Blinded

by Teyla Branton

  It took way more effort than I imagined to pull myself to my feet. My easy chair always seemed to capture a person in it, and today I wouldn’t have made it out at all if Jake hadn’t offered a hand. I smiled and pulled away as quickly as I could without offending him. No way did I want him to suspect I might still have feelings for him. Which I did, but not the right feelings. I’d loved him for years—I still loved him—and if Shannon hadn’t come along, Jake and I would be a couple. But with Shannon in my life, the world held new colors and emotions. The right kind.

  The minute I was on my feet, Destiny pushed against her mother in a valiant effort to reach me. That baby loved me almost as much as her mother, and because she hadn’t seen me for more than five minutes that morning, she was anxious to play.

  Tawnia tried to hold her back, but she was as helpless to deny Destiny anything as I was. I took the baby, cuddling her close, breathing in the baby smell of her—this time spit up mixed with baby lotion. The aroma shouldn’t be pleasant but was actually the greatest comfort I could imagine. The heavy feeling in my chest lightened.

  “Hi, sweetie, how are you? I missed you, too.” I kissed her cheek, and she reciprocated, opening her mouth wide pushing it against my skin. Okay, so we needed to work on the closing and puckering, but I felt happier anyway. Even the pounding in my head lessened. Only the dizziness continued with the same intensity. I’d have to remember to ask Tawnia about breaking an eardrum. The blast could have been responsible, and maybe it was affecting the imprints.

  I did seem to hear fine, though.

  I snuggled Destiny for a few more minutes before giving her back to her mother. Ever since her birth, my own biological clock was ticking. I wondered how Shannon felt about kids. Strange that I didn’t know, when I knew Jake was hoping for a half dozen.

  “I can’t let you go alone,” Peirce said.

  “You can come,” I told him. “But don’t call Shannon yet.”

  I headed to the bathroom to clean up a little before my meeting with Russo. What I really needed to feel completely ready was a long, hot shower, a new dress that cost more money than I had in savings, and a couple of guns. I had my concealed carry permit, but I never carried unless Shannon and I were heading to the range. The gun Shannon had given me—the second now—was locked in a small safe installed under my counter. With Destiny growing older, the rule was that the gun was on me or in the safe. So far, except for our weekly range trip, it was always in the safe. My weapons of choice were my hands and feet, though I had to admit they wouldn’t be much against Russo’s goons.

  I washed my face, reapplied a touch of makeup, and ran damp fingers through my dark brown hair, fluffing the red, dyed part on top. Then I took a wet rag and rubbed at a dirty spot near the buttons on my fitted blouse. My efforts were wasted; I still looked like I’d been rolled in a rug and almost burned to death. I did feel calmer, though. Maybe now I could read an imprint. My eyes darted around the small bathroom, but I could see nothing I knew held an imprint. Except my antique rings, which still had not even the slightest buzzing.

  Great.

  The lump in my chest exploded into panic, and I clutched at the sink in an effort not to curl into a miserable ball on the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut until the panic subsided, and until my dizziness lessened enough to see my reflection in the mirror once again.

  “You can do this,” I whispered.

  Sitting on the closed toilet seat, I washed my feet in the tiled floor basin I’d recently installed between the toilet and the new pedestal supporting my sink. The basin wasn’t much over a foot wide, and only a couple inches above ground level, but the attached sprayer did the job and made my employee Thera happy. She was always worried I’d contract something walking around without shoes, though I’d reminded her numerous times that there were normally more germs on a doorknob than on a sidewalk.

  Tawnia waited for me in the back room outside the bathroom door, but, thankfully, the men had withdrawn into my shop. “Feeling better?”

  “Do I look better?”

  “Sure,” my sister lied.

  I was normally the transparent one, but this time I could see right through her.

  “Look,” she rushed on, “I don’t think you should go.”

  “I have to go. Don’t worry. Peirce will be there.”

  She nodded, and I could tell it took great effort for her not to continue her protest. Instead, she hugged Destiny tightly.

