MIND READER (22 page)

Parker rubbed her arm, her shoulder. At some time while
he’d slept, she’d put on one of her flannel gowns. He was
coming to like them. “Talk to me.”

“It won’t help. It...happened.”

Her voice, weak and thready, tugged hard at him. He
wanted to hold her, but did she want to be held?
 
She needed
it, he decided. He needed it, too. Seeing her like this tore him apart and made him ashamed. Shifting around to lean
against the headboard, he pulled her into his arms. “Come
here, Caron.”

When she snuggled close and buried her head against his
chest, he knew he’d done the right thing. God, but he hated feeling her tremble. He rested his chin on her head and
whispered against her hair. “Shh...it was just a dream...
 
Don’t cry, talk to me. At least trust me with your dreams.”

“It wasn’t just a dream.” Her voice was a mere wisp of
sound. “It was—”

A loud crash of thunder rolled overhead, shaking the walls, and it began raining again. Parker waited for her to
go on, stroking her delicate shoulders and her spine. Shadows played on the ceiling. Watching them, he wondered.
Why did holding only Caron Chalmers, of all the women
in the world, feel so right?

“It was another case,” she finally said. She cleared her throat, but tears still choked her. “A year ago, I imaged a woman. A very beautiful woman. She had blond hair and
green eyes and a beautiful smile.”

Sarah.
His heart nearly stopped. Caron was telling him about Sarah! He forced his voice to be calm. “What hap
pened?”

“I was trying to find her. She was so pretty, and
so...scared.” Caron’s tears seeped through his shirt and wet
his chest. “She’d been at the mall, Christmas shopping. She’d bought a wood carving—a mallard drake. I imaged
it.”

He’d seen it. It had been returned with Sarah’s personal
effects—her Christmas gift to Harlan. Parker’s heart ached.

“A man hit her from behind in the parking lot, dragged
her into a van and took off. He took her to this seedy place.
It was dirty and smelled sour. He lived there.

“She was tied up—her hands, like Misty’s,” Caron went
on. “Once, she sawed through the rope by dragging it
across the metal frame, again and again. But he found out.
He chained her. Sometimes, when I imaged her, I could see
the room she was in, see her chained to...to that bed.”

Caron’s voice cracked. “I’d been looking for her for
three days. There wasn’t a break—no rest. And I was so tired. At night, he would be there. And he’d do...horrible
things to her.

“The first two days, she fought him. She tried so hard to
be brave. But on the third day, she got so...quiet.”

Parker squeezed his eyes shut. The coroner’s report confirmed that Sarah had been tortured for three days. A
sick feeling burned like acid in Parker’s stomach. He
wanted to tell Caron to stop, wanted to shove the ugliness,
the gruesome truth, away. But he couldn’t. He had to hear it from her. His eyes burning hot, his face wet, he tight
ened his hold on Caron. Whether he meant to soothe her or
himself, he wasn’t sure, but he began sweeping her scalp
with long, gentle strokes.

Caron sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Then I saw the
sign—Rue de Bourbon. The street name doesn’t have the ‘de,’ and I didn’t catch that it had been painted in. I told
Sandy. There was a bar with that name off of Desire Street.
We went there.” She shuddered. “Oh God, Parker,” she
cried, her brittle voice cracked. “We went there!”

He wanted to tell her the truth, tell her that she didn’t
have to explain. He
knew
what had happened. And he
knew it haunted Caron; he could see that clearly now.

Deep sobs racked her slim body. “The red light confused me. The bar had a flashing red light. We went inside. It was smoky and dark and the smell of beer and sweat made me dizzy. I saw an image and felt a stab
bing pain in my throat. My neck burned. I—I started
gasping. I tried to tell Sandy it was a traffic light. That we were in the wrong place. It was the street, not the bar.”

She gulped in ragged breaths, then went on. “But my throat—” She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t
tell him, Parker. And...and she died.”

Again Parker felt the pain, the hollow emptiness that had
carved out his insides, the anger that Caron’s interference
might have slowed down the police investigating hard evi
dence that might have saved Sarah. And again Parker felt the bitterness that had filled him at the morgue when Harlan identified Sarah’s body. He’d never forget seeing her like that. Bruises muddying her arms and legs, her face.
Cigarette burns peppering her breasts and thighs. And
never, not if he lived a thousand years, would he ever for
get the jagged wound splitting her neck. Her throat had
been slashed.

Caron’s sobs eased, and Parker brushed at his face with
the back of his hand. He was shaking as hard as Caron. Would remembering ever get easier?

“I found her too late.”

Parker’s hand stilled on Caron’s shoulder. Cold dread seized his chest. “You saw her?”

She nodded against his chest. “I scribbled down that it was the street. Sandy took me there, and I pointed out the house. He told me to stay in the car, but I couldn’t.”

“You followed him in.” The dull ache behind Parker’s eyes began to throb, and he dropped his lids. “Ah, Jesus, Caron...” The need to shield her had him tightening his hold, pulling her closer until she nearly draped his chest.

“I don’t know what happened after that. The last thing
I remember was walking into that awful room and seeing her on the bed.” Caron shuddered. “I woke up at Dr. Zilinger’s institute. They told me two days had passed.”

Her voice had calmed now, so much so that the dull tone
had knots forming in Parker’s stomach. “Did you remem
ber?”

She hesitated a long time before answering. “Yes, I remembered,” she said, dragging in a ragged breath that
heaved her shoulders. “I still remember.”

