Kill Her Again

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“ I’ll share my secrets, if you share yours,” Pope said.

Evan was asleep again, curled up next to Anna on the sofa. Worthington’s wife-Ronnie-had run to the market despite Pope’s insistence that they wouldn’t be staying.

It may have been Anna’s imagination, or simple intuition, but Pope seemed uneasy. The way he kept glancing out the front window, she wondered what kind of trouble he’d gotten himself into back at the Oasis.

“Secrets, huh?”

“Share and share alike,” Pope said.

“Then you won’t mind telling me who you’re running from.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Am I that obvious?”

Anna shrugged. “To trained eyes, I suppose.”

“Then let’s just say I got on the wrong side of a wannabe bad boy with some very nasty friends.”

“Let me guess,” Anna said. “Gambling debts?”

“Among other things. But the cops are already on to him and I made a promise that I wouldn’t talk to anyone about it. Especially the FBI.”

“If it means anything to you, I’m about to be retired.”

“A promise is a promise,” Pope said.

“Just tell me this: Are you expecting one of those friends to show up here?”

“That would be pretty stupid of them, but the sooner I get out of here, the better I’ll feel.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

Pope hesitated. “Evan, for one. He’s just lost everyone he has and I don’t want him to feel abandoned.” He paused. “Besides, it’s not every day you stumble across a psychic kid.”

“You’re still on that kick?”

Pope looked at her. “I don’t think you’re as skeptical as you pretend to be. The way you reacted to the news, I’ve got a feeling there’s a whole lot going on inside that brain that you’d just as soon not talk about. So maybe I’m not the only one who’s on the run.”

Touche, Anna thought. And it struck her that perhaps Pope wasn’t just some peripheral player in this drama. That he was as much a part of this thing-this cosmic plan-as she was.

But to what end?

“Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

Pope took a moment to answer. “I guess certain things happen for a reason, but I also think we make our own fate. The universe gives us guidelines, and it’s up to us to either follow them or discard them.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“When your wife poisons your kid, then fries him in the family car, you tend to think about a lot of things.”

His bluntness caught her off-guard. “Your son’s name was Benjamin, right?”

Pope nodded.

“And that room you put me in. That was his?”

Another nod. “Thanks to Susan, Ben spent a lot of his time in and out of hospitals. First in Vegas, then here in Ludlow. Jake and Ronnie wanted him to have a place to stay where he felt comfortable.”

“That’s very generous of them.”

“They’re generous people,” Pope said. “But enough about that. It’s your turn now.”

“For what?”

“We’re sharing secrets, remember?”

Anna felt the internal wall go up, about to tell him that she hadn’t agreed to anything.

Why was she so reluctant to talk about what was happening to her? Was she afraid he’d laugh? Call the loon patrol? Or was it simply a matter of conditioning? Maybe she’d spent too many years alone inside her own head, never sharing more than superficial thoughts and feelings, even with the handful of men who had flitted in and out of her life.

Pope was staring at her now, waiting. She’d never seen eyes so… unnerving. A gaze that was trying to reach beneath the surface.

But there was something about him. Something familiar. And maybe it would be in her best interest to trust him.

“Be careful what you ask for,” she said.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know.”

Feeling as if she were about to paddle straight for the rapids on an increasingly dangerous river, Anna took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think Evan is the only one who’s psychic.”

Pope listened intently as McBride laid it all out for him, everything she’d been going through these last few weeks. It came out of her in a rush, as if she were purging the data banks, her voice trembling sometimes, just as her hands had.

She spoke of strange visions, and a little girl in danger, and tattoos, and doubts about her sanity, and the growing belief that fate had brought her here to Ludlow, that what she was seeing in her mind, what she had experienced out on that football field, could well be a preview of things to come.

Pope tried to listen without judgment, the rational part of his brain wanting to dismiss it all, but he knew that this stuff was real. What he’d seen happen to Evan was neither illusion nor coincidence.

And maybe McBride was right. Maybe fate did have a hand in this. Maybe the universe was working in its own mysterious way to bring them all together. McBride, Pope, Evan, Jake, and-yes-the man in the red hat.

When she finished, McBride looked both embarrassed and anxious. “I don’t suppose you believe a word I’ve just said.”

“Am I that hard to read?”

She paused, uncertainty in her eyes. “Then you do believe me?”

“What can I say? I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone.” He smiled. “The truth is, I’ve always straddled the fence when it comes to this kind of stuff, but fifteen minutes in the car with Evan was enough to convince me there’s something to it.”

“Then maybe I’m not crazy.”

“Either that or we both are. But I’m willing to gamble. So tell me about the girl.”

“That’s the thing,” McBride said. “There’s not much to tell. Until this morning, all I got were glimpses of her, and those always faded away so quickly I sometimes had to wonder if I’d seen them at all.”

“But this morning was different.”

She nodded. “It was like I was there, this time. Inside her head. I was the girl.”

“And you didn’t feel that way before?”

“No,” she said, then paused. “I mean, I don’t think so. I’ve never really remembered enough to know. Just enough to turn me into a flaming fruitcake.”

A sudden thought came to Pope. He looked at her scar, gestured to it. “How long ago did that happen?”

McBride touched the side of her face. “Why?”

“Indulge me.”

He could see that he’d provoked a memory she’d just as soon not dwell on. “A little over a month ago.”

“How?”

“Is this really necessary?”

“I won’t know until you tell me,” Pope said.

McBride sighed, then took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I was attacked. My partner and I were working undercover in conjunction with the DEA, posing as buyers, in contact with a local narcotics distributor who was said to have ties with a cartel out of Hong Kong.”

“This was in Victorville?”

She shook her head. “Up in San Francisco. We spent months developing those contacts, and I stupidly came to trust someone I shouldn’t have.”

“The story of my life,” Pope said.

“I was the lead agent on the case and was pretty full of myself, thought I could do no wrong. But when the bust came down, the person I’d trusted turned on me, and I didn’t pull the trigger when I should have.”

“You considered him a friend.”

“Whatever that means,” she said. There was a bitter tinge to the words. “But that’s no excuse. Thanks to me, the perps escaped, my partner wound up with a bullet lodged in his spine, and I got a three-day stint in the hospital.” She gestured to her face. “And this.”

“I’m sorry,” Pope said.

“So am I. I fucked up and people got hurt.”

Pope shrugged. “You’re human. You made a mistake. Show me someone who hasn’t.”

McBride looked at him, smiled. It was a weak one, but it looked good on her. “You sound like a man who might be ready to move on.”

The notion surprised Pope, but maybe she was right. Could it be that all he really needed was a purpose?

“Let’s get back to you,” he said. “Besides the cut, how badly were you hurt?”

“A few bruises, and a pretty nasty concussion.”

“Were you out for any length of time?”

She nodded. “Several hours.” “And these visions. When did they start? Before or after the incident?”

“After. One of them woke me up in the hospital.”

Pope thought about this. “I’m no expert,” he said, “but I’ve heard that sometimes when people are victims of severe head trauma, certain doors can be opened.”

“Doors?”

“Doors that normally stay closed.”

“You think the concussion somehow linked me psychically to this little girl?”

“Based on what you’ve told me, the link may have been there already. All the concussion did was trigger the memories.”

McBride frowned. “Memories?”

“You aren’t psychic,” Pope said. “What you’re seeing is not something that’s about to happen. It’s something that already has.”

The frown deepened. “What exactly are you telling me?”

“That the little girl in your visions is you.”