Page 18 of The Psychic

“No, no … she’s in a dark gray coat and pants and a dark blouse or shirt. Her shoes have come off and her feet are bare. It’s cold. It feels really cold.”

“So, you can feel it, too?”

She shot him a baleful look. “She’s lying in icy mud puddles, so yeah, it’s cold. I see the picture and I can feel it. It’s December.”

“This picture, this vision, doesn’t give you a clue where it is?”

“No.”

“So, it could be anywhere in the world?”

“I’ve never seen anything outside of the region I’m in. It’s near enough to me for me to be getting the message.”

“There are rules, then?” One eyebrow arched.

So he thought she was nuts. Like just about everybody. From down the hall she heard a printer coming to life.

“It’s fine that you don’t believe me,” Ronnie said, more than a little indignant. “You’re not the first. All I’m doing is giving you the information.”

“Sounds like you’ve had this kind of thing happen before.”

I’m going to marry you.

She cleared her throat. “Once or twice.”

Another cop waltzed into the room from the back hallway at that moment, rolling the wrapper off an energy bar and biting into the nuts, oats and goo. He looked over at her as she was avoiding Sloan’s hard stare and their gazes met.

“Hey.” He stopped short. “You’re that psychic gal, huh? The one who said Olman was going to kill his wife.” He bit off another chunk of his bar, and mumbled around a piece stuffed in his cheek, “’Course he’d already beaten her up pretty bad by the time you reported it.”

Sloan had looked over at him, but his attention boomeranged back to Ronnie. If he’d stared at her hard before, it felt like she was being blasted by flames under his current scorching glare.

He said carefully, “Is this some kind of joke?”

“No.”

“You’re famous around River Glen.”

“Infamous, you mean.” She lifted her chin. Man, he was irritating her.

“That, too. But I’m not wasting my time over a pursuit that’s all in your head. You don’t have information, you have ideas. Maybe this woman is out there and needs help, maybe she isn’t. But even if she is, you haven’t given me a starting place.”

“I wish I could give you more. Believe me.”

“But you can’t.”

“She may be dying, or is dead already. I—I don’t know. We just need to help her. She’s out there, somewhere. Maybe he’ll come back and finish her off if she’s not already dead.”

“He?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a she,” Ronnie admitted. “The perp. Whoever did this to her, but I don’t feel like it is.”

“You don’t feel like it is,” he repeated.

“That’s right. I don’t feel like it is.” She stared him down. “Look, I came here to report a crime and that’s what I’m doing. Make fun of me all you want, I just want to help a victim.”

He held up his hands. “Okay. You clearly believe you’ve gotten a psychic message, but just wait,” he said as she started to protest. “View it from my perspective. You want me to find someone. Someone you don’t know, and don’t know where they are.

And where that place is? Just a description from somewhere in your head.

You don’t know if this person even really exists.

You have no information other than this belief, vision, or whatever. You don’t even know the person’s name.”

“I know she’s in terrible trouble. That’s what I know.”

“It isn’t a lot to go on.”

She half laughed. “It’s nothing to go on. I know. But it needs to be said. It needs to be …”

“Out in the universe?” he finished for her.

He was trying to make her see how ridiculous she sounded. Well, she already knew. In spades.

“When someone’s in trouble, I try to help them. Detective Verbena listened to me about Edmond Olman. She increased patrols around the house after I told her Olman was going to try and kill his wife. I didn’t know it had already happened.”

The officer munching on the energy bar made a scoffing sound.

Ronnie felt her cheeks heat. She was getting nowhere. Par for the course. She could already feel the anxiety building that reminded her she was going to have to figure this one out for herself.

“Without more to go on, there’s nothing we can really do.”

At least he wasn’t scoffing like the officer. But he didn’t look like he believed her at all, either.

He thinks you’re a complete crackpot.

She looked away from his steady gaze and remembered being beneath him at The Pond, the pebbles digging into her back, his hands on her chest, his mouth on hers …

For a moment she was back there. Twenty years past and it felt like it was happening again.

She could smell the dank odor of algal water, the sweet aroma of pink cupcake frosting, the sharp, clean scent of fir needles …

She could feel Sloan’s strength, sense his own fear.

She remembered that joyful feeling that she was meant to be with him, marry him, that had consumed her when she was ten years old.

Jesus H. Christ. Get OVER it!

Her throat was hot with embarrassment. She wanted to say something sharp and mean.

She’d nurtured the dream that if and when she should ever meet Sloan again that she would be smart, cold, and bitingly clever, put together and completely disinterested in anything he had to say.

She would roll her eyes at her own moronic silliness from that day at The Pond and then, because she was a nice, good person at heart, she would thank him again for saving her life, but it would be perfunctory. Duty done.

Never in her imaginings had she seen herself coming to him for help with one of her psychic visions.

And the fact was he wasn’t going to help her, so she needed to leave.

As if on cue her cell phone rang. She swept it from her bag and glanced at the number. One she didn’t recognize. She didn’t answer, but it was a good excuse to act like she had somewhere she had to be.

“I have to leave,” she said, getting to her feet as the call went to voice mail.

“I’ll walk you out,” Sloan said.

“You don’t have to.”

“Car’s out front. I’m going the same way.”