Chapter Three
“You’re not helping.”
Dr. Lovett gave him an aggravated look before shooting a glance back over his shoulder at the woman who huddled on the bed. “I don’t know if she’s latched on to you because of the car wreck or if there’s some other reason, but this…this isn’t normal and you can’t keep staying at her side just because you…” He paused, floundering for words.
Dev wasn’t exactly sure why he’d spent the past thirty minutes with a woman who was more than likely troubled. It didn’t make sense. She’d been fine when he’d pulled up to handle the MVA—taking care of the report from the wreck, even trying to get her to come in to the hospital. She’d been clear and calm. Pissed, hurting, but clearly fine.
Today…
He gave a reluctant nod and looked back at her. “Just let me—”
“You should leave.”
“She doesn’t have any family. Nobody at all she can call.” Dev knew what that was like. “Maybe that’s why she latched on, as you call it. Having a familiar face when you’re hurting or scared is sometimes the only thing that can pull you through. No, I can’t stay, but I’m not just disappearing without telling her I’m leaving, either.”
Lovett gave him a grim look, then shook his head before stepping aside.
Dev ducked back into the room. Most of the exam rooms in the emergency department were more like curtained-off partitions as they went through the expansion and remodeling, but Nyrene had been put in a private room. He had a feeling the doctors hadn’t wanted her upsetting the others.
She looked up at the sound of his shoes on the linoleum and to his surprise, she gave him a tired smile. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah…”
A sigh seemed to shudder out of her and she rested her head on her knees. “It’s gone. That headache.”
He frowned. “They’re going to help you, Nye— Ms. Goldman.”
As much pain as she was in, whatever was wrong, it couldn’t be gone in the short time since he’d stepped outside into the hall with the doctor who’d come to evaluate her.
Her lashes lifted and he found himself looking into tired, but clear, eyes.
“I’m okay now, Officer Deverall.” She slid off the exam table and he went to stop her, but she lifted her hands. “Please…um. Please don’t touch me. I…I don’t think I like people touching me.”
He shot a look at her. I don’t think I like people touching me.
That didn’t really fit with the hugger he’d encountered last night. And she had been a hugger. Just one of those naturally affectionate people. It had driven him a little crazy because that soft, sweetly curved body pressed against his had done a number on him as she tried not to cry after the accident. Holding it together professionally had been easy enough—telling himself to get a grip and push it away, put it aside? Not so much.
He’d dealt with crying women before on the job. Most cops had. Some were irritating, some made him uncomfortable. Dev just took it as part of the job until last night.
He’d enjoyed every second her body had been close to his and then he’d regretted every second his body had been in uniform because there was no way he could make anything come of it, especially not now.
And not just because there was clearly something…odd going on.
She went to open the door and he blocked her. “Ms. Goldman, you need to sit down, let the doctor examine you.”
“No.” She smiled and it was a smile of relief, as if the weight of the world had fallen away. “I think I just had to keep you from going into the garage.”
He gaped at her, caught off guard by that statement long enough that she was able to slide past him and open the door.
The doctor was the next one to try to stop her while Dev just stood there, trying to figure out what she’d meant.
The sound of doors banging open had him looking up. It was an almost instinctive gesture.
Immediately, he backed out of the hallway as a crash team came rushing through, doctors shouting orders, nurses calling out numbers.
Distantly, he noticed that Nyrene Goldman had gone still and was staring at the team as they all but ran by.
Out of the chaos, it was almost bizarre the way his ears caught one simple phrase.
“Damn. Meredith Russell…she always wanted to get the top story…but not like this…”
His radio crackled. Instinctively, he went to respond, but instead, he found himself following the crash team. He had misunderstood. That was all.
Except he hadn’t.
He was still processing that hours later after he finished giving his statement to the investigating officers—one that was very, very self-edited.
