Something Wicked: HarperImpulse Romantic Suspense (3 page)

His libido wasn’t driving anymore. His cop instincts had taken the wheel.

She could be involved. An accomplice. They could be toying with the police.

Maybe she’d come to Charleston to scam them, or had she seen a chance and jumped at it when she read the paper this morning? He couldn’t remember seeing her at the bar before last night. He’d have to make inquiries at the inn to find out when she’d checked in. Find out why she was in town. She could have been watching him for days.

The captain instructed Dylan to close the door behind her.

“I know you don’t like doing this, but we’ve got three homicides connected by this.” Devereux gestured to the drawing on the notepad. “And we don’t have a single lead yet. It’s only a matter of time before the press calls us out and starts proclaiming we’ve got a serial killer in the city. I don’t need that kind of grief. Understand me?”

Dylan crossed his arms and nodded over his shoulder. “How do you think she knows about the reaper? You really believe she’s psychic?”

“I have no idea, but I’m desperate enough to give her a chance to prove herself. Do me a favor, Collins, and do the same.” The captain reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of pills. “What is Dempsey saying? He confirmed anything yet?”

Dylan shook his head and thought back to his conversation with the coroner. “He said he’d try to have a report to me after lunch, but it depends on when the autopsy is done. Don’t worry. I’ve called, and they know it’s a priority.”

“Head over there and make sure they hurry. Take King with you.”

Dylan clenched his jaw to keep from arguing. “Anything else?”

“Just keep me informed.” The captain gestured toward the door, giving him permission to leave, but adding one last comment. “My friend in Denver isn’t an easy guy to impress, and he was impressed by her. She might surprise us.”

He didn’t tell the captain she already had.

Dylan went back to his desk and did a search on Alexandra King. She came up empty on a criminal records background check. Her driver’s license had recently changed from Colorado to Georgia. No past bankruptcies. Divorced. Interestingly, she had filed for an order of protection against a man named Kevin Alred a few months before she’d moved from Denver to Atlanta, but the details in the system were slim.

The internet gave him hits on several articles from Colorado, citing her involvement in cold cases, and a few more hits on spiritual conventions at which she’d appeared as a guest.

He added private detective to her name in the search field, but no new results came up. Had she lied about being a private investigator? If so, it would be easy enough to determine. PIs were required to be licensed in most states.

He’d just picked up his phone to call and ask Kathy to peek and tell him what agency Alexandra claimed to work for when Kathy’s voice startled him from behind.

“Paperwork is filed. She’s all yours, Collins.”

***

So he’d been checking her out.

Alexandra wasn’t surprised. She’d expected it. Glancing at the computer screen in front of him, she recognized her name in the search field and tried to take note of the results shown before Dylan turned around in his seat.

A sick, worried feeling gripped her stomach and made her feel momentarily nauseous. Had Spider updated the firm’s website to include her name and bio yet? She hoped not. At least, not yet.

She wanted to talk to Dylan before he made the connection between her and his brother, feel him out and see how receptive he was to reconciliation first. If there was as much bad blood between the two men as Zach seemed to think, she sensed that type of connection would not be to her advantage right now.

Of all the men to fall into bed with her first night in town, of course he would turn out to be a cop
and
Zach’s brother.

Of course he would.

Putting his phone back in its cradle, Dylan turned and sighed, half smiling up at her and bringing to mind all sorts of naughty memories.

Whoa, girl. Keep your mind on the matter at hand, and not on his, er, weapon.

She crossed her arms and arched a brow at him. “So it’s Detective Collins, is it?”

He stood. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. King.”

“Funny. You remind me of this guy I know, only I don’t think he ever mentioned his name.”

He glanced around, seemed satisfied no one was paying them attention, and lowered his voice. “Poor communication seems to be a real problem here. He doesn’t remember you mentioning you were a psychic either.”

She tilted her head and considered him. “Oh, dear. I thought you only referred to yourself in third person to pick up women. This is a real problem for you, isn’t it?”

He did not look amused as he reached for his jacket and brushed past her. “The only real problem I see here is that I don’t have time for this crap.”

She hurried to keep up with him as he pushed out the door and headed for an unmarked car that had seen better days. He turned his head once he reached the vehicle, looked at her, and sighed as he opened the driver’s side door. “Get in. We’re going to check on the coroner’s report.”

