Energized

by Mary Behre

  “All right, let’s go inside. Zig is waiting for us. I texted him in the truck.” They started up the steps but Karma pulled them to a stop. “Just so you know, I think you and I have more in common than you realize. That wasn’t the dashboard lights you saw. Those lights were orange. You saw Niall’s aura.”

  “Orange? You sure?” Hannah asked, then realized she knew the answer. “You’re right. So that means what? I’m going to start seeing the auras of everyone around me too?”

  “Well—” Karma began but was cut off by Hannah raising one hand.

  “Never mind, explain later. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Because somewhere in Tidewater a man’s body was rotting in a building under construction.

  * * *

  “TELL US AGAIN.” Detective Reynolds crossed his arms over his chest and sat on the corner of his sturdy wooden desk. His partner mirrored the pose on the opposite corner. Both men stared at Hannah with enough skepticism in their eyes, they could have probably written a tome on its definition.

  “I told you. All I saw was that guy was my age-ish. Mercy stabbed him once in the chest but must have missed the heart because he didn’t die right away. Mercy got really angry and stabbed him in the throat next to make sure he was dead.”

  “And you say, you got this vision from a knife where you work?” the partner asked, his voice oozing disbelief.

  “Yes, Detective O’Toole.”

  “O’Dell. Detective O’Dell,” he snapped. “Where’s the knife now?”

  Karma, who’d been standing against the wall next to Zig, strode forward. “Here it is.” She reached into her purse and pulled out the object still wrapped in the hand towel from the Boxing Cat.

  “But that’s not the actual murder weapon,” Hannah said as Detective Reynolds examined it. “The blade she used was bigger, sharper. It didn’t look like any kind of knife I’d seen before. The one side was curved and the other side was serrated with wide teeth.”

  “But this knife is what made you go all hooey?” Detective O’Dell asked.

  “I wouldn’t say hooey, but yes, it gave me the vision.” Hannah huffed in exasperation, glancing at Karma helplessly. Her friend gave her a small nod. It didn’t do much, but it did embolden her to keep going. “Look, the killer must have touched the knife tonight at the restaurant. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Right. Makes sense,” Detective Reynolds scoffed. “You got a vision, saw a murder, but you can’t tell us what the killer looks like. You can’t tell us where to find the body. And you have no murder weapon.”

  “Wait, just give me a sec.” Hannah pulled her sketch pad out of her backpack and flipped it open to the page she’d been drawing on. “I have a drawing here of the victim. That’s got to count for something. Can’t you run it through a facial recognition program or something? Find out where the guy lives, who he knows?”

  “You watch too many cop shows on television.”

  The detectives didn’t even glance at the drawing. They looked at each other over her head and seemed to share a silent conversation. One that was interrupted by Karma tugging Hannah by the arm. “Let’s go, Hannah. They don’t believe you.”

  They were most of the way to the door when one of the detectives muttered loud enough for Hannah to hear, “You need to keep your girlfriend on a tighter leash, Harmon.”

  Karma must have heard it too because she swung around and hissed out something in Spanish, then spun on her heel and all but pushed Hannah out the door.

  Outside on the sidewalk, Karma spoke rapid-fire Spanish under her breath, her cheeks splotchy and her fists clenched.

  Hannah patted a hand on Karma’s back. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” her accent thick again. She sounded as if she were choking back tears.

  “What did you say to them?”

  “I told them their mamas would be disappointed to know that their sons were really little pussies with peanut-sized dicks and no imagination.”

  Hannah laughed. God, it felt good to laugh. It had been so stressful in the police station. She hadn’t really been prepared for it.

  Karma laughed too, but her laughter fell away as Officer Zig Harmon stepped outside. By the fierce expression on his face, Hannah expected him to be angry or frustrated. Her jaw went slack when he swept Karma into his arms and kissed her loudly.

  “Damn, Karma, you make me so hot,” Zig whispered in a deep baritone. “You really pissed them off this time.”

