by Лори Девоти
Kara frowned. What to say now? He acted as if he’d just popped out the door when she hadn’t been looking. Rude, but not occasion to call the paranormal press. The pounding she’d felt earlier returned. Damn. She couldn’t deal with this. Maybe the pretending-all-was-normal route was the wiser, at least until she was alone and able to think.
Glancing around, her gaze lit on a small black object almost hidden under a toppled stack of old school books. She sighed, happy to have a reason to change the course of conversation.
“I did find this.” She walked across the room, her gait a bit unsteady, to the small black notebook she’d found in Kelly’s box earlier.
She flipped open the cover and scanned the first page for the fiftieth time. “It looks like a list of names.”
“Really?” Risk shifted on the balls of his feet until he faced her. “What kind of names?”
Kara walked toward him, the notebook held out in front of her. “I don’t know. Names.” Her gaze flicked from his bare feet to his equally bare chest. Where were his clothes?
He glanced from the page to her face, his gaze intense, simmering. Kara licked her lips again. A vein at the base of Risk’s neck began to pulse, and Kara suddenly didn’t care about his strange answers or lack of shirt and shoes, she just longed to press her lips against the thrumming vein, to taste the saltiness of his skin.
“Do you want to see?” she asked.
He held out his hand. Kara started to slip her own into his grip, before remembering the notebook. “Oh.” A small nervous sound in the quiet room. “Here.”
The vein at his neck throbbing harder, he shifted his gaze to the paper. “Humans?”
“Uh, yes?” There he went again, making her think she should be running from the room instead of standing mesmerized by the lines of muscle that formed his back, or the way his worn jeans pulled across his thighs. Kara swallowed.
“Hmm.” He balanced the book on his leg, and looked up at her. Silence filled the room.
Kara reached out to take the book back, and her fingers brushed over taut denim. Risk’s eyes flashed, and Kara’s breath caught in her throat. Tension pulsed between them. Before she could pull back, his hand captured hers, his fingers warm, strong and masculine.
They stood there frozen. Kara unsure whether to run or to finish what they’d started earlier — to fling her legs on each side of his waist and trap his body with her own.
Risk rubbed his thumb across the bones of her hand. Emotion warring behind his eyes.
Kara opened her mouth, not sure what she was about to say, and the phone rang, breaking the spell.
Risk drew in a deep breath and followed Kara as she scampered out of the room. The dusty steps creaked under his weight as he climbed the stairs leading to the main house, leaving the dark basement behind him.
“This is Kara.” Kara stood in a small kitchen, a cordless phone wedged under her chin.
Polished wood floors and a white-painted table made the room cozy and feminine. An intriguing mix of cinnamon, coffee and Kara perfumed the air.
“No, I haven’t heard from her.” Kara glanced up, nodded for Risk to sit at the table.
Risk pulled out a spindle-legged chair and stared uneasily at the lemon-yellow cushion balanced on its seat.
“No, I understand.” Kara turned to face the wall, pressed her free hand to the back of her neck. “I…I can come now.”
With a click she hung up the phone. “I have to go.” Without looking at Risk, she strode to a cabinet and jerked out the drawer. “Where—? Damn it.” She looked up at Risk, her eyes snapping with anger.
Leaning against a line of cabinets, he wrapped his fingers around the cheerful yellow countertop, and fought to ignore the onslaught of emotion rolling out of her. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes. No.” Kara shook her head. “I don’t know. My car. Where is it?”
“Car?” He stared back at her. If she had a car, he didn’t know it. Most of his prey had bigger issues to worry about than lost transportation.
“Damn. It must still be at the bar — or towed.” She mumbled something under her breath. Then snapped her head up. “Your car. I’ll have to borrow it.” She disappeared through a doorway into a hallway. There were sounds of shuffling objects then the tinkle of keys.
Risk raised a brow. Silly female. He’d loaned her his Jeep once — to escape Lusse. But did she really think he would let her waltz away in it again? Without him? Sighing, he strode through the door after her.
