She really needed a large white dry-erase board in her kitchen, but since that wasn’t an option, she reached for paper.
First she wrote down Justin McCabe’s name on a blank piece of printer paper. Then she wrote down Sarah Jordan’s name. Then Abigail Chung, and finally Kaylee Ivers.
She taped the four pages together and started writing connections. Who did they all know? How were they connected? She drew line after line. Were there more victims out there?
She’d spent two hours detailing everything she knew about the four different cases when her phone rang.
“Hello?” She was staring at the papers and answered without looking.
“Katherine?”
“Monica!” She smiled and focused her attention on the call. “How are you?”
“How are you? I had this feeling I should call you.”
“Good instincts.” Maybe Monica was more than just a seer. “I had a vision yesterday, and I was able to keep myself in it long enough to stretch the time.”
“Wow! Tell me about it, will you? How did you do it?”
Katherine explained how she’d used her senses, used the tricks Monica had taught her, to expand the vision and give herself a little longer to rescue Kaylee from the roof.
“It sounds almost like you’re stretching time,” Monica said. “Just a little bit. Like time passes quickly in the visions and if you can stretch it there—”
“Then I can stretch it in reality?” The idea was so mind-bending Katherine almost didn’t want to contemplate it. “I don’t know how to process that right now. I have too much going on.”
“Your ability may still be evolving. It’s hard to say what the limits of it are. Have you told Baxter anything about it yet?”
She sighed in relief. “Yes. Just last night. He took it well after he found a scientific rationalization.”
“Good. If that’s what it takes to ease him into the idea, go for it.”
Katherine drummed her fingers on the table. “But you don’t think it’s science.”
“I think…” Monica took a long time to speak. “I think there’s a lot about life, about our spirits, about energy and the world, that we just don’t understand. Call that magic. Call it science we don’t understand yet. Does it really make a difference? What matters is what we do with the power we’ve been given.”
Katherine nodded. “Agreed.”
“I didn’t plan on spending the second half of my life solving problems that came to me in visions, but when you see something bad that you can prevent—”
“You have to do something.”
“Yes.” Monica took a long breath. “I think you, Megan, and Toni might just be getting started. Just remember to be there for each other—have each others’ backs—and call us if you get into trouble. Do that and you’ll be fine.”
“Thanks, Monica.”
“I should let you go.”
Her phone beeped at her. “Is that you?”
“No,” Monica said. “It sounds like you may have another call coming in. I’ll say goodbye, but call me anytime, okay?”
“I will.” Someone else was calling her? Usually Katherine received a grand total of three calls in an entire week. Now she’d gotten three in one day. What had become of her solitary life?
Megan’s name was on the screen.
Katherine touched the button and answered. “Hello?”
“Hey! Have you eaten?”
Had she? Oops. “Uh no, I completely forgot.”
“Seriously, what is wrong with you? I never forget to eat. I’m gonna pick you up and take you to lunch since you’re not working today and I have a fantastic surprise.”
Katherine looked at the spread of information about the case that was scribbled across her kitchen table. Then she thought about a floating pistachio and Monica’s advice to have Megan’s and Toni’s backs. Then her stomach rumbled. “Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Maybe we can pick Toni up too?”
Megan grumbled a little. “And tear her away from the sweaty confines of her garage? We can give it a try.”
Chapter 22
Tearing Toni away from the confines of her garage hadn’t been as hard as Katherine imagined once Megan told her that the “surprise” she had was a reservation at Red Hill, a brand-new restaurant from a local chef that had a tiny dining room attached to a winery just off Highway 1.
Everyone in Moonstone Cove who loved food had been trying to get a reservation at Red Hill, but it was booked out months ahead. Somehow Katherine’s husband, Rodney, had wrangled a coveted lunch table.
“It’s just so sweet of him, you know? Rodney’s been kind of… aloof lately,” Megan said as they pulled away from Toni’s garage. “Which I can’t really blame him for. He’s been working like a dog, and I’ve had all these… changes going on, which I haven’t really told him about, of course, because I don’t even know where to start.” Megan steered her luxury SUV toward the highway. “Added to all that, the kids are busy with eight million things now, and I just feel like we never see each other at all.”
Toni exchanged a look with Katherine. “Listen, we’re both excited to go with you,” Toni said. “But are you sure you shouldn’t be having lunch with Rodney since he got the reservation?”
“Can’t! I guess the owner of the winery offered him a table for today, but he already had a meeting scheduled for lunch with a client in Paso Robles, so he couldn’t take it, but he asked if I could use it and they promised they’d give us the red-carpet treatment.”
“That’s very generous,” Katherine said. “I really need to meet him some time. I’d love to say thank you.”
Megan glanced over to Katherine, who was sitting in the front seat. “Can you get my sunglasses out of my purse?”
Katherine looked down, but she didn’t see a purse. “It’s not here.”
Megan frowned. “What?”
“I don’t see a purse down here.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake…” She looked over her shoulder. “Toni, did I put it back there?”
“I don’t see it.”
Megan swerved to the right and
