Page 7 of The Psychic

Ronnie woke on a strangled gasp, the fragmented dark images of a nightmare slipping away even as she tried to mentally grab them, unsure of their import.

She took a couple of deep breaths, coming into focus.

Had she seen the woman in the clearing again?

It felt like it, but she couldn’t quite put it together.

Tell the police about her …

She snorted at herself as she got out of bed and headed for the shower.

Oh, sure. That had worked so well last time when she’d showed up at the River Glen Police Department to warn them that Edmond Olman was going to attempt to murder his ex-wife and they’d better put him under surveillance, maybe even arrest him on some dummied-up charge, just to keep him from killing her.

Detective Elena Verbena had regarded her soberly and, to her credit, had increased patrol cars to drive by the Olman house, but it hadn’t helped because Olman had already beaten his wife within an inch of her life.

She very nearly died in the days in between the time Ronnie warned the police about him and her unconscious body was discovered.

Olman was now in jail and Ronnie had been grilled long into the night by River Glen’s finest. Only her father’s charge to her rescue had gotten her released.

They were sure she knew something more, was somehow involved.

She’d heard the incredulity in the voice of one of cops who’d interviewed her at the time.

“You say a vision just came to you?” Needless to say, the River Glen P.D.

had come to view Veronica Quick as someone to be wary of.

The wife moved back in with family in Minnesota and Ronnie’s uneasy relationship with the police grew uneasier.

Galen was no help at all. He’d never believed much in her abilities and his lack of coming to her aid was another reason the marriage failed so quickly.

After that Ronnie had doubled down on her decision to keep her “possible idiopathic neural abnormality” (idiopathic meaning no discernible cause) to herself.

As she was getting ready for work today, she called Dawn at the front desk and left a message that she would be late. She planned to check on Shana before heading to the office. Ronnie had watched her being loaded into an ambulance and felt oddly connected to her.

Now, thinking of how the dead woman’s image had been superimposed over Shana’s face, Ronnie’s mind flicked to another recent bout of extrasensory information that had taken her over.

Barely weeks ago she’d seen trouble coming for P.I. Jesse James Taft, who’d been in the line of sight of two murderous females aiming for his demise.

Ronnie had perceived a mental image of Taft’s sister, his dead sister, Helene to be precise, who just happened to be his personal muse, and one he apparently saw from time to time himself. Whether Taft actually did see her was yet to be determined, but her “ghost” was someone he talked to.

Ronnie, on the other hand, had gotten a very clear message from Helene that Taft was in danger. Serious danger. When Taft recognized that Ronnie had actually seen his sister, he’d been gobsmacked. He hadn’t believed it and consequently hadn’t listened to Ronnie as carefully as he should have.

Taft was so grounded in reality that the idea Helene could be something more than just a memory was anathema. He’d even thought the times he’d envisioned her were just his mind playing tricks on him.

There was only so much Ronnie could do to explain her “gift,” especially since she didn’t really understand it herself. She had passed on the message from Helene, that Taft was in danger and left him to deal with it.

That he’d nearly been killed and her vision had proved true probably left him with more questions than answers.

She didn’t know because she’d avoided Taft ever since, not wanting to have a post mortem on exactly what she’d seen, felt and known was going to happen to him.

He was just the latest who’d sparked a vision.

Until the dead woman in the clearing.

After checking her black slacks, jacket and white collarless blouse in the mirror, she glanced out the window.

Gray clouds hung low in the sky, but the rain was holding off for the moment.

Her boots were sitting by the back door, still caked with half-wet muck, so she slipped on black flats, then took the boots outside, knocking them against the rail that ran along this second level above the parking lot.

Angel Vasquero, Ronnie’s neighbor, was already leaning against that rail in a pair of low-hung jeans and a gray T-shirt, barefoot.

He watched the little flakes of mud from her boots dropping down to the parking lot below, then eyed her with a slight smile.

They didn’t know each other well, but the vibe he gave off was always lazy amusement.

“Hey, pretty lady.”

Ronnie gave him a look. Angel worked hard to give her the impression that he was an idle Hispanic just hanging around between gigs, but there was a lot more going on with him than he wanted her to know.