Kara stared through the small windshield of Risk’s Jeep, refusing to look at the man himself. He had insisted on driving her to the morgue — despite the fact he was half-clothed. He’d just plucked the keys from her fingers and strode past her to the car. As distraught as she was, not knowing what awaited her, she’d followed, like a sheep.
When the detective had called, she’d lost her grip for a bit — her only thought to get to the morgue and prove the body they’d found wasn’t Kelly — couldn’t be Kelly. Even now, ten minutes later, her pulse pounded and she couldn’t seem to sit still on the leather seat. She had wanted the police to call, but not like this — not to tell her they’d found a body matching the description of her sister.
A body. A body. Her mind chanted over and over.
Sun beat down on her, and despite the cold air outside, sweat beaded on Kara’s neck and dribbled between her breasts. She stared out the window watching children with sleds whiz down a snow-covered hill as the Jeep zipped past.
Not Kelly. Not Kelly. Couldn’t be Kelly.
Sloshing through half-melted snow, the Jeep spun into the circle drive in front of the county building and jostled to a stop.
Risk turned in his seat to look at her.
Kara closed her eyes and unclicked her seat belt. Time to prove them wrong.
Risk had dropped Kara at the door, then driven off to find a parking spot. When he joined her inside the building, he was wearing a flannel shirt and boots. Kara didn’t bother to ask where they came from. She was beyond such details.
Detective Poulson was waiting for them at his desk. Kara had met him earlier, two days after she first reported Kelly missing. He was attractive in a slim marathon-runner kind of way. When he saw Kara, he smiled, flicked a chunk of too-long hair out of his eyes, then held out his hand. Before she could return the gesture, Risk stepped forward. The welcome in the detective’s eyes changed to a question.
“You have something to show us?” Risk asked, ignoring the other man’s hand.
Detective Poulson met Risk’s gaze, then lowered his hand. “Are you here for the ID, too?”
“We are,” Risk replied.
Poulson gave Risk a curious stare, but shrugged it off, switched his gaze back to Kara. “You ready for this? It isn’t going to be easy. This woman…she didn’t die an easy death.”
Kara inhaled through her nose, held the breath for a second. “I’m ready.” Ready or not. Right? There were just some things you’d never be ready for. Meeting the detective’s gaze, she gave her head a firm nod. “I’m ready.”
The detective looked as if he might say something else, then shook his head. “Follow me then. Might as well get this going.”
They took an elevator to the lower level. Kara stared blindly at the silver doors. When the bell dinged, she didn’t move. The detective cleared his throat, and Risk pressed a warm reassuring hand to the small of her back. Huffing out a breath, she stepped out of the elevator.
They stood in a short hall. Black scuff marks marred otherwise white walls. The air was cool; Kara wrapped her arms around herself, wishing Risk would replace his hand on her back or drape his arm around her shoulders. Wished someone would tell her this was all a mistake and motion them back into the elevator. Instead, Detective Poulson ushered them toward an older man in a white lab coat standing a few feet to their left.
“Dan is one of our forensic technicians. He’ll take us in.”
In the tech’s hand were three surgical masks. “For the smell,” he sa
id with an apologetic note.
Risk waved the mask off, but Kara took one, her hands shaking as she tied it around her face. With one last concerned nod, the technician pulled open a nearby door and motioned them inside.
Even through the mask, the smell hit Kara hard — an unpleasant mix of sulfur and ammonia. Her lungs burned, and her eyes watered. Blinking back the wetness, she glanced around, praying she would see nothing that reminded her of Kelly.
The room was small, cold, and sterile. There were three tables in the back, only one occupied by a sheet-covered body. Their companion motioned them ahead, then walked toward the corpse. Kara took a shuddering breath and forced her feet to move one in front of the other, her hand tightening around Risk’s arm with each step.
