Reason To Believe (3 page)

He stood, brushed his hands on his pants, and surveyed her face, which looked entirely different with the sprinkling of freckles and the arched brows no longer darkened by pencil. Why did they put so much junk on her face? She was a natural beauty.

“If Lucy didn’t tell you I was coming, then how did you recognize me in the audience?”

“I didn’t recognize you,” she said indignantly. “I’ve never seen you in my life.” At his look of disbelief, she added that saucy smile, the bright and pretty invitation he’d gotten in the studio. “Believe me, I’d never forget you.”

He smirked at the compliment, certain she was lying. She hadn’t pulled the rocket and Michael’s name out of thin air. “Why don’t we start with looking at the e-mails you’ve been getting,” he suggested. “Lucy indicated you have a cyber stalker, and that’s why you need protection and an investigation.”

She turned to the vanity and riffled through a stack of papers, slid a coffee cup out of the way, and presented a pack to him. “Yeah, I do. There’s no shortage of people who like to dis what I do. There are whole Web sites devoted to dismantling my every word. But this guy is elevating it to something scarier. Here.”

He took the papers.

“Each one gets a little nastier,” she said, tapping the page in front of him. “Look at that last one—he knows exactly where I live. He describes my view, which you have to get behind a big wall to see.” She gave a dramatic shudder. “That totally weirded me out.”

“I can see why,” he said, rereading the message slowly. “But what makes you so sure it’s a he?”

She drew back, surprised. “Because chicks don’t send disturbing e-mails to other chicks that say things like ‘I’m always watching you.’ ” She thought about it for a moment. “Although this is Hollywood. You think a woman wrote that?”

“There’s not a single overt sexual reference.”

“Maybe he’s…” She squinched up her face in a charming scowl. “Lowvert?”

He couldn’t help it. He smiled. “Covert.”

The scowl bloomed into a grin, and her eyes sparkled with a little victory. “Oh, there is a sense of humor in there. I like that. Anyway, you’re right. These notes are more about my job than me. Still creepy, though.”

“A competitor?”

“Maybe.” She kicked off her shoes and lost three inches, putting her at about five four, and not an ounce over a hundred pounds. And still a force field of solid energy.

“Any phone calls?” he asked, flipping through the notes for key repeated words.
Phony
.
Scam
.
Fraud
.
Liar
. “Letters? Any contact other than e-mail?”

“Nope.” She played with the hem of her sweater, thinking. “Nothing unusual or that sounds like these.” In one move she yanked the top up, revealing a thin white cami-sole, a tiny waist and the source of that sweet, feminine cleavage he’d been admiring.

Well, it was her
dressing
room.

He didn’t even bother to pretend to look at the paper; the words weren’t nearly as interesting as the half-dressed woman they were sent to. “Do you have any enemies?”

She snorted softly as she walked to a clothes-laden wardrobe rack. “Enemies? This is Hollywood. Of course I have enemies.”

“Ex-boyfriend, husband, or jilted lovers?” With that body, hair, and face, she probably had a dozen. More.

She threw him a look over her shoulder as she stepped behind the rack of clothes. “An ex who doesn’t have the time or inclination to write anything like that, no husband, and not a single lover, jilted or otherwise.”

“Have you attempted to trace these e-mails?”

He heard the soft whoosh of her silk pants hitting the floor, the sound as enticing as her shadow on the wall. “Yes—at least, the computer people at the studio did for me. They said all the messages came through free servers, and that whoever sent them was probably using an Internet café or something.”

A bullshit answer from someone who didn’t feel like doing a little work. Every e-mail could be traced. “My firm can get something more definite,” he said. “How many times have you changed your e-mail address?”

“Three. But then a day later, he sends me another message.”

That took a certain amount of expertise. Or access.

She stepped back into the open area, holding her hair up with both hands, a silver clip in her mouth. The cami-sole was pulled high enough to reveal the dip of low-rise jeans. Very low. A lavender and violet tattoo—something with wings—floated in the concave between her navel and her pelvic bone.

