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Forbidden Territory
Paula Graves


"Help me!” For Lily Browning, there was no escaping the visions that had haunted her all her life.

And now a little girl's desperate cry for help had brought enigmatic, disturbingly masculine Lieutenant McBride to her door. McBride didn't have time for psychics. He had a kidnapper to catch. But the honey-haired woman with the golden eyes seemed to see things no one else could - including his own tragic secret.

With a child's life at stake, he had to trust Lilyeven as each step plunged them deeper into danger and into the uncharted territory of irresistible desire.












“You actually saw her?”


Lily nodded slowly. “She was crying. And she was afraid.”

“Can you see her now?”

Her quick, deep breath sounded like a gasp. “No.” She lurched from the chair and stumbled against the coffee table.

McBride’s heart jumped to hyperspeed as he hurried to Lily’s side. He caught her elbow. “Are you okay?”

Her head lolled forward, her forehead brushing against his shoulder.

He wrapped one arm around her waist to hold her up. Her slim body melted against his, robbing him of thought for a long, pulsing moment. She was as soft as she looked and furnace hot, except for the icy fingers clutching his arm. Her head fell back and she gazed at him, her eyes molten.

Desire coursed through him, sharp and unwelcome.




Forbidden Territory

Paula Graves








This book is dedicated to my mother, for not laughing

when I told her I wanted to be a writer; to Jenn, for

putting up with my doubts, my fears and my

dangling participles; and to Kris, for believing

in this story when I didn’t.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Alabama native Paula Graves wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America.

Paula invites readers to visit her Web site, www.paulagraves.com.




CAST OF CHARACTERS


Lily Browning—The reluctant psychic’s visions of Abby put her in a killer’s crosshairs.

J. McBride—The jaded cop with a tragic past—he doesn’t buy Lily’s vision but can’t deny she’s in danger.

Debra Walters—The ex-wife of Senate candidate Adam Walters is the victim of a deadly carjacking gone wrong.

Abby Walters—Debra’s six-year-old daughter goes missing after her mother’s murder.

Adam Walters—Abby’s father is in a close race for the U.S. Senate—could his opponent be behind his daughter’s kidnapping?

Joe Britt—Adam’s campaign manager must keep his distracted candidate focused on the prize.

Gerald Blackledge—The incumbent senator is facing a tougher race than anticipated—how far will he go to win?

Paul Leonardi—Debra Walters’s former lover wasn’t happy about their breakup—could he be behind the murder-abduction?

Skeet and Gordy—Abby’s kidnappers are deadly, but why don’t they seem to know what to do with their little victim?

Cal Brody—The FBI agent thinks Lily knows too much not to be involved in Abby’s kidnapping.

Rose and Iris Browning—Lily’s sisters have special gifts of their own.

Casey—Why is this little girl showing up in Lily’s visions of Abby?




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen




Chapter One


The vision came without warning, a door bursting open in her mind.

Frightened blue eyes, red-rimmed from crying.

Freckled cheeks, smudged with tears and dirt.

Red hair, tangled and sweat-darkened.

A terrified cry. “Daddy, help me!”

Lily Browning pressed her fingers against her temples and squeezed her eyes closed. Explosions of light and pain raced through her head like arcs of tracer fire. Around her, a thick gray mist swirled. Moisture beaded on her brow, grew heavy and slid down her cheek.

She opened her eyes, afraid of what she would see.

It was just an empty schoolroom, the remains of the morning’s classes scattered about the space—backpacks draped by their straps over the backs of chairs, books lying askew. The kids were still at recess.

“Lily?” A woman’s voice broke the silence. Lily jumped.

Carmen Herrera, the assistant principal, stood at the entrance of the classroom, but it was the man behind her who commanded Lily’s attention. His dark hair was crisp and close-cut, emphasizing his rough-hewn features and hard hazel eyes. His gaze swept over Lily in a quick but thorough appraisal.

The door in her mind crept open again. She stiffened, forcing it shut, her head pounding from the strain. Pain danced behind her eyes, the familiar opening salvo of a migraine.

“Headache again?” Carmen asked, concerned.

Lily pushed herself upright. “It’s not too bad.” But already the room began to spin. Swaying, she gripped the edge of the desk.

The man in the charcoal suit pushed past Carmen to cup Lily’s elbow, holding her steady. “Are you all right?”

Lily’s arm tingled where he touched her. Raw, barely leashed power rolled off him in waves, almost as tangible as the scent of his aftershave. It swamped her, stole her breath.

He said her name, his fingers tightening around her elbow. Something else besides power flooded through her. Something dark and bitter and raw.

She met his gaze—and immediately regretted it.

“Help me, Daddy!” The cry echoed in her head. Fog blurred the edges of her sight.

Swallowing hard, she fought the relentless undertow and pulled her elbow from the man’s grasp, resisting the urge to rub away the lingering sensation of his touch. “I’m fine.”

“Lily gets migraines,” Carmen explained. “Not that often, but when they hit, they’re doozies.”

Lily heard a thread of anxiety woven in the woman’s usually upbeat, calm voice. A chill flowed through her, raising goose bumps on her arms. “Has something happened?”

Something passed between Carmen and the man beside her. “Lily, this is Lieutenant McBride with the police. Lieutenant, this is Lily Browning. She teaches third grade.” Carmen closed the classroom door behind her and lowered her voice. “One of our students is missing. Lieutenant McBride’s talking to all the teachers to find out whether they’ve seen her.”

Red-rimmed eyes.

Tearstained face.

Frightened cries.

Lily’s head spun.

Lieutenant McBride pulled a photo from his coat pocket and held it out to her. She shut her eyes, afraid to look.

“Ms. Browning?” He sounded concerned, even solicitous, but suspicion lurked behind the polite words.

Lily forced herself to look at the picture he held. A smiling face stared up at her from the photo framed by red curls scooped into a topknot and fastened with a green velvet ribbon.

Lily thought she was going to throw up.

“You haven’t seen her today, have you?” McBride asked. “Her name is Abby Walters. She’s a first-grader here.”

“I don’t have a lot of contact with first-graders.” Lily shook her head, feeling helpless and guilty. The sandwich she’d eaten at lunch threatened to come back up, and she didn’t want it to end up on the lieutenant’s scuffed Rockports.

“You’ve never seen her?” A dark expression passed across McBride’s face. Pain, maybe, or anger. It surged over Lily, rattling her spine and cracking open the door of her mind.

Unwanted sounds and images flooded inside. The lost girl, now smiling, cuddled in a man’s arms, listening to his warm voice tell the story of The Velveteen Rabbit. Red curls tucked under a bright blue knit cap, cheeks pink with—

Cold. So cold.

Scared.

Screaming.

Crying.

Grimy tears streamed down a face twisted with terror, hot and wet on her cold, cold cheeks. Panic built in Lily’s chest. She pushed against the vision, forcing it away.

“We have reason to believe that Abby Walters may have been taken from her mother this morning,” he said.

“Where’s her mother?”

“She’s dead.”

The words sent ice racing through Lily’s veins. She swallowed hard and lied. “I haven’t seen this little girl.”

McBride gave her an odd, considering look before he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. “If you think of anything that might help us find her, call me.”

She took the card from him, his palpable suspicion like a weight bending her spine.

Carmen had kept her distance while McBride talked to Lily, but once he turned back toward the door, she moved past him and took Lily’s hand. “Go home and sleep off this headache. I’ll send Linda from the office to cover for you.” She glanced at the detective, who watched them from the doorway. “I can’t believe something like this has happened to one of our kids. I’m working on a migraine myself.” She returned to McBride’s side to escort him from the room.

Lily thrust the business card into her skirt pocket and slumped against the edge of her desk. Sparks of colored light danced behind her eyes, promising more pain to come. She debated trying to stick out the rest of the afternoon, but her stomach rebelled. She barely made it to the bathroom before her lunch came up.

As soon as Linda arrived to cover her class, Lily headed for the exit, weaving her way through the groups of laughing children returning to their classrooms, until she reached her Buick, parked beneath one of the ancient oak trees that sheltered the schoolyard. She slid behind the wheel and closed the door, gratefully shutting out the shrieks and shouts from the playground.

In the quiet, doubts besieged her. She should have told the detective about her visions. She couldn’t make much sense of the things she’d seen, but Lieutenant McBride might. What if her silence cost that little girl her life?

Lily pulled the business card from her pocket and squinted at the small, narrow type made wavy by her throbbing head. The scent of his crisp aftershave lingered on the card. Lily closed her eyes, remembering his square jaw and lean, hard face. And those eyes—clear, intense, hard as flint.

She knew the type well. Give him the facts, give him evidence, but don’t give him any psychic crap.

Lieutenant McBride would never believe what she’d seen.



BY MIDAFTERNOON, when Andrew Walters called from a southbound jet to demand answers about his missing daughter, McBride realized he faced a worst-case scenario. Less than one percent of children abducted were taken by people outside of their own families. Most child abductions were custody matters, mothers or fathers unhappy with court arrangements taking matters into their own hands.