His eyes filled with sympathy, the technician placed his hand on the sheet. “Are you ready?” The question was directed at the detective, but the tech kept his gaze on Kara. Then before pulling back the sheet, he flicked a warning look to Risk.
Risk stepped closer, his large body seeming ready to shelter Kara from whatever lay underneath the white cloth.
Her gaze on the body in front of her, Kara nodded. Now or never. She had to know. Was it Kelly?
The tech flipped off the sheet then stepped back, his eyes focusing on something on the floor a few feet away. Kara ignored him. Ignored everything but the body on the table. She stifled a gasp as her gaze first lit on what she prayed wasn’t her sister. Closing her eyes against the sight, she counted to ten, leaned her back against Risk’s warmth then opened them again. She had to do this. Had to know.
It was a woman, her height. In other words, Kelly’s height, but past that it was impossible to say how the woman had looked in life. The police detective was right, this had not been a pleasant death.
The body was black, but not in skin tone, burned, charred. From the neck down, Kara could make out clothing, but barely. It was as if whatever the woman had been wearing melted into her skin before being burned even further, almost beyond possible recognition as clothing. What hair was left was sparse and frizzled. There was no way to identify the color.
And the smell. It was horrid beyond imagination.
Kara’s eyes filled again — the smell was stronger here, but it was more than that. She was trying to imagine the blackened thing lying in front of her filled with life, dancing at a club or kicking ass during fight training. She couldn’t. The charred corpse could never have been as alive as her sister, could it?
“What…killed her?” The words spilled out of Kara.
The detective stepped forward, his gaze on the still sheet-covered part of the corpse. “We don’t know. We suspect some kind of electric shock, maybe lightning, but there’s no entrance point. There are some broken bones, but the coroner says that could just be from the body being flung into something like a wall when it got the jolt.
“…Had a case where a boy got flung twenty feet—” Risk took a step forward, cutting the detective’s monologue off short. Poulson tightened his jaw, then continued, “I know it’s probably impossible to tell, but we have to ask. Is this your sister?”
Kara stared at the body for another minute before replying. “Can, can I touch her?”
The detective’s eyebrows shot up, his surprise darting through his eyes.
Kara didn’t know why she needed to touch the body, but somehow she knew it was the only way she’d know for sure. Was that…Kelly?
With a nod, Poulson gave his permission.
Kara curled her fingernails into her palm, bit her lip under the mask, then inched forward away from Risk and toward the body.
Risk placed a hand on each side of her waist, stopping her. “There are other ways. You don’t have to do this.”
He was right. Even as incinerated as the body was, it still had to offer DNA evidence. Kara was no forensics expert, and she knew that had to be a possibility, but she would have to wait for that. She knew she would never accept the truth, not unless she found out for herself, now.
One hand pressed to her mouth to help block the smell the mask couldn’t disguise, she stepped away from Risk and placed her other hand on the dead woman’s blackened forehead.
Nothing. Then memories flooded her. She was in someone’s head — the woman’s? She was sitting at a computer, worried, scared, and Kelly was there taking notes in the notebook Kara had found in the basement. Someone was missing — they would find them — the woman trusted Kelly. Had no one else to trust. Then she was alone — calm, laying out a statue, bowl and stones — all similar to the items Kara had found in Kelly’s plastic tub — then she was somewhere new. It was smoky and dark. A knife pressed against her throat, and someone whispered roughly in her ear. Terror sliced into her, cutting off her voice, leaving her defenseless.
Kara scrambled to pull herself from the vision, to save what she had learned. The woman knew Kelly — had been somewhere Kara had been before. Kara clung to the thought, where?
Just as she felt the answer was within her grasp, she sank back in — smells, sights and sensations warring for her notice. A dank stench surrounded her; pain burned and twisted inside her and light exploded from behind her eyes. Then finally, when she knew she could stand no more, a scream ripped through her.
7
Breath heaving, Kara realized someone had yanked her backward, breaking her contact with the charred body that used to be a person — a person someone loved surely, but not Kelly.
