Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery (46 page)

In an instant Candice was in motion, dashing back toward the chopper, and my focus
was then back on Dutch. “Please!” I begged him, struggling to pull out of his grip.
I’d throw myself over the side of the cliff if only to protect him. “Dutch,
please
get back!”

To my shock and horror Dutch responded by pulling out a set of handcuffs from his
pocket. Gripping my forearm tightly, he slapped one cuff onto my wrist, and the other
onto his own.
“Nooooooooooo!”
I screamed, pounding on his chest, so angry and afraid at the same time. “Why?” I
demanded through my tears. “Dutch,
why
?”

“Till death do us part, Edgar,” he replied, his own eyes misting.

I stopped fighting him. “But you’ll die,” I sobbed. “Don’t you get it? You’ll die!”

“Abs,” he said gently, wrapping me into his arms. “Don’t
you
get it? Without you I can’t live.”

I shook my head. “Not like this,” I said to him. “You can’t go like this!”

He just looked at me with such love and sympathy that it was hard to hold his gaze.
“Abigail Cooper, there’s something you don’t know about me. Three and a half years
ago, after you and I had shared a bowl of ice cream on your back porch, I called my
mom and told her that I’d just had dessert with the woman I was going to marry. And
you know what else? I think I knew the moment I laid eyes on you at the restaurant
where we had our first date that you were the one for me. I might as well have married
you back then. You are my one and only, sweethot, and I’ve never been more certain
of anything in my life. I love you, Abby. I take you for my wife today, here and now,
to love, honor, cherish, and occasionally call you out for swearing. I will be there
for you to the end of my days, and if that day is today, well…then I’ll go out with
you wrapped in my arms, and that’s better than the next fifty years without you.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Edgar. I love you. So I do. I do, I do, I do.”

I realized I was shaking from head to toe. It was all too much for me. I didn’t want
to be the cause of Dutch’s murder, but I couldn’t help feeling so glad, so relieved,
so loved wrapped in his arms as the last moments of my life counted down. I was left
speechless as Dutch wiped away my tears and kissed me so sweetly.

And then the chop, chop, chop of the helicopter was approaching again, and I looked
up to see that we were literally surrounded by squad cars and black sedans. They were
all about fifty yards away and the cops and agents who’d driven here were outside
of their cars, eyeing us with a mixture of fear and trepidation. Instinctively, I
also glanced at the clock on the bomb. Even upside down I could see that we had barely
two minutes left to live.

T
he chopper landed well away from Abby and Dutch, but close enough to M.J. so that
she had a good view of who got out. She saw Brice and Candice and two other men in
suits, and between them was a man of about thirty with a black eye, torn tuxedo, and
victorious smile. His hands were secured behind his back and he had no chance of escape,
but still, his smile widened when he saw Abby and Dutch. It made M.J. sick to her
stomach to look at him. He had to be this Buslawski character they’d all been talking
about.

Candice yanked on his arm and tugged him to the front of all the cars to face Abby
and Dutch.

M.J. instinctively wound her way through the cars and police toward them, that intuitive
sense that she stay close to Candice pushing her forward. “What’s the code to deactivate
the bomb!” Candice demanded.

Buslawski simply laughed.

M.J. walked forward; someone from the other side had just entered her energy. This
was a new soul. And she felt strongly it was connected to the man who’d strapped Abby
to a bomb.

“Candice, please!” Abby yelled from across the road as she pulled up her wrist to
show that Dutch had handcuffed himself to her. “Please! Someone get Dutch out of these!
Please! Save him!”

Dutch reacted by pushing Abby’s hand down and pulling her close to him. He was willing
to die with her and everyone there knew it.

“What’s the code?!” Candice shouted again. This time she struck Buslawski so hard
he doubled over. But then he lifted his head and actually laughed. “You’ll never guess
it,” he sang. “And you only get one try!”

Candice raised her hand to strike him again, but at that moment M.J. rushed forward
and yelled, “Wait!”

Candice’s eyes darted to her, but her arm remained high, ready to strike.

M.J. bent down to look at the bomber in the eye. “Someone from the other side wants
you to tell us the code,” she said.

He merely snickered at her.

“I’m a medium,” M.J. said quickly. “Someone with an
M
is trying to connect to you. She keeps saying it’s me! It’s mememememe!”

Buslawski’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t believe her for a second.

M.J. reached out to the woman with the
M
name. “Mary,” she said to him. “Her name was Mary. She says that she’s so disappointed
in you. She never wanted this.”

Buslawski turned away from her.

Candice struck him again.
“What’s the code?!”

M.J.’s jaw clenched. She wanted Candice to calm down, but she knew they were quickly
running out of time.

“What’s the timer say?” Brice called to Abby and Dutch as a large metal truck arrived
with the words BOMB SQUAD on the side.

“It’s too late,” Dutch called back. “Less than a minute. You guys all get back!”

Around them people began to move away, but Candice stood there with Brice and M.J.,
who all refused to move.

Meanwhile Mary was practically yelling at M.J. to keep trying to talk to the bomber.
“Mr. Buslawski,” M.J. said, squatting down again to get right up into his face. “Mary
says that she’s the one who’s responsible. She decided to take her own life, and nothing
anyone else said or did contributed to it. She says please don’t do this. Tell them
the code!”

