Chapter Two
MEGAN glanced into the rearview mirror when she heard the siren, and cussed to herself when she saw the lights. And now she understood her premonition that she would arrive at the bank three minutes after it closed, and that as a result, a check would bounce tomorrow. She’d left early to circumvent fate, and she’d driven fast to further ensure her success.
Only now she realized that if she’d never had the damned vision, she never would have been driving several miles an hour above the speed limit, and never would have been pulled over, and maybe, never would have been late. Was there such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Not only was her gift of little practical use, it was often downright cruel.
She pulled off onto the shoulder and sat there, drumming her fingers and looking at her watch while the officer took his sweet time about doing whatever it was they did in their cars while the speeders sweat it out and everyone they knew drove past and saw them. She took her wallet out of her purse, slid her license out of her wallet. Might as well save whatever time she could. She took the registration from the glove compartment, and rolled down her window. Then she drummed her fingers some more as the seconds ticked away.
Finally, a cop came walking up alongside her car, uniform, sunglasses, jack boots. He glanced inside, quickly into the backseat, then leaned down.
“Li—”
“License and registration,” she said, handing both to him.
He took them, peering at them through his sunglasses. “Do you know—”
“How fast I was going? Yes. Forty-three. And yes, I know this is a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone. I won’t even argue with you. I was speeding, I admit it. Trying to get to the bank before it closes, but I’m obviously not going to make it now.”
“You always finish peoples’ sentences for them?”
She looked up at him, noticed the line of his jaw, square chin with a little dimple in the center. Something niggled at her. The sunglasses hid his eyes. “Always.”
“A little boy’s dog was hit here last week. Kid cried for three days straight.”
She closed her eyes, nodding. “Point taken. Speed limits are posted for a reason.”
He nodded. “I’ll go run this. It’ll take a minute.”
She looked at her watch. “It’s too late to make the bank now anyway. Tomorrow a check is going to bounce.”
“You know which one?”
She glanced at him, frowning. “Yeah. Why?”
“Call whoever has it tonight, ask them to wait until noon to deposit it, and then go to the bank in the morning.”
She tipped her head to one side. His solution was so simple she could not for the life of her figure out why she had bothered racing for the bank in the first place.
He tapped her license against his fingertips. “Be right back.”
Something was off here. Why had her so-called gift bothered to warn her about making the bank on time in the first place? Nothing all that earth-shattering was going to happen and she could even avoid the bounced check.
She smiled to herself, shook her head at her own efforts to force her premonitions to be useful, helpful, and how those efforts always backfired. “I suck,” she muttered.
Then she closed her eyes, leaned back on her seat and waited for the handsome cop to come back. Just once, she thought, she would like to find a missing child, or identify a murderer or solve a bank robbery. Other psychics got to do dramatic, wonderful things like that. Meanwhile, she foresaw a “closed” sign in the bank window, and failed to see the speed trap until Officer Studly back there sprang it on her.
She smiled again, almost laughed at her own silliness. At least she’d got to meet the good-looking cop. She wondered if he was married.
He tapped her car door. She turned to see him holding her license and registration out to her. No gloves. No wedding ring either.
“You’ll be glad to know you’re not wanted for anything.”
“Hey, I resent that remark.”
The cop, stone-faced till now, smiled slowly as he got her joke. “I meant by the law.”
“So did I,” she told him.
His smile flashed then, full force and almost blinding and again something niggled at her. Something powerful. “I’m gonna let you off with a warning this time.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Thanks, Officer. I appreciate that.” She reached up to take the license and registration from his hand, but when her fingers brushed over his, she froze, as a flash of light and sensation hit her all at once. She knew her hand closed powerfully around his, and that her head slammed back against the seat and her eyes rolled. And then she was gone, down, down through a dark tunnel, until she emerged on the other side into the pouring rain and driving wind. Small green pup tents whipped, tore, stakes popping, cords snapping. Teenage boys huddled together, a canvas wrapped around their shoulders and mini rivulets running past their feet. A large tree. A creaking limb.
“Hey. Hey, come on, are you okay?”
His voice drew her back into the tunnel, back into her body, where she landed with the same thudding, jolting impact she always did. She felt warm pavement underneath her back, and a warmer hand cupping her nape. Her eyes popped open.
Her cop was leaning over her, a hand supporting her head, his face close to hers. He’d apparently pulled her out of the car when the vision hit. And no wonder. They’d never hit her so hard before, with such a physical impact.
She blinked her eyes clear and stared up at him. The sunglasses were gone, and she could see his eyes. They were deep brown, with thick dark lashes. And they were painfully familiar.
He was the man she’d been dreaming about from the age of twelve. She realized it suddenly and with a shock that nearly made her gasp out loud. God, she knew his face like she knew her own.
“There you are,” he said softly. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”
“I know I am.” What on earth was happening here? Something . . . this was no accidental meeting. She blinked a couple of times, pressed a hand to her head. The rush was gone. She felt normal again—physically, at least. She sat up, but her cop pressed his hands to her shoulders, telling her to stay down. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really. You didn’t go calling for backup over this, did you?”