He couldn’t exactly stand there and tell one of the cops he knew was dirty that he had been meeting with the reporter because she claimed she had information to pass to him about the corruption going on inside the department, now could he?
No. That wouldn’t have gone over well.
He slumped in the seat of his cruiser, staring at the rain-splattered windshield, but he didn’t see the rain or the blue-on-white sign of the hospital or even the flashing lights of the arriving ambulance.
He kept seeing the images the investigating officer had shown.
Meredith Russell, lying on her back, a neat entry wound in her forehead. The blood had stained her pretty blonde hair red and her wide blue eyes were glassy in death, blank.
But he could see the accusation in them.
He should have been there.
Why hadn’t he—
Abruptly, he slammed a fist into the dashboard.
“Son of a bitch!”
He jammed the key into the ignition and gave it a vicious wrench, threw the car into drive and pulled out of the parking slot with a squeal of rubber on cement.
I think I just had to keep you from going into the garage.
Nyrene sat cross-legged on her couch with her laptop on her legs. The vicious pain in her head was gone, but there was an odd, muffled feeling back there. It reminded her of the way she’d felt after the orthodontist had pulled a molar and then packed it up with cotton. She kind of hoped there wouldn’t be some huge stabbing pain developing as the metaphorical Novocain wore off.
Of course, it was entirely possible that she’d be back in the hospital—on the psych floor—by the time it happened.
She really was going crazy.
She’d spent a ridiculous amount on a cab ride home, and it had been a quiet ride—none of that noise in her head, no images, no screams.
No visions of blood or violence.
Once she’d locked herself in her home, she’d gone online. She hadn’t bothered with the local news. Even if her gut was right, the news wouldn’t be posted yet. The media was always hours behind what a person could find out via social sites, it seemed.
Sure enough, there on the Twitter stream for a local blogger who followed the police radio, she’d seen it.
Just in: fatality at CCH. Victim unverified, but heard the name Meredith Russell. ??? Reporter at WCLA?
A flurry of retweets and questions had followed, but the user hadn’t responded or posted anything more until he had more information, and that had made Nyrene’s stomach hurt.
Fuck, guys. It was MR. I caught a few things on the radio before they switched frequencies.
That had been hours ago and she hadn’t bothered to look for anything else.
Either she was going crazy and she’d hallucinated the past few hours or something else was going on.
Nyrene almost preferred to think she was going crazy. It seemed safer.
But in the back of her mind, that calm, rational voice that had tried to take over in the hospital had started to speak. This time, that voice had drowned out everything else.
This is really happening. You didn’t hallucinate any of it.
That means you need to look at the other things.
Which explained how she’d found herself at this website—The Psychic Portal.
It had seemed gibberish, but finally, she’d found a contact button and although it seemed like a shot in the dark, she’d sent off an email, asking for more information.
She’d get a response in two months, when she’d either committed herself to Southern State, the only psychiatric facility available on her lousy insurance, or when all of this turned out to be a very bad dream.
She hadn’t even had a chance to find another decent source when a response came back. It was a short, almost form-like, and it sent her to a questionnaire.
Ten minutes later, her head pounding, she finished it and slumped down on the couch, wanting a drink. It seemed like a dumb thing to do, considering she didn’t know what was going on inside her head. She still wasn’t completely ruling out some sort of traumatic brain injury, although the likelihood didn’t seem high.
There was another response in her email and this was a personal response.
Hello
I apologize for what seems like tedious and needless steps before we allow anybody to join us here at the Portal, but I’m sure you can understand…we get a lot of flakes, fakes and fools here.
You, however, are a different sort of beast and we’d love to have you.
There are actually two portals here. A public face, the one we give to the flakes, fakes and fools, and the one real portal. Below is the link you’ll need to set up your account at the real portal.
Please pick a username that will help you remain anonymous and never share any personal details. As you can imagine, the world isn’t a safe place, but there are many who would prey on the gifted, and while you struggle to understand what is happening to you, you will be more vulnerable than you can imagine.