But there was no custody battle in the Walters case. From all accounts, Andrew Walters had no complaints about the custody arrangement with his ex-wife. Over the phone, at least, he’d seemed genuinely shocked to hear his ex-wife had been murdered.

When he learned Abby was missing, shock turned to panic.

“Did you check her school?” he asked McBride, his voice tight with alarm.

“Yes.” The memory of Lily Browning’s pale face and wild, honey-colored eyes filled McBride’s mind, piquing his curiosity—and suspicion—all over again.

“Is there any reason to think Abby might…” Andrew Walters couldn’t finish the question.

“It’s too early to think that way.”

“Are you sure Abby was with Debra?”

“As sure as we can be.” When they’d found Debra Walters dead on the side of Old Cumberland Road, a clear plastic backpack with Abby’s classwork folder and a couple of primary readers had been lying next to her. Furthermore, neighbors remembered seeing Abby in the car with Debra that morning when she’d left the house.

Her car, a blue Lexus, was missing.

They’d held out hope that Debra had delivered her daughter to school before the carjacking, but McBride’s trip to the school had turned up no sign of Abby.

McBride looked down at his desk blotter, where Abby’s photo lay, challenging him. He reached for the bottle of antacid tablets by his pencil holder and popped a couple in his mouth, grimacing at the chalky, fake-orange taste. “We’ve set up a task force to find your daughter. An Amber Alert has been issued. Her photo will be on every newscast in Alabama this evening. We’ve set up a phone monitoring system at the hotel where you usually stay when you’re in Borland, and a policeman will be within easy reach any time of the day or night. If you get a call from anyone about your daughter, we’ll be ready.”

“You don’t have a suspect yet?” Walters sounded appalled.

“Not yet. There’s an APB out on the car, and we’ve got technicians scouring the crime scene—”

“That could take days! Abby doesn’t have days.”

McBride passed his hand over his face, wishing he could assure Walters that his daughter would be found, safe and unharmed. But she’d been taken by carjackers who’d left her mother dead. McBride didn’t want to think why they’d taken her with them instead of killing her when they’d killed her mother.

In the burning pit of McBride’s gut, he knew he’d find Abby Walters dead. Today or tomorrow or months down the road, her little body would turn up in a Dumpster or an abandoned building or at the bottom of a ditch along the highway.

But he couldn’t say that to Andrew Walters.

Walters’s voice was tinny through the air phone. “Nobody’s called in with sightings?”

“Not yet.” A few calls had come in as soon as the Amber Alert went out. The usual loons. McBride had sent men to check on them, but, of course, nothing had panned out.

“Come on—when something like this happens, you get calls out your ass.” Anger and anxiety battled in Walters’s voice. “Don’t you dare dismiss them all as crackpots.”

“We’re following every lead.”

“I want my daughter found. Understood?”

“Understood.” McBride ignored the imperious tone in Walters’s voice. The man was a politician, used to making things happen just because he said so. And God knew, McBride couldn’t blame him for wanting his daughter brought home at any cost.

But he knew how these things went. He’d seen it up close and personal. The parent of a lost child was desperate and vulnerable. A nut job with a snappy sales pitch could convince a grieving parent of just about anything.

“We’re about to land,” Walters said. “I have to hang up.”

“One of my men, Theo Baker, will meet you at the airport and drive you to your hotel,” McBride said. “I’ll be by this evening unless something comes up in the case. Please, try not to worry until we know what it is we have to worry about.”

Andrew Walters’s bitter laugh was the last thing McBride heard before the man hung up.

McBride slumped in his chair, anger churning in his gut. The world was mostly a terrible place, full of monsters. Killers, rapists, pedophiles, users, abusers— McBride had seen them all, their evil masked by such ordinary faces.

A monster had taken Abby Walters, and the longer he kept her, the less hope they had of ever getting her back alive.

McBride picked up Abby’s photo, his expression softening at the sight of her gap-toothed grin. “Where are you, baby?”

She wasn’t really a pretty child, all knees, elbows and freckles, but in the picture, the sheer joy of life danced in her bright blue eyes. People would notice a kid like Abby Walters. Even in the photo, she had a way about her.

Her picture had certainly affected Lily Browning, though not how McBride had expected. When he’d shown Abby’s picture to others at the school, the grinning child immediately brought smiles to their faces. But Lily had looked ill from the start.

She was keeping secrets.

About Abby Walters? McBride couldn’t say for sure, but sixteen years as a cop had honed his suspicious nature to a fine edge. He knew she couldn’t have been in on the kidnapping; witness testimony had narrowed down Debra Walters’s time of death to sometime between seven-twenty and eight-thirty in the morning. According to Carmen Herrera, Lily Browning had been in a meeting at six-thirty and hadn’t left it until seven-forty, when students started trickling in. She’d been in class after that.

But he couldn’t forget her odd reaction to Abby’s photo.

On a hunch, McBride pulled up the DMV database on his computer and punched in Lily Browning’s name. While he waited for the response, he mentally replayed his meeting with her.

He’d noticed her eyes first. Large, more gold than brown, framed by long, dark lashes. Behind those eyes lay mysteries. Of that much, McBride was certain.

She was in her twenties—mid to late, he guessed. With clear, unblemished skin as pale as milk, maybe due to the headache. Or was she naturally that fair? In stark contrast, her hair was almost black, worn shoulder-length and loose, with a natural wave that danced when she moved.

She was beautiful in the way that wild things were beautiful. He got the impression of a woman apart, alone, always on the fringes. Never quite fitting in.

A loner with secrets. Never a good combination.

The file came up finally, and McBride took a look. Lily Browning, no middle initial given. Twenty-nine years old, brown hair, brown eyes—gold eyes, he amended mentally. An address on Okmulgee Road, not far from the school. McBride knew the area. Older bungalow-style homes, quiet neighborhood, modest property values. Which told him exactly nothing.

Lily Browning wasn’t a suspect. She was just a strange woman with honey-colored eyes whose skin had felt like warm velvet beneath his fingers.

Irritated, he checked the clock. Almost four. Walters’s plane would have touched down by now and Baker would be with him, calming his fears. Baker was good at that.

McBride wasn’t.

He was a bit of a loner with secrets himself.

As he started to close the computer file, his phone rang again. He stared at it for a moment, dread creeping up on him.

Abby Walters’s photo stared up at him from the desk.

He grabbed the receiver. “McBride,” he growled.

Silence.

He sensed someone on the other end. “Hello?” he said.

“Detective McBride?” A hesitant voice came over the line, resonating with apprehension. Lily Browning’s voice.

“Ms. Browning.”

He heard a soft intake of breath, but she didn’t speak.

“This is Lily Browning, right?” He knew he sounded impatient. He didn’t care.

“Yes.”

Subconsciously, he’d been waiting for her call. Tamping down growing apprehension, he schooled his voice, kept it low and soothing. “Do you know something about Abby?”

“Not exactly.” She sounded reluctant and afraid.

He tightened his grip on the phone. “Then why’d you call?”

“You asked if I’d seen Abby this morning. I said no.” A soft sigh whispered over the phone. “That wasn’t exactly true.”

McBride’s muscles bunched as a burst of adrenaline flushed through his system. “You saw her this morning at school?”

“No, not at the school.” Her voice faded.

“Then where? Away from school?” Had Ms. Herrera been wrong? Had Lily slipped away from the meeting, after all?

The silence on Lily Browning’s end of the line dragged on for several seconds. McBride stifled the urge to throw the phone across the room. “Ms. Browning, where did you see Abby Walters?”

He heard a deep, quivery breath. “In my mind,” she said.

McBride slumped in his chair, caught flat-footed by her answer. It wasn’t at all what he’d expected.

A witness, sure. A suspect—even better. But a psychic?

Bloody hell.




Chapter Two


Heavy silence greeted Lily’s answer.

“Are you there?” She clutched the phone, her stomach cramping.

“I’m here.” His tight voice rumbled over the phone. “And you should know we don’t pay psychics for information.”

“Pay?”

“That’s why you’re calling, isn’t it?” His words were clipped and diamond hard. “What’s your usual fee, a hundred an hour? Two hundred?”

“I don’t have a fee,” she responded, horrified.

“So you’re in it for the publicity.”

“No!” She slammed down the phone, pain blooming like a poisonous flower behind her eyes.

The couch cushion shifted beside her and a furry head bumped against her elbow. Lily dropped one hand to stroke the cat’s brown head. “Oh, Delilah, that was a mistake.”

The Siamese cat made a soft prrrupp sound and butted her head against Lily’s chin. Jezebel joined them on the sofa, poking her nose into Lily’s ribs. Groaning, she nudged the cats off her lap and staggered to her feet. Half-blinded by the migraine, she made her way down the hall to her bedroom.

