Parker And The Gypsy (14 page)

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Authors: Susan Carroll

BOOK: Parker And The Gypsy
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A soft cry breached her lips as Sara thrust the horrifying vision away from her.
“Oh, Mike,” she whispered, sagging against the parking meter, clutching it for support. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
She'd already broken her promise. She'd slipped into his head again.
And this time she'd seen the face of his shadow man.
Seven
H
e had her cornered in the steamy darkness of his office, the only illumination flashes from the neon light across the street. Mike paced in front of Sara, a real tough guy in his fedora and trench coat.
“All right, doll Time to come clean,” he growled. “Breaking and entering a man's head is a felony in this state.”
“I didn't mean to do it.” Sara pleaded. “I couldn't help myself. ” She held out her hands, waiting for him to slap the cuffs on. “I suppose you'll have to take me in now.”
“Nah. I don't see any need to make this a federal offense We can square things between us personally.”
“How...personally?”
He answered by hauling her into his arms. Shadowed beneath the brim of his hat, his eyes smoldered hot and dangerous as his mouth crashed down on hers.
Yanking off his hat and tossing it aside, Sara buried her fingers in the silken mass of his tawny hair, her lips parting before the demanding onslaught of his kiss. Moaning, she raised one stocking-clad leg, rubbing her knee against his trousers in wanton invitation.
Mike's fingers slipped beneath her skirt, following the trail of her nylon-clad thigh, the heat of his palm searing through the sheer layer of fabric.
But a loud crash sounded in the reception room. He wrenched away from her, coming to full alert, passion giving way to tension and fear.
“You stay right here, doll.” he ordered her.
“But Mike,” Sara protested, trying to cling to him. He evaporated out of her arms like mist and with sickening suddenness the room around her seemed to shift and change.
She found herself alone in a dark alley. Shivering, Sara rubbed her arms and called, “Michael?” Silence at first, then she heard him answer from a long way off, his cry faint and full of terror.
Heart pounding, Sara started to run, but she never seemed to get anywhere, the alley twisting and turning like some endless maze. Hearing Mike but unable to find him. Until at last she stumbled down a dead-end street, only to discover Mike sprawled on the sidewalk. Caught in the glare of a street lamp, he cast her a look of pure desperation.
“Get away from here, Sara. Run!” he shouted hoarsely.
Ignoring the warning. Sara dashed toward him. But before she could reach his side, a sinister figure melted between them. The shadow man. Sara watched in helpless horror as he bent over Mike, raising his knife.
“Mike, look out!”
A clap of thunder sounded and Sara snapped awake. She sat bolt upright in bed, her fearful gaze taking in the familiar surroundings of her wicker furnishings and eyelet curtains. A summer storm raged outside her bedroom window, a jagged flash of lightning illuminating the rain-washed panes.
But even that was a more comforting sight than the images of her recent dream. With a shuddery sigh, Sara sank back against her pillow. What a horrific nightmare. She couldn't remember when she'd had one so terrifying, so vivid, so real.
Let that be a lesson to her. Never to go to bed after a late supper of sushi and chocolate cake. Or with a guilty conscience.
Troubled thoughts of the incident with Mike earlier that afternoon sifted through her brain, the same thoughts that had been tormenting her when she'd fallen asleep.
He'd
trusted
her, trusted her enough to offer to take her to that dance, to kiss her again. And what had she done? Invaded his privacy, once more stealing away tiny fragments of his soul he'd never intended to share.
“I didn't mean to do it,” Sara groaned, hugging her pillow tight. She cursed the infernal talent of hers for peering into other people's most private pains and secret sorrows. What good did it ever do besides get her into trouble? From the time she'd been six years old and innocently asked the visiting minister about the pretty pictures she saw in his mind of the blond lady wearing the golden tassels. It turned out she wasn't the good reverend's wife.
But Sara imagined that Reverend Thompson's shocked anger on that occasion would be nothing compared to Mike's reaction if he knew Sara had been stumbling around in his head again. What ever was she going to say to Mike the next time she saw him? Confess to the man that she'd been lusting after him in her sleep, that she'd been having nightmares about his shadow?
No, she couldn't possibly tell Mike any of that. Not if she didn't want her quirky Prince Charming with his mad Hawaiian shirt and teasing smile to disappear forever. And Sara was startled to discover how intensely she didn't want that to happen.
But it made no sense this powerful attraction she felt for Mike, this melding of their minds from the very beginning, almost as though...as though their coming together hadn't been a matter of chance, but of fate. And yet they were such different people.
As lonely as her own childhood had been, Sara had always had her books, a thousand fantasies to be lived beneath the roof of her dollhouse, the comfort and security of parents that at least loved her, even if they never quite understood her.
But Mike had grown up a kid of the streets and dark alleys. Shunted between hotel rooms and foster homes, never any place to call his own. Losing his mother at the tender age of six. And his father....
Sara shivered, understanding what had first put the dull light of mistrust and cynicism in Mike's warm cocoa eyes, the remembered pain and scars he'd tried to bury so deeply.
It made Sara long to seek him out, wherever he was, and just hold him, that great tall, gruff man. Cradle him in her arms. To make everything all right, to heal, to give comfort.
But comfort was the last thing a man like Mike would want from her, Sara thought sadly. He wasn't the sort to ever admit he needed anyone, not even if he was dying of thirst in the desert and she stood at his elbow with a glass of water. And it didn't matter, either, that each time he kissed her, she felt all lit up, like skyrockets and pinwheels were exploding in the sky. Because Mike would never see them.
“Only gunpowder and matches, angel,” he would likely drawl. “They must be having fireworks in the next county.”
No, any relationship between her and Mike Parker seemed utterly hopeless. If fate had decreed their meeting, then this was one time that fate had made a mistake.
