After Moonrise: Possessed\Haunted (13 page)

“‘Lady’ is just as bad as ‘ma’am.’ I’m Harper,” she called over
her shoulder.

Harper. The name didn’t quite fit her.

He closed the distance, checking the living room to make sure
he’d cleaned up after himself. Besides the shirt and pants he’d draped over the
side of his couch, he had, thankfully, done a little picking up. As for his
furniture, the dark leather of his couch and love seat were scuffed but of high
quality, his coffee table as polished as his gun, and his rug threadbare only
where he liked to pace. The floorboards creaked with his every step, but then,
creaks, groans and moans as wood settled and hinges dropped were the standard
sound track, blending with chatter that could be heard through the ultrathin
walls.

“Listen up,” he said.

“Okay, I’ve waited long enough for you to offer,” the
woman—Harper—interjected. “What’s your name?”

“Levi. Now why are you here?” He gripped the counter to stop
himself from shaking her. Shaking was bad. Very, very bad. Or so his captain was
always saying.

Clutching
his
cup, sipping
his
coffee, she turned to face him. Only, rather than
spilling her reasons, she grimaced and gasped out, “What
is
this crap? Because honestly? It tastes like motor oil.”

So he liked his joe strong. So what? “Maybe it
is
motor oil.”

“Oh, well, in that case, it’s actually pretty good.” She took
another sip, sighed as though content. “Definitely grade-A motor oil.” Her gaze
slipped past him. “You know, your place is so much bigger than mine, with much
better lighting. Who’d you have to sleep with to get it?”

She’s as weird as the rest of them
.
“Who says I had to go all the way?”
Apparently, I am,
too.

A laugh bubbled from her, and she choked on the coffee. “Dude.
Do you know what you just implied?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s why I said it.” Now, then. He’d allowed her
to dominate the conversation long enough. He needed to move this along before
she gave another one of those laughs.
Gorgeous
.

He sidestepped the counter, moving closer to her, closer still,
the fragrance of cinnamon thickening the air between them, the turpentine
fading. He claimed the cup, set it aside and crowded her personal space, forcing
her to back up until she ran into the cabinets.

She peered up at him, those ocean-water eyes haunted…and, oh,
so haunting. Just then, she reminded him of a fairy with a broken wing.

Broken. There was that word again.

Muscles…tensing again…

In his experience, everyone had secrets. Clearly Harper was no
exception. He recalled the day she moved in. She’d kept her eyes downcast, the
long length of those pale lashes unable to mask the shadows underneath. There’d
been a hollowness to her cheeks that had since filled out, and a stiffening of
her spine every time someone had neared her. And wow, he’d noticed a lot
considering he’d hadn’t allowed himself to watch her.

“You have five seconds to start talking,” he said more harshly
than he’d intended. There was no reason to break her other wing, but dang, his
instincts to protect those weaker than himself were taking over, every part of
him rebelling at the thought that someone had hurt her. “Why. Are. You.
Here?”

She gulped, and her trembling increased. “Can’t a girl get to
know a guy before she begs him for a favor?”

“No.” Evasion never worked with him. “Are you in some kind of
trouble?”

Color darkened her cheeks, even as the rest of her blanched to
chalk-white. “Not exactly, no.” Softer voice, danger hidden by silken threads
of…fear? Yeah, definitely fear. No longer was her gaze able to meet his.

More gently he said, “Explain ‘not exactly.’”

And there went her nails, smashing into her teeth. “Word on the
street is, you’re a detective with the OKCPD.”

“I am.” No reason to mention his forced leave of absence.

Those ocean-water blues finally returned to him, so lovely in
their purity his breath actually snagged in his throat. “What kind of cop are
you?”

“A detective, as we’ve already established.”

“Like there’s a difference. A badge is a badge, right? But I
meant, are you the good kind or the bad kind? Do you care about justice, no
matter the cost, or do you just like closing a case?”

He pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth and reminded
himself that he was a calm, rational being (with a gun) and she probably hadn’t
meant to insult him and his coworkers.

“Harper.” A swift rebuke, her name uttered as though it was a
curse. He should have called her “ma’am” again, but since he’d teased her about
how he’d gotten the apartment, formalities were out. “You’re seconds away from
being arrested for public intoxication, because only a drunk person would say
something like that.”

A relieved sigh left her. “The good kind, then. Otherwise,
you’d try and convince me of just how good you are, rather than taking
offense.”