The headaches had never been as bad back home in Willow Grove, with her sister Iris always around to brew up a cup of buckbean tea and work her healing magic. But Willow Grove was one hour and a million light-years away.

The phone rang. Lily started to let the answering machine get it when she saw Iris’s face float across the blackness of her mind. She fumbled for the phone. “Iris?”

Her sister’s warm voice trembled with laughter. “I’m minding my own business, drying some lavender, and suddenly I get an urge to call you. So, Spooky, what do you need?”

The warm affection in her voice brought tears to Lily’s eyes. “Buckbean tea and a little TLC.”

“Did you have a vision?” Iris’s voice held no laughter now.

“A bad one.” Lily told her sister about Abby Walters. “The detective on the case thinks I’m a lunatic.” She didn’t want to examine why that fact bothered her. She was used to being considered crazy. Why should McBride’s opinion matter?

“What can I do to help?” Iris asked.

“Does your magic work over the phone?”

Iris laughed. “It’s not magic, you know. It’s just—”

“A gift. I know.” That’s what their mother had always called it. Iris’s gift. Or Rose’s or Lily’s.

Lily called hers a curse. Seeing terrified little girls crying for their daddies. Broken bodies at the bottom of a ditch, rain swirling away the last vestiges of their life-blood. Her own father’s life snuffed out in a sawmill across town—

“Stop it, Lily.” Her sister’s voice was low and strangled. “It’s too much all at once.”

Lily tried to close off her memories, knowing that her sister’s empathic gift came with its own pain. “I’m sorry.”

Iris took a deep breath. “Do you want me to come there?”

“No, I’m feeling better.” Not a complete lie, Lily thought. Her headache had eased a little. Just a little. “Sorry I called you away from your lavender.”

Iris laughed. “Sometimes I listen to us talk and understand why people think the Browning sisters are crazy.”

Lily laughed through the pain. “I’ll visit soon, okay? Meanwhile, don’t you or Rose get yourselves run out of town.”

Iris’s wry laughter buzzed across the line. “Or burned at the stake.” She said goodbye and hung up.

Lily lay back against the pillow, her head pounding. Jezebel rubbed her face against Lily’s, whiskers tickling her nose. “Oh, Jezzy, today went so wrong.” She closed her eyes against the light trickling in through the narrow gap between her bedroom curtains, trying to empty her mind. Sleep would be the best cure for her headache. But sleep meant dreams.

And after a vision, Lily’s dreams were always nightmares.



BY FIVE O’CLOCK, the sun sat low in the western sky, casting a rosy glow over the small gray-and-white house across the street from McBride’s parked car. He peered through the car window, wishing he were anywhere but here.

When Lily Browning had hung up the phone, his first sensation had been relief. One more wacko off his back. Then he’d remembered Andrew Walters’s demand and his own grudging agreement. Call it following every lead, he thought with a grim smile. He exited the vehicle and headed across the street.

Lily Browning’s house was graveyard quiet as he walked up the stone pathway. A cool October night was falling, sending a chill up his spine as he peered through the narrow gap in the curtains hanging in the front window.

No movement. No sounds.

He pressed the doorbell and heard a muted buzz from inside.

What are you going to say to her—stay the hell away from Andrew Walters or I’ll throw you in jail?

Wouldn’t it be nice if he could?

He cocked his ear, listening for her approach. Nothing but silence. As he lifted his hand to the buzzer again, he heard the dead bolt turn. The door opened about six inches to reveal a shadowy interior and Lily Browning’s tawny eyes.

“Detective McBride.” She slurred the words a bit.

“May I come in? I have some questions.”

Her face turned to stone. “I have nothing to tell you.”

McBride nudged his way forward. “Humor me.”

She moved aside to let him in, late afternoon sun pouring through the open doorway, painting her with soft light. Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she skittered back into the darkened living room, leaving him to close the door.

Inside, murky shadows draped the cozy living room with darkness. When McBride’s eyes finally adjusted to the low light, he saw Lily standing a few feet in front of him, as if to block him from advancing any farther.

“I told you everything I know on the phone,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not quite.”

Her chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. Finally, she gestured toward the sofa against the wall. “Have a seat.”

McBride sat where she indicated. As his eyes adjusted further to the darkened interior, he saw that Lily Browning looked even paler than she had at school earlier that day. She’d scrubbed off what little makeup she’d worn, and pulled her dark hair into a thick ponytail. Despite the cool October afternoon, she wore a sleeveless white T-shirt and soft cotton shorts. She took the chair across from him, knees tucked against her chest, her eyes wary.

Her bare skin shimmered in the fading light. He stifled the urge to see if she felt as soft as she looked.

What the hell was wrong with him? He was long past his twenties, when every nice pair of breasts and long legs had brought his hormones to attention. And Lily Browning, of all people, should be the last woman in the world to make his mouth go dry and his heart speed up.

He forced himself to speak. “How long have you been a teacher at Westview Elementary?”

She answered in a hushed voice. “Six years.”

He wondered why she was speaking so softly. The skin on the back of his neck tingled. “Is someone else here?”

Suspicion darkened her eyes. “My accomplices, you mean?”

He answered with one arched eyebrow.

“Just Delilah and Jezebel,” she said after a pause.

A quiver tickled the back of his neck again. “What are they, ghosts? Spirits trapped between here and the afterlife?”

A smile flirted with her pale lips. “No, they’re my cats. Every witch needs a cat, right?”

“You’re Wiccan?”

A frown swallowed her smile. “It was a joke, Lieutenant. I’m pretty ordinary, actually. No séances, no tea leaves, no dancing around the maypole. I don’t even throw salt over my left shoulder when I spill it.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. The lines in her face deepened, and he realized her expression wasn’t a frown but a grimace of pain.

“Do you get headaches often?”

Her eyes swept down to her lap, then closed for a moment. “Why are you here? Am I a suspect?”

“You called me, Ms. Browning.” He relaxed on the couch, arms outstretched, and rested one ankle on his other knee. “You said you saw Abby Walters—how did you put it? In your mind?”

She clenched her hands, her knuckles turning white.

“Why call me?” he continued. “Do I look like I’d buy into the whole psychic thing?”

“No.” Her tortured eyes met his. “You don’t. But I don’t want to see her hurt anymore.”

He didn’t believe in visions. Not even a little. But Lily’s words made his heart drop. “Hurt?”

“She’s afraid. Crying.” Lily slumped deeper into the chair. “I don’t know if they’re physically hurting her, but she’s terrified. She wants her daddy.”

McBride steeled himself against the sincerity in her voice. “How do you know this?”

Her voice thickened with unshed tears. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I have a door in my mind that wants to open. I try to keep it closed because the things behind it always frighten me, but sometimes they’re just too strong. That’s what happened today. The door opened and there she was.”

Acid bubbled in McBride’s stomach, a painful reminder of too much coffee and too little lunch. “You actually saw her?”

Lily nodded slowly. “She was crying. Her face was dirty and she was afraid.”

“Can you see her now?”

Her quick, deep breath sounded like a gasp. “No.”

Tension buzzed down every nerve. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t work like that. Please…” She lurched from the chair and stumbled against the coffee table. A pair of cut-glass candlesticks rattled together and toppled as she grabbed the table to steady herself. Out of nowhere, two cats scattered in opposite directions, pale streaks in the darkness.

McBride’s heart jumped to hyperspeed as he hurried to Lily’s side. He caught her elbow. “Are you okay?”

Her head rose slowly. “Go away.”

“You can’t even stand up by yourself. Are you drunk?”

“I don’t drink.” Her head lolled forward, her forehead brushing against his shoulder.

“Drugs?”

He could barely hear her faint reply. “No.”

He wrapped one arm around her waist to hold her up. Her slim body melted against his, robbing him of thought for a long, pulsing moment. She was as soft as she looked, and furnace-hot, except for the icy fingers clutching his arm. Her head fell back and she gazed at him, her eyes molten.

Desire coursed through him, sharp and unwelcome.

Ruthlessly suppressing his body’s demands, he helped her to the sofa, trying to ignore the warm velvet of her skin beneath his fingers. “What did you take for the headache?”

“I ran out of my prescription.” She lay back and covered her eyes with her forearm, as if even the waning afternoon light filtering through the curtains added to her pain.

“I can call it in for you. Do you have any refills left?”

“Just leave me alone.”

He should go, and to hell with her. It was probably another con. But she wasn’t faking the pain lines etched across her delicate face. “I can call a doctor for you—”

“The prescription bottle’s in the drawer by the fridge.” Tears slid out from beneath her forearm.

Her weak capitulation gave McBride an uneasy feeling as he headed to the kitchen to find the prescription.

He was back in fifteen minutes, using the keys Lily had given him to let himself back into the house. It was a few minutes after six and night had fallen, cool and blue. He fumbled along the wall for a light switch, but couldn’t find one.

Pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dark, he saw the pale sheen of a lampshade a few feet away, outlined in the glow coming through the windows from the streetlight outside. He felt his way to the lamp and turned it on. The muddy yellow circle of light from the low-watt bulb barely penetrated the darkness in the corner where it stood. But it was better than the unrelenting darkness.

Lily lay on the sofa, her arm still over her eyes.

“Ms. Browning?”

She didn’t answer.

McBride crossed to the sofa and crouched beside her, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest. She was asleep, without the benefit of the pills he’d just spent more than fifty dollars buying for her.

No matter. She’d probably need them when she woke up.

She shifted in her sleep but didn’t awaken. Waiting for her to settle back down, McBride gave in to the male hunger gnawing at his belly and let his gaze wander over her body, taking in the tempting curves and planes. At some point in her sleep, the hem of her T-shirt had slid up, baring a thin patch of smooth, flat belly and the indentation of her navel.

Heat sluiced through him, unexpected and unwanted. Dragging his gaze from that narrow strip of flesh, he pushed himself to his feet and stepped away from her.

He distracted himself with a quick, cop’s-eye survey of the living room. Clean. Spare. Simple furniture in neutral tones with just enough color to ward off boredom. He moved closer to the wall to study a framed water-color, a delicate rendering of a tulip in colors that would be subtle even with full illumination. A neat signature appeared in black appeared in the bottom right corner: Iris Browning. Mother or sister?

Movement to one side caught his eye. A Siamese cat crouched, frozen, near a small iron plant stand, staring at him from between the leaves of a philodendron. McBride barely made out glowing turquoise eyes in a chocolate face.

A shudder ran through him.

Suddenly, a scream split the quiet, snapping the tension in his spine like a band. Off balance, he stumbled backward into the lamp, knocking it over. The bulb shattered, plunging the room into darkness.

With his heart slamming against his rib cage, he turned to the sofa, peering through the blackness. In the glimmer of light flowing through the window, Lily’s face was a pale oval, twisted into a horror mask by her wide-stretched mouth, her scream rising and swelling like a tidal wave, chilling him to the bone.



LILY KNEW IT WAS NIGHT, black as pitch and deathly quiet except for whimpering sobs. She recognized Abby’s soft cries.

“Abby?” she whispered.

The child didn’t hear her, but stayed where she was, somewhere in the deep blackness, crying in soft little bleats.

Lily knew she was dreaming, that by waking she could spare herself whatever lay beyond the door separating Abby Walters from her abductors. But she couldn’t abandon the little girl.

She could almost hear Abby’s thoughts, the panicked jumble of memories and fears—Mommy lying on the roadside, blood streaming down her pale hair, tinting the golden strands red.

Mommy, wake up! Am I going to die? Daddy, help me!

Lily heard the rattle of a doorknob and the scraping sound of a dead bolt sliding open. Bright light sliced through the dark room, blinding them both.

Abby screamed.

A whistle shrieked.

Second shift at the lumber mill. Daddy would be home soon.

As she did every afternoon, Lily shut her eyes and watched her father wipe his brow with his worn white handkerchief, then reach for the switch to shut off the large circular saw.

Bam!

A log slipped loose from the hooks and slammed into Daddy’s back, pitching him into the spinning steel blade. A mist of red spun off the blade and spattered the sawdust on the table.

Daddy screamed.

Lily awoke in an explosive rush. Smothering blackness surrounded her, her father’s scream soaring, deafening her.

Then she realized the scream was her own.

Gentle hands emerged from the blackness, cradling her face. The couch shifted beneath her and a familiar scent surrounded her. Fingers threaded through her hair, drawing her against a solid wall of strength and warmth.

She felt a hammering pulse against her breasts, beating in rhythm with her own racing heart.

A low voice rumbled in her ear. “It’s okay.”

Her heart stuttered, then lurched back into a gallop as she realized the strong arms wrapped around her belonged to Detective McBride.




Chapter Three


Feeling Lily’s warm body stiffen, McBride let her go. “I think you were having a nightmare.” He stood and stepped back from the couch. “Do you remember it?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“Think you can bear a little light?” McBride turned on the nearest of the two torchiere lamps flanking the couch. Golden light chased shadows to the other side of the room. “Okay?”

“Yes.” She met his gaze, her eyes huge and haunted.

He frowned. “You sure?”

“I’m fine. No need to babysit anymore.”

Though he had more questions to ask, he decided to let her stew awhile, wondering when he’d come back. “I put your pills on the kitchen counter. It cost fifty-six dollars, but since I broke your light, we’ll call it even.” He gestured at the lamp lying at a crooked angle, propped up by an armchair. “Sorry.”

Her glimmering eyes met his. A pull as powerful as the ocean tide engulfed him, catching him off balance. He forced himself to turn away, move toward the front door.

Sofa springs creaked behind him. He felt her approach, the hair on the back of his neck tingling. When he turned again, he found her closer than expected. Close enough to touch. He clenched his fists. “Stay away from this case, Ms. Browning. There’s nothing in it for you.”

“Goodbye, Lieutenant.” She opened the front door. Her skin glowed like porcelain in the blue moonlight.

Quelling the urge to touch her, he slipped out the door and hurried to his car. He slid behind the steering wheel and took several deep breaths. When he felt more in control, he dared a quick look at the dark facade of Lily Browning’s house.

His lips tightened to a grim line. What the hell was wrong with him? Of all people, he knew better than to let a woman like Lily Browning get under his skin.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way.



SUNLIGHT KNIFED across Lily’s bed, waking her. She squinted at the clock on her bedside table. Nine. All that sleep and she still felt as if she’d been run over by a truck.

She pulled her T-shirt over her head, breathing in a faint, tangy scent clinging to the cotton. It took her back to the darkness, to the feel of McBride’s strong arms around her. She’d felt safe. Comforted by his solid body against hers, the soothing timbre of his voice in her ear, telling her everything was okay. God, she’d wanted to believe him.

Jezebel jumped from the dresser to the bed and rubbed her furry face against Lily’s chin. Lily stroked the Siamese cat’s lean body, from silvery mask to long gray tail. “Hungry, Jez?”

After feeding the mewling cats, she retrieved the Saturday morning paper from the front porch. Settling at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, she opened the newspaper.

Abby Walters’s freckled face stared back at her. Former Wife of U.S. Senate Candidate Found Dead, Daughter Missing, the headline read in bold, black letters.

Abby Walters, age six, had gone missing after her mother was killed in a carjacking Friday morning. The article speculated the attack might be politically motivated. Abby’s father and Debra’s ex-husband, Andrew Walters, was a state senator running for the U.S. Senate.

The door in her mind opened a crack. Resolutely, she slammed it shut.



“IT WAS A ONE-TIME THING. She threatened to get a restraining order and I quit.” The slim, nervous man sitting across the interview table from McBride pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his long nose with a shaky finger. “My God, y’all don’t think I had anything to do with it….”

McBride tapped his pencil on his notepad and let Paul Leonardi stew a moment. The man’s dark eyes shifted back and forth as he waited for McBride to speak.

“I was out of town Friday. I left home at five in the morning. You can ask my neighbor—he saw me leave.”

McBride pretended to jot a note, but he already knew all about Leonardi’s trip to Lake Guntersville for a weekend of fishing and eagle watching. It had taken the task force most of Sunday to track him down after Andrew Walters had fingered Leonardi as the man most likely to leave his ex-wife dead by the side of the road.

“I loved Debra. I’d never hurt her or Abby.”

“Lots of men kill the women they love. That’s why it’s called a crime of passion.” McBride felt a glimmer of satisfaction when Leonardi’s face went pale at his words. “I did check your alibi. The cabin manager said you didn’t show up until noon. That’s seven hours to make a two-hour drive to Guntersville. What did you do with the other five hours?”

“God, I don’t know! I took the scenic route part of the time. I stopped for gas somewhere around Birmingham, I think. I stopped at an antique store in Blount County and picked up an old butter churn to add to Mom’s collection for her birthday coming up. I went by the home store outlet in Boaz to pick up a pedestal sink for the guest bathroom I’m renovating at home.” He raked his fingers through his thinning hair. “Damn, I knew I should have waited and done all that on the way back home, but I figured I’d be tired and just blow it off.”

McBride wrote down the stops he mentioned, asking for more details. Leonardi couldn’t remember the gas station in Birmingham, but he supplied the name of the antique store and the home center outlet. McBride would put a couple of the task force officers on the job of tracking down the man’s movements on Friday morning.

“Back to Mrs. Walters for a moment—I understand you showed up at Westview Elementary one afternoon about a month ago, when she was picking up Abby.” McBride watched Leonardi carefully as he spoke. The dark-haired man’s eyes widened, dilating with alarm. Good. “That’s what convinced her to threaten you with a restraining order, wasn’t it?”

Leonardi looked down at his hands. “I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted her to tell me why she’d decided to end it.”

“She said you were a transition, didn’t she? Just a post-divorce ego stroke.”

Leonardi blanched. “It was more than that to me.”

