Lingering Touch: The Summer Park Psychics, Book 3 (3 page)

Chapter Three

The gallery had been her life for almost a decade. Now, Jazz could barely stand the thought of stepping inside. It had been rough after breaking up with Finn, with so many memories of the two of them together when no one else was around. That was nothing compared to this.

To hell with it. This was
her
gallery.

She unlocked the door and stalked inside, heading for the alcove that hid the alarm panel. She keyed in the code to shut it off—Finn’s birthday. She should really change it, but that would mean letting go of one more part of him. At least she could keep this little piece in her life.

Ugh. Maudlin thoughts.

“Enough!” She actually waved her arm in the air to cut herself off.

Great. Now she was talking to herself.

She flipped on the lights for the foyer, then pulled her sweater over her head and walked to the front door to lock it. The white T-shirt she wore reflected from the glass.

She was trying to put on a show of having her shit together. Same black leather pants as always, matching boots up to her knees, the V-neck shirt, minimal make-up, and the same attitude. She wanted her friends to know they could count on her.

They didn’t really seem to need much help anymore. That left her alone with her thoughts, which would not shut the hell up.

Peering out at the dark street gave her the creeps, especially after her conversation with Rachel. Jazz already believed ghosts walked among the living. Hearing Rachel’s firsthand account of encountering them—knowing they were
everywhere
—that was a bit much.

Not the ghost I was looking for, though.

But that was a good thing. Her father had crossed over. Chloe told Jazz during their first séance. It had taken a while for Jazz to accept it, but after all these years, she was glad. She believed he was in a happier place.

Her eyes filled with tears again. She was sick of it. People were counting on her, people she had already let down. She had to find a way to make it up to them.

Rachel was staying with Garrett. That was a huge blessing. Elsa had the necklace that would protect her during her travels. Dante was in good spirits, considering…

Jazz clenched her eyes shut and turned back toward the gallery. She didn’t want to remember seeing him with his face covered in bandages. She really didn’t want to remember what he had looked like when the EMTs had taken him away.

She had been so proud of Dante. So happy for him and Elsa and the life they were about to start together. A life Jazz had helped them create.

A wave of anxiety rippled through her. She had wanted Elsa happy. Wanted her to find love. That was part of what had blinded Jazz to Michael in the first place. Setting him up on a date with Elsa had been the first mistake—the one that let him into their inner circle.

How much had she talked Elsa up to Michael? What had Jazz said to Dante? She couldn’t remember. But if she had been too ebullient in her praise, too obviously affectionate in her own feelings toward her best friend…

This could all be her fucking curse again.

Every fortune-teller Jazz had ever been to had given her the same reading. No matter what divination method they used, the message was always, “You are an implement of Fate.” They said Jazz would play a vital role in facilitating the fates of the people in her life, helping them on the paths to their destinies.

She wished they had warned her about how dark those destinies could be.

Jazz had thought the readings were weird and amusing the first few times she visited psychics, until Fate struck her down over and over again—any time she bragged too much about someone she loved. And the stronger her emotion was, the worse the consequences would be.

It would have been easier to handle if Jazz was the one who bore the brunt of it, but the curse targeted the object of her affection. Whenever she was too happy and let anyone know, whoever she loved most paid the price.

At least this time no one had died. Well, no one who didn’t deserve it.

Her friends didn’t deserve what had happened to them, though. They were good people. They shouldn’t be suffering.

Even doped up on medicines, Dante seemed to sense Jazz’s distress and tried to ease her conscience, making jokes and pleasant conversation. It only made her feel worse.

She was used to his mask. The Phantom one was her favorite. The first time she saw his scars, she hadn’t reacted well. He’d caught her off-guard, and she had already been worried about Elsa at the time.

What would he look like when the bandages came off?

“Goddammit, Jazz,” she said. “Get it together.”

He would still be gorgeous. He would still be Dante.

