Perfectly Matched (24 page)

“‘Leap and the net will appear?’” I quoted a famous saying.

“Not always,” she said darkly.

I hung up with her feeling as though I’d just been warned.

About what, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

***

Five minutes later, the phone rang. The Caller ID was blocked. I had a good idea who it was.

“You cannot stay here,” Jeremy Cross said after I answered.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I countered, watching
Preston
nap. She looked out for the count.

“Be that as it may, it’s a horrible idea.”

“It’s been good talking to you,” I said, ready to hang up.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“You can’t stay here, but I can help.”

“How?”

“I know people.”

I laughed. It sounded so gangster. “People who own hotels? Because I need a place to sleep tonight.”

“You can stay where you are.”

“Didn’t Orlinda give you the memo about the arsonist?”

“I didn’t need any memo.”

Right. I’d almost forgotten how he’d seen the vision of Sam’s house going up in flames.

“A security force will be arriving at your house within an hour. They’ll remain hidden unless there’s a disturbance. You have my word that the arsonist will not get within one hundred feet of your or your grandmother’s houses.”

A shiver ran through me. Not only because he knew where I lived and who lived next door, but because of the hard tone of his voice. It brooked no argument. He meant business.

I didn’t quite trust his word, but I did trust Orlinda. If she said he was a friend, then I’d believe her.

“Give me a safe word,” he said.

“A what?”

“If you happen across someone on the property, you’ll know who’s who. Pick a word, a phrase. The security officer will know it. A prowler would not.”

“Fuzzy navel.”

“Fuzzy navel?”

“That’s right.” I could practically see him rolling his eyes.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“How’s Ebbie?”

I glanced over my shoulder. She was asleep on my pillow. “Good. I’m thinking about keeping her.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.

“I’m not joking.”

“We’ll discuss this tomorrow. I’ll stop by and see what Ebbie has to say.”

“Who are you?” I said. “Really? Because I know your name isn’t really Jeremy Cross.”

There was a long silence before he said, “I’m a ghost of a man” and hung up.

Preston
stirred and sat up. “Who was that?”

“A ghost of a man.”

She blinked at me, then said, “I’m going back to sleep.” Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back.

I set the portable phone on the table, stood up, and hopped over to the window. Sean and Sam sat in a pair of
Adirondack
chairs perched at the edge of the bluff. Not talking, just sitting.

Both, I was sure, were formulating plans.

But as soon as they came in, I’d run my idea past them. Sean had lived in limited places. If each of those homes were staked out overnight, the chances of catching the arsonist in the act were much greater. We would need more manpower, but with Sam’s connections, I wasn’t worried about that.

Jeremy’s security force had my and Dovie’s house covered. We would need someone at my father’s penthouse. At Valentine, Inc. At all of the homes Sean could remember living.

We would catch him. I was sure of it.

I felt something brush against my leg and looked down to find Ebbie sitting next to me. I scooped her up, amazed at how light she was compared to Grendel.

Her purrs vibrated my hand as I held her against my chest, and I thought about what Jeremy had said about asking her opinion on whether she wanted to say.

I rested my chin atop her head and hoped her answer would be yes.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hours later, Dovie handed me a glass of wine. “Drink.”

Flames from tiki torches flickered around us on her deck. The ocean looked peaceful in the moonlight. It was the only peaceful thing in my world right now.

Well, the ocean and Thoreau, who slept at the top of the deck stairs.

Dovie settled next to me on a wicker loveseat and put her arm around my shoulders. “Telling you not to worry probably wouldn’t help.”

I shook my head and sipped the wine. My foot was aching a bit—I’d cut back on the painkillers, switching to ibuprofen, but the pain was tolerable.

The ache in my chest was much, much worse.

The arsonist stake-out had begun. Without me.

Sean and Sam had insisted I stay home.

I hadn’t been happy about it, even though I understood their reasoning.

With my foot, I couldn’t give chase, and if I tagged along with Sean, he would be more worried about me than catching the arsonist.

