The Psychic
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Synopsis
In a chilling, intensely eerie new novel of suspense from the New York Times bestselling author of The Camp and The Babysitter, a woman haunted by unreliable psychic visions must decide how far to trust herself when it comes to stopping a killer.
Sometimes, a bad, bad feeling creeps over Veronica Quick. It happened on her tenth birthday, when a voice filled her head: Don’t go in the water. That day, she nearly drowned while swimming with her friends, one of whom was seriously injured.
Since then, Ronnie has tried to turn off her premonitions. After all, not every vision comes true. She’s made a fool of herself before, predicting things that didn’t transpire. And she’s still shaken by disturbing images tied to that day at The Pond.
But this new vision is different. This one won’t be ignored. There’s a clearing in the woods, and a woman, strangled to death, her hands bloody and torn.
The body is found just as Ronnie predicted, and suddenly she’s seeing glimpses of more victims, even as she clashes with a skeptical police detective from her past. But Ronnie sees just enough to know there’s a killer out there, stalking, strangling, circling everyone she knows in an
ever-tightening web.
But it’s the part she doesn’t yet see that is the most terrifying . . .
Release date: September 30, 2025
Publisher: Zebra Books
Print pages: 400
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The Psychic
Nancy Bush
Twenty years later …
Hot, damp breath … panting … smell of wet fur … whining … scratching …
Ravaged hands … a body … a woman’s body … lying in a clearing … and pounding, pounding, POUNDING!
Ronnie came to on a gasp.
Blinking, disoriented, she realized she was standing in her kitchen, hand on the refrigerator handle.
And someone was slamming their fist against her apartment door.
How long had she been out? A minute? Two? Longer? Whenever she had a vision she lost time, the amount hard to measure. But she’d certainly been having a vision. The force of this one had been like a punch to the chest, which meant it might be real, and it took her a moment to “re-combobulate.”
She took in a long, shaky breath and glanced out the window.
It was five o’clock at night, dark as a cauldron, and she was alone in the apartment, the unit she’d rented six months earlier when she and Galen had separated … after she’d had enough of his lies and he’d had enough of her weirdness. He’d married her because she was the boss’s daughter and she’d married him because … God, she couldn’t even remember and it had only been two years.
“I’m coming!” she yelled to the increased pounding. Sheesh. Everybody was so impatient these days.
She walked the six steps to the front door and cautiously pulled it open. On the other side was a white-faced, anxious-looking woman. Her dark hair was threaded with fine silver hair filaments, though she didn’t look like she was much into her thirties. She wore a black rain jacket, no hood, beads of rainwater competing with the silvery strands. Her makeup was heavily applied, her dark eyes rimmed in black. One arm was straight down, locked to her side, the opposite hand reached up to touch her face as if suddenly wondering what she looked like.
“Veronica Quick?” she asked tensely.
“Yes?”
Familiar. She was so familiar, but Ronnie didn’t think she knew her. Behind her rain was pouring from the skies in sheets and a cold burst of wet December air swept inside the apartment, an eager, uninvited guest. The woman reached inside her jacket with the hand that had touched her face, pulled out a large, manila envelope and thrust it forward. Ronnie’s hand came up automatically as the woman slapped the envelope down hard, declaring, “You’ve been served.”
Galen beat me to the punch.
Ronnie was almost impressed by his speed. She suspected she was holding divorce papers and couldn’t decide if her anger was at her soon-to-be ex because he was such an all-around shit, or because she’d been cheated out of serving him first. Probably a little of both. Her gaze dropped briefly to the envelope, then upward to the deliverer, who was eyeing Ronnie as if she were memorizing her face.
The woman looked like someone she should know, but Ronnie wondered if that were true. She’d experienced the consequences of engaging with people who might have heard something about her psychic ability and were seeking her out because of it. Yes, her “gift” was known around River Glen, maybe all of Oregon and beyond, for all she knew, as was the fact that Veronica Quick was a certified nutcase. Didn’t matter to some that she worked hard to pretend and deny this extra ability since more often than not it got her into trouble.
Ronnie tried to place the woman. She looked like someone from one of her visions, in that watery sort of way that always irked her. If you’re given a gift, shouldn’t it be more reliable? Something you could actually use?
Bark, bark, bark. Ronnie turned to her right, recognizing the sound as the dog from her dream, though she didn’t see it.
“What?” the woman on her doorstep demanded.
“Nothing. The dog.”
“I don’t like dogs. Keep it away from me,” she muttered, then turned on the heels of her black Doc Martens and stomped toward the stairs that led to the parking lot. Ronnie watched her progress through the incessant downpour. She was bareheaded and apparently oblivious to the rain. In the lot below, she splashed through the shallow puddles on the tarmac, the overhead lights marking her progress as she headed for a gray Ford Explorer. Ronnie noted the license plate, a habit, and as soon as she was back inside, wrote it down on a piece of scratch paper.
She might be considered a psychic but she could forget data as well as the next person.
She finally looked down at the now wet envelope in her right hand. It was from a different law firm than Tormelle & Quick. No surprise there; it was from Galen’s new firm. He’d sexted too many women online while at Tormelle & Quick, which had caused his firing. Most of the firm believed it was because he’d cheated on her, but the sexting was what really chafed her father. Jonas felt betrayed as he’d initially been Galen’s champion. Ronnie felt he’d wanted to unload responsibility for her, even while always telling her what he wanted her to do with her life.
“Time to go back to law school,” Jonas had told her when she and Galen had separated, which, as ever, had irked Ronnie. Maybe it was a function of her father’s overbearing plans that had made her deaf to his pleas. She liked being an assistant at the firm. It kept those who felt uneasy over her extra “ability” feeling safe and maybe a little superior. As long as the boss’s daughter with her strange woo-woo stayed out of the legal limelight, she could be tolerated.
An ear-splitting squeal of brakes from the highway rang through the apartment. It came from behind the complex. Ronnie froze, listening hard at the drawn-out shriek from the tires.
CRASH!!!
Tossing down the envelope unopened, she leapt across the living room toward the small rear balcony of her apartment, throwing open the sliding door and stepping onto the slick, wooden deck boards. Rain splashed onto her head from a listing gutter and ran down the front of her shirt and jeans into her black ankle boots. She leaned over the railing, swiping moisture from her face. The highway below was known for speeders clipping each other. Sporadic serious accidents occurred. She could smell the wet bark and earth as she peered through the bare tree limbs of the deciduous trees that ran down the hill toward the highway. Cockeyed headlights flooded the area where a pileup of cars was already stopping traffic. Vehicles were every which way. Crumpled metal flashed under the myriad headlights.