Welcome…and I hope you can find some information to help with your headaches. I’ve been there. They are horrid. Let me know if I can help.
Phantom
The entire message left her squirming uncomfortably.
But the final paragraph had her slowly setting the laptop down, as though she had suddenly found herself holding something quite deadly.
Swallowing, she stood and backed away one step, then another.
She hadn’t said anything about her headaches.
Not a damn thing.
A hard fist slammed on the door and she jumped, unable to muffle the shriek before it escaped her.
Find out what’s going on.
A rough, masculine voice.
A familiar one.
Her head started to pound as she looked away from the computer to stare at her door.
There was another knock and she eased her way around the coffee table, leaving the laptop where it was, as it was.
She’d think about that email, and all its assorted creepiness, later. After she saw who was at the door.
You know. Her imagination filled in the blanks—big and blond, with his ice-blue eyes and impassive features, Ben Deverall was a mouthwatering piece of work. Too bad the terror had dried all the spit from her mouth.
“Ms. Goldman, please open the door,” a brusque voice said. “It’s Officer Bennett Deverall with the Clary Police Department.”
The sound of his voice didn’t do anything to soothe her uneasiness.
Why couldn’t she have been wrong?
Why couldn’t he be the Easter Bunny? A cute little girl selling Girl Scout cookies? Anybody other than the cop, because that would mean she hadn’t just known.
She swiped her hands on the soft cotton of her pajama pants and paused for a second to look down at herself. She’d changed when she got home, into something warm and comfortable and soft, desperate for the comfort. Now, though, she wished she hadn’t.
The long-sleeved cotton shirt wasn’t quite thick enough to disguise the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra and the slogan written across it in vivid, pink font was funny, if you knew the context. She’d gotten it at a book convention she’d attended a few years ago.
But Dev wouldn’t know the context and now she had to open the door with some rather risqué words scrawled across her boobs like an invitation—You’ve been a bad boy…go to my room.
The irony of it all—if it wasn’t a terrible situation she found herself in, having Bennett Deverall in her room wouldn’t bother her a bit.
Groaning at how pathetic she was, she reached for the door, keeping the security chain in place as she peeked out.
He stood with his hands on his hips, head slumped, but at the sound of the door he slowly lifted his head. Rain drenched him, clinging to golden-blonde hair, high cheekbones, and rolling down a jaw so hard it could have been carved from granite.
“Hello,” she said and the unsteady sound of her voice made her want to pound her head against the door.
“I’d like to speak with you.” The rain started to come down even harder and the pitiful excuse she had for a porch didn’t offer much protection at all. “If I could…?”
She undid the chain and opened the door, stepping back. Manners had been drilled into her. If it hadn’t been raining, maybe she could have kept him outside for a few minutes, but not in that downpour.
He came in, rain falling around him to puddle on the floor.
His gaze swept over her and lingered on the shirt.
“Let me get you a towel.” She spun around.
“That’s not necessary.”
“Neither is it necessary for you to drip water all over my floor,” she responded, painfully aware of the fact that he was following her down the narrow hall to her bathroom.
She imagined it was a safety thing, a cop thing, and she tried not to think about how closely he followed her, or anything else.
It was funny, trying to blank her mind, though, because when she tried to stop thinking about him, she found herself thinking about all the little things she hadn’t even realized she knew. Like, she hadn’t been aware of how hard his muscles had felt under her hands when he’d helped her stand earlier, or how wide his shoulders were.
But she was remembering it all in acute detail now.
Grabbing a towel from the rod, she turned around and thrust it at him. “Here,” she said, her voice tight, rusty.
He took it with a sigh and nodded. “Thank you.” He stepped back and gestured.
She slid out of the bathroom, conscious of him rubbing the towel over his face, across his almost ruthlessly short hair. When she led him into her small living room, she caught sight of him in the reflective glass of the windows and saw him drag the towel down his neck, head tipped back.
