by Misty Dietz
She’d never shared her failed attempt at working with law enforcement to find Abigail, a missing five-year-old. Not even with her parents, as much as they had tried to get her to open up about it. But how do you explain something you couldn’t control—something that seemed to be a Pandora ’s Box of tragedy?
Did the visions make bad things happen? Or would they happen whether she saw them or not?
A cause and effect question she’d wrestled with for years and still didn’t know the answer to.
Better to keep it locked down. Locked away.
Just in case.
She looked at the front door, her eyes fixing on the door handle not three feet away. A new wave of fear froze her muscles. Zack squeezed her shoulder, bringing her eyes to his.
“I’m good for secrets,” he whispered.
Oh Lord, she believed him. She didn’t know why. She’d only met him a few hours ago, but after all he’d seen of her, he was still here. And it seemed as though he believed her, too.
But her fear was stronger than her trust.
Stop it. Here she was worried about herself when Heaven only knew where Ann was. She slowly stood, feeling a chill on her skin where he’d been touching her. She watched as he unfolded his long legs and stood next to her. Then it hit her.
He’d gone to the floor with her. Taken her in his arms to comfort her. Hadn’t moved, pushed her away, or acted uncomfortable with her drama.
God.
“I…I need a second.” She turned toward the bathroom before he had a chance to reply, and it was all she could do not to run like a four-year-old on the verge of peeing herself.
Inside, she locked the door and rested against the heavy wood for several long moments. Going to the sink, her skin came alive as the water sluiced between her fingers. She cupped her hands and drank, then methodically dried her face.
Where was this road going to lead? What was she still doing here? And where was Ann? Every supersensory cell in her body told her that wretched front door held secrets.
But could she go there? Would it give any clues as to Ann’s whereabouts?
More important, could she live with herself if she did nothing to try to help?
It feels different with Zack. Somehow the experience was…buffered?
She combed at her tangled hair with her fingers and opened the bathroom door to find him standing there.
“You okay now?” The concern in his eyes made a lump settle in her throat. She tried and failed to smile.
Ann was missing, and something was definitely wrong. Plus, she couldn’t find the crystal rhino, so Timothy Benjamin would probably never back her foundation—out of spite, if nothing else. And it could be months if not years before she could secure another sponsor. Add to that, she’d blown her cover with this man who had so many contacts in town. If he wanted to, he could completely discredit her. Her business could be devastated.
Worst of all, her psychic sensitivities seemed to be growing.
Total. Nightmare.
But…
But.
She could still recover from all of that as long as she kept the most important secret.
She looked at Zack and wondered what might have happened if they’d met under different circumstances.
But it wasn’t to be. His concern was for Ann, whose very life—not merely her reputation, nor her career—was in the balance.
It’s different with him.
Try me, his eyes seemed to say.
It wouldn’t jeopardize her secret. The two situations were unrelated.
So be it.
She wrapped her arms around herself and prayed for a cast iron stomach. “I need to go back to the door.”
Chapter Seven
Zack used the side of his index finger to bring Sloane’s chin up. “We’ll do this together, okay?”
His whisper was a steadying caress over her skin. Locked in the profound green of his eyes, she felt—for the first time in her twenty-five years—that maybe, with him there to anchor her, she might put her psychic gift to use without such debilitating consequences.
She rubbed her arms, established her protection shield, and led the way back to Ann’s foyer, where she stopped before the door. A tremor passed through her, and she started again when Zack’s warm, tough palm swallowed her own.
He looked as surprised as she felt. “I won’t let go, if that’s what you want.”
She’d blubber like a moron if she opened her mouth so she nodded, then focused on the door handle, using the golden color to build a flower in her mind. As the edges of the petals unfurled, the perimeter of her vision glittered in a million silver sprays of light, heavy with waves of negativity. She took in Zack’s calm face, twined her fingers more solidly with his, and reached for the door handle with her free hand.