There was a gray SUV turned sideways. Like the one her messenger had driven.
Rain poured down from the skies.
Shit …
Racing back inside, Ronnie swept wet strands of hair from her forehead. She grabbed her coat and cross-body purse and racewalked to her own SUV, a dark blue Ford Escape. Slamming the door, she pushed the button to engage the engine and the Escape roared to life. She drove directly into the traffic jam, which was already backing up, nearly stopping. There was enough room for vehicles to still creep around on the shoulder and she followed after them, much to the fury of the drivers stuck in the inside lanes who honked madly at the moving cars.
Sirens sounded in the distance as she followed the slow-moving line. When the makeshift lane suddenly stopped, she pulled as far off onto the shoulder as possible. In front of her the road was completely blocked by the mangled cars. Rain blew over them in curtains as she stepped out, bending her head against the wind as she pushed forward.
A man holding a cell phone to his ear stood outside a red Tesla. “Get back in your car! I called 911!” he yelled.
“I know her,” said Ronnie, pointing to the gray Explorer. Its front end was demolished. The woman who’d served her papers must have slammed her foot to the accelerator as soon as she hit the highway to cause that much damage.
“Ma’am, get back in your car. It’s not safe.”
As if the gods heard his words a small pickup zigzagged around the stopped cars, suddenly racing toward them, clipping one car and taking out the front bumper of another as it aimed forward like a bullet. Tesla-guy grabbed Ronnie and practically threw them both toward the deep ditch running along the highway. She slid into icy water, but somehow remained upright, her boots drowning in the small running stream that had developed from the rain. She sank ankle-deep into the mud.
At the last minute the driver had yanked his steering wheel in order to miss Ronnie’s Escape—thank the gods—but it plowed into the back of a white Prius that was still trying to inch forward in traffic. Ronnie could see that the woman inside the Prius was thrown against the dash, then back again. She lifted a hand to the blood forming from a gash on her forehead and started screaming, the sound tinny, barely audible, behind her windows.
Bark, bark, bark, bark!
Ronnie glanced around, wondering which car had the dog.
Tesla-man said, “Fuck me,” under his breath, releasing his hold on Ronnie before climbing back up the incline to the road. Ronnie scrunched her feet inside her boots to increase her grip as she tried to pull each foot out of the mucky stream. Slowly, the boots released with a sucking noise and she worked her way up the slope as well.
The two cars that had apparently created the initial crash were locked together like two bull rams, squaring off. The drivers were outside, staring at the mess while the icy December rain bore down.
The woman process server managed to wrench open the door of her gray SUV and climbed outside. She swayed for a bit in the rushing wind. She, too, had a gash across her forehead and regarded Ronnie dazedly. She’d opened her coat and her large breasts were already drenched with rain.
“You all right?” Ronnie asked, though clearly she wasn’t.
She looked around as if she hadn’t heard. She was—
Shana. From The Pond all those years ago. Shana Lloyd and Sloan Hart.
That’s why she seemed so familiar. She was Sloan Hart’s high school girlfriend. Now a process server? Twenty years on she’d aged hard.
And she was about to walk into traffic, while the drivers of the first two cars were still just standing in the rain and the sound of sirens’ wails grew closer.
Shana took a step toward the road.
“Stop!” Ronnie grabbed for her. Missed her arm, but Shana seemed to hear because she suddenly froze, though her legs wobbled. She turned her head to look at Ronnie, her eyes moving like they were in a game of marbles.
Ronnie suddenly felt a flood of emotion. Desire and love and sadness. Coming from Shana. A full-on sensory rush that narrowed into a picture of Shana in a wood-paneled office, kneeling beneath a desk, Galen in the chair with her head bobbing up and down as she pleasured him, his head thrown back, eyes closed, his hands in her hair. Shana … and Galen?
Ronnie saw Shana running her fingers through Ronnie’s soon-to-be ex’s prematurely gray hair, her head thrown back, mewling cries issuing from her parted lips. Or … what?
Ronnie blinked against the rain.
The vision blew apart like fairy dust. Instead Shana stood in front of Ronnie, wet and bedraggled, blood running down her cheek from the gash on her head.
Immediately Ronnie wasn’t sure of what she’d seen. The vision didn’t have that sensation of something creeping out of the dark to leave its ominous message. This one was more … indistinct. Something maybe true, maybe not. The visions that were real had heft to them.
Ronnie had visited a psychic once herself, kind of as a joke, kind of as a tutorial. She’d been curious about what the seer would say, which had been that Ronnie would have one child with the love of her life. However, the psychic Ronnie had seen had since been mentioned in a lawsuit in which another client, a woman, had learned in the session that she would live a long and healthy life. Within six months that client had died in a mountain climbing accident.
“Do you see her?” Shana asked.
“What? Who?”
She took another step forward, walking directly in front of a car that was edging around the mess of traffic, just as that driver hit the gas. Ronnie screamed at the same moment the driver slammed on his brakes.
Untouched, nevertheless Shana collapsed in a heap onto the wet and muddy shoulder.
Ronnie jumped forward but Tesla-man was faster and was at Shana’s side in a flash. He bent over her as Shana lay on the ground, staring up at the sky, rain running down her head as people, victims and onlookers, gathered around.
Then the scene changed.
For a heartbeat the woman lying in the clearing from Ronnie’s earlier vision was superimposed over Shana’s body. Familiar … so familiar. And somewhere a dog was barking.
Ronnie held her breath. In her mind’s eye, she saw the two women as one, a weird vision that was so damned real. She half expected the vision to play out, to say something to her, to mean something. But no. It remained unchanged. Nothing happened.
In a blink, it was gone—the woman from the clearing having vanished.
Shana was back to looking like Shana. Not moving. Quiet.
Tesla-man was leaning over her. The dog had traded barking for howling. Ronnie’s heart galloped as if it were trying to escape her rib cage.
“She’s breathing,” said Tesla-man. “She’s alive! Come on, lady. You’re okay. Come back! Can you hear me? You’re okay.”
And still the dog howled incessantly.
“Can someone help that dog?” Ronnie muttered, glancing around at the various knots of people who were either in the accident or had stopped to help. “Maybe it’s trapped.”
