Mind Games (19 page)

Derrick didn’t have the face of a violent man, but then again, neither did Dana. She steeled herself. She had to get closer to Derrick to get closer to the truth. She went to the front door. She didn’t like how they had left things. He had overreacted to her saying Dana’s name—it wasn’t like she’d sighed it in the heat of the moment—but she understood his frustration.

She opened the door. Derrick’s fist was raised in the air, and he almost knocked on her face. Instinctively, she ducked from his raised fist.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right.” He released his clenched hand and lowered his arm to his side. “I saw your lights on.”

“Uh-huh.” The utterance lay in the air between them. She widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows at him, bracing one hand on the doorknob, the other firmly against the frame. She blocked the open door’s threshold. The rest of her petite frame leaned against the door.

“I’m sorry about earlier.” Derrick leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. His nose rubbed the side of her face. She turned away from his affection. He nuzzled closer. “You’ve been through a lot,” he whispered against her ear. His eyelashes fluttered against her skin, sending chills through her in all the right places. Damn, she needed to keep her guard up.

His breath smelled of bubblegum, but she detected the clean fragrance of a fresh shower. “You’re gonna catch cold,” she said, ruffling his damp locks with one hand. She pulled him in through the front door with the other, taking control of the situation. She had let him grovel long enough. “I just put on a pot of tea and was going to have a few cookies.”

She pulled out a stool from under the breakfast bar and patted the seat. After she steeped the tea she brought them each a full cup on a saucer and then pulled a box of chai-almond-flavored tea biscuits from the cupboard. She arranged several on a tiered serving tray. Everything screamed frilly and feminine. She grinned at Derrick picking up the dainty cup.

“Cheers,” she said, and gently touched the rim of his teacup to hers. “So why are you really here?” She knew damn well he didn’t drop by in the middle of the night only to apologize.

*               *               *

A plan to possibly indict your father for illegal, cruel, and unapproved therapeutic practices.

Derrick had ruined their night earlier, and now that he was with her the only thing he wanted to do was hold her. After listening to the humiliating things Dana put her through, he wanted to protect her. He wanted her to feel loved. And that was when the arrow stabbed him through the heart. He was in love with her.

How could he expect her to love him in return when he wanted to ask for her cooperation to investigate her father?

“I missed you.”

She sipped her tea. “I’ve been busy.” She tilted her head back toward the living room and the box of Dana’s personal effects. She picked up a tea biscuit, bobbed it up and down in the tea, and took a generous bite. She reached for another.

“Have you found anything interesting?”

She swallowed down the last bite. “Hmm. So that explains this house call.”

“No, not exactly. You brought it up.”

She settled her teacup back onto the saucer. “Derrick, you just got the Mobile Health Clinic RV back. After missing a couple of days of work, I find it hard to believe you just came over to tell me you’re sorry. Not when you could be out on the streets helping the kids you care about so much.” She clasped her hands together and rested her chin against her knitted fingers.

“I saw Tony again. You know Sly, the guy we thought was Angel’s boyfriend?” She nodded. “Turns out he’s her brother.”

“What does Tony have to do with this?”

“He broke up a knife fight that got Sly slashed. Tony pulled me over, and next thing I know here’s Sly. But…” He paused, took a gulp of tea, and set down the cup.

“I can tell I’m not going to like this.”

“Your dad paid Sly a visit. He tried to get him to come back to the house.”

“So? Angel is staying with him.” She went to the stove to pour another cup of tea. She topped off his cup and then took a seat next to him. “What are you getting at?”

The intensity in her eyes told him he’d gotten her hackles up. “Sparrow, your dad’s been out there before, asking kids to participate in psychological evaluations.”

Her cheeks flushed an angry red and the fire bolts flaring from her eyes could have struck him dead. “So you think he’s up to no good, Derrick?”

“I didn’t say that, but…”

“But what?”

“Why would he be picking up runaways for psych evals?”

She jumped up from her stool and paced the floor. Finally, she stopped and pressed her back against the wall, folding her arms across her chest. Her foot jutted out. She was agitated by his remarks. She tapped at the tile with her barefoot. “Maybe he wants to help. Why do you drive around in an RV filled with medical supplies?”

Ouch. The comparison hit home. “Point taken. The problem is, according to Sly he’s never seen these kids again once they’ve left with your dad.”

She planted her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes at him like he’d missed something. Her orbs resituated themselves in their sockets, and she nailed him to the back of the stool with another witchy glare. “Isn’t that the idea, Dr. Sloan? To get them off the streets?”

Two points for Sparrow. Dr. Derrick Sloan, zip. He leaned against the stool and folded his arms across his chest. He was at an impasse. “Touché.”

