in an affair had caught him by surprise, just as it had her. He hadn’t been faking it.

  A chill sparked down her spine. It was as if someone had touched the nape of her neck with a live wire. The mug in her hand trembled. Several drops of hot liquid dampened her fingers, making her draw a quick, startled breath. Some of the tisane splattered on the hardwood floor.

  “Oh, damn.”

  She stared down at the spilled liquid, baffled by the sudden attack of nerves. Zack had been on her mind virtually all day but this was the first time the thought of him had rattled her like this.

  She turned around and hurried back into the kitchen. Setting the mug down on the counter, she yanked a couple of white paper towels off the stainless steel holder and returned to the living room.

  Crouching, she mopped up the spilled tisane. When she was satisfied that she had got it all, she went into the kitchen again, opened the cupboard door beneath the sink and dropped the crumpled towels into the trash.

  Now her pulse was racing. She looked at her fingers. They were shaking.

  What was happening to her? She had been feeling fine only a few minutes before. Now something was very wrong, something involving Zack.

  It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t overcome the overwhelming urge to call him, just to make sure he was okay. He’d written the number of his cell phone on a card and given it to her before they left Shelbyville. Just in case we get separated and you need to reach me, he’d said.

  What had she done with the card? It was imperative that she find it. She tried to think. It wasn’t easy because the adrenaline was pounding through her now, filling her with a sense of frantic urgency.

  Batman meowed loudly at her feet. Robin wrapped himself around her legs. The cats were channeling her anxiety.

  This is crazy. Oops, wrong word. Not crazy. Just weird. Really, really weird. For Pete’s sake, slow down and focus.

  She had dropped Zack’s card into her purse before getting behind the wheel. Her purse. Where else would one put a card with a phone number?

  Okay, that made the next step simple.

  She hurried into the foyer and opened the closet door. Her purse was right where it was supposed to be, on the shelf next to her keys, a pair of gloves and a stack of neatly folded scarves.

  When she reached for the purse, the back of her hand brushed the side of her black raincoat hanging nearby. Dark psychic energy splashed through her, acid hot.

  …Let the witch know she’s being hunted. Make her afraid…

  “No.”

  Instinctively she jerked back, promptly tripping over Batman, who had come up behind her. She staggered and fell against the wall. She grabbed for the door handle to keep her balance, missed and landed on the floor in a distinctly undignified position.

  For a moment she just sat there, trying to get her nerves and her senses under control. Batman and Robin prowled around her, restless and agitated.

  “Don’t look at me,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s going on, either.”

  Maybe the incident in Shelbyville followed by the revelations about the mystery of Vella’s death had been too much for her psychic nerves.

  Don’t think that way. Zack told you you weren’t going to go crazy because of your psychic side. Pull yourself together. Find out what the hell just happened to you. You had that raincoat on earlier this evening and there were no psychic zingers from the freak.

  “Some kind of fluky psychic echo effect,” she told the cats. “Maybe Zack can explain it. He has all the answers.”

  Zack. She had to call him immediately. That was what had started this whole thing.

  She gave Batman a pat and scrambled to her feet.

  Gingerly she reached back into the closet and touched the raincoat.

  …Punish her like the others. Burn, witch…

  She snatched her hand away again. It was the freak. But what she was hearing in her head was not an echo of what she had heard earlier. This was something else, something new.

  Clenching her teeth against the invasion of the voice, she took the coat out of the closet and examined it closely. There was something in the pocket that was giving off the bad vibes.

  She opened the pocket cautiously and looked inside, afraid of what she might find.

  A piece of broken china gleamed. She recognized the dainty green-and-yellow floral pattern. She was looking at a broken cup from the Shelbyville B and B.

  Twenty-three

  There was something wrong with the little old lady. She was blurry. And then, in mid-stride, she morphed into a man clad entirely in black. A black ski mask covered his face. Instead of an umbrella, he gripped a military-issue knife.

  Zack’s eyes were confused by the abrupt transformation but his psychic senses were fully jacked and had no difficulty whatsoever interpreting the situation. Intuitively, as he always did when the chips were down, he went with his parasensitive instincts. His mirror-talent abilities recognized a would-be killer regardless and telegraphed the assailant’s next move in a nanosecond.

  He slid to the right, knowing that the attacker expected him to shift to the left. The ski-masked man blurred again. In the next instant the elderly woman reappeared. She adjusted with dazzling speed, whipping around to run down her prey.

  The old lady was a para-hunter.

  That was not good news. He had spent a lot of time in the gym and the dojo, sparring with his hunter relatives. He was good but he lacked the preternatural speed and lightning-fast reflexes of a level-ten hunter. Ski Mask was definitely
level ten.

  He yanked the gun out of his holster. The elderly woman lashed out with a slashing kick. He managed, just barely, to evade the killing force of the blow but the toe of the woman’s shoe caught him in the ribs and sent him reeling back. A second strike numbed his shoulder. The gun flew out of his fingers. He heard it clatter on the concrete. There was no time to search for it. He could not take his eyes off the old woman.

  In the next instant she morphed back into Ski Mask. This time Zack’s mirror talent caught the cues just before the transition and telegraphed the information to his brain in a neuro-chemical way that was literally faster than the speed of thought. He suddenly understood something very important. The constant morphing came with a price. Switching from ski-masked killer to little old lady and back again slowed the guy down a little. So why was he wasting the psychic juice it obviously required to shift back and forth?

  Even with the faint hesitations that occurred when he jumped from one identity to the other, the attacker was still hunter-fast. It was all Zack could do to avoid the slashing knife. There was no way to escape the assault. The wrought-iron gate was at his back. The assailant blocked the only exit out of the breezeway.

  The old woman came at him again in another lethal charge. His mirror talent noted the way she was balanced and he knew without being able to explain how he knew that she expected him to dodge right. He waited until the last possible second and went left.

  The old woman slammed into the iron bars. For a fraction of a second or so she seemed disoriented.

  Zack seized the opening and ran toward the far end of the breezeway. If he could reach the parking lot, he could use the parked cars as shields.

  Ski Mask was suddenly behind him, running him down the way a predator runs down prey.

  Zack whipped around in a small, tight circle. When he came out of it, he had one foot extended.

  Caught in mid-morph, Ski Mask stumbled over the foot and went down. But he rolled to his feet as the old lady with paranormal speed.