  “And you just let them talk about me like that?” Karma pushed at his hold, but he didn’t release her.

  “Mi amor, I told them you weren’t anyone’s bitch, and if they knew what was good for them, they’d hold their tongues around you. You are a McKinnon after all and not all of your cousins operate within the legal system anymore.”

  Karma laughed and swatted him on the shoulder. Then they stared into each other’s eyes as if they were the only people in the world. Their love poured out of them, making Hannah’s breath hitch.

  Wow, third wheel thy name is Hannah.

  She sidled down the steps to the sidewalk, giving them room and a semblance of privacy.

  “Hannah, wait!” Karma called out. She whispered something to Zig who nodded, then followed Karma down the steps until they were beside Hannah.

  He pulled a card out of his pocket, cast a sheepish look at Karma, then said, “Give these guys a call. If you say there’s been a murder, they’ll look until they find a body or can prove nothing happened. And unlike the bozo twins,” he hiked a thumb toward the police station, “they’re more open-minded about visions. They have some experience with that.”

  Hannah accepted the card and blinked. It was a business card for Tidewater Security Specialists. The same private investigators who’d come to find her in Fincastle. A sign she was doing the right thing. Something she desperately needed after being verbally pummeled by the cops.

  Pocketing the card, she nodded. “Thanks, I’ll call them when I get back to my hotel room.”

  “You need a lift?” Niall’s voice spoke softly behind her, but that didn’t stop her from jumping.

  “Hey, Boss, thanks for coming back.” Karma smiled warmly at Niall, then gave Zig a kiss on the cheek. “I can definitely use the ride. Zig’s got work tonight.”

  “What about you, Hannah?” Niall asked, his grass-green eyes locked on hers.

  Hannah eyed Niall with a mix of lust and distrust. Outrage still pumped through her body at his callous, but all-too-true words but so did the desire to lose herself in those lovely eyes of his.

  Who needed Mercy for insanity? Hannah was driving herself crazy without any help.

  Niall held out a hand to her and she eyed it suspiciously. It wasn’t him she didn’t trust, it was herself. She really wanted to invite him back to her hotel room, but she had more self-respect than to throw herself at someone who had already made it clear he didn’t want to repeat their time together.

  “Sure. I’m at the Blue Owl Hotel.”

  Niall opened the passenger door. The dome light from the truck cast him in a greenish glow. Not a sickly color but a warm, comforting, soothing light. Hannah nearly sighed until Karma coughed behind her.

  “It’s him,” Karma mouthed to her when Hannah glanced at her friend.

  She whipped her gaze back to Niall but the green light had been replaced by the orange glow from the dashboard lights. Before she had time to think, Karma gave her a slight push and Hannah climbed into the cab.

  “That’s a pretty good hike from the Boxing Cat. How’d you get to work today?” Karma asked once they were all inside and on the road.

  “I took a bus. It’s an easy line from the hotel to the restaurant. Good sign.” Hannah grinned.

  “A good sign?” Niall asked. His gaze bounced between the road and Hannah.

  Each time he
looked her way, her heart did a funny little jump. She played it cool though. “Well, yeah. I needed to go to my mother’s house and I just happened to find the Blue Owl in the phone book. Another sign.”

  “Blue owl like the painting in your apartment?” Niall asked.

  “You’ve been to her apartment?” Karma asked.

  Hannah pressed on Karma’s toe to silence her friend.

  Oh, please don’t go there.

  Niall might change his mind and fire her after all—even if the slip had been his. He’d been acting so strangely all night, Hannah didn’t want to risk annoying him. Yet.

  Because whether he liked it or not, she was going to sit down with him and talk this out. He might not think he wanted her around, might even say it in that literal way of his, but his actions sang an entirely different song.

  “Long story, Karma,” Niall said, his cheeks mottled with color. “Never mind.”