  That was when I spied the drawing on my worktable next to several other drawings Tawnia had been working on. I picked it up. “You drew this today?”

  “Yeah. Kind of funny, isn’t it? It just came to me.”

  It was a drawing of the two old women from the estate sale with the young man carrying the rocking chair. Like me, my sister had an unusual ability. Hers was to draw people and things she’d never seen but that actually existed. Usually, her drawings linked to my cases. Knowing she would be here drawing this morning, I’d been half afraid that she might have drawn the burning van and become frantic with worry as she had in other past cases. Instead, it was the two harmless old ladies she’d somehow focused on.

  Maybe her talent was off a bit as well. Then again, the ladies benefitted from my rejection of the chair, which represented a loss of hundreds to me. Maybe I’d been more upset about that than I’d thought, and Tawnia’s ability picked up on my emotion.

  Tawnia studied my face. “Did you see them?”

  I wanted to say no, but withholding information from her was not the same thing as an outright lie she’d see right through. “Yeah. They beat me out of that little rocking chair. Well, I let them have it. The imprints—”

  “Hmm. So you could read imprints earlier today.”

  “I read a lot of them.” I stifled a shudder at the memory of the repeated one on the rug.

  “When exactly did they stop?”

  “I’m not sure. There was this one that was kind of bad, and then a loud noise.” No way was I going to bring up exactly what those men had tried to do to the van and me inside of it. “Made me dizzy. Weak. But I didn’t have your picture, and it was only when I put back on my rings—” I held them up. “They don’t buzz, and I couldn’t feel you here when I came into the store.”

  Tawnia’s brow furrowed. “I felt you.”

  This was an important admission, something she’d never shared with me before. My sister wasn’t big on owning up to any special ability. She claimed it was her connection with me that inspired her drawings. But our biological grandmother had drawn scenes that had happened across town, scenes she’d never witnessed. They’d locked her in a sanitarium for it and she’d died there. Her son’s greatest regret was not getting his mother out, but Cody had only been a teenager at the time.

  “It’s like the other times when you’ve read too many imprints,” Tawnia said in a voice that was meant to soothe. “You’ll see. You’ll rest and eat and pretty soon you’ll be reading more imprints than ever.” A coaxing smile slid over her face. “Think of it. People throughout the entire world, even in countries that don’t yet have running water, will line up and pay you money—or sticks or carvings or whatever they have—just to see you touch something. Then you can pay for Emma’s college and her wedding to a rich prince who adores her and who will give me an island somewhere for my very own so that I can draw without interruptions. The prince will buy all my paintings at exorbitant prices, and we’ll both be rich and famous. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Normally my sister’s silly imaginative stories made me laugh, but now I only wanted to remind her that though I’d passed out, thrown up, and otherwise become incapacitated after reading imprints, I’d never stopped feeling them altogether.

  “Thanks,” I said instead. “Just save room for me on that island.”

  She winked. “You can have half of it.”

  It was time to go.

  I didn’t take my gun. On the way out of the shop, I touched four items I knew held positive imprint
s, pretending to adjust their positions on their shelves. Nothing but dizziness. It was as if a part of me was missing. An arm, a leg. An eye. Leaving a gaping hole in its place.

  “Look,” I told Tawnia as she accompanied me to the door, “I might have broken an eardrum from that loud noise this morning. Do you know what symptoms I’d have?”

  “Well, pain in that ear for starters. Maybe it’d leak fluid. I’ll have to look it up on the Internet to be sure. Why, does your ear hurt?”

  “No. But I’m a bit dizzy.”

  Tawnia looked hopeful. “Maybe that’s why you can’t read imprints.”

  I knew before I returned that she’d have a list of symptoms, a dozen cures, and an appointment with her doctor for me. At least she’d be busy and not worrying quite as much while I was in the evil viper’s lair.

  Jake, trailing behind us with Peirce, showed no sign of stopping at my shop door. “You’ve got customers,” I reminded him. Friday was a big day for his store, and Thera couldn’t handle all the customers alone. Randa, our other part-time employee who was also Jake’s sister, was still in high school and wouldn’t get here until after two.

