I tugged my gloves off and tucked them into the waistband of my leathers. I pushed more emotion away, separating everything emanating from a living being from the ghosts of emotions. Intense emotions left afterimages. The woman’s terror would scream from these walls for weeks, if not months.
Most psionics were used during interrogations to verify the truthfulness of the witness. Jonathan believed using a psychic at a crime scene was pointless. All you did was burn them out. Which, of course, was why Jonathan assigned me to an officer known for bringing psionics to crime scenes. I might sense the killer’s rage, his hatred. If I did, maybe I could identify the person from the taste of his emotions if the police brought him in for questioning. The knife block was the logical place to start. Given the tags, the police assumed the killer grabbed a knife from the block.
Lowering my shields, I extended my senses. Echoes of fear oozed from the walls around me. Anger simmered. The sensations of the foyer extended back here. I passed my hand over the block. The colors deepened but shed no light. Contact. I needed contact. My trembling fingers reached out and wrapped around the wood. I set it upright. My other hand curled around the Formica counter lip.
The world vanished in a flash of white agony.
“Where’s my dinner?” A mountain bellows from the door.
I cringe next to the center island. “Y-You said you were eating o-out.”
“I’m here now. Ain’t I? I want my fuckin’ dinner. That too fuckin’ much to ask?”
I push my suitcase into the cabinet with my foot. Darren rounds the far side of the counter.
“N-No,” I say.
“You fuckin’ lazy bitch.” He raises his hand.
Never. Never again. Pale thin fingers—my fingers—reach for a knife…
Silvered light blinds me.
Sally bounces down the stairs. Her strawberry-colored hair bobs in two even pigtails. Sir Growls, her ragged stuffed tiger, perches in the crook of her arm. She wanted to wear her white party dress to the sleep-over at Mary’s house. Darren’s going to kill me when he finds out I let her. But no, Darren is out. He’ll never know.
He has the knife. Oh God, he’s going to kill me.
I throw my arms in front of my face to ward off the blow. The crimson blade slashes down.
Cold steals my breath. Darkness crashes around me.
“No!” I bolted upright.
An iron tang in the air choked me. I gulped. Cindy’s—I knew who she was—body lay in a puddle of blood on her once pristine kitchen floor. I knew all about her. Her kitchen knife slashed her, again and again. He was too fast. She turned away. The knife bit into her neck. My hands flew to mine as if I could stop her blood from spurting from her body. The blood. All that blood. Who knew a body could hold so much?
“Oh god,” a voice wailed. It could have been mine.
My control slipped, allowing my doppelganger, the raving side of me, to slip in. The vision of Cindy’s petite blood-soaked body washed before my eyes. Nausea clawed up my throat. I pitched forward and heaved into the pot resting at my feet.
A hand rested on my back.
What the hell?
My vision shifted from the psychic to the mundane. Darkness wrapped around me. The kitchen door stood open. Light flooded into the night. Red stained the cream linoleum. A cool breeze fluttered the ends of my hair. Bile clawed my throat. Dropping my head between my knees, I spewed the last of the pork chop and mashed potatoes that had been my dinner.
I raised my head. The warmth of the hand shifted to the top of my head.
“Keep your head down for a minute.” Muller’s voice rumbled against my back.
With that realization came others. The warmth of his thighs around mine, his other arm wrapped around my waist holding me in place on some bench.
“I don’t want to do the paperwork your passing out on me’ll require.”
I turned my head but could only see the outline of his knee in black slacks. “H-How are you joking?”
“You either develop gallows humor in this job or you transfer to parking enforcement. If your sanity survives that is.” His voice softened. “Think you can sit up?”
My stomach did one last rebellious flip. I drew the night air deep into my lungs and let it out in one long slow breath before I nodded.
“Good.” His hand slid from the crown of my head down to my waist. “Take it slowly.”
My eyes shied away from chaos in the kitchen. The yard had the repressed tidiness of the house.
