by Harte, Marie
“You okay?” His gruff voice caused her to tremble, and he wasn’t even trying to be sexy.
“I think so. I’m not sure what happened there, but I’m me. Not her. Not that I was before, but it felt—”
“Real.”
She nodded, wishing her nipples weren’t so hard. If he’d only touch them, squeeze them, order her to her knees… She squirmed in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. Stop thinking about sex, Lara. Right now!
Noah closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Then he opened them and looked at her as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. Calm, in control, as if what he’d seen hadn’t affected him in the slightest.
“Lara, before that…distraction…I wanted to talk to you. You’re tied to the reason I’m here, even though I wish to hell you weren’t.”
That stung, especially after what they’d just shared. Not shared, seen, she told herself.
He continued. “This whole town is full of the past.”
Lara didn’t understand Noah at all. How could he go from sexually aroused to stoic so fast? Because despite evidence of his erection, he didn’t display one iota of passion on his face. “Please, explain. I’m all ears.”
He ran a hand through hair that needed a cut. A disheveled jerk with a body like a god, wrapped up in a button-down shirt that needed to see the underside of an iron.
“This is going to sound totally unbelievable, but considering what just happened, you might want to keep an open mind.”
And open legs. My, sugar, you sure are handsome.
By the look on Noah’s face, he’d heard the voice too. She blinked. “Y-you heard that?”
“I hear all sorts of things. I see them too. Especially in places like this. But I don’t understand how you heard it.”
“What do you mean, ‘places like this’?”
“This is going to sound strange, but then, none of this is normal.” He sighed. “Have you ever heard of retrocognition? It’s the opposite of precognition, and it’s something I’m really good at—the ability to read the past. Some places are full of stories. History that’s so rich and real, it feels like it’s happening right now.”
His face relaxed, and his eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look.
“The minute I stepped foot in town, I felt the miners toiling, saw the merchants haggling over a fair price while the proper ladies yelled at the whores near the saloon.” He focused on her again. “The Lady Fine Saloon.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s—”
“About as impossible as watching a woman give the sexiest handjob I’ve ever seen? Or hearing the woman talk directly to me?”
He had a point.
“So am I haunted? Is that it? Do you think I’m possessed by this woman?”
“Who the hell knows?” His gaze fell to her lips, and he hurriedly glanced away. “I’m pretty sure she’s Lady Fine. I saw her in you when we first met. You look alike, and a few times, I’ve seen a ghostly overlay, as if her spirit is over you. Like a vision of the past. She’s there, but she’s not. And now she’s talking to me.”
He seemed fascinated and watched Lara like a curiosity he’d just found under his microscope.
“I am so confused, my brain hurts.”
“I see visions of the past. When I first arrived on Friday, upstairs in my room—you know this used to also be a brothel, right?”
She nodded, wondering what he’d seen. His cheeks flushed, and his eyes darkened. The blazing look of hunger in his eyes returned. His gaze traveled from her eyes to her breasts and settled; then he glanced away again.
He took even breaths, as if fighting for control. “Friday night, not two seconds after being in my room, I saw all kinds of things. Men and women in bed, on the floor, you name it.”
“On the floor?” Her voice rose embarrassingly high.
“Fucking like rabbits. It’s a lot to take in, let me tell you.”
“Good Lord. What about now? Are you seeing them now?” If he’d seen before what she’d just been treated to, it made sense he’d been gone for three days. Probably gorging himself on the many available women in town. They’d line up for a bite of Noah. Though he didn’t seem socially polished, he exuded raw sex appeal. A rough-and-tumble man, if a woman was brave enough to take him on. The surge of jealousy accompanying the realization disturbed her more than the thought itself.
“I’ve been concentrating to shield myself so I won’t be bombarded by images anymore. What we just saw—I have no idea what that was.” He rubbed his jaw. “It’s not easy, not in a place like this, where yesterday is so mixed in with the present. What just happened surprised me.”
“Me too.”
He blew out a breath. “Watching her… I was watching you.”
She took a moment to absorb that. “It was her. Not me.” Even though I wanted it to be.
He looked as if he wanted to refute that but didn’t. “None of that is why I needed to talk to you. I’ve been looking all over town the past three days for that painting. I catch glimpses of it in my visions. I know it’s here, that the person who stole it is here with it, but I can’t get a fix on it. Then, earlier today, I ran across some disturbing news.”
“What happened?”
“I was in the library looking into Cecilia Fine’s history. Like you said, there’s not one damn picture of her but loads of descriptions. And after what we just saw, I don’t think there’s any question that the woman in the picture is her.”
“Yeah. Makes sense.” Like why the woman’s ghost haunted Lara in the inn.