Yeah. This was Hollywood.

“Vadyousinkof…” She popped the clip out of her mouth and stuck it into her hair. “Catburd? That’s what he uses on every e-mail.”

“Could be a power play. Could be a reference to something else. Could be nothing.”

“A power play, huh?” She plopped onto a love seat and propped bare feet onto the two inches of coffee table space that didn’t have a magazine, earring, or Styrofoam cup. “Like somebody who sits in the catbird seat. Hadn’t thought about that.”

“Or he’s a geek.”

She looked up at him, from under lashes that were thick even without the mascara. “How’s that?”

“A reference to General Catburd, a character from the Bonzai Buckaroo film. Real popular with science geeks. You know any?”

She snorted softly. “Not really.” Then she shot forward like a little bird in a cuckoo clock, pointing her finger at him. “You know, there was this guy, this graduate student at Cal Tech, and he was just weird enough to do something like this. He said he’d prove to the world I’m a fake. That’s the last thing he said to me. I totally forgot about him.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“About three months ago. He was doing his doctoral thesis, trying to ‘disprove the paranormal.’ ” She finger-quoted the phrase. “I did a phone interview—just to be nice, mind you—and he was so obnoxious. He wouldn’t listen to me, he was closed-minded, and his whole attitude really torqued me. Then, the best thing happened.” She grinned at the memory, leaning back and crossing her arms with a cocky smile. “Right in the middle of his ranting that paranormal doesn’t exist and psychics are really psychopaths, his dead sister shows up.”

“His dead sister.” Chase took a seat across from her, using everything in his training not to react. “Showed up.”

“You know—she started talking in my head. And I told him he had a sister who passed away of leukemia and that she was describing their house—it was yellow with a green tin roof, I remember distinctly—and he went absolutely postal and hung up. I never heard from him again.” She pointed to the e-mails. “But those started around the same time. One every couple of weeks at first, then weekly.”

Chase just lifted one brow. “And his sister? Has she popped in for any more visits from beyond?”

She grabbed a purple velvet throw pillow and hugged it to her chest, her eyes lit and her color high. “Let me make something clear. I do
not
talk to the dead.”

“No kidding.”

“
You
do.”

He just stared at her.

“
I
wasn’t the medium in there, when we talked to your friend Michael,” she said, dropping the pillow to point at him again. “You were. I was hearing what he was saying through
you.
See the difference?”

“No, but I’m not here to buy what you’re selling. I’m here to protect you and help you find and eliminate the threat. That’s my job.”

She shot to her feet. “I’m not selling anything. And what do
you
think happened in there? You think someone told me there’d be a tall, hot guy in the third row who has a dead friend named Michael?”

“I think,” he said calmly, “that Lucy Sharpe mentioned my NASA background in your discussions about a bodyguard. I think you made a brilliant guess that I would know another astronaut killed in one of the very few high-profile incidents involving the space shuttle. Maybe you remembered one of their names. And then you took a very lucky guess. I think that’s what you do, and, frankly, you do it quite well.”

She half choked and stuttered over a few words, as if she didn’t know where to begin her argument, there were so many possibilities. “Listen to me,” she finally said. “I didn’t know you were an astronaut. And I don’t have time to run Internet searches on bodyguards I hire; that’s why I went to a reputable company.” Her eyes shone as she looked at him. “I
heard
Michael. Well, you did. And I heard him from you. It was not a lucky guess.”

“It’s a common name.”

She threw her hands on her slim hips, adding a theatrical sigh of exasperation. “We have a big, fat problem, because if you don’t believe me, then you can’t protect me.”

“Of course I can.” He indicated the love seat. “Calm down. We need to focus on the tangible problem. These e-mails.”

She shook her head slowly, dropping back to the sofa to get eye level with him. “No, you can’t. Because those notes may be tangible, but the real threat to my safety isn’t coming from the person who sent e-mails.”

He frowned, waiting for an explanation.

“You were there. You saw what happened to me in the studio. I told you, I witnessed a murder.”

