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Lily tried to hide her surprise. She’d have thought the election would be the last thing on Andrew’s mind.
“You think that’s cold of me.” He sounded resigned.
“No,” she replied.
“People have invested a lot of time and money in my campaign. For their sakes, I have to go through the motions.” He beckoned for her to join him in the sitting area. “It’s good to have something constructive to focus on, to keep my mind away from the worst possibilities.”
She sat where he indicated. “Understandable.”
He sank into an armchair and slanted a considering look at her. “The FBI told me about the call from the kidnapper. Why do you think he called you?”
If Andrew Walters harbored the same suspicions as Lieutenant McBride, he hid it well. He looked desperate and anxious, but he didn’t seem distrustful.
Lily wished she had a better answer for both of them. “I guess they saw my picture in the paper. From the funeral. My name was in the caption, and I don’t imagine there are that many Lily Brownings listed in the Borland phone book.” It was the only explanation that made sense.
“I wonder how the press got your name in the first place.”
She cocked her head. “I assumed you gave it to them.”
“No.” His eyes narrowed. “Probably Blackledge. He knew people would see us together and make assumptions. ‘Andrew Walters didn’t even let his first wife’s body get cold before he found someone else.’”
She grimaced. “People won’t think that.”
He gave her a look that made her feel very naive.
She shook her head, appalled. “If my being there—”
“This is politics. Dirt gets flung. I’m becoming a little better at ducking these days.” His face tightened with anxiety. “McBride says you’ve had visions of my daughter. What did you see?”
She told him what she’d seen in her visions, holding back only the appearance of the second little girl. Andrew Walters listened, his hands clenched in his lap, his sharp-eyed gaze moving over her face as if gauging her veracity. “What was she wearing?” he asked when she finished.
For a second, Lily’s mind went blank. She remembered so much about Abby—the way she smelled, the tear tracks down her dirty, freckled face, the way one red curl hung just off center over her forehead. But what she was wearing?
Lily closed her eyes, recreating the most vivid scene, the one where Abby had been huddled in the back of the moving car. She heard the hum of the motor, smelled the musty odor of the blanket under which the child had crouched, cold and afraid. She saw the messy red curls, the chattering teeth.
The light blue overalls with a yellow rabbit on the front.
“Overalls.” Her voice shook. “Pale blue with a yellow bunny on the bib. And she had a long-sleeved white turtleneck underneath.”
When Lily looked up, Andrew’s face had gone pale. His voice shook when he spoke. “My God, you did see her.”
She released a shaky breath. She’d been afraid she was wrong, that her visions really were delusions, as McBride apparently thought. “That’s what she was wearing?”
The man nodded, color slowly seeping back into his face. “A neighbor who saw her Friday morning remembered the outfit. She’d bought it for Abby on her last birthday.”
“So you believe me?”
Andrew reached across the space between them and took her hand. His expression solemn, he nodded. “I believe you.”
Relief swamped her. “Mr. Walters, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
He managed a smile. “Thank you. And please, call me Andrew.”
She nodded. “Andrew—”
The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted her, the sound jarring her spine.
“The dedicated line.” Andrew’s voice sounded strangled.
“Answer it,” she urged, breathless. Her nerves were so taut that she didn’t recognize the signs until gray mist invaded the edge of her vision.
As the fog thickened, she glimpsed a man hunched over a phone in a dim room. She barely made out dark green walls and a computer nearby. The man’s blond hair was thin and patchy, and his skin was milky pale. The glow of the computer screen made twin blue squares on the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.
It was the caller, she realized when he spoke.
“Mr. Walters, listen quick.” Lily was certain she’d never heard the voice before. It definitely wasn’t the harsh-voiced man who’d hit Abby, the one who’d called her home on Wednesday.
“Who is this?” Andrew demanded.
“We have your daughter.”
“Is Abby there?” Andrew’s voice was like a fly buzzing in her ear, oddly unreal, even though he was in the same room with her. “Let me speak to her!”