“Hey, we got a real situation here. This woman needs help.” Tesla-man gave Ronnie a scrutinizing glare before turning his attention to the fast approaching rescue vehicles.
“I know. But it sounds like it’s in pain.”
His dark eyes clapped back to her. “I don’t hear any dog, ma’am.”
It was Ronnie’s turn to stare. “You don’t?”
“No, ma’am.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her, assessing. “Are you all right?”
“I wasn’t in the accident. I’m here to help,” Ronnie assured him, but was starting to feel that sense of unease that crept over her when she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. It happened rarely. Most of the time when she surfaced from a vision she was fully aware again. Now, though, Tesla-man was regarding her in that way that said they were experiencing two different realities.
And the pained yowls of the dog had stopped. Ronnie swallowed hard, trying to concentrate on what was really happening. The wail of the sirens cut off as if strangled as the ambulances arrived on scene. The moment their tires stopped, paramedics leapt from their vehicles to take charge.
Thank God.
Still wondering about the vision, Ronnie waited while Shana was tucked into an ambulance, and then returned to her Escape. Drenched and shivering, rain still running down her face, she thought of the dead woman in the clearing. The black void was sending her a message that she wasn’t getting.
Who was she?
What had happened to her?
Why had her image melded with Shana’s as she lay on the cold, wet shoulder of the road?
And what, if anything, should Ronnie do next?
There was no clear answer.
The night was dark and cold. The cabin was a little more than a lean-to shelter these days. The woman shivered and counted her many sins. She’d made mistakes, vast mistakes as it turned out. She wasn’t good at reading human nature and it was going to kill her … maybe … if she didn’t think of a plan of escape.
The dog whined softly and she pulled it close. It wasn’t her dog but she’d taken it with her for protection.
A chilly wind clattered against the cabin, trembling the walls. She could smell dirt and damp weeds, saw tendrils reaching from beneath the rotting floorboards. She couldn’t stay here long. She had to move … run … She’d racked her brain. Who could she call to help her? Dear God, there was no good answer.
The only person, and it was an insane longshot, the longshot of longshots, was Veronica.
Clutching the dog, burying her face in its black fur, she sent a message into the universe:
I’m in trouble. He’s coming to kill me. I don’t want to die. Help me!
Was that a car engine? She raised her head in alarm, heart galumphing. She didn’t move. The dog growled low in its throat and she quietly shushed it. They’d bonded in their short time together and the animal complied, softly snuffling her ear.
She couldn’t hear the engine now.
Was it real?
Had someone cut it?
Were those footsteps?
Panicked, she strained to listen.
The door of the cabin had a latch on the inside.
Not much to keep her safe. But something.
And yet …
To her horror she watched as a small stick was inserted beneath the latch and pushed upward, releasing it with a small metallic click.
She trembled. Her hand moved to clasp the rock she’d placed beside herself. If the dog couldn’t save her, it would be her last defense.
The dog was quivering all over. Its skin sliding beneath her other hand, beneath its soft fur. The door opened and a black figure stood there. “You called?” said a voice filled with real concern.
Surprise flooded her. Then shock. Full on shock. “You … ? You … found me?”
The dog started barking. Sharp. Insistent. Barking and barking.
Slam!
The world went black.
The next thing she knew she was lying face up in a clearing. A faint moon glowed behind a cloud, a momentary respite from the rain. She wanted that rain now. Desperately. Wanted its cold wash on her face. Needed it to clear her mind. She envisioned diamond droplets falling on her face, rinsing all the bad stuff away.
Then hands circled her throat. Gloved hands. “Why?” she asked but it might have been in her mind.
The last thing she remembered was the frenzied barking of the dog, somewhere far away …
Ronnie woke on a strangled gasp, the fragmented dark images of a nightmare slipping away even as she tried to mentally grab them, unsure of their import. She took a couple of deep breaths, coming into focus. Had she seen the woman in the clearing again? It felt like it, but she couldn’t quite put it together.
Tell the police about her …
She snorted at herself as she got out of bed and headed for the shower. Oh, sure. That had worked so well last time when she’d showed up at the River Glen Police Department to warn them that Edmond Olman was going to attempt to murder his ex-wife and they’d better put him under surveillance, maybe even arrest him on some dummied-up charge, just to keep him from killing her.
Detective Elena Verbena had regarded her soberly and, to her credit, had increased patrol cars to drive by the Olman house, but it hadn’t helped because Olman had already beaten his wife within an inch of her life. She very nearly died in the days in between the time Ronnie warned the police about him and her unconscious body was discovered.
Olman was now in jail and Ronnie had been grilled long into the night by River Glen’s finest. Only her father’s charge to her rescue had gotten her released. They were sure she knew something more, was somehow involved. She’d heard the incredulity in the voice of one of cops who’d interviewed her at the time. “You say a vision just came to you?” Needless to say, the River Glen P.D. had come to view Veronica Quick as someone to be wary of. The wife moved back in with family in Minnesota and Ronnie’s uneasy relationship with the police grew uneasier.
Galen was no help at all. He’d never believed much in her abilities and his lack of coming to her aid was another reason the marriage failed so quickly. After that Ronnie had doubled down on her decision to keep her “possible idiopathic neural abnormality” (idiopathic meaning no discernible cause) to herself.
As she was getting ready for work today, she called Dawn at the front desk and left a message that she would be late. She planned to check on Shana before heading to the office. Ronnie had watched her being loaded into an ambulance and felt oddly connected to her.
Now, thinking of how the dead woman’s image had been superimposed over Shana’s face, Ronnie’s mind flicked to another recent bout of extrasensory information that had taken her over.
Barely weeks ago she’d seen trouble coming for P.I. Jesse James Taft, who’d been in the line of sight of two murderous females aiming for his demise.
Ronnie had perceived a mental image of Taft’s sister, his dead sister, Helene to be precise, who just happened to be his personal muse, and one he apparently saw from time to time himself. Whether Taft actually did see her was yet to be determined, but her “ghost” was someone he talked to.
Ronnie, on the other hand, had gotten a very clear message from Helene that Taft was in danger. Serious danger. When Taft recognized that Ronnie had actually seen his sister, he’d been gobsmacked. He hadn’t believed it and consequently hadn’t listened to Ronnie as carefully as he should have.
Taft was so grounded in reality that the idea Helene could be something more than just a memory was anathema. He’d even thought the times he’d envisioned her were just his mind playing tricks on him.
