Dangerous To Love

by Toni Anderson, Barbara Freethy, Dee Davis, Leslie A. Kelly, Cynthia Eden, J. Kenner, Meli Raine, Gwen Hernandez, Pamela Clare, Rachel Grant

  “I mean, you know, the psychic stuff?” she prodded. “Do you have to look at someone’s picture, or be in their house or touching their pillow or something in order to get any impressions about them?”

  How to explain that to someone who’d never experienced it? Most people’s exposure to the more unusual possibilities in this world came from shows like Ghost Whisperer and the one about those demon-hunting brothers with the cool black muscle car. Few ever realized they had a glimmer of the same ability he had, they simply mistook it for something like intuition, déjà vu, or lucky guessing.

  She continued to wait, so he gave her his most basic answer to that very common question. “I am sometimes able to mentally connect with other people.”

  “So you’re Mr. Spock. Vulcan mind-meld stuff.”

  He sighed. The woman’s mouth was always three steps ahead of the conversation as she tried to fill in the answers to her own questions.

  “I can’t put my hand on someone’s temple and know just what they’re thinking. In fact, I don’t have to be in the same state as the person I’m connecting with. But I am sometimes able to catch images, scents, or the physical sensation of things that have been filling their minds lately.”

  “And that would be different from mind reading . . . how, exactly?” she asked.

  “Look, I can’t see their real-time thoughts, can’t experience precisely what they’re seeing or hearing or feeling at any particular moment.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. This was damned hard to explain. “Sometimes I catch snippets of people’s memories, even after they’re dead. They’re left behind, like a mental fingerprint on the world.”

  “That’s gruesome.”

  “It can be.”

  “But I guess it comes in handy for solving crimes.”

  “On occasion,” he admitted. “The problem is, it’s not a sure bet. I get flashes of things that might represent what’s been on someone’s mind, not necessarily a real picture of what they’re seeing or experiencing. Think of it as recording your favorite show on your DVR, only the power went out and you only caught part of it. It’s cut off, plus it’s a rerun, not real-time. Not the whole thing, never the entire story.”

  She nodded slowly, getting it. “Frustrating.”

  “Yeah. For instance, if I were to mentally connect with you, I imagine I’d see . . .”

  “Don’t even go there—I was not thinking that about you!”

  “. . . a random scattering of girls’ faces. Or I might catch the scent of ink and paper.” He couldn’t help raising a curious brow. “What, exactly, were you not thinking about me?”

  “Nothing right now.” Her eyes shifted down at her hands, which were twisted on her lap. “But if you went back in the DVR of my mind to yesterday when you slammed the door in my face, you might see me thinking about a whole overflowing bucket of assholery.”

  Unable to prevent it, he laughed, wondering how this blunt woman had so quickly worked her way around the stern, protective walls behind which he usually barricaded himself. “No wonder you’re a writer, Ms. Nolan. You certainly have a way with words.”

  “And no wonder you’re a psychic. You certainly have a way with that whole mystical thing. By the way, if you can’t bring yourself to call me Lexie, how about Alexa? The Ms. business is a little too 1970s women’s lib for me.”

  He considered it. Alexa was too formal, too junior league for her. Just as Lexie was too young and carefree.

  “Or you can call me what my boss, Walter, does. Lex.”

  He nodded, repeating, “Lex. As in the cape-wearing superhero’s nemesis. I think I can work with that.”

  “Does that make you the cape-wearing superhero, Mr. McConnell?”

  “Hardly. And call me Aidan.”

  “Yeah, I can’t see that, either, Aidan. Maybe the dark, brooding guy surrounded by bats, but definitely not the squeaky-clean one.”

  Not knowing whether that had been a compliment or not—probably not—he said, “I’m not your nemesis. Not anymore, anyway.”

  “No, you’re not.” A small smile told him how glad she was of that.

  He noted the prettiness of that smile, the way it brought a sparkle to her green eyes.

  “Speaking of Walter,” she said, “he asked me to thank you.” She quickly explained what was going on with the man, her tender tone revealing how close they were. “He would be a lot more active with this investigation himself, but with his wife, he just can’t.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Now, can we go back to the question I asked before I neglected to say hello? Can you tell me how this all started?”

  “You read the whole file?”

  “I did.” He reached into the backseat to grab his briefcase. As he retrieved the folder, his forearm brushed against her shoulder. It was just the lightest brush of clothing, no meeting of skin, and yet he reacted strongly, yanking his arm back.

  Touching was something he tried to avoid as much as possible. Even with his mental walls in place, as they were now, sometimes people could slip in between the cracks. With a personality as strong as hers, he suspected Lex could come barreling through.

  She either didn’t notice, or pretended not to. Hunkering down a little in the seat, she cleared her throat and pointed at the ticket booth set up near the field. “That’s Chief Dunston.”

  He stared out the windshield at the uniformed police chief. Younger than he’d imagined, maybe in his early forties, and in good physical shape.

  “He’s not the tubby blowhard I was picturing.”

  She frowned. “No, I suppose not. He’s only thick mentally.”

