Page 7
K ylie stayed quiet until they got to the latest crime scene. Then she got out, grabbed her sketchbook, and noted the place was empty.
Porter stopped her at the entrance. “I don’t want you to go in yet.”
She frowned at him. “Why? You think I haven’t seen what’s in there before?”
“Unfortunately, I’m sure you have,” he replied.
When he pulled out a blindfold, she immediately shook her head. “Oh, hell no.”
“It’s as much for the captain and for everybody else that’ll be involved than anything else.”
“No, absolutely no way.” She glared at him. “I already told you that I’m not a trick pony, remember?”
“I know you’re not,” he murmured, “and I knew I would get some resistance, but I was hoping you would understand why I need to do this.”
“Nope, I don’t understand, and I don’t care what your reasons are.” She headed to the front door, yet something prohibited her from walking inside. She felt as if a 2x4 beam stopped her. She turned to glare at him. “Are you doing that?”
He looked at her in surprise. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
She hesitated, looked back at the door, and then at him. “Are you doing anything to stop me from entering?”
“No, I would never do that.”
She frowned at him, asking, “Why do you want me to put on a blindfold?”
“Because I want you to sketch whatever it is in your mind that you’re seeing, versus what you could see here.”
“You don’t understand,” she began. “I have to get into a certain zone before I can sketch at all. If I’m at a crime scene, I don’t get involved in any of the photos. I step out of that. At the mass shooting at the casino, because just so much carnage was inside and I needed to do so many sketches, I immediately dropped into a trance. Yet only one dead body is here, so chances are I won’t need to do anything in preparation.”
He nodded. “I know it’s a call on faith, and I know it’s about trust. All I can tell you is that I think this is really important.”
She eyed him for a long moment. “What is it you’re really asking me to do?”
“I just want you to put on the blindfold and keep it on while you sketch.”
She stared at him. “So, what do you expect me to sketch?”
“I guess it’s what I expect you to think you’re seeing versus what you’re seeing.”
“So, you think I’m making up these images?” she cried out in horror.
“No.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, and that’s the main reason why I’m asking you to do this. You don’t seem to acknowledge the gift you have.”
“Jesus,” she muttered. “Fine, but asking an artist to sketch a scene without seeing it makes no sense.”
“I know,” he agreed, with a gentle smile. “Just humor me.”
“Why come here at all? We could have done this at the station.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “So we’ll take five minutes and do this silly experiment. Then you can go about your business and do your thing.”
She glared at him while he put the blindfold around her eyes. “Look. You can still see the presence of light. I’ll lead you into the room where she is.”
Kylie shivered at his words and whispered, “Why the hell would she still be in there? That makes no sense.”
“Okay, so the body has been moved to the morgue. Just her outline remains on the floor.”
“Right,” she grumbled.
“Now I’ll lead you into the room, and then you can do your thing.”
“Whatever my thing is,” she stated bitterly.
“I just—”
“Whatever,” she snapped, cutting him off with a wave of her hand. “I’ll prove it to you in a matter of minutes.”
He led her into the room and handed her the pencil, opened up the sketch pad for her, and said, “Okay, now sketch what you see.”
“You mean, what you think I’m seeing or what I think I’m seeing?”
“Exactly. I know I’m not being very clear.”
“No, you’re not,” she snapped. “Now, step back because I just need a few minutes to figure out what it is you think I’m supposed to be drawing.”
He laughed. “If nothing comes, nothing comes.”
But images were already forming in her head, as if she could see outside of the blindfold. She had seen things like this before but had more or less ignored them all her life as an overactive imagination or just day terrors. Who needed crap like this going on in their mind 24/7?
As soon as she stopped the internal argument with herself, her pencil hitting the paper, she sketched a woman lying on the floor. Kylie remembered what Porter had mentioned about following the MO of the second killer at the casino, involving some posing. Her pencil kept moving steadily. She wasn’t sure how close Porter was or if he was giving her space. However, she suspected he was right there beside her, watching everything that went down on her paper.
When her sketching slowed, she unclamped her hand and groaned. “Now, take the damn thing off.”
He immediately untied the blindfold, obviously standing right there in front of her, waiting for her to say that. “Now, take a look at your sketch.”
She looked down at the sketch and winced. “Well, shit, guess I’ve got a great imagination, so thanks for that intel.”