“You have until tomorrow afternoon to get five hundred grand together. When you do that, you’ll talk to your kid. Got it? And if you call the cops, you’ll never see your kid again.” The caller shifted, his desk chair creaking.
Beyond him, Lily saw a bed with rumpled green sheets. A newspaper lay near the pillows. Abby Walters’s freckled face stared up from its front page. But there was no sign of Abby. And the room didn’t remotely resemble the one where she’d seen the little girl in her visions.
“I’ll call back tomorrow to tell you where to drop the money.” The caller’s hand shook as he clutched the phone.
He’s not one of the kidnappers, Lily thought. They know not to call Andrew Walters directly.
She struggled against the swallowing mists, trying to slam shut the door of her mind. She’d seen all she needed to see. She had to tell Mr. Walters what she knew.
She emerged with a jolt when he banged the telephone receiver into its cradle and bent over the table, sucking in several deep, steadying breaths.
Lily stumbled to the couch and sat, pressing her hand to her head. Fighting to end the vision before it was finished had a price; colorful lights crowded her vision, and the first twinge of pain shot up from the base of her skull. She fumbled in her purse for her pills and swallowed one dry, laying her head back against the sofa cushions.
Andrew turned to face her. “He wouldn’t let me talk to her.” Anxiety creased his handsome face.
“He doesn’t have her.” Lily lifted her eyes to meet his, hating to burst his tiny bubble of hope. She told him what she could remember about the vision. “It was a hoax. I’m sorry.”
Andrew sank to the sofa next to her and buried his face in his hands. She touched his shoulder, unsure how to comfort him.
Someone rapped on the door. Andrew went to let two detectives into the room. “He wasn’t on long enough for a trace, and his caller ID’s blocked,” one of them said.
Lily was no longer listening. She drifted on a river of pain, barely aware of the voices of the detectives talking or the trill of Andrew’s cell phone when his campaign manager called back. Andrew’s voice faded as he took the call in another room.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed before a new voice roused her from her pain-washed daze. She struggled up from the depths of the soft couch and opened her eyes.
Detective McBride’s stormy eyes stared back.
* * *
MCBRIDE CROUCHED IN front of Lily, trying to be angry. But she looked ready to collapse. Purple smudges bruised her eyes—headache, he guessed. “Walters says you think it’s a hoax.”
She hugged herself. The room was warm, but chill bumps dotted her bare arms. “I wish he’d kept that to himself.”
“Why?” McBride lowered his voice to a gentle murmur.
Her eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you angry I’m here?”
Tiny lines etched the skin around her eyes and mouth. Pain lines. He couldn’t stop himself from touching a tiny crease in her forehead, gently smoothing it. “You have a headache?”
Her eyes drifted closed and she nodded, turning her head to give his fingers better access. Her body arched toward him, like a kitten responding to a gentle caress.
He dropped his hand with difficulty. “What did you do, fight your vision?”
Her eyes fluttered open. “I wanted to tell Andrew Walters about the hoax as quickly as possible.” She stumbled over some of the words, as if she couldn’t quite make them all fit together. “I fought to leave the vision before it was through.”
And paid the price, he thought, then chided himself for letting himself get sucked into her delusion. Whatever had caused her headache, it damn well wasn’t a psychic vision.
But she was right about the call being a hoax. Though smart enough to block his caller ID and keep his call too short for a trace, the man had blown it by not getting his business done in one shot.
Tomorrow he’d phone back and they’d get him.
“Can I go home now?” Lily leaned forward, bracing her hands on the sofa cushion. McBride stood to give her room to rise, but she moved faster than he did. Their bodies touched for a long, electric moment before he backed out of her way.
Maybe she was a witch, he thought, his body responding to her presence like fire to oxygen. He seemed entirely at her mercy, no matter how he tried to fight it. “Are you okay to drive?”