Buslawski remained unmoved.

In frustration M.J. stood. She had only seconds left to figure this out, she knew,
and she reached out to Mary and begged her for a number that might have meant something
to this man.
One,
she heard Mary say.
One, one, one, one, one, one!

M.J. shook her head. She needed the other digits. Closing her eyes, she pleaded again,
but Mary only continued to shout the number one, and then, in desperation she filled
M.J.’s mind with the image of a wedding cake. And then she showed her M.J.’s symbol
for suicide—a noose.

“Fusco! Harrison!” shouted a voice full of authority. “Grab that girl and the unsub
and get back!”

A hand landed on her shoulder and M.J. shrugged it off. She knew Mary was giving her
all the clues to the code, but she wasn’t the one that was going to be able to put
it together. She needed help, so she lifted her chin and shouted at Abby and Dutch.
“The code is connected to a wedding, but not this one, and it’s also connected to
a suicide! I think one of the digits is a one!”

Abby reacted by gasping. “Ohmigod! I know the code!”

“W
hat is it?” Dutch said, bending down in front of me to focus on the keypad of the
bomb.
“Abby, what’s the code?”

“Eleven, eleven, eleven!” I shouted, and I looked at Russ, whose triumphant smile
evaporated. Mimi had killed herself at eleven eleven on the eleventh, and died a month
after abandoning Russ at the altar, which would have been the eleventh of November
2011. I prayed that I was right and then I prayed that Dutch’s shaking fingers could
type the date in fast enough.

He began to tap at the keypad and I gripped his free hand tightly. At the last second
I closed my eyes tight and whispered,
“Please!”

At my chest there was a little
ping
and then…nothing.

Nothing at all happened. For several more seconds Dutch and I stood together, squeezing
hands and waiting, but then there was a sound that began to fill the air. The sound
was clapping. I
opened my eyes. Everyone—all the cops, the FBI agents, Candice, M.J., and even the
chopper pilot—was clapping, and then they were cheering, and then they were all shouting
and giving each other high fives.

Barely able to take it all in, I looked down and saw that the face of the clock had
stopped with two seconds on the timer. Two seconds. My knees wobbled and I nearly
went down, but Dutch caught me and held me close. “We did it, dollface!” he said.
“Holy shit, we did it!”

I sobbed with relief and when I could support myself again, I looked to the crowd,
searching….

At last I found M.J. She was crying too. We exchanged a look and I knew that I would
be grateful to M. J. Holliday for the rest of my life. And I planned to live a very
long life as the wife of Special Agent Dutch Rivers.

The bomb squad had me out of the metal harness in about twenty minutes; it probably
would’ve taken less time, but Dutch refused to remove the handcuffs until after they’d
safely deposited the bomb in the metal truck.

And then, from down the street came a limo, and out of it stepped my sister, who looked
like a complete wreck. She seemed rattled not only by what’d happened—or nearly happened—to
me, but also by what’d apparently happened to her.

She was disheveled and just a complete mess from head to toe. There were butterflies
still flapping in her hair, crescent-shaped bite marks on her legs, and in her hand
she carried a broken arrow from one of the cupids’ bows.

I had a feeling that Cirque du Ceremony may have perhaps gotten a little away from
her. Still, she was so happy to see I was alive and, except for some cuts and bruises,
okay, she barely mentioned the havoc the swans, butterflies, and rebellious little
people had caused.

“Well, the minister has gone home with a hundred and two fever,” she announced as
I was being patched up by the paramedics. “But a few of the guests are still at the
estate. We might be able to find someone to get the two of you hitched.”

“Who’s still at the estate?” I asked.

“Dave and his wife,” Cat replied, picking at a swan feather clinging to her stocking.

“Dammit,” I swore. I’d missed her again.

“We’re
not
getting hitched today,” Dutch said firmly.

Cat eyed him moodily. “I can’t go through this whole wedding plan again, Dutch,” she
said.

“You won’t have to,” he said, taking my hand and kissing it, but what he meant by
that, he wouldn’t elaborate on.

Later that night Dutch and I were at our new home in the master bedroom resting comfortably
on our new beautiful bed when the doorbell rang. One of Dutch’s brothers answered
the door and Dutch and I heard Gaston’s voice in the foyer. “You don’t have to see
him,” Dutch said to me. He’d been doing a great job of keeping everybody else at arm’s
length while I recovered emotionally from our ordeal.

Truth be told, I was more worried about the big lump on his forehead. He had yet to
tell me all that’d happened to
him
that day, and Candice had vowed to tell me only after I’d had some rest.

“It’s cool,” I told Dutch when a knock on our bedroom door alerted us that Gaston
was waiting to be seen.

Dutch let him in, and the director smiled as he entered. I noticed he was no longer
formally dressed, but he still looked dignified in a black sweater and matching slacks.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “But I wanted to let you know that Russ Buslawski
has made a full confession.”

I sat up to hear what the director had to say. Dutch came to
sit next to me, and he took up my hand and we listened without interrupting the director
as he told us that in Russ’s apartment they’d found a suicide note, where he’d confessed
to being responsible for all the bombs. He’d planned all along to detonate the bomb
the moment I came down the aisle, and he probably meant to die in the blast.