Shattered: A Psychic Visions Novel (15 page)

She beamed. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I have some news you won’t like.”

She frowned. “You couldn’t find Tasha?”

“I might have found her,” he said in a soft voice. “A body was found in the same fire that burned your store to the ground.”

H
annah gasped in
shock, tears filling her eyes. “What? How?”

“The florist shop was burned to the ground, and a body was found inside. They are presuming it was her but an autopsy is pending.”

Hannah shook her head. “No. She can’t be. She was such a beautiful person.”

“This happened just yesterday.” He took a deep breath and added, “Arson.”

The color faded from her face yet again. She’d taken several major hits today, and at one point they were going to be too much. She wanted to curl up in a ball and crawl back into a hole at the same time.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Where was I?” she asked bitterly. “When my best friend was dying, where the hell was I?”

“And don’t you also mean, where were you when your business was burning to the ground? Or how about when your car was torched in the back parking lot.”

She stared at him as the hits kept on coming. “I can’t believe it.”

“Well, you need to because the cops are looking at you as being the guilty party.”

She stared at him in shock. “But I wasn’t even there.”

“Good. So where were you?”

Her eyes overflowed and she started to sob. “I don’t know,” she cried. “I have no idea because I don’t remember anything about that time. I have no idea even when
this
blackout started. As far as I know I can only remember a week ago – and even that is full of holes.”

He stared at her. “Surely you can remember later than that?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t. Images keep moving in and out but nothing makes sense.” She wiped at her wet eyes. “It’s like I wake up one day and I’m in one world, then I go to sleep and wake up in a different world. I don’t know which is right or wrong but some people are in both.”

“Your father and Will?”

“Why them?” she cried. “Why can’t it be people who love me and are nice to me? I had Tasha and we were really having fun. She knew about my blackouts. I’d had two in the months she’d worked for me, but they were short and not a big deal. Then I just woke up on the highway outside of Stefan’s house.”

Collapsing back against the pillow she said in a low voice, “My father is right, isn’t he? I
am
a danger to society. I should be locked up.”

“No. He’s not right. You should not be locked up. But yes, we do need to fill in the blanks so that we can clear you of murdering your store manager.”

At that she slapped her hands over her ears and curled up in a ball. After a moment she said in a small voice, “I need to rest for a little while.”

“You can have ten minutes,” he said in a hard voice. “That’s it. Then it’s down to business. Unless you want to be locked up – and this time not in a gilded cage.”

She shuddered. How had her life gotten to be so bad? She lay there trying to let his information roll over her and through her. “My life has always been like this. Dr. Maddy had asked me about the traumas in my life and if they lined up with the blackouts, but you walked in then and I didn’t have time to tell her. Not sure that I know all of them anyway.”

“Then start at the beginning and I’ll take notes.”

She nodded. Closing her eyes, she started on that day so long ago. “My mother died when I was eight. Apparently I killed her.”

*

As a place
to start that was a doozy.

His breath gusted out on a heavy sigh as he stared at her to see if she was serious. Lying as she was, speaking in a monotone she said, “I was eight, close to my ninth birthday. We were outside by the lake and I went into the water. I wanted her to play with me but she didn’t want to come in. I had no friends back then. I wasn’t allowed to play with the neighbor kids, and they lived so far away it wouldn’t have worked out anyway most likely. They were as rich and locked up as I was, so they wouldn’t have been allowed to come to my house either.” She paused for a long moment and Trevor wondered if he should prod her.

“I pretended I was drowning,” she whispered, in shame. “It was just a joke. I wanted to have someone play with me…”

Ah shit. He knew where this was going, and it wasn’t going to be a good place.

“She screamed for help and jumped in,” Hannah said. “There were two guards so I don’t know how or why, but she drowned and I survived,” she said in a bitter voice. “Life was never the same again.”

“You know you aren’t to blame, right?” Her gaze opened and shot him such a sad look, he knew she’d carried the guilt forever. “You were a child.”

“I was a stupid, selfish child,” she corrected.

“Did your mother know how to swim?”

She nodded. “I have memories of the two of us swimming. For all I know she might have had one of her fits but if she’d had them on dry land, which is when she always had them, then she’d have been fine. But my father said that the shock of believing I was drowning likely triggered the episode.”

“Episodes?” He stared at her. “As in, fits?”

“She was an epileptic and had seizures occasionally. Apparently they were often triggered by stress.”

“They can be, but there are many other extenuating circumstances. Sometimes even metabolic imbalances cause episodes. Medical science doesn’t know everything.”

She snorted. “I am a prime example of that.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She was a lovely person,” Hannah said tearfully. “But moody. She was either smiling and happy – or she was in one of her melancholic moods. She went from one to the other often with little warning. At those times she’d go to her room and spend some time alone until she felt better.”