So here I was, at girls’ night in at Dovie’s.

Worried sick.

Sean was watching the Donahue’s house; Sam was watching Valentine, Inc.; and they’d enlisted various others to help with various different locations.

Aiden had regretfully sent his apologies that he couldn’t help out tonight.

I was worried about him, too.

“I spotted one of the guys in the woods,” Dovie said. “Ha cha cha. Dressed all in black, muscles galore. Drop dead sexy.”

I hadn’t seen anyone, and it was rather creepy knowing they were there.

Creepy yet reassuring.

“Should Mac be worried?”

She smiled. “Always.”

She wasn’t fooling me. She adored Mac. Unfortunately, how long their relationship would last was in the hands of fate.

Mac had cancer. Originally the doctors had predicted a fairly quick death, but he was beating the odds.

But for how long?

I breathed in the salty night air. The temperature had dropped into the high eighties, but it was still oppressive. Half the city had lost power, and I felt bad for those who didn’t have a cool ocean breeze to take the edge off the heat.

Dovie pressed a kiss to my temple. “Have you heard from Sean?”

“A couple of text messages.” He promised to keep me informed throughout the night. “So far he’s bored, sweating to death, and wishing he’d brought more snacks.”

“No sign of the arsonist.”

“Not yet.”

The French doors behind us opened, and Marisol came out carrying a tray of tapas. Em followed with a full bottle of wine, and
Preston
brought up the rear, looking like she was about to fall over.

And she hadn’t even been drinking.

The sneak had lied to me about her doctor’s appointment. It had been at two, not three, so by the time I made it up to the house to demand she take me with her—she had already returned.

The doctor had taken blood for testing and sent
Preston
home to rest.

She still wore the Band-Aid that the nurse at the doctor’s office had put over the puncture site. The wound was being stubborn about clotting.

“You two didn’t tell us we moved the party outside,” Marisol said.

It didn’t feel much like a party.

I was a nervous wreck.
Preston
looked like death. Em refilled her wine glass and stared at it morosely.

“What a lively group,” Dovie said as if reading my thoughts.

I smiled. Leave it to Dovie to point out the obvious.

“Do you think he’s having an affair?” Em asked.

“No,” we all answered at the same time.

She frowned. “Then what’s going on?”

“Give him time, Emerson,” Dovie said. “He’s obviously working through something.”

“Then why doesn’t he tell me about it?”

“Maybe
you’re
what he’s working through,”
Preston
said, demonstrating yet again her lack of tact.

Em stuck her tongue out at her, downed her wine, and refilled her glass.

“Well,” Marisol said, “things are great with me. Business is great, and I have a date this weekend.” Beaming, she glanced around.

We all stuck out our tongues at her.

“Well, fine. Be that way.”

Dovie smiled. “Who’s the man?”

“Tall, blond, gorgeous. He’s a pastry chef.” She rubbed her hands together. “And he’s delectable.”

“Ew,”
Preston
said.

I grinned.

“We can’t all be so lucky to have a Cutter McCutchan in our lives,” Marisol said, poking her.

“I know,”
Preston
said softly.

Dovie leaned forward. “Wine,
Preston
?”

She shook her head.

“Tapas?”

“No thanks.”

Dovie threw me a worried glance. I wondered how long the blood work would take to return.

Thoreau stirred from his sleep and came over to sniff the goodies on the table. Marisol lifted him up onto the chair next to her. “By the way, Lucy, you’re not going to believe what I found out about your little cat.”

“What?” I asked.

“Remember how I told you her microchip came from a clinic where I volunteered?”

“You told me that this morning. I’m not senile. Of course I remember.”

“Cranky,” Marisol said.

Dovie nodded.

I was cranky. It had been a bad idea to come up here tonight. I wasn’t fit for company.

