The Dark Gate. Pamela Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ up. Just shut up.

      But, if anything, the horde in his head grew even louder. With an angry flick of his thumb, he pushed up the volume on his iPod in a useless attempt to drown them out, and concentrated on watching for Larsen.

      What were the chances she’d believe he just happened to be hanging around Dupont Circle this afternoon? That he just happened to be walking by as she left the wedding reception?

      Jack grunted. Nil. Hell, even if she did believe him, her secretary would give him away the moment she told Larsen he’d stopped by her office this morning looking for her. Police business, he’d said.

      He was so screwed.

      His only chance of success depended on him knocking her off her feet with a single lethal blow of his charm. Yeah, right. The formidable Ms. Vale was probably immune to any man’s charm.

      Damn, this sucked. He’d never had trouble attracting a woman before. He was the one women accidentally ran into, never the other way around. Now here he was, broiling in the summer sun, praying the woman would give him the time of day. She had to. He had to know if her touch was really his salvation.

      A movement across the street caught his attention—a woman in a bright green dress walking out from behind the church. Stumbling, more like it. Her hair shone like gold in the sun. Her dress was splattered…red.

      Larsen.

      He lunged to his feet and dashed across the busy road, weaving between the traffic, heedless of the honk of horns and the squeal of brakes as he completely forgot his pretense of running into her by accident.

      In the minute it took him to cross the street, she’d pulled herself together and now walked calmly, almost normally. Except he was a cop and knew better. There was a paleness to her face and a wildness in her eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday.

      Those eyes were pointed straight at him, but he could swear she didn’t see him.

      “Larsen.”

      She visibly started, then stopped abruptly, blinking as if disoriented. As he watched, she pulled herself in and away, snapping a cool facade in place. Once more, she was the remote woman he’d met before.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked with only a hint of a wobble to her voice.

      “Screw that. What happened to you? You…” He motioned helplessly at the red dotting her dress. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the spots. From a distance, they’d looked like blood.

      She glanced down at herself. “I spilled my punch. Once again, what are you doing here?”

      Either she was amazingly adept at hiding her emotions, or he’d screwed up. Badly. But he saw something move in her eyes, a glimmer of the fear he was convinced she struggled to hide, and he knew his instincts were dead-on.

      Her cool facade crumbled and she cringed and pressed her palm to her forehead.

      “What’s the matter?” Jack curled his fingers around her forearm to steady her, but the moment his fingers brushed her skin, his head noise went silent. The “Hallelujah Chorus” nearly erupted from his mouth.

      It wasn’t his imagination. She quieted the damn voices.

      Slowly she lowered her hand. If she’d been anyone else, he might have thought he saw a sheen of tears in her eyes.

      “I don’t feel well. I’m going home.”

      He tightened his grip on her arm. “What happened in there?”

      Her response was a moment too long in coming. “Nothing. I have a migraine. I want to get home before I throw up again.” She looked pointedly at the hand still gripping her arm, avoiding his gaze.

      “Larsen…” His cell rang and he grabbed his phone and checked the Caller I.D. Police business. Hell. He stared at her, torn, as the percussion beat of his ring tone continued. He could see the faint tremble of her ripe lips, a tremble echoed in the vibration of her arm beneath his fingers.

      Her gaze suddenly snapped to his. “Are you going to get that?”

      “Yeah.” He gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the rush of noise in his head, and released her.

      Without a moment’s hesitation, she brushed past him and strode away.

      The death visions were back.

      Larsen sat on the navy chenille sofa in her little houseboat and shook. Outside, the miserable day had slowly turned to a miserable evening, the sky darkening as if her mood were sucking the very color from the sky.

      It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened. Just a dream. A terrible, waking nightmare. She hadn’t had a premonition in fifteen years. Fifteen years. She’d thought they’d stopped. Prayed they’d stopped. How could she go through this again?

      Hours had passed since the wedding, yet her stomach still rolled and clenched as her mind forced her to relive the savage attacks. The blood. The rape of that poor girl.

      God.

      Sick guilt raked her insides with sharp claws. She’d fled. Instead of trying to stop it, instead of trying to save them, she’d fled.

      Hot tears burned the backs of her eyes as the weight of too many years, too many deaths, pressed her into the cushions. As a kid, she’d believed she caused them. She’d dream about people dying and they died. Her fault. The evil living inside her.

      She was eight when she saw her first premonition, the car accident that killed her mother and older brother, Kevin. She never told anyone, not even her father. How could she when she was afraid she’d somehow caused the accident? The last came when she was thirteen and saw her grandfather’s fatal tumble down the stairs.

      It never once occurred to her to try to change the outcome of one of her visions. Not until today. Not until she’d run…and not died.

      Restlessness forced Larsen to her feet and she paced the small houseboat, the court papers she should be reading all but forgotten in her hand. She was supposed to have died.

      Always before, the cursed devil’s sight had shown her the death of someone she loved. Her mom. Her brother. But this time she’d watched her own death. And that of a stranger. Why? What did it mean?

      As she paused at the window, her reflection peered back at her, riddled with a dozen dots of light from nearby apartments as if she’d captured the nightscape and her likeness in a single double exposure.

      She couldn’t have seen what she thought she’d seen. One man could not control the minds of so many. Veronica had called to tell her about the terrible attack that had occurred at the wedding and to make sure she was okay. Veronica said no one remembered anything. All those who’d been hypnotized, all those who’d killed, had awakened without any memory of what they’d done.

      But she hadn’t been hypnotized. She would have remembered. As would the man behind her. But she’d fled. And he’d died.

      A chunk of ice settled in her stomach. She turned toward the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine, hoping it would СКАЧАТЬ