She had to brush aside a fast-food wrapper and bag, but she slid into the seat beside him without commenting on his sudden lack of manners.

“Your car?”

“Detectives aren’t allowed to use personal vehicles on duty.” His gaze skimmed over her doubtfully. “Seems an experienced police consultant would know that.”

She couldn’t help it. She had to roll her eyes. Oh, the fun she could have with this man, winding him up. He hadn’t been nearly so uptight last night.

“I’m not an idiot, detective. I was simply wondering if this was your mess or someone else’s.” She picked up a discarded receipt on the seat beside her. “I have to wonder about any man who eats a simple ham omelet sandwich when the enormous omelet sandwich on their menu is so much tastier.” She handed him the receipt, which he promptly crumpled and tossed over his shoulder into the back seat before starting the car. “Oooh. Messy. Another strike against you. Didn’t your mother teach you better than that?”

Speaking of…where the heck was his mother? Rebecca still hadn’t made an appearance, even though every effort Alexandra had made to close herself off had been futile. She’d seen a few ghosts wandering around, but none had tried to make contact with her. Only that pesky guy from the bar last night, and the young woman from the café this morning.

As she buckled up, she took stock of Dylan’s features and began to notice a slight resemblance to Zach. Both men had thick, dark hair, blue eyes and a strong jawline, but Dylan’s face was longer than his brother’s. Oh yeah, she could see it now, in the daylight, and felt like slapping her forehead and murmuring “D’oh!”

She’d slept with her boss’s little brother.

Oh, Alexandra, how do you get yourself into these things?

He directed the car into traffic and caught her looking at him. “I’m gonna ask you some things, and I expect the truth.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

His chest moved beneath a deep breath. “Why are you in Charleston?”

Ah, heck. Of course that would be the first thing he asked.

“I’m looking for someone.” There. That was the truth.

“Who?”

Well, crap. “A friend’s brother. I’ve been led to believe he’s in trouble.”
Please don’t ask for a name.

“What kind of trouble?”

“I have no idea. That’s partly why I’m here. To figure it out.” She flexed her hand in a circle motion. “My information so far has come from … my special abilities.”

He sent her a narrow-eyed look before focusing on the road again. “Mind telling me what your abilities are exactly?”

She shrugged. “I’m a psychic medium. Any dreams, visions, or voices I hear are from the spirits feeding me information.”

“And there are ghosts everywhere, all of the time?” He scoffed. “So all ghosts are crime-fighting ghosts? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Most have the same personalities they had when they were alive. There are plenty of ghosts who keep to themselves, just as there are plenty who like to help if they see an opportunity.” She pursed her lips as she considered his words. “Although I have met some who consider themselves vigilantes of a sort. I met this one guy last year who died on Halloween. I swear, he loved that he’d died dressed as Batman. He used to—”

“Spare me the ghost stories,” Dylan growled. “When did you get here?”

“Last night.” She felt her face warm. “I checked into my hotel, went to the bar to grab something to eat, and you know the rest.”

He grimaced and glanced toward his window, hiding his expression from her. “So you’re ditching your search for your friend’s brother to help us with this case, for free?” He shook his head. “Sorry, honey. Something doesn’t smell right here.”

“Probably that left-over omelet sandwich. I’d toss that bag soon if I were you.”

His lips twitched. “I wasn’t talking about the omelet and you know it.”

Her muscles bunched in that way they always did when she met a skeptic a-hole hell-bent on dismissing her, and nothing she said or did could persuade him to the opposite.

Where the heck was Rebecca? Alexandra would have given anything in that moment for his mother to share some information to really freak him out.

“I don’t expect you to understand. I have a question for you now.”

He nodded. “Alright.”

“What does that grim reaper drawing have to do with the woman who was murdered in the cemetery?”

His jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

A series of images flashing in her mind momentarily disoriented her. The grim reaper cartoon she’d already seen this morning. An image of water. A woman’s hand falling into water. Water flowing onto sand.

She blinked when the road came into focus again in front of her. She blew out her breath and glanced toward the back seat. She didn’t see the dead young woman sitting back there, but Alexandra suspected the woman was hitching a ride and feeding her information telepathically.

This young woman must be the victim. That’s why she was drawn to me, but she’s new, still confused, probably scared. Trying to see if she can trust me before she reveals herself in full.

Alexandra returned her attention to the man beside her. “She wasn’t killed in the cemetery, was she? Her body was just placed there after.”