  As a truck pulled between them and the cop, she leaned over into his side of the car to see around it. Aidan shifted closer to the door, pulling away as instinctively as he drew breath. She noticed, looking up at him in confusion. He could only imagine what she was thinking. His innate desire to avoid touching anyone had to come across as either paranoia or snobbery.

  Actually, it was neither. He just didn’t want to open any lines of communication he wasn’t prepared to deal with.

  She shook her head, as if chasing away some dark thought. With that shake came a hint of the light scent of her perfume, or her shampoo, flowery, clean and fresh. It suited her. Why he’d even taken note of that, he honestly didn’t know. He was working with the woman, not contemplating sleeping with her.

  Lie.

  Okay. The thought had crossed his mind. He’d been alone for a long time, and from the minute he’d answered her knock yesterday, he’d been very much aware of that fact. As aware as he’d been of her silky red hair, her husky voice, her curvy form, the sparkle of her smile.

  He liked sex. A lot. But physical attraction usually led to mental vulnerability, so Aidan seldom allowed himself to give in to it. When he did, even more self-protection was required. Because actual physical connection demanded strength and stamina to prevent someone else’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions from overwhelming him.

  So it said a lot that he’d been wondering how smooth her skin would feel beneath his fingertips, how her mouth would taste and how well her soft body would fit against his.

  She might just be worth the risk.

  “Would you move?” she snapped.

  He jerked, wondering if he’d inadvertently done something to reveal his incredibly personal thoughts. Then he realized she’d been addressing a group outside, who had stepped between her and the chief. Once they had, she pointed out the window again.

  “The one on the right is Mayor Lawton, who also manages one of the downtown banks. On the left is”—she sniffed in disdain—“that’s Bob Underwood, who’s my boss’s partner in the paper. He stays out of it when things are going the way he wants them to. When he’s unhappy he becomes extremely obnoxious.”

  She didn’t have to elaborate; he got it. Underwood had probably been the one who’d demanded that public mea culpa of a retraction, in which the woman sitting beside him might as well have asked to be s
meared with tar and rolled in a field of feathers.

  “The game’s starting soon,” she said, returning fully to her seat. “We should wait a few more minutes, try to slip in after it starts and get lost in the crowd.”

  “Sounds good. Meanwhile, fill me in. I read the file; now I want to hear it through your perspective.” Black-and-white text was all well and good, but the nuances and subtle impressions she might have formed could prove very important.

  “As you read, ten teenage girls from the Boro area have gone missing in the past thirty-six months,” she explained, her deep frown signaling how she felt about the subject. “All aged sixteen to nineteen, starting with Jessie Leonard.”

  He nodded. “The one that stood out from the rest. She disappeared three Halloweens ago. Six months before the rest.”

  “Right. Like you, I wasn’t entirely certain she was connected at first because there was that big gap.”

  “I can see why you decided it was.”

  “You listened to the interview?”

  “Yes.” It hadn’t been easy, but he’d listened to each and every recorded discussion.

  “Six months after Jessie, it was boom-boom-boom,” she said. “They started happening pretty steadily, one every three months or so. All under circumstances very similar to that first one. Add Vonnie Jackson this week and you have eleven.”

  He opened the folder, recalling some of her notes. Thumbing to one particular photocopied sheet, he tapped it and glanced at her. “Only eleven?”

  She met his even stare. “You noticed that, did you?”

  Yes, he’d noticed. One page, copied out of what looked like her own journal, had a hand-written list of the eleven names mentioned in her newspaper article. It also, however, contained three additional female names, all with question marks beside them.

  “I can’t say for sure,” she admitted, “but these three missing teenagers from other parts of Georgia have aroused my suspicions. The cases were from before this time period, and they are a little different, but they do have a few things in common. Same type of girls—pretty, from poor backgrounds. Same circumstances surrounding their sudden disappearances. Their families are completely clueless as to what happened to them.”

  “You didn’t mention them in print.”

  “Nor did I even talk about them to anyone else, not even my boss. My own intuition led me to note those cases, nothing else.”

  “Trust that intuition,” he told her, pleased that she’d included the journal entry in the file she’d left him. Again, every detail mattered. “Always.”

  She nodded, silently assuring him she would. Then she continued to explain, quickly and concisely. First how she’d begun hearing whispers about a lot of runaways from the Boro, then details of her own interviews with family members, friends, teachers, and the uninterested members of the police force. She told him that the missing never took anything with them—leaving clothes, personal items, even cash behind. That not one of them had mentioned any thought of running away, even to their closest friends. The plans made and events skipped. Everything that had led her to write the original piece, headlined “Mysterious Disappearances of Local Teens Concern Residents.” It was followed by two more, during which it was clear that the town’s mood had grown from concerned to frightened.

  Which brought them to the next document in her folder: the press release from Chief Jack Dunston. He pulled it out, reading it over, intensely disliking the man just for the arrogance of his tone that came through loud and clear, even in print.

  “Dunston tracked down two of the missing girls,” Aidan said, already knowing it.

  She nodded. “Yes. Rosa Chavez and Carrie Marks. Rosa was an illegal immigrant who went back to Mexico to be with her father, and Carrie was picked up on a prostitution charge in Atlanta a few months after she skipped town.”