“Harper.”

She swallowed. “Okay, fine. I told you I’m a painter,
right?”

“An
incredible
painter.”

Her chin lifted, those haunting secrets in her eyes momentarily
replaced by affront. “Well, I am,” she said, having to speak around her fingers.
“Anyway, I, uh, hmm. I knew this would be hard, but wow, this is worse than the
time I had to tell Stacy DeMarko her butt did, in fact, look fat in those
jeans.”

I am not amused.
He wrapped his
fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth.

The contact jolted her, and she gasped. It jolted him, too. Her
skin was unbelievably soft, decadently warm, something out of a fantasy. Her
pulse hammered erratically, every pound caressing him. He let her go, stepped
away.

“Last chance, Harper. Just say what you came to say. That’s the
only way to get what you need.”

She rubbed at the elegant length of her neck, the picture of
feminine delicacy, and whispered, “I’m painting something…from memory, I think,
and…the problem is…I don’t really remember, but it’s there, in my head, the
horrible image, I mean, and…and…I think I witnessed a murder.”

CHAPTER TWO

Aurora Harper, named after Sleeping freaking Beauty—and
if anyone dared call her by the awful name they’d soon get a personal
introduction to the razor in her boot—sat “calmly” on her neighbor’s couch. He
was peering at her, silent, waiting for her to answer his latest question.

Her tongue felt thick and unruly, unusable, and there was a
lump growing in her throat, making it difficult for her to swallow. She hated
talking about this, hated
thinking
about it, and
would have given anything to slink away unnoticed, soon forgotten.

Thing was, Levi would not be forgetting her. After her grim
announcement, he’d gone stiff and jarringly quiet, then had ushered her into his
living room, gently pushed her onto the couch cushions and pulled a chair
directly in front of her. He’d spent the next half hour drilling her for
information.

She’d had no idea what to expect from him, had known only that
he was the most rugged-looking man she’d ever seen. Oh, yeah, and every time
she’d glanced in his direction he’d made her heart pound with an urge to fight
him or to jump into his arms and hold on forever—she wasn’t yet sure which.

He had wide shoulders, muscled forearms and the hard, ridged
stomach of an underwear model. Dressed as he was in black jogging shorts, she
could see that he had scarred knees and calves. He was barefoot and his toes
were strangely cute.

She forced her gaze up. Black hair shagged around a face honed
in the violence of a boxing ring, or perhaps even the down-and-dirty streets,
with still more scars crisscrossing on his forehead, his cheeks sharp and
skirting the edge of lethal, and his nose slightly crooked from one too many
breaks. A shadow of a beard covered his jaw.

He was just as bronzed up top as he was below, and she would
guess his ancestry Egyptian. His eyes, though…they were the lightest green,
emeralds plucked from a collector’s greatest treasure. Long black lashes framed
those jewels, almost feminine in their prettiness.

Not the only thing pretty about
him,
she thought then. His lips were lush and pink, the kind her best
friend and roommate Lana would “kill to have…all over me.”

And, okay, enough of
that
. Harper
wasn’t here for a date, wasn’t sure she’d ever date again. The past few weeks,
she could not tolerate even the thought of being touched. Maybe because every
time she closed her eyes she felt phantom hands whisking over her, heard the
laugh of a madman who enjoyed inflicting pain, and smelled the coppery tang of
blood deep in her nostrils.

She could have written off the sensations as an overactive
imagination, except…sometimes she fell asleep in one room and woke up in
another. Sometimes she would be in her kitchen, or in her studio room painting,
or anywhere, really, and would blink and find herself standing in a neighborhood
she didn’t recognize.

The blackouts freaked her out, filled her with soul-shuddering
panic, and each time she realized she was someplace new, her mind would paint
her surroundings with blood, fill her ears with screams…such pain-drenched
screams.

The only explanation that fit was that she’d witnessed a
murder, but had suppressed the details. Suppressed until she painted, that is,
the blurred images of horrors no one should ever have to bear taking shape and
emerging unbidden. Either that, or crazy had razed the edges of her brain and
she needed to be locked away for her own safety.

“Honey, I asked you a question and you need to answer it.”

The harshness of Levi’s voice jerked her out of her mind. Guess
he was done calling her by her name and even the old-lady “ma’am,” and was now
resorting to endearments that sounded more like curses.

“No,” she said, just to pick at him. “Not ‘honey.’ I told you.
I’m Harper.”

