Telling Secrets. Tracy Montoya

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СКАЧАТЬ course. Right on cue.

      Feeling more exhausted than he could remember, he planted his hands on the desk and pushed himself wearily to his feet. “Seriously? You call the police?”

      She nodded. “Of course. I don’t want to lose her, but what if she’s dangerous? Maybe you shouldn’t go out there.”

      “If she’s that dangerous, she would have come in here, guns blazing.” Then again, the murder victim had been a healthy male in his fifties who’d outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. If she’d managed to take him down, she might be more formidable than she looked. The thought didn’t stop him from heading for the door. “I’ll stall her,” he said to Sabrina. “You tell the cops to hurry.” Someone had to keep her occupied until the police arrived, and he wasn’t going to send out Skylar or Bree and cower behind them.

      He pushed through the ranger-station doors and headed outside. In the dimness of the parking lot lights, he could barely make out a lone figure standing next to a small gray compact car, a fringed scarf wrapped around her hair. Just as Sabrina had told him, she wore a pair of sunglasses so huge, they looked like they’d eaten half her face. As he approached, she got in her car, leaning over to open the passenger-side door in an obvious invitation.

      Once he’d climbed inside, pausing briefly to scan the interior and make sure she didn’t have a tranq gun hidden on the floor somewhere, she unwrapped the scarf from around her head and took off the ridiculous sunglasses. And yes, indeed, it was her—the woman from the coffee shop. The insane woman from the coffee shop whose bizarre message had led him to the body of someone who’d died in a way that no one should.

      “What do you want?” His words were harsh, and he didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her when she flinched at his tone.

      She licked her lips, and he was close enough to her to see the light dusting of freckles on her face. The curls that he’d thought were mostly brown had taken on a fiery reddish hue in the light of the setting sun. “My name is Sophie Brennan, and I wanted to apologize,” she began. “I had no idea what I told you this morning would lead you to…what you found.” She shifted her weight slightly in her seat, so she was leaning away from him as if she were afraid. He scowled at the thought that he would have frightened her—he wasn’t the one sending people to find murder victims.

      “What I found was a body,” he said, trying to keep himself from shouting at her. “And you knew something was there, across the bridge. You mind telling me how?”

      “I don’t—” She flipped her palms upward, blinked a couple of times and then let her hands drop to her lap once more.

      “Look,” Alex said, trying another tactic. “My coworker’s husband is a cop. He can help you, if you just tell us what you know.” He didn’t know why he’d offered her even that much protection. But then again, now that he was face-to-face with her, it was difficult to picture her as the one who’d performed that grisly killing. This quiet, somewhat shy woman with her too-intense eyes didn’t seem like the type to murder someone and then carry out some bizarre ritual with their remains. Plus, the victim had been a big man, and she barely cleared five feet. Strangulation? He didn’t think so.

      Or so his gut told him. Then again, lots of people’s guts had told them Ted Bundy was an okay guy, before the whole being-outed-as-a-serial-killer thing had happened.

      She shook her head emphatically. “I don’t need help. They won’t find any evidence on or near the body that ties it to me, because I had nothing to do with that murder.” Folding her arms, she looked him straight in the eye then, her deep blue gaze solid and seemingly filled with the naive belief that her proven innocence was a sure thing. “Look.” She took a deep breath, then continued. “I’m a little psychic. That was why I talked to you at the coffee shop.”

      “You’re a little what?” Now that he hadn’t seen coming. “How can you be a little psychic? Isn’t that like being a little rich, or a little dead?”

      She gave something between a snort and a laugh. “Not in my case.” With that, she pulled off the leather gloves she wore, squeezing them in one of her now-bare hands. “Basically, I’m a really bad psychic.”

      Now it was his turn to laugh.

      “I don’t get visions, I don’t see dead people, I don’t even hear little voices in my head,” she continued. “But sometimes, I just get this big, nagging sense that I have to say something or do something. It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular, but it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.” She stopped squeezing. “I saw you in the coffee shop, and I just had to talk to you.”

      He shook his head, opening his mouth to reply and finding that he had nothing to say to that.

      “Ummmm…” She swallowed. “I mean, I felt like I had to tell you something. And when I finally got up the nerve to approach you, that thing about the kids and the water just came flying out.” She fluttered one hand in front of her like a butterfly to illustrate, then pulled it back, curling both hands around her gloves so the leather squeaked slightly. “I had no idea if I was right about what I told you until I saw the news tonight.”

      “Great.” It sounded so far-fetched, but something in him almost believed her. She seemed so sincere, so…normal. But there was nothing normal about a ritualistic murder in a state park. And there was nothing normal about warning someone not to take children near the place where a dead body waited. “You know the police think you might have something to do with that murder, right? And your defense is you’re a psychic who sucks?” He leaned back in his seat, stretching his arm across the ridge between the door and the window. “Sweetheart, I don’t have to have my own 1-900 line to know that that isn’t going to get you very far.”

      “Then why haven’t you called the police yet?”

      Just then, a wailing siren sounded in the distance, growing louder with every passing second. Oh, yeah, if she was what she said she was, she sure had the “who sucks” part down if she hadn’t seen that one coming.

      “You did call them. Before you even got in the car.” She dropped her gloves and whirled around, clutching at the door handle and looking very much like a trapped rabbit—soft, scared and completely clueless as to what to do next. “I’m such an idiot.”

      A police car careened into the parking lot, lights flashing, only to be followed by another. And another.

      Several more skidded to a halt around the parking-lot exit, forming a haphazard line that would prevent any cars from going in or out. Their respective sirens blended together into one shrieking, cacophonous alarm, somewhat muffled inside the closed doors of the car.

      “I didn’t think I warranted this much effort,” she shouted at him.

      “Get out of the car, and put your hands in the air!” a tinny voice outside blared through a bullhorn.

      She yanked the keys out of her car ignition and shoved them in her pocket. “You slept with a woman named Penny last month,” she said suddenly to the windshield.

      “Wha—” How could she know that? Penny lived in another state and had claimed to have no friends in Washington when she’d visited on business.

      “She has a blog, and she’s very, very peeved at you.” Sophie sighed, and her shoulders dropped in defeat. She switched off the car’s headlights. “See? I’m awful. I wish I could throw some secret or something that only you and your dead СКАЧАТЬ