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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 hard-wood 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?”
Couldn’t he just leave her alone? “They scare me. I don’t usually like what I see.”
His footsteps sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of drawing drapes. The thoughtfulness of the action surprised her.
His expression was hard to read in the darkness, but she thought she detected a hint of gentleness in his craggy features. “Thank you,” she murmured.
His expression hardened. “Don’t thank me yet.”
He turned and left her alone in the dark.
* * *
“THE FEDS WILL BE bringing you a copy of the tape,” McBride told Theo Baker over the phone. “Get it to Andrew Walters ASAP.” Maybe Walters would recognize the voice.
And maybe pigs would fly.
McBride hung up and slumped on the sofa, tension banding across his shoulders. His gut churned like a whirlpool, but his antacids were at the office.
How convenient that a day after he’d mentioned the fact that the kidnappers hadn’t yet called, Lily Browning should be the one contacted. Surely she saw how guilty it made her look. Yet she’d phoned him instead of Andrew Walters, who’d be far less skeptical about her motives.
What kind of game was she playing? And why had the caller sounded so spooked when she’d accused him of hitting Abby? “What the hell are you?” he’d asked. Either the guy was a heck of an actor or he didn’t know Lily or what she claimed to be.
There could be an explanation for that, of course. Maybe the kidnappers were hired thugs, and Lily’s connection was to whoever had hired them to grab the girl. Paul Leonardi? McBride had watched Leonardi closely at the funeral home. When he’d approached Lily, it had seemed like a first-time meeting.
Gerald Blackledge? He’d made a point to talk to Lily at the funeral. And what kind of man would commandeer a solemn occasion to score political points? A man who thought abducting a little girl would drive her father out of the senatorial race?
McBride’s belly burned like fire.
* * *
WHEN LILY WOKE, the clock on her dresser read 7:45 p.m. Around her, all was so quiet she wondered if McBride had given up and gone for the night. But when she padded barefoot to the kitchen, she found him sitting in one of the chairs facing the counter, where Jezebel perched like a stone statue, her blue eyes crossed in a baleful glare.
“I don’t think she’d want you on the counter,” McBride was telling the cat. “In fact, why don’t you come over here and see me?”
Jezebel’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t budge.
“Come on, kitty. Come see McBride. Come on,” he crooned.
Lily bit back a chuckle of sympathy as Jezebel turned and started grooming herself.
McBride’s voice dropped to a sexy rumble. “Got a big ol’ lap here, puss. And I’ve been told I have talented hands. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
A quiver rippled down Lily’s spine.
“Oh, I see, you like playin’ hard to get. You must be a female.” McBride sat back and propped one ankle on the opposite knee. “That’s okay. I’m a patient man. I can wear you down.”
Lily decided to end the standoff before his sexy drawl melted her into a puddle in the kitchen doorway. “You’re trying to seduce the wrong woman.”
The detective’s head whipped around in surprise.
“Jezzy hates everyone but me. It drives my sister Rose crazy.” Lily picked up the cat and cuddled her a moment, smiling at his flummoxed expression when Jezebel melted in her arms, butting her face against Lily’s chin.
She set her on the floor. “Delilah’s the pushover.”
As if Lily had spoken a command, Delilah entered the kitchen, tail twitching, and wound herself around McBride’s ankle. He reached down and scratched the cat’s ears. Delilah rewarded him with a rumbling purr of pleasure.
“Better?” Lily sat across from him, glancing at the loose sheets of notepaper littering her kitchen table.
He gave her a considering look, gathering up the papers. His short hair was mussed and spiky, softening the hard lines of his face. His presence filled her kitchen, branding every inch of space he occupied as his own.
And a traitorous part of her liked the idea that he belonged here. With her.
The corded muscles of his forearms rippled as he stacked the sheets in a neat pile in front of him. When he spoke, his voice was gruff. “Headache better?”
“Yeah.” Awareness shuddered through her, a magnet drawing her toward him. She’d already leaned his way when she caught herself. She rose from the table, wishing she hadn’t closed the distance between them. “Have you eaten dinner?”
“No. Didn’t realize what time it was.”
She pulled sliced turkey, cheese and a jar of mayonnaise from the refrigerator. “I can make you a sandwich.”
