“What?”
“Going back to Sunday night, when Roxanne and I were in the coffee shop looking for Alex, I thought that I saw a blonde woman—really pretty, just staring at me.”
“Ah, well, maybe she admired you,” Griffin said, trying to speak lightly. “I love looking at you. Let me try to get a little poetic. Eyes like emeralds, hair like a raven’s wing...you’re pretty beautiful yourself, you know.” His left hand on the wheel, he reached out briefly with his right, drawing his knuckles down her cheek.
She caught his hand and turned to him, smiling. “Thanks. I was just thinking... I can’t begin to understand or make sense of what is going on. We keep trying to come up with explanations. A guy dies the other night by his own hand, the girl today tried to die and may still die, and...”
“And?”
“I dreamed of someone dying or dead, Griffin. I thought that it was Alex calling to me, and this is absurd, yes, but I do think he’s trying to reach me somehow. But Alex wasn’t hurt in the dream. It was definitely a woman. I keep trying to remember details, but the cross was upside down, she was all bound to it upside down and everything was covered with blood.” She shuddered suddenly. “Like I was today!”
He squeezed her hand. “You’re pretty good at this, you know. Okay, so you may have been foolish and rash, as well, chasing after the woman who threw the blood at you.”
“Devin went after her.”
“Devin went through the academy. She’s armed.”
“Yeah, well, there’s that. But I was pretty sure the redhead wasn’t armed with more than that cup. It’s just so sad, Griffin. And so confusing!”
He agreed.
When they walked into the apartment, she turned in his arms immediately. It had been a ridiculously long day, an emotional day, and he was glad that she was turning to him—rather than away. And yet she seemed keyed up and distracted.
She suddenly stepped away from him, murmuring, “I’ve got to take a shower.”
“You were just sanitized!” he told her.
“That’s the point. I need to feel like I’m not a large swab of disinfectant soap,” she told him.
She turned and headed toward the bedroom.
He followed more slowly, taking off his jacket and sliding his Glock and its holster onto the bedside table. He sat on the bed and wondered if he should just walk in and join her, or give her a moment.
He smiled, thinking about the incredibly erotic way she had intended to greet him the night before.
The water was still running.
Why not? Griffin thought. He looked around the room.
Maybe he simply needed a few props.
*
Vickie was startled to hear music playing.
After the long day—food and coffee just snatched up here and there on the run, the last hours at the hospital—she’d been zoning out under the shower when the music jolted her back to reality.
She frowned. The water was falling around her, steam rising, and she was holding a little round ball of her favorite rose soap in her hands.
Griffin had not come into the shower.
She had really at least half expected him to do so.
She rinsed quickly, stepped out, grabbed a towel and headed out of her bath and into the bedroom.
And there, of course, he was.
Returning the favor.
He looked like a million bucks, she thought, lying across the foot of the bed on an elbow, a rose in his hand, wearing nothing but a white collar and tie, and a fedora.
Rod Stewart was singing away on the radio, and as she stood there, laughing, Griffin stood and tossed off the fedora and drew her to him, pulling away her towel and dipping her low in his arms. “Laugh at me, will you?” he demanded.
She stroked his face, curled her fingers around his neck and kissed him long and hard. “Laugh at you,” she said huskily. “That was fantastic. Wonderful. I really would like to see just how far it could go—the music, the tie is a nice touch...and you, well, the display of the body, the muscles...wow. Just one thing missing.”
“What’s that?”
She laughed softly. “Some friends at an open door!”
“You’re heartless, wench. Will I never be forgiven?”
“These muscles really are great,” she told him. “If you let me up a little, I can try to show my forgiveness?”
He eased her up. He lifted her and she jumped up, winding her legs around his waist. She loved the strong hot feel of his naked flesh against hers, and loved even more that he had thought to amuse her, tease her, arouse her...
Take the day away and make magic of the night.
He fell backward on the bed, bringing her down on top of him. She found his mouth first, and then moved against him, bathing his bronzed flesh with erotic sweeps of her lips and tongue. It lasted only so long before he reached for her, tossing her underneath him and rolling with her, returning each kiss, each feathery tease and aggressive touch.
They made love.
Sighing, her head on his chest, Vickie slept deliciously. He was the greatest nectar ever for her, body and soul, and he could exhaust her, as well, and let her sleep...
So peacefully at first.
And then the dream came again.
She heard her name being called. She wasn’t certain—she just couldn’t be certain—but she thought that it might be Alex’s voice.
She rose and found her robe and slipped into it. She started down the path that seemed to be forming in front of her.
She paused, and looked back.
She could see Griffin, splayed out on the bed, his body a glorious bronze against the opaque white of the sheets. She wanted to go back to him, crawl into his arms, or at the least wake him and make him come with her.
“Vickie, Vickie, Vickie...please!”
She turned. The note of anguish in the voice calling to her was so very deep.
And, so, she walked the path again.
She could hear running water, see a deeply forested region before her. Pine needles lay upon the path where she walked. She could smell the very richness of the earth.
The voice kept calling to her.
She stepped out of the path and into a clearing.
And there it was—the inverted cross. There was something else there—a table, a large tiled concrete table. People were gathered in the clearing. They were chanting lowly.
“Vickie, Vickie, Vickie, please!”
Chanting and swaying.
She heard a scream. The cross wasn’t empty. The woman was upon it, upside down. Her throat was slit, and blood...
Blood was rushing, along the trail, into the water beyond the clearing, and it was becoming a tidal wave.
She turned to run. She screamed and screamed and screamed...
She awoke; Griffin was there, holding her, shaking her lightly, trying to get her to focus on him.
She stared up at him.
He stared back at her with his incredible dark eyes, empathy heavy within them.
“The nightmare again?” he asked her softly.
She nodded.
“I’m so sorry!” he said. “They are—such dreams—common with us. People who speak with the dead. But, Vickie, though I know how bad they are, I also know just how important it can be to remember them. Someone is trying to reach you. Maybe it’s Alex, maybe it’s someone else or maybe there’s more than one person.” He smiled gently, holding her even closer. “None of us has answers. Really. You’d think that we—who speak with the souls or remnants of our humanity, ghosts, what have you—would have more answers. We just don’t. Maybe we’re not meant to.”
She cupped his face with her hand. “You’re... I really do love you,” she murmured. “You’re so...special.”
He winced, laughed and kissed her fingers. “Special. Great.”
“I didn’t mean...oh! Never mind. You are kind of special in a fedora!”
They both jumped when there was a knock at her door.
“What the hell?”
“Someone must have left the front door to the building open again—hate to say it, even after the Undertaker thing, none of my neighbors ever remember to lock the outer door,” Vickie said, jumping up.