“Grab that one, Sally,” I say.
Her hair is mostly tucked into one of her father’s discarded baseball caps. Freckles dust her nose and cheekbones. A blue-bonnet-colored shirt highlights the blue in her eyes. I feel stronger as pride and protectiveness flood me.
I rest my hands on my hips as Sally goes to the cardboard tray of flowers and picks up a tall, red salvia.
God, she’s growing so fast. How did she get to be eight? How soon will it be before she doesn’t want to spend a Saturday in the garden with her mom?
With a snap, day turned into night. An arm tightened around my middle.
“What just happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Muller said.
“You can let me go.”
“Not until I’m sure you’re not going to pass out. Again.” He turned his head and spoke into the com. The light blue of relief edged his aura. “Deva, she’s up.”
“Right there, boss,” a lilting female voice floated over the com.
Muller shifted on the picnic table bench so he was sitting next to me rather than astride. “The med tech and Company have to check you out.”
My stomach flipped again. This time it wasn’t from the gore waiting so close at hand. I rubbed my nose, trying to get the stink of copper penny and slightly rotten meat out of my nostrils.
“You’re sending me back just because I got sick?” Damn. Jonathan had been right, but I wasn’t going meekly. “I can do this. I won’t get sick again.” Panic made my words run together.
He nudged the improvised bucket with his toe. “I’d send you back if you could stomach your first murder without getting sick. If the M.E.’s right, and you did what she thinks you did, I’m never letting you go.” His grip on my waist tightened fractionally before loosening again.
“Then why?”
“I need to know that your little spell didn’t cause you any harm.”
“Spell?” My eyebrows crawled to my hairline. I pulled back and put my knee on the picnic bench between us. “What am I some sort of ancient…what did they call them…Southern Belles?”
“Yup. I can see you’re definitely one of those shrinking violin types.”
“You…” My mouth snapped closed. There was a dead woman, Cindy, not twenty feet away from us, lying in a puddle of her own blood on her kitchen floor, and we were joking?
I turned my head for the bucket. Muller held it out for me. Nothing but bitter bile came up.
When he put the bucket, which I noticed was one of Cindy’s pots down, he fished in his jacket pocket. The flash of leather in the flood lights revealed his holster.
“Gum?”
“Absolutely.” The taste of mint muted the bitterness in my mouth. “Wait. What does the M.E. think I did?”
“Tell me what happened first.”
“Detective.” A small woman lightly stepped down the stairs. Black hair ran like rain down her back and framed an oval face with liquid brown eyes. Her gold aura displayed a rainbow of emotion—competence, anticipation, grim determination, wariness, satisfaction, and curiosity. The plum of curiosity brightened as she turned toward me.
“Well?” There was an edge to his tone that belied the yellow of anticipation that shot through his aura.
“Preliminarily?” She shrugged. “I’d say yes.”
“Huh.” Muller turned speculative gimlet-colored eyes to me. “Well if that doesn’t beat the band.”
“What?” I asked.
Muller ope
ned his mouth as if to answer, but never got the first word out.
“Vonna,” a deep baritone barked from the doorway.
I shot to my feet. My vision blurred but I still saw Jonathan’s broad shoulders limed in the kitchen light. He was my part-mentor, part-nemesis and head of the A.G.R.D., the Advanced Genetics Research Division. It was a polite way of saying breeding program. A level thirty-five and the first male on my breeding list, he’d spent years waiting for me to first grow up, and now to slip up so he could revoke my walking papers. While he was good at suppressing his emotions, I still saw the slashes of twinned gold and silver, the colors of victory, crackling off him.
“Easy now,” Muller’s voice rumbled in my ear. His hands circled my waist again to steady me.
“You should sit down.” Deva buzzed around me. Heat reddened her features and concern tinged her aura.
“I’m taking Vonna. Now.” Jonathan said as his runner’s legs devoured the ground between the stoop and picnic table.