One black brow arched into his hairline, and for a moment he
appeared amused with her rather than accusatory. “Is that a first or last
name?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah.”

She popped her jaw, finding strength in the familiarity of an
irritation she’d never been able to shake. Her mother had named her after a
fairy-tale princess and had expected Harper to mimic her namesake. Years of
training in manners and deportment, followed by years of competing in a pageant
circuit she’d despised, had nearly drained the fighting spirit out of her.
Nearly. “Well, I’m not telling you the rest of my name.” He’d laugh; he’d tease
her.

He shrugged those beautifully wide shoulders. “Easy enough to
find out. A few calls, and boom.” He paused, clearly waiting for her to jump
in.

“I will never willingly volunteer it, so you’ll just have to
make those calls.”

A gleam of challenge entered those green, green eyes. “So be
it.” He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned closer to her, the scents of
minty toothpaste and pungent gun oil intensifying. Scents she really, really
liked, if the flutter of her pulse points was any indication. “Let’s backtrack a
bit. Tell me again what you think you’re painting.”

This was the third time he’d demanded that information, and
she’d watched enough cop shows to know he was testing her, looking for any
mistakes between her first and subsequent telling. If he found them, he could
write her off as a liar.

“Shouldn’t you be taking notes?” she said, stalling.

“No.”

“You’ll forget—”

“I never forget.”

“Anything?”

“Not anything like this.”

How intriguing. “Really, because that’s—”

“Talk,” he barked.

His intensity gave her the strength to obey. “Okay.” She closed
her eyes and forced the painting to the front of her mind. “There’s a cold metal
slab, stainless steel, I think, and it’s splattered with dried b-blood. There
are shackles at the top and bottom, holding a woman’s wrists and ankles, and
those are also splattered. There are holes on the slab and floor…drains, I
think, and they’re splattered, as well. There’s a man. He’s clutching a knife
over the woman’s abdomen.” Every word caused her heart rate to quicken and
little beads of sweat to dot her skin. Sweat, yet her blood had thickened with
ice.

“Describe the man.”

“I can’t.” Her lashes fluttered open as a shudder rocked her.
Nausea rolled through her stomach, a common occurrence these days. “I haven’t
yet painted his face.” Wasn’t sure she wanted to see it. Even the thought of him
made her want to hide under her covers and cry.

“What
have
you painted of him?”

“His lower body. His arms. Some of his chest.”

“And he’s wearing…?”

Good question. She’d been so focused on what was happening in
the picture that she hadn’t paid any attention to the little details her mind
had somehow caught. “A white button-up shirt and dark slacks.”

“Possibly a businessman, then. Gloves?”

“No.”

“Is he pale, tan, black, what?”

“Tan, though not as tan as you.”

“Okay, now describe the woman.”

“I can’t,” she repeated, a mere whisper. She flattened a hand
over her stomach, hoping to ward off even a little of the sickness. “Not her
face, I mean. She’s naked, and her skin is pale.”

“Does she have any birthmarks or scars?”

Harper licked her lips, pictured the female and shook her head.
“If she does, I haven’t added them yet.”

His gaze sharpened on her, more intense than before and kind
of, well, terrifying. This was not a guy to anger, or taunt, or even to play
with. He would retaliate, no question. “How much of her have you painted?”

“All but the head.”

“Is she a brunette, blonde or redhead?”

“How would I—”

His pointed gaze explained for him.

“Oh. Uh, I don’t actually know. The bottom half of her is
blocked by the man’s torso.”

“Is she alive or dead in the painting?”

“Dead, I think.” And probably happy to have escaped the
pain.

Silence once again permeated the room, thick and oppressive,
reminding her of exactly why she hadn’t wanted to come here. She’d known he
would doubt her—as she sometimes doubted herself—or suspect her of playing a
part in the murder.

Lana believed the woman was indeed real and Harper had stumbled
upon the scene. As an employee of the Oklahoma City branch of After Moonrise, a
company specializing in grisly murders and the spirits those murders sometimes
left behind, she ought to know. But her belief stemmed not from the painting,
but from the fact that there were two weeks neither Harper nor Lana could
account for. Harper could have been trapped with the man and his victim, and
somehow, miraculously, have managed to escape.

