“Good to know.”
“But my life would be vastly simplified if you did not get picked up in the first place,” Judson warned.
“Relax, I’ve never been caught. I’m not about to spoil my perfect record of non-arrest now. Send me that list of people you want your mom and me to vet, and be sure you take good care of Gwen. Anything happens to her, you’ll answer to me.”
“Understood.”
Judson ended the call and looked at Gwen. “Evidently not all psychic counselors conduct themselves according to your own high ethical standards.”
“Damn,” Gwen said. “Nothing like a killer psychic counselor to give the profession a bad name.”
Thirty-one
Gwen watched Judson pick up the coffeepot and move through the bathroom doorway to fill the pot with water. Max followed him on the off chance that Judson might also refill the food dish.
“You think this Sundew is using the chat room to troll for business, is that it?” Gwen asked.
“That’s my best guess,” Judson said through the doorway. “Online rumors probably send prospects his way. He can check them out anonymously in the chat room, select those who look like serious prospects and contact them privately to offer his services.”
“We may have put a glitch in his business model here in Wilby, but if we don’t stop him, he will continue to kill, won’t he?”
“Sure.” Judson emerged from the bathroom and poured the water into the coffeemaker. He put the pot on the hot plate and dropped the pre-measured bag of coffee into the machine. “He’s addicted by now, probably has been for a long time.”
Gwen shuddered. “But you said he was a pro, that he does it for the money.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not addicted to his work, specifically the feeling of power that it gives him.”
Max abandoned hope of another meal and vaulted up onto the bed. He settled down and half closed his eyes.
Gwen tried to suppress the chill that iced her nerves. “If Sundew is addicted to murder, he’s simply another kind of serial killer, even if he does consider himself a pro.”
Judson flipped the switch on the coffeemaker. “Just another one of the monsters.”
“Okay, say he will need another crystal tuner,” Gwen said. “How would he go about replacing Louise? It’s not like you can look up crystal tuners online or find one in a phonebook. At least I don’t think you can.”
Judson watched the coffee drip into the pot as if the machine was a crystal ball that would reveal secrets. “If I were the killer, it might occur to me that the best source of leads would be Evelyn’s files.”
Gwen raised her brows. “It might occur to you?”
He winced. “Sorry about that. I’ve been thinking like the bad guys for a while now. Over time it becomes a habit.”
“No need to apologize,” she said briskly. “You aren’t really thinking like the bad guys when you try to get inside their heads.”
“No?” He sounded amused.
“No. You’re thinking like a good investigator. You’re doing what you were born to do—hunt bad guys.”
“Thanks. I’ll cling to that theory. How did Evelyn find her test subjects two years ago?”
“I see where you’re going here.” Gwen took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Evelyn had her own counseling records from the time she worked at the Summerlight Academy. They were stored on her computer. Her files would provide a nice, neatly categorized list of people with talents. It’s horrible to think that Sundew is going to stalk some poor innocent crystal tuner and force her to tune his weapon for him.”
“He’s not going to get the chance to do that because we’re going to stop him,” Judson said.
“Do you really think we can do that?”
“Yes,” he said. “I really think we can do it. And soon.”
The coffee finished brewing, and they drank it in silence for a time. After a while, Gwen lowered her cup.
“It wouldn’t be all that easy to find them, you know,” she said.
Judson looked at her. “You’re talking about the talents in the Summerlight files?”
“Yes. I told you that the one thing most of us learned was how to keep a low profile and pass for normal. The truly dangerous talents really excelled when it came to learning those lessons. But there were also the students who were overwhelmed by the onset of their abilities or too fragile psychologically to handle them. Some of them ended up in institutions. Some ended up on the streets. Some simply disappeared. This Sundew will have his work cut out for him trying to find a crystal tuner in those files.”
“You’re good at passing for normal,” Judson said. “Why didn’t you go into the mainstream professional world? With your talent you could have done brilliantly. I’ll bet you could easily be pulling in several hundred bucks an hour as a high-end shrink. No one would have to know that it was your psychic talent that made you so good at your work.”
She smiled faintly. “In other words, you want to know why I bill myself as a low-rent psychic counselor when I could have a string of letters after my name?”
“For the record, I never used the term low-rent.”
“Right. Well, the answer is twofold. First, it’s hard to outrun your past when that past includes a place like Summerlight.”
“All you needed was a new identity,” Judson said.
“It’s true that Nick could have set me up with a false identity, complete with transcripts from some respectable school,” she agreed. “He’s offered to do it on several occasions.”
“He’s versatile.”
“Certainly.” She was aware of a flash of genuine pride. “Nick is very talented. And to tell you the truth, I have considered taking him up on his offer from time to time. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending to be something or, rather, someone I’m not.”
“It would have been hard work.”
