Shattered: A Psychic Visions Novel (33 page)

“I’m not keeping it. It’s scratchy and hot.”

“Reminds me of a walk on the wild side.” She reached up and kissed him.

He gave a shout of laughter. “In that case, it’s definitely coming off. Back then we could only grow super fine and splotchy beards. But we tried hard and the sparse hair growth added to the whole scruffy look.”

She grinned. “Well, whatever it was – it worked for you guys.”

“Only to the girls who were looking for the same thing.” He leered at her, causing her to giggle.

“Oh my, don’t you look fine.” She batted her eyes and he laughed, hugging her close.

“You are very cheeky this morning.” He released her and stepped around to pour coffee from the pot for them both. “I’m glad to see it.”

“I am feeling better, you, however, look to have more weighing you down.”

“Yeah, I do.” He held out a cup for her. “The office was broken into last night. My assistant called from the scene while the police were there.”

“Oh my God,” she cried. “Was he working there? Did he get hurt?”

Trevor shook his head. “No, he was at home at the time. There is a bunch of damage that insurance will cover but we don’t know if this was a random attack or if they were looking for something or if it was a warning.”

She sucked in her breath. “Likely a warning. From my father.”

He nodded. “That’s my first impression but we can’t count on that yet.”

“Do you need to go there this morning?”

Again he nodded. “Yes. We’ll stop by on our way to the mall.”

“Right.” She stared out the window. “What a pain.”

“The mall or the office?”

She laughed. “Both really. I have a ton of clothes at home so don’t need to buy new ones, and you certainly didn’t need this extra headache.”

“Your clothes might not still be there.”

“I thought of that,” she said in a pensive voice. “In the scheme of things there isn’t much there I care about, but there are a few things of my mother’s.”

“Like what?”

“Her diary for one.” She sighed. “I never did open it. I loved her so much and the guilt just crippled me.”

“Maybe we will swing by then. See if we can find that.”

She glanced over at him. “What value would it have?” She frowned at him, not sure she wanted anyone prying into her mother’s personal thoughts. It felt wrong. Intrusive. And it was the last thing she had of her mother – sharing that felt like a betrayal.

“We need to confirm how she died. And if she had any worries, fears, idea of her impending death.”

Hell. She was going to have to read the diary. And share with him.

“I wouldn’t want her diary to become public knowledge, and neither would I want to lose it.”

“Understood. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. If there is evidence of her own demise, you might want to consider that justice has a price. And sometimes lack of privacy is part of it.”

*

He didn’t want
her worrying about the diary. He’d seen enough cases where someone held privacy at a higher value over truth. That couldn’t happen in this case. She needed to be safe. And he needed to stop being harassed. If her diary held any nuggets of truth then he needed to hear them. And as soon as possible. And that brought up a possible reason for the break in.

Could it be someone was looking to see what he was up to? Cases he was working on, evidence he’d collected? And possibly stop him. Not that a break in would do that. A fire might though. He frowned, thinking about it. He had an offsite storage locker, but only for old files.

“We can leave right now, if you’d like.” Hannah leaned against the counter in front of him, munching on a piece of toast. “It’s obvious we need to go as soon as possible.”

He glanced down at his coffee and wondered, but that inner prodding wouldn’t stop. “Let’s go,” he said. He threw back the rest of his drink and rinsed the cup under the tap.

Within five minutes they were on the road. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t nine yet. On a Sunday morning. The roads were empty and the sun was shining bright. He felt foolish. But he hadn’t done this job for so long to ignore his instincts. He pulled up beside his ground floor office and stared at the large plastic sheets over the windows. His office was in a general office building. He had a small sign but generally he didn’t have much in the way of walk in traffic. It wasn’t the nature of his business. Outside he checked the ground around the broken windows and quickly realized that was likely how the intruders had broken in. He unlocked the front door, wondering what the point of locking it now was but…

He stepped back to hold the door open for Hannah who stared at the broken glass on the ground. “It was Will,” she said softly. “I can feel him here.”

Trevor froze. “You can feel him?”

“Sure. I’m the one who shatters when he gets too close, remember,” she said, her voice droll.

He did remember but had no idea she’d recognize Will’s signature after the fact. Interesting. “Can you feel someone else with him or was he alone?”

She closed her eyes and stood still. He watched the tight aura open up slightly and a wisp of energy slide out away from her body. Like any animal that was hunted, it took stock of the situation then dashed back under cover into safety.

“I’m only feeling Will’s energy,” she said. “But I don’t know if that’s because I can’t in theory recognize other people’s energy or if, in fact, Will was alone.” She turned to give him a lopsided grin. “So no help there.”

“It’s a help already. If this was done by Will, then either he was acting alone or this was done on your father’s orders.” He glanced at her. “Would Will do something like this on his own?”

“Oh absolutely. He has a lot of free rein these days.”

“Because your father lets him have it, can’t control his pet or because he doesn’t care what Will does?” He studied her, curious to see her reaction to his comment.

“I don’t know,” she said. “All three are possible. I haven’t spoken to my father – outside of the lovely hospital visit – in months. I’m not sure what his mental state is these days. At the hospital though, he was as bullish, arrogant and controlling as ever.”