There was only so much Ronnie could do to explain her “gift,” especially since she didn’t really understand it herself. She had passed on the message from Helene, that Taft was in danger and left him to deal with it.
That he’d nearly been killed and her vision had proved true probably left him with more questions than answers. She didn’t know because she’d avoided Taft ever since, not wanting to have a post mortem on exactly what she’d seen, felt and known was going to happen to him. He was just the latest who’d sparked a vision.
Until the dead woman in the clearing.
After checking her black slacks, jacket and white collarless blouse in the mirror, she glanced out the window. Gray clouds hung low in the sky, but the rain was holding off for the moment. Her boots were sitting by the back door, still caked with half-wet muck, so she slipped on black flats, then took the boots outside, knocking them against the rail that ran along this second level above the parking lot.
Angel Vasquero, Ronnie’s neighbor, was already leaning against that rail in a pair of low-hung jeans and a gray T-shirt, barefoot. He watched the little flakes of mud from her boots dropping down to the parking lot below, then eyed her with a slight smile. They didn’t know each other well, but the vibe he gave off was always lazy amusement.
“Hey, pretty lady.”
Ronnie gave him a look. Angel worked hard to give her the impression that he was an idle Hispanic just hanging around between gigs, but there was a lot more going on with him than he wanted her to know. She suspected he was either an informant for the police, or a cop himself, because he’d appeared shortly after she’d rented her apartment. This had been a few weeks after she’d related her suspicions about Edmond Olman to the police, so it was a pretty good bet there was something there. His living next to her was more than mere coincidence.
Angel lackadaisically gestured toward her boots. “Looks like you ran into some trouble.”
“Something like that.”
His dark hair was slicked back, still wet from an apparent shower. “How’s the lawyering going?”
“I’m not a lawyer. I’m an assistant.” As she’d explained to him before.
“Whose old man owns the place.”
“Still an assistant.”
She wished she would be hit with some kind of mental background on him, but that’s not how her gift worked. She had no control over when and how something from the dark void would creep over her, replacing what her eyes saw with an inner screen. The more intense the image, the more credible the vision. Sometimes, if she closed her eyes, let herself relax, made a point of opening up her mind … sometimes she could coax it forward. Sometimes … not often.
And sometimes what she saw was utter bullshit.
“You know Daria Armenton?” Angel asked now.
“Yes, I do,” Ronnie said, in some surprise.
Daria Armenton was one of the heirs to a fortune of the newly deceased Frank Rollberson, who’d bought certain stocks in the nineties that had increased in value nearly twenty-five times, leaving him a very rich man with no children. Daria was the young Hispanic woman who’d taken care of Rollberson for the last ten years or so and she was being sued by Rollberson’s myriad shoestring relatives who’d only received small amounts and felt Daria’s piece belonged to them, too. Rollberson’s estate lawyer, Martin Calgheny, was with Tormelle & Quick and had asked Ronnie to attend the reading of the will, which she had several months earlier.
“She’s my cousin,” Angel informed her. “She’s being hassled. Some lawyer’s coming after her.”
Had she been wrong about Angel? She didn’t think so … but … ?
“She might need someone to defend her,” he added.
“She should talk to Martin Calgheny. He’s the one who handled the distribution of the estate. Martin would be best to find someone to repre—”
“Daria said you were there, too, though,” he interrupted, straightening, suddenly all business. “She came by the other day, saw you, remembered you. I told her I’d talk to you.”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Ronnie repeated. “But I’ll talk to Martin.”
“Will you?” Angel’s dark eyes said he doubted that she would.
“Yes. I will,” she said firmly, then headed down the stairs to her SUV.
River Glen General Hospital’s main parking lot was nearly full when Ronnie pulled in and she had to circle around and squeeze into a spot that made it hard to open her door. She managed to climb out without too much car dirt transferring to her jacket, then hurried around the puddles to the front doors, which slid open as she approached.
She asked to see Shana Lloyd and was directed to an elevator to the fourth floor. She’d had a lie all ready on her tongue, planning to say she was a family friend and Shana’s lawyer, but she didn’t need to use it. She was actually a good liar, having been forced to cover up her occasional lapses that made everyone uncomfortable. Far easier than trying to explain she was merely “lost in the psychic moment.” She might have been able to pull that off if her predictions were always accurate, but since that wasn’t the case … lying …
On the fourth floor, the elevator doors opened and Ronnie faced a nurse in light blue scrubs and a low ponytail who was waiting to enter. She netted a small smile from the woman who barely glanced at her before trading places with Ronnie and heading into the elevator. The doors had closed behind her before Ronnie’s brain clicked into gear.
Brandy.
Ronnie quickly looked back at the elevator’s blank doors, but Brandy’s car was already moving downward. She should’ve recognized the dark ponytail, the intent look Brandy wore most times.
You didn’t recognize Shana at first.
Well, that was true, but she hadn’t known Shana all that well, whereas Brandy …
One thing was for certain: It was fast becoming old home week. She hadn’t seen Brandy Mercer since they were in high school and even then their elementary-school friendship had turned into little more than an acquaintanceship in their upper grades. She was aware Brandy had become a nurse, but she hadn’t known she was back in River Glen. The last she’d heard, which was admittedly a while ago, Brandy had been living in Arizona. And Mel … she’d gotten married to some guy in tech and moved to the Bay Area for a while, she thought.
Shana was alone when Ronnie entered, pressed up against pillows, awake and almost as pale as the white pillowcase and bandage that ran over the gash on her forehead and covered her left eyebrow. Her breasts pressed against the hospital gown. Ronnie had a moment of recalling the image she’d had of her kneeling in front of Galen’s chair, but pushed it aside. Galen was history. Her pride might be bruised that he’d only chosen her because she was Jonas Quick’s daughter, but hadn’t she really suspected that all along at some level? If she really wanted to drill down on it, she would find she’d wanted to get married and Galen had crossed her path at the right time … and, lame as it was, one small reason she’d wanted to wed was to abolish that damn prediction she’d made about marrying Sloan Hart.
She scowled at the thought as Shana gazed up at her blankly.
“You’re Veronica Hillyard,” she said, as if they’d just met.
“Veronica Quick,” Ronnie corrected. “You got it right the first time. Hillyard’s my soon-to-be ex’s name.”
A bit of color swept into Shana’s cheeks. Guilt, maybe, over her intimate knowledge of Galen? If that vision was accurate?
“You’re the psychic,” she stated.
