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Too bad she was unaware of the friendly spirit he’d glimpsed accompanying her. Guardian spirits, he called them. Such spirits seemed to have unfinished business or they clung to living loved ones who were troubled. Desi Hollyhock didn’t appear troubled. She was just a pill.
He looked forward to the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Team meeting tonight. She might be a tough cookie, but he was tougher.
If she wore that red sweater, all the better for him.
Chapter Three
When Buck entered Rampart headquarters it was as if a magnet drew his eyes to Desi Hollyhock. She was seated at a battered conference table that took up much of the meeting room. She wore the red sweater, and the swell of her soft breasts seemed to glow. Desi glanced up when he walked inside, but immediately returned to her conversation with a tall, brown-haired woman.
Dallas Stone beckoned Buck. Peeling out of his coat, Buck joined him in the kitchen. Dallas shook Buck’s hand then indicated a man.
“Alec Viho, Buck Walker.”
They shook hands. As soon as Buck made contact he felt a shock of recognition. Alec looked to be in his mid-thirties with long, black hair tied back in a ponytail. His face was dark, hard-planed, with a jutting nose, prominent cheekbones and a sharply outlined jaw. Buck knew they hadn’t met, but something about Alec struck a chord.
Maybe it was the aura.
Buck had seen glimmers of color surrounding people before. It hadn’t happened often and he’d never figured out why only some people had them. Alec’s aura was green and soothing.
“Glad to you meet you,” Alec said. “Dallas says good things.”
“Grab a drink,” Dallas said. “I’m going to see if I can wrangle that herd of cats into a meeting.”
Buck pulled a soda from the fridge. He felt Alec studying him.
“So you have a direct line to the dead,” Alec said. He spoke with the same casualness as if he’d said, “So I see you drive a Jeep.”
Maybe it was the aura, or maybe the man’s utter calm, but Buck felt a sense of relief. “I guess,” Buck said.
“You’re untrained.” Alec nodded. “That’s okay. Never too late to learn.”
“Do you see ghosts?”
“Not so much.”
Buck’s head reeled. He’d never met anyone so accepting. Alec stared out the glass sliding door. Though it was only six o’clock, the backyard was dead dark. Buck could just make out the bulky shape of a gas barbecue grill and a basketball hoop mounted on a tall pole. Buck asked, “Why do you believe me?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”
Feminine laughter caused both men to turn their heads. The female members of the team had gathered at the far end of the conference table. Buck caught Desi’s eyes. She gave him an icy look before turning back to her friends.
Alec chuckled, low and charged with amusement. “Don’t take it personal, Buck. She doesn’t like me, either.”
Buck stiffened, wondering if his feelings were that transparent or if Alec was extremely intuitive. He hoped it was the latter. “She’s a piece of work.”
“She has a good heart. A warrior’s heart. But she shoulders the problems of others instead of looking at her own.” Alec smiled. “She throws boulders on her own life path.”
Interesting man, Buck thought. “Did you get to the Moore house today?”
Alec nodded. “It was quiet when we left. All are where they belong now.”
Buck hoped the little boy had joined his loved ones on the Other Side. He really hoped the Dark Presence had gone straight to hell.
“Everybody’s here,” Dallas said. “Let’s get the show on the road.”
Buck took a chair near the head of the table and Alec sat beside him. Fifteen people crowded around the conference table. Dallas pointed to Tara Chase, Rampart’s researcher and historian.
Tara opened a folder. “I found more info about the Moore house. You’ve all seen the transcript of the question-and-answer session with Desi, Buck and the K2 meter, right? If you didn’t get the e-mail, let me know and I’ll resend it.” She glanced at her notes. “After the original owner died, his younger brother inherited the house. He had six children. Three boys and three girls. The youngest, a little boy named Jonathon, was the only child of the husband’s third wife. He died of influenza in 1919. He was nine years old.”
“Wow,” John Ringo said. “That fits exactly with what Buck and Desi picked up in the K2 session. Good job, Tara.”
She closed the folder. “I should be able to post all the material I found out about the house this week. Even without ghosts it’s a fascinating place.”
Dallas nodded. “We did a blessing at the Moores today. It went well. The Moores aren’t leaving, but they did move their bedroom downstairs to a room where nothing is torn up. They say they feel better since the investigation, and they haven’t been seeing or hearing things. I think Mr. Moore was more shaken up by the EVP than Mrs. Moore was, but he seems cool with it now. Especially since his wife isn’t waking up screaming anymore. They invited us to come back when the renovations are finished to see if we can catch anything else. Chalk one up to the good guys.”
