there watching you do your thing, the next it felt like my heart exploded in my chest. I don’t know how long I was down and out, only that when I came to it was with Detective Ordones doing CPR.”
“He’s a good-looking man. Too bad I missed seeing the mouth-to-mouth part,” she joked, escaping the serious.
He bit her earlobe. “Funny. Some of your fantasies I’m game for, not that one.”
“And especially not with Eamon.”
“He’s not my favorite person at the moment.”
With a final kiss he disengaged long enough to open the car door for her, closing it afterward to go around and get in the driver’s seat. He took her hand as they headed toward San Francisco. She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I could ask Eamon to start looking for a way to break the bond. Free you from this…weirdness. You could have died back there, because of me.”
“Leave it alone, Etain.” He carried her hand to his thigh. “How about we just pretend we’re a normal couple for a little while?”
She hesitated, torn between an aversion to lying and the need she sensed in him, finally saying, “For a little while.”
They made a quick stop at Stylin’ Ink to collect her tattoo kit and a change of clothes. Then Cathal ushered her into his house, his hand warm against her back. “Where do you want to do this thing?”
“How about the TV room?” She didn’t need total silence to draw.
“Sound’s good. I’ve got some demos to listen to, including one Salina sent me of Lady Steel.”
Etain laughed, turning into him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “Are you mentioning that because you’re hoping to get lucky in exchange for launching Salina’s band into stardom?”
“I do seem to remember having some mind-blowing sex because of Lady Steel playing at Saoirse. I wouldn’t mind an encore performance.”
His eyes went hot and dark, creating a liquid pool of need low in her belly. She touched her mouth to his, teasing along the seam of his lips with her tongue, seeking comfort and escape.
He opened for her, his tongue tangling with hers, his hands sliding upward, cupping her head and holding her in place as he deepened the kiss, turning it into a carnal promise for later, because guilt and duty wouldn’t allow for this until she was done keeping her promise.
He released her reluctantly and she stepped away from temptation, wheeling her kit over to the coffee table while he went to the sound system, electing to use headphones though he settled behind her on the couch, legs stretched on either side of her as she sat on the floor to draw.
It didn’t take long, less than an album’s worth of time for her to capture in detail the relevant images. Kelvin hadn’t seen much, one man wearing a black ski mask and black clothing, firing bullets into Toney while another, unseen assailant went for a head shot, his death and his brother’s probably the first two casualties of the invasion that followed.
She tore the pages from the sketchpad. Before Eamon, she would have rushed to the bathroom and puked her guts out after touching a victim and stealing their memories. She would have needed sleep for those same memories to surface in a nightmare that would once again send her running to hug the toilet bowl before she could draw. And afterward…
She understood now it was magic that helped her push those memories behind a mental barrier and keep them there, completely separate from her own life, though that barrier had become thin, fragile. Because she was changeling? Or because there were so many horrifying images behind it, years and years of touching the victims of violent crime, people left so damaged and traumatized they could barely function.
Those had been the only types of cases her father and brother had ever asked for her help on, because what she learned couldn’t be used in court and once she had the memories, the victim was free of them.
Kelvin’s memories weren’t a burden she couldn’t carry. Weren’t a reality she intended to distance herself from. She wasn’t absolutely sure she could, given everything else: the events she and Cathal had witnessed while locked in a dream, her heart stopping at the hospital, and Cathal’s. The voice she’d started hearing. The primordial forest and emerald-green lake. The Dragon she wasn’t positive had been real. Because what, in the end had she learned from the conversation?
Nothing. Nothing at all, except hope exposed, that one day she would find her mother and be able to ask,
She leaned back, smiling when Cathal pulled off his headphones and leaned forward, arms draping over her shoulders, lips brushing against hers in an upside down kiss. “Taking a break?”
“Finished.”
He was quiet for a long, very noticeable minute, no doubt wrestling with his own stated desire to pretend they were a normal couple. Finally he said, “What about the other scenes?”
In the past, she would have drawn what she and Cathal witnessed in the dream that wasn’t a dream and handed it off to the captain. But not now, not when things were so unsettled with Eamon, not with Liam’s threat.
“I’ll pass them on to the captain after I’ve had a chance to do a little asking around, to give him a place to suggest the cops start looking.”
Cathal understood the why of it immediately. “Fuck Eamon.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what got me into my current mess,” she joked. And to be fair, “Maybe without him, maybe without you both, I’d be dead at the hands of the Harlequin Rapist, or wishing I was, and all this would be moot.”
Cathal sighed. “I don’t have to like this, right? You don’t expect me to.”
She shrugged, but doubt reached into her chest and grasped her heart, squeezing it just enough to make her vulnerable, so she asked, “Having regrets?”
“Ask that one more time and I’m not going to be responsible for what happens next.” There was a distinct growl in his voice.
It chased away the doubt. “I need to get the drawings to Detective Ordones.”
“I’ll do it while you draw the rest of it.”
“You could pass them off to the captain instead of going back to Oakland. He’s on this side of the bay. I could call ahead.”
“Works for me.” He gave her another upside-down kiss then straightened.
She tore a sheet from her tablet and wrote down the address of a house she hadn’t entered in years, though once she’d called it home. After taking Cathal’s offered cellphone, she punched in the captain’s number.
“Chevenier,” he answered.
“Cathal’s bringing the drawings over now. You can hand them off to Ordones.”
“Bring them yourself. I want you to stay here for a while.”
Oh yeah, that’d go over well with the captain’s wife. The results of the paternity test Laura had insisted on all those years ago hadn’t diminished the animosity. If anything, it’d increased it, because the captain refused to let it be known that he didn’t have a bastard child after all.
“I’m good where I am.” The traitorous part of her that still believed reconciliation was possible added, “But I appreciate the offer.”
“Etain—”
“Captain—”
“He was giving you CPR when I came to,” Cathal said from above her, sidetracking her, stalling out an argument that was sure to come around to her choice of men and the captain’s lack of approval.
“I guess I owe you thanks, for what you did at the hospital.” She cringed at how that came out but forged ahead. “A lot has happened today. I just want to curl up on the couch and chill. Is it okay if Cathal brings the drawings over? I’m not sure they’ll be useful, Kelvin was outside behind the bar, but I figure Ordones still wants them as soon as possible.”
“I’ll get them to him.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
There was a long silence. Her pain. His. It was there, shimmering between them, constricting her throat and turning her fingers white as they tightened on the phone and she fought against speaking again just to call him