“Your resemblance has got to be something more than coincidence.”
Go figure. “I have a hunch you’re going to need me to find your painting.”
Noah smiled, a slight curve of his lips that lit his face up with more than sex appeal but an emotional attainability she hadn’t sensed until now.
“Yeah, I need you, all right.”
She swallowed, not comfortable with how her body responded to him. “I have a feeling this might be dangerous.”
“Don’t discount instinct. It’s saved me once or twice before.”
“I guess you’ve been in similar situations investigating, hmm?”
He nodded. “The bad news I mentioned? While I was researching, I overheard the librarian gossiping with a few members of a book club.”
“They meet for lunch and discuss their books at the library.”
“One of them was talking about a body found outside of town.”
“What?”
“Apparently one of the ladies is married to your county doctor, who I imagine got tapped to play coroner.”
“Doc Jeffries.” A body?
“According to Mrs. Jeffries, they found a woman naked and bound. She’d been beaten severely and died of what looks like blood loss from several stab wounds. Mrs. Jeffries also said the victim looked surprisingly like you. So I went out to where they found the body and opened my senses.”
“Your retrocognition.”
He nodded. “I saw her. The woman’s hair had been styled and her makeup painted to resemble the woman in the painting—to a tee.”
“This is too bizarre.”
“In the shadows, the dead girl looked enough like you to be your twin.”
How could her day go from bad to worse this quickly?
Noah didn’t look happy either. “Before I arrived in town, I’d tracked down the painting to Superior, just a half hour away. The art dealer who’d owned it recently died, victim of a hit-and-run. The painting disappeared.”
“Good Lord.”
“A theft was bad enough. Then the art dealer’s death? Two strikes. But if whoever killed for the painting is killing again, we have a problem.”
“Hell, yeah, we have a problem.” She stood, too nervous to sit. “You’re sure the gallery guy was murdered? It wasn’t some accident?”
He grimaced. “No. I saw it, a version of it,
I mean. He was deliberately run over. At the gallery, the echo of violence was strong. I could see the same dark energy of the thief and the person involved in the hit-and-run. There was a brutality to it not found in an accident. No question it was deliberate.” He stood and ran a hand through his hair. “But I didn’t see his face. The killer was shadowed, but I knew his destination. Then I come here, see you, and find out there’s been another murder? This is all tied together; I just wish I knew how.”
“It could all be coincidence this dead woman looks like me. A lot of people have dark hair and dark eyes.”
“I don’t think so.” Noah crossed to her.
He grabbed her arms, and the heat of contact between them felt better than good; it felt right.
“You need to see her. Tell me I’m wrong. That I’m imagining this.”
“This is crazy.”
“I wish it were.” He brushed a lock of hair back from her forehead.
How the hell was Noah mixed up in this? He’d not only heard the ghost, but could supposedly see the past. Should she trust him? Hell, she didn’t know much more about Noah than that she liked the look of him, and he wasn’t a hardened criminal. Not even so much as a speeding ticket. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be a crazed killer.
One who sent her libido into overdrive. What a crazy time for her body to wake up and want sex. But her desire didn’t seem to be one-sided; he desired her too. Or did he want the image he’d envisioned superimposed over her? And why couldn’t she stop thinking about Noah and sex?
“Right. So we have a murder, a theft, and weird ghost sex.” She blew out a breath. “Tell me I’m not alone in all this.”
“Hot ghost sex,” he corrected, “that gave me the hard-on from hell.”
She didn’t know how to answer that, especially since it now looked like Noah would like nothing better than to return to what Cecilia Fine had been doing. How the hell did the man blow so hot and cold? “So what now?”
He met her gaze again, his eyes intense. “Now we wait until dark, then break into the morgue and check out a dead woman.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Dead serious.” At her wince, he shrugged. “Sorry, bad pun. But yeah. I want another opinion. And it seems to me you’re a part of this. You’re hearing and now seeing Cecilia Fine. You’re more than qualified to help. Besides, I don’t want you alone.”
“Great. And here I thought I’d get a chance to relax with business getting into the slow season.” Lara hardened her resolve. “Okay, Noah. Let’s do this before I lose my nerve.” Another thought struck, and before Lara lost her courage, she forged ahead. “One more thing. You seem to know a lot about this psychic stuff.”
He watched her, saying nothing.
“Maybe you could answer a few questions for me later. Because God knows, there are some things I’d love to understand.”
“Let’s get through tonight. Then I’ll answer any questions you have. I know a lot of people who deal with the extraordinary on a daily basis. So if I don’t know something, one of them might.”