“But not her. And you couldn’t take no for an answer?”

“I didn’t think she’d really given us a chance. She has these friends telling her she should go out, have fun, not tie herself down. �Don’t just settle for the first guy who comes along, Debbie. Have some fun, Debbie.’”

“How do you know what her friends said, Mr. Leonardi?” McBride leaned forward. “Did you tap her phones? Did you put a bug in her house? What?”

He pressed his lips tightly together. “I want a lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest. Why would you need a lawyer?”

Leonardi’s baleful gaze was his only answer.

“When you showed up at the school—how’d you know what time Debra would be picking up Abby? Had you followed her before?”

Leonardi didn’t answer.

“Maybe you know somebody who works there,” McBride suggested, tapping the folder on the interview table. He flipped it open, exposing an enlarged photocopy of Lily Browning’s driver’s license photo from the DMV database.

Leonardi’s gaze shifted down to the table as McBride intended. His brow furrowed slightly as his gaze skimmed over the photo, but beyond that, he had no reaction.

Not what McBride had been expecting, but he wasn’t ready to discount the idea that Lily Browning had a part in Abby Walters’s disappearance. “Know what I think, Mr. Leonardi? I think you have a friend who works at the school. She told you when the first grade would be letting out in the afternoon so you’d know exactly when to show up. Did she know about your plans for Friday, too?”

Leonardi’s eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t kill Debbie. Don’t you get it? I lost her, too, just like her friends and her family and her jerk of an ex-husband did. Why aren’t you talking to him? Don’t you always look at the husband first?”

McBride had already talked to Walters Friday evening, going over his alibi in detail. Over the weekend he’d been able to validate all the times and places Walters had supplied. Of course, it was possible Walters had hired someone to kill his ex-wife, but the autopsy report McBride had found sitting on his desk first thing that morning suggested that Debra Walters’s skull fracture might have been accidental, the result of a struggle with the carjackers.

They couldn’t even be sure it was anything but a random carjacking. Debra Walters’s Lexus hadn’t shown up anywhere yet.

Neither had Abby Walters.

McBride’s captain had left it up to him to put together a task force for the case. After contacting the FBI and the local sheriff’s department to supply their own officers for the team, McBride had picked six of the best cops on the Borland force to assist him.

Sergeant Theo Baker had the job of holding Andrew Walters’s hand and keeping him from calling every few minutes for an update. McBride understood the man’s anxiety all too well, but he didn’t need that distraction.

Some of the task force members were canvassing the area where Debra Walters had died, hoping for witnesses who might have seen something on Friday morning. Some were fielding calls from tipsters, most of them crackpots and attention seekers.

Others were monitoring Friday morning footage from the handful of traffic cams scattered throughout the city of Borland, hoping they could track Debra’s movements from the time she’d left her home to the time she’d stopped on the side of the road to meet her death. McBride didn’t hold out much hope for that angle; where she’d died was a lightly traveled back road without any camera surveillance.

“How long do you plan to hold me?” Apparently having a cry put the steel back in Paul Leonardi’s spine; he met McBride’s questioning look with a steady gaze. “I know my rights. You can only hold me for so long before you either have to charge me or let me go. Unless you think I’m a terrorist or something.”

McBride was tempted to toss him in the cages just to make a point, but he quelled the urge. “I’m going to be checking out your alibi, Mr. Leonardi. If everything pans out, no problem. But you shouldn’t leave town anytime soon.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Leonardi said. “At least, not until after Debbie’s funeral. Do you know when it’ll be?”

McBride’s eyes narrowed as he stood and motioned for Leonardi to follow him out of the interview room. Either the guy was really innocent or he had cojones of titanium. “Check with her ex-husband. He’s handling the arrangements.”

Back at his desk a few minutes later, McBride grabbed the bottle of antacids on his desk and downed a couple to ease the fire in his gut.

His captain, Alex Vann, chose that moment to pop his head into the office. He eyed the bottle as he sat down across the desk. “You eat too many of those things.”

Ignoring the remark, McBride gave him an update on his interview with Leonardi. “I don’t know if he’s good for it or not. He has all kinds of motive, but he just doesn’t feel right for this thing.”

“And the nutso schoolteacher angle?”

McBride arched his eyebrow at the description of Lily Browning. “He didn’t really react at the sight of her photo.” Nothing beyond the furrowed brow, which could simply mean he was wondering why McBride was flashing Lily Browning’s picture.

“Why don’t you take a break, McBride? Go get some lunch.”

“I’ll order something in.”

“Not good enough.” Vann’s jowly face creased with concern.

McBride didn’t pretend not to notice. He put down the papers and looked up at his captain. “I’m fine.”

“Maybe you should work another case. Take your pick.”

“I want this one.”

Vann’s gaze darkened, but he didn’t comment as he walked out of the office.

McBride didn’t expect the captain or anyone else to understand. Working the Walters case was like rubbing salt into an open wound, but McBride couldn’t let it go. He had to follow it to the bitter end. Find the child. Capture the kidnappers.

See justice done this time.



THE DOOR IN LILY’S MIND flew open without warning, catching her in the middle of grading papers in her classroom while her students played outside at recess. Her pencil dropped from her shaking fingers, rolling to the floor and disappearing in the silvery fog that washed over her in the span of a heartbeat.

Instinct urged her to fight off the battering ram of images, but at the first glimpse of Abby Walters’s tearstained face, her resistance fled. She gave in to the vision’s relentless undertow and let it sweep her into the haze.

The mists parted to reveal Abby Walters on the other side, knees tucked to her chin, blue eyes wide and unblinking.

“Abby,” Lily breathed.

The misty void deepened. Abby huddled in the looming darkness, covered with something musty-smelling. A blanket? She was trembling. Her teeth chattered.

Lily shivered, goose bumps rising on her arms.

Cold.

She tried to touch the little girl. Her hand felt as if it moved through cold molasses. “Abby, where are you?”

Lily smelled the musty blanket they huddled beneath. She felt vibrations under her, the carpet-covered hump of a drive shaft hard against her left hip. They were in a car.

“They’re moving you, aren’t they?” Lily felt the tremble beneath her fingers and realized she was finally touching the girl. “Abby, can you feel me here?”

The little girl went still. “Mama?”

Lily felt a surge of excitement. “No, Abby, I’m a friend.”

“Help me!” she cried.

“Shut up!” A harsh male voice boomed in front of them.

Lily tried to get her bearings. She and Abby shared the floorboard behind the front passenger seat. The voice had come from there, so someone else was driving. There were at least two kidnappers. Did McBride know that?

Lily put her arms around Abby and concentrated on planting the sensation of touch in the child’s mind—skin to skin, warm and soft. Suddenly, the little girl jerked out of her grasp, all contact between them disintegrating into gray mist.

As Lily tumbled into the void, she saw a hand smack Abby’s face. The girl whimpered in terror. Lily cried out as the door in her mind slammed shut, cutting her off.

She came back to herself with a jerk. It took a second to reorient herself. She was in her empty classroom. A glance at her watch confirmed that only a few minutes had passed.

A rap on the closed classroom door jangled her nerves. “Lily?” It was Janet, the teacher whose class was next door. The door cracked open and she poked her head in. “Everything okay? I thought I heard a shout.”

“Broke a nail,” Lily fibbed, forcing a sheepish expression, though her whole body seemed to be vibrating with tension. “Sorry—it was my longest one.”

Janet laughed politely, although wariness darkened her eyes. “Just checking.” She closed the door again.

Lily buried her face in her hands, unnerved by the close call. She wasn’t used to her visions attacking without warning. What if one hit her while class was in session?

She waited for the tightening bands of a migraine, but they didn’t come. She should be in agony after such a powerful vision. Why not this time? Because she hadn’t had time to fight it off? Was the answer really that simple?

She replayed the vision in her mind, trying to pick up more clues. She’d made contact. Beyond everything else she’d learned, that fact stood out. Never before had she made actual contact with someone in a vision.

But Abby had heard her. Maybe even felt Lily’s arms around her. Though she’d been frightened this time, maybe it was possible to make Abby understand Lily wanted to help her. But that meant letting the visions come, whatever they might bring.

Panic bubbled in her gut, tempting her to retreat again, to lock the door in her mind and hide the key forever. Visions were bad things. She’d learned that lesson long ago. She wasn’t like Rose, with her happy gift of predicting love matches, which she’d channeled into a successful job as a matchmaker and wedding planner. Nor like Iris, whose gift of empathy helped her ease people’s pain and despair.

Lily’s gift was darkness, terror, blood and death. She didn’t want to explore her visions. She wanted to end them.

But the memory of Abby haunted her. Maybe she could make a difference in this case. If time didn’t run out.

She just had to make someone believe her.



AS MCBRIDE HAD SUSPECTED, Paul Leonardi had caused at least one incident at Westview Elementary, near the beginning of the school year. Unfortunately, if Lily Browning had any connection to Leonardi, neither the principal nor vice principal knew anything about it.