Watching Elsa dote on him earlier that afternoon should have been hilarious—like Winston’s running commentary while he made everyone dinner. How could they laugh so soon? Jazz was still raw, especially after visiting them. She practically vibrated with the need to
do
something.

God, she missed Finn. If they had still been a couple, going back to his place would have been the first order of business. Or heading to the office in the gallery. She needed an outlet for her frustrations. Finn had always been so great about that, sensing when she’d had enough with talking and thinking and needed to just feel—even if he obviously had more he wanted to say.

And you wonder why he bailed.

She would be grateful to have him as a friend at this point. He was the only person she ever felt she could talk to. She gave Rachel orders, teased Elsa, chatted with Garrett, but only really talked to Finn. He knew her plans for the gallery, everything she hoped to accomplish with it.

She wanted to build up her business so that she could become an integral part of the community, could change Summer Park for the better. Hell, she had even shared her dreams for retirement—filling her twilight years with travel and new experiences.

If they were still hanging out, she could ask him for another self-defense lesson just to have someone to wail on. He’d encouraged her to let herself go as much as she wanted. He told her he could take whatever she dished out.

Apparently not. It didn’t take long for him to decide he didn’t want her in his life at all.

She was supposed to be over him by now. Dammit, she
was
over him. She had moved on.

She threw her sweater down on the bench seat near the door, then headed for Dante’s exhibit room. Looking at his paintings would help clear her head and calm her. It might help her feel less alone.

She turned on the lights for his room and took a deep breath as the soothing artwork entered her peripheral vision.

A portrait of Elsa at her writing desk hung on the wall opposite the entrance to the exhibit. In the painting, Elsa’s blonde hair glowed with gold tones that warmed her brown eyes. She was dressed in a pale pink tank top and pajamas that picked up splashes of color in the sky visible through the windows of her solarium.

Jazz loved the piece. If she thought Dante would sell it, she would buy it in a second. He had beautifully captured Elsa’s balance of vulnerability and strength. The cautious hope on her features left Jazz breathless. The brushstrokes were bold and gentle at the same time. How did he do it?

She stood in the center of the room, turning to look at Dante’s landscapes. She felt herself smile, her cheeks stiff and bewildered. It had been a while. His paintings lifted her spirits. If she had Elsa’s ability, that lifting would be literal—Jazz would be able to go back in time to when Dante had made the pieces.

She still wouldn’t be able to warn them.

This wasn’t helping. Not her, not anyone. She needed a plan, a focus. Some sort of direction.

One of Dante’s landscapes caught her eye. It was Elsa’s backyard, which seemed as big as a freaking football field. Jazz didn’t want to know how much her friend paid to make the grass green and thick in such a large space. Normally, Jazz thought of it as wasteful. But it had helped Dante create this masterpiece.

There was a wistfulness in it. He had captured the gentle swaying of the palms and pines along her property line. The painting almost seemed to move. Garrett’s house was right on the other side of those trees, a much smaller dwelling on a bit less land.

For a moment, Jazz actually felt homesick.

Maybe she should throw in the towel and move back to Kansas. Join her mom on a swing on the front porch and watch her little sister raise those three adorable nieces. The idea was good on paper, but the reality would be anything but peaceful. Her sister would light into her immediately, like she always did.

“When are you going to have kids? You should really settle down with someone. You’re not getting any younger you know. My kids need more playmates.”

Their mom would just sit and stare at them, letting them work it out between themselves and not taking sides. Jazz knew what that side would be, though. Her mom had married and had kids, after all. Jazz just wasn’t interested.

Her sister wouldn’t take no for an answer. Even when Jazz had confided that she’d already gone through with a tubal ligation and had no interest in government-sanctioned ceremonies to legally bind her to another person, Mei had just said,
“You can adopt. Hire a nanny with all that art-money.”

Mei could really be a pain in the ass.

“Dammit!”

This is not helping.

Jazz needed to get out of her head. Or at least switch what she was focusing on.

