Page 58 of The Psychic

“I’m sorry, Father,” said the terrified blond woman who had inadvertently let Cooper and Emma enter. She stood a few steps away from the preacher and was nearly cowering as she turned beseeching eyes at Cooper.

“Hush!” the preacher ordered and she backed up a step, nearly tripping on the hem of her cloak.

“Where’s Emma?” Cooper ground through clenched teeth. He had to hold himself back from inflicting serious harm on the man.

“You’re on private property. How did you get in?”

At the soft cry from the blond, Atticus turned, his angry gaze narrowing at her. “You opened the door,” he accused.

“There was a girl, Father,” she said in a rush, tears glistened in her eyes. “A young woman whose baby—”

“Where is she?” Cooper nearly leapt up the few steps to reach Atticus’s level.

“You can’t go there,” Atticus said. “It’s sacred ground and—”

“Stop me, then,” Cooper challenged, one fist balling, the other ready to reach for his Glock, his gaze hawk-like on the preacher. As soon as Cooper found Emma, this sanctimonious prick was going down.

“I’ll call the police and—”

“Call them. I’m a cop.”

The preacher’s eyes flickered. With anger? Fear?

“Call them. They can talk to every damned person in the flock.”

For a moment, there was a standoff. Itching for the fight, Cooper mentally begged the man to come at him. “Where. Is. She? Tell me now or—”

A door suddenly opened.

Banging against the wall.

Echoing through the nave.

The huge cross above swaying a bit on its wires.

Harley flew into the church and one step behind her was Emma, incongruously clutching a knife. A crowd of other women followed them.

Thank God, she was all right!

And then, in her emotionless tone, Emma said to Atticus, “I don’t like your way of meeting the Lord.” She motioned broadly with her free hand to the women streaming into the nave and the pews within. “They don’t like it, either.”

Atticus’s eyes were riveted on the knife and he paled a bit in his ornate robe.

“What? What? ” he uttered, obviously stunned for a second.

Trying to gather his authority again, he started giving commands.

“Go back to the dormitory. All of you! Sister Alma,” he ordered one of the older woman.

“Take them back. This is God’s loving home! ”

Harley snorted. “Arrest him, Cooper. He’s been having sex with these women against their will. God’s loving home … ” she muttered under her breath as Cooper drew his weapon on a floundering Atticus.

“No, no, this is a sacred place! I won’t be bullied.

I only speak the word of God!” But now his gaze was fastened on the gun and the snap ties that Cooper withdrew from his pocket.

Perfect to tie off a garbage bag, or use as handcuffs on supercilious dicks like Atticus Symons.

“You give preachers a bad name,” he said, wrapping the zip ties around Atticus’s wrists.

Then as the congregation looked on from their pews, Cooper read Atticus Symons his rights. He might be on administrative leave, but he was still an officer of the law, and they could argue in the courts whether he had the right to arrest Symons, but in the moment, he didn’t really give a shit.

The rain was falling in earnest, adding another chilling layer as Sloan and Ronnie pulled into her apartment parking lot. “Go over it all again with the bat and Angel,” he’d ordered as he’d driven, and Ronnie had complied.

Now as they got out of his SUV, she was shivering again and he took off his coat and gave it to her, ignoring her protests that she could just go upstairs and add more layers of clothing.

“You told me he said he put the bat in the garbage,” Sloan said.

“That’s right.”

He was already heading in the direction of the apartment building’s east side, where the trash receptacles were stored. Clutching his coat over her shoulders, she hurried after him, ducking under the second-floor stairs on the far end of the balcony and crossing to a small, locked storage building.

Ronnie hesitated when she saw that the door was cracked. Sloan’s gaze had been raking over the garbage receptacles, but now he looked back.

She reached out a hand to push open the door and Sloan said softly, “Don’t.”

She yanked her hand back as if burned.

Sloan took over.

Ronnie caught the ugly but faint scent of rotting drifting from the shed’s interior.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

Sloan sent her an unreadable look, then pushed open the door and stepped inside the pitch-black interior. Heart pounding, she peeked in and saw the wall of boxes that loomed in front of him as he reached up and grabbed the string for the bare overhead bulb.

The place was instantly flooded with glaring light.

She didn’t recognize any of the boxes, but then she’d only seen into the interior once when it was left open by the maintenance people.

Her nerves rippled within her skin.

Sloan turned around and hustled her out of the shed.