Heads bobbed and murmurs rippled through the room. Buck caught Desi’s sideways glance. She slid her attention away as if she hadn’t been looking at him at all.
“Well, folks,” Pippin O’Malley said. The pretty redhead with big green eyes and a smattering of freckles tapped the scarred tabletop with her knuckles. “I have a case our resident psychic might be able to help with.”
All eyes turned to Buck and his spine went rigid.
“I’ve been talking to a single mom with two kids. Her cousin lives with her. The cousin says she’s a psychic and she senses unhealthy spirits in the house. Our single mom thinks her children are in danger.”
“Boot the cousin to the street,” Desi said. “Problem solved.”
“I agree,” Pippin said. “But I don’t think she’ll do that.”
“Any activity?” Dallas asked.
“Only the cousin’s claims. I feel bad for the mom. She’s barely making it financially, but she’s ready to break her lease and move her kids out.”
Buck asked, “How do you think I could help?”
Pippin smiled at Buck. “A psychic reading.”
Several people burst into laughter. Buck felt like slinking out of the meeting and never returning.
“Shut up!” Dallas rapped the table. “Come on, guys. We aren’t icy-cold scientists. Part of our mission is to help people. For God’s sake, we’re talking little kids here. Go ahead, Pip.”
Buck hated the word “reading” It sounded like something you did with a 1-900 number after asking a sucker for a credit card number.
Pippin said, “Buck isn’t like those guys on television.”
Desi snorted and slumped on her chair. “They’re all crackpots.” The hard look she tossed at Buck said Just like you .
Buck met her glare with narrowed eyes.
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain there’s nothing paranormal going on,” Pippin said. “So let’s call this a mission of mercy. We do a full investigation, then Buck can do a reading. Counteract the cousin. Who does sound like one of those guys on television, by the way.”
“A battle of the psychics?” Desi shook her head, sending her hair swinging across her shoulders. “Pip, I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb.” She looked around the room. “Doesn’t anybody else see how dangerous that could be? The cousin is an attention junkie. You all know how people like that are. The more we expose her as a fake, the harder she’ll try to prove us wrong.”
A few agreed, others disagreed, but Buck stayed silent. Desi made a good point.
Pippin said, “Speaking as a therapist and as a single mom, I think she’s looking for someone to assure her the kids are safe. Maybe a few sessions with me can help her work out the issues with her cousin. It will help if an investigation fails to catch anything.”
“It’ll make us a laughing stock,” Desi said. “Psychic crap undermines our credibility.”
Buck’s jaw tightened. “It’s not crap. The things I see and hear are real. What it is exactly and where it comes from is a mystery. But that doesn’t mean I’m a fake.” Temptation burned to tell her that right now, right in this room, several spirits were hanging around—including the entity he’d noticed near Desi at the antique store.
“There’s an explanation for hearing voices. Schizophrenia.”
“There’s an explanation for you, ” he shot back. “Close-minded.”
“I’m not watching you play ‘Oooh, I’m picking up a J name.’ John, Jack?” She pitched her voice high. “A friend of my third cousin, twice removed, is named Julie! That’s it! Oh yay! You really are psychic!” She clapped her hands in mock delight.
Buck’s jaw ached from tension. This made twice in one day Desi had poked his temper.
Dallas’s eyes blazed and his big hands clenched, making veins stand out on the backs. “Drop this for now, Pip. You can fill me in on the details later.”
The meeting resumed on a subdued note. After Dallas announced it was over, some of the team members looked as if they couldn’t escape quickly enough.
Buck pulled on his coat. He and Desi were going to have this out, one way or another.
“H EY , D ESI ,” Dallas said. “Stick around a minute.”
She watched Buck leave the house. The anxious ache in her belly worsened. She couldn’t believe how she’d acted. She couldn’t believe she’d been so nasty…so childish. Drawing a steadying breath, she faced Dallas Stone.
She stared over his head at a framed poster for the movie Swamp Thing.
