“This . . . lovely benefit . . . is that going to happen when I touch other people?”
Noah released a belly laugh, and Charlie shot him a chastising glance. “It’s not funny.”
“No, but it could be a hell of a lot of fun.”
“Leave it to a guy to think so.”
Chuckling, AnnaCoreen asked, “Have you experienced it with anyone besides Noah?”
“Not so far.”
“Then it’s likely that your deep, emotional connection to him enhances your ability to tap into his energy. That ability could heighten further as your relationship grows.”
A growing relationship? Deep, emotional connection? Holy crap. She
did
love him.
“Hmm,” Noah mused, “the idea of being able to get you off with a mere phone call has a certain appeal.”
“Noah,” Charlie gasped, horrified.
AnnaCoreen laughed again. “I don’t know about the remote possibilities, but it’s certainly a theory you could test.”
Noah got up and headed for the door. “I have a call to make.”
Charlie had to laugh. “Get back here, ya big horndog.”
He returned, grinning, and she thought the most amazing thing in the world was seeing him smile. She sensed he hadn’t smiled nearly enough in his life and vowed to change that. If she got the chance. Who knew what would happen once he had to return to Chicago? The thought of a long-distance relationship did not sound appealing.
As he sat back down, she reached over and grasped his hand, pleased by the way his eyes flared with awareness as he squeezed her fingers.
She had to force herself to turn her attention back to AnnaCoreen. “So, about what happened last night. You called it flash fatigue.”
AnnaCoreen nodded as she began to rock. “Can you tell me how you were feeling before the flashes began cycling?”
“Mainly, I had a headache. A migraine. I kept seeing flashes of light that got more intense before each vision.”
“Would regular migraine medication hold off the cycle?” Noah asked. “Or perhaps Charlie could take a tranquilizer as soon as the headache starts?”
“It would be best for a doctor to determine the appropriate course,” AnnaCoreen said.
Charlie was skeptical. “How do I explain what’s happening to a doctor? He or she would think I’m nuts.”
“There’s a doctor from Fort Myers who visits me regularly,” AnnaCoreen said. “She has an open mind, and I’m sure I can arrange for you to see her. I also think it’d be a good idea for her to do a brain scan.”
“A brain scan?” Noah asked, alarmed. “Why?”
“We would be remiss not to keep an eye on what’s happening physically as well as emotionally,” AnnaCoreen said. “We don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with. If these flashes are having a physical impact of any kind, other than the obvious, we need to be on top of that.”
Noah’s complexion had gone bone white. “What kind of physical impact?”
“It’s just a precaution,” AnnaCoreen said. “We don’t want any nasty surprises down the line.”
Noah pulled his hand away from Charlie and sat forward to brace his elbows on his knees.
Charlie skimmed her hand over his bare back. “Relax, Noah. I’m—” She broke off when she saw the scar on his lower back. She’d felt it before, when they’d been tangled together and sweating, but what had caused it had never occurred to her until she was looking at it, up close and personal. Her mouth dry, she traced the circle of pale, puckered flesh with the tip of her finger. “Is this from a bullet?”
He straightened, catching the wrist of her exploring hand and drawing her palm up for a feathery kiss. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
Charlie wanted to protest, wanted to know how and why he’d been shot. The thought of him in pain, bleeding, made her head feel heavy and full, achy. And, for the first time, it sank in how little she knew about this man. Yes, she’d been inside his head, had experienced firsthand his doubts and regrets, had connected with him on the most visceral level. She knew him so intimately that being with him felt absolutely right, as though the piece that had been missing from her life had locked right into its predetermined place.
But she knew little
about
him. AnnaCoreen’s voice echoed in her head:
He has many demons . . . you would be wise to proceed cautiously.
AnnaCoreen rising from her rocking chair jarred her from her thoughts. “I have an appointment in half an hour. Perhaps while I’m gone, you two could focus on who’s trying to kill our girl and what we’re going to do about it.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
N
oah watched AnnaCoreen walk into the house, then looked at Charlie and grinned. “I like her.”