“I’m an assistant in my father’s law firm,” she corrected.
“And psychic.”
“Not completely accurate.” If she could count the times she’d had to say that … “I’ve had some … success in predicting things. But it’s more about studying human nature than any real ability.” What a load of crap. She sounded like she was launching into a TED Talk. But it was still easier than admitting she occasionally had episodes, fugue states, lost time … whatever …
Luckily, Shana had lost interest. “Looks like I’m going to be okay. They were worried about my head. I am having a little trouble remembering things, but I remember being at your apartment.”
“Serving me divorce papers.”
She grimaced, then sucked a bit of air between her teeth at the pain that moving t
Hot, damp breath … panting … smell of wet fur … whining … scratching …
Ravaged hands … a body … a woman’s body … lying in a clearing … and pounding, pounding, POUNDING!
Ronnie came to on a gasp.
Blinking, disoriented, she realized she was standing in her kitchen, hand on the refrigerator handle.
And someone was slamming their fist against her apartment door.
How long had she been out? A minute? Two? Longer? Whenever she had a vision she lost time, the amount hard to measure. But she’d certainly been having a vision. The force of this one had been like a punch to the chest, which meant it might be real, and it took her a moment to “re-combobulate.”
She took in a long, shaky breath and glanced out the window.
It was five o’clock at night, dark as a cauldron, and she was alone in the apartment, the unit she’d rented six months earlier when she and Galen had separated … after she’d had enough of his lies and he’d had enough of her weirdness. He’d married her because she was the boss’s daughter and she’d married him because … God, she couldn’t even remember and it had only been two years.
“I’m coming!” she yelled to the increased pounding. Sheesh. Everybody was so impatient these days.
She walked the six steps to the front door and cautiously pulled it open. On the other side was a white-faced, anxious-looking woman. Her dark hair was threaded with fine silver hair filaments, though she didn’t look like she was much into her thirties. She wore a black rain jacket, no hood, beads of rainwater competing with the silvery strands. Her makeup was heavily applied, her dark eyes rimmed in black. One arm was straight down, locked to her side, the opposite hand reached up to touch her face as if suddenly wondering what she looked like.
“Veronica Quick?” she asked tensely.
“Yes?”
Familiar. She was so familiar, but Ronnie didn’t think she knew her. Behind her rain was pouring from the skies in sheets and a cold burst of wet December air swept inside the apartment, an eager, uninvited guest. The woman reached inside her jacket with the hand that had touched her face, pulled out a large, manila envelope and thrust it forward. Ronnie’s hand came up automatically as the woman slapped the envelope down hard, declaring, “You’ve been served.”
Galen beat me to the punch.
Ronnie was almost impressed by his speed. She suspected she was holding divorce papers and couldn’t decide if her anger was at her soon-to-be ex because he was such an all-around shit, or because she’d been cheated out of serving him first. Probably a little of both. Her gaze dropped briefly to the envelope, then upward to the deliverer, who was eyeing Ronnie as if she were memorizing her face.
The woman looked like someone she should know, but Ronnie wondered if that were true. She’d experienced the consequences of engaging with people who might have heard something about her psychic ability and were seeking her out because of it. Yes, her “gift” was known around River Glen, maybe all of Oregon and beyond, for all she knew, as was the fact that Veronica Quick was a certified nutcase. Didn’t matter to some that she worked hard to pretend and deny this extra ability since more often than not it got her into trouble.
Ronnie tried to place the woman. She looked like someone from one of her visions, in that watery sort of way that always irked her. If you’re given a gift, shouldn’t it be more reliable? Something you could actually use?
Bark, bark, bark. Ronnie turned to her right, recognizing the sound as the dog from her dream, though she didn’t see it.
“What?” the woman on her doorstep demanded.
“Nothing. The dog.”
“I don’t like dogs. Keep it away from me,” she muttered, then turned on the heels of her black Doc Martens and stomped toward the stairs that led to the parking lot. Ronnie watched her progress through the incessant downpour. She was bareheaded and apparently oblivious to the rain. In the lot below, she splashed through the shallow puddles on the tarmac, the overhead lights marking her progress as she headed for a gray Ford Explorer. Ronnie noted the license plate, a habit, and as soon as she was back inside, wrote it down on a piece of scratch paper.
She might be considered a psychic but she could forget data as well as the next person.
She finally looked down at the now wet envelope in her right hand. It was from a different law firm than Tormelle & Quick. No surprise there; it was from Galen’s new firm. He’d sexted too many women online while at Tormelle & Quick, which had caused his firing. Most of the firm believed it was because he’d cheated on her, but the sexting was what really chafed her father. Jonas felt betrayed as he’d initially been Galen’s champion. Ronnie felt he’d wanted to unload responsibility for her, even while always telling her what he wanted her to do with her life.
“Time to go back to law school,” Jonas had told her when she and Galen had separated, which, as ever, had irked Ronnie. Maybe it was a function of her father’s overbearing plans that had made her deaf to his pleas. She liked being an assistant at the firm. It kept those who felt uneasy over her extra “ability” feeling safe and maybe a little superior. As long as the boss’s daughter with her strange woo-woo stayed out of the legal limelight, she could be tolerated.
An ear-splitting squeal of brakes from the highway rang through the apartment. It came from behind the complex. Ronnie froze, listening hard at the drawn-out shriek from the tires.
CRASH!!!
Tossing down the envelope unopened, she leapt across the living room toward the small rear balcony of her apartment, throwing open the sliding door and stepping onto the slick, wooden deck boards. Rain splashed onto her head from a listing gutter and ran down the front of her shirt and jeans into her black ankle boots. She leaned over the railing, swiping moisture from her face. The highway below was known for speeders clipping each other. Sporadic serious accidents occurred. She could smell the wet bark and earth as she peered through the bare tree limbs of the deciduous trees that ran down the hill toward the highway. Cockeyed headlights flooded the area where a pileup of cars was already stopping traffic. Vehicles were every which way. Crumpled metal flashed under the myriad headlights.
There was a gray SUV turned sideways. Like the one her messenger had driven.
Rain poured down from the skies.
Shit …
Racing back inside, Ronnie swept wet strands of hair from her forehead. She grabbed her coat and cross-body purse and racewalked to her own SUV, a dark blue Ford Escape. Slamming the door, she pushed the button to engage the engine and the Escape roared to life. She drove directly into the traffic jam, which was already backing up, nearly stopping. There was enough room for vehicles to still creep around on the shoulder and she followed after them, much to the fury of the drivers stuck in the inside lanes who honked madly at the moving cars.
