Page 11

Tennyson stood in front of the microwave watching his lunch leftovers spin on the plate. He’d never seen so much food in his life as there had been on their table at Strega in Boston. They’d ordered charcuterie boards, arancini, freshly baked bread, every kind of pasta imaginable, along with meatballs, sausage, and lastly, pistachio cheesecake for dessert. Ten felt like he’d wouldn’t want to eat for days, but there he was at half past eleven, hungry again.

Everly informed everyone that strega was the Italian word for witch. She’d used her gift to glean that little piece of information, which warmed Ten’s heart. Maybe the problem Everly was having with her gift was just a blip and not signs of a larger problem.

“I thought I’d find you in here,”

Ronan said, walking into the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah?”

Ten asked.

“You’re procrastinating going to bed. Where else would you be?”

Ronan took a seat at the table, his focus was on Tennyson.

“Well, the Walmart in Beverly is open twenty-four hours, so there’s that.”

Ten shrugged and pulled his pasta out of the microwave when it beeped.

Ronan lifted a questioning eyebrow. “Just admit you’re procrastinating.”

“Maybe a little,”

Ten agreed, bringing his pasta to the table. “Can you blame me? I’m exhausted from being up most of the night avoiding my nightmare and now, I’ve got the weight of my vision of Celestina on my mind as well.”

“Do you still think the nightmare and the vision are connected?”

Ronan got up from the table and grabbed a fork from the drainboard.

“More now than ever,”

Ten admitted. “Celestina admitted it was her father who’d hit her, which was why she was laying at Hank’s feet in my vision. It seems too much of a coincidence to be anything but related. What I don’t understand is what the dream is trying to tell me. Is Celestina going to be hurt the night of the performance? Is she going to do something to get back at the father who’s abused her for all these years?”

“Would you blame her if she did?”

Ronan asked.

“Not at all.”

Ten shook his head. “Would you?”

“No,”

Ronan said unequivocally. “I got to sit with Nava, Celestine’s mother, for a few minutes,”

Ronan began, before forking up a piece of ziti. “She confirmed what Celestina said about Vincent abusing both of them. I wished you’d seen her back in the day. Nava was so beautiful, with the way her dark hair was stacked on her head in curls. I’ll never forget the joyful smile on her face when she handed me the baby tiger. Who knew twenty years later we’d cross paths again. She’s only in her mid-fifties, but I swear she looked a decade older.”

“I was thinking more like two decades,”

Ten said. When he’d introduced himself to the frail woman, the only thing he got from her was pain. Physical. Emotional. Mental. Ten didn’t pry any further than that. The woman had obviously been through enough.

“Was there anything else you picked up from the circus crew this morning?”

Ronan asked.

“Nothing to do with Jack’s murder. People were excited to be together again doing what they love. There was a lot of animosity over the circus being shut down back in 2017. Not that they didn’t agree with the idea of sending the animals to a sanctuary to live out their days, but the fact that the circus hadn’t evolved with the times. Look at Cirque du Soleil. There are no animal acts and their shows are sold out every night. The crew thinks they could have done something similar, minus the insane midair acrobatics.”

“Yeah, like the way Blockbuster was swallowed up by streaming services. They could have made a fortune if they’d switched from DVD to digital media,”

Ronan added.

“Exactly,”

Ten agreed. His procrastination plan was working better than he’d hoped for. Ronan was always keen to talk about his current case and Ten was using that to his advantage. “What information did you get from reading the interview transcripts from 1995?”

Ronan had been unusually quiet on the matter.

“Some of the interviews were horrible, Ten.”

Ronan shook his head, as if to knock the transcripts from his memory. “The cops who interviewed the members of the circus were unnecessarily cruel. They were threatened with jail time if they didn’t confess. Worse, the mothers in the group were threatened that they’d lose custody of their kids. Some of the officers said they’d lock up the performers indefinitely, so they’d miss their next scheduled tour stops. I know I wasn’t with the department back then, but I can’t help but feel sick to my stomach over the way these people were treated.”

Ten could feel Ronan’s ick. He understood exactly what his husband was saying, which also explained why he’d been so quiet about the details of the case. “Was there anything in there that will help find the killer?”

“One of the questions everyone was asked was who they thought killed Jack. It’s a typical interrogation technique,”

Ronan said. “I’ve asked this very question in my career more times than I can count. You ask who they think is the killer and how they think it was done. This usually leads the suspect to a confession they don’t realize their making. The detectives now have more information to go on and can find more evidence. The problem with that question being asked in this case is that all of the circus crew knew they had to give someone up to save themselves. Most of them picked Ying Yang, you know, because of his eternally sunny disposition.”

Ten offered a weak smile. He’d never been particularly bothered by clowns, but after meeting Vincent, Ten understood exactly what Ronan had feared. The clown was larger than life, a Goliath to Ronan’s David. Even though the two men were roughly the same height now, Ronan had seemed somehow dwarfed by Vincent. “On the surface he sure seems like the perfect suspect. Both mother and daughter claim he was physically abusive toward them, but without proof, it’s hard to make that claim publicly.”

“Especially with Nava and Celestina being almost complicit in the abuse. It kills me to say this, but Nava covered up not only her own abuse, but her daughter’s as well. Celestina returned the favor. I’m guessing there are no pictures of bruises and no calls to the police. We’re going to run criminal records checks on everyone tomorrow, but I’ll bet you that no domestic abuse allegations will come up under Vincent’s name.”

“I agree. Both women were so cowed by him.”