She smiled back at him. “Kind of freaky sometimes, though, isn’t she?”
“Well, she is psychic.”
She dropped her head back against the chair and laughed. “That she is.”
Noah settled back in his own chair and propped his right ankle on his left knee. “So you think it’s Dick.”
Charlie sighed as though the mention of the man’s name made her want to jump off a tall bridge. “It seems so obvious that it’s probably not. I mean, Logan’s right. The guy would have to be a complete idiot to go after me. And, much as I hate to admit it, he’s not an idiot. He’s been screwing over customers and getting away with it for years.” She took a breath, held it. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
He tried to stop himself from stiffening, but he didn’t like her doomed expression. He also didn’t like the thought that he’d probably look the same way when he told her his own secret. And she might not be able to get over his walk on the dark side. He cleared his throat. “Okay.”
“When the guy attacked me after running me off the road, I got an empathic flash off of him. I saw him kill someone else.”
He sat straighter, disbelief surging through him. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“Hell, yes. I worked with Laurette for a year. I know all about empathy. Jesus, Charlie.”
“I didn’t know that at the time. I thought you’d be . . . well, I thought you’d be like I’d be in your shoes. Skeptical.”
“Fine, fine. I get it, and you’re right. When Laurette first told me, I didn’t believe it. But then I saw her in action.” He rubbed at his forehead, thinking. “Her ability wasn’t like yours, though. She sensed things. She didn’t relive them.” He paused. “Who did you see him kill?”
“A woman with curly black hair. I recognized the hair, but I can’t place the woman. You know how you see an actor in something and you know you’ve seen them before but you can’t place where? That’s how it is. I have no clue how I know her. Part of me thinks she might be Lucy Sheridan, the receptionist at Dick’s.”
“And why do you think she’d be murdered?”
“She was the anonymous source on my story. She was terrified he would find out and kill her.”
“That’d be awfully obvious, too, don’t you think?”
“Well, yeah. But I haven’t been able to reach her. I went to her house, and it’s like she went on vacation.”
“Or went into hiding.”
She nodded. “Then, yesterday, you know the woman who was bludgeoned with a hammer? I went to where they found her body at a house on Tarpon Bay Street. All I saw was the top of her head. She had curly black hair.”
Noah bit back the urge to jump all over her for exploring crime scenes without protection but instead got to his feet. “There’s something in the paper about that today.” He went inside to retrieve the paper then returned and handed it to Charlie. “She was identified late last night as Louisa Alvarez.”
Charlie released a gust of breath. “Not Lucy then. Thank God. But I don’t know a Louisa Alvarez.” She bent her head to read the story.
When she went still, Noah knew something had clicked. “What is it?”
She looked up at him, her complexion ashen as she raised the paper and pointed at the snapshot of the woman accompanying the story. “I know her. But not as Louisa Alvarez.”
Charlie scanned the news story about Louisa Alvarez. The police had confirmed the murder weapon, a ball-peen hammer, and determined that Alvarez had been killed somewhere else and moved to her home. Her breath locked in her lungs when she read what Louisa did for a living.
“Oh.”
Noah hovered over her shoulder. “What?”
“She was a maid at the Royal Palm Inn.”
“So?”
She raised her head to look at him. “About three weeks ago, this same woman, she said her name was Maria, asked me to meet her. It was very clandestine, kind of silly, really. Over-the-top covert in the back of a dark bar on the not-as-nice side of town. She told me she had information about a blackmail scheme at one of the local hotels. A businessman or politician or some other high-powered, wealthy person would meet his or her lover, or sometimes a prostitute, at this hotel and someone would take pictures. Blackmail pictures.”
“Why are some rich people so insanely stupid?”
Charlie gave him a wry smile. “Sex and power make the world go round.”
He chuckled. “Well, sex with you makes my world go round, but back to the naughty story.”
“So the pictures would be sent to them, and they’d pay to get the disc.”