“I doubt it,” Carmen Herrera told McBride in her office a little before noon. “Lily’s something of a homebody—she doesn’t socialize that much, even with other teachers. I doubt she’d have any reason to know Mr. Leonardi.”

A loner with secrets, he thought, remembering his earlier assessment of her. Apparently he’d been spot on. “And there was only the one incident?” he asked.

“Yes, just the one. It wasn’t really that big a deal—he didn’t resist when security asked him to leave. I didn’t get the feeling he was really dangerous. Just heartbroken.” Carmen flashed a rueful smile. “We’ve all been there once or twice, haven’t we?”

He thanked her for her time and headed for the exit, slowing as he reached the half-open door to Lily Browning’s classroom. Today, it was full of children, who sat with rapt attention as they listened to Lily reading.

He wasn’t familiar with the book she’d chosen, but as she told the rollicking tale of a girl and her pet cat braving a violent thunderstorm to reach the girl’s injured father, he found himself seduced by her musical voice.

He paused outside the doorway to get a better look at her. She was perched on the edge of her desk, legs dangling. Today she wore her hair up in a coil, with wavy tendrils curling around her cheeks and neck.

It was soft, he remembered. Sweet-smelling, like green apples. He could still recall how she felt in his arms, trembling from her nightmare.

“That’s it for today, ladies and gentlemen,” Lily announced as she reached a shocking cliffhanger at the end of the chapter. She closed the book, came around the desk and slid it into her top drawer. Scattered groans erupted.

“Aw, Ms. Browning!”

“Can’t we read one more chapter?”

“If we finish the book today, what will we have to read tomorrow?” Laughter tinging her voice, she rose from her desk and started passing out sheets of paper. “Besides, Mrs. Marconi is waiting for you in the library. Let’s go, single file.”

McBride’s lips curved. Years passed, things changed, but teachers still lined their students up single file. He backed away, hoping to make a quick exit without being caught eavesdropping, but he hadn’t made it down the hall more than a couple of steps when Lily’s voice called out to him.

“Lieutenant McBride?”

Busted.




Chapter Four


Anxiety rippled through Lily’s belly. Why was Lieutenant McBride here? Had something happened? “Is there news?”

The single file line of students flowing out the door behind her began to devolve into chaos. Tamping down her fear, she quickly brought them back into order, glancing over her shoulder to make sure McBride hadn’t left while she was distracted. “Please wait here—I’ll be back in just a minute.”

She headed up the hallway with her brood, quelling small mutinies with a firm word or a quick touch of her hand on a troublemaker’s shoulder. Once they were out the door in the custody of the librarian, she hurried back to her classroom, afraid McBride would be gone. But she found him sitting on the edge of her desk, his expression unreadable.

“Is there news about Abby?” she asked.

“No. I was just following another lead.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Here?”

“Ever met a man named Paul Leonardi?” His gaze focused like a laser on her face.

She frowned, searching her memory. “Not that I remember.”

“He had to be escorted from the school grounds a couple of months ago, near the start of the school year.”

“Oh, that guy.” It had caused a big stink, generating a dozen new security policies. “Yeah, I heard about it, but I didn’t see it happen.”

He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “You never saw this guy?”

She glanced at the paper. It looked like a driver’s license photo. The man in the picture was nice-looking in an ordinary sort of way. She shook her head. “Do you think he’s one of the kidnappers?”

“One of them? You think there’s more than one?” McBride’s eyes changed color, from smoky brown to mossy green. “Why do you think there’s more than one kidnapper?”

She licked her lips. “I had another vision. Abby in a car, huddled under some sort of blanket. One of the kidnappers hit her.” McBride’s hard gaze made Lily want to crawl into a hole, but she pushed ahead. “Whoever struck Abby was in the passenger seat, so someone else had to be driving.”

He rose from the edge of her desk. “If you remember anything about Mr. Leonardi, let me know.”

She caught his arm. “I can help you if you’d let me.”

He looked down at her hand, contempt in his eyes. “I’m up to my eyeballs in help, Ms. Browning. Every crackpot in the state seems to know what happened to Abby Walters.”

She dropped her hand quickly. “Including me?”

“Some of my people are handling the crackpot calls. I’ll tell them to expect yours.” He headed out to the hall.

Torn between irritation and humiliation, Lily watched him reach the exit and step outside. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that he didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

She’d have to deal with her visions of Abby her own way.



LILY HATED FUNERAL HOMES.

The newspaper had listed the time and place for the pre-funeral viewing. Her stomach churned at the thought of crashing the wake, but if she was going to find Abby, she needed to start with the people closest to her. Her father. Family and friends. Proximity to people who knew the subjects had always made her visions stronger in the past. It was one reason Lily had become something of a recluse in her personal life. Avoiding people was self-defense.

But this time, she needed the visions to come.

She spotted Carmen Herrera getting out of her car. Lily stepped out of her own car and met the assistant principal halfway to the door. “I was afraid I’d missed you.”

Carmen smiled sadly, putting her hand on Lily’s arm. “Thanks for volunteering to come with me. I hate wakes.”

“Me, too.” She followed Carmen up the steps to the funeral home entrance, distracted by a spattering of camera flashes.

“The press.” Carmen grimaced. “Ghouls.”

More flashes went off as they entered. The foyer’s faux marble floors and gilt furnishings gave the room a cold, austere feeling. Funereal, Lily thought with a bubble of dark humor. She tamped down a nervous giggle.

The small viewing chapel was packed with a combination of mourners and a few people Lily suspected were reporters who’d hidden their agendas along with their notepads to get inside.

Not that Lily could quibble about hidden agendas.

She signed the guest book and went with Carmen to the front, forcing herself to look at the body in the coffin.

Had Debra Walters been as lovely in life as the powdered, waxed and beautifully coiffed body in the casket? Seeing her now, Lily realized she did look a bit familiar. Maybe Mrs. Walters had been at a parent-teacher event earlier in the year. Or maybe it was just the resemblance between mother and daughter that struck a chord.

“There’s Mr. Walters.” Carmen moved toward a well-dressed man surrounded by a handful of fellow mourners. His newspaper photo didn’t do justice to his lean good looks, Lily thought.

She should join Carmen, take advantage of the opening to meet Abby’s father and see if he’d be receptive to her unusual method of finding his daughter. But a combination of guilt and fear held her back. There was something unseemly about using these particular circumstances to approach him with her offer of help.

“They did a good job, didn’t they?” a man’s voice asked.

Lily jerked her attention toward the questioner, a familiar-looking man of medium height with dark hair and mournful brown eyes. He met her gaze briefly before looking back at the body.

“But they didn’t capture who she really was.” Sadness tinged his voice. “She was the most alive person I ever knew.”

This was the man in the picture McBride had showed her, Lily realized. The one who’d come to the school looking for Debra. The hair on her arms prickled.

“Paul Leonardi. Debra and I dated a few months ago.” He held out his hand. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

“No.” She made herself shake his hand. It was damp and hot, his handshake limp. She quelled the urge to wipe her palm on her skirt. “I’m Lily. I teach at Abby’s school.”

His expression darkened. “Horrible about the little girl.”

Interesting, she thought. He’d said “the little girl” as if Abby were an afterthought.

Paul’s eyes shifted away from her, his brow creasing. “Great. The cops are here.”

Lily followed his gaze and met the narrowed eyes of Lieutenant McBride. She looked away quickly, her heart clenching. Of course he was here. She should have anticipated it. He’d be hoping for the killer to show up.

Paul gritted his teeth. “Can’t I have one night to mourn her without the Gestapo breathing down my neck?”

“He has a job to do,” Lily responded, surprised to be defending McBride. “Don’t you want him to catch Debra’s killer?”

“Of course.” Paul directed his glare her way.

Unless you’re the killer, she thought, her heart leaping into her throat. Obviously, he’d had feelings for Debra, and from the way he’d phrased things earlier Lily gathered the relationship had ended, probably before he was ready.

Not a bad motive for murder.

To her relief, Carmen Herrera approached, Andrew Walters a step behind her. She put her hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Lily, this is Mr. Walters, Abby’s father. Mr. Walters, Lily Browning.”

To Lily’s left, Paul Leonardi stepped away before she was forced to make an introduction. He blended back into the rest of the crowd.

“It was kind of you and Mrs. Herrera to come. Abby’s teacher was here earlier to pay her respects, but it means a lot that you both came as well.” Andrew Walters took Lily’s hand, his expression eager. “Do you know my daughter well, Ms. Browning?”

Lily glanced at Carmen before she answered Walters’s question. “I don’t know her, really, but from all accounts she’s a delightful child.”

“She is.” Andrew Walters’s gaze softened.

Carmen put her hand on Lily’s shoulder. “I’ll be back in a sec. I see someone I should say hello to.” She drifted away, leaving Lily alone with Andrew Walters.

“I hope you find Abby soon,” she told him.