“I’m fine. The medicine’s already working. And don’t worry, officer. It’s the non-drowsy formula.” She gazed up at him, her eyes wide and glowing in the lamplight. Her body swayed toward him before she pulled herself up and slid past him, moving toward the door. McBride remained where he was, watching with clenched jaw as Andrew Walters closed his hand around Lily’s arm and bent toward her, their faces intimately close as they spoke. Walters’s grasp on Lily’s arm became a gentle stroking, almost like a lover’s caress.
McBride’s chest tightened with anger.
“Lieutenant?”
McBride tore his attention away from Lily and Walters to look at the detective who’d contacted him after the call.
“Do you want to take the tape with you or do you want me to bag it and send it by courier?” the detective repeated.
“Courier,” McBride answered.
As the two technicians headed out, McBride’s eyes swung back to the door.
But Lily was gone.
He crossed to Walters. “You okay?”
Walters blinked as if startled. “Yeah. It’s all just so crazy. Some creep playing with our minds.” He shook his head. “How could someone do that?”
It’s a big, bad world out there, McBride thought. Bigger and badder all the time. “We can’t be sure it’s a hoax.”
“Lily’s sure of it. That’s good enough for me.”
McBride’s stomach sank as he dropped his hand from the other man’s shoulder. “You know, Mr. Walters, we can’t know for certain without a thorough investigation. I know Ms. Browning seems confident of everything she says, but—”
“She doesn’t seem confident. I’d worry more if she did. But she’s been right about everything so far.”
“Like what?”
“She knew what Abby was wearing the day she disappeared.”
McBride shook his head. “That was reported in the paper.”
“Not the yellow rabbit.”
“She knew about the rabbit?” Acid gushed into McBride’s gut. The police had released a description of Abby’s clothing—the blue overalls and white shirt—but held back the yellow rabbit decal to divide the crank calls from the genuine tips.
If Lily Browning had really described what Abby had been wearing, there was only one way she could have known.
She’d seen Abby Walters the morning she disappeared.
And he’d just let a person of interest walk out the door.
Chest tight with growing anger, McBride moved toward the exit. “I’m going to head out now and let our technicians handle things. Are you going to be okay?”
Walters looked exhausted. “I just want my daughter back.”
“We’ll find her.” McBride heard the words, recognized his own voice, but couldn’t believe what he’d said. He’d been raging at Lily Browning for giving Walters false hope, and here he was, adding his own lies to the mix.
He didn’t believe the real kidnappers would call again, because Abby Walters was dead. Too much time had passed, with no sightings, and no clues but a harsh voice on Lily Browning’s answering machine. Who knew whether that phone call was the real thing or just another of Lily’s lies?
But he couldn’t say that to Walters. Not yet. The man had to go through this part of the journey, the hopeful part. Next would come uncertainty, then despair, then the black anger that churned in the gut like a feeding frenzy of piranhas.
McBride didn’t know what came after that.
* * *
AVOIDING THE CONGESTED perimeter highway, Lily took Black Creek Road home. It was a longer drive, but the winding road was lightly traveled, especially on a rainy night, and Lily was in no state of mind to deal with heavy traffic.
At least the migraine was almost gone.
But McBride’s touch lingered like a fiery brand on her skin. She could still conjure up the tang of his aftershave, the intensity of his gaze sweeping over her as if he wanted to strip her bare of her defenses and find out what lay underneath.
Idiot. Trying to guess McBride’s thoughts was a fool’s game. If he thought of her at all, it was as a calculating con artist taking advantage of a wealthy but vulnerable man.
Whimsy wasn’t Lily’s style. She wasn’t the fanciful sister; that was Rose, the hopeless romantic. She wasn’t impulsive and daring like Iris, either. Lily was the eldest, the one with her head screwed on firmly. The one who’d taken care of her younger sisters when their mother died six years ago.
Lily didn’t form ridiculous crushes on men who’d never return her feelings.
