True Vision

by Joyce Lamb

  He gestured lamely toward the hall. “I’m going to hop in the shower, then I’ll run out and get the stuff we’ll need to wire you up before we go to the Royal Palm.”

  She nodded again. Don’t go. Please don’t go yet. “Okay.”

  He gave her a tight smile, his eyes miserable, then walked out.

  Charlie’s shoulders sagged, and she looked down at her hands tangled on her knees. That hadn’t gone well. And she had no idea what to do about it.

  She heard the shower come on, and her heart felt leaden. She shouldn’t have let him walk away like that, but she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t look him in the eye and tell him she thought it was okay that he’d killed three men in cold blood. It wasn’t okay. No matter how much she might understand what had driven him.

  It wasn’t okay.

  Regardless, she loved him.

  Pushing up out of the chair, she headed toward the bathroom.

  She shed her clothes outside the door then eased inside. Steam rose in clouds, parting for her as she opened the shower door and stepped inside. Noah, who had his hands braced on the wall, the water hitting him full in the face, turned toward her just as she slid her arms around his waist and pressed a kiss to his bare chest. His eyes were wide as he looked down at her. Hopeful.

  She smiled up at him, holding his gaze, as she kissed his chest then ran a tongue around his nipple until his breathing quickened and his desire for her nudged against her belly. His hands caught in her hair, and groaning, he backed her against the wall, lifting her until her legs wrapped around his waist.

  He sank into her with a sigh.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Can you hear me now?”

  Charlie turned her back to the mostly empty lobby and lifted a hand to her right ear. The earbud tucked inside was more comfortable than she’d expected, and Noah had said the microphone he’d tucked inside her cleavage under her tank top was sensitive enough to pick up the sound of her heartbeat.

  “Yes, just like I could hear you three minutes ago,” she said, careful to speak normally as he’d instructed.

  Strain laced his chuckle inside her head, uncertainty. He didn’t know where they stood, and she couldn’t blame him. She didn’t know, either. “Where are you?” he asked, all business.

  She swallowed against the ache in her throat. Just focus and get this over with. Deal with relationship stuff later. “Being visible in the lobby before I go snooping through supply closets.”

  “It’s unlikely that you’ll find any damning evidence that easily.”

  “I know that. All I want is for the bad guy to find me snooping and freak out.”

  He groaned in her ear.

  “Okay, not freak out, really. What I meant was ‘get sloppy.’ Are you comfortable where you are?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sitting at the bar with a rum-free Coke in front of me. You can join me anytime and we can go upstairs.”

  As if sex would fix what was wrong. They’d already tried that, and while it had still been mind-blowingly amazing, surrounded by the steam of hot water, cool tile against her back and the hot, muscular length of Noah against her front, they weren’t fixed. Their easy camaraderie had cooled like the water in the shower. Banter felt forced. She didn’t even know how to respond to his teasing suggestion. Oh, God, was this it? Was it already over?

  She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. Way to focus, Chuck.

  Noah’s voice hummed in her ear: “What’re you doing now?” More strained now. She hadn’t responded to his teasing, and he wasn’t taking it well.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m standing here talking to myself.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Still the lobby.”

  “Okay, well, as soon as you change floors, you need to let me know so I can position myself where I can get to you quickly.”

  She breathed out a sigh. “This is a dumb idea, isn’t it? You’re just humoring me with this microphone business.”

  “You never know. It might work.”

  “So if you were a blackmailing murderer, where would your center of operations be?”

  “The basement.”

  “This is Florida. We don’t have basements.”

  “Really?”

  “The ground’s too soft and wet.”

  “Hmm, I like the sound of that.”

  Her stomach clenched at the rasp in his voice. He could so easily turn her on. His voice in her head, his hum in her ear, the thought of him listening to her heartbeat. “Focus, please,” she said, for his sake as well as hers.

  “So if there’s no basement, where’s the boiler room and air-conditioning?”

  “Probably in a back room somewhere. You know, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll find the boiler room.” She lowered her voice. “Breaker one-nine, birdie’s leaving her nest. Repeat, birdie’s leaving her nest. Approaching Stairwell Number One. Charlie, out.”

  His chuckle was warm, easy in her ear, sounding like it had before he confessed his sins. “Don’t mock law enforcement, missy. You won’t like the consequences.”

  She laughed softly, her shoulders finally relaxing. Okay, they were back. “Oh, I bet I’ll like them very much indeed if you’re the one—” She broke off as she pushed through the door marked STAIRS.

  “Charlie? What is it?”

  She stood in the stairwell, surrounded by freshly painted walls the same gray as the dots dancing all over her vision. The wet-paint smell overwhelmed her senses, and she saw again the blunt end of a hammer smashing into skull.

  “Charlie? Answer me.”

  The alarm in his voice snapped back the dots. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

  “What just happened?”

  “I know where Louisa Alvarez was killed.”

  And then she saw the body.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Charlie? Answer me, damn it!”

  He could hear her heart racing—or was that his heart?—as he tore out of the bar and through the lobby. Hotel guests either stopped in their tracks to stare at him or stumbled out of his way.

