by Joyce Lamb
Hunter moved to Charlie’s side, stepping closer than Noah would have preferred, and lowered his head as though to speak to her privately. “Logan told me about Alex. I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice gruff. “You weren’t hurt?”
She shook her head but didn’t look at him. Easing away, she rested her hip against the bed. She hadn’t put a tremendous amount of distance between them, but to Noah the message was clear: Back off. Hunter didn’t get the hint, or ignored it. He leaned toward her, placing his hand over hers braced on the bed. She flinched, and her eyes glazed over for an instant before she gasped and pulled her hand away like she’d been stung.
Noah moved quickly, seizing Hunter by the arm and shoving him face-first against the wall and pinning him there with his arm cranked up between his shoulder blades. “Are you okay?” he asked Charlie. “What’d he do?”
Hunter jerked against his grip. “What the fuck are you doing? Let me go!”
Charlie shot off the bed and grabbed Noah’s arm. “No, don’t! He didn’t hurt me.”
“Then what the hell happened?”
“Please, let him go.”
Noah reluctantly released Hunter, who turned and leaned back against the wall. He massaged his shoulder. “Jesus, you’re trigger-happy.”
Noah ignored him, watching Charlie as she first rubbed at the knuckles of her right hand, then grasped Hunter’s right hand. She turned it palm down and examined his bloodied knuckles.
“You punched the wall,” she said.
Noah felt a shaft of surprise. How did she know how he’d hurt his hand?
“Yeah,” Hunter said. “I’m so mature.” His fingers curled to grip hers. “I heard about the shooting, and I thought it was you.”
Noah watched them, feeling like an outsider and at the same time wanting to surge forward and rip Hunter’s head off. Instead, he stayed put. She was obviously close to this guy.
As she gave the other man a soft, sad look, doubt wormed its way through Noah’s belly. Just how close were these two?
“I couldn’t breathe,” Hunter went on. “I couldn’t breathe thinking I’d lost you.”
“Mac—”
“I’ve been such an incredible ass,” he cut in. “I want it back, Charlie. I want us back.”
Noah stiffened when Hunter pulled her to him. Mine, he thought as a roar of possession gathered in his gut. But then Charlie’s dark eyes met his over Hunter’s shoulder, and she held his gaze without blinking. Noah took that as reassurance and forced himself to chill.
Charlie drew back first, and Hunter seemed reluctant to release her, but he did. Then she sank onto the edge of the bed, looking pale and shaky, her forehead furrowed. Noah went to her, placing himself deliberately between her and Hunter.
“You okay?” he asked for her ears only.
“Headache,” she said, her lips barely moving.
He tipped her head up with a finger under her chin and studied the gold-flecked depths of her eyes. They looked glassy, almost feverish. Like they had the day after he’d stepped between her and Dick Wallace at the dealership.
“Maybe I can get some Tylenol,” she said.
Tylenol wasn’t going to do it, he thought.
Hunter cleared his throat. “So what’s the deal here? What am I missing?”
Charlie raised her voice and said, “Noah came to Lake Avalon to investigate Laurette Atkins’s hit-and-run.”
Noah turned to face Hunter. “I’m a Chicago police detective.”
“Lassiter? Didn’t someone take a shot at you yesterday?” Hunter asked.
Noah nodded. “I was grazed by a bullet, yes.”
“You recover fast.”
“It was minor.”
“It didn’t feel minor to me,” Charlie said.
Noah glanced at her sharply while Hunter voiced the word ringing in his head. “What?”
Charlie looked up, blushed. “I . . . was just imagining what it would be like . . .”
Even if she’d finished the sentence, Noah wouldn’t have heard it. He was thinking about that moment when he’d snatched at her hand in his hotel room, how she’d reacted so violently, how she’d gone catatonic for several frightening instants. She’d gotten the same look, though far more briefly, just now when Hunter had touched her without warning. And then she’d rubbed her hand, as though her knuckles hurt, before inspecting Hunter’s bloody fingers. She’d known he’d slammed his fist into the wall.