“Angel,” she said. Her racing heart galumphed painfully in her chest.

“Someone.”

Her stomach turned over, but she said, “I can identify him.”

“Ronnie, I don’t think—”

“Let me!”

Sloan clearly wanted to argue further, but she pressed her hand into his chest and moved past him to the wall of cardboard. Tentatively, holding her breath, she pressed against the side of one of the boxes with her elbow, pushing it slowly aside.

And there was the body.

Angel.

“Oh God,” she whispered, tears burning hot in her eyes.

Angel lay on his back, eyes open, as if trained on the shed’s ceiling. Blood had drained down from his crown and left a reddish-brown trail between those eyes. A bloody shovel lay beside him. Ronnie’s wobbling knees gave out and she would have fallen if Sloan wasn’t there to catch her.

She lay on an examining table in ER, the afterimage of Angel’s slain body burned on her retinas.

After finding him, Sloan had called the department, waited for an officer to arrive, then had reversed course and driven Ronnie to the ER to be checked out. She hadn’t protested.

She’d felt … spent.

Still did.

The events of the past couple of hours crowded in her head.

Carlton had killed Angel. Angel! The knowledge was a heavy, heavy brick in her chest. She felt weak and responsible and angry. She’d so hoped she was wrong.

She closed her eyes against the pain of losing Angel. He died because of me!

Angel must’ve caught Carlton in the act of some further nefarious deed, maybe another dead bat for her, maybe something else. It didn’t matter. He’d killed Angel with the shovel from the shed, then stacked the boxes to hide Angel’s body before running away.

For money.

She turned her head to see Sloan pacing between her cubicle and the outer hallways.

He’d told her that Marian had been examined, her stomach pumped, but whatever drug had been administered was already in her bloodstream.

They’d discovered a prescription sleeping aid in her name and were giving her an antidote.

Carlton had switched his plea, according to the officers who’d taken him in, to say that Marian had apparently accidentally overdosed on her own meds.

This new take on what had gone down was apparently because no one had seriously believed Ronnie was at fault.

The ER staff was finished with Ronnie’s test and waiting for results. They’d already concluded she was not concussed, a minor miracle, considering the way Carlton had attacked her.

“I wish Angel would have talked to me,” Ronnie murmured as Sloan re-entered her cubicle. “I’ve seen him a few times lately, but haven’t talked to him since he caught me, keeping me from falling when we first found the bat.”

“Where did you last see him?” asked Sloan as he moved closer to her bedside, his phone beeping in his pocket.

“On the balcony outside our doors. Just for a second or two. It was … he was protecting me, but we never … got close again. He was …”

He’d checked his cell, but now he turned his gaze on her as her voice trailed off. His eyes were opaque and dark, more black than gray, and she couldn’t read his thoughts.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. I don’t know.”

“Angel was … what?” he insisted.

… like a ghost.

In her mind’s eye she could see Angel clearly as he’d been the last time she’d spotted him on the balcony.

Leaning against the rail. In his usual slouched position.

His head and shoulders outside the overhang, his feet and legs sprawled across the decking.

It was snowing … It had been snowing, flakes falling all around, drifting under the overhang onto the decking, some sticking, some melting …

only nothing was sticking to Angel. No snow. No melting precipitation.

Another hallucination of him, maybe? Not Angel in the flesh. That day it had been a quick sighting and since then she’d only seen shadows of him.

Psychic ability, or a step into madness?

She shivered and shook her head. Telling Sloan would only convince him that he should not have gotten involved with her in the first place. He might be regretting it already, she thought, with an aching little jolt to her heart. He might be taking care of her now, but he sure as hell was remote.

“I need to go to the station and interview Langdorf,” he said, slipping his phone into his pocket.

“I’m fine. Do what you need to do. I can take Uber to my car.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“I’ll take her,” a familiar voice put in.

The curtain to her cubicle was swept back to reveal Brandy. Her eyes were weary and dull and her hair was falling out of its clip.

“Hi,” Ronnie greeted her, a catch in her throat. She was surprised Brandy was talking to her, had apparently sought her out. Maybe this was an olive branch? She hoped so. “How’s Clint doing?”

“You’re wrong about him,” Brandy stated flatly to both Ronnie and Sloan. “Clint didn’t physically hurt Mel. He just tried to reason with her.”

“He’s woken up?” Sloan fixed her with a stare.

“No. But when he does, he wants a lawyer.” She returned the stare. “Leave him alone.”