There was a mountain of paperwork waiting for her in the office. Bills, schedules, emails—all the gallery work that she’d been putting off while focusing on getting her friends back on an even keel. Everyone else seemed to be doing better, but Jazz felt like she was drifting around in a fog. She was sick of it.

She headed for her office, stopping long enough in the alcove to turn off the main lights before scaling the stairs two at a time.

Chapter Four

Finn couldn’t believe he was doing this. Breaking into Jazz’s gallery in the middle of the night.

All his leads had come up empty. He was sure the Montgomerys were the ones burying the story. Everyone Finn talked to had been nervous. Enough so that he was considering looking into that family when he was done with this case. Bribery only went so far. The people he spoke with acted more like they were being threatened.

He didn’t dare try to read their minds with his powers out of control. He had to solve this case first and get back to normal. The gallery was the only option he had left. He hoped he wasn’t getting in over his head.

Luckily, he’d helped Jazz design and install her security system. He knew where the cameras pointed, where the blind spots were, and the interior layout. He even had a key to the back door, though he was sure she’d changed the lock.

He walked up to the edge of the back camera’s field of view, which was a few feet away from the door. Black gloves protected him from picking up random memories and leaving prints anywhere. If anyone reviewed the footage, the long raincoat and his dad’s fedora would disguise his features once he was visible. Of course, if he could get in and out like he hoped, no one would think they needed to look…

His thoughts trailed off as he looked at the doorknob. Same shade of gray, same model, same scratch on the handle where Jazz had lost her grip on an unwieldy metal sculpture and dropped it—a secret he was sworn to take to his grave, even though it hadn’t been damaged.

She’d felt so bad about it, she’d purchased it from the artist and then donated it to the local hospital. And sworn to him that she’d hire people to help her move heavier pieces in the future. It was a big concession for her. She was a hands-on kind of person. In many, many ways.

He shook off the slew of memories that floated right at the back of his mind. The gallery was full of them, like when she’d given him the key on their one-month anniversary. At the time, he’d thought it was a great sign—that they were on the same page and headed toward a lifelong partnership. Turns out, she trusted him with her business. Not her heart.

It still didn’t make sense that she hadn’t changed out the lock. She’d had years to do it. Maybe she’d only replaced the tumbler and kept the rest of the hardware. Maybe she’d expected him to come crawling back after he left. If so, he doubted these were the circumstances she had in mind.

He pulled out his key ring. The gallery key was still on it. Ducking his head, he quickly walked to the door, then slid the key in the lock and turned it.

Click.

There was no time to reflect on what that meant—which was probably nothing. He slipped into the dark gallery and shut the door behind him, then turned to look at the motion sensors.

Green light. Bad news.

That meant someone was already in the gallery. Unless the alarm had been left off. He doubted that was the case. Jazz loved her gallery. She wouldn’t leave it unprotected. At this time of night, she was probably the one hanging around. He hoped so…and he hoped not. Seeing her would be too much to deal with right now.

He needed to be quick.

The streetlamps outside the big front windows gave him just enough light to see vague shapes and doorways. Finding Michael Angelo’s exhibit room was easy. It was the one roped off with police tape. He couldn’t believe Jazz hadn’t dealt with that yet. The doorway leading to Michael’s room wasn’t visible from the front foyer at least.

It wasn’t like her to let anything interfere with her business. Two months was a long time to keep the gallery closed.

He pushed aside his unwelcome concern as he ducked under the yellow ribbon of plastic crisscrossing the doorway and turned on his flashlight. The small beam cut a weak line of light through the darkness.

The room was cold. Colder than the rest of the gallery. Colder than it should be. The hairs on his arms were standing on end, even under his coat. He half expected his breath to come out as fog.

What the hell?

It was probably his imagination. He was already dreading what he had to do. Terrified, actually. He was going to try to read the walls.

The chance of him getting anything was slim. He wasn’t reading an object—he was reading a wall that had touched an object. And the paintings had been removed months before. The more time passed, the more the energy dissipated.

