“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” he said presently.
“What?”
“Not being afraid of death.”
At that she couldn’t repress a smile. “I’m not jumping from airplanes without a parachute, if that’s what you mean. I take reasonable precautions like everyone else. I’m just not afraid of the inevitable outcome of every life.”
A smile creased his face in return. “Good point.”
“We all get there sooner or later. The problem comes when we spend too much of our time and efforts trying to avoid it. I pity people who are obsessively afraid of dying.”
“Anything can take over your life,” he agreed. “That’s a common obsession. Others of us have different ones.”
She nodded, wondering if he was taking this conversation somewhere. At the same time, she didn’t want him to leave. Earlier the house had felt empty and oppressive. Now it felt as home should. Normal sounds, warmth, friendliness. And she was feeling a kind of attraction she hadn’t felt in quite a while. Was he married?
“Let me get you a coffee,” she said. “And a slice of cheesecake. I imagine you spent most of the day outside.” She paused, filled with the need to know. “Unless you need to get home to your family?”
This time he didn’t decline. “No family,” he said. “And coffee sounds really good now. It’s getting cold out there.”
So no family. That pleased her more than it probably should have. As she rose from the rocker, she took her congealing dinner tray to the kitchen, deciding she might as well have some cheesecake, too. Sometimes she needed comfort food, and tonight was a good night for it.
The wind blew some dead leaves against the kitchen window, rattling them as they passed. She stared out into the darkness, but saw only her own reflection in the glass. A lingering whiff of burned bacon wafted past her nose, barely detectable, and soon disappeared in the aromas of fresh coffee and chocolate-caramel cheesecake.
She placed everything on a serving tray, and returned to the living room, setting it down on the coffee table.
“Wow,” he said appreciatively as he eyed the cheesecake. “Did you make this?”
“I get cravings for things like this sometimes. Besides, it’s always good to have something like this on hand for visitors.”
He smiled as she passed him a plate. “I need to drop by more often.”
She laughed, inordinately pleased by the idea. “Just let me know if you mean that. I’ll make sure not to run out of desserts.”
He dug in with relish and complimented her generously. She sat back in her rocker, nibbling at her own slice, enjoying herself for the first time that day. The shadows that had haunted her had dispelled as if Adrian had brought light with him.
Life went on, she thought. Even when terrible things happened, people had to continue living. It was a hardlearned lesson, after her friends died in the accident. Sometimes she still felt guilty, very guilty, despite her experience of the light and her absolute conviction that her friends had gone to a far, far better place.
“Life has its charms,” she said, before she realized she was going to speak out loud.
He looked at her with an arched brow. “It does,” he agreed.
But she detected some kind of hesitancy in the way he said it, a hesitation that convinced her he carried his share of ghosts, too. Maybe that’s why he had gently steered her to talk about her near-death experience. Maybe he needed some kind of reassurance.
He rose suddenly, placing his plate and mug on the tray. “Can I carry this out to the kitchen for you?”
“No, no thanks. It’s not a problem.”
“It’s time for me to be getting home,” he said. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.”
“Yes.” She nodded and stood, wondering why his mood had changed so abruptly.
He started toward the front door, then paused and looked back, his gray eyes serious. “Let us know if you sense anything else. Please.”
The request surprised her, but what it hinted at made her shiver. “I hope I never sense another thing.”
“I can sure understand why.” He nodded, opened the door and disappeared into the dark evening as the door closed firmly behind him.
Kerry remained standing, ignoring an urge to get a sweater, thinking over his visit. It had been odd, she realized, about something other than what she had reported earlier.
But whatever had brought him, she was glad he had stopped by.
She heard the heat kick on, and as she carried the tray back to the kitchen, felt the first musty stirrings of hot air.
Time to put it all behind her, she decided. Today needed to be put on the shelf along with the other mysteries of her life, such as why she had survived an accident that had killed her two best friends.
Some questions just couldn’t be answered.
Hours later, after a long, aimless drive, Adrian climbed out of his car in front of the small clapboard house he now called home. Around him spread the small ranch he had bought with his savings just before he retired with disability from the DCI.
The night, undisturbed by city lights, boasted a sky so strewn with stars that it looked like a black sea into which someone had tossed millions of diamonds. The swath of the Milky Way could be seen clearly, and its misty glow provided the answer to why the ancients had often believed it to be a heavenly river.
He loved it out here. The scent of sage and grass out-performed any aromatherapy. The minute he smelled the cool fragrant air, he always felt at peace.
He tried to soak up that feeling now, before entering his house, hoping to banish the day’s images of mayhem. Trying to think of something pleasant.
Cheesecake. Yeah, that was pleasant. Good coffee, a cute schoolteacher…
But as soon as he tried to summon the images, reality called him back. Change that to unnerved and unnerving schoolteacher, pretty or not. For the first time he considered the possibility that being psychic could be real and, worse, it could be awful.
He’d had so-called psychics try to provide information before on his cases. On the rare occasions when they were right, no one knew until they’d developed the information through ordinary means anyway. As a result, he hadn’t given the idea much thought over the years.
All that had changed in a few heart-stopping moments this evening when Kerry Tomlinson had described several unique aspects of the crime scene, aspects that couldn’t have been known to her. Then she had said the bodies had been positioned to send a misleading message.
That statement drew him up short, because it was exactly what he had been thinking about the carefully posed bodies. Something he couldn’t prove without a confession, something that on the face of it was a stretch.
Yet she had spoken his own impression aloud, an impression that he had shared only with Gage.
Impossible.
Except that when he looked up at the night sky, he sensed a universe that brimmed with possibilities that no one had yet imagined. Standing with his head tipped back, looking up at billions of suns, millions of which might have planets, hundreds of thousands of which might have life, he couldn’t deny any possibility.
Certainly not after today.
Of course, he’d given up on the whole idea of anything being impossible when he’d discovered his own partner at DCI had turned on him. The last person on earth he would have ever expected to betray him. If that could happen, anything could.
Then,