“It means that I can sometimes…sense things,” he said, his voice low.
“You mean like gut instinct?” She could relate to that.
He shook his head. “More like…psychic stuff.”
Get out of here. “You don’t expect me to believe—”
“Here in Moriah’s Landing my psychic ability is stronger than it was when I was gone.” His eyes met hers. “It’s stronger around you.”
Right. A thought struck her. “Are you telling me you can read my mind?” She didn’t like the sound of this. If he could read her mind, then he knew how she’d been thinking about him. She felt her face flush at the thought.
“No, I can’t read your mind.”
She couldn’t believe her relief. But then, she didn’t believe any of this, did she? “If you can’t read minds…”
“It’s hard to explain,” he was saying.
She was sure it was.
“I just get strong feelings sometimes.” He shrugged.
“That’s it?” She hadn’t meant to sound disappointed.
His gaze narrowed. “What did you expect?”
“I’d at least expect some superhero powers,” she said. She put the Beretta away, knowing that she didn’t need it with Jonah. A warlock. Oh yeah.
“You aren’t taking this seriously.”
She smiled. Maybe he could read her mind. “If you really were psychic you’d be at the nearest horse track making your next million.”
“It doesn’t work that way either.” He sounded disgusted. With her or with himself, she wasn’t sure. “Look, I’m only telling you this so you understand—”
“Understand what?” she said, her own antennae going up.
He ran his tongue over his upper lip, the movement drawing attention to his mouth, making her realize again just how dangerous this man really was to her.
He looked away for a moment, then back at her, the intensity of his gaze practically nailing her to the brick sidewalk. “Could we go somewhere and talk about this? It isn’t something I think we should discuss out here on the street.” He reached for her, his touch like a live wire on her skin. “As I tried to tell you earlier, you’re in danger.”
She pulled back, suddenly wanting to cry. “Don’t do this, okay? You’re scaring me.” She felt her heart take off at a dead run. “If you’re working with the FBI, it can’t be on my mother’s case, not a twenty-year-old murder, unless…” She stared at him, his expression making her suddenly bone-chilled cold.
“I think her killer is after you now,” Jonah said quietly, painfully. “I think he has been for some time.”
No. She looked past him, the moon bright. Everything in her wanted to argue that he was wrong. But hadn’t she felt something? Still…“If someone really was after me, then what is he waiting for?”
“The full moon.”
The full moon? For a moment there, she’d almost started to believe him a little. “The full moon?”
“Trust me on this,” he said. “We have forty-eight hours to find him. I’m going to need your help.”
“Hold on. Without some sort of evidence, how do I know any of this is real or that anything you’ve told me is the truth?”
“You know,” he said softly, his gaze holding hers as he drew her toward the motorcycle.
She went, her mind rebelling, and yet part of her kept thinking of the daisies. Those damn daisies. If it wasn’t for them and the trouble with her car tonight…
He handed her the helmet off the seat of his bike and climbed on, waiting for her to do the same.
Slipping on the helmet, she swung her leg over the seat, trying to stay back, away from him, as if by not touching him she could distance herself from what he’d told her. Distance herself from the impact this man had on her.
It proved impossible. She slid down the leather until her front was pressed against his back. His touch brought on all the conflicting emotions she’d felt since the first night she’d met him. As if she didn’t have enough problems.
“Hang on,” he said as he started the engine and gave it gas. The bike leaped into noisy motion. She threw her arms around his waist to keep from falling off, reinforcing contact. She closed her eyes, giving up, too tired to fight the chemistry between them.
The ride to her house was, thankfully, short, the cool night air clearing her head a little.
He pulled the motorcycle up to the front door. She started to get off the bike, wanting to break the physical contact as quickly as possible, but Jonah reached back to put a stilling hand on her thigh. He motioned toward the dark porch. Her front door stood open.
Chapter Twelve
“Could your sister have left the door open?” Jonah whispered, easing off the bike seat as he pulled the .38 from his shoulder holster.
“No.” As she slipped off the seat, he saw she had her weapon in her hand again. Just his luck getting involved with a private eye. Especially one who looked like this one.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t noticed the way her jeans hugged her hips and molded her wonderful round bottom. The white fabric of the crop top lay stark against her olive skin. Her belly was brown above her jeans, and he’d caught the small flash of silver when she moved toward the porch. A belly-button ring?
She gave him a look that told him not to say a word about her going into the house with him.
He motioned to her to at least stay behind him. Carefully, he climbed the porch and eased the front door open a little farther, listening for any sounds in the house. When he heard none, he moved inside, waiting before he flicked on the flashlight from his pocket.
He moved swiftly through the lower floor. While the front door lock had been jimmied open, the rest of the house looked undisturbed—and almost too quiet. It obviously hadn’t been a burglary or the thieves weren’t interested in the TV, stereo, DVD player or the silver.
He felt an odd sensation and stopped, his breath catching. The person who’d broken in hadn’t come to take something—but to leave something. And that person had left the door open on purpose. He’d wanted Kat to know he’d been there. Just as he’d left the cadaver in the gazebo.