She suspected he was either an informant for the police, or a cop himself, because he’d appeared shortly after she’d rented her apartment.

This had been a few weeks after she’d related her suspicions about Edmond Olman to the police, so it was a pretty good bet there was something there.

His living next to her was more than mere coincidence.

Angel lackadaisically gestured toward her boots. “Looks like you ran into some trouble.”

“Something like that.”

His dark hair was slicked back, still wet from an apparent shower. “How’s the lawyering going?”

“I’m not a lawyer. I’m an assistant.” As she’d explained to him before.

“Whose old man owns the place.”

“Still an assistant.”

She wished she would be hit with some kind of mental background on him, but that’s not how her gift worked.

She had no control over when and how something from the dark void would creep over her, replacing what her eyes saw with an inner screen.

The more intense the image, the more credible the vision.

Sometimes, if she closed her eyes, let herself relax, made a point of opening up her mind …

sometimes she could coax it forward. Sometimes … not often.

And sometimes what she saw was utter bullshit.

“You know Daria Armenton?” Angel asked now.

“Yes, I do,” Ronnie said, in some surprise.

Daria Armenton was one of the heirs to a fortune of the newly deceased Frank Rollberson, who’d bought certain stocks in the nineties that had increased in value nearly twenty-five times, leaving him a very rich man with no children.

Daria was the young Hispanic woman who’d taken care of Rollberson for the last ten years or so and she was being sued by Rollberson’s myriad shoestring relatives who’d only received small amounts and felt Daria’s piece belonged to them, too.

Rollberson’s estate lawyer, Martin Calgheny, was with Tormelle & Quick and had asked Ronnie to attend the reading of the will, which she had several months earlier.

“She’s my cousin,” Angel informed her. “She’s being hassled. Some lawyer’s coming after her.”

Had she been wrong about Angel? She didn’t think so … but … ?

“She might need someone to defend her,” he added.

“She should talk to Martin Calgheny. He’s the one who handled the distribution of the estate. Martin would be best to find someone to repre—”

“Daria said you were there, too, though,” he interrupted, straightening, suddenly all business. “She came by the other day, saw you, remembered you. I told her I’d talk to you.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” Ronnie repeated. “But I’ll talk to Martin.”

“Will you?” Angel’s dark eyes said he doubted that she would.

“Yes. I will,” she said firmly, then headed down the stairs to her SUV.

River Glen General Hospital’s main parking lot was nearly full when Ronnie pulled in and she had to circle around and squeeze into a spot that made it hard to open her door.

She managed to climb out without too much car dirt transferring to her jacket, then hurried around the puddles to the front doors, which slid open as she approached.

She asked to see Shana Lloyd and was directed to an elevator to the fourth floor.

She’d had a lie all ready on her tongue, planning to say she was a family friend and Shana’s lawyer, but she didn’t need to use it.

She was actually a good liar, having been forced to cover up her occasional lapses that made everyone uncomfortable.

Far easier than trying to explain she was merely “lost in the psychic moment.” She might have been able to pull that off if her predictions were always accurate, but since that wasn’t the case … lying …

On the fourth floor, the elevator doors opened and Ronnie faced a nurse in light blue scrubs and a low ponytail who was waiting to enter.

She netted a small smile from the woman who barely glanced at her before trading places with Ronnie and heading into the elevator.

The doors had closed behind her before Ronnie’s brain clicked into gear.

Brandy.

Ronnie quickly looked back at the elevator’s blank doors, but Brandy’s car was already moving downward. She should’ve recognized the dark ponytail, the intent look Brandy wore most times.

You didn’t recognize Shana at first.

Well, that was true, but she hadn’t known Shana all that well, whereas Brandy …

One thing was for certain: It was fast becoming old home week.

She hadn’t seen Brandy Mercer since they were in high school and even then their elementary-school friendship had turned into little more than an acquaintanceship in their upper grades.

She was aware Brandy had become a nurse, but she hadn’t known she was back in River Glen.

The last she’d heard, which was admittedly a while ago, Brandy had been living in Arizona.

And Mel … she’d gotten married to some guy in tech and moved to the Bay Area for a while, she thought.