His expression hardened with determination. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.”

She almost told him what she knew then and there. But the sight of McBride bearing down on them held her in check.

“Mr. Walters?” McBride’s voice rose over the soft murmurs of conversation surrounding them. He stepped forward, taking Andrew Walters by the elbow and drawing him away. “I need to speak to you.”

Carmen crossed to Lily’s side. “Ready to go?”

“Yes.”

“Is that Lieutenant McBride talking to Mr. Walters?” Carmen asked as they headed for the exit.

“Maybe,” Lily replied, keeping to herself the fact that Lieutenant McBride’s rough-hewn features and hard hazel eyes were indelibly imprinted in her memory.



“STILL NOTHING FROM the task force?” His voice laced with desperation, Andrew Walters shifted from one foot to the other.

McBride forced himself to look away from Lily Browning’s retreating figure. “We’re still following leads.”

“Is Ms. Browning one of those leads?” Walters asked. When McBride remained silent, he added, “You seemed eager to get me away from her just now.”

McBride took a deep breath through his nose. He should have known a politician would be perceptive. And since Lily Browning proved by coming to this wake that she wasn’t going to back off, it was a good idea to inoculate Walters with the truth before she made her next attempt to contact him. “I wanted you away from her because Ms. Browning believes she’s having visions of Abby.”

Walters cocked his head to one side. “Visions?”

“Obviously she’s a crank.”

“But what if—”

The hopeful gleam in Walters’s eyes made McBride cringe. “Don’t do this, Mr. Walters. You want to believe she can help you. I get that. I do. You need somebody to tell you Abby’s okay and she’s coming back to you any day now. Ms. Browning will tell you she can lead you to her.” Acid spewed into McBride’s stomach. “But she can’t. She doesn’t know anything.”

“And you do?” Walters’s cold voice seemed to grate on McBride’s spine. “You think Abby’s dead, don’t you?”

McBride couldn’t deny it, so he said nothing.

“I don’t believe that, Lieutenant.” Walters lifted his chin. “And if Lily Browning thinks she can help me find my daughter, I want to hear what she has to say.”

“There have to be better leads to follow. What about a political angle? Is that possible?”

Walters’s look of resolve faltered. “Maybe. I have a very powerful opponent with powerful backers. I don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“We’re looking at Blackledge, I assure you.” The savvy old senator was barely leading Walters in the latest polls. Probably because of his divorced status, Walters had made his relationship with his daughter the focal point of his campaign ads, stressing family values in an attempt to assure the conservative local voters he was a solid citizen they could trust in Washington.

Maybe Blackledge or one of his people had figured taking the daughter would ensure Walters dropped out of the race. After all, the doting father could hardly keep up the campaign while his kid was missing. A thin motive, but not out of the realm of possibility, especially where politics were involved.

Of course, the same could be said of Andrew Walters.

However, Walters had an alibi. And McBride couldn’t see a motive for killing his ex-wife and getting rid of his daughter. Everyone McBride had talked to agreed that Walters and his ex had remained friends after the divorce. Walters never missed a child support payment, supplying more than the court-agreed amount.

He might have means, but he lacked motive and opportunity. And Walters couldn’t possibly be faking the panic underlying every word he spoke.

“Mr. Walters, I know what you’re feeling—”

The state senator narrowed his eyes. “I doubt it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other people to talk to.”

Torn between sympathy and anger, McBride watched Walters leave. He hadn’t been feeding him a line. He knew exactly what the man was going through.

Every excruciating moment of it.

McBride gravitated to the open casket and gazed down at Debra Walters. She was lovely in death, her pretty features composed and calm, as if she were merely asleep. Thick makeup designed to make the dead look better than the living covered the bruise on her temple.

McBride’s stomach roiled. Laura’s casket had been closed.

“How can you be working on a case like this?” Theo Baker joined McBride at the casket, his dark eyes full of concern.

McBride’s stomach burned. “Abby’s father has to know what happened to her.” Even if she was dead. It was not knowing that killed you.

An inch at a time.



DEBRA WALTERS’S FUNERAL was a brief, solemn affair, held at graveside. A smattering of people sat in metal folding chairs under a white tent that shielded the casket from the bright October sunlight. Several more filled out the circle of mourners around the site, including dozens of cameramen from local stations and national networks. Another clump of people gathered around a tall, silver-haired man Lily recognized as Senator Gerald Blackledge.

Strange, his being here. Or maybe not—the senator’s opponent had just lost his ex-wife to foul play. Maybe Blackledge thought if he didn’t appear for the funeral, he’d look as if he had something to hide.

And a public show of compassion couldn’t hurt, she supposed.

Andrew Walters gave a brief, eloquent eulogy, captured for posterity by the news cameras. Ever the politician, he managed to come across both sad and commanding, an achievement Lily couldn’t help but admire, though she found his self-control almost as discomfiting as Gerald Blackledge’s decision to attend the funeral and turn it into a media circus.

But maybe politicians had no choice but to be “on” all the time, with so many cameras around, waiting for them to stumble.

A cadre of reporters hovered about, talking into microphones in hushed tones that might have been unobtrusive if there weren’t a dozen other newspeople doing the same thing at the same time. Across from Lily, on the other side of the circle of mourners, stood Lieutenant McBride, his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses.

But she felt the full weight of his disapproval.

Too bad. She’d given him a chance to help Abby. Now she was handling things her own way.

She didn’t have to approach Andrew Walters after the service; he sought her out almost as soon as the preacher finished his prayer and the casket was lowered into the ground.

“I spoke to Lieutenant McBride this morning.” He kept his voice low, taking her elbow and guiding her away from the crowd. “He says you claim you had a vision of Abby. Is that true?”

Unprepared for his straightforward question, she stumbled, grabbing Andrew’s arm to steady herself. A murmur went up among the reporters and they shifted toward them. Lily quickly let go of Andrew’s arm. “Yes, it’s true, but we can’t talk about it here.”

“Come by my hotel room tomorrow evening. We’ll discuss it then,” Andrew murmured, before carefully stepping away.

Turning, Lily came up against a wall of black-clad men with earpieces. Bodyguards, she realized as the men parted like the Red Sea and Senator Gerald Blackledge strode through the gap, hand outstretched.

“Andrew, I’m so sorry to hear about your ex-wife and daughter. If I can do anything to help, you mustn’t hesitate to use me. Understand? Politics has no place in this situation.”

The irony of the senator’s words, juxtaposed against the flash of camera bulbs and the sea of camcorders and microphones, forced a bubble of nervous laughter up Lily’s throat. She swallowed it, looking for her chance to slip away. But before she moved a step, Blackledge caught her elbow.

“Please, don’t go on my account, Miss…?”

Andrew’s mouth tightened. “Lily Browning, this is Senator Gerald Blackledge. Senator, this is Lily Browning. She teaches at the school my daughter attends.”

The senator enveloped her hand in a firm handshake. “A delight to meet you, Ms. Browning. My mother taught English for thirty years.” He looked sincerely interested, but Lily imagined a man who’d been a senator for twenty years had probably honed his acting ability to perfection.

“Really?” Lily responded politely, catching a glimpse of McBride a few feet away. Unnerved by his scrutiny, she murmured an excuse and moved aside, trying to avoid the cameras ringing them. She’d almost made it to the parking area when someone grabbed her arm. Whirling, she came face-to-face with McBride.

He’d removed his sunglasses, exposing her to the full brunt of his fury. “Don’t do this, Ms. Browning.”

She jerked her arm from his grasp. “Did I break a law?”

He didn’t answer.

“I didn’t think so.” She headed toward her car.

McBride fell into step, his long strides easily matching hers. “He’s vulnerable and desperate. The last thing he needs is someone promising she can bring his baby back home to him when we both know damn well you can’t.”

She unlocked her car and opened the driver’s door, putting its solid bulk between her and McBride. “I know you don’t think she’s still alive.”

His only visible reaction was a tightening of his lips.

“But I know she is, and I’m not going to wait around for you to get over your knee-jerk skepticism before I do something about it.”

She started to get into the vehicle, but he grabbed the door before she could pull it shut behind her. Looking down at her over the top, he narrowed his eyes. “If you really know Abby’s alive, answer me this—why have four days passed without anyone calling with a ransom demand?”

Lily’s stomach knotted. She had no explanation for that.

“Think about it.” He let go of the door and stepped away.



HE WATCHED FROM THE gravesite, his heart pounding. Who was this woman with the knowing eyes? What could she know about what had happened to Abby?

He’d planned so carefully. Worked out all the details, figured the odds. He’d visualized just what would happen, down to the lightly traveled shortcut Debra took every weekday morning on her way to Abby’s school. He knew where to stage the surprise attack, and how quickly Debbie would be scared into compliance.

It was supposed to be fast. Grab the girl and go, leaving Debra to sound the alarm and put the rest of the plan in motion.

But she had fought back.

