a Touch of Ice (3 page)

Violet sidled around me, grabbed my hand. “Good idea. Why don’t
we
grab the blanket from my trunk and join you in a minute, Mitch.”

Mitchell’s eyebrows headed north, and for an instant I was positive he’d brush us off. I shook free of Violet’s death grip. We couldn’t leave him alone. He might escape. “Probably better if I head for Starbucks with Mitch, take it slow. Give myself a chance to recuperate from the tumble.”

She glared at me. There was no doubt I’d hear about it later, but she dutifully headed for the car to retrieve the blanket. Violet had a streak of insatiable curiosity, and she had to know I’d seen something when I touched Mitch. Still, this was
so
not the time for an explanation.

Ever so slowly, Mitchell’s shoulders sagged and his eyes turned hazy. Looked like sadness, or grief maybe. Because he was a killer? Murderer’s remorse? I shivered again. What was I thinking to hang out with him? Alone? And inviting him to coffee? I’m always rational, middle-of-the-road stable, boringly sane. Except for the touch thing. Violet got it right in her earlier assessment—something had obviously fried my brain.

“Coffee’d be fine.” Mitch seemed to be watching the series of odd expressions that had to be evident on my face.

Panic carved its way between my shoulder blades. I didn’t move, my breathing shallow, my body numb. What had I done?

Three

The silence went on for, oh, several centuries at least.

Mitchell Hunt’s lips moved in a funny little quirk before he found some control. “I’m going for coffee and Violet seems to be waiting for us. You coming?”

I whirled toward Starbucks. Violet stood to the left of the front door, foot tapping, blanket draped over one shoulder.

“Coming.” I nudged past him and stomped my way to the coffee shop, only to have my attitude interrupted by a woman setting up a display of bright, shiny Granny Smith’s in front of the general store. I have a weakness for apple pie, heavy on the cinnamon, and the display stopped my pursuit of justice in mid-stride.

Violet tossed the blanket over my shoulders and shoved me into Starbucks. “Coffee first, pie later.” We’d shared enough apple pies that she knew exactly what was going through my head.

The three of us settled around a table toward the back, steaming mugs in front of us. I secured the blanket around my body, tucked the ends under my thighs and faced Mitchell Hunt, potential murderer—the first guy who had truly made my toes wiggle, and might, in some totally unexplainable way, be responsible for the dark circles under my eyes.

I blew on my coffee, stalling for time. How do you ask someone if they moonlight as an assassin?

“So, Mitchell, surely you weren’t taking pictures of Everly for your work?” Violet swirled an almond biscotti in her hazelnut latte, tapped it on the edge of her cup, then eyed Mitchell as she bit down. Hard.

“Mitch,” he clarified as he picked up his mug. “And no, I don’t, wasn’t…okay. Truth is I had a bad night and when she—” he twitched in my direction— “sprang from the waves like some sea goddess…it was sweet light. I couldn’t help myself.”

My fingers inched toward the camera. “Could I see?”

He took a swallow of his French roast and fiddled with some buttons on the camera. “Sure, but first how about I go order you a muffin? You didn’t get anything to eat and we can’t have you dropping at my feet again. Gotta confess, not the usual effect I have on women.”

Violet stifled a snort.

“Thanks, but I’ll get one on the way out. My latte is heavy on the milk, so should fix me right up.” I breathed in the fragrance of cinnamon from my steaming mug and prayed for divine inspiration. How do you casually bring up a dead body when you aren’t supposed to know it exists? “I haven’t had much sleep the past few…” Not good enough. I cleared my throat and started again. “Mostly it’s been an ordinary Saturday. Nothing exciting like a murder—”

Mitch stopped fiddling with the camera, narrowed his eyes and looked right through me. Didn’t say a word.

I’d really done it. Mouth malfunction in the extreme. Damn. So much for divine inspiration. I had to get out more. Talk to people instead of clients. Totally different thing, being social.

Violet’s mouth had dropped open. Again. She was rarely at a loss for words, but it didn’t look like I’d be getting any help from that direction for a while.

I filtered some words though my censoring system—even though it was obviously on the fritz—and hurried to fill the deafening silence. “My life is pretty quiet most of the time.” There, I did it. Ordinary, non-threatening words that could be found in any casual conversation. I sipped my latte, chancing a quick look at Mitch over the edge of the cup.

“Quiet, huh? What kind of work do you do? Besides auditioning for bit parts as a sea nymph?”

