Unseen

by Nancy Bush

  Her caring tone caused a ripple of emotion to run through Gemma’s heart, leaving her throat hot. She swallowed hard and said, “I’ll come in for an afternoon just to get started again. Will I see Charlotte?”

  “Oh, you know she’ll be around.”

  Gemma left her booth and lifted a hand in good-bye, then hesitated at the door. “When was that? When I chased that guy out?”

  Macie lifted a shoulder. “’Bout a week ago, or so.”

  “You didn’t recognize him?”

  “Wasn’t a regular.”

  “What did he look like?” Gemma asked.

  “Like every other middle-aged man in the world. I kinda thought he was from around here, but I can’t remember why. He had a baseball cap on, I think. Or maybe that was the other guy, the one that left right after you did. I don’t know. It was the morning crowd and they were all hungry. I wasn’t paying all that much attention except that you were kinda wild-eyed.”

  “I almost remember,” Gemma said.

  “Almost only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades,” Macie responded automatically. One of her favorite expressions.

  Gemma smiled faintly. “The guy that left after me. What did he look like?”

  “More apish,” Macie said after a moment of thought. “Rounded shoulders like he worked out too much.”

  Gemma was heading out when Macie caught her by the arm. “Have you thought about seeing Doc Rainfield?” she asked.

  “What?” Gemma asked.

  “If you don’t want to, that’s perfectly okay, y’know. But that shrink doctor of yours has helped before. He’s a nice guy.”

  Gemma suddenly pictured the older man with the creased, sad face. He was a nice guy. And he had helped her.

  “Your momma had her fits with him, but I always thought you and he connected. Do what you want.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “Just, if things are bad…he might be able to help.”

  With that she scurried off to deal with another order and Gemma left the diner.

  Looking in the mirror, Lucky realized she’d been injured far worse than she’d originally thought. She shrank inside herself at the bonanza of colors: green, purple, brown, that ran down the side of her face and covered one eye. That eye was a problem. Blood had drained into the white part and turned one corner a sickening scarlet, which was slowly fading to magenta-ish pink. She’d had to wait over a week for her face to stop being such a show stopper. She’d waited impatiently, afraid Letton would be released from the hospital before she could take care of him permanently—the bastard had had the nerve to survive!—but apparently she’d hurt him pretty damn bad because he was still languishing there.

  Good.

  She’d used the time to recover herself. She kinda hurt all over. The seat belt had left a deep bruise and it was a little tricky to take a deep breath.

  But with each tick of the clock she’d grown stronger. And now that she’d purchased actual rose-colored glasses, her magenta-filled eye looked damn near normal. If she went to Letton’s room in the early evening, maybe around dinnertime when there was more hustle and bustle and confusion around the hospital, she might not be noticed as much. But she would have to be careful. Find a way to disguise herself.

  She cocked her head and considered. One more day? Two?

  If Letton were released that would compound her problems. She needed to wrap her hands around the man’s throat and choke the life from him. Or smother him with a hospital pillow. There would be sweet irony in having his place of healing turn into his place of death.

  Her temple throbbed and she pressed fingers hard against it, as if pushing the pain back inside.

  And then she was hit by a wave of something like lust. Not her own. A sample of what Letton had felt when he was eyeing prepubescent girls. It left Lucky feeling sick, spent and bent over, hacking, on the verge of throwing up. Saliva ran from her mouth; the precursor to vomiting. She wiped it away and drew several breaths, straightening with an effort, staring at her reflection in the mirror. This wasn’t the first time she’d been able to sense—physically sense—what someone felt. It was a kind of psychic ability she neither understood nor wanted, but it was something she’d been born with and it had sent her on this quest. This mission.

  She visualized Letton, saw the hot need in his eyes.

  “I’m going to kill you, you bastard,” she whispered harshly.

  Edward Letton woke with a snort and a gasp. Demons were running around inside his head. They were spinning. Chortling. Poking fingers at him and laughing like hyenas. He was in hell. He was dead. Or dying. Suffocating.

  Slowly he opened his eyes. His mouth was slack and desert dry. There was a tube running from his nose. No. Into his nose. Oxygen. He was being given oxygen because he was…in a hospital…and he could feel pain, though he was oddly dissociated from it. Drugs. Demerol, maybe, or something like it.

  What happened?

  He couldn’t piece it together. It was too much. He’d been at work but that was on Friday. And then there was—

  A soccer game.

  He drew a quaking breath of fear and tried to look around. Did they know? He’d been in the van. Oh, God. The van.

  Fuzziness ruled his head. The damned drugs. He was in a hospital bed but he couldn’t remember why. How long had he been out? Had he said anything? Did they know?

  He struggled to move but his body screamed at even the slightest twitch. He was breathing hard, though he’d scarcely done more than squeeze his eyes closed, sucking up the oxygen, in some kind of real mess here.

  What had he done? What happened? How had he ended up in a hospital?

  Faintly, as if viewing it from a long, long distance, he saw the young girl with the slim legs and blue shorts. She was so beautiful. He wanted to rub against that firm, nubile flesh. But he knew she wouldn’t allow it. That’s why he’d brought the van.