“I radioed for an ambulance when you passed out,” he told her.
She blinked at him. “Cancel it, will you?”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “It’s not the first time this has happened to me.” It was the first time it had knocked her senseless, however. “And I didn’t pass out.”
“You didn’t?”
She shook her head. “Can I sit up now?”
He nodded, extended a hand, and helped her into a sitting position. Then he tapped the microphone that was clipped to his collar, calling her attention to his corded neck, and spoke in cop jargon. She was pretty sure he was canceling the ambulance he’d ordered up for her.
She was getting to her feet, and he was still holding her, helping her. He said, “So if that wasn’t passing out, what was it? Some kind of seizure?”
She studied his face. Hell, she was going to have to tell him. It wasn’t life and death, or even minor crime solving—but then again, who was she to say? It could be important. He was the man of her dreams, after all. And it would be cruel not to tell him. “It wasn’t a seizure. It was . . . a vision.”
His brows went up. “A vision. As in . . . a psychic vision?”
“I get them sometimes. I think when I touched your hand . . .” She watched his face, waiting for one of the looks she had come to expect: the blatant disbelief of her overly critical father, who would call her a compulsive liar and probably punish her for it; or the horrified fear of her zealot mother, who would call her evil, offensive to God, and would probably punish her for that.
The man’s face betrayed no emotion, neither skepticism nor fear. “So you’re psychic, th
en?”
She swallowed her fears. “Yeah. Just not usually about anything important. I do have some advice for you, though.”
“Really? For me?”
She nodded, staring into his eyes. She didn’t tell him about her dreams, about her having seen his face in her mind for such a long, long time. She didn’t ask him if he were laboring under any sort of curse that he knew of. No sense giving him further reason to doubt her sanity.
She wanted to see this man again. And she kind of thought she needed to. So she’d start him off easy. And even then he probably wouldn’t believe her. No one ever believed her.
He walked with her the few steps to her car, opened her door for her, waiting patiently for her advice.
She stood beside the open door, lost in her explorations of his face. God, he was handsome. “You’re, um . . . taking a group of teenage boys camping this weekend?”
He blinked, clearly surprised that she would know that. “Yeah. Over at Letchworth. It’s a departmental program, and it’s my turn.”
“It’s a very, very bad idea.”
He frowned at her. “That’s what your vision was about? My camping trip?”
She nodded. “I saw torrential rains, high winds, soaked, miserable kids, and tents getting torn to shreds.” She frowned. “And I got a bad feeling—something about a tree. Big pine, lots of dead branches.”
“The one where the vultures roost,” he muttered.
“Could be. I didn’t see any vultures. Still . . . if I were you I’d change the date.”
She got into her car. He stood there, holding her door open, staring in at her. “You’re not kidding about this, are you?”
“Nope. If I were making it up, I’d predict something much more important. I mean, this isn’t earth-shattering, but you might stay drier if you listen.” She shrugged. “I may not change the world with my visions, but I’m never wrong.”
“Never, huh?”
“Well. Almost never,” she said, recalling that she’d made a complete fool of herself with the chief of police this morning.
“Then how come you didn’t know I was sitting here clocking your speed?”
She pursed her lips, saw the twinkle of humor in his eyes, and knew he wasn’t ridiculing her—he didn’t believe her either, but he wasn’t being mean. He wasn’t calling her a liar or a sinner. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing, to be honest. If I hadn’t had the vision of getting to the bank too late, I wouldn’t have been speeding. I wouldn’t have been stopped. And I wouldn’t have been late. As it is . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we were supposed to meet.” That was it. She knew it the moment she said it, with a certainty she rarely felt about anything.
“You think?”
“I do.” She stuck her hand out the window. “Megan Rose.”
“So it said on your driver’s license,” he said. But he took her hand in his, and it was warm, smooth, and firm. “Sam Sheridan.”
“Good to meet you, Sam.”
He lifted his dark, thick brows, maybe a little surprised she had used his first name. He shouldn’t be. The man belonged on a police-hunks calendar. And besides, she’d known him forever. It wasn’t her fault he had no way of knowing that. He was far more stunning, she thought, in person.
“I hope next time it’ll be under more pleasant circumstances,” he said.
And there would be a next time, she had to make sure of that. “Will you do me a favor, Sam?”
“What’s that?”
“A favor? It’s something nice you do for someone else.” He smirked at her, and she smiled in return. “If you should take my advice about camping this weekend, and something important results from it, would you let me know?”
He frowned at her, obviously unsure she was being serious.
She shrugged. “You never know, one of these days this so-called gift of mine might actually do something useful. So will you call if you get the feeling it has?”
“Sure I will.”
She smiled, tugged a little card from her purse, and handed it to him.
He looked at it. “Celestial Bakery?”
“You were expecting me to tell fortunes for a living, I’ll bet.”
He shrugged, tucked the card into his pocket. “I’ll call.”