He reached out and put his hand on her knee. “I don’t believe in visions, Arianna.” Her mouth opened and he quieted the protest with a squeeze. “But I do believe in instinct. Maybe what you think you saw, was a manifestation of something else that’s making you feel insecure. These e-mails could have that effect on you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She threw herself back on the love seat with another drama queen exhale. “I am not
manifesting
anything and this isn’t something I
think
I see. Images are sent from someone who has crossed over to the other side: sent directly to a person in the room where I am. I pick it up from them, and only them.” Her voice rose in frustration. “You have to believe me.”

No, he didn’t. But he did have to listen. “Okay. Why don’t you tell me what you saw and why this is making you so scared.”

“It’s making me scared because I can’t pick up something like that, unless it is coming from someone very close. Usually in the room.”

Usually. There was always a caveat with her.

“So whoever is acting as the medium, whoever is sending the message—and this one is quite vivid and always,
always
in black-and-white, which means it is evil through and through—is going to figure out very soon that I know they committed murder.”

“And you think that person is worried that you will expose them. Even though there isn’t a body. Or a crime. Or any evidence of anything but your…vision.”

“Yes,” she said, shooting him a look that said he failed in hiding his sarcasm. “And it
will
become clearer. It already has. It’s just a matter of time before I see their face.”

“But not the body of the victim? Which, you have to admit, would be helpful.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever see the body. Right now, my perspective is from inside a car that’s being forced over a cliff. I’m inside the head of whoever died. But every time, I see more details. And once I know who’s in the other car, who the killer is…” Her voice quavered. “They might do anything to keep from getting caught.”

“But there is no crime. Just your…” Imagination. “Visions.”

She stood, pushing back a strand of hair that had escaped the clip. “That can be enough to scare a killer.”

“I appreciate your concern, but these e-mails—”

“No, you don’t.” She widened her legs and stared down at him, as threatening as a hundred-pound woman in a flimsy tank top could be. “You don’t appreciate my concern. You want to take those e-mails and figure out who sent them and stop that guy. Fine. So do I. But I mostly want to figure out who’s sending me the visions in the studio, and expose them before they kill me. They might even be related. Have you thought about that?”

Actually, he had. He stood to take away the slight advantage she had by looming down at him, with her nipples six inches from his face. “I promise you that we’ll investigate every possibility, and use the very best resources to get information. We will be vigilant and careful, but you need to live your life as you normally do, with the added assurance that you have protection.”

“I intend to. But you need to know this: I’m seeing a murder. And I know, firsthand, that seeing it is enough to scare the hell and sense out of the person who committed it.” She reached over and touched his hand, her fingers warm on his skin. “Didn’t
you
run an Internet search on
me
? Because if you did, you’ll see my mother was shot when I was seventeen.”

“Yes, I saw that in your file. I’m sorry. There were no details.”

“Then let me tell them to you. My mother was shot on the freeway, on her way to a crime scene where she was about to identify the killer. Murderers are scared of psychics. We know their secrets.
That’s
why I called Lucy Sharpe for a bodyguard.” She gave him one last finger-point to the face. “Not because some whacko student wants his graduate thesis to be accurate.”

She strode toward the other side of the trailer for the perfect exit. A second later, he heard the powder room door latch. He sat back, staring at nothing, his brain cataloguing the facts.

Now he knew why she’d called the Bullet Catchers, and not one of the dozens of ordinary security firms that provide protection to the stars. Because this was not an ordinary case of celebrity stalking. But why had Lucy yanked him from the job at Stanford to handle this? Why did she think a rocket scientist was equipped to handle the woo-woo girl who had visions of murders dancing in her head? Had she sent him because she knew he’d be the skeptical voice of reason and logic, or just because his boss loved nothing more than finding the chink in the armor of every Bullet Catcher?

Lucy may have been in a bind to staff this assignment, but she never did anything arbitrarily.

He pulled out his cell phone. It was after midnight on the East Coast, but of course Lucy answered on the first ring. “Chase? Are you in L.A.?”

“I am,” he confirmed. “And with the principal.”