It didn’t feel minor to me.
She’d known Noah was close to Laurette after they’d clasped hands the first time.
After the incident in his hotel room, she’d looked into his eyes as if seeing him clearly, as if understanding everything about him.
It didn’t feel minor to me.
Noah jolted.
She’d felt the bullet graze his head. She’d felt Hunter punch the wall. Just as Laurette had felt it when a suspect was lying.
Charlie was empathic.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The surgery went well,” Dr. Shane McKee said as he ran a hand through his short, sweat-darkened hair. He still wore scrubs, which made him look doctorly despite his dimpled baby face. “She’ll be in recovery for several hours before being transferred to the ICU for a day or two. It will take some time, but I expect a full recovery.”
Charlie hung back as her mother shook the surgeon’s hand and her father clapped him on the back. Her knees felt weak, and she leaned against Noah, conscious of his hand at the nape of her neck, lightly massaging. She didn’t want to touch the doctor, to experience whatever recent trauma he might have suffered. She’d already been floored four times in the past several hours.
First, by Mac slamming his fist into the wall. Then two more times when her parents blustered into the ER waiting room. Her father had hugged her tight, and her mother had briefly touched her arm. The skin-on-skin contact meant Charlie lived in quick succession their horrified moments when Logan had told them Alex had been gunned down. The anguish, the fear, the grief.
When Logan had walked into the waiting room, a friend of the family now rather than a cop investigating a shooting, he’d hugged her even tighter than her father had. And his fear for her sister, his absolute, gut-wrenching terror, tore through her in a numbing wave.
After Mac reluctantly left for work, and the rest of them sat in silence and waited for word about Alex, Charlie’s headache grew to near-migraine status, a disorienting dizziness whirling through her senses for several moments at a time.
Now, she listened to the doctor give a full accounting of Alex’s injuries, growing dizzier and more nauseated with every word.
“You okay?” Noah asked near her ear.
She nodded, then braced herself and clasped the doctor’s large, warm hand.
Terror explodes in my head as I fly through the air, everything around me glittering like the sharp points of broken glass. And then I hit those points and go under, gulping in air and salty water at the same time. My head breaks the surface, and I look wildly around, choking and sputtering as I turn in the water toward the sailboat and spot the reason I ended up in the water. The boom jerks to and fro, the main sail flapping wildly, its busted rope whipping through the air.
Charlie blinked, realizing the doctor had released her and now Noah stood in front of her, worry etched in the lines of his forehead. “Charlie?”
She raised her eyes to his. Alex was going to be okay. And like that, the waves of terror in her brain parted and one coherent thought blasted through: Dick did this.
She was going to kill Dick.
With the taste of salt water still on her tongue, she pivoted toward the door. “I have something to do.”
Noah fell in step beside her. “Uh, where are you going? Don’t you want to wait to see Alex?”
“This won’t take long.”
She heard her father call her name but didn’t acknowledge it as she burst through the doors of the ER into the Florida sun. She paused, squinting into the parking lot, t
hen turned to Noah and thrust out her hand, palm up. “Keys.”
He tilted his head, his eyes narrowed. “No.”
She lunged forward, shoved at him. “Give me your fucking keys!”
He grabbed her wrists and brought her up flush against him. “Why? Where do you want to go?”
“That son of a bitch Dick shot my sister. I’m going to end this once and for all.” She jerked at her wrists, maddened by her inability to free herself. She was trapped. Always trapped.
Noah held tight. “You need to take a breath, Charlie.”
“A breath? You think that’s going to do anything?”
He didn’t respond this time, just held tight to her wrists.
She felt herself shaking, felt the heat of the sun beating on top of her head. Her legs felt as though they were treading water, weightless and insubstantial. And then light popped in her head, washing her vision white, and pain smashed into her right hand, as though she’d just slammed her fist into a wall. She blinked, and she was standing in front of Noah. He watched her expectantly, warily, waiting for what she did next.