  “And based on proof that those two had left of their own volition . . .”

  “He was able to convince everyone all the rest were simply runaways, criminals, or transients, as well,” she said with a disgusted sigh.

  “People believe what they want to believe.”

  “You got it. Dunston didn’t have to offer any proof or even conjecture about any of the others. Providing a definitive explanation for what had happened to these two was enough to satisfy most people I had let my imagination run away with me. Or I’d made the whole thing up to get attention. It was easier than believing the alternative, I guess.”

  Noting her frustration, he nodded in sympathy. “As if eight disappearing teenagers is just the norm in a town this size.”

  Obviously hearing his skepticism, she said, “Exactly! And if you narrow down the geographical area to just the Boro, which only makes up about a third of Granville’s population, the odds against this are even worse. But nobody gives a damn.”

  “The girls’ families?”

  She frowned. “The ones I interviewed for the article don’t want to talk now. That could be because they’re holding out hope that I’m wrong and their daughters are fine.”

  “Or because Dunston got to them?”

  “Yeah. They’re nervous. Rosa wasn’t the only illegal, and Vonnie wasn’t the only one who’d spent time in foster care because she had the misfortune to be born to crappy parents.”

  “Sounds like whoever’s taking them is counting on that.”

  Her mouth fell open on a soft gasp; he’d surprised her. That hadn’t been his intention. It just seemed a no-brainer to him that somebody was making these girls disappear. Any decent law enforcement officer should reach the same conclusion.

  “You really believe that’s what’s going on?” she asked, her voice shaking the tiniest bit, as if she wasn’t quite prepared for someone else to come over to her side in this whole ugly situation. From the sound of it, she and her editor at the newspaper had been fighting a two-man battle for a long time. It really was no wonder she’d sought him out, if only to bolster the number of people on the side of the good guys.

  Huh. He was thinking of a reporter as one of the good guys, maybe because he already liked her. This was, indeed, a banner day. Physical attraction, now actual liking? All wrapped up with a woman whose profession he loathed? He never would have believed it.

  “Aidan?” she prompted.

  “Yes. I do think you’re right. I certainly don’t believe all these missing teenagers left of their own free will. Someone took them, though I’m not certain that means we’re dealing with a serial killer. We can’t reach that conclusion yet.”

  “What else . . .”

  “There are a lot of places in the world—including some right here in this country—where attractive young women command a high price.”

  Every last bit of color fell out of her face. “Human trafficking.”

  “It’s possible,” he said, trying to be gentle. “The girls could have been kidnapped and sold. And the chances of them ever being heard from again are very thin, Lex.”

  Her eyes drifted closed for a long moment as she acknowledged that reality. It was the first sign of helplessness he’d seen in the woman since he’d met her. But he wasn’t sure whether she found that possible explanation better or worse than the one she’d convinced herself was true: that the missing teenagers were all dead.

  “They could be alive, then,” she finally said.

  “I doubt it,” he admitted, sounding as grim as he felt, “but it is a possibility.”

  Even if they were still drawing breath, he couldn’t be sure that would count as living. Existing, at most. Sexual servitude couldn’t be called much more than that.

  “There’s something else,” she said softly. “Something Walter told me tonight.”

  As she told him about her boss’s story regarding the discovery of human bones, her face paled. It had become real to her, all too real. Until recently, she’d been focused only on the professional aspect, the story, the mystery. She hadn’t fully allowed herself to consider the missing girls as murder victims.

/>   Now it was hard to do anything else.

  “I’d wanted to keep a low profile for a day or two, but we’re going to have to confront the chief on those remains,” he said.

  “I know.” A long exhalation said she didn’t relish the prospect, though he knew she wanted the information. “At least I know it can’t be Vonnie. Not this soon.”

  Very doubtful, but technically not impossible. But he wasn’t about to go there. Discussing methods of dissolving a human body down to bone just wasn’t a conversation either of them needed right now.

  She cleared her throat. “About Vonnie.”

  He knew what she was about to ask. It was the one question he had been waiting for. The one he still wasn’t sure how to answer, mainly because he didn’t know the answer himself.

  “Have you had any feelings about her? You mentioned that your hands touched when she waited on you at the restaurant. Does that mean you could possibly ‘connect’ with her? Wouldn’t that be one way of finding out what’s happening here?”

  Aidan hesitated, not sure how much to share. Yesterday’s experience in his kitchen remained strong in his mind; if he focused, he could still hear the missing young woman’s voice. He no longer doubted that he had opened a channel of communication with Vonnie.

  But the evidence was so thin, the clues so tantalizingly obscure. A few scents, the word king, that strange, breathless sensation just before they’d been cut off? Those things could mean just about anything. Or, as much as he hated to admit it, nothing. After all, the last big case he’d worked on had shown him just how unreliable these visions could be. Still, it was worth at least checking one thing. “In your research on Vonnie, did you happen to stumble across anyone named King? Or somebody with that nickname?”

  She shook her head. “No, nothing. Why?”

  “Just a possibility that occurred to me,” he said.

  He heard her sucked-in breath as excitement hit her. “Something happened. You felt her, didn’t you?”