  “I called Jazzy,” he said. “She’s coming right in.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Jazzy Storm was one of the girls Shannon and I’d freed during the child trafficking case we’d solved in Salem. The fifteen-year-old runaway hadn’t wanted to go back to her deadbeat parents, and Paige had set her up with an attorney who’d agreed to help her become emancipated, but who had ended up fostering the girl instead. Jazzy was too far behind to attend regular school yet, so she helped out in our stores a couple times a week—more to keep her off the streets than for her usefulness. She had many bad habits, which her guardian suspected she’d get rid of right about the time she stopped using her made-up name. The attorney secretly paid her wage to encourage us to employ her long term so she’d have more stability. I’d convinced Jake to agree to the arrangement, and after five long months, she was finally becoming a bit helpful. We still made sure to keep a close eye on our cash registers and our inventory when she was around.

  “Thera knows the score,” he said. “And we’re not going to be long. I mean, you can’t do anything for Russo right now.”

  I shrugged, annoyed at the implication. For a long time, even before we broke up, Jake had hinted that he wanted me to pull back from any situation that might be dangerous, and I suspected he hoped my condition was permanent.

  No. That was uncharitable. Jake might wish a lot of things, but he wouldn’t want me to be miserable.

  Then again, reading imprints had changed me from a trusting, friendly person to someone more jaded, more careful. Where once I’d embraced everyone without reserve the way my hippie parents had, now I didn’t offer my hand for fear of touching a piece of jewelry. I reserved judgment until imprints had verified my first impressions. I avoided places people commonly left imprints—like libraries and secondhand stores—unless I was wearing gloves.

  Imprints complicated things. But at the same time, they opened up an entirely new world where I understood people and experienced them as I never had before. A world where my efforts helped people and changed lives for the better.

  Could I adjust to a “normal” life again? Maybe the choice wouldn’t be mine.

  I offered Tawnia what I hoped was a confident smile and strode outside into the bright sunlight. However, it felt more like slinking out. My eyes roved the street, looking for danger, but besides Peirce’s partner lounging against his squad car, all I saw was the sleek black sedan parked across the street, a bit down from Smokey’s. If I hadn’t been so out of things earlier, I would have noticed it before.

  Nicholas Russo was slumming. The man owned a host of fancy restaurants and other businesses, and was up to his ears in exporting, importing, and real estate, both in New Jersey and on the West Coast. He was certainly accustomed to better than what Smokey’s could offer—at least in the way of ambience. Smokey’s food, in my opinion, compared favorably to any fare five times the cost, and Russo would probably recognize that. I hoped Smokey’s didn’t become his new favorite hangout whenever he was in town—or, worse, that he would decide to buy the place.

  The sidewalk felt warm and rough on my bare feet, and though the sensation wasn’t the connection with the universe that I craved, the heat and familiarity of the sensation was comforting.

  “Delaney’s going to keep watch out here.” Peirce thumbed at his partner. “Just in case.”

  I opened the door to the restaurant with a bit of rag I casually palmed from my pocket before remembering it wasn’t necessary. It seemed I’d finally learned to protect myself from random imprints when I no longer needed to make the effort. Neither Jake nor Peirce commented, though Peirce rushed to hold the door for me. Maybe they hadn’t noticed.

  Inside Smokey’s, Russo had appropriated two well-lit tables near the back, pushed together to form a larger dining area. One of Russo’s men, a massive guy in dress pants and a blazer, sat with him. I recognized the man’s bald head instantly from our last encounter. Charlie was his name. Two other men, dressed similarly, sat at the long snack bar along the wall opposite the kitchen area. Though they were enjoying coffee, they were obviously alert.

  Bodyguards, I guessed. Russo never went anywhere without a few.

  The place smelled heavenly, as always, and despite my claim that I wasn’t hungry, my stomach growled. At least part of my body was working normally. Maybe eating something high in protein would help me recover. Some good fat couldn’t hurt, either. Smokey’s was mostly organic, from their brownies to their famous pot pies, and their proteins and fats were healthy.