Sara needed to stop tormenting herself about the man. Forget him, forget her dreams, forget the desires he aroused in her and try to go back to sleep.
But between the storm and the turbulence of her own emotions, that was an impossibility. Tossing and turning in frustration, she peered toward her nightstand to see what time it was. But the face of her alarm clock had gone silent and dark. She flicked the switch of her bedside lamp and nothing happened.
“Oh, no, not another power failure,” she grumbled. Well, that put an end to her usual method of coaxing herself back to sleep by reading a book. Unless she went rummaging for her emergency supply of candles. But if the only alternative meant lying on her back, staring into the dark and trying not to think about Mike, she really didn't have much choice.
Untangling her legs from the hem of her cotton, anklelength nightgown, she climbed out of bed and minced carefully toward the hall.
The apartment behind her New Age shop was small, consisting only of one bedroom with a bath, the kitchen, and a sitting room that served as both office and the place where she did her psychic readings. Making her way into the kitchen, Sara opened drawers, rummaging around until she found matches and a large wax candle. Propping it in a glass holder, she coaxed the wick to light.
The magnificent bursts of thunder and lightning had stopped, leaving only the rain beating drearily against her windows. No other sound intruded upon the isolation of her apartment except for... Sara tensed, coming suddenly alert, listening. Except for someone hammering against a door.
Her
door to be precise. The front door leading into her shop.
But who in the world would be trying to get into her store at this hour of the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, for heaven's sake? She tried to convince herself she'd just imagined it when the insistent knocking came again.
Nervously she picked up the candle and crept out of the kitchen, tiptoeing through the sitting room and past the beaded curtains that led into her store.
She never realized it before but the shop was an eerie place at night. The light from her candle flickered over crystals glinting mysteriously in the glass cabinet. The feathered dream catcher swayed overhead and dragon incense burners winked at her with fiery red eyes.
When the knocking thundered louder this time, she nearly leapt on top the cash register counter. Glancing toward the door, she could just make out the shape of a man silhouetted behind the glass, large and threatening. She fought a strong urge to douse the candle and bolt back to the security of her apartment.
“Don't be ridiculous,” she admonished herself. “It's probably only someone from the power company or—or one of the neighbors.”
The fussy little antique dealer from next door often came stomping over when there was a power failure, as though Mr. Peavine suspected Sara of practicing some strange mystic rites that drained off all the electricity.
Holding aloft the candle as though it were a talisman to ward off evil, she forced herself forward. The sign on her door pronouncing her shop closed shielded the man's features, but as Sara drew closer, she could tell it wasn't Mr. Peavine. The man appeared too tall, his shoulders too broad.
A sudden hope flared inside of Sara, every bit as irrational as her fear had been. She had no reason to suppose, to even dare to think that it could possibly be....
Her fingers trembled as she reached for the door, but as soon as she touched the handle, she knew.
“Michael,” she cried. Setting the candle holder down on top of a display case, she fumbled with the lock and flung wide the door, just as he was raising his fist to knock again. Her breath snagged in her throat.
Swallowed by the darkness and pouring rain, he sheltered beneath her store front's narrow ledge, her huge mechanical eye weeping copious tears down over his trench coat and the fedora pulled low over his eyes. The tough, rough, hard-edged detective. He looked like he'd stepped straight out of her dream.
Her heart turned over but her joy at his unexpected appearance was quickly tempered by remembrance of the way she'd last seen him. Seen too much of him. Visions of Mike driving down Main Street, naked, danced through her head and Sara flushed. She couldn't have felt more guilty than if the police had suddenly turned up at her door—the thought police.
“Michael.” She breathed his name again. “What—what are you doing here?”
“Getting wet.” He appeared soaked through and his hat had lost some of its dash, the brim wilting a little in the rain. “You gonna let me in, angel, or what?”
“Oh—oh, yes, of course.” Sara stepped nervously aside as Mike brushed past her, seeming to bring with him a storm of wind and rain. Sara could feel the tension rumbling off him like claps of thunder.
“Dammit, Sara,” he growled, slamming the door closed behind him. “Do you always fling your door wide open that way in the middle of the night? What if it had been an ax murderer?”
“It wasn't an ax murderer. It was you.”
“And how could you tell that? It's black as pitch outside.”
“I could tell,” Sara said stubbornly, almost defying him to ask her how.
He didn't, turning to grumble at her door instead. “Cheap lock,” he said. “I could pick it in two seconds flat. And no security system of any kind. Not even a damned alarm.”
“I don't need an alarm. My shop usually isn't invaded in the middle of the night by surly detectives wearing trench coats.”
“It's not a trench coat,” Mike snapped. “Only a raincoat. In case you haven't noticed, it's pouring buckets outside.” Jerking off his hat, he slicked damp strands of hair out of his eyes.
Sara might have been taken aback by his angry tone, but she was sensing something behind all the bluster. Something ... lost and uncertain. Whatever had brought the brash Mike Parker to her doorstep tonight, the man wasn't quite as sure of himself as usual.
“So what's wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong? Nothing.” He shrugged. “But I promised to let you know what happened with Mr. Kiefer.”
“You spoke with him?”
“No-o-o, not exactly.” He rubbed the moisture from his chin like a man testing his face to see if he needed a shave. Which he did. His jaw was shadowed with rough stubble, only adding to his Humphrey Bogart look. “I found Kiefer's place, but he wasn't there. His grandson said the old man took off for a spell, fishing, but the kid had no idea where. It'll probably be a couple more weeks before I can talk to Kiefer. This case is turning out to be damned frustrating.”

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