Ringo kept his head down and his hands busy clearing the table and straightening chairs. Dallas crooked a finger, indicating Desi should join him in the kitchen. He rested his backside against a counter and folded his arms over his chest. “What the hell is going on between you and Buck?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right. Whether you like it or not, I’m convinced he’s the real thing. He’s as interested in finding the truth as any other member of the team. I’m a skeptic when it comes to claims by psychics and mediums, too. You know damned good and well that I would never invite anyone to join unless I thought they were serious.”
“I have a lot going on with work, and I’m stressed out. I—I didn’t mean it.”
“The problem is,” Dallas said, “you did mean it. I’m not having any dissension on the team. We don’t need negative energy.”
Desi wished she could curl into a tiny ball and disappear. Her throat tightened. She admired and respected Dallas as much or more than any other man she knew. His disappointment in her hurt worse than if he’d slapped her across the face.
“I won’t put you and Buck on the same investigations. I expect you to ease up at the meetings, okay?”
“Okay.”
She slunk out of the duplex.
At home, she took a moment to breathe in the air of her little town house. This was her sanctuary. She turned on her computer. She had work to do for a client and she looked forward to it. Numbers were rational. Numbers never changed their character or delved into the unexplained. Numbers always made sense.
“Get off my chair, Spike,” she said.
The yellow tomcat twitched an ear. She picked him up and he rumbled and meowed in protest. “Go sleep in your basket, you big grouch. That’s my chair. I don’t know why we have to have this argument every single time I need to use the computer.”
Her cell phone rang and she glanced at the clock. Good news never came at this time of night. She answered warily, “Hello?”
“Hi, Desi. This is Buck. Sorry for calling so late.”
Fresh humiliation rolled through her. “Hi.”
“I can’t sleep unless I apologize for tonight. I’m really sorry.”
She lifted her eyebrows. She caught a movement from the corner of her eye and turned in time to see Spike hop back up on her desk chair.
“Desi?”
An apology to him caught in her throat. “I’m not sure what to say.”
“How about saying we can start over. We got off on the wrong foot. I’d like to keep working with you. I can learn a lot.”
He came across as so genuine he was hard to resist. His voice was seductive in its sincerity. She pictured him in the olive-green sweater he’d worn tonight, stretched over his shoulders and chest. As Pippin had said, he was very easy on the eyes. Probably a nice guy, too. She supposed as long as he didn’t offer to read her palm or start talking in tongues she could tolerate him.
As for the psychic abilities, well, she thought, a researcher should wait until all the data was in. “Thanks. I do act stupid sometimes. We can start over.”
A bright flash in the kitchen was followed by a loud pop. She squeaked.
“Desi?”
She laughed. “A lightbulb just blew. It startled me. But never mind. Thank you for calling, Buck. I appreciate it. It’s big of you.”
“Maybe—” He paused. “Good. So I’ll see you around.”
After she hung up, she put the cell phone on the charger. She scooped up the cat. Spike grumbled and tensed as she snuggled him. She rubbed between his ears. He acted like a little kid suffering smoochies from an overly enthusiastic auntie. “Everybody else likes him. Guess it’s only fair to wait until he actually screws up before I jump down his throat.”
Another lightbulb blew. Spike twisted. His claws hooked into her arm and she yelped, dropping him.
“Damn it!” She glared past the breakfast bar into the now-dim kitchen. She winced at the scratches where beads of blood formed on her skin. Shaking her head in disgust, she went upstairs to find the antiseptic.
U NSETTLED , B UCK FROWNED at the phone. On the one hand he was relieved to have made up with Desi. On the other hand, a most unpleasant sensation prickled his scalp. He’d felt something when she said the lightbulb blew. A brief feeling, a micro-instant of knowing. Sourness filled his mouth and settled in his guts.
Alec said the Moore house was cleansed of spirit activity. Even so…The prickling worsened, and Buck dragged in a deep breath.
Dark Presences. After his encounter with their malignancy in the past, Buck had vowed to never allow one to notice him again. Like all ghosts, Dark Presences had unfinished business and they had an eternity to finish it. Unlike most other ghosts, Dark Presences had the power to manipulate the physical world. They had the power to manipulate people.
Whether she meant it as a joke or not, Buck feared Desi had opened a doorway to something very bad.
S QUINTING AGAINST SUNLIGHT , Desi grabbed the obnoxiously ringing cell phone. If Gwen was calling at this ungodly hour of the morning, Desi was going to strangle her over the airwaves. In case it was a business call, Desi forced brightness into her tone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Desi. This is Buck. Sorry to wake you.”