Sirens sounded in the distance as she followed the slow-moving line. When the makeshift lane suddenly stopped, she pulled as far off onto the shoulder as possible. In front of her the road was completely blocked by the mangled cars. Rain blew over them in curtains as she stepped out, bending her head against the wind as she pushed forward.
A man holding a cell phone to his ear stood outside a red Tesla. “Get back in your car! I called 911!” he yelled.
“I know her,” said Ronnie, pointing to the gray Explorer. Its front end was demolished. The woman who’d served her papers must have slammed her foot to the accelerator as soon as she hit the highway to cause that much damage.
“Ma’am, get back in your car. It’s not safe.”
As if the gods heard his words a small pickup zigzagged around the stopped cars, suddenly racing toward them, clipping one car and taking out the front bumper of another as it aimed forward like a bullet. Tesla-guy grabbed Ronnie and practically threw them both toward the deep ditch running along the highway. She slid into icy water, but somehow remained upright, her boots drowning in the small running stream that had developed from the rain. She sank ankle-deep into the mud.
At the last minute the driver had yanked his steering wheel in order to miss Ronnie’s Escape—thank the gods—but it plowed into the back of a white Prius that was still trying to inch forward in traffic. Ronnie could see that the woman inside the Prius was thrown against the dash, then back again. She lifted a hand to the blood forming from a gash on her forehead and started screaming, the sound tinny, barely audible, behind her windows.
Bark, bark, bark, bark!
Ronnie glanced around, wondering which car had the dog.
Tesla-man said, “Fuck me,” under his breath, releasing his hold on Ronnie before climbing back up the incline to the road. Ronnie scrunched her feet inside her boots to increase her grip as she tried to pull each foot out of the mucky stream. Slowly, the boots released with a sucking noise and she worked her way up the slope as well.
The two cars that had apparently created the initial crash were locked together like two bull rams, squaring off. The drivers were outside, staring at the mess while the icy December rain bore down.
The woman process server managed to wrench open the door of her gray SUV and climbed outside. She swayed for a bit in the rushing wind. She, too, had a gash across her forehead and regarded Ronnie dazedly. She’d opened her coat and her large breasts were already drenched with rain.
“You all right?” Ronnie asked, though clearly she wasn’t.
She looked around as if she hadn’t heard. She was—
Shana. From The Pond all those years ago. Shana Lloyd and Sloan Hart.
That’s why she seemed so familiar. She was Sloan Hart’s high school girlfriend. Now a process server? Twenty years on she’d aged hard.
And she was about to walk into traffic, while the drivers of the first two cars were still just standing in the rain and the sound of sirens’ wails grew closer.
Shana took a step toward the road.
“Stop!” Ronnie grabbed for her. Missed her arm, but Shana seemed to hear because she suddenly froze, though her legs wobbled. She turned her head to look at Ronnie, her eyes moving like they were in a game of marbles.
Ronnie suddenly felt a flood of emotion. Desire and love and sadness. Coming from Shana. A full-on sensory rush that narrowed into a picture of Shana in a wood-paneled office, kneeling beneath a desk, Galen in the chair with her head bobbing up and down as she pleasured him, his head thrown back, eyes closed, his hands in her hair. Shana … and Galen?
Ronnie saw Shana running her fingers through Ronnie’s soon-to-be ex’s prematurely gray hair, her head thrown back, mewling cries issuing from her parted lips. Or … what?
Ronnie blinked against the rain.
The vision blew apart like fairy dust. Instead Shana stood in front of Ronnie, wet and bedraggled, blood running down her cheek from the gash on her head.
Immediately Ronnie wasn’t sure of what she’d seen. The vision didn’t have that sensation of something creeping out of the dark to leave its ominous message. This one was more … indistinct. Something maybe true, maybe not. The visions that were real had heft to them.
Ronnie had visited a psychic once herself, kind of as a joke, kind of as a tutorial. She’d been curious about what the seer would say, which had been that Ronnie would have one child with the love of her life. However, the psychic Ronnie had seen had since been mentioned in a lawsuit in which another client, a woman, had learned in the session that she would live a long and healthy life. Within six months that client had died in a mountain climbing accident.
“Do you see her?” Shana asked.
“What? Who?”
She took another step forward, walking directly in front of a car that was edging around the mess of traffic, just as that driver hit the gas. Ronnie screamed at the same moment the driver slammed on his brakes.
Untouched, nevertheless Shana collapsed in a heap onto the wet and muddy shoulder.
Ronnie jumped forward but Tesla-man was faster and was at Shana’s side in a flash. He bent over her as Shana lay on the ground, staring up at the sky, rain running down her head as people, victims and onlookers, gathered around.
Then the scene changed.
For a heartbeat the woman lying in the clearing from Ronnie’s earlier vision was superimposed over Shana’s body. Familiar … so familiar. And somewhere a dog was barking.
Ronnie held her breath. In her mind’s eye, she saw the two women as one, a weird vision that was so damned real. She half expected the vision to play out, to say something to her, to mean something. But no. It remained unchanged. Nothing happened.
In a blink, it was gone—the woman from the clearing having vanished.
Shana was back to looking like Shana. Not moving. Quiet.
Tesla-man was leaning over her. The dog had traded barking for howling. Ronnie’s heart galloped as if it were trying to escape her rib cage.
“She’s breathing,” said Tesla-man. “She’s alive! Come on, lady. You’re okay. Come back! Can you hear me? You’re okay.”
And still the dog howled incessantly.
“Can someone help that dog?” Ronnie muttered, glancing around at the various knots of people who were either in the accident or had stopped to help. “Maybe it’s trapped.”
“Hey, we got a real situation here. This woman needs help.” Tesla-man gave Ronnie a scrutinizing glare before turning his attention to the fast approaching rescue vehicles.
“I know. But it sounds like it’s in pain.”
His dark eyes clapped back to her. “I don’t hear any dog, ma’am.”
It was Ronnie’s turn to stare. “You don’t?”
“No, ma’am.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her, assessing. “Are you all right?”
“I wasn’t in the accident. I’m here to help,” Ronnie assured him, but was starting to feel that sense of unease that crept over her when she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. It happened rarely. Most of the time when she surfaced from a vision she was fully aware again. Now, though, Tesla-man was regarding her in that way that said they were experiencing two different realities.