Jonah rushed back toward the front of house. No Kat. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. He swore and, taking two stairs at a time, raced up to the second level.
He didn’t find her there, so kept going up to the third floor, bursting into her bedroom. Past her he could see the widow’s walk where she’d stood earlier tonight. Where he sensed she’d stood the night of her mother’s murder.
She didn’t seem to hear him come racing in. Nor did she answer when he said her name. She stood in front of the vanity, holding something in the palm of her hand, looking at if she’d seen a ghost. And he knew. She’d found what the intruder had left for her.
THE MOMENT SHE WALKED into the room, Kat had smelled her mother’s perfume, the scent so strong, so overpowering she fought to breathe. Memories swamped her, pulling her under, the memories of her mother tightly caught up in the scent of her perfume.
It was as if her mother had just been in the room, her perfume lingering behind. Just as her sordid reputation and the odd circumstances of her death had.
At first she’d thought she was only imagining the scent, the same way she could imagine her mother in this room, sitting at her dressing table, putting on her lipstick getting ready to go to work. Kat had hated it when her mother went to work. Hated the smell of that perfume. It meant her mother wouldn’t be home until late because she’d be meeting a man after work. A man who wasn’t Kat’s daddy. Where had that memory come from?
Kat had moved to the dressing table, catching her reflection in the mirror, startled to see her mother’s face—not her own. It was as if Leslie Ridgemont had come back from the grave.
As she stumbled back, she hit the edge of the vanity. Something glasslike tumbled over, drawing her attention. It was a small lavender bottle with a glass rose on the cork stopper. A perfume bottle.
Her pulse thundered in h
er ears as she reached for it. Some of the perfume had spilled out on the vanity top. She cradled the tiny lavender bottle in her palm, just as she imagined her mother had years ago.
“Kat?” Jonah’s voice sounded far away.
The perfume bottle was like the one her mother used to have. The one Kat had thrown away when she’d found it in her mother’s things.
She stared at the bottle in her palm, the cloying scent making her sick to her stomach. It hadn’t been on the vanity this morning. She would have remembered. Someone had left it here for her, pushing everything else aside on the vanity so she couldn’t miss it. Just as she couldn’t miss the front door standing open when she came home.
“Kat!” Jonah said next to her.
She blinked, the spell broken.
“What’s wrong?” Jonah asked, his voice tense.
She looked over at him, remembering everything he’d told her and how she hadn’t wanted to believe him that she was in danger, that someone was after her. “It’s the same perfume my mother used to wear.”
“Here, give it to me,” he said, frowning with concern as he pulled a tissue from the box at the edge of the vanity and took the bottle carefully from the palm of her hand. “Do you have a plastic bag we can put it in?”
She nodded, still shocked that someone had broken into her house to leave the perfume where she would find it. Just as they’d left the daisies. Just as they’d left the cadaver. Only this time, they’d come inside her house. Into her bedroom.
She felt herself begin to shake. Felt Jonah’s arm around her shoulders. She stepped into him for a moment, soaking up his warmth, his strength, his arms coming around her to hold her tightly. Then she straightened and went to get a bag for the evidence. Evidence.
She no longer believed she had nothing to fear. Or that she could handle this alone.
JONAH MADE HER WARM MILK and insisted she sit in the overstuffed chair in the living room. He’d closed the curtains, locked the door and told her he wasn’t leaving her alone, but he could tell she didn’t feel safe. He knew she didn’t trust him. But then, why should she?
She drank the milk. He thought maybe some of the warmth might have eased the chill inside her—the same chill he felt.
“Who are you?” she asked, not looking at him.
The question surprised him. “I already told you.”
“Right, you’re a warlock. With no powers. Just the ability to ‘know’ certain things. Funny, but before I met you, none of this was happening. No daisies on my doorstep, no one following me home, no one spying on me, no one breaking into my house.”
He could hear the fear in her voice. She hadn’t taken him seriously before, but now she was scared.
“I’m not the one doing this,” he said.
“You just ‘sense’ the person who is.” He could see that she was fighting tears. She waved her hand through the air, her gaze settling on him. “I didn’t feel afraid until you came to town,” she said, her voice breaking.
“I don’t blame you for being…skeptical,” he said.
“I’m a lot more than skeptical,” she retorted. “I want to know everything. What you’re doing here in Moriah’s Landing, everything. Including a name of someone I can talk to at the FBI to verify that you’re for real.”
That could be a small problem. “If you call the FBI they will tell you my cover story—that I was kicked out.”
She started to rise from the chair, her gaze going to her purse and the Beretta he’d seen her slide back inside it.
“Hold on,” he said, realizing what he was about to tell her could get them both killed. But at this point, he feared neither of them had much more to lose.
She sat back down.