“Derrick, I don’t know if you think I’m stupid, incapable, or both, but I don’t need you making random accusations or drawing unfounded conclusions about my father. He has an impeccable record as a therapist worldwide. I’ll admit there seems to be some sort of a connection between my father and Dana. I’m working on it. As a matter of fact, I’ve taken your advice and scheduled an appointment with a hypnotist. I see her tomorrow morning at ten.”

The roadblock he thought she’d resurrected cleared. “I suggested that because of what happened the other morning. When I found you staring out at the ocean insisting you saw a dead girl. So either you’ve discovered something in that box or you’ve had another episode?”

She dropped her fisted hands from her hips and slapped them against the tops of her thighs. “Are you sure you’re not a lawyer disguised as a doctor? You just won’t let this go, will you?” She shook her head at him. Her eyes rolled at him in disgust.

“Sparrow, I want to help. Don’t shut me out.” He got up from the stool and caged her between his arms, pressing his forehead to hers. “Let me in.” The uncertainty in her green eyes softened, and she slumped against the wall.

“I don’t know,” she uttered under her tea-laced breath.

“Relationships are built on trust. If we don’t have that we won’t have much of a future. Will we?”

She pressed the back of her head against the wall, searching the ceiling for the answer. “You’re not making this easy.”

He pulled his right hand from the wall and tugged on her chin with his thumb and index finger. “Look at me, Sparrow. I can’t imagine the mental belittling and physical cruelty you experienced with Dana, but I’m not him. Dana and I were friends a long time ago, but I never approved of his reckless behavior.”

“Then why did you hang out with him? Why did you bring drugs to the party that night?”

“Well, at first I thought he was cool, and I liked the adrenaline rush I got from the stupid things he did. Until it got out of control. I was like any guy our age. I liked getting in a fast car and racing down the road, or skateboarding next to a moving vehicle, but I had my limits. I wasn’t into the death-defying crap Dana was. Bringing the ecstasy to the party was dumb, but I fell to the peer pressure and wanted to be cool. And then, when he did what he did to Jessica, I knew he was really messed up. I’ll never hurt you.” He caressed her jaw line with his thumb. “You’re a smart, beautiful, and intriguing woman. I like your passion for life and the way you care for the kids the way you do when you work side by side with me at the Mobile Health Clinic. You’re perfect.”

“I’m not.”

“For me you are.”

“You might change your mind after you hear what I’m about to tell you. It’s about the night Dana died.”

He was right. Relationships were built on trust. If she pursued a future with him, she needed to confide in him. The suspicion building around her father worried her, and she needed Derrick to lean on. Just having him next to her now eased her burden. However, her natural instinct to defend her father’s innocence prevailed, and she couldn’t team up with Derrick in his pursuit to convict her father of unscrupulous practices.

She ducked out from under his arm and motioned for him to have a seat. The warmth surrounding her evaporated. She missed being trapped in his arms and so close that she could smell the faint bubblegum left on his breath that the tea couldn’t mask.

“I’m not even sure where to start.”

He reached over and put his well-scrubbed hand on her arm, curling his fingers around her wrist. His thumb massaged at her worry. “How about you tell me what feels right? It’s a place to start. If you’re not ready to confide everything, eventually you will.”

The sincerity in his eyes put her at ease. If she knew he would have been this understanding, she would have opened up sooner. She took a deep breath. “Well, I think the dead girl I’ve been having visions of is connected to…” She paused, rubbing her lips together.

“It’s okay. This might be the breakthrough you need to figure out who she is.”

“Not exactly. I think she’s connected to my father and Dana.”

His hand went still. A startled expression spread across his face. “How?”

“The last vision I had of the girl, she was dangling this charm bracelet in my face like she was trying to tell me something. I don’t remember having a charm bracelet, but I found one in my jewelry box at my parents’ house. The jewelry box is from my childhood. I’d like to pass it down to my daughter some day.” She paused, taking in his smile that brightened the serious expression etched upon his face when she talked about having a daughter of her own. “When I started to go through the box Dana had left for me, I found this charm.” She scooted off the stool and walked over to the coffee table. She picked up the charm and the bracelet with the missing link and set them on the breakfast bar in front of Derrick. She flattened the charm bracelet against the marble top, stunned when Derrick grabbed her wrist.

“You knew her?” His grip softened, and he nudged her hand away.

His remark left an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t like the way his fingers ran over the charms.

“Did this belong to Jessica Thaylor?”

A sick idea crept up in her head. She could have missed something in the vision. Had Dana been at the beach that day too? Was he in the water and pulled her under? After the trauma Jessica had suffered at the hands of him, he might have killed her. Considering Jessica’s father was Judge Thaylor, he could have thrown the book at Dana.