He opened up his phone and held up a photo. “Maybe so, but this is a snapshot from the crime scene that I took this morning.”
As she stared at it, she felt some of the pain inside her tightening more and more. She took another look at her sketch and asked, “And?”
He snorted. “And it’s exactly what you just did, blindfolded.”
“Not likely,” she replied, peeling her gaze off the screen on his phone. “Your picture is worse.”
He gave a bark of laughter and nodded. “I won’t argue with that because you’re right. It is. Your sketch is so much clearer. It’s scary clearer. Even though you couldn’t see the original scene or this cleaned-up scene.”
“So, what is it you’re trying to say?” she asked, glaring at him.
“My guess is that you don’t see the crime scenes at all,” he began. “You’re drawing something else, aren’t you?” She just glared at him and didn’t say anything. He smiled. “I know trust is a huge thing with you, and I get that, but right now it would really help if we had the truth.”
“Why?” she asked. “None of my sketches are admissible as evidence in court. You can’t use them for anything but to further your case along.”
He smiled and nodded. “I know that, and that should give you a little more comfort, knowing that whatever you’re doing is helping the victims, if for no other reason than to confirm we catch the killers.”
“Sure,” she agreed, “but your little trick doesn’t prove anything except that I have a great imagination.”
“Really? Including the necklace you drew?”
She looked down at the necklace in her sketch, then over at the photo still up on his phone. She winced. “Is that all you wanted? To bring me here and show me that I’ve been drawing visions inside my head instead of what’s in front of me?”
“Yet you are drawing what’s in front of you, but you are not limited to just that,” he declared. “You’re drawing layers past what the normal person can see.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she didn’t know what to say. In an uncanny movement that she wasn’t expecting, he pulled her onto his arms and just held her.
“I think you’ve been alone for a very, very long time.” She shook her head, but it was a movement muffled against his shirt. He smiled as he let her step back a little bit. “Yes, you have, and so much so that you’re scared to let anybody in.”
“Nobody can get in,” she stated, her gaze stony as she stared up at him. Yet she wanted to step right back into his arms again, and that was dangerous. “People hurt each other, and they do it with joy. They do it with abandon, and sometimes they do it just because, in their mind, it’s the right thing to do.”
“And that sounds like your aunt speaking,” he whispered. “She was a very broken woman in so many ways.”
Kylie’s eyebrows shot up. “How would you even suspect that? My aunt was very controlled, very contained, and very fearful.”
“And why was she fearful?” he asked. “She had many of the same issues you did, but she squashed down her gift and made sure that nobody would ever know about them.”
“No way,” Kylie argued. “I asked her about that several times. She would have told me.”
“Would she?” he asked. “Or was she so scared of you and what you could do that she made sure she completely avoided everything in your world that could bring up the discussion of psychics?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, speaking slowly as she stared at him, “but it doesn’t matter. I have zero relationship with her now anyway.”
He nodded. “I get that. It’s hard to have a relationship when somebody just wants you gone, isn’t it?”
Her breath came rushing out in a whoosh. “Wow, you really did your homework, didn’t you?” she asked sarcastically, hiding the pain inside. “She also taught me to be independent and to watch out for everybody, if only because she was so harsh.”
“Of course, she taught you her fears, so that they would become yours, so that you would be a little more careful than she had been.”
“Than she had been?” Kylie repeated.
Porter nodded. “Your aunt at one point in time helped the police. I found a police file on it, but the case went bad, and your aunt was blamed.”
She shifted, realizing, if that had happened, it would have locked down her aunt.
“It was pretty dark and pretty ugly for a while, and she disappeared, I only realized who it was, when I realized who you were.”
“Who I am?” Kylie repeated, shaking her head. “I’m nobody, and the sooner you realize that, the better.”
“I’m looking at a woman who just sketched a crime scene while blindfolded, and she got accurate details that a camera got earlier, plus she got details that a camera didn’t get.”
“What do you mean?” she asked fearfully.
He pointed. “Look closer.”
And because the camera had only taken a snapshot of that particular time, it hadn’t necessarily picked up all the details clearly. The details were there, but in her sketch she had expanded them much bigger, much easier to see. “You can still put the photograph through a filter and enlarge it, make it bigger.”
“Yes, and every time we do that, we end up with fewer details, don’t we?”