Imagine understanding the impossible. “Okay, then. Let’s figure out how we’re going to break into the morgue.” Saying it out loud made it worse. She tried to pretend this whole thing wasn’t freaking her the hell out. But like it or not, she couldn’t ignore all the links connecting her to Noah’s painting. And to Noah. “I need to find out what all this has to do with me.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you do. But don’t worry, Lara. I’ll be right there with you.”
Chapter Four
Noah wanted nothing more than to leave this entire case behind and return to Bend. The monotonous routine of repetitions and sets, weights, crunches, and push-ups didn’t tax him, leaving his mind free to float with the historic simplicity of the area. No emotional entanglements, no need for social niceties…no dates over a dead body.
It’s not a date. Christ, this is an investigation.
So why did being with Lara feel so good? Spending time with her appealed to him, a loner who had little use for people in general, though he admitted he needed some socializing, which the PowerUp! gym provided. People kept him grounded in the present. But Lara awoke a part of him he hadn’t realized had been asleep.
And should be sleeping now, he thought as he illuminated the time on his watch. Twelve thirty in the morning. Shit. Would he ever stop working nights?
“What now?” Lara whispered as they stood inside the doctor’s office. She held a flashlight aimed at the floor.
“It’s back there.” He grabbed her hand, ignoring the spark of heat that jolted his cock whenever he touched her, and pulled her with him out of the office and down the hall. He’d already scouted the place earlier, using his retrocognition to view where they’d taken the body.
When they arrived at another room, he unlocked the door using a key he’d filched off the front desk. They entered quietly. Doc Jeffries had a makeshift morgue. Two refrigerated drawers and a medical table for operating on the dead. Noah pulled out a drawer and unzipped the bag.
Lara caught her breath when he parted the plastic.
“Oh wow. She really does look like me. And she’s so beat up. The poor girl.”
Noah studied the dead woman’s coiled hair, sprayed stiff with some sort of hairspray. The rouge on her lips and blush on her cheeks looked obscene against the pallor of her skin. So pale and lifeless, painted to be someone else.
“I see it, Noah. The hair, the makeup. Even the small earrings are identical to the picture you showed me.” Lara swallowed, the sound easily heard in the stillness of the room. She leaned closer, pointing the flashlight at the woman’s ears. “The silver rosebuds are sprinkled with a glittery coating. Not all that common.”
“No, it’s not.” What the hell did this mean? Someone had killed a likeness of Cecilia Fine. Not Lara. The killer hadn’t staged this woman to look like Lara, but like Cecilia. But Lara resembled Cecilia. Doing the math didn’t make him happy. He focused, and to his surprise, he caught a faint whiff of the same energy he’d felt in Superior. The same person had killed twice now. But worse, the energy was somehow tied to Lara. He could see it lingering over her, as if waiting for something. Then he blinked and severed the connection.
She shivered and nodded at the body. “Could you zip her up and put her back, please?”
He did, wishing he hadn’t brought Lara, but he’d needed to be sure. Now that he was, he didn’t know what to do. “Shit.”
“What?”
Noah stared at the bag concealing the body. “Nothing. Sorry.”
They made their escape as easily as they’d entered. Brownville didn’t rely too heavily on state-of-the-art locks. A good thing, or Noah would have had more difficulty breaking in.
“Now what?” he asked as they sat in his rental car.
“Now we go back to the inn, and you try to explain what I’m not involved in.” Lara didn’t sound afraid. She sounded angry and a touch mean.
Noah grew hard, as if he hadn’t just spent the night looking at a dead girl. God, I must be sick. Because Lara’s really turning me on. There’s nothing I want more than to show this strong, capable woman where she really belongs. Under him, serving him in any and every way he deemed fit. Not good. Put those feelings away, asshole. They’re not right. Not normal.
“Noah?”
He cleared his throat, glad for the darkness that obscured his arousal. “Let’s get back.” He didn’t say more. They drove in silence the few minutes it took them to get to the inn. He parked out back, then they exited the car and entered the inn through the back door using her key. His opened only the front door.
Once inside, she motioned him to follow her through the private corridor on the first floor, away from the common area. She unlocked a thick door and pushed it open. After he entered, she joined him and shut and locked it behind them. The click sounded loud in the overwhelming silence.
She lived in a large suite with a bedroom on one side
and a small living area on the other, done up in antique cherrywood and soothing blue walls. Homey yet attractive, and very much like Lara.
“This is what I call home, for the moment.” Lara sighed and slipped off her shoes.
He chafed at the intimacy of the motion, not needing to see more of her when it was all he could do to stop remembering how her hand had looked around Finnegan Fury’s cock. Not her hands. Cecilia’s. Fuck. Cut it out.
She sat on her bed, not paying attention to him, for which he was grateful.