Darkness swept around her so suddenly she faltered. Wind slapped at her and she slipped down, whirling, spinning away into a whirlpool of stygian clouds shuddering with malevolence. The clouds were alive, pulsing with lightning, reverberating with thunder, raising goose bumps all over her body.
Zack! She scanned the darkness for his light anchor but her cry boomeranged against the tornadic winds. Then she was sucked through the storm’s eye into the murkiness on the other side, a ragdoll tossed in a tug of war between rogue winds.
Ssseee meee.
Heart pounding in her throat, she pushed at the hair whipping her face and looked up. Could that have been him? Where was he?
Panic bloomed in her chest. She squeezed her eyelids shut and imagined Zack’s face, his eyes—the green reaching out to save her. Her heartbeat grew louder, drowning out the fury of the storm around her. She called out for him again and felt a moment of zero gravity at the wind’s sudden calm.
Her breath whooshed out as she landed in a crouch in a midnight forest filled with mist, night sounds, and moving shadows. Dank earth and stagnant water clogged her nostrils with tangy scents of death and decay. She straightened as gasps and groans spilled from the shadows.
This isn’t real. Not real. Sooo not real.
She saw an opening between the shadows and ran deeper into the forest. She ran, underbrush tearing at her shins and tree limbs scraping her cheeks until her legs and chest burned. Calm down. Calm. Down. She had to stay focused or she’d lose all control.
Sloane.
Zack’s voice rolled through her—composed, centered—ripping her from the grip of hysteria so suddenly she tripped over a fallen log and slid into a dusky bower of wildflowers. She reared up, brushing leaves from her hair to squint through the darkness. She rubbed a hand over the wild beating of her heart and looked around.
There!
A tiny pinprick of light above her. But it seemed so hopelessly far away. She inhaled deliberately, then let the breath out slowly, each subsequent exhale murmuring Zack’s name, a mantra to release the disturbing images.
Immediately, the forest floor gave way, dropping her once more into a silent void, a blackout so complete she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face. She struggled to her feet, panning out with her fingers to find substance, but encountered only cobwebs that snagged in her hair, stuck on her clothes, and caught at her skin. She heard a squeak, then something cool feathered against her cheek. Her system flooded with adrenaline. She spun in a circle, alone in the eclipse.
Sloane. I’m here. Stay with me.
Panting, she looked up. The pinprick of light had become a stream of energy, pulsing white directly above her head. The vise around her chest loosened slightly, and she reached out for the light with her mind, drawing it to her. Sweat poured down her temples and between her breasts. Her arms quivered. In her head, a buzzing began.
That’s it. You’re doing fine.
The closer she came to the light, the louder the buzzing grew until it filled every corner of her mind, amplifying until she thought her skull would rupture. She tried to stymie the noise, squinting, focusing on the light. No good! The buzzing vibrated down her spinal
cord and rippled across her skin like a league of beetles. Her hands raked at her skin to try to dislodge the phantom bugs and the light slipped. No!
She couldn’t breathe. No air!
Come on, Sloane! Beat it!
His presence dimmed the buzzing to a low drone. Enough to gather herself for one last desperate jump. Her thigh muscles shook as she squatted, then leapt toward the light. Dozens of bony fingers grabbed at her ankles. She kicked with her legs as her arms gathered the light to her body.
Suddenly, a pulse of warmth flooded her brain, flashed down her torso, and singed the demons clutching her bloody ankles. Their screams faded into oblivion along with the buzzing, leaving her momentarily dazed in the too loud silence. She felt weightless, floating on a current of heat, the light so brilliant against her eyelids she brought an arm up to shield her eyes. She counted to ten and then back to zero.
Holy.
Holy, holy, holy crap.
Her vision self sat up and took stock of her body. No bloody ankles, ripped shins, torn clothes, or Bride of Frankenstein hair. Not even any queasiness. Instead, a low pulse of power thrummed in her veins. More remarkably, she was in control—not of the secrets the door might ultimately reveal, but of herself. Her sanity.
