True Vision (2 page)

She looked up, expecting to see other witnesses or perhaps the car’s driver fretting about whether he or she had just killed someone. But the area was deserted.

Hearing a small gasp, Charlie glanced down. Her racing heart jammed into her throat when she saw the pedestrian’s light brown eyes keenly focused on her face, as though she were counting on Charlie to save her.

“Help is on the way,” Charlie said. “Just keep breathing for me, okay? Nice and easy.”

Her lips moved. She was trying to say something.

Charlie stroked her forehead, trying to soothe her. “Please try to save your strength.”

A wet, gurgling sound issued from the woman’s throat before she could force the words out. “It’s up to . . . you . . . now.” She moistened her lips. “Bring them . . . together . . . Charlotte.”

Charlie wanted to shush her, to implore her to concentrate on breathing, on hanging on, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Bring who together? I don’t know what you mean. Do we know each other?”

Instead of answering, the pedestrian tightened her hand around Charlie’s with surprising strength and stared intently into her eyes.

“Charlotte,” she whispered just before her fingers fell slack, and it took Charlie a few seconds to realize she was staring into the face of a dead woman. Oh, God, no.

The world abruptly shifted, and Charlie was no longer holding a dead woman’s hand. She was across the street, sprinting toward the intersection, hope and excitement rising in her chest as she spotted the woman she was looking for.

In the next instant, Charlie was back, kneeling on the pavement, unhurt, her fingers clamped around the dead woman’s hand.

Sirens began to scream in the distance.

CHAPTER
TWO

C
harlie stood on the corner with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, watching the unreal scene play out. Three police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance, all topped with flashing emergency lights, crowded the intersection. Emergency workers milled around the perimeter, waiting for the police to do their jobs before they could do theirs.

A blanket like the one clasped between Charlie’s fingers—gray and scratchy—had been draped over the woman’s body in the road. Wisps of reddish brown hair escaped from beneath the blanket’s edge, lifting lazily on the breeze.

Alive one instant, and dead the next. So fast, so brutal. Shocking.

Charlie shivered, clutched the blanket tighter around her as though it would protect her from the harshness of reality.

“Charlie? Charlie!”

She turned at the frantic voice behind her. It was Mac Hunter running toward her, his thick, dark hair ruffled by the wind. He wasn’t looking at her, though, his attention on the body in the road.

Charlie sidestepped into his path, expecting him to focus on her and stop, but he barreled into her, sending them both stumbling. She grabbed at the front of his royal blue dress shirt to keep her balance, and he grunted and brought his hands up to steady her.

The instant his fingers closed on her forearms, the tableau inside her head shifted so that she was seeing the body in the road but from another angle farther away.

In the next instant, she was back in front of Mac, disoriented and off-balance, her wrists grasped in his hands as he stared down at her as if he didn’t recognize her. Then his hazel eyes cleared and a sound that might have been a laugh burst out of him. He pulled her into his arms for a tight hug, burying his face against her neck, his warm breath against her skin. What the—?

“You scared me, Chuck,” he murmured, pulling back and gazing down at her.

For once she didn’t object to the hated nickname, too startled by the emotion in his eyes. From
Mac
? “I’m sorry I scared you,” she said.

He noticed the blanket around her shoulders, and his relieved smile slipped into a frown. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She nodded but couldn’t stop herself from glancing at the woman being loaded by paramedics onto a gurney. Not a woman—a corpse. She couldn’t suppress a shudder. “I saw her get hit.”

“Oh, Christ.” He pulled her to him again, hugged her close while resting his chin on the top of her head. She remembered the first time he’d held her like this, three months ago. She’d called him after discovering her beloved grandmother had passed away in her sleep. He’d been there in record time, her best friend, and then they’d gone and screwed their friendship, literally.

He tried to draw her back toward the newspaper. “Come inside. I’ll get you something to drink.”

“I need to talk to the police, tell them what I saw.”

“It can wait a few minutes.”

“It was a white . . . Sebring, I think. Convertible, but the top was up. It didn’t even try to stop. In fact . . . it sped up.”

“Charlie—”

“She called me Charlotte.”

“What?”

She raised stunned eyes to his. “Mac, she knew me.”

 

He whistled the
Mission: Impossible
theme as he parked the Sebring and sat for a second to wallow in satisfaction. He’d done it. He’d done what had to be done to protect their secret.

After getting out, he pulled a gray car cover over the convertible. This would hide the damage nicely.

He thought he’d feel some guilt: He’d just killed a woman. But it was a woman who deserved to die. Just like the other one. They’d both known, and he couldn’t have them,
anyone
, knowing. Couldn’t let the secret out. It would destroy them, and they’d worked too hard for too long to sit back and let the destruction begin.

No, the secret to success was destroying the enemy before they could destroy you.

Mission: accomplished.

CHAPTER
THREE

C
harlie settled at her desk and logged onto her PC, her head spinning a little from co-workers mobbing her the instant she walked into the newsroom. Once they discovered she didn’t have answers to their questions about the hit-and-run, they had returned to their usual late-afternoon business. The copy editors on the far end of the room discussed last night’s reality TV, loudly debating who
should
have been voted off the island. Two reporters huddled less than three feet from her desk, arguing about who was in charge of doughnut duty in the morning. It was an ordinary day at the
Lake Avalon Gazette
.

Except, for Charlie, it wasn’t.

A sharp clap of two hands drew her attention to the center of the newsroom, where managing editor Robert Lewis called out, “Gather around, folks. I have an announcement. Hunter, get your ass over here.”