Thank God. It wasn’t Kelly.
Kara glanced down at her fingers then clasped them in her other hand and pressed them tightly against her chest.
“What happened?” Risk grasped her shoulders so tightly his fingers dug into her flesh. Startled, she looked up at him.
He held her at arm’s length, staring into her eyes, his simmering with an emotion she couldn’t quite peg — anger, concern, what?
Poulson stepped toward them with brows lowered. A low growl rumbled from Risk’s chest and he pulled her to his side, his arm draped around her. To Kara’s surprise, she realized she was shaking.
“Are you all right?” the detective asked, bending to peer at her, crushed as she was against Risk.
Kara closed her eyes, grateful she hadn’t passed out. That was becoming an annoying habit lately. She had to be strong — Kelly was still out there. Kara had to find her.
She opened her eyes and placed a hand on Risk’s chest to push herself away. Once she was standing under her own power again, she looked at all three men. “Fine. I’m fine.” She squeezed the words out of her constricted throat.
Three pairs of eyes stared back at her.
Another rumble started in Risk’s throat and he reached for her again.
“No, really. I’m fine.” She held out one hand, palm out. “Just a bit overwrought. That’s all.” She glanced at the technician, shoving her shaking hands into her jean pockets. “That’s normal, right?”
“Sure it is. I’d be worried if this—” He glanced behind him and, seeming startled to find the body still there, tugged the white sheet over it, covering the corpse from their view. “I’d be worried if something like this didn’t upset you. You’re doing fine.”
Kara smiled, grateful for the support, although she knew what she had just experienced wasn’t normal — not in any way.
“What happened?” Risk asked as soon as they were both belted into his Jeep.
“Nothing. Just like I said, I was overwrought.” Kara ran her fingers up and down the seat strap.
“It wasn’t your sister?”
Kara sucked her lower lip into her mouth, held it there between her teeth. Her eyes huge, she shook her head. “No. Not Kelly.”
Risk stared at her for a second. She was lying. Something had happened when she’d touched that body. Something that scared her, but if she said it wasn’t her sister, he believed her. She wouldn’t be able to hide the emotion that revelation would have brought with it.
He put the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot.
He was getting closer. He could feel it. And Kara’s sister was still out there. He still had a chance to find her, for himself and…he glanced at Kara’s petite form…Kara.
The thought sneaked up on him. But him first, he corrected. He had to stick with his plan. He would save Kara’s sister, but for himself. If it saved Kara from a loss as well, that didn’t really matter.
He glanced at her again. Her hands lay limply on her lap.
Risk stared at her pale hands, at the fine bones and delicate fingers. She was tiny — how would she defend herself against Lusse once he’d secured his freedom and left?
She’d have her sister, he reminded himself. If the two of them could free him, they could surely defend themselves, right?
“What happened to her?” she asked, her voice shaking.
Risk glanced up at her wide eyes, startled by her question.
“That woman.” She jerked her head over her shoulder, toward the building they had just left. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, and he didn’t. He’d never seen a corpse like the one lying under that sheet. A witch, he guessed. He couldn’t be sure, not with her life force missing, but there were hints. A lingering scent of power separate from whatever had killed her.
“Detective Poulson…he said, lightning. Do you think…?” She glanced up, her blue eyes filled with hope.
Risk balled his fists. Would lying to her help? No. It was time his little witch learned the truth — or most of it.
“Let’s get back to your house. I think we need to talk.”
Kara studied Risk’s profile as a passing car’s headlight illuminated the inside of his Jeep.
He wanted to talk. Kelly once told her someone wanting to talk could never be good — but a man? That was downright dangerous.
They pulled up in front of the small house Kara shared with her sister. Flat stones formed the walkway to the porch. Kara slid from the Jeep and stepped from one rock to the other. The thyme she’d planted last summer was still fragrant when she kicked off the light covering of snow and scuffed the herb with her shoe.