But this was a special case. The paintings that had hung on these walls were covered in blood. Blood put in place while Michael’s victims were dying. They watched it flow from their bodies and be spread on the canvas.

Sick fucking bastard.

Finn was glad Rachel had killed Michael. After reliving the memories of one of Michael’s victims every night for two months, Finn wanted to kill the guy himself.

What he didn’t want was to read these walls. He almost hoped he would come up empty. Except then, he’d be stuck like this indefinitely. At least reading the walls would be safer than reading the paintings. Finn was counting on that.

The paintings had to be filled with terrible energy. Too much energy—memories that were so dark, Finn was afraid of becoming trapped in them, of taking on more and losing himself entirely in the memories of Michael’s victims. The residue left from the paintings would be easier for him to pull back from.

Please, let me be able to pull back from this.

Best to get it over with quickly. He put away his flashlight, then pulled the glove off his left hand and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans.

He did not want to do this. He so did not want to do this. But he touched the wall anyway, his fingers splayed over the smooth surface.

Voices began to echo in Finn’s mind, their words distorted as he strained to listen. Yelling. Jazz’s voice mixed in. Elsa’s name. A man’s voice as well. Accented. Crisp.
Dante.

Finn pushed back farther. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He was keeping as tight a hold of his powers as he could, holding on to the tenuous threads of the past while trying to not lose control in the present.

A man and a woman speaking quietly. Her voice—her energy—was so familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Dante again. They were talking about Michael’s paintings.

Finn pushed more.

Jazz barking orders. Just her—in her element.

His breath hitched and he felt himself leaning forward, wanting to be closer to her, even now. He stopped himself, the strain increasing as he tried to control his body and his powers at the same time.

This used to be so easy.

He paused at that moment, listening to her voice. The measured cadence of her speech was comforting. It was the last comfort he was going to have for a while. He pushed again, rewinding the memories imprinted on the wall.

The room became colder. His skin prickled and he felt a pull, like gravity was shifting and the wall wanted to suck him in. His stomach lurched and his knees weakened. He had felt similar things working some of his early cases—before he had learned how to spot trouble and brace himself for it. Domestic investigations that had gone south. Way, way south.

He sensed death. Violence. Fear.

His stomach kept churning. He didn’t want to hear anyone die. And if he became lost in the memory… He sure as hell didn’t want to experience it with them.

At least in his nightmares, he always woke up before the victim died.

He couldn’t feel his body anymore.

The wall was sending out ripples of energy, like it wanted to cleanse itself of the paintings it had touched. Then the ripples became a spiral, pulling him in, thick as tar.

He heard someone yell. He thought it was a memory beginning, but it was male. All of Michael’s victims had been women, hadn’t they?

The whirlpool that ensnared him vanished. Finn was on all fours on the floor, his right knee sending sharp spikes of pain to his brain. Before he could register what was going on, a strong, slender hand clasped his right wrist and pulled that arm out from under him, then twisted it around behind his back. His assailant jammed their knee into his back, further throwing him off balance so that he fell forward onto his face.

“Struggle and I will dislocate your shoulder.”

Jazz.

Christ, her voice was sexy even when she was pulling his arm out of its socket. Trying to, anyway. She twisted his arm a bit further, just like he had taught her, making pain arc through him intense enough to beat out the throbbing in his knee for a moment.

“Ow.”

The pressure lessened a miniscule amount. “Finn?”

Dammit. Why was he flattered that she knew it was him from one word? His idiotic heart was doing flips in his chest, as if it didn’t remember her stepping on it. Repeatedly.

“Hi, sweetie,” he said. “Thought I’d drop by and check out the gallery for old time’s sake.”

“In the middle of the night.”

“I was trying to avoid an awkward encounter.”

“How’s that working for you?”

Man, he’d missed the snarky sarcasm. Truly, he had. He chuckled, face against the hard wood, waiting for her to be ready to let him up. Her weight disappeared from his back. She kept her grip on his wrist, though, and used it to help him turn over.