Caron had had this dream before, he realized. Many
times. Whether she suffered from a guilty conscience because she pretended to be psychic when she wasn’t, or be
cause she was psychic and she’d made a mistake that might—or might not—have cost Sarah her life, Parker
wasn’t sure. But guilt was guilt. And that he understood.

Caron had seen Sarah in the hellhole where she’d been tortured and murdered, not in a sterile morgue. He wished he could have spared her that. He wished he could have spared Harlan, too. The word
devastating
didn’t begin to describe what they had suffered. God, poor Harlan. Sarah
had been his wife! To see his wife that way. How that must
have twisted him inside.

Parker’s throat clogged with tears. It had twisted Harlan. Hadn’t he called Parker that Christmas morning and said that without Sarah life wasn’t worth living? Hadn’t he said that
she’d been everything good in him, that he had died with her? He had been reaching out, crying for help.

But
Parker hadn’t heard. He’d been confused by the signs...just like Caron.

He stared blankly at the ceiling. His voice thick, he gave
Caron what he could give her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was.”

“Why?”

“I made a mistake, and she died.”

A long silence filled the room. Rain pattered against the bedroom window, tatting against the pane. The drops beaded, glistening in the light from the streetlamp.

Caron felt guilty because Sarah had died. He felt guilty because Harlan had died. And Parker’s guilt deepened. Lying there in Caron’s bed, holding her in his arms, he realized what it was that had been niggling at the fringes of
his mind since that first night at Decker’s: Caron had never
lied to him.

But
he
had lied to her. He was still lying to her. She hadn’t given him Sarah’s name, but Caron had given him
everything else.

The urge to tell her the truth, to tell her about Sarah and Harlan and the year-long investigation, burned on Parker’s
tongue, begging to be spoken. But he swallowed the words,
forced them back down his throat. They were tearing holes
in his belly, but he couldn’t tell her. Not now. It was too
late.

Though the evidence pointed in that direction, he wasn’t convinced she was psychic. She could have found and sup
pressed evidence pointing to Sarah’s whereabouts to pro
tect her image. Sanders could have given her enough to send
her in the the right direction. She was tenacious. All she would have needed was a thread. But she was carrying around a ton of guilt. She needed someone. And, though he had no right, God help him, he wanted to be the some
one she needed.

Caron sniffed, rolled over, then cranked an eyelid open.
Bars of light shining in from between the blinds slanted
across the room and her bed. Her head ached, her stom
ach felt queasy, and memories of last night were rushing back to her. Parker. She’d told him about Sarah.

Groaning, she turned onto her side and reached for the
covers. If he hadn’t been sure she was a certifiable flake
before then, he surely was now. Her hands throbbed.

Misty.
Caron kicked off the covers and dragged herself out of bed. Some awful smell that wasn’t coffee was com
ing from the kitchen.

Parker was still here. She should give him a hard time for
staying, but the truth was, she was glad he had. After the dream, he’d held her. Safe, secure and content, she’d gone back to sleep. She usually paced the floors until dawn.

After a detour into the bathroom she stumbled into the
kitchen. Parker was at the stove, stirring something in a pot. Without a thought to her reasons, she walked up be
hind him, curled her arms around his waist and pressed her
cheek against his back. “Morning.”

“Morning.” He turned and brushed a kiss to her forehead, then cast her an appraising glance. “You should’ve
slept longer.”

She moved to the cabinet, pried it open with her wrist,
then reached for a cup. Pain bolted up her arm, and she whimpered.

“Here.” Parker grabbed a cup and filled it from the pot.

“Is it coffee?” She couldn’t keep the skepticism from her
voice.

He smiled. “Yeah, it’s coffee.” He turned her toward the
table. “Sit. Breakfast is ready.”

She sat down in her usual chair. When he put the cup in front of her, she looked up at him. He was every bit as
gorgeous first thing in the morning as he was at midday,
and in the dark of night. Feeling like a frump, she pouted. It wasn’t fair. She felt like a zombie, like something the cat had dragged in, and was certain she looked worse. Yet he
looked gorgeous.

She shrugged her sleep-tossed hair back from her face.
“Thank you, Parker.”

Stirring the pot, he arched a brow. “For what?”

“Specifically?” With luck, maybe he’d let her off the
hook. Considering she hadn’t yet had coffee, that would be
the decent thing to do.

He nodded.

No such luck. Resigned, she winced against the light and
looked up at him. “For being here for me last night. For
giving a damn.” The muscles in her throat clamped, and her eyes burned. He’d been so tender and gentle, and she knew he’d cried with her. “For not skating out on me like
Mike and Greg and my father did.”

So other men had hurt her, too, reinforcing what her fa
ther had done. Parker nodded, turned back to the stove and
let loose a silent stream of curses. When he felt he could talk without betraying his resentment, he asked the question that had been on his mind all morning. “You have
many nights like that?”

“Some.” Caron stared at his back. He was reacting to
her at gut level. Somehow she knew that—not by any im
age, but by emotion. And his emotions were as raw as hers.
He rinsed his hands at the sink, stretching his shirt taut
across his shoulders. A little fire sparked to life in her
stomach.

He looked back at her, his eyes probing. “Many?”

“Many.” Her cheeks warm, she braced the cup between
her forearms and lifted it to her mouth.

A frown threatening his lips, he spooned the oatmeal into
bowls. “Honey and cinnamon, butter, or milk and sugar?”