It all seemed to make good sense. Except for the part where she remembered watching the water consume the girl little by little, and all Sparrow had been able to think while she looked into the girl’s soft blue eyes was:
You know what you must do
.

Derrick shook his head but didn’t look up from the charm bracelet. “It belonged to my sister. Are you telling me my sister is dead?”

“What?”

The warm tea and soggy biscuits barely digested in her stomach crept into the back of her throat. She forced down the nausea.

Derrick didn’t lift his head from his chest. His eyes strained to the far corners of his lids, glancing over at her.

“She’s been missing since 1999. She ran away after she turned sixteen.”

His gaze shifted back to the bracelet, and he raised his hands and covered his face. She could hear his heavy breathing into his cupped hands. She reached over and laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder. He dropped his hands from around his mouth. His left arm stretched across his chest, and he squeezed her hand. He rested his forehead in his free right hand.

“She ran away from home not long after we moved to Colorado. I’ve been looking for her ever since. Where did you get this again?”

“I found it in my jewelry box at my parents’ house. Derrick, don’t get upset, but is it possible this isn’t your sister’s charm bracelet. Maybe it’s mine and I just don’t remember. Maybe I knew her and we had matching bracelets. I’m sorry, I just can’t remember.”

He released his hand from hers and picked up the heart charm. He turned it over. His jaw tensed.

“
Love, Mom & Dad
. My parents gave this to her on her birthday. And look.”

He set down the heart charm and picked up the bracelet, stretching the length of it between his fingers. “She loved to ski when we first moved there. This pair of skis was my birthday gift to her. I wanted her to be happy. I thought if she could focus on what she liked about Colorado she’d stay, but her threats to leave weren’t empty. I knew she’d run back to where she thought all the glitz and glamour shone, LA.”

Sparrow finally understood why the Mobile Health Clinic RV was so important to Derrick. He couldn’t save his kid sister, but he could help other kids with the same delusional dreams.

“What was her name?”

“Kathlyn. We called her Katie.” His voice faltered, and his hurt cut through her nauseated gut like a knife. “Tell me what she looked like when you saw her.”

She moved out from behind him, dragged back a stool, and took a seat next to him. The fingertips of his hands pressed together, and he didn’t bother to look up at her. Her heart ached for him, and she wanted to reach over and pull his hands into hers, but didn’t. Not everyone wanted comfort during a difficult time, and Derrick looked like he wanted her to keep her distance. She leaned back against the stool and shoved her hands into her lap to avoid touching him.

“She has wavy, long blonde hair, the shade of blonde that’s been kissed by the sun, not bleached, and striking pale blue eyes. Her eyes are almost translucent, but there’s a kindness—no, a sorrow that glitters behind them. She has thin lips and a small button nose set in a round face that lacks maturity. Her voice is—”

Derrick pressed his moist hands against the countertop and shifted in the stool to face her.

“She talked to you? What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Stop him, Sparrow. You have to stop him.’”

“My God,” he said, and shifted back in his seat to face the charm bracelet, turning his head away from her. “Who? Stop who?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s all she says, and then she disappears in a mist of vapors. My first thought, after I found the charm in Dana’s things, was that he hurt this girl in my vision and employed my dad to help cover things up. Well, not to cover things up, but maybe he told my dad what happened and invoked his doctor-patient confidentiality right. Obviously, there’s some connection there. Derrick, I hope to have some answers tomorrow after I meet with Violet Crosby. She’s the hypnotist I’m going to see. If I am having visions of your sister, maybe she’s still alive and being held captive somewhere. Somehow she’s able to connect with me, or me to her. No matter what, I’ll find out what’s going on.”

“Sparrow, I don’t know if any of this has to do with you, your father, or Dana, but I’m sure as hell going to find out who the hell the
him
is that she’s warning you about. I’m going to that appointment with you.”

“You think I hurt your sister? I would never hurt anyone. I’m trying to figure out why I’m having this vision and what it all means. You believe me, don’t you?”

Her eyes moved from his face to Dana’s open journal on the floor. She decided to wait to share the mad ramblings with him. She had already destroyed his world.

*               *               *

“Yeah, I believe you. I think this has more to do with your dad.” Derrick pressed his hands against the cool marble table, resting them on either side of the bracelet. A dewy ring outlined his clammy hands. “The vision you described sounds an awful lot like Katie.” He’d said her name, and the empty abyss inside of him widened. He knew he might never see his sister again. “I’m going with you to that appointment. I have to know what Kat’s trying to tell you.” He didn’t want to believe Katie was…dead.

“Kat?” She furrowed her brow and squinted at him.