“Sure, but this detail isn’t necessarily something you need,” she stated, as she stared down at the photographic image. And yet what she had sketched had been uncannily accurate. She sighed. “You’ll never let me live this down, will you?”
He let out a laugh which tugged at her own heartstrings, making her realize just how alone she had been and how different it was to have a conversation about this with somebody without being mocked.
“Seems you’ve been alone for a very long time.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. That time is long gone. I’m not a child anymore, and I’m not somebody living in my aunt’s house on charity.”
“I don’t know if it was on charity alone,” he stated, “or out of complete and total fear. Fear that you would ruin everything she had built up, fear that you would open yourself to the same hellishness that she had suffered, or, even worse, bringing her back into the same issues that had scared her so much. Agatha would have done an awful lot to avoid that.”
“She did do an awful lot to avoid it,” Kylie murmured. “She avoided everything to do with me and my life. It was a case of Here is your food. Eat it. As soon as you’re an adult, leave .”
He smiled, then rubbed her back and her shoulders. “But, in many ways, she gave you a gift.”
She stared at him. “What kind of a gift is that?” she asked in shock. “I was just a child.”
“Yes, and you could have used more love and affection. You could have used an awful lot, but what she did give you was a skin tough enough to withstand what the world out there would do to you, if they found out, and they did find out, didn’t they?”
She stared at him and swallowed hard.
He nodded. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, and all the things that I found out about you barely scraped the surface. There’s so much more to you, so much more to what you can do, and I understand that for you it’s not anything you want to address. You didn’t choose to do this, to be this, but for some reason you did choose to come in and start drawing for us.”
She stared down at her sketchbook, realizing she could explain only so much. “I think it was a way to keep my abilities happy or quiet, yet at the same time protect myself.… I don’t know when I sketch how much of it is me,” she shared, pointing down at the sketch that she had just done, “versus what is really there.”
“I saw you at one point in time at the casino,” Porter admitted, “and your eyes had a very unfocused look to them.”
She winced. “That was a very special case, and I figured I could easily pass it off as being in shock.”
“I think we all were in shock, trying to make any sense out of that mess, which is asking a lot out of any of us.”
“And yet you seemed to handle the casino murders just fine.”
“No,” Porter replied, “I didn’t. Some souls there weren’t very happy with their lives.”
It took a moment before she realized what he’d shared. “Oh my God, did you see them?”
He nodded. “I saw some of them. I didn’t speak to any of them, but I did show the light to a couple. When people pass over very fast like that, sometimes they go quietly, and sometimes they wander around in chaos, looking for the way back again. In a few of those cases, I can guide them.”
“Does your partner know?”
“Somewhat but the details… God, no.” Porter shook his head. “The captain knows a little bit, but I don’t even tell him about those things.”
She sank to the floor, thinking about how many souls had died in that twenty-minute shooting episode at the casino and nodded. “I can’t imagine how they felt.”
“Which is why sometimes I can help, and sometimes I can’t. Learning to accept that I can’t help everyone has taken me a lifetime.”
She shook her head. “I can see that too,” she murmured, as she stared around the area. “I’m not even in the same room where she was killed, am I?”
He crouched in front of her, a smile on his face, and nodded. “Right, you’re not. Do you want to see it though?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice stronger as she stood up again. “What was your purpose in bringing me into this particular case?”
“I’m pretty sure the killer has some connection to you,” Porter shared, “and so I need to put him down forever.”
She stared at Porter. “A connection?”
He nodded. “Yes, a connection.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he’s the same killer who killed that entire family and then connected with your aunt and ruined her life.”
*
Porter watched the color completely drain from Kylie’s face, as she slipped right back down to the floor. She stared up at him in shock, and he nodded. “I’m sorry. It would have been easier if your aunt had mentioned something to you.”
“How is that possible? She never gave any indication of having any abilities at all.”
“And she did a damn-fine job of hiding her gift,” he noted. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but she changed her name and yours.”
“Mine?” Kylie asked, staring at him in confusion. “No, no, my name has always been Kylie.”
“Yes, your given name has always been Kylie,” he agreed. “But you were Kylie Macintyre. You are now Kylie Okovi.”
She blinked several times. “What?”