“Go on,” Em said to Marisol. “Lucy’s just worried about Sean.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“You’re forgiven.” Marisol’s hair gleamed in the moonlight. “Anyway, I went to the clinic this afternoon, and they let me peek at her paperwork. You’re never going to believe who placed that microchip in Ebbie.”

The hairs raised on the back of my neck. “You?”

She nodded. “Isn’t that crazy? And as soon as I saw that file, I remembered her. Such a sweet cat. She’d been a stray when she came in nearly starved. I even took her home with me and fostered her until she put on some weight. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize her today.”

I bit my lip, recalling a recent conversation I’d had with Jeremy.

“And Ebbie told you she wanted to see me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Apparently,” he said, “only you can find my soul mate.”

Ebbie had once known Marisol... “When did you microchip her?”

“Late November. Why?”

“Just trying to piece a timeline together. It’s not long after that she was placed with Jeremy Cross.” He’d said just before Christmas.

“That makes sense. It was right around the time she ran away from the clinic.”

I set my wine on the table. My stomach was too topsy-turvy to finish it. “She ran away?”

“Apparently. I didn’t know about it, because by then my stint volunteering there was over. One of the techs told me today that Ebbie was their one and only escapee.”

“That’s really strange,” Em said. “That she’d somehow find her way back to you.”

“Not strange,” I said. “Fate.”

“Does she have any thoughts about who your soul mate might be?”

“She says that you can find her.”

“What do you mean?” Marisol asked.

I smiled. “It means you might have to cancel your date with Mr. Delectable. You’re already spoken for by Dr. Doolittle.”

***

A couple of hours later, Thoreau and I made our way back down to my cottage. I had fully intended to spend the night at Dovie’s, but I hadn’t been able to sleep, and decided I’d rather be at home.

Ebbie and Grendel met me at the door as if I’d been gone for weeks not hours. I showered them with love and affection and crutched my way into the kitchen for some more ibuprofen.

While there, I pulled out a piece of processed cheese and removed the cellophane. I broke the cheese into quarters and tossed three to Grendel (who liked to chase his treats), and one to Ebbie, who sat daintily on the counter.

I leaned down and said, “It’s Marisol, isn’t it?”

She blinked at me.

I rubbed her ears. “Okay. We’ll figure this out.”

Because as much as Ebbie wanted the match between Marisol and Jeremy, I wasn’t so sure about it.

A ghost of a man
.

What kind of best friend would I be to set Marisol up with someone who claimed he was a ghost of a man?

Ebbie nibbled at her food while I made my way to the couch. As my laptop warmed up, I checked my cell phone. Sean hadn’t answered my last text, and it had been more than fifteen minutes.

I texted again:
sleepy?

He wasn’t one to fall asleep on the job, but it was hot, he was bored, and he was exhausted. I couldn’t rule it out.

While I waited for him to write back, I typed “Jeremy Cross” into a search engine again, and came up with the same results as last time.

Grendel hopped up beside me, looking for attention. After I gave him lots of scratching and rubbing, he hopped down again and sniffed Thoreau, who was curled up in the dog bed next to the hearth. Ordinarily, he would join him there, but tonight, he crossed the room and leapt into the bassinet.

Ebbie ran in from the kitchen and joined him.

He flicked an ear in her direction, and she nudged him with the top of her head.

I thought for sure Grendel was going to pitch a fit, but he sank down, curling up to go to sleep. Ebbie did the same.

I thought again about opposites attracting. Which led my attention back to the computer screen. As far as I could tell, Jeremy and Marisol were about as opposite as they could be.

I typed in everything I could think of having to do with psychics and animal communicators.
Marshfield
Farms. Orlinda. Anything.

Needing a break, I texted Sean:
Anything new?

When he still didn’t text back, I called him. It rang and rang, and finally his voicemail picked up. I left a message asking him to call me back. That I was getting worried.

Which I was. But I tried not to let it overwhelm me.

Biting my lip, I stared at my cursor, and thought about what I knew about Jeremy. Which led me to thinking about the men in the woods.