Light flashed, lightning inside her brain, followed by agony razoring through her chest and the sensation of blood gurgling into her throat. Then it was gone, and she was outside. The setting sun served as the backdrop to a parking lot dotted with medians of lush grass and palm trees.
A starburst behind her eyes preceded a wave of gut-wrenching fear for the life of a precious daughter, a woman so young, so vital. When she came back to herself, her stomach heaved, and she tried to push Noah away and pull free.
He tightened his grip. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“I’m going to be sick,” she mumbled. He released her, and she managed to stumble away, onto the nearest median, before gagging. Nothing came up.
Noah knelt beside her on the grass, his hand on her back, rubbing in circles, while she took deep, ragged breaths. “That’s it,” he soothed. “Just breathe, just breathe.”
Light exploded, like the flash on a camera blinding her, and she was airborne. She hit cool salt water and went under, the terror crushing. In the next instant, she was back with Noah, on her knees in the grass. Her stomach twisted a second time. Again, nothing came up.
Noah rose beside her, keeping his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go back inside and let them look at you,” he said, his voice low and shaky.
“No,” she said, panting, so dizzy she didn’t think she could stand up by herself. Whatever was going on was supernatural. A regular doctor wouldn’t be able to help. “I need to go see someone.”
“Yeah, a doctor. You’re probably dehydrated, and you haven’t eaten all day.”
She grasped his wrist, dug in her fingers as she braced for the next lightning burst in her head. Her skull felt as though it were splitting in two. She couldn’t think, could barely remember how to string words together. If it got worse . . .
Noah seemed to growl, then bent and swung her up into his arms. She caught his shoulder for balance, had to concentrate to keep her whirling head from dropping limply back over his arm. “We’re going back into the ER,” he said.
“No, please.” She struggled to find words. “I don’t think . . . a doctor can help. I need . . . an expert.”
“An expert what?” he demanded.
“If she can’t . . . help, you can bring me . . . back.”
“Charlie—”
She sank her fingers into the front of his shirt, swallowed several times. She was feeling stronger, her stomach calmer. The pain in her head still pounded viciously, but she could think. And the flashes of light had stopped. For the moment. “Trust me. Please? I’ll tell you how to get there.”
He hesitated, staring into her face with narrowed green eyes. He was scared. She could see it in his gaze, and she could relate. But there was nothing she could say to ease his fear when she didn’t know how to ease her own. All she knew was that AnnaCoreen might know better how to help than an ER doctor.
“Please,” she said, and managed to stroke a hand down the side of his face.
He closed his eyes at her caress, swallowed. Then, with a groan, he carried her to the car.
Noah knew he was driving too fast on the shoulder of the road, flying by the backed-up beach traffic, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting Charlie to this so-called expert she seemed to think could help her. At the same time, he berated himself for letting her talk him into this when his instincts had screamed at him to get her ass back into the ER. As it was, she sat in the passenger seat of the Mustang, quiet except for telling him when to turn. Every few minutes, her entire body would clench, as though gripped by a terrible pain, and her breathing would go shallow and ragged. When he looked away from the road, for too long to be safe, her eyes would be blind, the way they’d been right after he’d grasped her hand in his hotel room and she’d gone briefly catatonic. Each time, the tension passed within seconds, and she’d go limp.
He assumed she was having some kind of empathic reaction to the trauma of Alex’s shooting. He didn’t know much about empathy, but he knew from what Laurette had told him that empaths could be bombarded by the emotions and moods of other people and that it could be devastating.
“It’s on the left,” Charlie said, her voice so weak she could only whisper.
He peered through the windshield, horrified. The pink shack. The fucking psychic? Oh, God, they’d wasted so much time.
“There’s a house behind it.”
“Charlie, come on. You need a doctor.”
“Just humor me. Please.”