He shifted in his seat. “What?”

“She was killed near water.”

Dylan shook his head and then laughed. “This is Charleston. Water is all around us.”

A-hole.

Alexandra felt a little nauseous—that sometimes happened after such visions—so she placed a hand on her stomach and willed it away. “I can’t begin to explain to you how this works, but when it happens, like it happened this morning when I saw the newspaper, it doesn’t matter what else I have on my plate. I feel such a strong sense of urgency about this case right now. I had to offer my help.”

Because Alexandra knew, deep in her soul, that whoever killed the woman found in the cemetery would kill again.

Soon.

The sterile, gray-walled hallway was empty except for a handful of people dressed in scrubs, some carrying books or backpacks, as Dylan led Alexandra through a door marked MEDICAL AND FORENSIC AUTOPSY SECTION. She’d remained quiet as he’d pulled into the Medical University of South Carolina’s parking lot, but her curiosity finally got the better of her.

“Is this a school or a hospital?” Alexandra asked.

“Both. It’s a teaching hospital.”

Her throat tightened. “Is this where the coroner’s office is?”

“No.”

An anxious feeling nestled in her chest and refused to leave. “But this is where he performs autopsies?”

Dylan didn’t answer, which told her all she needed to know.

The bastard was bringing her to see the girl’s dead body. Some warning would have been nice. She slowed her steps to a stop, and with a heaving sigh, he finally turned and acknowledged her.

“The staff here handles them and sends their report to our coroner. I don’t have time to wait for it.” He motioned her toward another door. “After you.”

Great. He actually was taking her to the autopsy room. Goosebumps lifted the hairs on her arms at that realization. Alexandra had assisted other police, sure, but none had ever taken her to a morgue before. She wasn’t sure she could handle it, quite frankly.

Dead people, no problem. Dead bodies, hell no.

Her feet wouldn’t move, and she reached out a hand to grab the wall beside her. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re being mean and cruel, and trying to scare me away.”

His eyebrows shot up, even as his shoulders relaxed. “What? You mean you’ve never seen a dead body before?” A smirk played at the edges of his mouth. “In your line of work? Come on. I thought psychics got their information from things like this. You know, touching stuff.”

Touching a dead person in the autopsy room? Was he out of his ever-lovin’ mind?

Oh, she’d seen plenty of dead people in ghost form, and a few times at funerals. She didn’t particularly care to ever see one up close and personal after a medical examiner had cut it open.

The scent of some harsh cleaning chemical nearby assaulted her nostrils and sent her stomach on a gymnastics routine.

“Since what I do is new to you, I’ll cut you some slack. I don’t need to see a body in order to—” Ugh, she still felt nauseous from earlier. This wasn’t helping. She waved a hand. “—to be able to communicate with the person. Spirits, at least young spirits, tend to linger near the person, place or object they valued most in life. Eight times out of ten, it wasn’t their body.”

Dylan’s mouth pulled into a tight line as his eyes seemed to trace her features. Was she turning green? Man, she felt like she might be. “Fine. There’s a chair in the office around the corner. Wait there. I’ll try to make this quick.”

Nodding, she hurried to find that chair before her mind and body conspired to faceplant her right there in the hallway. She found one in a small, empty room and dove for it. Her face grew hot as her vision blurred and the room spun around her.

Oh, man. Not good.

Forcing deep breaths in and out of her lungs, she squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head between her knees. Breathe. Breathe. Okay. Everything’s okay now.
She repeated the mantra over and over until the kaleidoscope of color behind her eyelids stopped. She slowly opened her eyes and sat up. This had happened before, most memorably when she’d been visiting a cousin after foot surgery, glanced down at the freshly stitched wound on the swollen limb propped on a pillow, and abruptly lost consciousness.

Given the assortment of strange and unnatural injuries she’d seen among the dead over the years, one might expect her to be blasé about the real ones, too, but nope, she was a first-class wimp when it came to blood and gore. Her mind had always been able to disconnect when a ghost manifested a slit throat or bloody gash, much the way many people did when watching horror films, but put her near a hypodermic needle or flesh wound, and she was horizontal in seconds.

She reached for the lightswitch on the wall above her shoulder and flicked it on. She yelped when she spotted the elderly woman sitting in the chair behind the desk across from her.

“Geez!” She held a hand to cover her racing heart. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you before.”