  The van. He’d worked so hard on the van. Long hours, away from Mandy. Hiding out in the garage, listening with active ears in case she should enter the garage uninvited, surprising him. The sweet danger of that had given him almost a constant erection. If she caught him fitting out the van, what would he say? Would she believe him? Would he have to take her as his first victim, just to keep her quiet? He despised her. Her big tits and fat, cellulite-filled ass. But she was a necessary part of the equation. His cover. His loving wife.

  But she never came in the garage. Couldn’t be torn away from her reality TV shows. That one where a bunch of shrieking women went after the rich guy really turned her on. She about wet her pants when those guys gave the girls roses. If she’d had an ounce of sexuality herself, she might have given herself a rub and tickle, it turned her on so much. Unfortunately, that would never happen. Mandy liked chocolates, and an occasional gift, though he could never afford the diamonds and furs she salivated over. Maybe if he could, she might have tried to at least enjoy their monthly hump and bump, but she pretty much just waited for it to be over. Just closed her eyes and waited while Ed did his thing. One time, by God, she’d started softly snoring. Out cold. That was about the last time he’d been able to even get it up for her.

  She was too round.

  Too old.

  But girls…they were beautiful. Lovely, lovely thighs and ankles and flat chests with skin drum-taut, and narrow little wrists.

  It was a sickness; he knew that. He didn’t care. Ed had waited all his life for something for himself. When was it Eddie’s turn, huh? And he wasn’t going to wait anymore. He was going to take what he wanted. What he needed. What he deserved!

  But…what had happened? He was in deep shit, here, he could tell, and there was a murky memory of something bad…

  Damn drugs. He was sinking under them, but at least that would mean the pain would go away. He was hurt. He needed to heal.

  He could see that lovely, lovely girl reaching for the soccer ball…

  In his dream he reached back.

  Lovely…

  Chapter Six<
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  The interior of the truck reeked. Reeked with her evil odor. Reeked with her death. His eyes watered but he refused to cover his nose and mouth. He wouldn’t give the witch the satisfaction.

  And she was burning now. Burning. Her sick, filthy flesh melting from her body.

  He drove away as fast as he dared. He’d found a place for her. They would discover her and soon. Her scent alone would draw them near, but the fire would pinpoint the location from afar.

  He had a long way to go before he was safe. The other witch’s haunts were over an hour’s journey from his home, closer to two in the summer when vacationers headed to the beach. He didn’t know what had brought her to the town of Quarry, but it was where he’d found her, where he intended to find her again.

  Quarry.

  His lips flattened into a cold smile.

  His quarry.

  Carol Pellter really had nothing more to add to her story but she was bent on keeping Will’s interest as he sat across from her at the dining table of her parents’ house. Her mom looked both weary and annoyed. Now that the danger was past, their daughter’s obsession with the event was something she wanted to switch off but just did not know how.

  Carol’s tale was sounding less and less like a suspected kidnapping and probable sexual assault case, and more and more like an epic fairy tale where Letton was an ogre bent on destroying everything good and hopeful in the world and Carol was a princess/swashbuckler who saved one and all.

  Will pretended to listen closely to her description of Letton, which stopped just short of him possessing horns and cloven feet, while trying to direct her tale-telling toward something a little more productive. He’d already concluded that this trip to meet with her was a waste of time, but he liked her and sensed that her need to keep the attention on herself stemmed from loneliness, the kind suffered by children whose busy parents signed their kids up for every athletic event, every academic tournament as a means of overcompensation. She had no brothers or sisters and possessed an imagination that boggled. Will sought to guide her through the events of the morning of her near-abduction in an attempt to draw her back from fantasy.

  “Do you remember anything about the silver car?” Will asked, though Carol had been thoroughly questioned a number of times already. Each time her story became a little more exaggerated.

  “It came speeding up then BAM! He just went up in the air and landed back on top. Then he bounced off. There was a lot of blood.” She’d been squeamish and white-faced the first time she’d told the tale. Now she didn’t bat an eye. “He was kinda moving his legs and arms, like he was gonna get up and chase me like a zombie!” She shivered, eyes wide. Will could see her adding that to her fairy tale. The Princess and the Zombie.

  “You said it was silver. What about the wheels?”

  “The wheels?”

  “What kind of rim did they have? Chrome, shiny? Or, dull, maybe black?”

  “They were just wheels. Round.”

  “Any kind of logo? Name of the kind of car? Like, Ford or Toyota or Jeep?”

  “It was just kinda old.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I know cars,” she said, like he was the biggest idiot on earth. “My dad drives a BMW and my mom has a Ford Escape.”

  “All right. Do you know what kind of old car it was?”

  “The kind people don’t take care of.”

  “Meaning…it had dents?”

  “The color was not good.”

  “The silver was more gray than—shiny?”

  “It was orange.”

  “Orange?”

  “Like on the back. I saw it when she zipped through the lot like a bat outta hell!”

  “Where did you see it? The back of the car? Like the trunk?”

  “No, the protector bar. It was kinda bent and—”

  “Rusty? The bumper was rust-covered?” Will guessed. Carol had said before she thought the car was old, but she’d never said it was orange before.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Rusty. The bumper was rusty. Does that help?” she asked, keying into Will’s sparked interest.