Muller nodded, and the edge of his lips curled into a half smile. “You could.” His blue med-skin glove snapped as he pulled it off. I startled, only now realizing he’d been wearing them. So that’s how he’d been able to touch me without fear. The med-skin was nearly as good a barrier as leather.
“So much for my powers of observation,” I muttered.
He rubbed his chin with his now naked hand. “But she’s covered in evidence—particulates and all that—so those geeks in the kitchen tell me. What do I know? I’m just a beat cop.”
Jonathan’s eyes tracked down me. Blood coated my leathers and caked in my hair. Disapproval shone from his pale blue eyes. His mask slipped for a fraction of a second. So quickly that anyone who didn’t know him would have missed the signs. But in that instant, fury made his face a rocky peninsula. After, his face could have been made of marble for all the expression—or warmth—it showed. He didn’t like his orders questioned. Somehow on some back channel, he’d make Muller pay. Something petty. A parking spot further from the door, or schedules switched at the last moment so he missed a vacation.
“I—”
“Then hose her off and hand her over.” He held out his hand as if I were some token to be passed between them. In his mind, I was.
Muller’s other glove snapped off. “No.”
“I can help here.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Jonathan resettled his stance so his feet were spread, taking more space in the hope of intimidating the smaller Muller. The slightest flush of red tinged his aura, and domination’s brass color crept into it.
“Not if Vonna did what the M.E. thinks she did.”
He favored me with a smile like one he’d give his favorite dog. Damned me if I didn’t want to wag my tail. A quick glance at Jonathan had my tail planted firmly between my legs. My undocumentable talent wore on him like a sore tooth. If I’d done something to trigger that, here, against Jonathan’s wishes, the man’d be insufferable. He’d make Muller pay out of spite.
“Which is?” Jonathan’s voice had leveled out to his politician’s tone. All smooth edges that left a greasy feel behind and somehow cut nonetheless. I always felt unclean after he used that voice on me. I was sure he projected subliminals into it, but had never caught him at it. He turned his ice gaze on me. The last traces of emotion drained from his aura.
“I don’t really know, Sir. I saw…” I made the mistake of closing my eyes.
A blade, the boning knife, flashes in the overhead light. I throw my arms up to protect my face. Pain burns down my nerves as the weapon bites into my flesh. It lifts for its next strike.
“There!”
The images dissolve at Muller’s shout. “She’s doing it again.”
Dena’s voice is cool as she says, “Defensive wounds. I’d need to cross reference blood splatter to confirm the pattern.”
I folded to the ground. Wrapping my arms around my middle, I heaved again. All that came up was the gum I’d been chewing. The taste of bile and copper penny filled my mouth.
“Vonna.” This time Jonathan’s voice held a hint of concern. His hand sprawled against my back. A connection flashed between us. His presence filled my mind and quieted my rebellious stomach.
*What happened?* His voice resonated in my mind.
“She’s re-enacting the murder,” Muller said, as if in response to Jonathan’s subliminal question.
“How?” I croaked.
“Don’t know. That’s his area—” Muller inclined his head toward Jonathan “—not mine. But the M.E.’s prelim finding is that your motions seem to line up with the observed defensive wounds on the victim.”
“Cindy,” I breathed. “Her name’s Cindy.” My hand covered the left side of my throat.
“You’re doing it again. You’re covering the likely death blow.”
“What?” I felt as dense as a five-year-old child who’d been thrust into a fission lab and asked to stop a meltdown.
Deva said, “I won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but it looks like an edged weapon severed the carotid artery.”
“The boning knife from the butcher block,” I said.
She nodded. “The victim would have rapidly bled out.”
Cindy, I thought. At the merest invocation of her name, images flowed through me. The pressure from Jonathan’s hand rooted me in the present. He drew in a quick breath as his senses picked up the ghost of Cindy’s memories.
