Harmonized
Page 2
“She’s not crazy. I’m getting sick and tired of people calling her that.” Karma exhaled an angry breath when Zig opened his mouth. She raised a finger to silence him. “She’d never hurt her son. And Wesley Bremer is very much alive.”
Chapter Two
Zig stared into Karma’s huge, dark eyes and he was nineteen again. A college sophomore with a future so bright, he was certain he was living an old eighties song. He’d thought he had it all figured out. He’d marry Karma. She’d be a nurse and he’d run the burglary division for the Tidewater Police Department. They’d have two kids and a fucking perfect life.
Then she left him. Just walked out one day and never looked back. Never answered his calls or texts. Not even a note of explanation. Just wham! She was gone for good. And he had no hope of ever seeing her again. Until now.
It seriously pissed him off that a big part of him was fucking happy to see her, despite what she’d done. She was alive and in front of him. And whether she knew it or not, she had the ability to flip his world on its axis if he let her.
That, more than anything, helped him squash his more tender feelings and focus on getting her away from his station and back out of his life. After all, she wasn’t here to see him.
“You walk in here and tell me the Bremer baby is alive? God, this is so like you. To drop a bomb like you’re taking off your coat. What am I supposed to do with this information? Wait. Don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter.” He dropped the pen and paper on the desk and trotted down the podium’s steps. He strode toward the door, calling over his shoulder, “I’m really busy right now. The detectives aren’t here. You can talk to them when they return.”
Karma yanked him by his left arm, pulling him to a painful halt.
Burning pain licked up his shoulder and throbbed there. He gritted his teeth but refused to let it show.
“That’s it? You don’t care that a baby is missing?” she demanded. Her eyes snapped fire. “You’re not even going to ask me how I know this? What more I know?”
He rounded on her, narrowing his gaze at her fingers still wrapped around his bicep. She released him and clasped her hands together in front of her, as if she didn’t know what else to do with them.
“No. I’m not going to ask what you know or even how. Knowing you and your zest for drama, it’ll take you two hours to get to the information. By that time, the detectives should be back and you’ll be off talking to them, forgetting I even existed. And I will have wasted two hours on you when I could have been completing my paperwork. Save your story until they get back.” He pointed at the ugly pleather couch on the far side of the room. “You’re welcome to sit over there and wait. Silently.”
Her beautiful caramel-colored face mottled with rage and her eyes narrowed with unbanked fury. She began ranting in Spanish. Her hands flew as if each word she spouted was incomplete without the accompanying movement. She still wore her short nails unpainted and kept them well-groomed. It was a stupid thing to focus on as she shouted but he couldn’t help it. The sight of them unearthed long-buried memories of those same hands gliding along his body. Those short nails digging into his ass as she came beneath him.
Karma snapped her fingers in his face to get his attention. Not that he hadn’t been listening, but he was pretty certain she wouldn’t have been pleased to know he’d been picturing her naked.
She continued to rail at him in her native tongue. Her words crashed through his brain like a jackknifing semitruck. Zig’s Spanish was rusty but he recognized her less-than-complimentary description of his head wearing his ass for a hat.
“Watch your language, Ms. De La Cruz.” His own cheeks heated now. “I’m an officer of the law.”
“What you are is unreasonable!” She switched back to English, her words heavily accented. A sure sign her temper still raged. “A little boy’s life is in jeopardy. His mother is in a coma, and the whole world thinks he’s dead. But he’s alive. Very much alive. And you won’t even listen. You know what I can do.”
“What you can do?” He scrubbed a hand down his face, making his shoulder sing with the jerky movement. “Are you talking about that psychic shit?”
Her mouth rounded and she emitted a sound so high-pitched he was certain any stray dog in the vicinity would be howling its displeasure.
Karma muttered in Spanish again, a long string of unintelligible syllables. She shoved her hand into a large handbag that matched the color of her jacket and shoes. Shoes currently clicking a staccato rhythm as she jerked her knee up and down in agitation. The sight of her old habit made his chest both swell and ache with its familiarity.