“I hope you do.”
She pulled her seat belt on, put the car into gear, and pulled into the nearest driveway to turn around, since it was already too late to make the bank.
I’M never wrong. Well, almost never. . . .
Sam stood in the woods of Letchworth State Park, huddled with the boys currently enrolled in the Pinedale Police Department’s Cop-Camp program. All of them were shivering and soaked to the skin. Their tents hadn’t held up to the gale-force winds, and he doubted these trees were going to hold up against them much longer. He could have kicked himself for ignoring Megan Rose. Not that he thought her claims of psychic powers were anything. Hell, she could have figured this storm was coming from watching the Weather Channel.
Though the local weather reports had completely missed it.
Something creaked ominously overhead, and her voice whispered through his brain, yet again, the way it had been doing for three consecutive nights now.
And I got a bad feeling—something about a tree. . . .
He looked up at the tall, haunted-looking tree the kids referred to as the Vulture Roost, as the woman’s words whispered through his memory.
Big pine, lots of dead branches.
A limb creaked and groaned.
“Everyone out from under the tree!” Sam shouted. As he said it, he herded the cold, wet teenagers out of the relative shelter of the woods and into the open, and the full fury of the storm. “Move it!”
They moved it. And when they were standing in the clearing that had seemed like such a perfect campsite, he heard a loud CRACK and saw the overweight limb crash to the ground right where they’d all been standing.
The boys and his Cop-Camp cocounselor, Derrick, were all staring at him. One of the kids said, “How did you know?”
“Heard the limb cracking,” he replied, making his voice loud enough to compete with the storm. “What, you telling me none of you heard it?”
The entire group of males shook their heads side to side.
“Well, I heard it. Good thing, I guess.”
“Yeah. Darn good thing,” Derrick said. He was searching Sam’s face as if he didn’t quite believe him.
Sam looked away, recalling Megan Rose’s warning. She couldn’t have seen that limb breaking on the Weather Channel.
Then again, it wasn’t that big a leap of logic. A storm, plus a forest, equals falling limbs. It was only common sense. Still . . .
“I think maybe we need to get out of here.”
“What about the gear?” Derrick asked.
“Leave it. We can’t protect it anyway. We’ll come back when the weather breaks and grab whatever’s left. I think the faster we get out of these woods, the better.”
Derrick nodded in agreement. “You heard him, boys. We’re out of here.”
“I heard that,” one of the teens said.
As soon as he managed to get warm and dry and stop shivering, Sam promised himself he was going to tell the pretty redhead that her warning had been dead on target. He supposed he owed her that much. And he had to see her again, anyway. Chief’s orders. Though he kind of thought he’d have wanted to see her again even if that hadn’t been the case.
There was something about Megan Rose that had brought his senses to life in a way he’d never ever experienced before. Which was not a good thing, considering that the chief suspected she was somehow involved with a murderer.
Chapter Three
SHE stood at the counter, blinking in surprise at the man who stood on the other side.
He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but that didn’t interfere with the instant recognition, nor with the tingling awareness that came with it. He was still gorgeous. Still familiar. Still im
portant to her, even though it made no sense he should be.
She tipped her head to one side. “I wasn’t speeding, I swear,” she said.
He smiled at her. “That’s what they all say. How do you know I’m not here for the doughnuts?”
She let her gaze slide down the front of him. “It doesn’t take a psychic to see you’re not big on doughnuts, Sam.”
He shifted a little, as if self-conscious under her stare, so she brought her eyes up to his again. There was a hint of fire there. “Actually,” he said, “I’m here to keep my promise.” He shrugged. “Well, technically I guess the promise was to call if anything happened, but I, uh—I don’t know. I just decided to come by.”
Megan frowned, her attention shifting instantly from his looks to his words. “Something happened?”
“Yeah. Something happened.”
“Hold on a sec.” She turned toward the kitchen in the back and called, “Karen, I’m taking a break. You okay by yourself?”
“Sure thing,” Karen called as she came walking out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Megan took off her apron as she came around the counter. “We can talk over here. You want some coffee?”
“No, I’m good, thanks.”
She led him to one of the small, round tables. There were only a handful. Most people came here to pick up orders and carry them home, but now and then someone liked to just get a doughnut or pastry and relax with a cup of coffee.
“This is a really nice little place,” he said. “You seem to be doing well.”
“Yeah, yeah, enough with the small talk. What happened? Did you go on that camping trip?”
“I did. It’s a program the department has for at-risk teens. Cops volunteer, take groups on camping trips a few weekends every summer. It’s a good program.”
“Sounds like. So what happened?”
He pressed his palms to the tabletop. “I don’t even believe in this stuff. I mean . . . I never have.”
She gnawed her lip and tried not to bark at him to get to the point already.
“It was just like you said it would be. A storm hit, even though the weather service predicted it would miss us by fifty miles. We had high winds, heavy rain, tents blowing all over hell and gone. Everyone was huddled near a copse of trees for shelter.”
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