“Classic blackmail.”
“And expensive. It’s a small town. Lots of people would like to know what mischief the mayor and her aldermen are up to in the wee hours of the morning.”
“The mayor is a woman?” Noah said, incredulous.
“I hope your disbelief is because she’s a cheating idiot, not because she’s a woman.”
He grinned. “Well, yeah, of course. I always thought women were smarter than that.”
She punched him in the shoulder. “Yeah, right.”
“Go on.”
“So Louisa aka Maria said she’d tell me the name of the hotel and the people behind the scheme, for a price.”
“But you don’t pay for information.”
“Right. Plus, she wouldn’t tell me who she was or how she knew this stuff. She wanted to remain completely anonymous.”
“Wait, what about Lucy? You used her as an anonymous source.”
“I know her real identity, know her connection to the story. I know how she got the information she shared with me, and she gave me paperwork to back up her claims. Louisa wasn’t offering any of that.”
“So, what, you told her to forget it? A story like
that
? You had to be beside yourself.”
“Yes, but I also know some people will do anything to get back at people they’re mad at.”
“Such as make shit up.”
“Exactly.”
“So you never knew which hotel it was or who was behind the blackmail.”
“Right. Except now I know there’s a good chance it’s happening at the Royal Palm, since Louisa was a maid there. And whoever’s behind the blackmail must have found out she talked to me and killed her. And then they came after me.”
“But if she never told you anything useful . . .”
“Her killer doesn’t know that. He might think she told me everything. Or maybe she told him she told me everything, maybe to try to prevent him from killing her. Her version of evidence in a safe-deposit box.”
“But all she did was set you up as the next target.”
She reached out and grabbed his arm. “We have to go back to the Royal Palm.”
“What? No way. The killer found you there.”
“Exactly my point.”
He pulled away and stood up, backing away. “No way. No fucking way. You’re not going back there as bait. I won’t let you.”
The muscles in her chest expanded at the wild fear that darkened his eyes. He really did love her. God, how cool was that? But instead of letting herself sink into the joy, she forced herself to focus. There’d be time for joy later. “It’s the only way.”
“We’ll find some other way. We’ll go to Logan. You can tell him what you told me.”
“Do you think he’ll believe any of it? How do we explain how I know anything?”
“It’s simple. Louisa came to you about a blackmail scheme and now she’s dead. You don’t have to tell him anything about the empathy. He doesn’t have to know that you saw her get killed.”
“We have no idea who’s behind the blackmail. It could be anybody.”
“If it’s at the Royal Palm, the police can narrow it down pretty quick, starting with the people who work there.”
“But the people who work there might not have anything to do with it. It could be anyone who stays there or has access. And as soon as the police show up asking questions, they’ll know we’re onto them and flee. We may never know who it was.”
“We find the rooms they used and the equipment, we’ll have fingerprints, DNA, you name it. Charlie, I do this shit for a living. You have to trust me.”
“And what if the fingerprints and DNA don’t lead to anyone? What if they’re not in the system? What if these are amateurs who let things get out of hand? Obviously, the guy trying to kill me isn’t the brightest ninja of his clan, considering how often he’s failed.”
He jammed a hand through his hair, scrubbed his palms over his face, then looked at her with a new idea. “What about going at it from the angle of the people who were blackmailed? Maybe one of them would have an idea who’s doing it.”
“And how are we going to get any of those people to admit they were that stupid? They obviously don’t even talk to each other or this blackmail thing wouldn’t have legs.”
He turned his back and stared out at the waves, his hands wrapped tight around the railing. “Damn it, Charlie. I have no right to tell you this, but no. Absolutely, positively no.”
“You’re right. You have no right to tell me that. But these people almost killed Alex. You turn around and look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t try to go after them if the same thing happened to someone you care about.”
He turned his head toward her but didn’t meet her eyes. “You’re talking about revenge.”
“I don’t want to kill anybody, Noah. I want to catch them and make sure they pay for what they’ve done. I’m talking about justice.”