Still muttering something about asses, hats, and stubborn men, she yanked two things out of her purse: a small leather-bound journal, and a single photograph. The picture was an obvious selfie, a crystal-clear image of Gwyn Bremer smiling with her tiny son’s face pressed against her cheek. Nothing in the image hinted at the woman’s diabolical plans to leap off a bridge with her son in her arms.
“Look at this picture. This is my friend Gwyn.” Karma tapped the woman’s image then pointed to the baby. “And this is Wesley Bremer. He’s still alive. I’ve called the precinct for the past two days trying to get someone to listen to me. I keep getting transferred around. Missing persons tells me to talk to homicide. Homicide says if I’m reporting a missing person, then I’ve got to call missing persons. I’m getting the runaround because everyone believes Gwyn killed her son in her failed suicide attempt. But everyone is wrong.
“You know me. You may hate me for leaving you, but this isn’t about something that happened eight years ago. You want to have a go at me after we find Wesley, fine. I’ll take whatever you want to dish out. I probably deserve it. But Zig . . . er, Harmon, you know me. And you know it’s not psychic shit. My ability to read auras is real. You’ve seen me do it. Maybe you don’t want to remember me but you do. You couldn’t still hate me this much if you didn’t remember. You’ve got to help. Don’t do it for me, do it for that baby. Wesley is alive. Right now. He’s out there and needs you. Please don’t let the fact that you and I once had feelings for each other a lifetime ago interfere—”
“Fine! Fine!” He sliced his hand through the air silencing her. Thank God, she’d shut up. Once had feelings? Maybe she’d gotten over him but if his racing heart was any indication, he still suffered . . . Hell, she was right. Their past was long since dead. And not something he wanted to discuss in the station. Or anywhere, for that matter. “Where is he? Do you know where to find him?”
“Not exactly. If I knew where to find him, I wouldn’t be here asking for help.”
“Fair enough.” Zig gave back the photo and opened the journal Karma handed him. The first page had his eyes bulging. “Gwyn’s diary? Ah, Christ!”
Karma hissed and crossed herself. Catholic to the last, he thought wryly and shook his head. “Karma, where did you get her diary?”
“From Gwyn’s bedroom. I went to her apartment after visiting her in the hospital last night. Zig, she’s all alone in there. Everyone thinks her baby is dead. Even I thought it. Well, I didn’t think she’d killed him, because I know she’s not capable of murder. So I decided I needed to give her a reason to wake up. I went to her apartment to get some clothes and pictures. That’s where I found this.” Karma held up the selfie. “I saw his little aura glowing. You can see it, right there in his little eyes. Zig, Wesley is alive.” She traced a finger over her friend’s pretty blond hair. “Does she look depressed to you? Does she look like someone who’d ever hurt a baby? This baby?”
A small ached formed behind his left eye and throbbed in time with his still-stinging shoulder. “How did you get into Gwyn’s apartment? And why would you take her diary out of it?”
He started to flip through it, but Karma placed her hand over his. Her touch was distracting, alluring, and damned disarming. The worst part was that while it jacked up his puls
e, her skin on his didn’t appear to affect her at all.
“I told you. I thought having some of her things would be good for her. She’s all alone. Her mother refuses to come see her. Her father is dead. And the baby’s daddy can’t be with her. Everyone in the city thinks she’s some deranged baby killer. The nurse at the hospital told me Gwyn hadn’t had a single visitor until I came to see her. She doesn’t have anyone else. So it was my job to get her some things.”
“Yeah, that didn’t answer my question of how you got her diary.” Zig pulled free of her touch and rubbed at the ache in his head. “Did you break into her place?”
Karma blinked her big brown eyes and rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. Her expression too innocent to be believable.
Ah, crap!
“I changed my mind, don’t answer that. In fact, don’t tell another living soul how you got in or that you were even there. And absolutely do not show this diary to anyone with the ability to arrest you for breaking and entering. Why would you even befriend this nut job in the first place?”