“I‘m a personal coach and I specialize in helping people solve problems and find balance as they flow, or not, with their life issues.” Excellent. Normal people chat about work all the time. Maybe there was hope for me yet.

“Uh-huh.” He angled his mug toward Violet. “And you?”

“I do private inquiry work.”

Mitch’s mug landed on the table with a thud. “A PI? You’re a private investigator?”

Her lips quirked into an almost smile. “Yes.”

Mitch shifted in his chair, took a swallow of coffee, and ran his hand along the back of his neck.

“The pictures?” Violet nodded toward the camera. “I’d like to see them, too.”

He handed her the camera.
She
cupped his hand. Could this get any more twisted?

“Me too.” Enough with the pretending. I leaned toward Violet and grabbed his wrist, my fingers getting lost in the soft silkiness of his black cashmere sweater.

The same image filtered through my mind. Nothing more. Not a single smidgeon of additional information. I reluctantly let go of him and focused on the pictures. It took a minute to realize they were actually me, and words caught in my throat, garbled. I chugged a swallow of coffee. “Wow. I don’t look like that. I’m not all…glowy.”

Not that it was painful to look at me, or anything. My five foot, six inch body stays trim unless I go on a chocolate binge, easily fixed if I squeeze in extra time on the treadmill. I was blessed with midnight blue eyes (a gift from my mother), and a mop of dark red hair (definitely from my father). No glow had ever surrounded me at any time. I was sure of it.

Mitch tipped his head to the side, studied me. “Like I said, sweet light. That’s why I had to take the photos. Look, my mind…I wasn’t thinking, didn’t mean to impose on your privacy. How about I send you copies?”

“How about you sign a contract not to publish them?” Violet was exercising her right to sound like an attorney. Could be she’d noticed how the wet t-shirt outlined my breasts and was thinking ahead to a possible internet exposé.

Mitch’s eyes got all wrinkled and squinty. “Yeah, sure. They were for me anyway. Just for me.”

A knot grew in my belly. Fear? Of a potential relationship, or of dead bodies? Could be either. My feet wanted to run, far and fast, but my head really, really wanted to know about the dead body and how this whole thing could possibly be messing with my life. I took a sip of coffee, steadied my thoughts. “That’s a little freaky since you’ve never seen me before today. Ah, oh damn. You haven’t seen me before today, have you?”

He sighed, tapped his long, squared fingers against the table. “No. I’m not a stalker. Look, I…”

Violet was too quiet and I could feel her tension bouncing against me from across the table. This wasn’t getting me any closer to finding out about the body. Maybe a new topic. “So, tell me about your last photography assignment. Where did you go? What did you photograph?”

He leaned back in his chair, balanced on the rear legs, and looked at me with no recognition. Suddenly he shrugged, dropped the chair back down, and focused on Violet, stress radiating from every muscle in his body.

I had a brief moment of jealousy. Violet is gorgeous, and usually has a trail of men requesting her phone number. Was Mitch? Were they? Oh, bloody hell they’d be perfect together. Probably. Maybe. I covered my jealousy with a quick gulp of coffee. Whatever was going on between them shouldn’t be interrupted.

“Somehow my photographs contributed to a friend’s death.” The words spilled out of Mitch, jagged, harsh. “It doesn’t make sense. Keeps nagging at me. There has to be a connection. Don’t know how, but there’s no other explanation.”

A friend’s death? His
photographs
? It gave me a whole new take on murder weapons.

He dropped his head in his hands and was silent for so long my right eye started to twitch. I jabbed a finger against the lid and willed it to stop. Nothing is more annoying than a twitchy eye. Especially when you’re trying to be cool.

He took a sip of coffee and shifted his focus back and forth between me and Violet. “I found a body yesterday. A childhood friend. Sorry, that was abrupt and I’m being rude.” He pushed his chair back.

Violet shot me a so-that’s-what’s-going-on-with-you look, then focused on Mitch. “Sounds like I might be able to help.” She pulled a card out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Think about it. Call me.”

I made a silent agreement with the universe to give up chocolate for a week if he stayed. And phoned me instead of Violet. Not that I had a clue about PI work, but I wanted…

“What the hell. Maybe you can.” He held his thoughts close for a minute, and then words tumbled from his mouth. “Tony and I hung out some. Grew up in the same neighborhood. I was dropping off some photos he’d commissioned and—” Mitch pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes “—I found him lying there. Body jammed between the sofa and the coffee table.”