  Kristy, a rounded brunette waitress I knew fairly well from my biweekly visits, greeted us as we came in. “Hi, Jake. Hi, Autumn.” To me, she added, “You look hungry.” Which I supposed was her way of saying I looked as lousy as I felt. Her soft brown eyes scanned Peirce in his uniform. “You want a table for three? Or are you taking it with you?”

  “Not today. I’m here to see him.” I indicated Russo with a flick of my chin.

  Her smile faltered. “Oh, lucky you. I’m just hoping he’s a good tipper.”

  Apparently, Russo hadn’t gone out of his way to be nice.

  “So are you actually eating with him?” Kristy asked. “Or do you just want a drink?”

  “I’d like a pot pie. Beef. And my usual turkey club. But double the meat.” I grinned at her. “Put it on his tab.”

  She laughed. “Coming right up. Your usual to drink?”

  Strawberry smoothie, she meant. It was my latest habit. “Sure. Thanks.”

  Kristy looked at Jake and Peirce. “Anything for you?”

  They shook their heads, both looking as if they were heading to a funeral—my funeral and maybe their own. Peirce found his voice. “No, thanks, ma’am. Just some water, please.” Not a trace of his usual levity. Jake nodded agreement.

  I sighed. “Thanks, Kristy.”

  Russo had spotted us, and he set down his fork, lifting an imperious left hand. I remembered now that he was left-handed and missing half a middle finger next to his thick wedding band. As I crossed the cool tile toward him, I could see he hadn’t changed in the intervening ten months since our last, nearly fatal, encounter. He had black hair with no trace of gray, and his well-defined features weren’t overly prominent. He didn’t look Italian, and he didn’t have an accent when he spoke English, but he wore a dark suit that was most likely Italian and cost as much as I made in two years. Possibly more. He wasn’t fat, but he had serious bulk, and an air of power and charisma that made him compelling. He invited trust, but trusting him would be a huge mistake.

  Still, he had stayed away from his cousin and his little family. He would expect me now to uphold my end of the bargain, so I’d have to tell him the truth—or bluff. I wasn’t sure which would help me stay alive. Too bad we couldn’t have cut and dyed the top of Tawnia’s hair and had her talk to Russo. Sh
e’d have convincingly rattled off a few fake imprints and we’d be finished. Of course that option was off the table—no way was my sister getting anywhere near this creep.

  Russo stood as we arrived at the table. I hadn’t felt underdressed before in my jeans and blue blouse and bare feet, but I did now. “Autumn Rain,” he said, swallowing my hand in his two larger ones. I noticed he was careful not to let his ring touch my skin. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” His eyes narrowed as they flicked over Peirce’s uniform, but he didn’t acknowledge either of my companions, which irked me.

  “You remember my friend Jake Ryan, don’t you?” I said, placing a steadying hand on Jake, who looked ready to burst. I’d seen Jake lovingly escort old women through his store, explaining the benefit of one herb or another. I’d seen him spoon-feed baby kittens who’d lost their mother. But he could also appear intimidating, as he did now, with his locs framing his strong face and his muscles flexing beneath his snug white T-shirt. His jaw already showed signs of new beard growth since his last shave, making his dark skin even darker in those spots. This was the Jake that some of my more romantic customers sighed over when they thought I wasn’t watching.

  “Yes,” Russo said in a bored tone that told me I was wasting time. “We talked a few minutes ago in your store.”

  “And this is Officer Peirce Elvey. He’s a friend of mine and happened to be driving me home today when I learned of your visit.” I didn’t mention my sister. I couldn’t remember if he knew I had a sister, but I wasn’t going to bring her to his attention.

  “How fortunate,” Russo said dryly. “Will you join me?” He indicated the chair across from him.

  “Sure. I already gave my order to the waitress.” I sat down, flashing a smile I knew was forced in the direction of his companion. “Hello, Charlie.”