Telling Secrets. Tracy Montoya

the naive belief that her proven innocence was a sure thing. “Look.” She took a deep breath, then continued. “I’m a little psychic. That was why I talked to you at the coffee shop.”

      “You’re a little what?” Now that he hadn’t seen coming. “How can you be a little psychic? Isn’t that like being a little rich, or a little dead?”

      She gave something between a snort and a laugh. “Not in my case.” With that, she pulled off the leather gloves she wore, squeezing them in one of her now-bare hands. “Basically, I’m a really bad psychic.”

      Now it was his turn to laugh.

      “I don’t get visions, I don’t see dead people, I don’t even hear little voices in my head,” she continued. “But sometimes, I just get this big, nagging sense that I have to say something or do something. It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular, but it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.” She stopped squeezing. “I saw you in the coffee shop, and I just had to talk to you.”

      He shook his head, opening his mouth to reply and finding that he had nothing to say to that.

      “Ummmm…” She swallowed. “I mean, I felt like I had to tell you something. And when I finally got up the nerve to approach you, that thing about the kids and the water just came flying out.” She fluttered one hand in front of her like a butterfly to illustrate, then pulled it back, curling both hands around her gloves so the leather squeaked slightly. “I had no idea if I was right about what I told you until I saw the news tonight.”

      “Great.” It sounded so far-fetched, but something in him almost believed her. She seemed so sincere, so…normal. But there was nothing normal about a ritualistic murder in a state park. And there was nothing normal about warning someone not to take children near the place where a dead body waited. “You know the police think you might have something to do with that murder, right? And your defense is you’re a psychic who sucks?” He leaned back in his seat, stretching his arm across the ridge between the door and the window. “Sweetheart, I don’t have to have my own 1-900 line to know that that isn’t going to get you very far.”

      “Then why haven’t you called the police yet?”

      Just then, a wailing siren sounded in the distance, growing louder with every passing second. Oh, yeah, if she was what she said she was, she sure had the “who sucks” part down if she hadn’t seen that one coming.

      “You did call them. Before you even got in the car.” She dropped her gloves and whirled around, clutching at the door handle and looking very much like a trapped rabbit—soft, scared and completely clueless as to what to do next. “I’m such an idiot.”

      A police car careened into the parking lot, lights flashing, only to be followed by another. And another.

      Several more skidded to a halt around the parking-lot exit, forming a haphazard line that would prevent any cars from going in or out. Their respective sirens blended together into one shrieking, cacophonous alarm, somewhat muffled inside the closed doors of the car.

      “I didn’t think I warranted this much effort,” she shouted at him.

      “Get out of the car, and put your hands in the air!” a tinny voice outside blared through a bullhorn.

      She yanked the keys out of her car ignition and shoved them in her pocket. “You slept with a woman named Penny last month,” she said suddenly to the windshield.

      “Wha—” How could she know that? Penny lived in another state and had claimed to have no friends in Washington when she’d visited on business.

      “She has a blog, and she’s very, very peeved at you.” Sophie sighed, and her shoulders dropped in defeat. She switched off the car’s headlights. “See? I’m awful. I wish I could throw some secret or something that only you and your dead aunt Polly know at you, but I can’t. All I know is that when it’s really, really important, sometimes words come to me that are meaningful to someone else. I’m not a murderer.” She opened the car door and raised her hands as she got ready to exit the vehicle.

      “And I don’t know why, but I’ll see you again,” she shouted over the noise that had grown significantly louder since she’d opened the door. “This murder is connected to you in more ways than you know. And I think I have to help you with something.” She rolled her eyes, her body half in, half out of the car. “Although why I would help a guy who thinks I’m a satanic cult killer is beyond me.”

      With that, she got out, heading for the cops waiting for her with her head held high, and leaving him to wonder at the strength of her seemingly unshakable conviction in her innocence.

      And how, with a seemingly random comment, she could have hit on the fact that he had a dead aunt Polly.