  Hannah pressed her lips together until the smile that made her mouth itch was firmly restrained. “Right. Anyway, the hotel was perfect.” Turning to Karma she explained, “Blue’s my favorite color and my favorite animal is the owl. From the moment I decided to leave home, everything lined up perfectly. I sold a painting during the May Day celebration that covered my bus ticket. The electrician I was going to do my apprenticeship with won a cruise and decided to take his wife to Alaska this summer, so that freed me up to come to Tidewater. Then I found the Blue Owl Hotel online and they had a monthly deal that was half the cost of the weekly rentals if I paid up front. The place isn’t the Ritz but it’s cozy and bright and on the ocean. Altogether, I’d say the universe is practically screaming that I’m on the right path.”

  Niall snorted his obvious lack of faith at the same time Karma said, “That’s really cool.”

  Hannah turned back to her Marine. “Haven’t you ever tried to do something and no matter what you did, it didn’t work out?”

  “I suppose.” He shrugged and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “Hasn’t everybody?”

  “Yes. I know I have but then there’s the flip side. Like those times you didn’t even have to try but things fell into place. Like every light being green on a day when you should have been late for some important meeting. Only you weren’t because of all the green lights. That’s the universe telling you that you’re on the right path. Doing the right thing. See, that’s what the universe is telling me with all those things lining up. I’m on the right path.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Niall frowned and slowed his truck as sirens erupted behind them. Hannah tried to see through the back window as Niall pulled to the side of the road. “Looks like the universe is sending you mixed messages.”

  Four fire engines and an ambulance with their sirens blaring raced past them and directly toward the twenty-foot bright yellow flames licking the night sky. She didn’t have to see it to know what was burning.

  The Blue Owl.

  CHAPTER 10

  GOD, I’M SUCH an asshole.

  Niall glanced at Hannah and wished to God he could take back his thoughtless words. But he couldn’t and the look of desolation on her face was worse than shrapnel to the gut.

  “Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. My room is on the second floor in the back.” Hannah seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him or Karma.

  An enormous cracking sound splintered the stream of sirens wailings. Then the entire second floor caved in on the first.

  “No!” Hannah dove toward Niall’s door, trying to climb over him. He grabbed her around the waist, trying to hold her against him but she wriggled like a wet fish in his grasp. “Let me go! Everything I brought is in there. All of my clothes, my money, my art supplies, everything. Even Hootie, the owl my parents gave me on adoption day. I can’t let it all burn.”

  Hannah elbowed his belly in her bid for freedom. She might be tiny but that jab was good enough to make him suck in a breath. She managed to wriggle out of his hands, across his lap, and flung open the door, damn near falling out of the truck. Niall caught her by the back of her shirt and Karma grabbed her legs. Thank Christ he’d pulled off to the side of the road and stopped before the fire brigade came through, otherwise Hannah might have ended up getting her head squashed beneath the tire of a rescue vehicle.

  “Chica, escúchame!” Karma tugged Hannah back inside. She rattled off rapid-fire Spanish, then paused as if waiting for a response. The sound of the foreign language was enough to jolt Hannah into listening, at least.

  “Karma, you’re using your mother’s language again,” Niall said.

  Her mother’s Spanish heritage bled through her normal southern Virginia accent, giving her words a rich cross between her Mexican roots and her Virginia ones.

  “I was speaking in Spanish?” Karma asked, her accent fading with each word. She shook her head as if to clear it, then faced Hannah. “You can’t go running in there. You’ll only get in the way. Let’s wait until we hear what the damage is.”

  Hannah made a sound that could have been a chuckle or a heavy sigh. “Sorry. You’re right. But I can’t ask you two to wait here. It could be hours yet. Look at that.” She gestured toward the scene with her hands, then let them flop down.

  And yes, that was Hannah’s hand on his groin. Oh, holy hell, she was going to kill him.

