Page 5 of The Psychic

Twenty years later …

Hot, damp breath … panting … smell of wet fur … whining … scratching …

Ravaged hands … a body … a woman’s body … lying in a clearing … and pounding, pounding, POUNDING!

Ronnie came to on a gasp.

Blinking, disoriented, she realized she was standing in her kitchen, hand on the refrigerator handle.

And someone was slamming their fist against her apartment door.

How long had she been out? A minute? Two? Longer? Whenever she had a vision she lost time, the amount hard to measure. But she’d certainly been having a vision. The force of this one had been like a punch to the chest, which meant it might be real, and it took her a moment to “re-combobulate.”

She took in a long, shaky breath and glanced out the window.

It was five o’clock at night, dark as a cauldron, and she was alone in the apartment, the unit she’d rented six months earlier when she and Galen had separated …

after she’d had enough of his lies and he’d had enough of her weirdness.

He’d married her because she was the boss’s daughter and she’d married him because …

God, she couldn’t even remember and it had only been two years.

“I’m coming!” she yelled to the increased pounding. Sheesh. Everybody was so impatient these days.

She walked the six steps to the front door and cautiously pulled it open.

On the other side was a white-faced, anxious-looking woman.

Her dark hair was threaded with fine silver hair filaments, though she didn’t look like she was much into her thirties.

She wore a black rain jacket, no hood, beads of rainwater competing with the silvery strands.

Her makeup was heavily applied, her dark eyes rimmed in black.

One arm was straight down, locked to her side, the opposite hand reached up to touch her face as if suddenly wondering what she looked like.

“Veronica Quick?” she asked tensely.

“Yes?”

Familiar. She was so familiar, but Ronnie didn’t think she knew her.

Behind her rain was pouring from the skies in sheets and a cold burst of wet December air swept inside the apartment, an eager, uninvited guest. The woman reached inside her jacket with the hand that had touched her face, pulled out a large, manila envelope and thrust it forward.

Ronnie’s hand came up automatically as the woman slapped the envelope down hard, declaring, “You’ve been served. ”

Galen beat me to the punch.

Ronnie was almost impressed by his speed.

She suspected she was holding divorce papers and couldn’t decide if her anger was at her soon-to-be ex because he was such an all-around shit, or because she’d been cheated out of serving him first. Probably a little of both.

Her gaze dropped briefly to the envelope, then upward to the deliverer, who was eyeing Ronnie as if she were memorizing her face.

The woman looked like someone she should know, but Ronnie wondered if that were true.

She’d experienced the consequences of engaging with people who might have heard something about her psychic ability and were seeking her out because of it.

Yes, her “gift” was known around River Glen, maybe all of Oregon and beyond, for all she knew, as was the fact that Veronica Quick was a certified nutcase.

Didn’t matter to some that she worked hard to pretend and deny this extra ability since more often than not it got her into trouble.

Ronnie tried to place the woman. She looked like someone from one of her visions, in that watery sort of way that always irked her. If you’re given a gift, shouldn’t it be more reliable? Something you could actually use ?

Bark, bark, bark. Ronnie turned to her right, recognizing the sound as the dog from her dream, though she didn’t see it.

“What?” the woman on her doorstep demanded.

“Nothing. The dog.”

“I don’t like dogs. Keep it away from me,” she muttered, then turned on the heels of her black Doc Martens and stomped toward the stairs that led to the parking lot.

Ronnie watched her progress through the incessant downpour.

She was bareheaded and apparently oblivious to the rain.

In the lot below, she splashed through the shallow puddles on the tarmac, the overhead lights marking her progress as she headed for a gray Ford Explorer.

Ronnie noted the license plate, a habit, and as soon as she was back inside, wrote it down on a piece of scratch paper.

She might be considered a psychic but she could forget data as well as the next person.

She finally looked down at the now wet envelope in her right hand.

It was from a different law firm than Tormelle it was from Galen’s new firm.

He’d sexted too many women online while at Tormelle & Quick, which had caused his firing.