“She’s not a nut job!” Karma shoved the picture and journal back into her purse. “And I didn’t just wake up this week and decide to befriend someone accused of murder. Gwyn’s been my friend since sophomore year, when we were lab partners.”
Zig shook his head. “No, I remember your lab partner. She was some Goth chick who had a vest covered in safety pins and listened to Nine Inch Nails.”
Karma let out a mirthless laugh. “She wore that outfit one time for a psychology presentation she gave on people’s assumptions about music and dress. Gwyn was an American Eagle girl all the way. I can see you really paid attention back then. How’d you make it as a cop?”
Annoyance cut the fraying thread of patience he’d been clinging to. “Keep insulting me and you’re going to have a long, silent wait for Reynolds and O’Dell.”
“Fine. I’m sorry.” Karma lifted her hands in the air, palms up, then dropped them again. “I’m grateful you’re listening. I’m just really worried about the baby and Gwyn. She couldn’t have hurt him. I know it. I know her.”
“Fine, you knew her. So what? It’s not like you’ve seen her in eight years.”
She squirmed and drummed her fingers on her thigh, through her long jacket that looked too thin to be warm. “Yeah, well, we stayed in touch over the years. Although, I hadn’t seen her until last month. I came back to Tidewater because she asked me to be her birthing coach. She had one but something happened. I don’t know what exactly, but I know it had her worried enough to ask me to come help.”
“You’ve been home for a month?” He locked his jaw tight before any other words flew out of his mouth.
She’d been back in town for thirty days and no one told him? Although, why should they? She’d left him almost a decade ago. It’s not like he’d sat around waiting for her to come back.
She accused him of not remembering her, but clearly he was the one who had been forgotten.
“No, I was here a month ago. I went back to Mexico after the baby was born. I only got back here on Tuesday.” Karma appeared to be having an internal struggle. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Zig watched in annoyed fascination as she finally kept it shut.
Exhaling his aggravation, Zig grabbed his notebook and pen from where he’d dropped them on the desk and prepared to take her statement. “Give me everything you have, Ms. De La Cruz. How can you be sure he’s alive? Have you seen him?”
“Yes! I helped deliver him. Oh wait, you mean since the incident. No.” Karma shook her head. “I haven’t exactly seen Wesley. I’ve seen his aura though. It’s right there in the picture. The color’s starting to disappear around the edges. It’s why I’m here. I think something is wrong. Looking at the picture, he seems to be fading away.”
***
Zig opened his mouth to say something but the sound of the front door opening cut off his words. Cops and cold wind gusted into the room. Change of shift had officially begun. The reception area filled with noise: the clomping of cop shoes, discussion of scenes, orders, and general grumblings about the weather.
Reynolds and O’Dell, never ones to stay past end of shift if they could help it, strode in with the incoming crowd. They started past Zig but he stepped to the right, blocking their path.
This was his chance to get rid of Karma. Raising a palm, Zig stopped the detectives. “Sirs, this woman has been waiting to see you.” Zig gestured to Karma.
Surprise and another emotion—hurt, maybe?—crossed her face briefly before she schooled her features. The sight of her reaction almost had Zig offering to help her himself, but Karma stepped around him, making a beeline for the detectives.
Extending her hand, she plastered a smile to her face. “I’m Carmelita. I’m here to talk to you about the Bremer baby.”
The detectives exchanged sorrowful looks, but nodded in tandem. “Officer Harmon, please show our guest to interview room B. Give us a second to take off our coats, Carmelita, and we’ll be right into speak with you.”
If she was as surprised by Reynolds’s courtesy as Zig, Karma didn’t show it. She dutifully followed Zig down the hallway without speaking.
The relief he’d expected didn’t come. Only a vague sense of unease, unfinished business. Zig shoved it down. He didn’t have time to deal with it. Seeing Karma again, stirred up old hurts and worse, a not-so-old arousal. She’d been pretty in her youth. As an adult she was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. A pinch of something he could define only as regret pierced his chest as sharply as the knife that had put him in the hospital.