Her friend had showed the painting to her coworkers, but they
hadn’t taken the case. Lana had even begged—which, in her case, meant she’d
cracked heads around—and they’d finally given in and said they would look into
it, but so far, they’d discovered nothing.
If
they’d
even tried. Lana was doing everything she could on her own, but as someone used
to dealing with spirits rather than bodies, this wasn’t her area of
expertise.

So, when Lana heard a detective was living in their building,
she had insisted Harper nut up and speak out.

This tormend you,
she’d said in a
Lithuanian accent that came and went with her moods. When she was happy, she
sounded as American as Harper. When she was scared or angry, hello, the accent
appeared, as thick as if she’d just stepped off the plane. So often now, she was
sad, and at the time she’d been filled with so much sorrow over what Harper
might have endured that her teeth had chattered.
Let man
help you.
That girl…she deserve peace, rest. Please.

I can’t. He’ll suspect me of hurting
her.

Maybe at first, but then he see the
trut.... Please, do for her, for you, for…me.

Given the fact that Lana had spent every night of the past few
weeks sobbing for the pain
Harper
suffered over the
entire ordeal, well, Harper had been willing to do anything her friend asked, no
matter the consequences to herself.

“Harper.” The curt bark of Levi’s voice jolted her out of her
thoughts. “You with me?”

“Well, I am now,” she grumbled. “Do you have an inside
voice?”

His lips twitched at the corners, hinting at an amusement he’d
so rarely shown. That humor transformed his entire face. Those emerald eyes
twinkled, little lines forming at the corners. His mouth softened, and his skin
seemed to glow.

“Have you ever painted anything like this before?” he
asked.

“No. I love painting people, but not like this. Never like
this. Why does that matter?”

“Once, and it’s plausible you stumbled upon some kind of scene.
Twice, and it’s more plausible your mind manufactured everything.”

Okay, that made sense. “Well, it was only once. And just so you
know, I can’t see the dead, so it wasn’t a bunch of spirits putting on a show
for me, either.” She wasn’t like Lana, who had always had the ability to see
into that other realm.

“I’ll need to view your new painting, as well as a sample of
your usual work,” Levi said.

“All right. The new one isn’t done, though. Obviously.”

His head tilted to the side, his study of her intensifying.
“When did you begin painting it?”

“About two weeks ago.” She tried not to squirm or wring her
fingers under such a probing stare—until she realized that his probing stare was
a good thing. Criminals would not stand a chance against this man’s strength and
ferocity. If her painting were a depiction of a real-life event, Levi would find
out the identity of the man responsible and punish him. “Little by little, I’ve
been filling in the details.”

Another bout of silence before he sighed. “Let’s switch gears
for a minute. Forgetting the fact that you’ve never before painted anything like
this, what makes you think this is a memory?”

Bottom line, she wasn’t ready for a stranger to know about her
blackouts and to, perhaps, use them against her, yet neither was she ready to
lie to a man who could have kicked her out but hadn’t. He’d listened to her, had
asked her questions and truly seemed interested in helping her.

So, she said, “I’m struck by moments of absolute terror,” and
gazed down at her feet. Her pink snakeskin boots were one of her favorite
possessions. She’d had to sell four paintings to buy them, as well as live off
peanut butter and jelly for a month, but she’d never regretted the choice. So
pretty. “Moments I can almost feel the shackles around
my
wrists and
my
ankles.”

“Delusions hold that same power,” he pointed out.

Don’t act surprised, you knew it would
come to this
. And better this than the other avenue he could have
taken: blame. “Well, I hope it
is
a delusion,” she
whispered.

“Me, too, Miss…Harper?”

“Just Harper.” She would
not
be
tricked into revealing her full name, thank you.

“Had to try,” he said with a shrug. “What if you discover you
were the one on that table, that you somehow escaped but repressed what
happened?”

“Impossible. I was only gone—” She pressed her lips together,
stopping her hasty confession before it could fully emerge. “I would have had
bruises at some point, and I haven’t.”

He sat there a moment, silent again, before nodding as if he’d
just made a decision. He pushed to his feet and stuck a finger in her face.
“Stay there. Do not move. I’ll get dressed and we’ll walk to your apartment
together. Nod if you understand.”

“And there’s that lovely attitude again,” she muttered.

“Nod.”

Oh, very well. She nodded.

“Good. Disobey, and I’ll cuff you faster than you can say, ‘I’m
sorry, Levi, that was the dumbest thing I ever did.’” Without waiting for her
reply—because he clearly didn’t expect her to have one—he turned on his heel and
headed for the hall.