That was new.
Because of Zack.
He’d pulled her through the gauntlet. The dark scary place she always had to tread to bring forth a vision. Her pulse drummed steady, nerves and excitement bringing her to her feet in the panorama of white. Zack’s white light. Her heart constricted thinking of him. He hadn’t left her. He’d talked to her. Kept her with him. She would thank him. So many ways she could do that.
Later.
She looked around, wondering what to do next.
Okay, Ann. Don’t you dare make me come all this way for nothing.
Concentrating, she brought up an image of Ann’s face. Ebony hair framing her pixie-like features, the upturned nose. So beautiful, so kind, so impossibly shy.
Sloane filled her mind with positive thoughts, letting her genuine affection for Ann guide whatever vision needed to come forth. Soft as a gentle rain, vocalizations began filtering through her consciousness. She squinted, trying to place the muffled sounds. The pitches sounded angry, but curiously the negativity didn’t overwhelm her.
As she approached the image of Ann, her face began to waver, blurring like waves from a heat mirage until the cameo dissolved completely, leaving behind a gray-blue mist, a curtain of secrets.
This is it. Beyond that mist were the answers they needed.
Sloane braced herself, gathered light to her until it was a living thing hammering inside her, and stepped into the fog.
Echoes of anguish, fear, and desperation throbbed in the silence, push-pulling at her, yet she identified the emotions only on an intellectual level. Moving faster now, she parted the curtain of gray mist and found herself—
In Ann’s foyer. In a different time.
Late in the evening, lightning putting on an awesome display through the windows. An expensive Tiffany lamp glowing in gorgeous reds, oranges, and golds on the table next to the door. A show house room, but the aura, oh so wrong. A desperate pall seemed woven into the fabric of the home. Sloane jerked when Ann’s voice broke through the silence.
Please, please stay. We have to talk. The man with her is tall, movie-star handsome in an old-fashioned way. Trim and dapper. So appealing. Until Sloane looks in his eyes. They spill over with rage and disgust. Thunder shakes the walls of the house in time with his reply. Not now.
Sloane felt Ann’s shock before the image short-circuited and immediately picked up in an explosion of pain. Sloane moaned, clutching the side of her head, the coppery taste of blood filling her mouth.
Zack!
Here. I’m here. I won’t leave you.
In the vision, Ann’s foyer filled with shadows and frequent pulses of lightning through the front windows. Shards of glass from the lamp lay in a hundred pieces across the hardwood floor. An upturned bowl of rose potpourri drifted pungently through the humid air. Sickeningly sweet.
Sloane panned in every direction trying to locate Ann and her attacker. There. Ann lay in darkness, curled on the floor, thin shoulders quaking with the strength of her sobs. Her sadness pulled at Sloane, so insistent even through Zack’s anchor that she felt compelled to lie down next to her and take her into her arms.
But it was only a vision of what had been.
Ann was no longer there.
Sloane breathed through the vision, focusing all her senses on the man. He was still there, swamping the room with rancor. She waited for the next pulse of lightning, her muscles cramping with motionlessness. When she saw his face again, she would need to remember every line, every mole, every scar, so they could find him.
When electricity sliced through the air, his back was to the window, his face in shadows. A shiver rocked her frame as he spoke. It had better be gone by the time I come back.
He moved, the light shifted, and she saw his face. Trim, dapper, movie-star handsome. Older than Ann.
Then he vanished, and the vision winked out, replaced by a new picture of Ann. Time had passed. She had changed her clothes and fixed her make-up. She was composed, but at the touch of her fine-boned fingers on the door handle, Sloane registered a sorrow more profound than when she’d been a crumbled heap on the floor.
Ann said something over her shoulder Sloane couldn’t hear. Then she grabbed her purse and stepped through the front door into the smothering night.
No, Ann! Please, please stay home tonight.
But of course she didn’t hear.
And then the world went black. The door handle had reached the end of its memory.