Mac, grinning like a fool, strode to their boss’s side. This was
the
announcement, Charlie realized. Mac’s promotion. The thing that had ended their . . . what to call it? Fling? Affair? Comfort sex? Whatever it was, it started when Charlie fell apart after Nana’s death, and lasted two months, until her father tapped Mac to replace Lew. Which meant Mac had had to choose between their relationship and his dream job. As managing editor, he’d be Charlie’s boss, and a long-ago sexual harassment lawsuit had made relationships between bosses and subordinates a major no-no.

To his credit, Mac hadn’t taken the decision lightly. But he had greater responsibilities than the average thirty-year-old. Number one: The sister he’d raised after the deaths of their parents was about to graduate from high school, Mac had vowed to help Jennifer pay for college, and the promotion would nearly double his pay.

“Make it snappy, people,” Lew growled, impatient as always. “We don’t have all goddamn day.”

Charlie joined the rest of her co-workers as they gathered around the large square pillar that served as the newsroom’s meeting place. Lew hiked his black pants up to just under his bulging gut and cleared his throat. “As you all know, I’ve been planning to retire. Instead of taking off next month, though, I’ve decided to bug out a little earlier. My last day is Friday.”

He paused, as though expecting some kind of response, but when no protest appeared imminent, his face colored slightly. As much as they clashed, Charlie felt sorry for him. He hadn’t had it easy, being caught between the newsroom staff and her prickly father.

He cleared his throat several times again before going on. “So, effective the day I walk out the door, Mac Hunter will be your new managing editor.”

A cheer went up, and Mac’s face split into an even broader grin. Charlie joined in the cheering. She might have been disappointed that her father hadn’t chosen her as ME—they had never seen eye to eye on how the newspaper should be run—but she didn’t blame Mac. He was good at his job. Really good.

Lew slapped him on the shoulder and nodded for him to go on and revel in the kudos of his co-workers, then went back to his desk, his head drooping like that of an abused dog. Charlie felt another wave of empathy for him.

Bypassing the group crowded around Mac, she approached Lew’s desk, where he appeared to already be nose-deep in editing.

“Hey, Lew.”

He looked up at her and rolled eyes that looked redder than before. “You’re not going to harass me some more about that damn Dick’s story, are you?”

She almost winced at the reminder that he’d shot down the story before she could even finish pitching it. She’d gotten a tip a couple of days ago that Dick’s Auto Sales was cheating elderly customers. At the last minute, the dealer would switch its sales contract for a lease contract. In three years, customers were notified it was time to give back the car they thought they’d bought. Unfortunately, the story seemed destined to languish on Charlie’s hard drive: Dick’s was the
LAG
’s biggest advertiser.

“I actually came over to tell you how much we’re going to miss you around here.”

He glanced away, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “Sure you are.”

She knelt beside his chair so they were at eye level. “Really, Lew. You’ve been a good editor. I’ve learned a ton from you. All of us have.”

“Shut the hell up, Trudeau. You’re at the top of the list of reporters who can’t wait for me to slink off and die.”

Her heart squeezed. He was the kind of guy who’d escape into self-deprecation long before showing any kind of emotion. Not knowing what else to say, she patted his forearm.

And then she was back in the newsroom, on her knees next to Lew, her palm still resting on his bare arm. He was staring at her with a perplexed expression. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded.

She pulled her hand back, her heart racing now. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I . . . uh, I’ll get back to work.”

She quickly returned to her desk.

The despair she’d felt lingered. The old curmudgeon wasn’t retiring. He was dying.

Emotion burned behind her eyes. That poor man.

And she had somehow tapped into his memory of getting the bad news, had experienced it as if it were her own. She remembered that moment when she’d knelt on the pavement beside the dead woman, how she’d seen the car barreling at her, felt the lightning flash of impact, the dizzying sensation of flying through the air. Right after that, she’d experienced firsthand Mac’s blinding fear when he’d thought she’d been the one hit.

That made three . . . she didn’t know what to call them. Visions? No, they were more than that, like an out-of-body experience.

She’d always been sensitive to the feelings of the people around her, often absorbing their doom and gloom as if they were her own. Her grandmother had called it “empathy.” But she’d never experienced anything as visceral and real as Lew’s despair and Mac’s fear or anything as physically jarring as the hit-and-run.

Somehow, her empathy had become supercharged.

CHAPTER
FOUR

H
e clicked off the TV news and tapped the remote against his temple.

Fuck, fuck,
fuck
.

The phone rang. Great, here it comes. The story of my life.

Bracing, he picked it up.

“You screwed up. Again.”

No “Hello, how’ve you been?” Succinct. Cold. He should be used to it by now, but it still chafed. After everything he’d done. “Yeah, I know.”

“What’re you going to do about it?”

“I’ll fix it.”

“If you hadn’t screwed up in the first place, it wouldn’t need fixing.”

“I know.” That was his standard response these days. I know. I’m a class-A fuckup. I know, I know.
I know.
Jesus.

“Take care of it. Soon.”

“I will.”

The phone clicked in his ear, and his hand tightened on the phone. So how was your day? Stressful? Yeah, mine, too. I became a killer today. Again. And I’m still not done.

He fired the phone at the wall.

CHAPTER
FIVE

C
harlie drove home automatically after a long day at work, her mind flitting between her odd visions and the woman she’d watched die. That woman had a name now, according to the police: Laurette Atkins. She’d probably gotten up this morning, just like any other morning. Showered. Dressed. Drunk her orange juice. Eaten a muffin. And left the Royal Palm Inn, which she’d checked in to just the night before, fully expecting to return later in the day to a maid-straightened room and clean towels.