Page 36 of The Psychic

“Hello,” she said, feeling that odd, tingly sensation that followed an episode, like a limb waking from an uncomfortable position.

“Ms. Quick?”

“Yes.” She blinked, tried to concentrate and found herself leaning against the railing.

“You all right?” asked Angel.

He’d let go of her but was watching her as if expecting her to fall face-first. No wonder. She felt like she might. She nodded at Angel and held up her hand, finally standing without support.

“You saw the news?” asked Sloan.

“Um … no.”

“They don’t have Melissa McNulty’s name yet, but Townsend gave a brief statement to the press about the woman’s body found in the clearing.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Townsend’s leading the investigation. He will want to talk to you.”

“Yes … all right.”

She was having difficulty threading the key into the lock. Angel took it from her, opened the door, then handed the key back. She nodded her thanks, pushed in and closed the door behind her. There was something about Angel she needed to think about, but she already had too much on her mind.

“What is it?” Sloan suddenly demanded. “Something else you want to tell me?”

Ronnie expelled a pent-up breath. “Not about Mel …”

“What, then?”

“I—it’s Shana. I think she’s in trouble.”

“Shana … Lloyd?”

She could tell she’d thrown him for a loop.

Well, yeah, but she was having trouble articulating and she was referring to his old girlfriend.

“Yes. She was in a car accident the other night and I took her home from the hospital. But I think something’s happened to her now.

At her apartment. I think she’s in trouble. ”

“You picked up Shana Lloyd from the hospital and took her home,” he repeated.

“I know. It’s a long story. But I need to see that she’s okay.” She pulled herself together with an effort. “I have to see she’s okay,” she added with more determination. “Thanks for updating me on Mel.”

“Wait. Don’t hang up. What do you mean? What do you think happened to Shana?”

“I’ll call you back from the car. I’ve gotta go.”

“What’s her address? I’ll go with you.”

Ronnie held a hand to her head, tried to mentally wipe away the cobwebs clogging her thoughts. All she knew was Shana needed help now.

“If you’re going, I want to make sure she’s all right, too,” he insisted.

“I hope I’m wrong. I really do, but I …” Don’t think so .

“How do you know she’s in trouble?” he asked.

She couldn’t have this argument. “I don’t need your help, Sloan.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

Anger stirred in her breast. She was coming back … and worried … and she didn’t need to explain herself. “I don’t need—”

“I’ll be there in fifteen, twenty at the latest.” He clicked off before she could argue further.

Fine. Let him come. It felt like she was being bombarded with information and she didn’t know how to process it all. Normally, she was near someone when she picked up something from them. Not always, but this was different. She almost felt under attack.

Had Mel reached out to her? And now Shana? Or, was it something else?

Ronnie hurriedly headed for a second shower.

Turning her face up to the hot spray, she let it warm her from the coldness that had come over her, another symptom of a particularly vivid vision.

She was toweling off when her cell rang again.

After throwing on a robe, she swept up the phone.

A number she didn’t recognize. She let it go to voice mail and saw that someone had already left a message.

Marian Langdorf. She didn’t have time for either of the callers right now.

Quickly she threw on jeans, warm socks and a sweater.

The sheets of rain had passed but it was drizzling outside.

Plucking her coat from a peg on the wall behind the front door, she slipped her arms through the sleeves.

Twenty minutes had passed. Longer than Sloan had said, but she expected him to wheel into her lot any second.

Didn’t think of him as one to dilly-dally.

Dealing with all the ins and outs of Veronica Quick’s world was like going down a twisting rabbit hole.

Visions and memories and danger and even death …

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe …

This was his world since reconnecting with Quick: “Jabberwocky” half-words that seemed to almost make sense.

But Melissa McNulty was definitely dead. And Shana Lloyd? His ex-girlfriend from high school? That was out of left field … except Veronica Quick’s tone had sent warning messages along his nerves.

He drove straight to her apartment. He’d looked up Quick’s address as soon as she’d first stopped by the department to warn the police of the woman in the clearing.

Pulling into the apartment’s lot, he spied an open space near Quick’s Escape and parked, then headed for the stairway to the second floor.

She was clearly waiting for him because she held her hand out from the upper balcony, silently telling him to stay where he was while she came downstairs.