  It was purely physiological, but damn, her touch made him rock hard. And she apparently didn’t even realize it, caught up as she was with the flaming scene in front of her. Niall carefully plucked her hand from his lap by her wrist.

  “S-sorry.” Even in the orange glow of the fire, her cheeks burned red. She rubbed her hands together as if cold.

  A firefighter in full turnout gear tapped on the hood of the truck. Niall rolled down his window. “We need to keep this area clear. You need to roll back out of here.”

  “But my stuff’s in the hotel,” Hannah called out, once again leaning over Niall’s lap. Thankfully, this time she braced her hands on the steering wheel. Still, her honeysuckle fragrance clung to her and for a moment was all Niall could smell. It no longer brought home images of Tidewater but of a certain pretty bartender naked and writhing beneath him.

  “Anyone you know of inside?”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, I just got to town and I’m here alone.”

  “Then I’m sorry, miss. The hotel is burning fast. I doubt there’s going to be much left. You can call the Red Cross if you need assistance with food, clothing, or shelter but there’s nothing you can do here.” Something cracked and boomed behind the fireman. The front wall collapsed inward and what had been the roof of the first floor crashed down. The fireman’s radio signaled and he tugged the handheld from his shoulder, pressing it to his ear, then talked into it before he returned it to its holder. With one gloved hand, he tapped the open window of Niall’s truck. “I need you to clear the road.”

  Waving them away with one hand, the firefighter jogged back toward the burning building.

  With no other hope for it, Niall put the truck in reverse.

  “Where are we going?” Hannah asked, her eyes wide with confusion. “I only have fifty in my wallet. Shoot! I left my cell phone charging in the hotel. I don’t even have a way to call home.”

  “You can stay with me tonight.” Karma nodded sharply. She pulled out her cell and tapped out a text.

  Niall caught the move out of the side of his eye and wondered at the punch of jealousy he felt. He wanted to be the one consoling her. The one to take her home.

  He was such a fucking gentleman. He’d get her home and take her right back to bed given half a chance.

  “Great idea, Karma,” Niall said quickly, turning the corner and heading to Karma’s apartment. “You’ll be in good hands there, Hannah.”

  Hannah turned to him, her big golden eyes searching. For what, he wasn’t sure, but he hoped it wasn’t for him to be her re
scuer. That was never going to happen. She was his employee now, and would never again be his lover.

  Maybe if he repeated it to himself enough, he’d finally believe it.

  * * *

  HANNAH RUBBED THE grit from her eyes and blinked. The room slowly took shape. First the portrait of an old woman in a traditional Mexican dress on the far wall came into focus. Beneath that was a plain, olive-colored dresser that looked to be about forty years old and missing handles on a number of drawers. The rug on the floor looked hand-braided in the brilliant shades of orange, yellow, brown, and green.

  Sitting up, Hannah glanced at the four-poster bed. A blanket similar in color to the rug covered the bed. It was warm and soft and completely unfamiliar. She remembered arriving at Karma’s apartment last night but had no memory of the blanket.

  “So she’s in the guest room?” Zig’s voice filtered through the closed door.

  “She needed a place to stay. Her hotel burned down. I thought you understood when you replied to my text last night. Didn’t you realize she’d be here this morning?” Karma’s voice, filled with humor, lilted through the air.

  “Yes, I understood. Mi amor, you’re always helping the lost, aren’t you? Damn, you’re so sexy this morning.” There was silence for a moment, then the distinct sound of giggling.

  Hannah pushed out of bed and stared at her reflection in the floor-length mirror on the bedroom door. She wore a long, thin black Michael Bublé T-shirt and a pair of too-long blue jogging pants. At her reflection she remembered Karma lending the clothing the night before.

  “That’s not all that burned last night.” Zig’s voice again, a note of seriousness this time.

  Hannah opened the door and followed the voices down the hall.

  “Good morning.” Hannah made sure to announce her presence before she walked into the room, just in case the couple decided to get smoochy again.