Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  “Who is he? What’s he do for a living? How come I haven’t met him yet? How long have you been seeing him? Why didn’t you tell me? How the hell did he wrangle an invitation to Thanksgiving with the family already? Are you having sex?”

  She returned from the kitchen with two filled coffee mugs. The maker was programmed to turn on first thing in the morning so I didn’t have to mess with it, and her keen eye always detected whether I had a full cup or not. She handed me my mug and went to sit on the sofa to begin thumbing through my fan mail while sipping. “His name is Mel Brennan. He’s a lawyer. He travels a lot out of state, so I only get to see him a couple of times a month. I’ve been seeing him for six months. And you haven’t met him because I didn’t want to hear your creepy ESP analysis of his deepest secrets. I’d rather find them out the old-fashioned way. Did I miss any of your questions, Your Honor?”

  “Yeah. A hundred. And I’ve told you a million times, I don’t have freakin’ ESP. Also, ouch.”

  She smiled. “You can meet him later. He’s picking me up.” She looked at me looking at her and added, “Because my car’s getting serviced. Not because we’re shacking up.”

  “Are you?”

  “No. God, you’re nosy.”

  “Your mother’s in Erie. I like to think of myself as her stand-in. How old is he?”

  “I haven’t asked.”

  “You’re the worst liar in the world. He looks old.”

  “Define old.”

  I shrugged. “Forty?”

  “Forty’s not old.”

  “It is when you’re twenty-four.”

  She started a stack of fan mail, a stack of junk mail and a stack of possible business mail. “Why the hell don’t they just email you? Who writes on paper anymore?”

  “Old people. Like your boyfriend. How old is he again?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s forty-two.”

  “And I’m eighteen.”

  She eyed me. “You could actually pass for eighteen. Which pisses me off, because I probably couldn’t.”

  “Goth is ageless. No one can guess a goth’s age. And you’re a gorgeous goth. Thanks, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome. Thanks back.”

  “So he’s going to Thanksgiving dinner with your family. It’s that serious?”

  She shrugged. “He’s coming to Thanksgiving dinner. What are you doing for dinner tomorrow, Rache?”

  Sure, change the subject. “Probably going to Sandra’s, like always. My sister will cook more than ten people could eat. Jim will stuff himself and watch football. The twins will spend all day texting and griping about their identical eighteen-inch waistlines being endangered by their mother’s apple-and-walnut stuffing. And I’ll do my best to make myself useful.”

  She puckered her lips at me, bloodred today. “If you could do anything you wanted for Thanksgiving, what would it be?”

  I shrugged. “Call Mason and have him run a background check on your boyfriend.”

  “Mason.” She nodded like an ancient sage. “I knew it.”

  “Don’t even—”

  “You’d spend the day with him if you could. Wouldn’t you?”

  In a New York minute. The night, too. “I told you, Mason and I decided to go our separate ways. For now.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You need time to experience life as a sighted adult. He needs time to get over his brother’s death and help his nephews adjust to life without their dad. I heard all the logical reasons. I just don’t buy any of them.”

  “You really think you can distract me from my misgivings about your relationship by talking about mine?” I asked.

  “So it is a relationship, then!”

  I rolled my eyes at her. She pretended not to notice and tore open a fan letter. “Huh. This is a good one. She wants to know how to tell when she’s overstepping the bounds of the employer/employee relationship with her constant advice and concern for her personal assistant’s love life.”

  “Subtle you are not.” I yanked the sheet from her hand and read aloud. “‘Dear Rachel, I’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The end is going to be long and painful. You say every situation has a silver lining. Please tell me how to find the one in this.’ Jesus H. Christ.”

  “Jesus wrote you that?”

  I sent her a look. “No. It’s signed Marianna. I really hate the tough ones.”

  Amy compressed her lips, grabbed the laptop off the coffee table, clicked a few keys and then scrolled and scrolled. I tried to see what she was doing, but she turned the laptop away so I couldn’t, so I just let it go. Then she started typing and narrated as she went.

  “Dear Marianna, every single one of us has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It’s called being human. For some reason we’ve all got this warped and twisted idea about death, that it’s the biggest tragedy ever and must be avoided at all costs, when instead it’s the natural transition into the most amazing existence imaginable. And then some. You might move into the afterlife from a dread disease, or you might step in front of a bus tomorrow. You might heal from whatever diagnosis you’ve been given and live to be a hundred and six. It happens every day. You also might make the most frightening experience of your life into the most deeply meaningful and spiritual part of your entire life. Ultimately, it’s up to you, and your higher self. Everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

  I blinked in shock. “Damn, you’re good.”

  She turned the computer toward me. “No, you are. That’s from The Truth About Death, Chapter two, ‘Terminal Illness.’ I’m just copying and pasting.”

  I saw that she’d opened the galley version of the three-year-old book. “I’m really very wise, huh?”

  “Mostly,” she said.

  “Then you should listen to me. There’s something off about Mel.”