Nyrene curled her hands into fists as she turned around.
“What can I help you with?”
A rush of heat swamped her as an image assailed her. Take off that damn shirt…
His voice echoed in her mind and subconsciously, she wrapped her arms around her middle, hiding the way her nipples had tightened and were now stabbing into the material of her shirt.
Take off that damn shirt…
Self-preservation made her desperate and she had the insane desire to just slam a door, build a wall, shut a window—anything to keep her from hearing everything that seemed to flood her head now, the images that crowded into her mind…like his hands grabbing the hem of her shirt, peeling it upward.
She spun away and stared at the window. Close the damn window!
The images in her head cut off and the heated rush that had swamped her disappeared. In the breadth of a second.
Thank God.
Take off that damn shirt for starters, Dev thought sourly. Then his mind underwent a short circuit as he thought of her doing just that, peeling the black cotton away, revealing golden skin and a body that he was already too aware of.
She wasn’t wearing a bra, a fact he hadn’t been able to ignore when she opened the door, and now he also knew that her full breasts had tight, prominent nipples and he wanted to see how she’d react when he rolled them between his fingers, then toyed with them, using his tongue and teeth.
Not what you’re here for. Get your brain out of your dick. He lowered the towel and looked around. “Mind if I have a seat?”
“Feel free.”
He went to sit on the only chair and then stopped, sighing as the water continued to drip off. He had his own little rain puddle. “Maybe I should just stand,” he said, shaking his head.
“That’s not—”
“It’s fine.” Waving toward the couch, he said, “Feel free, though. I’ll try to keep this short.”
He instinctively turned toward the electric fireplace she had on. It was tucked against one wall, giving off a somewhat realistic impression of an actual flame, and the heat felt good, although it served to remind him of how miserably uncomfortable his uniform was.
There was a faint chiming sound and he glanced over just as she looked at her laptop. She caught her lip between her teeth and although she tried to be subtle, he noticed the way she looked at him, then away. And the way she casually closed her laptop. Just a little too casually.
“I only have a couple of questions,” he said, schooling his face into the polite, blank mask he’d perfected ages ago. “Actually, just one.”
“I don’t know if there’s much of anything else I can tell you about the accident,” she said softly. “I already called my insurance. My agent tells me the fault is clear. It will probably take a while to get it settled, but—”
“It’s not about the accident.” He moved over, eyed the wide, fat table and then decided, the hell with courtesy. He was looking over the edge into his grave anyway. Sitting down, he stared at her, eye to eye, wondering if she was yet another stumbling block they’d thrown at him, or if she was just another innocent bystander. He had to know—stumbling blocks could be dealt with. He was tired of innocent bystanders paying the price, though.
“Oh?” Her eyes widened ever so slightly and he couldn’t help but notice the darker striations of brown that splintered the golden color. She seemed all about golden warmth with those eyes and her skin.
Her hair, though, was black as night, straight as rain.
Deliberately, he clenched one hand into a fist.
Thinking about her hair, her eyes, her mouth, her ass—not going to help him learn what he needed to learn.
“The hospital,” he said.
And those golden eyes went blank.
“I’d like to know exactly what that display at the hospital was about, Ms. Goldman. Why were you so determined to keep me out of the parking garage?”
“I…” She said nothing else, just shook her head.
“Okay, then I do have a second question.” Leaning in until only a few scant inches separated them, he held her gaze for a long moment, listening as her breathing hitched, as her pupils spiked. “What does it have to do with the dead woman they found out there?”
She sucked in a breath of air and he wanted to swear. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to grab her and shake her and he wanted to scream.
Because he saw it in her eyes—she wasn’t some innocent bystander.
Somehow, she was connected.
Nyrene Goldman, this woman who intoxicated him and made him want to forget everything that didn’t involve soft sheets and naked flesh, was involved with the men who wanted him dead.