Chapter Eight
Zack caught Sloane as she collapsed. He carried her away from the foyer into the living room where he hunkered down, filling up two thirds of Ann’s sofa. He could see faint blue veins lying beneath Sloane’s cheeks. His hands wobbled as they smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
She’d scared the ever-living hell out of him when she’d first gone into the vision. Her face had lost all animation, as if she’d up and died right in front of him.
His arms tightened around her, and she curled toward his chest. Her scent drifted over him, peeling away his last defenses. He studied the dark crescent her eyelashes formed against the upper part of her cheek. The splash of freckles, barely noticeable, on the bridge of her nose. The subtle color variations of her hair as the strands shifted when he breathed. Her smooth, soft skin, too pale, way too pale…
He forced himself to look out the front window. He was lucky she’d fallen into a light sleep because it wouldn’t do to let her to see him this rattled, though she’d probably attribute it to his concern for Ann. Which would be right, but…
Something about Sloane pulled at him, dredging up feelings that terrified him. Made him vulnerable again. And being vulnerable usually led to heartbreak.
Chill out. These unsettled feelings were obviously the result of this crazy-ass episode. That made a lot more sense.
ESP. What a racket. It mucked up his foundation of possibility. More than once, he’d wanted to jerk her out of the vision, to just shut it down because he could feel it damaging her on a level he didn’t understand.
But he was afraid of what might happen if he did something wrong. What if he couldn’t bring her back? Could she somehow lose her way in that other realm? Never a gambling man, he’d done the only thing he was sure of and clutched her hand so tightly he feared he’d fracture her long, graceful fingers.
Then something around her had begun to change. He’d known the moment their spirits joined because he’d felt jacked in, amped up. Every hair on his body had sparked with awareness. Currents of power crackled along his nervous system, and he was hypersensitive to the rush of her blood.
On the couch, he shifted uncomfortably beneath her weight as his body remembered the sensation. He
r eyelashes fluttered and her color was finally returning in that delicious golden shade he knew covered so much of her landscape.
So beautiful and brave. So full of secrets.
He forced himself to look away. This was no time to be getting hard. She’d risked her soul to find answers about Ann. The least he could do was not poke her in the hip with a steel rod. He stared at the ceiling, inhaled deeply, and wondered if he was dreaming when he felt a hand on his cheek. He glanced down and lost himself in the liquid brown of her eyes.
“You all right?” she asked.
“You’re asking me? Jesus, Sloane.”
She sat up and quickly moved off his lap to sit beside him. She blushed, but her eyes glowed. “You’re my psychic anchor, Zack. You grounded me through the vision. You can’t imagine how big this is. I never believed it would be possible. Other than a mild headache, I don’t feel sick at all. My mother doesn’t even have anyone who can do that for her.” Her eyes flickered as her fingers tunneled into her hair. “I found some answers, but not nearly enough, I’m afraid.”
Her mother did this shit, too?
He said nothing, staring into her eyes, watching, marveling, at the drama of emotions shaping her features while she replayed the vision in her mind. One of her hands scraped across his thigh as it fell to the sofa and desire sparked in her eyes.
He smothered a groan. Damn. Her touch was tinder to his dry wood. His fingers dug into the textured linen sofa to stop himself from touching her. He closed his eyes, needing to hide, feeling desperate and completely out of his element.
She was holding her breath, he realized. They both were. Powder kegs. His eyes snapped open. The tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, and his shoulders ached with the effort to hold still.
“Zack?” Her hesitancy calmed him enough so he could slam the door on an erotic visual of easing those teensy shorts down her endless legs. What a dick. As much as he felt like one, he wasn’t an animal.
She stood up and laughed shyly. Cute. As. Hell.
“That was really something, huh?” She brushed her hands down her hips. An enticing little gesture. “Anchored together in a vision like that is incredibly…intimate. I’ve never shared one before, so I guess we’re sorta bonded. A little. Maybe.”