She was standing above him, long legs silhouetted against light that filtered in from the doorway. If she dropped to her knees, they could pick up right where they left off. More meaningless sex. More dashed hopes.

Not this time.

“Do you mind?” There was a bite to his tone that seemed just about right for how he was feeling.

Instead of stepping away, she bent down, sending his heart and other body parts into overdrive. Maybe meaningless sex wasn’t such a bad thing. But then she gripped both his hands to help him up, and his lust instantly flipped to panic.

They were touching skin-to-skin. Their
hands
were touching skin-to-skin. At least, one of them. It might be enough for him to be pulled into her thoughts, to lose himself there.

Jazz was the only person in his life he had never been able to read. But that was before his powers went off the rails. He didn’t want to read her thoughts now. He didn’t want to see that she really didn’t give a damn.

“Let go!”

She jerked back her hands as if he was made of lava. “Fine. Keep your ass on the floor.”

“Come on, Jazz. Could you just give me a minute to try to get my bearings?”

“Once you do, find the door and get the hell out of my gallery.” She walked to the wall near the door and flipped on the lights, blinding him.

He held up his arm to shield his eyes. “Right. Go for the weak spots to disable your opponent.”

“That’s what you taught me to do.” She let out a sigh. “What are you doing here, Finn?”

Something in her voice was off. She sounded tired in a way that went beyond the physical. He’d never known her to be anything but charged with enough energy to power the state. Lifting himself on his elbows, he finally laid eyes on her again.

Damn…

Her skin was flawless, shining over her smooth cheekbones and highlighting the graceful curve of her jaw. Her black hair fell over her shoulders in thick locks. It was longer than he remembered. She looked thinner too. She didn’t have the weight to spare, and his worry grew.

Her eyes were the same, though. Two spheres of onyx sparkling with intelligence and passion. Her lips were full and lush. He couldn’t stop staring at them.

Memories flooded his mind, but at least this time, they were his own. He remembered those lips pressed against his body, how her long legs felt wrapped around his waist, how she would smile at him and make him feel as if he was the only man on Earth.

Finn’s breath caught in his chest. Gorgeous wasn’t a strong enough word to describe Jazz. Her presence filled the room, commanded him to focus on her and her alone.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

Finn didn’t have to ask what she meant. He scowled and lay back flat on the floor, covering his face with his hands. Jazz was forged from iron. Unyielding. No wonder he could never read her.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not,” he said.

That tentative edge was in her voice again. She almost sounded vulnerable. Shit, what the hell had happened? Where was her unshakeable confidence? Finn rolled onto his side, then rose on all fours.

“Let me help you.”

He probably still couldn’t read her. If she only touched him through his coat, he’d be fine either way.

“Thanks.”

She held on to his arm as he tested putting weight on the leg she had kicked out from under him. Even when he was steady, she didn’t let go.

He wanted to bury his hands in her hair and kiss her and never stop. Hell, maybe melting into her wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Except the unshakeable woman of iron he had dated was holding him with a trembling hand, and for the first time since he’d known her, there was uncertainty in her eyes.

Which only made him want to kiss her more. To hold her close and tell her he would make it right. Whatever was wrong, he would fix it.

One case at a time
…

There was someone else he needed to help first. As much as he could at this point. The woman from his nightmares. He had to know what happened to her, why she was haunting his dreams. Hopefully then his powers would come back under control and the nightmares would stop.

“I’m working a case that involves one of Michael Angelo’s victims.”

“One of…” Jazz’s gaze became unfocused for a moment. She shook her head brusquely. Her lips tightened and her eyebrows pinched together. Her eyes started to blaze.

Uh-oh.

“What do you need?” she said.

“I was just going to read the walls and see what I picked up.”

Jazz was one of four people who knew about Finn’s ability. The others were Garrett, Daphne, and Dad—who shared the gift. Apparently, it was hereditary and passed through sons. His line would end with Finn, which was okay by him. He had family up north to carry it on.

“You think you can get something from the wall even though the paintings are gone?” she asked.