She was solemn. “He burns.”
“Yes, he burns to kill me...”
She shook her head. “No, Dalton,” she said softly. “He burns. Alive.” She shivered. “I saw it. I couldn’t see his features, but I know it was him in the vision. He burns. He screams...”
He nipped her thumb gently with his fingers. “Don’t dwell on things like that,” he said softly.
“That’s what I see. That’s the kind of thing I see, all the time. Death. Violence. Pain.” She drew in a long breath. “All my life. I had a friend when I was in grammar school. I knew she was going to die, and how. I tried to warn her. She thought I was joking. I told her not to go swimming in the lake that day, that a man driving a boat, drinking, would run over her.” She closed her eyes. “She just laughed. They went swimming. A man was driving a speedboat too fast, drinking. He didn’t see her. He ran right over her and the propellers caught her.” Her face was tragic. “After that, I didn’t want to have any friends.” She looked up at him. “People say this is a gift. It’s not a gift, it’s a curse. Nobody in his right mind would want to see the future if he knew what was lying in wait for him.”
“I suppose I’ve never thought of it like that.”
“I’d love to be just normal,” she said sadly. “You know, have a regular job, do regular things, get married, have kids...live a happy life.”
“Why can’t you?” he asked softly.
“My children would suffer because of me,” she replied. “They’d pay the price for my...gift.”
“You shouldn’t decide not to have children on such a basis,” he said quietly. “Merissa, we all have things in our lives that make us stand out. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Your children might have similar gifts. It isn’t a curse. It really is a gift. I wouldn’t be sitting here today if you didn’t have it.”
She knew that. She began to relax. She smiled. “I suppose I’m letting it all get to me.” She looked at her tray. “I’m so hungry,” she moaned.
“I’ll have them bring you something else, but Cody’s investigator’s having a look at that,” he added, indicating the tray.
The woman who’d brought the tray came in, smiling, to collect it. She stopped dead when she noticed that Merissa hadn’t touched it.
“Well, you haven’t eaten a thing,” she exclaimed. “Now that won’t do. You have to eat that right now,” she began. “All of it.” She moved to the bed. “Come on, Miss Baker, don’t be difficult. Here, I’ll feed it to you...”
“Like hell you will!” Tank exploded.
He got to his feet just as Cody Banks walked in the door. “Grab her,” he told Cody, indicating the woman. “She’s the assassin’s accomplice!”
“I’m...what... Who... You’re crazy!” the woman exclaimed, red-faced. “I’m leaving!”
“You are not,” Tank said, and covered the doorway. “Cody, there’s something wrong with the food on that tray. It needs to be tested. I recognize this woman’s voice. She worked for the so-called surveillance expert who bugged my house.”
The woman gaped at him. But she didn’t really protest when Cody cuffed her and told his investigator to call for a deputy to pick her up.
“You’ll sit right there,” he told the woman, indicating a chair near the window.
“You’ll never prove a thing,” the woman scoffed.
“Think so?” Tank asked, and his eyes were ice-cold.
THEY RAN A toxicology screen on the meal. The roast beef was laced with Malathion, enough to kill anyone who ingested it. Far from the normal grade that was used on the ranch as an insecticide, this was a commercial grade of the pure chemical, which was greatly diluted when in use. Tank was willing to bet that when they compared the Malathion in this food, and that in Merissa’s capsules, it would be a match for the product under lock and key on the Kirk ranch.
“Good God, he’s insane,” Tank exclaimed when the doctor gave them the results of the tests she’d ordered.
The doctor was grim. “I have never had such a case in all my career,” she confessed. “What do we do, Sheriff?”
Cody drew in a breath. “For one thing, we put someone with Merissa around the clock.”
“I can do that,” Rourke said. He’d joined them earlier. “I have another man watching the ranch. Both of us have backgrounds in, shall we say, deadly endeavors.” He smiled.
Cody gave him a wary look.
“I’ve done nothing illegal in this country,” Rourke reassured him.
Cody pursed his lips. “All right. Your man Carson can sure track,” he added.
“He can do a lot of things,” Rourke said. “Tracking is one of them. He’ll keep the family safe.”
“Clara has to move in with us,” Tank added. “I won’t have her at the cabin alone.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Rourke assured him. “I’d better get Merissa’s computer and bring it along as well. Wouldn’t want our anonymous friend messing with it.”
“Good idea,” Tank said. “And nobody says anything about what we’re planning in Merissa’s room. Chances are pretty good that it’s bugged, since we know a man pretending to be your deputy,” he told Cody, “came to interview her.”
“He’s in dead earnest this time,” Rourke said quietly. “He wants to kill her.”
“It’s a link in the chain,” Tank said. “He’s putting pressure on me. If she died, I’d never spend a second thinking about the past, when I met him. What he doesn’t know is that we’ve already made the connection he’s so afraid of.”
“What connection?” Cody asked.
“It’s better if you don’t know right now,” Tank told him. He clapped the other man on the shoulder. “It doesn’t concern this business, anyway. At least, not at the moment. Right now, our only concern has to be keeping Merissa alive.”
“Carson will stay at the hospital until she’s released,” Rourke said.
“Thank goodness,” Cody replied, oblivious to Tank’s offended and angry expression. “I don’t have the budget to do that.”
“He does,” Rourke said, jerking a thumb at Tank.
“My investigator will interview her while he’s here. This guy is a nutcase,” Cody said curtly.
“You can bet money on that,” Rourke replied.
“Why does he want to kill such a kind young woman?” Cody asked. “I just don’t get it.”
“She sees things,” Tank replied. “He’s afraid she’ll help me remember something he doesn’t want to get out. I’ll tell you the minute I can,” he promised. “It’s very complex.”
“Something to do with that case in Texas maybe?” Cody asked dryly.
“Maybe.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s even darker than that,” Rourke added. “This is a piece of a puzzle. A deadly one.”
“There are dozens of poisons that have no taste, or color,” Cody puzzled. “Why didn’t he use one of those?”
“He’s cocky,” Tank said coldly. “Arrogant. He thinks we’re all fools. Probably he thought it would be amusing to kill her with a substance we use on the ranch, in lesser doses, every day during the growing season.”
“Boy.” Rourke chuckled. “Has he got a surprise coming!”
“Indeed he does,” Tank added. He looked at Cody. “No chance you could suspend that woman you arrested on suspicion of murder over a lake or something by her thumbs to make her talk?” he teased.
He shook his head. “Sorry. Wrong century.”
“It was just a thought.” He glanced at Rourke. “Think she might sell him out for the right price?”
Rourke shook his head grimly. “I think she won’t be alive this time tomorrow.”
“Hey, I run a tight jail,” Cody protested. “He’d never get in past my guys. Not in a million years!”
Rourke and Tank didn’t answer. They knew enough already to be certain that if their killer wanted her dead, she would be.
SURE ENOUGH, LATER that very day Rourke phoned Tank, who was still at the hospital, with the news.