He nodded. “The thing is, the family that was annihilated was yours.” She started to shake, and he immediately dropped to the floor and hugged her. She soon was convulsing in his arms, as he watched the years of deceit and deception, done for her own sake, fall away.
With tears in her eyes and shock in her gaze, she whispered, “Please, no.”
He nodded. “I’m so sorry, and I wish I didn’t have to tell you.” He pulled her into his lap, rocking her while she shook, the tremors almost convulsing her to the point that he wondered if he needed to get her some help.
Finally the tremors slowed, and she shook her head. “No way Agatha would have kept that from me.”
He didn’t say anything because he already knew that her aunt had done such a thing.
Then Kylie sighed. “Of course she would have. She never told me anything about my family, about the circumstances, just that my parents died in a car accident.” She suddenly lifted her head. “You said a family of four.”
He winced and nodded. “Your mother had just had twin boys.”
She stared at him, her jaw dropping as she shook her head. “No, no, no.”
He nodded. “Yes.” He watched as she confronted the shock and horror at realizing what had happened to her, but she still didn’t understand it all yet.
“I don’t…” Then she buried her face in her hands, the tears coming with so much pain and grief.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said, “but I do have a file that you can read.”
“Why didn’t she just tell me?” she asked, such betrayal in her tone.
“I’m sorry she didn’t tell you. I guess… she did it to protect you—and herself.”
“From what?” she cried out. “What could she possibly protect me from?”
He hesitated and then replied, “For a long time I think she thought the killer would come back after her, and, therefore, after you as well.”
“Come back after us?” she whispered. “Dear God, do I know anything about my life?”
He swallowed and pushed the hair off her face. He wiped the tears from her eyes and replied, “I know you’ll judge her for it, but she was trying to keep you safe.”
“By not preparing me for any of this?” she asked in outrage.
He winced and nodded. “And again we’re judging her for something we don’t have a way to understand.”
“I understand,” Kylie declared. “She’s supposedly connected to a killer, the very one who had already killed my family,” she muttered, staring at him, her gaze haunted. “A family I don’t remember, a family I’m not even sure I believe existed, and you’re telling me that my aunt raised me in a cold, unemotional way, and that was supposed to be for my protection?”
He winced at that too. “I don’t know about the cold, unemotional way as being part of your protection,” he replied. “I can tell you that she raised you to keep you safe, and she likely did whatever else she could handle or could do for you. I don’t know the whole story. I just have bits and pieces.”
“Good God,” Kylie said, “it seems to me that you’re writing a horror movie.”
He smiled. “As horror movies go, this one would probably be a blockbuster.”
She took several deep breaths. “You’re telling me the truth, right?” she asked, her gaze hard. “This killer,… this guy who supposedly you’re after… Wait. Hang on a minute. Why would he even be here? Why would he be in this area if—” Then she stopped. “No, no, no, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?” Porter asked, waiting for her to work her way through it.
“Why would he be here? What would he be doing in this area? How is he connected to my aunt?”
“We think he was hired to kill the senator’s daughter at the casino the other day, and it could be a coincidence that he is in this area, or it could also be that he’s looking for the one who got away.”
“That would be my aunt, but I haven’t seen or heard from her in so long. I can’t imagine that he could even find her, since I have no idea where she is either.” Porter nodded and didn’t say any more. She stared at him and asked, “What are you not telling me?” He winced. “Come on. Out with it. Tell me,” she snapped. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but you’re still keeping something from me.”
“The one who got away is you,” he stated. “You were in that vehicle at the same time.”
“Good God. I was in the car accident with my family?”
“You were in the car accident,” he confirmed, with a nod.
As she stared at him, he knew how hard this would be for her right now. He was rewriting her entire history. He didn’t even know who she was really, but, as soon as he had come across her in that hospital, he realized that something profound was in her history. He knew at first sight that Kylie had abilities. Then seeing her aunt, he dimly recognized Agatha from a case she had helped the police with. That case had haunted him. He had to search it out to figure out what was going on. Now he had Kylie sitting here in his arms, staring at him in shock, as he told her the truth about her history.
“You can prove all this, right?” she asked.
“I highly suggest we do a DNA test, and that would prove it to you too.”
“I would have to,” she said, “but I don’t know what DNA I’m supposed to compare it to, other than my aunt.”
“We have the DNA of your family on file. I also have the adoption records and the name change records.”