“In order to maintain the lie, I would have had to deceive everyone around me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out. I think that would have become intolerable over time.”
“Sort of like going into the witness protection program,” Judson said.
“Just imagine not being able to confide the truth about your own past to a close friend or a lover without running the risk of losing the person’s friendship or love. Imagine not being able to trust anyone with the truth about yourself.”
“My family has been keeping secrets for two generations,” he said. “We expect to have to keep them a while longer.”
The quiet comment caught her by surprise.
“Yes,” she said. “You and your family do know what it’s like to keep secrets, don’t you? Those crystals from the Phoenix Mine—”
“It’s not just about the crystals. Sam is getting married. He and Abby will want children. Both of them have powerful paranormal profiles. We don’t know much about psychic genetics, but it’s a good bet their offspring will be talented, too. We’ll have to protect the kids and help them cope with their psychic sides.”
“I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose even a member of the wealthy and powerful Coppersmith family who possesses some talent has to learn to pass for normal.”
“You do if you want to operate in the normal business world. And Coppersmith, Inc., is a very big business.”
She smiled. “I’ve heard that.”
“The bottom line for all of us is that we’re going to need to stay at least partly in the shadows all of our lives, and our descendants will, too. There’s no telling if or when the public will learn to treat the paranormal as normal.”
“But at least you’ve got a family around you to help you guard those secrets.”
“What do you know about your own family?” he asked.
“My family by DNA? Not much. I was raised by my aunt who took me in after my parents were killed in a car crash. Aunt Beth was a very good person, but she was also very religious. When my talents started to emerge, she w
as . . . horrified. I think she truly believed that I was possessed. She took me to church a lot. I finally got the point and pretended to be cured. But I’m pretty sure she knew that I was still having visions. On her deathbed her last words to me were, Don’t tell anyone.”
“Not bad advice, under the circumstances.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Gwen said. “And I tried to follow it. But I wound up in Summerlight, anyway.”
Judson frowned, looking suddenly thoughtful. “How did that happen? It was an expensive boarding school, by all accounts. Abby told Sam that her family paid a fortune to send her there.”
“I got in the same way Nick did. We were informed that our expenses were covered by a special charity fund. Lucky us. Evelyn told me the truth, though. She said that social workers and shrinks and others who dealt with troubled youth who displayed certain symptoms were encouraged to send the kids to Summerlight for evaluation. If they met the criteria for admission, they would be accepted, all expenses paid. Sam said at least one, maybe more, of the counselors at the school actively searched for students who displayed evidence of talent.”
“When this job is over, I’m going to try to find out if there are other copies of those old school files floating around,” Judson said. “I don’t like the idea that someone can use them to go on a talent hunt.”
The words acted like a dash of icy water on Gwen’s senses. She straightened in her chair and shoved her fingers through her hair.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a quick shower,” she said. “It’s been a long night. I’m ready for breakfast.”
She pushed herself up out of the chair. But Judson was already on his feet, blocking her path. His jaw was steel-hard and his eyes burned.
“What the hell did I say?” he asked.
She held her ground. Show no weakness.
She gave him a blandly polite smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t give me that.” Judson wrapped his hands around her shoulders. “I said something just now that sent you straight into deep freeze. What did I say?”
“Sorry.” She kept her tone light and polite. “It was nothing. Just a reality check.”
He tightened his grip and pulled her closer. “Talk to me, Gwendolyn Frazier. I may be psychic, but I can’t read your mind.”
“It’s all right,” she said, softening her words because she could see that he had absolutely no idea why she was offended. The truth was that she had no reason to be hurt. “You reminded me that this is just a short-term job for you, that’s all. You’re here as a favor to Sam and Abby. That you’ll be moving on after you’ve closed the case.”
Comprehension hit him with visible force. His eyes narrowed.
“So that’s it,” he said. He moved his hands up to cup her face. “Let’s get something straight here. The job is supposed to be short-term. I hope to hell it is because there’s a killer running around. But I don’t want us to be short-term. As far as I’m concerned, this is not a weekend hookup.”
The wave of relief that swept through her was so strong that she would have collapsed back into the chair if he had not been holding her. Don’t get too excited, she warned herself. Just take it one day at a time.
She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t quite sure what you meant. Things have been a little intense lately. In situations like this, emotions can get overheated. Judgment can be impaired. Intuition is unreliable.”
“Is that right? You’ve had a lot of experience in situations like this?”
Her temper flared—much too quickly, she realized. Talk about overreacting.
“You know what I’m trying to say,” she said. “For heaven’s sake, we’re practically strangers.”
“You said we were partners.”
“That, too,” she said quickly. “At least for now.”
“Partners who sleep together. Do you know what that makes us?”
“No,” she said.
“It makes us lovers.”
She caught her breath. “Lovers?”
“Yes. Lovers.”