He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, then pinned me with a look. “I cover a lot of different assignments in my work, some gruesome, but finding him like that—not good. When you suddenly appeared in the middle of that wave, it caught my attention. Gave my head a break from the memories.”

I reached for his hand, stopped just short of touching him. He didn’t know about my fingertips, and that made my touch a huge trespass into his life. Yeah, I’d done it earlier. But this was different. It had become personal.

He slid his empty cup across the table from hand to hand. “I haven’t been home yet. Spent the night at the police station, accounting for my time and activities—”

I reached for his hand again, paused. What right did I have to intrude on his privacy? A civic duty to find out if he was a killer? To find out if my storyboard collage had something to do with his friend’s death? Yep, that made it okay. That and the rare surge of lust that turned my body into a helpless quiver. I shut down the lust, stopped thinking, and let my fingertips come to rest against the back of his hand. A hand that had touched the dead body, and that still held the imprint of the crime scene.

It was nothing at all like touching his wrist. New images flashed across the surface of my mind.

The body had a name. Tony. And Mitch didn’t kill him.

Not a murderer.

Against all common sense, I let my hand stay where it was. To offer comfort maybe? “It’ll help to talk about it, Mitch, especially to Violet. She’s the best PI in the business and can probably help you find the killer. You do plan on investigating, right?”

It was a guess on my part, but I was spot on. Could see it in Mitch’s eyes. Yeah, this was a shameless ploy on my part to gather more information. But it
would
help him to talk about it. And if by some miracle the info would stop my nightmares, well, all the better. His hand was warm against my palm and the heat rushed all the way to my toes. They trembled.

An inarticulate sound escaped his lips. “Obviously it’s on my mind, since I’m telling near strangers about the worst friggin’ night I can remember.”

I gave his hand a gentle squeeze and kept my mouth shut.

He jerked away from my touch and forked both hands through his hair, leaving it in raggedy spikes. “The cops said he killed himself, an overdose of some sort. Speculation on their part, since the tox screen hasn’t come through yet.”

I caught my lip between my teeth. Best not to interrupt.

He balanced on the back legs of his chair again and his fingers gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white. Suddenly he let go and slapped his hands over mine, pressing them firmly against the table. The chair landed flat with a sharp crack. “The thing is, I know it was murder.”

Heat poured into my abdomen when his hands covered mine. From his touch? Or was it his intense need to be believed about the reference to murder?

The man had good hands. Strong. Warm. Smooth, mixed with rough. I flexed my toes to keep them from curling. Who knew skin could be so fascinating?

He broke contact.

Lonely. Damn. I never feel lonely.

And that’s when the vision hit me for the second time.

“Is she…”

“Everly?”

“Maybe food…”

Fragments of their conversation buzzed in my head, but I couldn’t focus. Couldn’t respond. I forced my eyes open only to be blinded by a flash of sunlight pouring through the half-open slats of the blinds. I slapped my hands over my face, and, oh, no. Did that groan come from me? There was movement next me. Violet closing the blinds. And then I inhaled the warm scent of cinnamon and slowly uncovered my eyes. They were both staring at me, concern etched on their faces.

“Sorry.” I cleared the wobble from my throat. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I’m fine. It was a déjà vu moment. Took me by surprise.”

Mitch raised an eyebrow. “Not buying it.”

“It was another vision, wasn’t it?” Violet, completely ignoring my need for privacy about the weirdness going on in my life. Which was really strange because Violet never slipped up like that. Could keep a confidence better than anyone I’d ever met. Except this time. Must be she was more worried than she’d let on.

“Same one.” No point trying to pretend now that she’d blabbed my darkest secret. “Me dying in my rocking chair, caught somewhere between current time and old age. And…the dead guy.”

“You’re psychic? That’s what’s going on here? I know you’re not nuts. Too much intelligence behind the eyes for you to be mentally off.” Mitch pushed the muffin closer to me. “Eat. I hear visions are physically draining. Did a story on psychics in college.”

Bloody hell, he believed in psychics. Maybe. Just because he knew stuff didn’t mean he believed. I sagged against the back of the chair, trying to get a read on his feelings. Not that I was clairvoyant or anything. More like kinesthetically odd, but maybe he’d accept—well, at least understand—my touch phenomenon. Even my parents never got it. Violet accepted it, trusted me, and I knew she’d back me up. But her work demanded a paper trail, one that could be followed in court, and my ESP fingers didn’t transfer well to legal documentation. “I’m not psychic. Not in the way most people think of it.”