He ground his teeth together—he had to trust she knew what she was doing—and parked in front of the shack. He got out, ran around the front of the car to Charlie’s side and opened her door. She was rigid again, staring at nothing, her forehead shiny with perspiration. Tears streaked her pale face in a steady stream. Then she sagged in the seat and blinked several times, her eyes looking like they tried to roll back in their sockets.
Something snapped in Noah’s head. He couldn’t take it anymore. He just couldn’t, scared to death that these bizarre episodes were killing her. “Forget this. We’re going to the hospital.”
Hearing the crunch of gravel, he turned to see a petite older woman with short reddish blond hair hurrying toward them. “Charlie?” she called. “Are you with Charlie?”
Noah didn’t respond, shocked that she knew.
She pushed him aside with surprising strength and knelt in the car door. She grasped Charlie’s wrist, checking her pulse, then patted her gently on the cheek with the palm of her hand. “Can you hear me, dear? Open your eyes and talk to me.”
Charlie forced her eyes open, wet her lips. Noah bent down so that his head was close to the older woman’s, Charlie’s voice so faint that he caught only some of her words. “Flashes . . . over and over . . . can’t make them stop . . . head . . . hurts.”
The woman rose and turned to Noah, her features tight with worry. “Bring her inside.”
He hesitated. “I’d rather take her to the ER.”
Her piercing blue gaze swept up to bore into his. “You want what’s best for her,” she stated firmly. “Bring her inside. Now, please.”
Without another word, he bundled Charlie into his arms and kicked the car door closed. She was dead weight, her head limp against his shoulder, as he followed the woman over a stone path through a garden buzzing with insects. He could hear the wash of Gulf waves in the distance, smell salt in the air.
Inside the house, the woman gestured and said, “On the sofa in there,” as she thrust a teapot under the kitchen faucet and ran water.
He walked through the pristine kitchen into a clutter-free living room that contained a yellow floral-print overstuffed sofa, two matching chairs and a glass coffee table whose base looked like it had been carved from driftwood. The light was low and soothing, and Noah lowered himself to the sofa cushions and cradled Charlie on his lap. She had begun to shiver, so he gathered her close
, stroking her hair, her arms, his heart pounding with fear. She no longer seemed to be with him, as though trapped in some recess of her own mind, her body clenching every few minutes, becoming infused with that terrible tension, then sagging against him as tears spilled from her eyes. He hoped to God this psychic woman could make it stop, that he hadn’t made a fatal mistake by bringing her here.
The psychic walked into the living room then with a tray that she set on the coffee table before perching on the edge of the sofa in front of where Charlie’s legs stretched out.
“I’m going to give her a tranquilizer,” she said, plucking an orange plastic pill bottle off the tray and shaking three small white discs into her palm. After dropping the pills into a cup filled with reddish liquid, she stirred with a spoon to help them dissolve.
“What is it?” Noah asked, tightening his arms around Charlie. No way was he letting this woman pour something weird down her throat.
“Ativan.”
“And that?” He jutted his chin toward the cup.
“Herbal tea. Apple cinnamon. Can’t you smell it?”
He did then, and relaxed some. Herbal tea and Ativan. Nothing exotic or smacking of hocus-pocus. He could live with that.
“It’s going to put her out,” the woman said. “She needs to sleep so healing can begin.”
Fear spiked right into his brain. “Healing?”
“I’ll explain later.” She picked up the cup and tapped Charlie’s cheek until she roused some. “Charlie, dear, you need to drink this. It’s tea and a sedative. I made sure it’s not too hot.”
Noah took the cup, his hand shaking, and held it to her lips. He tipped it back slowly until she drank it all.
“That’s good,” the woman said, stroking her fingers over Charlie’s forehead and down the side of her face. “You’re going to feel better soon. I promise.”
It took twenty minutes before Charlie’s muscles ceased their ritual of contracting and releasing, before the tears stopped coursing down her face. She relaxed in his arms, her eyes fluttering. Her lips moved, as though she tried to speak but didn’t have the strength. Noah’s heart clutched, and he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her softly to reassure her.