“Oh, Christ.” She stared at Porter. “But the family annihilator wouldn’t have known I was here, right? The killer doesn’t know anything about me. At least not the adult me, right?”
“I don’t know whether he does or not,” Porter admitted, giving her a closer look. “To be honest, I’m not sure he does. I think he thought everybody in that vehicle died. I don’t know if he realized that the four-year-old little girl was still alive.”
She swallowed several times. “Why did he kill my family?”
He hesitated and then sighed. “The evidence that we have points to it being a hit, but we never did find out who would have paid him to do it.”
“Good God,” she cried out.
“I know. I know.” He kept rocking her. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“A lot,” she muttered. “You’ve just taken my entire childhood and thrown it up in the air and tossed it down into some strange horror movie that doesn’t make any sense. Now you’re telling me that the family I thought died in an accident was murdered, not only murdered but targeted. Somebody paid this killer to do it, and my aunt was somehow connected with the police hunt to find him.”
“Yes.”
“And, in the meantime, my aunt, crucified by the media for trying to help on a case she was not in any way equipped to help with, goes underground and what? Why did she change our names? Why did she know that this was something that she needed to do?”
He frowned. “I suspect, and I don’t know this for certain, but there may have been some communication after the fact from the killer’s holding cell via a woman. I’m thinking maybe an advocate for prisoners that the paid killer got close to. If I could find that woman, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she wasn’t asked to take a letter to your aunt, saying that the killer would find her.”
She stared at him and whispered, “So, if threatened, Agatha would be terrified, realizing we were both targets, so she decides to change our names and move.”
“Yes.”
“And somehow he now finds me here in Vegas? I don’t believe that.”
“I’m sure you don’t, and I’m not sure I do either.”
“The only thing that could make this even worse was if this killer is psychic too, capable of following me anywhere.” When dead silence came from Porter, she stared at him, wide-eyed. “Please tell me that he’s not.”
“I don’t know,” he murmured, “but it is something I’ve always wondered.”
“Wondered what?” she asked. “It’s not as if he would have been tracking me all these years, or he would have already found me. After all, I’ve been right here, and it’s not as if I’ve been hidden away. And if you found the name change files, he could have found them as well.”
“I’m not sure he cared in any way,” he explained, with a sad smile, “until you got involved with the police.”
“Oh, God. Just like Agatha. Yet a child’s face is not anything like the adult face they grow into, at least not to the layperson.”
“I’m not sure it matters here.”
“Why?”
“You are the spitting image of your mother.”
“I am?” she asked. “I have no pictures of my mother. I have no idea what she looks like.”
“You’re the spitting image of her. Maybe he saw you in some news coverage and maybe understood that you could be the daughter. Then he would know that he had missed somebody.”
“And why would he care?” she asked bitterly.
“Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s professional pride, or maybe it’s because of your aunt, who was instrumental in putting him behind bars. Maybe he’s even afraid of her. I just don’t know. You’re asking questions I don’t have answers for.”
“Why don’t you have answers?” she asked petulantly, and then groaned.
He chuckled. “At least your brain is back to thinking again.”
“No, it’s overwhelmed. It’s confused and completely doesn’t like this new reality.”
“Of course not, and I get it.” Porter gave her a smile. “I really do, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to be the one telling you all this.”
“And how long have you known?”
He shrugged. “In a way, I’ve suspected for a while, but it wasn’t until these last couple months that I really started digging into it.”
“Why were you digging into it?”
“Because I wanted to know more about you,” he shared.
“Know more about me?” she repeated, glaring at him. “You just wanted me to come on board and do more work for you guys.”
He laughed. “That could be it. Once I saw you in that mental hospital, I couldn’t forget you.”
“You saw me there?” she asked, staring at him. “And you’re still talking to me?”
“I was there because of my sister,” he reminded Kylie. “So I knew perfectly well that you were fine. I could sense that. I could see it,” he shared, as he patted her hand. “I didn’t want you to be tortured any further, but it’s hard to get the conventional medical community to listen to anybody.”
“God, when they get it into their heads that you’re sick,” she murmured, “they just won’t leave it alone.”
“And yet you fooled them,” he stated, with a knowing smile.
“Did I?” she asked. “It doesn’t feel as if I fooled them. It feels as if I’m still running, terrified that somebody will find me again.”