  She closed her eyes. “I told you I didn’t want you to do that.”

  “Maybe if I spent more than ten seconds with him—”

  “I told you, you can meet him when he picks me up tonight.”

  “Okay.” I looked at my watch, sighed, pushed to my feet. “I have to go change. Myrtle has a date with the vet.”

  “‘Kay. I’ll have the fan mail dealt with by the time you get back. Ten pages after that.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Ten pages of regurgitated positive thinking before five.” I saluted her and looked around for my dog.

  She’d heard the word vet, and was hiding under the coffee table, as if I was still as blind as she was. Too bad, dog. I can see and you can’t. You’re freakin’ doomed. Then the phone rang. I still had a landline, because there were days when heavy rain or thick cloud cover would result in a weak or nonexistent cell signal.

  I ignored it, going to get Myrt’s goggles from the closet. She might hate the vet, but she loved riding in the car. If she smelled those goggles and her matching yellow scarf, she’d perk up.

  Amy got the phone, as I’d known she would. Then she said, “She’s on her way out, but I’ll see if I can catch her before she gets out of the driveway. Hold on.” Then she hit the phone’s handy mute button while I waited. “It’s him.”

  I blinked like a doe in headlights. We didn’t need to say who “him” was. There was only one him in my life. Mason. We’d been through hell together a month ago, nearly been killed. That was no way to start a relationship.

  But damn, the sex had been great.

  My cell rang. I pulled it out and looked at it. Mason. I rolled my eyes and took the call. “I thought you were on hold on my landline.”

  “And I thought you were already out the door. Ditching my calls, Rachel?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “I was deciding whether to ditch your call. There’s a difference. I have to go. Myrtle’s due at the vet.”

  �
��I need you,” he said.

  I gave my imagination permission to play with that for a minute. Then he added, “It’s about the case.”

  I sighed as he burst my bubble. “We’re already late for the vet. Besides, isn’t that case old news?”

  “Not to the review board. I need you to look over my statement about the extent of your involvement and sign off on it. Particularly since they might decide to come asking you about it.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “I need to turn it in by noon.”

  It was nine forty-five. I had Myrt’s designer goggles dangling from one finger. Amy held out her hand. “I’ll take vet duty if I can borrow the Subaru.”

  “She’ll be scared if I don’t go with her.”

  “Yeah. Right up until I get her some McNuggets for the ride over. We’ll be fine. Myrtle loves me. Don’t you, Myrt?”

  Mason was still waiting for my answer. Myrt was still under the table, no longer hiding. Snoring instead. Bulldogs snore louder than most lumberjacks. Okay, I’m making that up. I’ve never heard a lumberjack snore, but I bet she’d beat them.

  “Wanna go for a ride in the car, Myrt?” Amy asked.

  Myrt opened her sightless eyes and lifted her head.

  “Well, come on, then,” Amy said.

  Myrtle scrambled over to Amy’s feet, where she did the wiggly butt happy dance.

  I could not argue with the evidence. Myrtle would be thrilled to go for a ride in the car with Amy, and I would be stuck in a meeting with the man I most wanted to bone, trying not to be blatantly obvious about it. “Bring me back a Happy Meal,” I said, then handed over the goggles and said to Mason, “Okay, I’ll do it. Where do you want to meet?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I walked into the little diner like a model walking into a shoot, slow motion, wind in my hair, sun glinting off my pearly whites. In my head, anyway. In real life I’m sure it was a lot less impressive, especially considering that the wind in my hair had turned into a wet November gust, and there was no longer any sun to glint off anything.

  It was mud season. October had been spectacular to my brand-new eyes. I’d devoured October. November was just brown. The trees were leafless. There was no snow yet. The ground was barren. Mud season came twice a year, I’d been told. It would return again in March.

  Then I saw him, and my mind went as barren as the surroundings. He was standing in front of a booth talking to a waitress when he looked up, met my eyes and smiled. Those sexy dimples flashed at me, and I almost threw up a little from the sheer nervous energy break dancing in my stomach. I know, stupid. I realized I was grinning like a loon and tried to stop, but it wasn’t possible, so I just hurried to the booth and slid into it before he could try to hug me. Because if he hugged me, I was going to go into convulsions or something.

  He stood there a second, then sighed and sat down. “Hello, Rachel. Nice to see you again. You look fantastic. How have you been?”

  I looked up, catching the edge of sarcasm in his voice. He had the prettiest brown eyes. Like melted chocolate, with those thick lashes you expect on a little boy, not a grown man. He could get any woman he wanted with lashes like that.

  “I’ve been good,” I said. “Busy.”

  “No more dreams?”

  “Not a one. I presume that means no more murders.”

  “Not by any of my brother’s organ recipients, anyway.”

  I gave a quick look around us when he said that, because really, no one knew but us that his dead brother had been a serial killer, or that a couple of the people who’d received his donated organs had continued his crimes, or that I had seen those crimes being played out in my dreams, presumably because I’d received his corneas. No one knew. And if they did, they wouldn’t believe it.