He had been, but that could have been bluster. Something to consider. “You are his only child.”

“Maybe,” she said cheerfully. “At least I’m the only legal one. Given my mother has been gone over fifteen years, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear he’d fathered a half a dozen other kids with his ex-mistresses.”

“Do you have any names of these so-called mistresses,” he asked when she finally walked into his destroyed office.

“No, and I don’t remember them. Wanda has been his main squeeze for years.”

Goodman might not have wanted any more legal heirs either. They did have a tendency to want inheritances early. Not that that was the case with Hannah. More likely her father had changed his will so she’d never be able to inherit, given his opinion of her mental state. Handling his vast business dealings would be well over her head. A trust was more likely. He doubted he’d have cut her off, because in his mind she couldn’t live an independent life, and she was still his responsibility. Even if only for show.

He’d like to think that Goodman loved his daughter.

But he’d been in the business a long time, and too often the relationship between family members was anything but love.

T
he office looked
terrible. Hannah stood in the open doorway and wanted to cry. It had been such a nice office. But not only had the intruder – Will – she would have said it was Will’s handiwork from the get go – broken in, but he’d destroyed damn near everything he could get his hands on. The desks had been stomped, and from what she could see, one had been severely broken. The other two had been metal and he’d tossed those. The drawers had been pulled out and dumped. Still, for all the two-year-old temper tantrum effect, the place wasn’t going to take too much to set to right. At least she hoped. There were office things like staplers and pens and scissors all over the floor. Pads of paper had been ripped and thrown. Loose sheets on the floor.

The printer was beside the door. That made no sense. Had he thought to make this look like a robbery? Because if so, he failed. Big time. And Will didn’t fail at much.

Or maybe it was an afterthought. Hell, maybe he just liked the printer. She studied the machine. Then motioned at it. “The printer doesn’t have a memory, does it? That he’d be able to take and retrieve the information that had been printed?”

“No. We don’t have a big expensive network here partly for that reason. We buy new printers almost yearly.” Trevor studied the square looking one on the floor. “This is a printer scanner copier thing but bigger than the last one.” He shrugged. “Easy to replace, just irritating. All this has done is set me, us, back a day to clean up.”

“You’re sure there was nothing here for him to find? Not your home address, your bank accounts, your friends names and places…” She spun to look at him. “Would he have gotten Kali’s address from here?”

“He might have,” Trevor said slowly. “I’d wondered how he’d found us there.” He frowned. “But the break in happened afterwards.”

She snorted. “Or he came here first and got what he needed, then after I changed his mind, he came back to look for whatever it was he’d come for the first time and destroyed the office in a temper because either he couldn’t remember what that was or couldn’t find it.”

Trevor stared at her. She could see him slotting the information into the correct boxes and he grinned. “You know that’s very possible.”

“The question is did he get what he wanted the second time?”

Trevor looked around. “This is a temper tantrum. So my guess is no.”

“The issue is are we safe at Kali’s house?”

“I’m not sure any house is safe.”

And that bothered him. She could see his face twisting in a frown. “I’ll call a security company that has done a lot of work for me in the past.” He pulled out his phone and walked away.

Hannah turned her attention to the mess in front of her. She knew Will had been here – but could she find any proof? She’d love to see him in jail for a year or two, although her father would most likely get him off. Particularly if he’d done this on orders. She wandered through the mess and studied the area. She had no idea what kind of proof she’d be looking for. Just because she recognized his energy didn’t mean it would stand up in court. The place was such a mess she couldn’t see anything that might have been new or different. She studied one corner. There was a crushed coffee cup on the side where the window had been broken. Would that have been from Will’s cup? She didn’t recognize the company logo on the side. If it wasn’t from around here or one that Trevor’s staff regularly attended, then it could be Will’s. He was a steady caffeine addict.

Trevor walked up behind her. “What did you find?”

She pointed to the coffee cup on top of the glass but still under pads of paper. “Do you think that was from one of the police, your staff or from Will?”

“Interesting.” He crouched down to take a look. “Believe it or not, my staff aren’t coffee drinkers. They are green tea addicts. The cops know better than to add to a crime scene, but neither should they have missed this.”

“It’s partially hidden, and I wouldn’t have noticed except I accidentally kicked these pads of papers.”

He nodded, got up and went into his office then came back out with tweezers and plastic bag. He carefully bagged the cup. “I’ll let the police decide if this is valuable or not.”

“Good. I’m all for anything that will nail Will’s ass to the jail cell wall.”

“So feisty,” he murmured. That grin of his flashed. “I like it.”

“Ha. You like it as long as it’s not turned on you,” she replied. She wandered the rest of the room looking for something that was out of place.

“Can you see his energy or just feel it?”

She spun. “One can see energy?”

He laughed. “Absolutely. I can see your aura. Or rather, the little bit of your aura you let us see.”

She blinked. “So you’re thinking I might be able to see Will’s energy?” She motioned with her hand. “As I look around I don’t see anything different. I see the destroyed office.”