The woman said nothing.

With cold, void eyes, the grandmotherly type just sat there, staring at Alexandra with absolutely no emotion on her weathered face.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

The sound of blood rushing through Alexandra’s ears intensified.

Oh no. Please, no.

Swallowing hard, Alexandra grabbed the arms of her chair. She’d met a lot of ghosts in her time and could easily distinguish between the living and the dead. Ghosts emitted sparkly auras, but living people had no auras at all that Alexandra could see.

Neither did this old lady. Alexandra’s heart raced and her stomach did continuous somersaults beneath the ominous, intense stare aimed in her direction. Those eyes were…unnatural.

Ghost?

No, she didn’t think so.

“What are you?” she whispered.

The old woman tilted her head and examined Alexandra even more closely. In a deep, gravelly voice, the woman countered with “What are
you
?”

Alexandra fingered the gold cross at her throat as she slowly rose from the chair, her gaze unwilling to leave the old woman. She said the silent prayer her grandmother had once taught her—By the power of Saint Michael and all the angels and saints, please keep me safe from harm
—
as she felt for the doorway behind her.

Hurrying out of the room, she glanced down both directions of the hallway, searching for the entrance she and Dylan had come through. Screw this. She’d wait outside by the car.

She spotted the familiar door and hurried toward it, but her feet came to another abrupt halt as figures down the hall turned toward her.

Nervous laughter bubbled through her chest when she saw not one, not two, but three more dead people standing in front of the door marked EXIT. They were all staring back at her.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

This wasn’t right. Dead people shouldn’t be hanging around the hospital-slash-morgue. They should be following their loved ones around or something. Not this.

They all advanced at once, chattering over one another so that Alexandra couldn’t make out the details of what any one was saying.

“Help me! Please help me!” One man began begging as he reached for Alexandra’s arm. His grasp was strong and determined. “My wife? Do you know where she is?”

“Where am I?” A middle-aged woman asked, pushing that man aside to clasp Alexandra’s elbow. “My children. Do you know where they are?”

“Outta the way!” A stern-looking old man in a hospital gown knocked them both aside and pressed Alexandra closer to the wall.

Alexandra mentally exclaimed for everyone to give her some space. At least, she hoped she didn’t yell the words aloud.

The three figures all fell silent and backed away, and that’s when she spotted the fourth figure, standing behind them all.

A gargled, sickening sound was coming from the naked man. His face was mangled and bloody. No features were distinguishable.

He reached out a hand toward Alexandra, and she screamed.

***

“Not that I’m complaining or anything, but you guys almost never come by here when we’re doing this. What gives?” Dr. Jeffrey Watkins removed the bloody gloves he wore and then washed his hands in the sink and flicked water off his fingers.

As one of five professors and medical examiners on the pathology staff at the university, Watkins was the only one Dylan had met, and he sent up a silent prayer of thanks for his one piece of good luck today. It would have sucked if he’d had to explain himself to someone new.

Dylan veered around the medical instruments that always gave him the heebie jeebies and tried not to look at the corpses barely covered on the examining tables a few feet away. The pretty, young autopsy technician Dylan didn’t know gave him a brief smile and left the room.

“My captain wants this case solved, and soon.” He gestured toward the body he was here to investigate. Candice Christopher. Twenty-two, a recent honors college graduate, and too damn young to be lying on that table. “I thought I’d come see if I could get a jump on that report.”

He didn’t mention that he’d hoped to shake the supposed psychic he’d been saddled with too. Guilt tugged at his conscience. Bringing Alexandra here had been a stupid thing to do, but the sooner he got rid of her and put his focus back on solving this crime, the better.

He’d have liked to have gotten to know her a little better, spend some more time in bed maybe, but that plan had been shot to hell and back.

Besides, the idea of someone pretending to be psychic sent his blood pressure up a few millimeters. Psychics made him think too much about his older brother, Zach, who was as dead to him as the bodies in this room.

A clang of metal in the sink snapped his attention back to the medical examiner.

“You’re in luck. Charlie told me this one was a rush job, so we did this one first,” Watkins said, mentioning the coroner both he and the police department dealt with regularly. “I haven’t finalized our report yet.”

“Did you find anything I should know?”