Too bad. He didn’t have time for anything as inconsequential as regret either. His shift had finally ended. He had more pressing issues. Like the fact that he needed to go home and get some ice on his shoulder.
Pushing open the door to the tiny interview room, he swept his arm wide. Karma stepped in and squeezed herself into the chair nestled between the wall and the oversize brown laminate table. Her eyes huge but her chin set at a determined tilt, she folded her hands on the table and met his gaze.
And there it was, that zing of awareness that had always existed between them. It sizzled in the air, confusing the hell out of him. He needed distance. Stepping back, he started to close the door.
“Ziggy,” she began then stopped, shifted in her seat, and then spoke more quietly. “I hope you’ve had a good life. You may not believe it, but leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If I could do it over—”
“Okay, Ms. De La Cruz, you’ve got our attention,” Reynolds said, cutting her off and pushing into the room with O’Dell on his heels.
“Get that on your way out,” O’Dell said to Zig and pointed at the door.
Zig closed the door quietly and headed back to his computer. Her words playing over and over in his mind. What did she mean by coming in here and dropping the bomb that leaving him was the hardest thing she’d ever done? Did the damn woman do anything subtly?
He wanted to be pissed at her. Hating her made her leaving him bearable, made it possible for him to go on with his life. Okay so he was a bit commitment-shy, but what man in his twenties wasn’t? And fuck it! Her words plucked at his dumb-as-sea-glass heart.
And like sea glass, if he let her matter to him again, when she walked away this time, his heart would shatter.
***
“You saw the baby’s aura? Not in person. Not since the delivery. But you saw it in a picture?” asked the cop with the bushy mustache. If disbelief walked around incarnate, it would inhabit the two cops who’d been grilling Karma for the past forty minutes.
Her plan had been to show them the diary she’d found in Gwyn’s place but Zig’s ominous warning about breaking and entering played through her mind as she stared at their collective aura. It pulsed an ugly crimson, tinged with a putrid shade of dark green—vanity, resentment, and disbelief pooled around t
hem like awful mood lighting.
Since their auras showed contempt for her, Karma kept the diary in her purse and focused on the auras instead.
“Yes. I saw Wesley’s aura the day he was born. And I see it now, in that picture.” She tapped the photo with her finger. “It’s what alerted me to the fact that the world is going on the assumption that he went off that bridge with Gwyn. He couldn’t have. His aura wouldn’t still be in the picture if he were dead. So, you need to open the case again. Wesley is alive, his aura is blue-silver, and it’s fading.”
“We have three witnesses who saw your friend jump with her infant in her arms. One of those witnesses tried to stop her and got scratched up in the process. Gwyn Bremer was fished out of the Chesapeake when she and her baby were swept out into historically rough current. But you see an aura in this picture, so naturally we should assume the baby is what, part fish, and still paddling around the bay?” The shorter one frowned at her then gave his partner the this-woman’s-effing-nuts-look.
“No. I’m not saying he’s in the bay. If I knew where he was, I’d get him myself. Just look at his picture, it’s in his eyes.”
Karma tapped the photo again. Sometimes, even mundanes could see a flash of auras in photos. She prayed one or both of these men would really look. Reynolds—or was it O’Dell?—picked up the picture. They hadn’t bothered with introductions, so she wasn’t sure which one was which. Instead, they’d hammered her with questions, in tandem, hardly giving her ample time to answer.
“There’s life in his eyes,” she said the moment a look of surprise briefly lit the mustache cop’s face. Now was the time to show them the diary. Reaching for her purse she added, “It was brighter earlier. A warm ocean blue–green. Kind of peaceful.”
“Are we talking about the kid’s eye color?” Mustache cop gave her a frown so deep it created a vertical crease between his equally bushy eyebrows. Suspicion darkened his expression as he watched her lift her purse from the floor and set it on her lap.