He kissed her before she could say another word. It was a thoroughgoing kiss. He did not let up until she sighed and softened against him. By the time he freed her, they were both breathing hard.
“Lovers,” he said again, making it a statement of fact.
“Okay,” she said. She took a deep breath and then she took a step back. “Lovers.”
He looked satisfied. “Glad we got that cleared up.”
“You bet.” She headed for the bathroom. “Who says men don’t know how to communicate?”
She closed the door very firmly and locked it.
Thirty-two
Max’s soft meow alerted Judson when he emerged from the bathroom after his own morning shower. The cat was in Gwen’s room.
A faint trickle of energy shifted in the atmosphere, reminding Judson of the light current of the underground river that had guided him out of the flooded cave. He heard soft footsteps out in the hall and checked the time. It was just going on seven.
He heard the muffled sound of the stairwell door closing outside in the hall.
Max meowed again, more urgently.
Judson took a clean shirt out of the closet and went to the doorway between the two rooms. On the far side of the big bed he saw Max crouched in front of the hall door of Gwen’s room.
Gwen came out of the dressing room area, fastening the waistband of her jeans.
“What’s Max complaining about?” Judson asked.
“I don’t know.” Gwen looked toward the door. “He just started making noise a couple of minutes ago while you were in the shower. He’s probably hungry. I’ll feed him before we go downstairs to breakfast.”
Max abruptly lost interest in whatever had attracted him to the door. He rose and trotted across the room to greet Gwen with a demanding purr. She reached down and scratched him behind the ears.
“He heard someone out in the hall a moment ago,” Judson said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I heard someone, too. Whoever it was went down the emergency stairs at the back of the inn.”
Gwen straightened. “Probably a guest going out for an early morning run.”
“Maybe. I’m going to take a look.”
Judson turned, crossed his room, opened the door and went out into the hall. The wall sconces lit the scene in a warm, golden glow. He glanced at the muddy footprints on the floor and then he followed them to the stairwell door.
He opened the emergency door just in time to hear the first floor door open and close at the bottom of the stairwell.
He went back along the hall and let himself into his own room. Gwen was waiting.
“Well?” she asked.
“Our visitor came from outside. She left a little mud on the carpet and the stairs.”
Gwen was impressed. “Did your para-senses tell you that the person was a woman?”
“No, I cheated and used my normal senses. The footprints belong to a woman. She came up the emergency stairwell, went to your door and then turned around and went back down the same stairs. Let’s take a look in your room.”
He went through the connecting doorway and walked around the bed to take a closer look at the place where Max had been crouched earlier. From that angle, he could see what had not been visible from the other side of the room.
An envelope lay on the floor.
He picked it up.
“Looks like she left a message,” he said.
“Probably the bill for room charges here at the inn,” Gwen said. “I’ll take care of it at breakfast.”
“It’s not the bill for the room.” There was no name or address on the outside of the envelope, but he could sense the anxiety that stained the paper.
He slit the seal and took out the photograph.
Gwen came to stand beside him.
“It’s a copy of the same group shot that I found on the floor near Evelyn’s body,” she
said. “The picture of the seven research study subjects.” She took a closer look. “Someone drew a circle around my face.”
Judson turned the picture over and read the scrawled message on the back aloud. “You are next.”
Thirty-three
You’re sure about this?” Gwen asked.
“Almost positive,” Judson said.
Gwen opened her senses a little and watched his aura as he shut down the SUV’s engine. He was definitely running hot with a mix of adrenaline and psi—he had been ever since he had opened the envelope that contained the unpleasantly marked-up photo. But, as usual, he was fully in control.
He sat quietly for a moment studying the thick stand of mist-shrouded trees that stood between the vehicle and the rear door of Hudson Floral Design.
In the backseat, Max glowered through the recently repaired door of his carrier.
It had stopped raining, but an early morning fog had rolled in off the river, muffling sound and limiting visibility. At least, Gwen thought, the fog had that effect on those like her who possessed merely normal hearing and vision.
“What do you see?” she asked Judson.
“What?” He glanced at her. His eyes glowed with a low level of psi.
“Just wondered if you could see through the fog.”
“Sometimes I forget that you see things differently than I do. Don’t worry, I won’t blunder into a tree and brain myself.”
“That possibility never occurred to me.” She turned back around to study the scene. “I have to tell you that knowing that you’re almost positive you know what we’re doing here is not the most reassuring thing you could say under the circumstances. Remember, she’s got that old rifle.”
“I gave you the option of staying behind at the inn,” Judson reminded her.
She ignored that. “Maybe we should talk to Oxley first.”
“That won’t do any good.”
“Things could get awkward if you get caught.”
“I won’t get caught. But if I do, get on the phone to Dad.”
She almost smiled. “That sounds similar to the advice you gave Nick.”