“A month ago, one of our agents came to Moriah’s Landing undercover,” he said. “The FBI had received an anonymous note that some illegal medical supplies were coming in by boat. That agent disappeared. I’ve been sent here to find out what happened to him—and intercept another boat, this one, according to our anonymous informant, carrying yet another shipment of these same illegal supplies.”
“What are they?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We suspect it has something to do with the secret society of scientists that dates back to the first residents in this town.”
She nodded, no doubt having heard the rumors of the secret society. “And the agent? You’re assuming he’s dead?”
“Yes. Max would have checked in by now if he hadn’t been.” Jonah couldn’t hide his guilt.
“And you got involved with me because I mistook you for my blind date,” she said.
“At first. Then I realized you were in danger.” Even now he couldn’t be sure that his showing up hadn’t had some effect on the killer’s plans for Kat.
“If you can ‘sense’ this, why can’t you ‘sense’ the killer?” she asked. “And tell me who he is so I can stop him?”
“It’s not an exact science,” he said. “Some people think it’s a gift. I’m not one of them. But it is definitely a case of use it or lose it. I haven’t used it since I left here. This may surprise you, but I was tired of being different. I didn’t want to know about the things going on around me so I worked hard at not feeling—or knowing anything.”
“So this gift of yours is rusty, is what you’re saying?” She studied him, disbelief in her eyes. And concern.
“And I’m here without any backup as part of my cover.”
She didn’t seem happy to hear this.
“All I can tell you is that the first night I met you I sensed someone out in the fog watching you, so I followed you home. Someone else followed you as well.”
She blinked. “I thought I heard two sets of footsteps behind me.”
He nodded. “I saw a man watching your house the next night. I chased him, but lost him in the cemetery. Unfortunately, I didn’t get close enough that I could see his face.”
“You do realize how this all sounds,” she said, getting up from her chair to go to the window. She pushed aside the curtain.
“I know you don’t want to believe me. Or trust me,” he said. “But I think part of you does. It isn’t just the daisies and the perfume, is it?”
She turned slowly. He met the heat of her gaze. As always, it sent a jolt through him. He saw her weaken a little, unsure.
“There’s been something else, hasn’t there?” he said quietly.
She brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m having the nightmare again,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s the same one I had after my mother died, disjointed, frightening, too mixed up to make much sense of.” She seemed to hesitate.
“Something has changed in the dream?”
She nodded, not seeming overly surprised that he knew that. Or had guessed it. “Blood. I saw blood.”
The thing that had started the rumors about a vampire killer on the town green.
“I know it doesn’t make any sense—”
“It does make sense, Kat. I’ve seen the official report. Your mother had two small cuts on her neck. The police believed that the killer strangled her until she was unconscious then took some of her blood. He was interrupted, possibly by Arabella, or he might have taken more.”
Kat closed her eyes. “Claire’s blood was also taken when he had her.” He could see that for twenty years she’d feared her mother’s killer was still out there. Maybe even feared that the man had taken the wrong woman that night in the cemetery five years ago. Maybe he’d been after Kat all along and mistakenly had kidnapped Claire.
“It wasn’t the same man.”
Kat’s head snapped up. “What?”
“I don’t think the man who killed your mother and the one who abducted Claire were the same men,” he said.
“How can you be sure of that?” she demanded.
“I can’t. It’s just a…feeling I have, and admittedly, not a very strong one,” he conceded.
Jonah knew it definitely wasn’t Dr. Rathfastar, the man re
sponsible for the deaths in Moriah’s Landing earlier this year, who’d been stalking Kat. He was dead. Nor had he been around back when Claire was attacked.
“Why now?” she asked, sounding scared. “Next you’re going to tell me that you think this has something to do with the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death. Or even the 350th anniversary of the town.”
“Not in the way you mean. This is no ghost after you. A lot of factors could be contributing to the killer making his move now. The fact that you look so much like your mother, that you’re about the age she was when she died…” The moon. But he didn’t tell her that. “There is one other possibility,” he said cautiously. “You were three when your mother died, right?”
She nodded.
“So you weren’t alone in the house,” he said.
“My father was at sea, my mother at work, my grandmother was baby-sitting me.”
“Were you living in this house?”
She nodded.
The crucial question. “Where was your bedroom?”
“On the second floor.”
Her answer threw him. If his instincts about this were off, then what did that say about the others? “You were asleep on the second floor then at the time of the murder?”
She started to nod, then stopped. “No, I forgot. I had a bad dream. My grandmother told me she put me in bed with her. She was staying in my mother’s room.”
His heart leaped. “In your mother’s room on the third floor, the bedroom with the widow’s walk?”
She nodded.
Jonah let out a sigh. “Kat, I think you saw your mother’s murderer that night from the widow’s walk.” He hesitated. “I think he saw you as well.”
KAT STARED AT HIM, her pulse thudding in her ears. Part of her actually believed him. Why was that?
“I believe you woke up that night and went to the widow’s walk. There was a full moon that night. But it was raining. Still you could have seen him either going into the gazebo with your mother or coming back out later.”
She stared into Jonah’s dark eyes, seeing the night as he pictured it.
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