I typed in “FBI Psychic Jeremy.”

The very first hit was an article about FBI profiler, psychic Jeremiah Norcross.

Bingo.

For the next hour, I skimmed articles and pieced together Jeremy’s life.

Gifted psychic, recruited by the FBI while in college. He worked the toughest cases, tapping into the criminal minds of some of the most depraved people in the world.

Until one of those people killed his wife and his daughter.

And almost killed him.

Jeremiah Norcross then fell off the map.

I guessed that’s when he’d changed his name and became a farmer.

He’d gone into hiding.

You must remember that some scars run deeper than what’s on the surface. Wounds run deep.

Orlinda was a wise, wise woman.

On a hunch, I typed the words Annie Hendrix had heard on my front porch last night. The words I suspected came from Ebbie—and also added the town Jeremy had given me as well.

“Hidden Hollow +
Marshfield
.”

Up popped a yellow page listing for Hidden Hollow Wildlife Sanctuary in
Marshfield
,
Massachusetts
.

I leaned back, feeling a sense of relief.

I’d found this ghost.

But what did I do with this information?

Chapter Twenty-Six

I looked down at my hands, shocked that they were so small. And dirty. Until I realized I was finger painting, making big smiling suns and colorful rainbows on a large piece of construction paper.

Until I realized they weren’t my hands at all—I was once again in someone’s head, watching the world through another set of eyes.

Paint splashed, and looking down, I saw it had splattered onto a pink skirt.

A woman came into the room and said, “Almost done?”

The woman looked familiar to me, and I tried to place her. Streaky blond hair, big blue eyes.

“Almost.”

“Five minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

The small hands took a moment to paint a large flower onto the paper, and I noticed the stack of mail on the table. I didn’t recognize the man’s name on the bill, James Rockwell, but took note of the address—it was in
Phoenix
.

Then we were moving, keeping arms straight out in front so as not to get paint on the walls.

Down a hallway, past a pink bedroom filled with toys. To a small washroom.

“Annabeth!” a male voice called.

Turning, I saw a man in the doorway.

He smiled. “Hurry, hurry!”

My heart nearly stopped. I definitely recognized the man. He had been the one who took
Bethany
, minus the beard.

Paint ran into the sink, the colors blurring together. More soap. More scrubbing.

And finally—finally!—a glance into the mirror.

I nearly cried as I looked into the
almond-shaped
brown
eyes of Bethany Hill.

I bolted upright, my eyes flying open. Breathing hard, I looked around. I was on the couch in my cottage. All was quiet.

At some point Ebbie had moved from the bassinet to the couch alongside me and had brought a friend with her—the pink bear. It sat on the couch pillow, right next to where my head had just been resting.

I picked it up and stared at it, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

What I had just seen.

I glanced at the clock. It was just after three in the morning. I grabbed my phone. It had been hours since I heard from Sean.

My heart pounded. He should have called by now. He’d promised me no more disappearing acts...

I dialed Sam.

“Lucy?” he asked, sounding bored.

“Have you talked to Sean?”

“Not since earlier.”

“He’s not answering his phone.”

“He’s probably asleep,” Sam said.

I wanted to believe him. Prayed he was right. But I knew it wasn’t.
Felt
it. “Something’s wrong.”

There was a beat of silence before Sam said, “I’ll drive over and check.”

“Hurry. And call me when you get there.”

I stood, picked up my crutches and the bear.

Was it possible
Bethany
was alive?

It was a ridiculous hour to call someone, but I picked up the phone to call Orlinda. Only to be told she’d already checked out of the hotel. Apparently, she’d gotten an early flight out, but that meant I didn’t have any means of communicating with her—she had no cell phone.

I couldn’t help but hope that
Bethany
was in fact alive. There was no reason to doubt it. The other visions I’d had like this one had proven true.

Then I thought about what Graham had said, about the shallow grave. It was entirely possible he’d been wrong. That his vision had misled him, as so many of mine (when I touched Sean’s hands) had done to me. Psychics were not infallible.