  “Maybe. Those are the kinds of things that help when you remember them.”

  “I’ll keep remembering,” she assured him. “Maybe I’ll remember some more tomorrow. Can you come by?”

  “Carol,” her mother sighed.

  “Mom, I’m helping!” she declared, right back.

  “I’m not sure I can stop by again tomorrow, but you can always call me,” Will said.

  “Okay.” She turned her head and peered at him sideways. “You’re not just humoring me, are you?”

  “Carol!”

  “No,” Will assured her. The mother turned three shades of scarlet on hearing her daughter mime her and her husband’s own words. “You never know when something might help.”

  Carol shot her mother a see there look as Will’s cell phone rang. Excusing himself, he stepped onto the Pellters’ front porch and punched the talk button. “Tanninger.”

  “Will, there’s a fire out by the Laurelton Airport,” Barb told him.

  “Uh-huh.” He waited. Since the strip of land euphemistically known as the Laurelton Airport was outside the city limits, it was within the Winslow County lines and therefore the sheriff’s department’s jurisdiction. But fires were the fire department’s problem.

  Barb enlightened him. “Dead body at the scene. Looks like whoever started the fire was trying to burn the body.”

  “Homicide?”

  “Yep. ME’s heading to the scene. But from what I’m getting, that body’s been dead awhile. At least a week. Female.”

  “Someone trying to cover up the crime.”

  “Most likely.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way,” Will said.

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  Gemma opened her mailbox and was relieved to find a new bank card. She’d made the trip to the bank to access her funds, but hadn’t yet gone for her driver’s license. The thought of a picture in her current bruised state had really squelched her desire to abide by the law. For now, she was driving without it. If she got pulled over, tough. She would just deal with the consequences.

  Even though most of her memory had returned—she could recall a lot of her growing up years although specific details were still hazy—she was at a complete loss about her recent past. She didn’t remember any part of chasing out of LuLu’s after some unidentified man. The only piece that seemed to stick out was eating oatmeal and cinnamon three days before she woke up in the hospital. Anything before that came in fits and starts, but with Macie’s explanation of her on-again/off-again brain, Gemma had accepted this annoyance as part of her own weird makeup.

  Still, she’d been desperately trying to remember who she’d chased after, out of LuLu’s. Was it that pedophile, Letton? Was she the person who had deliberately run him down? Would she do that?

  I would if the target were Charlotte.

  She thought about that hard. She would kill to save Charlotte.

  She smiled faintly as she thought of Macie’s daughter. Eleven years old. A truant. Tough as rawhide, with endless energy and a smart mouth. Charlotte was a truth-teller. For reasons she couldn’t explain, Gemma could remember nearly everything about her. She identified with Charlotte, who, though her mother loved her dearly, was independent in the way of only-children and loners. She lived with Macie, but she also lived in a wider world. Everyone around Quarry knew Charlotte. She rode her bike all over the place and knew more about the town’s gossip than was probably healthy. Like some forgotten memory, Gemma recalled that Charlotte had learned things about people, things she’d then told Jean, who had used them in her predictions. That betrayal had pissed Charlotte off.

  If someone like Edward Letton were after Charlotte, Gemma would have no qualms about running the bastard down. She could remember the emotion—the fury—that had consumed her as she banged out of Lulu’s that day. She’d followed him to his home…no…place of work?


  “Where’s the car?” she asked aloud to the empty room. She’d looked in all the outbuildings on the off-chance it was there, but there was no sign of it.

  Tossing the mail on the front table, she extracted her bank card. She was using an older purse that had nothing in it but two tubes of lipstick and a stack of ballpoint pens. She dropped the bank card into it and decided it was time to buy a new wallet.

  “And where’s my purse? And who dropped me off at the hospital?”

  It was extremely frustrating—extremely frustrating—that she couldn’t recall those facts.

  The phone rang and Gemma hesitated before answering. “Hello?”

  “It’s Sally, Gemma, dear. Thanks for calling me back.” Her tone added the word finally, though she didn’t say it. “When can I have my appointment?”

  Sally Van Kamp. Gemma had been forced to return her call, then had been thrilled when the woman’s answering machine had clicked on, giving her a chance to bob and weave. She had no interest in giving the woman a reading. None.

  “Hello, Sally. I just wanted to let you know that I’m not scheduling any appointments right now,” she began regretfully.

  “What? You can’t be serious. Jean, rest her soul, has been gone for nearly a year, and you’ve put me off and put me off. Your mother would never have treated me like this!”

  “I’m recovering from a—car accident. I just got out of the hospital,” Gemma said tightly. Okay, it was almost a week ago but Sally didn’t have to know that.

  “Oh.” She was momentarily flummoxed. But then she swept on, “I’ll bring you over some of my chicken casserole. Just the thing. Perk you right up.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Oh, my, my, yes, I do! I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  She clicked off and Gemma was left holding the receiver. She didn’t want to deal with Sally. She didn’t want her time used up. Before she started work at the diner she wanted to finish a few things. Threads left untied.