And the pained yowls of the dog had stopped. Ronnie swallowed hard, trying to concentrate on what was really happening. The wail of the sirens cut off as if strangled as the ambulances arrived on scene. The moment their tires stopped, paramedics leapt from their vehicles to take charge.
Thank God.
Still wondering about the vision, Ronnie waited while Shana was tucked into an ambulance, and then returned to her Escape. Drenched and shivering, rain still running down her face, she thought of the dead woman in the clearing. The black void was sending her a message that she wasn’t getting.
Who was she?
What had happened to her?
Why had her image melded with Shana’s as she lay on the cold, wet shoulder of the road?
And what, if anything, should Ronnie do next?
There was no clear answer.
The night was dark and cold. The cabin was a little more than a lean-to shelter these days. The woman shivered and counted her many sins. She’d made mistakes, vast mistakes as it turned out. She wasn’t good at reading human nature and it was going to kill her … maybe … if she didn’t think of a plan of escape.
The dog whined softly and she pulled it close. It wasn’t her dog but she’d taken it with her for protection.
A chilly wind clattered against the cabin, trembling the walls. She could smell dirt and damp weeds, saw tendrils reaching from beneath the rotting floorboards. She couldn’t stay here long. She had to move … run … She’d racked her brain. Who could she call to help her? Dear God, there was no good answer.
The only person, and it was an insane longshot, the longshot of longshots, was Veronica.
Clutching the dog, burying her face in its black fur, she sent a message into the universe:
I’m in trouble. He’s coming to kill me. I don’t want to die. Help me!
Was that a car engine? She raised her head in alarm, heart galumphing. She didn’t move. The dog growled low in its throat and she quietly shushed it. They’d bonded in their short time together and the animal complied, softly snuffling her ear.
She couldn’t hear the engine now.
Was it real?
Had someone cut it?
Were those footsteps?
Panicked, she strained to listen.
The door of the cabin had a latch on the inside.
Not much to keep her safe. But something.
And yet …
To her horror she watched as a small stick was inserted beneath the latch and pushed upward, releasing it with a small metallic click.
She trembled. Her hand moved to clasp the rock she’d placed beside herself. If the dog couldn’t save her, it would be her last defense.
The dog was quivering all over. Its skin sliding beneath her other hand, beneath its soft fur. The door opened and a black figure stood there. “You called?” said a voice filled with real concern.
Surprise flooded her. Then shock. Full on shock. “You … ? You … found me?”
The dog started barking. Sharp. Insistent. Barking and barking.
Slam!
The world went black.
The next thing she knew she was lying face up in a clearing. A faint moon glowed behind a cloud, a momentary respite from the rain. She wanted that rain now. Desperately. Wanted its cold wash on her face. Needed it to clear her mind. She envisioned diamond droplets falling on her face, rinsing all the bad stuff away.
Then hands circled her throat. Gloved hands. “Why?” she asked but it might have been in her mind.
The last thing she remembered was the frenzied barking of the dog, somewhere far away …
Ronnie woke on a strangled gasp, the fragmented dark images of a nightmare slipping away even as she tried to mentally grab them, unsure of their import. She took a couple of deep breaths, coming into focus. Had she seen the woman in the clearing again? It felt like it, but she couldn’t quite put it together.
Tell the police about her …
She snorted at herself as she got out of bed and headed for the shower. Oh, sure. That had worked so well last time when she’d showed up at the River Glen Police Department to warn them that Edmond Olman was going to attempt to murder his ex-wife and they’d better put him under surveillance, maybe even arrest him on some dummied-up charge, just to keep him from killing her.
Detective Elena Verbena had regarded her soberly and, to her credit, had increased patrol cars to drive by the Olman house, but it hadn’t helped because Olman had already beaten his wife within an inch of her life. She very nearly died in the days in between the time Ronnie warned the police about him and her unconscious body was discovered.
Olman was now in jail and Ronnie had been grilled long into the night by River Glen’s finest. Only her father’s charge to her rescue had gotten her released. They were sure she knew something more, was somehow involved. She’d heard the incredulity in the voice of one of cops who’d interviewed her at the time. “You say a vision just came to you?” Needless to say, the River Glen P.D. had come to view Veronica Quick as someone to be wary of. The wife moved back in with family in Minnesota and Ronnie’s uneasy relationship with the police grew uneasier.
Galen was no help at all. He’d never believed much in her abilities and his lack of coming to her aid was another reason the marriage failed so quickly. After that Ronnie had doubled down on her decision to keep her “possible idiopathic neural abnormality” (idiopathic meaning no discernible cause) to herself.
As she was getting ready for work today, she called Dawn at the front desk and left a message that she would be late. She planned to check on Shana before heading to the office. Ronnie had watched her being loaded into an ambulance and felt oddly connected to her.
Now, thinking of how the dead woman’s image had been superimposed over Shana’s face, Ronnie’s mind flicked to another recent bout of extrasensory information that had taken her over.
Barely weeks ago she’d seen trouble coming for P.I. Jesse James Taft, who’d been in the line of sight of two murderous females aiming for his demise.
Ronnie had perceived a mental image of Taft’s sister, his dead sister, Helene to be precise, who just happened to be his personal muse, and one he apparently saw from time to time himself. Whether Taft actually did see her was yet to be determined, but her “ghost” was someone he talked to.
Ronnie, on the other hand, had gotten a very clear message from Helene that Taft was in danger. Serious danger. When Taft recognized that Ronnie had actually seen his sister, he’d been gobsmacked. He hadn’t believed it and consequently hadn’t listened to Ronnie as carefully as he should have.
Taft was so grounded in reality that the idea Helene could be something more than just a memory was anathema. He’d even thought the times he’d envisioned her were just his mind playing tricks on him.
There was only so much Ronnie could do to explain her “gift,” especially since she didn’t really understand it herself. She had passed on the message from Helene, that Taft was in danger and left him to deal with it.
That he’d nearly been killed and her vision had proved true probably left him with more questions than answers. She didn’t know because she’d avoided Taft ever since, not wanting to have a post mortem on exactly what she’d seen, felt and known was going to happen to him. He was just the latest who’d sparked a vision.
Until the dead woman in the clearing.
After checking her black slacks, jacket and white collarless blouse in the mirror, she glanced out the window. Gray clouds hung low in the sky, but the rain was holding off for the moment. Her boots were sitting by the back door, still caked with half-wet muck, so she slipped on black flats, then took the boots outside, knocking them against the rail that ran along this second level above the parking lot.