They met at the bottom step, she in jeans and a dark rain coat. Her face was flushed. There was something appealing and fresh about her, something open, that he was drawn to in spite of himself.

Openly crazy, you mean .

“You have Shana’s address?” he asked as he held the passenger door for her.

She told it to him as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Okay, tell me about Shana,” he said as he pulled back onto the street.

“I don’t know what to say. Something’s happened to her. She looks, it’s … she’s on the floor and I don’t know … if she’s even alive.” Her voice wobbled slightly and she cleared her throat.

She was taut as a bow string and scared. That seemed real. He pushed back the clamoring voices in his head telling him that this whole thing was insanity. She’d been right about Melissa McNulty. And she clearly believed something had happened to Shana.

“You said she was in a car accident?”

“She came to my door with divorce papers. Galen, my soon-to-be ex, hired her to deliver them and she did. The back of my apartment’s right above the road, and after she left I heard the crash.

I ran out to help when I saw her car. She was inside but managed to get out, then collapsed right in front of me.

It was … it was awful.” She took a breath.

“They sent her to Glen Gen … er, the hospital—”

“I know Glen Gen.”

“—and she was there about a day. Then she called me and said she needed a ride home.”

“You’re friends?” Sloan asked.

“Not really. I think she just needed somebody in the moment and recalled that I’d been at the scene of the accident.”

“She’s friends with Evan,” Sloan pointed out.

“She may have tried to reach him. She did say he helped her get her apartment … ? But he wasn’t available apparently, so she called me.”

“On the phone, I assume.”

She shot him a dark look, probably sensing this was a jab on her outré ability. “Yes, on the phone,” she said shortly.

He didn’t think he should be blamed for wondering how she got the information, given that she wanted him to believe in her psychic ability. Letting that go, he said instead, “Caldwell and Shana have helped each other over the years.”

“I’m sorry I screamed about him that day at The Pond,” she murmured.

“That’s long over.”

“I know. I just … think about it sometimes.”

They drove through the rain in silence for a few moments. Thinking of Caldwell, Sloan said, “He does all right. Mostly in a wheelchair, but he can sometimes push himself to walk a few steps.”

“I heard he’s good with computers.”

“He’s good with information.” Maybe a little too good. Sloan had actually asked Caldwell to find information for him a few times that should have been legally off limits, but was available if you knew how to look for it, which Caldwell did.

“I’ve seen him a few times,” she admitted. “Once at Gabrielle’s memorial service.”

Sloan hadn’t been around for that one. He hadn’t known Gabrielle well. She’d been Caldwell’s hot crush. Although Gabrielle had never had any use for him.

“You saw Shana on the floor?” he asked. “Injured?”

“Yes … injured.” She slid him a reluctant glance.

And you saw this in your mind???

He didn’t say it, but his face must’ve given him away, because she pulled back in her seat, as if trying to put as much space between them as possible. She was very touchy about her “extra ability,” but he was running an investigation, so …

“The same way you knew about Melissa McNulty?”

“Something like that,” she muttered, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

Sloan’s continued disbelief came off him in waves. He didn’t like what he was hearing. Didn’t seem to like her much either, Ronnie suspected. But she was now actually glad he was with her because she didn’t want to discover Shana’s body alone.

The night of the car accident, she’d seen Shana’s body superimposed over Mel’s. Had what she’d really seen been Shana’s upcoming fate? Could she have stopped it? Was it related to Mel’s murder somehow?

Is it about you? Are both deaths because of you?

“I’m worried we’ll be too late,” she said tensely.

“Well, we’re going to find out,” he muttered as they turned into the parking lot of Shana’s apartment complex, a three-story, multi-building affair whose tired face looked out at them with the expression of a beaten dog.

Ronnie stared at the circa 1970s cluster of apartments again and found she suddenly didn’t want to go in. Hadn’t she just driven Shana here the night before? It felt like an eon ago and she didn’t want to face another dead body.

They were parked at the far side of the lot and no one was moving around in the dreary rain. Sloan climbed out of the Bronco and stood outside his vehicle beneath a lightly waving western hemlock branch. Ronnie unbuckled her seat belt and joined him in the cold, damp morning.