I wanted to do a jig.

I was taking several deep breaths, trying to get my heart rate back to normal when a pair of headlights swept across the windows.

Sean? I hobbled quickly to the door to peek out. Hope bubbled, and then burst when I saw who was getting out of the car in the driveway.

Dr. Paul McDermott.

As soon as he took two steps toward my door, he was flanked by two intimidating men dressed all in black. He looked about to pee his pants, so I pulled open the front door. They helped Dr. Paul up the steps and said to me, “Do you know him?”

I gazed at them, at how intensely scary they were. “What’s the safe word?”

I saw a flicker in the eyes of the man closest to me. He leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Fuzzy navel.”

I tried not to smile—it wasn’t really a humorous situation—but I couldn’t help myself. This rock-solid, scary-as-hell man saying “fuzzy navel” was about the funniest thing I’d seen in days.

If Dr. Paul had come with nefarious intent, these men had undoubtedly changed his mind. “You can let him go,” I said.

They nodded and dropped his arms. Spinning, they disappeared into the darkness.

Dr. Paul stumbled into the cottage. His face had gone pale. “Holy ninjas! Who the hell are they?”

“Protection.”

“Effective.”

I nodded and set the pink bear back into the bassinet. If Dr. Paul saw that I’d been holding it, he didn’t say anything. “What are you doing here?” Suddenly, I noticed he wore a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt along with a pair of flip-flops. There were still pillow markings on his face. He’d obviously just tumbled out of bed.

“I had a dream,” he said,
taking off his glasses and
pulling a hand down his face.

“About
Bethany
?”

“
Bethany
?” He
slid his glassed back onto the bridge of his nose
. “No, it was—”

The sound of footsteps on the front porch interrupted him. The screen door pulled open and
Preston
stuck in her bedhead. “I saw the commotion,” she was saying, “and came down to check it out.” Her gaze zeroed in on Dr. Paul. “But I’ll be going now.”

“Get back in here,” I said, “and sit down.” By the looks of her, she wasn’t going to make it back up the hill. “Dr. Paul was just going to tell me about a dream he had.”

Preston
sat. “What dream?”

He gazed at her with such intensity that it made me uncomfortable.

She looked at me. “Make him stop staring at me.”

I nudged Dr. Paul. “The dream?”

“It’s Sean.”

“My Sean?” I asked. My pulse jumped and started racing again.

“I didn’t know if it was real. I came here to find out. Is he here?”

I shook my head. “He’s on a stakeout.”

“Does he have a black car?”

I nodded.

“Do you know where he is? Exactly?”

“I could find it, yes.”

“Then, we need to go. Grab some shoes. Well,
shoe
.”

“Dr. Paul,” I said, trying to fight back a wave of nausea, “what did you see?”

“Is Sean dead?”
Preston
blurted.

I sat on the arm of the couch. I’d been thinking the same thing. After all, Dr. Paul was Dr. Death.

“What? No! No! Not that I know of.” His bald head glistened. “All I saw was a masked man sneak up behind Sean and hit him over the head. He put him over his shoulder and walked away.”

“Over his shoulder?” I asked. “Like a fireman’s carry?”

“Exactly like that.”

My stomach started aching.

The phone rang. I snatched it up. It was Sam.

“His car is here, but he’s not,” Sam said, cursing a blue streak.

“Call the police. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up and hopped over to the door and slipped on a flip flop.

Preston
stood up, wobbled a bit, and said, “I’m coming, too.”

Dr. Paul handed me my crutches. “Oh no you’re not,
Preston
.”

“Says who?” she demanded. A feeble demand, but still.

The air grew eerily still. Dr. Paul walked to over to the table, picked up the phone, and punched in a couple of numbers. Into the receiver, he said, “This is Dr. Paul McDermott. I need an ambulance sent right away.” He gave my address, and then hung up.