Angel Vasquero, Ronnie’s neighbor, was already leaning against that rail in a pair of low-hung jeans and a gray T-shirt, barefoot. He watched the little flakes of mud from her boots dropping down to the parking lot below, then eyed her with a slight smile. They didn’t know each other well, but the vibe he gave off was always lazy amusement.
“Hey, pretty lady.”
Ronnie gave him a look. Angel worked hard to give her the impression that he was an idle Hispanic just hanging around between gigs, but there was a lot more going on with him than he wanted her to know. She suspected he was either an informant for the police, or a cop himself, because he’d appeared shortly after she’d rented her apartment. This had been a few weeks after she’d related her suspicions about Edmond Olman to the police, so it was a pretty good bet there was something there. His living next to her was more than mere coincidence.
Angel lackadaisically gestured toward her boots. “Looks like you ran into some trouble.”
“Something like that.”
His dark hair was slicked back, still wet from an apparent shower. “How’s the lawyering going?”
“I’m not a lawyer. I’m an assistant.” As she’d explained to him before.
“Whose old man owns the place.”
“Still an assistant.”
She wished she would be hit with some kind of mental background on him, but that’s not how her gift worked. She had no control over when and how something from the dark void would creep over her, replacing what her eyes saw with an inner screen. The more intense the image, the more credible the vision. Sometimes, if she closed her eyes, let herself relax, made a point of opening up her mind … sometimes she could coax it forward. Sometimes … not often.
And sometimes what she saw was utter bullshit.
“You know Daria Armenton?” Angel asked now.
“Yes, I do,” Ronnie said, in some surprise.
Daria Armenton was one of the heirs to a fortune of the newly deceased Frank Rollberson, who’d bought certain stocks in the nineties that had increased in value nearly twenty-five times, leaving him a very rich man with no children. Daria was the young Hispanic woman who’d taken care of Rollberson for the last ten years or so and she was being sued by Rollberson’s myriad shoestring relatives who’d only received small amounts and felt Daria’s piece belonged to them, too. Rollberson’s estate lawyer, Martin Calgheny, was with Tormelle & Quick and had asked Ronnie to attend the reading of the will, which she had several months earlier.
“She’s my cousin,” Angel informed her. “She’s being hassled. Some lawyer’s coming after her.”
Had she been wrong about Angel? She didn’t think so … but … ?
“She might need someone to defend her,” he added.
“She should talk to Martin Calgheny. He’s the one who handled the distribution of the estate. Martin would be best to find someone to repre—”
“Daria said you were there, too, though,” he interrupted, straightening, suddenly all business. “She came by the other day, saw you, remembered you. I told her I’d talk to you.”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Ronnie repeated. “But I’ll talk to Martin.”
“Will you?” Angel’s dark eyes said he doubted that she would.
“Yes. I will,” she said firmly, then headed down the stairs to her SUV.
River Glen General Hospital’s main parking lot was nearly full when Ronnie pulled in and she had to circle around and squeeze into a spot that made it hard to open her door. She managed to climb out without too much car dirt transferring to her jacket, then hurried around the puddles to the front doors, which slid open as she approached.
She asked to see Shana Lloyd and was directed to an elevator to the fourth floor. She’d had a lie all ready on her tongue, planning to say she was a family friend and Shana’s lawyer, but she didn’t need to use it. She was actually a good liar, having been forced to cover up her occasional lapses that made everyone uncomfortable. Far easier than trying to explain she was merely “lost in the psychic moment.” She might have been able to pull that off if her predictions were always accurate, but since that wasn’t the case … lying …
On the fourth floor, the elevator doors opened and Ronnie faced a nurse in light blue scrubs and a low ponytail who was waiting to enter. She netted a small smile from the woman who barely glanced at her before trading places with Ronnie and heading into the elevator. The doors had closed behind her before Ronnie’s brain clicked into gear.
Brandy.
Ronnie quickly looked back at the elevator’s blank doors, but Brandy’s car was already moving downward. She should’ve recognized the dark ponytail, the intent look Brandy wore most times.
You didn’t recognize Shana at first.
Well, that was true, but she hadn’t known Shana all that well, whereas Brandy …
One thing was for certain: It was fast becoming old home week. She hadn’t seen Brandy Mercer since they were in high school and even then their elementary-school friendship had turned into little more than an acquaintanceship in their upper grades. She was aware Brandy had become a nurse, but she hadn’t known she was back in River Glen. The last she’d heard, which was admittedly a while ago, Brandy had been living in Arizona. And Mel … she’d gotten married to some guy in tech and moved to the Bay Area for a while, she thought.
Shana was alone when Ronnie entered, pressed up against pillows, awake and almost as pale as the white pillowcase and bandage that ran over the gash on her forehead and covered her left eyebrow. Her breasts pressed against the hospital gown. Ronnie had a moment of recalling the image she’d had of her kneeling in front of Galen’s chair, but pushed it aside. Galen was history. Her pride might be bruised that he’d only chosen her because she was Jonas Quick’s daughter, but hadn’t she really suspected that all along at some level? If she really wanted to drill down on it, she would find she’d wanted to get married and Galen had crossed her path at the right time … and, lame as it was, one small reason she’d wanted to wed was to abolish that damn prediction she’d made about marrying Sloan Hart.
She scowled at the thought as Shana gazed up at her blankly.
“You’re Veronica Hillyard,” she said, as if they’d just met.
“Veronica Quick,” Ronnie corrected. “You got it right the first time. Hillyard’s my soon-to-be ex’s name.”
A bit of color swept into Shana’s cheeks. Guilt, maybe, over her intimate knowledge of Galen? If that vision was accurate?
“You’re the psychic,” she stated.
“I’m an assistant in my father’s law firm,” she corrected.
“And psychic.”
“Not completely accurate.” If she could count the times she’d had to say that … “I’ve had some … success in predicting things. But it’s more about studying human nature than any real ability.” What a load of crap. She sounded like she was launching into a TED Talk. But it was still easier than admitting she occasionally had episodes, fugue states, lost time … whatever …
Luckily, Shana had lost interest. “Looks like I’m going to be okay. They were worried about my head. I am having a little trouble remembering things, but I remember being at your apartment.”
“Serving me divorce papers.”
She grimaced, then sucked a bit of air between her teeth at the pain that moving t
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