For a week, he hadn’t admitted he was on leave, and then he’d explained only because Ladybird spilled the beans. Of course, he’d minimized the whole thing to make both Max and his mother feel better, saying that it was no big deal, routine, yadda, yadda. His job was his life and if he lost it because of her...
“Wasn’t a jab at you,” he said with the smallest of smiles. The damn man was a mind reader. Or her every emotion showed on her face. Scary thought.
If he wasn’t jabbing at her, he should have been. If she hadn’t thought she had everything under control. If she hadn’t been stupid enough to climb into a killer’s car like a lamb to the slaughter. If Witt didn’t seem to have the overpowering need to protect from her own folly. If, if, if.
He was too tolerant of her antics when she gave him nothing in return. But she would pay him back, if only by giving him her trust and playing along with his line that the leave was no big deal. She patted his hand. “Everything will work out.”
Witt tipped his head and stared as if she’d suddenly morphed into a tall, gorgeous blonde with a tripleD chest. Then he smiled that heart-flipping smile of his. “Yeah, it will.”
He bent to pick up their two carry-ons—they both believed in packing light—with his big hands. Partial to big hands, she hadn’t always been partial to big blond cops with Dudley Do-Right dimples in their chins. She was five-foot-six; he was well over six. She’d never been partial to tall guys either. In a little over two months, Witt sort of grew on her, to the point where she now had trouble prying him off. Worse, most of the time she didn’t want to.
Until she thought about a cop’s mortality rate being higher than the average Joe.
Beneath a military-style buzz cut, Witt’s broad forehead would make a perfect target. In her mind’s eye, a bullet hole blossomed in his flesh, blood spurted. She dizzied with the sickening crunch of skull bone.
“Max?”
Breathe, in, out. She opened her eyes to the concern in his.
“A vision?” he asked as they shuffled forward in line.
“Yes.” As real in sentiment as her vision two nights ago of Cameron’s death. Witt shouldn’t be hanging around her. She shouldn’t be hanging around him. Taking him on this trip had been a stupid idea ... Cameron’s stupid idea. She was bad news. Together, they’d be a disaster.
Stop it. She’d agreed to put her trust in Witt. He wouldn’t die on her. He wouldn’t dare.
“A vision is why we’re taking this little impromptu trip?”
A vision of a dead man, yes. She nodded. It spoke to Witt’s feelings for her that he’d agreed to accompany her without a single question. He’d long since accepted that she was psychic. And she’d finally been willing to admit she had feelings for him, too. They’d come a long way. She’d come a long way.
But was she leading him into more danger? Maybe he was a lot safer without her around.
He bumped her leg with the edge of her travel bag, the one she’d bought yesterday with some of the cash she’d taken from the blood money fund.
“Hey.”
She couldn’t remember his question. Oh yeah, the vision and the impromptu trip. She scraped a hand through her short, dark hair, a lock of it falling forward. She needed a cut, badly. The longer it was, the more unmanageable it became. She was into easy maintenance. She was also into avoidance. Witt stared her down.
“I have to find Cameron’s sister.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded as bad as Cameron.
“What’s your husband say?” She’d grown used to Witt’s knowing about Cameron. He didn’t even think she was crazy. They’d been through too much for him to doubt her, at least as far as the whole psychic debate went. Besides, his own mother talked to the ghost of her late husband, Witt’s father. And he knew Ladybird wasn’t crazy. Odd maybe, but not crazy.
She shifted, moved ahead to fill the space that had widened in front of her. “Cameron doesn’t know, either.”
“Who got whacked in your vision this time?”
Someone always got whacked in her visions. That’s what they were all about, finding the whacker of the whackee so Max could exorcise that particular ghost.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek. The line inched forward. The terminal had felt empty with passengers spread out, but now, congregated by the departure door, there were far more travelers than she’d realized, and it seemed they’d all gotten up at once, most long before their boarding zone was called. She regretted she’d worn a jean skirt with some bizarre notion that it would be more comfortable on the plane than jeans or slacks. Now, standing around, her legs were cold, she’d shiver to death, she’d...
“The vision was about your husband, wasn’t it?”
Her throat closed like Witt had pulled up on a choke chain. Uncanny the way he read the expression on her face. “Yes.”
“After two years of nothing?”