  He burst through the door marked STAIRS and looked wildly around. Where the fuck was she? “Charlie!”

  A few steps in, and he turned his head to the left and saw her kneeling under the stairs where he’d seen the maintenance guy stash his bucket and mop the day the hotel manager had reamed his ass for questioning her guests.

  Charlie wasn’t moving, just sitting there on her knees in her white tank top and khaki shorts, staring at something on the floor.

  “Charlie?”

  He was at her side in three long strides, and froze when he saw what she was looking at. The hotel manager. Donna Keene. With a gun in her hand and the top of her head blown off.

  And then he saw Charlie’s hand on the woman’s wrist, saw that she was touching her.

  “Are you crazy?!?”

  He surged forward, but before he could grab her and haul her back from the corpse, she scrambled away from him. In the next instant, she pressed back against the wall opposite the stairs, her knees up to her chest and her eyes wild.

  Noah lowered himself to his knees in front of her, his frantic heart tearing up the inside of his chest. He raised his hands in front of him, placating, and they shook like those of a drug addict long overdue for a hit. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

  She blinked, shook her head in slow motion, then focused on him.

  So pale, he thought. So pale and tired and scared. “Are you okay?”

  She closed her eyes and swallowed, nodded.

  Acutely aware of the dead woman just behind him, he kept his gaze on Charlie, gauging, assessing. What had she seen? From the glimpse he’d had of the body, Donna Keene had been there several hours. He could smell the blood, and other things, but it wasn’t horrible yet, and the stairwell was cool, air-conditioned, still heavily scented by fresh paint. Anyone using these stairs probably wouldn’t have thought much abou
t the dead-person smell for at least a few more hours.

  Had Charlie seen the way she died? Lived her final moments?

  She drew in a shuddery breath, let it slowly out. Any hint of color had yet to return to her cheeks.

  “Can you stand?” Noah asked, reaching out a hand.

  She looked at his hand but didn’t take it, and he knew why. He lowered it and got to his feet, taking a step back as she used the wall to push herself up and stand on her own. Her fingers trembled as she tucked her hair behind her ear.

  Noah gestured at the door. “I’ll call Logan from the lobby.”

  She nodded and preceded him through the door into the jungle of the lobby with its multitude of green plants and guests milling around as they returned from dinner or got ready to go. Some of them cast curious looks at Noah and Charlie, probably because Charlie wasn’t walking especially steady and Noah was behind her, his hand hovering just behind her elbow, ready to reach out and catch her if her knees gave way. In his earbud, her heart beat fast and erratic.

  Once she was safely seated in a wicker chair, her back to the stairwell door, Noah fished out his cell phone and called Logan. In this position, he could keep one eye on Charlie and the other on the door to the stairs in case anyone decided now would be a good time to get some cardio rather than take the elevator.

  “Logan.”

  “Yeah, it’s Noah Lassiter. I’m at the Royal Palm. We’ve got a body in a stairwell.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. Looks like suicide. Hotel manager. She’s been there at least a few hours.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Noah flipped the phone closed and stashed it, then knelt before Charlie, still careful not to touch her. She had her eyes tightly closed and her arms wrapped around her middle, visibly shivering. When he stripped off his T-shirt and draped it around her shoulders, she opened her eyes and quirked an eyebrow at him.

  God, he wanted to touch her so much. And he wanted to shake her. What the hell had she been thinking? Touching a dead woman. Jesus!

  A tremulous smile curved her lips. “Hi.”

  He smiled back, relieved to see her eyes had cleared, and some pink replaced the gray in her complexion. “Hi.”

  “You want to kick my ass.”

  His smile widened. Well, duh. “Yeah, kind of.” And then he turned serious. “But I wouldn’t. You know that, right?”

  She tilted her head to one side and back, swallowing convulsively. “Yes. I . . . you just startled me.”

  He clenched his fist on his knee to keep from reaching for her. “Probably as much as you startled me. What were you thinking?”

  “I guess I wasn’t. I just thought . . .”

  “What? What did you think?”

  She shook her head, dropping her gaze to his bare chest, where it stayed fixed, though not with the heightened awareness she’d shown in the past, or that he would have preferred. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Curious, I guess.”

  “Jesus, Charlie.” He smoothed his palms over his thighs. Get a grip. Be a cop. “Logan’s on his way.” As if she hadn’t been sitting there while he’d made the call.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said softly.

  He sat back on his heels and dragged a hand through his hair. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.

  “Maybe she’s been dead too long.” Shuddering, she hunched her shoulders under his shirt. “She was cold.”

  He thought of how she’d reacted when she’d relived his shooting, how her head had snapped back and she’d gone catatonic for several moments. And that had been for a bullet that grazed him. He hadn’t seen what had happened to her when Alex was shot, but what would it do to her to relive a bullet that blew off the top of someone’s head? His stomach lurched, threatened to heave on the spot. Maybe it could kill her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t have.”