Ten sighed. He’d never understand how a man could be that cruel to his family. “On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he did have a record for assault, resisting arrest, those kinds of violent offenses.”

“I completely agree.”

Ronan nodded along with his husband’s supposition. “None of members of the circus mentioned him being openly violent with his family. A couple mentioned bar brawls and troubles with local yokels, but nothing that would truly land anyone in hot water with Vincent.”

“Okay, so what do we do next?”

Ten asked, feeling as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

“Like I said, we’re going to run a criminal records check in the morning. Fitz wants to interview both Celestina and Nava for a start. If there are any violent criminals in the group, we’ll want to speak to them as well.”

Ronan stood up from the table and dumped the now empty pasta plate into the trash. “As for you, it’s off to bed.”

Ten bowed his head. He knew this was coming. He felt like a child again and found himself wanting to ask Ronan for just five more minutes.

“I know you’re afraid of this dream getting more intense now that more pieces have maybe fallen into place, but tonight is perfect for that. The kids aren’t home, so you can feel the dream completely without worrying about scaring Everly and Ezra.”

“I know.”

Ten got to his feet and followed Ronan upstairs where they both brushed their teeth and got ready for bed.

“Did you ever think we’d become the kind of people who chose sleep over sex?”

Ten asked, as Ronan turned off the lights.

“I knew it had to happen eventually.”

Ronan laughed and pressed a kiss to Tennyson’s temple. “We’ll be all systems go again once we get to the bottom of this nightmare. As much as I hate to say this, Ten, I hope you have unpleasant dreams.”

Ten shivered. He knew exactly what Ronan meant, but the statement was ominous none the less.

Rolling onto his right side, Ten tried to prepare himself for sleep. Usually, he’d drift off with his head on Ronan’s shoulder, but tonight, he was on his own. At least that’s the way it felt. By the time Ten was settled and comfortable, Ronan had already fallen asleep.

Ronan had always been able to drop off to sleep within five minutes of going to bed. It was the one thing Ten was jealous of. While he was awake, his mind spinning with his clients for the next day, their kids, bills, an upcoming dental appointment, and this nightmare, Ronan was dead asleep, probably dreaming about the naked car wash. Again.

Ten matched his breathing cadence with Ronan’s. He tried to clear his mind and let his body take over. After a few seconds, Ten’s mind wandered to the creaky cellar door. Maybe if he got up now, he could find a can of WD-40 to fix it. If he couldn’t, he supposed he could always use Pam cooking spray. Lube was lube, right? Then there was the ugly backsplash in the kitchen. Ten had hated it since they moved into the house nearly seven years ago. He could grab his phone and check out tile samples on one of the big box store websites.

Realizing his only job at the moment was to dream, Ten let go of home improvements and felt himself starting to slide toward sleep. Just as he was about to drop off, Ten told his unconscious mind to pay attention when he dreamed. A single detail could be the difference between life and death.

Ten found himself back at the Boston Garden. The building was dark, but for the spotlight in the center of the floor. He assumed it was for the ring master. Moving quickly, Ten walked into the beam of light, which blinded him. From a distance he could hear arguing. Shouting. The sound of a gun being cocked. Fired. Someone was screaming.

Moving away from the light, Ten hurried toward the screams. Two voices were shouting. One simply screaming in pain, the other begging someone to call 911. It took forever for Ten to find the source of the screaming. When he did, Ten saw someone lying flat on their back in a pool of blood.

Every time Ten moved closer to the scene, it got further away. He couldn’t tell who the hurt person was. Celestina hovered over the body, screaming. The hem of her pink gown was quickly absorbing the blood spreading from the victim.

As he tried to wrap his head around what he was seeing, Ten realized the second person he heard screaming was his daughter. Panicked, he looked around for Everly. She was nowhere to be found. “EVERLY!”

“Ten, wake up! Wake up!”

Ronan begged.

Ten’s eyes blinked open and quickly shut again. The bedroom light was on and Ronan hovered above him wearing a scared look. “Ronan.”

“Jesus, are you okay?”

He sat back against his pillows with a hand on his heart. “You scared the life out of me.

“I’m okay, but someone in my dream was not.”

Ten tried with all his might to see who was lying in a pool of their own blood.

“Who was hurt?”

Ronan’s eyes were frantic. “Was it Everly? You were screaming her name.”

He looked as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“I don’t know.”

Ten sat up and reached for the bottle of water on his nightstand. With shaking hands, he twisted the top off and took a sip.

“Is there anything else you can remember?”

Ten shook his head. When he tried to reach for fragments of the dream, they got foggy and out of focus. “There’s one detail I can remember,”

Ten said, still panting. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t slow his breathing or his pounding heart.

“Tell me.”

“There was a gunshot. Someone way laying on the floor and there was blood. The bottom of Celestina’s pink gown is soaked in blood.”

The more Ten pushed his memory and his gift to recall the entire dream, the more his head ached.

“Who’s blood was it?”

Ronan asked, breathlessly.

“I think it’s yours.”

Ten could see the blood in his mind clear as day. Spreading. Red. Viscous.

Ronan got out of bed and started pacing around the room. “Why do you think it’s mine? Could it have been someone else?”

“I don’t know.”

Ten felt like a complete failure for not being able to see more of the dream. “Everly was screaming. That’s the last thing I remember, that pain-filled sound, and not being able to find her.”

There was just so much he didn’t know or couldn’t remember.

Why was Everly screaming? Whose bloody body lay on the floor? Was this dream a premonition of things to come? If so, could he stop these events from happening?

Ten had no answers, but there was one thing he did know. He wasn’t going to let his family go down without a fight.