He hadn’t thought she’d fight back. She’d always been such a marshmallow.

Everything had gone terribly wrong. And now there was Lily Browning, with her strange gold eyes and her knowing look, claiming she’d seen a vision of Abby.

His heart twisted with growing panic.

What if she really had?



A PHOTO OF LILY, Andrew Walters and Gerald Blackledge made the front page of Wednesday’s Borland Courier. The teacher’s lounge was abuzz when she arrived at school that morning.

“At least it’s a good picture. And they spelled your name correctly,” Carmen Herrera pointed out when Lily groaned at the sight of her face above the fold.

“I didn’t give anyone my name.” There was no mention of her in the body text, at least. “I guess Mr. Walters told them.”

“Or the senator,” Carmen suggested.

That was also possible—a jab at Mr. Family Values, consorting with a new woman right there at his ex-wife’s funeral. What would voters think?

Worse, what would Lieutenant McBride think when he got a look at her name and face plastered across the front page?

She half expected to find him waiting on her doorstep when she arrived home that afternoon, storm clouds gathering in his eyes, so she was almost disappointed to find no one waiting. But when she entered her house to find her phone ringing, she wasn’t surprised. She was listed in the directory; any reporter with a taste for a trumped-up scandal could look her up.

Lily grabbed the phone and took a deep breath, steeling herself for unpleasantness. “Hello?”

“Lily Browning?”

She knew that voice. The kidnapper’s harsh drawl was unmistakable. Lily’s heart slammed into her ribs. “You have Abby Walters.”

There was a long pause over the phone. When the man spoke, he sounded wary. “How’d you know that?”

“Is she okay?” Lily’s mind raced, wondering what to do next. Nobody was expecting the kidnappers to call here; all the recording equipment was no doubt set up at Andrew Walters’s hotel, waiting for a ransom demand. As she scrabbled for something to write with, her gaze fell on the answering machine attached to her phone.

The kind that allowed her to record incoming conversations.

She jabbed the record button with a shaking finger.

“She’s fine, for now,” the kidnapper said.

“You hit her, you son of a bitch!”

There was a brief silence on the other end before the man spoke in a hushed tone. “What the hell are you?”

Lily ignored the question. “Let me talk to her.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Shivers raced up her spine, followed by the first hint of gray mist clouding the edges of her vision. Gripping the phone harder, she fought off the sensation. “Why are you calling me instead of Mr. Walters?”

“You think we don’t know the cops have his phone tapped? We’ve been looking for a way to contact him away from his hotel.” The caller laughed. “Then we seen your picture in the paper. Lucky break, ain’t it?”

Lily sank down on the floor, tucking her knees close to her body. “You want me to pass along your demands to Mr. Walters?”

“Tell him it’s time to pay up. We’ll be in touch.”

She heard a soft clicking noise. “Wait!”

But the man had already disconnected.

She slammed down the phone and covered her face with shaking hands. The door in her mind bulged, trying to force its way open, but she continued to fight the vision.

She had to call McBride.

With pain lancing behind her eyes, she checked the tape in the answering machine, terrified she’d pushed a wrong button and failed to record the kidnapper’s message. But the harsh drawl was there. “Tell him it’s time to pay up.”

She shut off the recorder and dialed McBride’s cell phone number. He answered on the second ring. “McBride.”

She released a pent-up breath. “It’s Lily Browning. The kidnappers just phoned me.”

“What?” He sounded wary.

She told him about the call. “I managed to record most of it on my answering machine. Do you want me to play it for you?”

“No, I’m on my way.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

By the time he arrived ten minutes later, her head was pounding with pain, the vision clawing at her brain. She didn’t bother with a greeting, just flung the door open and groped her way back to the sofa, concentrating on surviving the onslaught of pain in her head. She wished she could escape to her room and let the vision come, but she had to stay focused.

McBride went straight to the answering machine. “What time did the call come in?”

She altered her expression, trying to hide the pain. “The phone was ringing when I got home—maybe three-forty?”

He listened to the tape twice before he pulled it from the machine. “I’ll get this to the feds on the task force, see if they can clean it up a little, pick up some background noises. Maybe we can pinpoint where he was calling from. And I’ll take a copy to Mr. Walters, see if he recognizes the voice.”

“I recognized it,” she said, keeping her voice low out of self-defense as the pounding in her skull grew excruciating. She tried to say something more, but the merciless grip of the impending vision tightened. Helpless against it, she sank into a whirlwind of dark, cold mist.




Chapter Five


The mist parted to reveal a small, blue-clad figure. Lily’s heart quickened at the sight of dirty red curls. “Abby?”

The child didn’t respond.

The mist dissipated, revealing a tiny room with mottled faux oak paneling and faded yellow curtains splotched with sunflowers. A tiny bed occupied the entire wall under the metal-frame window. A prefab house, or maybe a mobile home.

“Abby?” she whispered again.

The child sat on the cot, huddling in a ball against the wall, tears sparkling on her grimy cheeks. With horror, Lily realized one of the smudges there was a bruise.

Abby stirred, her blue eyes darting around the room.

“Abby, it’s me. Lily. I talked to you the other day. Remember? In the car?”

The little girl’s eyes widened. Her pink rosebud mouth opened, making words without sound. But Lily heard her thoughts, as clearly as if the child had spoken. “Are you a ghost?”

“No, I’m not. I’m not scary at all.” Lily touched her. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes.” Abby whispered back in her mind.

“Good. See, I’m not hurting you, am I?”

Abby shook her head.

“My name is Lily. I teach at your school. Maybe you remember me from there?”

“I can’t see you,” Abby replied.

Lily wondered if she could make herself visible to Abby. Was it even possible? She concentrated on seeing herself in the vision. She looked down at Abby’s arm and visualized her own hand gently squeezing the soft flesh. But nothing happened.

Abby’s eyes welled up. “I can’t see you!” she whimpered.

Aloud.

“Shh, baby, don’t say it out loud.” Lily held her breath, fearing the arrival of Abby’s captors. After a few seconds passed and no one came, she exhaled. “Remember, Abby, you have to think everything. We don’t want the mean men to hear you.”

“Why can’t I see you?” Abby’s thoughts were a frantic whisper. “Where are you?”

“I’m at my house, but I’m thinking real hard about you, and my mind is touching your mind.” Lily didn’t know how to make Abby understand. She didn’t really understand it herself.

“Like a psychic?” Abby asked. “Like on TV?”

Close enough, Lily thought. “Yes.”

“Can you tell my future?”

“I know you’re going to be okay. I’m going to help you.”

“I want to go home.” Abby started to cry. Lily put her arms around her, surprised by the strength of the mental connection. She felt the child’s body shaking against hers, heard the soft snuffling sound. Warm, wet tears trickled down Lily’s neck where the little girl’s face lay.

“Soon, baby—” Lily stopped short.

Something began to form at the edge of her vision.

Her eyes shifted to the emerging image, her grip on Abby loosening. She drew her attention back to Abby, but not before she saw a shape begin to take form in the mists.

Another little girl.

“Lily? Where are you?” Abby jerked away, her body going rigid. “They’re coming!”

Suddenly she was gone, and Lily was alone in the fog.

But not completely alone.

In the distance, she still saw the hazy shape of the unknown little girl. But as she approached the child, the image shimmered and faded into gray.

The mists began to clear, and Lily found herself in her living room, slumped on the sofa. The afternoon sunlight had begun to wane, shadows swallowing most of the room. Maybe ten minutes had passed since the vision started.

Real time. I was really there.

But who was the other little girl?

“Ms. Browning?” The sound of Lieutenant McBride’s voice made her jump.

He sat on her coffee table, his expression shuttered. He’d shed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt to his forearms. “Back among the living?” he asked dryly.

Her head pounded from the fight she’d put up to hold off the vision until she could tell McBride about the call. Staggering to her feet, she headed to the kitchen for her pills.

The detective followed. “Another headache?”

She swallowed a pill and washed it down with water from the tap. “If you’re just going to mock me for the rest of the afternoon, go away. Don’t you have a tape to analyze?”

“The feds are on the way to pick it up. They’ll give Sergeant Baker in my office a copy to take over to Mr. Walters.”

At least Mr. Walters would know why she didn’t make their meeting tonight, she thought.

McBride sat down at her kitchen table and waved toward the chair next to him. “I’m all yours for the evening. So why don’t you tell me what the hell just happened in there?”

“I need to lie down.”

His eyes narrowed. “Fine. I’m not going anywhere.”

She ignored the threat and staggered to her room, wincing as sunlight sliced through the parted curtains, shooting agony through her skull. Too ill to draw the blinds, she groped her way to her bed and lay down, covering her eyes with her forearm.

She heard quiet footsteps approaching on the hardwood floor. She could feel McBride’s gaze on her. “You okay?”

“I just need to sleep.”

“Do the headaches usually come when you have visions?”

“Only when I fight them,” she murmured through gritted teeth.

“Why would you fight them?”




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