“If that’s what she’s done, the forty-eight hour principle dictates that she’s mine. Not yours.” Muller’s even white teeth glowed in the yellow bug light.
Jonathan stood. He glared at the streak of blood on his palm. “Vonna?”
I knew that tone. He may have posed a question, but it was an order. Follow along. Come home. Except I didn’t want to. The men were impossibly tall from my position on the ground. Dena smiled down at me.
None of this made any sense.
“I didn’t touch…her.” I swallowed against the rising bile.
“Look at your hand, Vonna,” Muller said.
The tips of my left finger held a drop of blood—already faded from the bright red of life to the rusted brown of old nails.
“There was splatter under the counter’s lip. You must have touched it when you were looking at the knife block,” Muller said. “One second you were walking over to the island. The next you were twitching and screaming.”
A choice. I had a choice. I could deny what happened and return to Psy Corp. Shut out the images that crowded my mind’s eye. Maybe let a murderer go free. What would he do to Sally if I did?
Or I could stay. Hide behind whatever this forty-eight hour protocol was. I’d delay my sentence for two days.
I stood and stepped between the two men. I wasn’t ready to be an incubator. Maybe in another decade I’d want a child, but right now, I wanted this. I wanted to catch Cindy’s killer. I wanted to ensure he paid for what he did.
“I saw something. I’m not sure what,” I said.
“She’s an eyewitness,” Muller said his eyes sparkling. The deep sky blue of victory edged his aura. “Not even the Company can interfere with an ongoing investigation.”
Cold leeched from Jonathan’s eyes. I shivered. Damn me. I’d deal with him when I had to. For forty-eight hours I was free of Jonathan’s manipulations. I narrowed my stance and rose to the balls of my feet. He saw the change in my demeanor and read my resolve in the psychic energy I projected.
“You will report to my office at midnight on Thursday,” he said.
Forty-nine hours from now. He didn’t intend to let me slip away. But I already knew that.
“Of course,” I agreed.
Muller clapped his hands. The noise reverberated off the still buildings like a rifle shot. “Glad we’re all agreed.”
Jonathan turned on his heel and stalked out of the yard’s side gate.
Once his car door slammed, I turned to Muller. “The forty-eight hour principle?”
He grunted. “It
’s a cop rule of thumb. The most critical time in any investigation is the first forty-eight hours. After that, memories get confused and trails can go cold.”
“What happens on the forty-ninth hour?”
Avoiding the splashes of blood on my leathers, Muller put his hand on my back and steered me toward the house. His touch felt courteous, not possessive.
“We’ll find another way to keep you. That is, if you want to stay, Spooky.” The wolfish grin he gave me was one I’d come to be fond of. It signaled when he was going to do something outrageous and ill-considered.
“I do, but—wait, did you just call me Spooky?”
“You see through dead people’s eyes. Seems pretty spooky to me.”
Cops gave each other nicknames, didn’t they? Or was that just something the ones on the vid screen did? Did Muller’s nicknaming me mean that he’d accepted me? I studied his aura below the surface level—dusty opal and golden rod, the colors of mischief and satisfaction bloomed there.
“Don’t call me that.” But despite the negation, I couldn’t keep the blush off my face or the slight chuckle out of my voice.
“Don’t worry, I’ve danced the waltz with Johnny Boy before.”
“Johnny Boy?” I choked out.
“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.” He paused at the bottom stair. “Where’s the daughter?”
Sally. The image of the girl in pigtails turned into a ginger-headed teen peering down the stairwell. A large bruise turning from purple to a sickly yellow-green blossomed on her cheek.
“With Mary, her friend, for the night.”
He nodded and started up the stairs. I put my hand on his arm. “She was leaving him. He’d hurt her, hurt their daughter. There’s a suitcase in the island. He came home early and drunk.”
His lips thinned to a line before he nodded. “I think the murderers of this city are in a whole lot of trouble.”
Paths Less Traveled Page 2