Most of the firm believed it was because he’d cheated on her, but the sexting was what really chafed her father.

Jonas felt betrayed as he’d initially been Galen’s champion.

Ronnie felt he’d wanted to unload responsibility for her, even while always telling her what he wanted her to do with her life.

“Time to go back to law school,” Jonas had told her when she and Galen had separated, which, as ever, had irked Ronnie.

Maybe it was a function of her father’s overbearing plans that had made her deaf to his pleas.

She liked being an assistant at the firm.

It kept those who felt uneasy over her extra “ability” feeling safe and maybe a little superior.

As long as the boss’s daughter with her strange woo-woo stayed out of the legal limelight, she could be tolerated.

An ear-splitting squeal of brakes from the highway rang through the apartment. It came from behind the complex. Ronnie froze, listening hard at the drawn-out shriek from the tires.

CRASH!!!

Tossing down the envelope unopened, she leapt across the living room toward the small rear balcony of her apartment, throwing open the sliding door and stepping onto the slick, wooden deck boards.

Rain splashed onto her head from a listing gutter and ran down the front of her shirt and jeans into her black ankle boots.

She leaned over the railing, swiping moisture from her face.

The highway below was known for speeders clipping each other.

Sporadic serious accidents occurred. She could smell the wet bark and earth as she peered through the bare tree limbs of the deciduous trees that ran down the hill toward the highway.

Cockeyed headlights flooded the area where a pileup of cars was already stopping traffic.

Vehicles were every which way. Crumpled metal flashed under the myriad headlights.

There was a gray SUV turned sideways. Like the one her messenger had driven.

Rain poured down from the skies.

Shit …

Racing back inside, Ronnie swept wet strands of hair from her forehead.

She grabbed her coat and cross-body purse and racewalked to her own SUV, a dark blue Ford Escape.

Slamming the door, she pushed the button to engage the engine and the Escape roared to life.

She drove directly into the traffic jam, which was already backing up, nearly stopping.

There was enough room for vehicles to still creep around on the shoulder and she followed after them, much to the fury of the drivers stuck in the inside lanes who honked madly at the moving cars.

Sirens sounded in the distance as she followed the slow-moving line.

When the makeshift lane suddenly stopped, she pulled as far off onto the shoulder as possible.

In front of her the road was completely blocked by the mangled cars.

Rain blew over them in curtains as she stepped out, bending her head against the wind as she pushed forward.

A man holding a cell phone to his ear stood outside a red Tesla. “Get back in your car! I called 911!” he yelled.

“I know her,” said Ronnie, pointing to the gray Explorer. Its front end was demolished. The woman who’d served her papers must have slammed her foot to the accelerator as soon as she hit the highway to cause that much damage.

“Ma’am, get back in your car. It’s not safe.”

As if the gods heard his words a small pickup zigzagged around the stopped cars, suddenly racing toward them, clipping one car and taking out the front bumper of another as it aimed forward like a bullet.

Tesla-guy grabbed Ronnie and practically threw them both toward the deep ditch running along the highway.

She slid into icy water, but somehow remained upright, her boots drowning in the small running stream that had developed from the rain. She sank ankle-deep into the mud.

At the last minute the driver had yanked his steering wheel in order to miss Ronnie’s Escape—thank the gods—but it plowed into the back of a white Prius that was still trying to inch forward in traffic.

Ronnie could see that the woman inside the Prius was thrown against the dash, then back again.

She lifted a hand to the blood forming from a gash on her forehead and started screaming, the sound tinny, barely audible, behind her windows.

Bark, bark, bark, bark!

Ronnie glanced around, wondering which car had the dog.

Tesla-man said, “Fuck me,” under his breath, releasing his hold on Ronnie before climbing back up the incline to the road.

Ronnie scrunched her feet inside her boots to increase her grip as she tried to pull each foot out of the mucky stream.

Slowly, the boots released with a sucking noise and she worked her way up the slope as well.

The two cars that had apparently created the initial crash were locked together like two bull rams, squaring off. The drivers were outside, staring at the mess while the icy December rain bore down.