Maybe she didn’t know his sister after all. If Katie had landed in LA and called herself Kat, surely that name would ring a bell for Sparrow.

“That’s the nickname she gave herself when we lived in California. ‘Katie’ was too plain for her. You know, like most girls her age, she wanted a Hollywood-type name.”

He leaned forward on the stool and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He flipped it open, produced a photo, and set it on the marble countertop next to the bracelet. Sparrow’s eyes bulged from their sockets, confirming the photo resembled the girl in her visions. He gave her a hard stare and waited for her response.

“It could be the same person. I’ve never seen anyone with such striking eyes, but Derrick, I can’t be sure.”

“Let me show you this.” He reached back into his wallet and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He opened it and placed it on the counter next to the photo. “This is an age-progressed computer-generated image of her. As I mentioned, I’ve been looking for her for years. She’d be twenty-six now.”

Sparrow rested her hand against his arm. Her fingers rubbed at his misery. Her caring touch and sympathetic eyes assuaged his guilt for not taking Katie’s threats to run away from home more seriously, but he didn’t want to feel comforted. He didn’t want the sense of relief she provided, or to share his burden. No, looking for his lost sister had never been a burden, and now he had someone to share in his hope of finding her. Sparrow was right. Katie could be alive, and through some telepathic connection she’d reached Sparrow for help. Perhaps their paths had crossed, and Katie trusted Sparrow.

“Derrick, in my vision of us on the beach, we were writing our names in the sand. The water swept the shoreline away, but I know the hypnotherapist will be able to get that information out of me. We’ll definitely know the name of the girl on the beach.”

“I hope so.” He cupped his hand over hers. “Are you going to be okay if we find out this has to do with your father and his questionable treatment methods?”

She pulled her hand out from underneath his. Her spine shot up straight as arrow. She leaned in closer to him. Her eyes looked serious. “I will be hypnotized. I’ll have no choice but to believe the outcome. I’ll do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this.”

“Then explain to me what you meant when you said you had to tell me something about the night Dana died.” The color drained from her face. He’d seen that same paranoid look on the faces of the kids he treated when they knew something but didn’t want to tell him. “Go on.”

“The night Dana took his life, I had a vision. I saw him kill himself.”

The shock from her statement had him bolting up from the barstool and pacing the floor. His body heat kicked up a few degrees, and he didn’t know how many more of her visions he could take. He blew out his breath. “You didn’t think that was something important to tell me days ago?”

After he had given her a medical exam, he had suggested she talk to him on her own time, but that was no excuse. This was important. She could have told him about this long before she had the vision of the dead girl in the ocean. His shoulders automatically rose to his ears, and he compressed his neck against the tension. He didn’t want to think of Katie as dead.

Sparrow scooted off the stool and came toward him. “I-I wanted to, but I thought you’d think I was crazy and force me to go to the hospital for a psychological evaluation.”

He didn’t like the way she followed his pacing feet, talking in his face, trying to explain.

“I’m hoping that after I see the hypnotist, everything will make sense. I planned on telling you then.”

He stopped moving and lowered his head so that his face was only a few inches from hers. He needed to gauge her reaction when he asked, “Why would you be afraid to have a psychological evaluation? Did you kill him in some sort of psychotic rage and then stage his death?”

An incredulous glare came across her face, and disbelief shadowed her normally calm green eyes. He couldn’t decide if she was angry or insulted by his question. The rest of her body held no emotion. She stood stiff as board in front on him with her arms and hands motionless at her sides. She lowered her lids and dropped her head to her chest.

“What kind of a person do you think I am? I had a vision while practicing yoga and deep meditation. Do I feel responsible for Dana’s death? Yes, because I couldn’t stop him.”

He fought the urge to pull her chin up so he could see her face. Clearly, he had upset her, and after the manhandling she’d experienced at Dana’s hands he thought it better not to touch her.

“How could you stop him if you were having a vision? I don’t understand.”

“I’d been practicing yoga and a simple mantra, Aoom-Mani-Padmay-Hoom. Negative thoughts about Dana kept filtering into my mind, and while I tried to force them away and visualize myself a potted plant, Dana’s hand plucked me from my pot, and the next thing I knew, I was in his backyard. He was planning to hang himself.”

This sounded like a horror movie. He couldn’t make wild accusations or assumptions and risk her throwing him out. He had to remain calm if he was going to see that hypnotherapist with her tomorrow. He had to know what had happened to Katie, and an unexpected obligation to Tony and Dana loomed, considering her outrageous story. Her words about how she
visualized
being a potted plant stuck in his head. The article he’d read about her father’s treatments suggested yoga and visualization methods.