Watkins nodded and moved toward the body, slid the sheet lower and pointed out a small swollen spot on the woman’s arm. “Same as the others. Our guy used a needle to inject about 10 milliliters of chloroform. She was dead of cardiac arrest within minutes. The rest was done to her afterward.”

“So it’s the same suspect?”

Watkins nodded and tugged the sheet back up. “This one was a little different. I found sand under the fingernails on her right hand and salt water in her lungs, but that’s not what killed her.”

“Water?” Dylan blinked in surprise, remembering Alexandra’s words from earlier. “So she wasn’t killed in the cemetery?”

“Hard to say for sure, but I doubt it. She’d been dead about eight hours before she was found.”

What was he supposed to make of that? No way had she been in that cemetery eight hours before someone found her body. Some of the ghost tours trampled through that graveyard up until midnight, and her body had been found around two this morning by a homeless guy looking for a place to sleep.

That was a short window of time for someone to have carried a dead body off the street, positioned it grotesquely and gotten away without being seen. Someone had to have noticed something. Dylan made a mental note to check with the directors of the city’s night tours to find out which one had last been by there and when.

The sound of a scream diverted his attention, and he turned just in time to see Alexandra burst through the double doors to the autopsy room. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide and crazed as she stumbled toward him. His hands reached out to steady her as she fell against him, her fingers clasping his arms with an iron grip. Her hair whipped around her shoulders as she glanced frantically behind her.

What the? Was she being chased?

“Dylan!” she cried, sagging against him. “Oh, thank heaven!”

“What happened?”

She squeezed his middle, but he was too preoccupied with figuring out what the hell was going on to respond. His protective instincts kicked into gear and he tried pushing her away and behind him, but she was stuck to him like a leech.

Watkins hurried to the doors, opened them and glanced both ways down the hallway. The other man’s shoulders relaxed as he turned around, his expression just as puzzled as Dylan’s probably was.

“I don’t see anyone,” Watkins said.

The tension began to seep from Dylan’s muscles. “Sorry. She’s with me.”

Pushing herself away, Alexandra closed her eyes and shook her head, gesturing wildly. She danced around in the same spot, wiggling her fingers in that way little girls did when they were grossed out or had to pee. “No. No, you can’t see them. One guy…his face is all…” she shuddered as she waved a hand in front of her face. “Mangled. He’s dead. They’re all dead. They all want…” She opened her eyes and looked at him. She’d stopped trembling. “Dylan, can we
please
leave?”

Her nose scrunched. The odor in the room was hard for most to stomach. Her pallor turned an unnatural gray. She looked like she was about to toss some cookies.

“Mangled?” Watkins repeated. He thumbed over his shoulder and started walking toward a second examining table, where a body was covered with a light blue sheet. “Are you here for this guy too?”

Watkins ripped back the sheet, and Dylan felt his stomach lurch. A man—or at least, he assumed it was a man by the width of those broad shoulders—looked like he’d been in one hell of a fight, eyes swollen and bloody, nose either missing or sunk in, and a deep gash in—

Dylan had to look away.

“This guy was in a boating accident. Not a homicide.” Watkins threw the sheet back over the poor schmuck’s face, but it was too late.

Alexandra made a squeaking sound deep in her throat and sagged against him. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her body went suddenly limp.

He caught her seconds before she would have hit the ground.

***

“Alexandra? Alexandra, honey, are you okay?”

The echo of a woman’s voice and a warm, gentle touch on her cheek teased at the edges of Alexandra’s consciousness like an annoying alarm radio set on low. She stretched out to hit the snooze button, wanting nothing more than to snuggle deeper into the darkness, but her fingers touched nothing but air.

“Alexandra, it’s me. I’m here.”

She knew that voice. Blinking her eyes open, she saw Rebecca Collins leaning over her. She sucked in a deep breath and reached out to hug Dylan’s mother. The older woman engulfed her in return, rubbing her back and murmuring, “There. You’re all right. You just had a bit of a scare.”

The fog cleared and Alexandra remembered. The spirits harassing her for help, demanding attention, and Mr. Hamburger Face freaking her the heck out by physically shoving her against the wall when she asked him to leave her alone. He hadn’t realized he was dead, and had gotten violent when she’d tried to coax that truth into him. And then the old woman had appeared behind them all, exuding malice and negativity as thick as cigarette smoke. It was almost as if the woman was controlling the dead people, commanding them to overwhelm Alexandra. Well, it had worked! Alexandra had lost it.