  Both the guys who’d carried on Eric’s crimes were dead. One had taken himself out, and the other had almost killed us. But in the end, we won. End of case.

  “How about you?” I asked, ’cause that was the thing to do when you hadn’t seen someone in a while.

  “I’m good. Busy. Tying up the last few loose ends so I can move on. Looking forward to that. Moving on.”

  “I’ll bet. What about the boys?” His nephews, sons of a serial killer who had no idea what their father had been.

  “Jeremy’s depressed. Josh is…well, Josh is Josh.”

  “Jeremy’s sixteen. Isn’t that a synonym for depressed?”

  “Seventeen. His birthday was last week.”

  “Wow. Hard to believe. And how about their mom? She have the baby yet?”

  “Any day now,” he said.

  Then it was quiet, and I looked up from perusing my menu to catch him staring at me. “You look great,” he said.

  “So do you.” I got stuck in his eyes for a second. Damn, I liked him.

  He shoved the file across the table to me and I flipped it open while the waitress came with coffee and to ask if we’d decided. I ordered Belgian waffles and sausage. He ordered ham and eggs with home fries. And I studied the pages of the file, not really reading, just sort of skimming and wondering if we’d made the right decision. I’d only had my eyesight back since August. I really meant what I’d said about learning who the new Rachel was, the sighted Rachel. I needed time to figure that out before I got all involved in a romance. And he knew that. Respected it. Besides, he’d just lost his brother, after learning Eric had been a serial killer. He’d just become the only father figure in the lives of his two nephews. And on top of that, he’d been forced to admit that sometimes things happen that we just can’t explain. His life had undergone a radical change, too.

  As Keanu Reeves said to Sandra Bullock in Speed, “I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.”

  I flipped the file closed, though I hadn’t read it. “Looks fine to me. But if it’s something they might ask me about later, you might want to email me a copy so I can give it a more thorough look at home.”

  “They won’t.”

  I blinked and looked at him. “But you said—”

  The waitress brought the food. The cook was apparently a speed demon. She set the plates down and asked if we wanted anything else. I muttered, “No, thanks,” and waited for him to explain.

  He shrugged. “This is just a formality. The chief is behind me. Hell, he’s acting like I’m his new best friend.”

  “Well, you nabbed the Wraith. Only serial killer I’ve ever heard of in our neck of the woods. It’s a big deal.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help, though.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t help the dreams. They just showed up.”

  “It was more than that.” He sawed off a hunk of ham, ate for a minute. Washed it down with coffee. “You’re good, Rachel. Your instincts, the way you can read people. You’re like a human lie detector. Only you read more than just lies. You read the emotion behind them. The motivation. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I almost choked on my waffle, because the praise had come out of nowhere and I hadn’t been expecting it. I quickly took a gulp of coffee, but it was still pretty hot, so I dipped my hand into my water glass, fished out an ice cube and popped that into my mouth. My fingers were dripping and my shirtsleeve had dragged through my whipped cream. Graceful I wasn’t.

  I pulled myself together, wiped my fingertips with a napkin, then nipped the whipped cream off my sleeve and popped it into my mouth, because hey, it was freakin’ whipped cream. Then, ready to speak again, I said, “Being blind for twenty years would have the same effect on anybody.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’re unique. Special.”

  My lips lifted at the corners and my eyes sort of got wet. “Gee, Mason, I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything ye
t. I have something to ask you. Then you can say something.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like you to consider applying to the department as a consultant. That way I could use you on tough cases and you’d get paid for your time.”

  I blinked. Just sat there dumbstruck and blinked at him. “I don’t need a job. Best-selling author, remember?” Then I told my brain to shut up, because it was hopping with notions of why he would ask me this, and opened my senses instead. That was where the answer would be. I had it in seconds. “That’s why you asked me to meet you, isn’t it? It had nothing to do with the case. You just wanted to pitch this ridiculous…consultant idea.”

  “It’s not ridiculous. Police departments use consultants all the time. You could be a huge help to us.”

  “Are you forgetting what happened last time I helped? I was almost murdered, Mason.”

  “Yeah, but that was a fluke. It wouldn’t be like that.”

  I sighed, reined my emotional responses in again, stopped reacting and went back to feeling. And I realized what was happening here. He missed me. That was all it was. He missed me. And the boys probably missed me, too. Josh must be having withdrawal over Myrtle. I drew a breath, nodded and said, “If you want to hang out sometime, we could—”

  “I think you have a gift, Rachel. It hit me, as I was going over everything that happened on the Wraith case, that you could put it to use. You could help people.”

  “So it’s not that you miss me.” Yes, it is.

  He made a face, as if to say that was ridiculous.

  “‘Cause, see, I do have a gift. And it does help people. In my books. But I’m not a cop, and I don’t aspire to be one.”

  “Okay, okay.” He held up his hands. “It was just an idea.”