“And that’s always a concern when you have abilities that can make you seem odd, different, or strange.”
She snorted. “Or all of the above. And it’s not any easier just because people say you’re safe around them,” she declared, now glaring at him. “It really doesn’t help.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I pushed a lot of buttons, and I didn’t intend to, but I also knew I had to shake you out of that reverie that you were in, in order to make it a little easier to communicate with you. Your walls are very strong.”
“They’ve had to be,” she stated. “Not only did my aunt not show me any love or affection, she also didn’t show me any trust, acceptance, or anything along those lines either.”
“Did she look over her shoulder all the time? Did she act as if the world would get her at any moment?”
Kylie considered that for a second, then slowly nodded. “She had an almost grim reality to her, that she would do whatever she could. Yet, when any situation made her feel unsettled, she became very cold and snappy, as if no answers were in the world, and it would all go bad very quickly. She was a downer, with almost no joy in her heart.”
“I think she probably felt terribly guilty about your family too,” he suggested, “because she had abilities and may have tried to say something to your mother.”
“I don’t know anything about my mother,” Kylie noted, staring up at him before shifting off his lap and trying to stand up.
He helped her to her feet and added, “I do have some information on your mother, but not a whole lot.”
“Right. All these years and I never even thought to investigate any more about the accident, or who she was as a person.” Kylie frowned at that. “I was more concerned with trying to survive my own reality because, without any sign of love or affection, I didn’t have a whole lot of anything to make me want to do more. I know that sounds terrible, but—”
“Don’t go there. Don’t even think that. You were a child trying to survive.”
“Sure, but I’m not a child anymore, and I haven’t been a child for a very long time.”
“Sure, and then your aunt was against all your abilities, so what did you do?”
“I hid them as long as I could, and then, when they wouldn’t hide, I decided to help the police,” she explained, rubbing her face. “That didn’t go so well.”
“No, it didn’t,” he noted, with a gentle smile, brushing the hair off her face. “So, the media got a hold of you again.”
“Yes.” She winced. “I really didn’t think about it that much and just turned the other cheek and headed back into doing nothing, but my sketching was one avenue, one answer to support myself,” she explained. “A way of trying to help and still appease the ability. I don’t know how yours are, but mine? If I don’t do something with them, it’s as if they are forcing me into a weird state, so that I have no choice but to acknowledge them.”
“I understand, and that was the same with my sister too. If she didn’t use her abilities, she would become almost a zombie, as the abilities took over. You’re supposed to control them—”
“But nobody ever shows you how,” she interrupted.
“And yet you keep turning Stefan away.” Her shoulders hunched at that, and she glared at him. He nodded and smiled. “Sometimes he gets that reaction from people. I’ve always thought he was easy to get along with.” She touched the earring in her ear, turning it. He studied her while she did so. “What does that earring mean to you?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t take it off, not ever.”
He nodded. “And did you put it in there?”
She shook her head. “My aunt did.”
“Ah, that’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“She showed zero affection for you, so I have to wonder why she gave you that.”
“I’ve cherished it in a way because it’s the only thing she ever gave me. I also tend to forget about it because it’s one of those little pieces of jewelry that’s tucked away, and almost nobody ever sees it, including myself. It’s easy to forget about, as I just leave it in.”
“And it never gets infected?”
“No, never.” He just nodded, and she stared at him. “Now you’re making me question this too.”
He laughed. “No, it’s fine. I was just wondering because I’ve seen you touch it several times.”
She shrugged. “Agatha told me it was my mother’s, and in a way it’s just that little bit of security, that little bit of a connection I’ve never had before.”
“And that makes sense too,” he said. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Now…”
“Now what?” she asked. “You’ve completely bludgeoned me with the hidden truth, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with my world now.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you with such shocking news, but no easy way to tell you.”
She stared up at him. “The news was harsh regardless.”
“Harsh, yes, but also necessary. Since your aunt didn’t tell you, I’m the one left to do the dirty work.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, as she stared at the room. “Did you expect to tell me here?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “I didn’t bring you here to do that. I brought you here to see if I could get you to sketch without seeing the crime scene because it seemed to me that you had picked up so much more information from the casino than the actual photographs had. That is rare.”
“It’s not that I picked up more than the photographs would,” she clarified, “but I picked up interpretations that the photographs couldn’t.”