  He shoved to his feet and paced a few steps away, not sure he could keep himself from grabbing her and wrapping her up tight against him, waffling between absolute fucking relief and the need to shake some sense into her. Damn it. He shoved another hand through his hair. If he didn’t vent, he was going to explode, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “You’re damn right you shouldn’t have,” he ground out. “That was stupid, Charlie. You still don’t know exactly what you’re dealing with with this empathy crap, and you reach out and touch a dead woman? Shit.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  He turned to her, glad to hear the strength returning to her voice. Maybe his rage was good for something after all. The color in her cheeks had risen, and her eyes were bright.

  “You know that now,” he said, not willing to let it go just yet. Not until she realized how serious this was. “I could have found you dead on the floor. You realize that, right? That reliving someone dying could kill you?”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Not this time. Who knows what could have happened if she’d blown her head off in the past ten minutes?”

  “I get it, Noah. Okay? I get it.”

  He dropped his head forward, took several deep breaths. Get a grip. Get a fucking grip. But he was still shaking. He couldn’t help it. Losing her . . . Jesus, he couldn’t even think it. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . you scared me. You scared the living shit out of me.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You looked gray, Charlie. You weren’t answering me.”

  She shuddered again. “She . . . well, the top of her head was gone.” Sighing, she shook her head. “Second dead-person brains in two days.”

  He dropped his shoulders, drew in a long breath. Heart rate finally slowing, he dropped into the chair beside her. “Okay. I think I’m going to live now.”

  She smiled sideways at him. “I really am sorry.”

  His fingers twitched, itching to grasp her hand and squeeze. “Me, too. I kind of blew a gasket, didn’t I?”

  “It’s okay. It’s nice to know you care that much.”

  “You know I do, right? I’d be lost if I lost you. You already feel like a part of me.”

  Her smile turned soft and wry. “You fall fast.”

  “Never faster or harder.”

  “I . . . before, when you told me about your partner . . .”

  He drew back a little, not wanting to go there. Never wanting to go there again, not when it drove her away from him, made her distant. “That’s not—”

  “I was hurt,” she cut in. “And disappointed that you didn’t trust me enough to understand, that you expected me to condemn you. I know you, Noah. I’ve been inside your head. I know you.”

  He watched her wet her lips, and his heart jerked around, unsure what to do.

  “I know it seems like I see only in black-and-white,” she went on, “but I understand shades of gray. I understand what it means to be human and flawed, to do terrible things without thinking because you’re so driven to right a wrong. I’m guilty of that myself.” She paused, took a breath. “Yes, what you did was very wrong, but I . . . I know you. I know who you are on the inside . . . and I can live with it because I love you.”

  He blinked, his brain stunned into white, airless silence. She loved him. She fucking loved him! He would have lunged at her and kissed her down to her soul if he’d been able to do it without forcing an unpleasant flash on her.

  Smiling, as if knowing exactly what he was thinking, she held her hand out and wiggled her fingers. “Let’s just get it over with.”

  Still, he hesitated. He wanted to protect her. Always protect her.

  “What,” she prodded, “you’re not going to touch me now? Ever?”

  He cleared his throat and his head. Tried to think of a way to spare her. “Maybe it wears off after a while.”

  “We’re both going to have to get used to this, you know. You can’t go around refusing to touch me because you’re afraid of what I’ll feel.”

  He gave her a teasing grin. “Maybe I could spen
d some time in the men’s room replacing it with something infinitely more pleasant.”

  She laughed softly. “Much as I like that idea, this is quicker and easier. Give me your hand.”

  Reluctantly, he put his hand in hers.

  She stiffened, and her eyes went blind. He tightened his fingers on hers and stood to place a soft kiss on her mouth, felt the instant she came back to herself because her lips softened under his, parted. As his tongue stroked against hers, her sigh passed through his lips.

  Drawing back, he caressed the side of her face with the back of his hand. So smooth and warm and alive. He’d never get enough of touching her.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “You really wanted to kick my ass.”

  But then she opened her eyes and gave him a radiant smile that flipped his gut on the spot.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Logan joined them, carrying a plastic-bag-encased piece of paper covered with scrawled writing. “Donna Keene left us a suicide note.”

  “What does it say?” Noah asked.

  “She fesses up to all kinds of bad voodoo, including murder and blackmail. Says she’s been blackmailing the high-profile guests of the Royal Palm Inn. One of the maids, Louisa Alvarez, found her out and told her she blew the whistle to Charlie Trudeau. Says she killed Louisa then tried to kill Charlie to silence her before Louisa’s body could be found because she feared Charlie would know why Louisa was killed. She also took a shot at Noah, because he kept getting in the way when Donna went after Charlie. Once Louisa’s body was discovered, she figured it was all over and killed herself.”

  Charlie sank back in the chair, the shiver coursing through her making her wish she hadn’t handed Noah’s warm shirt back to him. “She was the ninja?”

  Logan nodded. “We found the costume in her suite upstairs.”

  “I could have sworn the ninja was a guy,” she said. “He was so strong.”

  Noah put his hand on the back of her neck, lightly massaged. “Donna Keene was thin, but she could have had muscle mass.”

  “I just . . . you’d think I would have known the attacker was a woman. You know, something . . . like I would have noticed she had breasts or something.”