“That made for a lonely childhood.”

“It did. But I had everything I could want, so many kids were jealous. We were rich but I was so unhappy. My father worried I was getting the same issues as my mother, so he kept me protected all the time.”

“He would have anyway. He’s a rich man. Kidnappings are all too common. He’d have had to keep a close eye on you.”

“Whatever the reason, I lived with guards. What I didn’t understand was after that incident, the guards followed me everywhere. They had before but not as close, or as constant. I was always in mother’s care before so the guards were in the background but after her death, well, there was nothing left for me at all – I was a virtual prisoner.”

Not unexpected in many ways. He’d heard variations of the same complaint from many members of wealthy families. Money was a nice bonus in life, but it was also a huge headache with side effects many couldn’t see or understand.

“And when was your first blackout?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Right after my mother died. I blacked out for several days apparently.”

“So what you just relayed to me is what you were
told
?” he asked carefully.

“Yes,” she said bitterly.

“Maybe only by one person,” he suggested gently. She studied him as if thinking about what he’d said, but she never commented. Good.

“When was the next time?”

“They were fairly frequent but minor for the first year apparently. Every few months, but I don’t remember why or if anything preceded them. Knowing I killed my mother was likely enough of a trigger to do that.”

“It quite likely was,” he agreed. “What was the next incident that you remember?”

“The guard dying.” She snorted at the look he shot her. “No, I didn’t kill him. There was an attack on the estate. Some kind of attempt on my father’s life. The guard had grabbed me and was carrying me from the living room to the panic room.”

Trevor raised an eyebrow at that bit but stayed quiet.

“On the way, he was shot. I fell to the ground and he collapsed on top of me.” She frowned. “Another vivid memory, but yet distant very foggy almost at the same time.”

He shook his head. Lord, one personal death was difficult, but two… “Both are traumatizing. Were the blackouts worse after that?”

“Oh yeah. Much, but still minor. A few hours, a day, max.”

“Was there another major incident after that?” He knew she didn’t need big triggers to set off the blackouts. If her way to deal with a difficult life was to black out, well that might have been all she could do at the time. But it would become a habit. It was an easy way to avoid dealing with stressors but not a good one.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice fatigued. “There were fights at school, arguments with my father. When he fired my guards, I had more to replace them.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say but it seemed like the blackouts were always an issue, but they were short and I recovered fast. I didn’t have any major triggers before these events, though.”

“That’s good,” he said, cheerfully trying to lighten the mood. “Considering the options. So when did the longer blackouts start?”

She swallowed. “After my father suggested that marrying Will was the perfect answer for me…”

Yeah, that would do it. “Tell me about Will. When did he first start working for your father?”

“Before I graduated. Father fired all the guards at that time, something he did on a regular basis, especially after my mother’s death.”

“I would too,” he admitted. “Unless they hadn’t been responsible, but it’s an emotional decision. If you lose someone you love and have people hired to look after them then you assign guilt, right or wrong.”

“You’re making a big assumption,” her voice slipped from guilt to cold and detached.

He leaned back. “What was that?”

“That he loved my mother. We lived in a separate house from him, and I think that was why she was so melancholic.”

Interesting. He made a note to dig into her mother’s background. “If she was unhappily married that might help explain her moods.”

“And she had health problems. I tried to get some information about her from my doctor a few years ago, thinking that genetically I needed to know, but he said I had to ask my father for that information.”

“That’s not typical.”

“There is nothing typical about my family, remember? My father is the ruler of his universe and we all live in it.”

“Anything else I need to know about your family? The blackouts? How long does it take for you to come out of them?”

She sighed. “Didn’t you say coffee was coming?”

As a delay tactic it worked. “I did. Let me see if that’s coming.”

He got up and walked out of the room. In the hallway he watched Maddy’s assistant walking toward them with two large coffees.

“I’m sorry. Things got a little busy.”

“No apologies needed,” he said from the doorway. “I’m sorry for causing you extra work.” He took the tray from her and walked back inside. Hannah had rolled into a small ball and appeared to be sleeping.

“Hannah?” he said quietly. “The coffee is here.”

“I don’t like coffee,” she said in a low flat voice. “You always say I’m too young to drink it.”

He froze, then silently moved forward to place the tray down on the small table.

He never took his gaze off of her. Taking a step closer, he whispered, “Who are you?”

“Hannah of course, silly.”

Mentally he sent out a message to Maddy,
Can you come? Something is happening to Hannah
.

He shifted his focus to look at her aura and stifled a gasp. It was expansive and wildly colored.
Maddy, if possible I need you now.

*