a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure) (11 page)

"Right." I glanced at the bullet Annie had set on the nightstand. The look that passed between them when Pierce tossed it to her zipped through my mind. "You know who shot at me? Us?"

He shrugged, too casually. "Not yet, but designer ammo can be traced."
 

Secrets. Somewhere in his twisty mind, Pierce had a good idea about who to look for, but he wasn’t talking. Like usual. Two could play at this game. I pushed out of the chair, stalked to the nightstand, and picked up the bullet, rolling if between my fingers.
 

"Dark complexion, middle eastern maybe, brown and brown." I glared at Pierce. "Almost black for both hair and eyes. Average height and weight. His hands are distinctive," I said, tossing the bullet in the air, catching it. "There’s a scar running down his right index finger and he has an empty space in his psyche where I’d usually pick up emotions. When he loaded his weapon he pictured me as a target, not a person."
 

"Well, damn."

"I’m part of this team, Pierce. It’s
my
family. I will stand for my grandmother, find her killer, and see that he’s brought to justice. Try to remember that."

Pierce set it up so I could give the information to a police artist over the phone, then he emailed me the drawing for corroboration.

It was a long night
. Totally exhausted, I alternated between tossing and turning, scattered dreams, and deep sleep. And to top it off, I woke with a nagging headache pounding at the base of my skull.
 

When the bathroom door clicked shut behind Annie, I opened one eye and squinted at the clock. Six-thirty. I groaned, buried my head under the pillow, and then remembered I had that phone session with my potential new client, Brody Williams, and he’d be calling in thirty minutes.

I hustled through my shower, dressed, and grabbed a mug of freshly brewed Kona coffee from Annie’s outstretched hand as I passed her on my way to the lanai. It was the perfect place to work—private and breathtakingly gorgeous.

The phone rang at precisely seven a.m. "Brody Williams here. Have I reached Ms. Everly Gray?"

"You have. I’m looking forward to working with you, and please call me Everly or El."

He cleared his throat. "Did you have a chance to read my email, El?"

"I did. I gather you’ve been unable to move forward since your divorce seven years ago."

"That’s correct. I need to wrap this up, and I’m looking for the best way to confront my ex-wife."

"Let’s backtrack, so I can get a better idea of what you hope to achieve. Was it an acrimonious divorce?"

"No. As I said in the email, she was going through a professional crisis, and she axed our marriage in the process." Bitterness clung to every word Brody spoke.
 

"What's your former wife’s profession?"
 

"Don’t know what she’s doing now, and can’t tell you much about then either. She did confidential negotiations for a corporation out of Washington, D.C. They handled a lot of sensitive contract work for countries outside the States, so she traveled a lot."

Sounded like Brody was sitting on the other side of a situation similar to one of my favorite client’s—Katelan Finn. She was another negotiator who’d had a bad first marriage. The coincidence prickled over my skin. I’d never believed in coincidence.

"What do you hope to gain by confronting your ex-wife?"

"Another chance to make it work."

"All right. Your assignment is to set a timer for fifteen minutes, and begin writing. Start every sentence with I want, and don’t stop writing until the timer rings. You should have a lot of wants and desires on the page in that amount of time."

"Uh-huh. I wasn’t expecting assignments." He sound miffed.

"You’ll have an assignment, homework of a sort, to do with every session. A personal coach is a guide, but it’s always up to the client to do his or her individual work."

"Gotcha. I’ll write about what I want, but it’ll be a short list. I want my wife back. Period."

"That might be your first sentence, but what about your goals, aspirations for the future? Let go of what you
think
you want, and let your subconscious take over. Don’t try to control what your write. This is called free writing because there are no boundaries to your imagination. No rules governing what you want your life to be."

"Uh-huh. I’ll see what I can come up with."
 

Brody Williams wasn’t going to be one of my easy clients. We chatted about the risk-avoidance issues inherent in his plan to reconcile, and then set a date for his next session. Our conversation rubbed me the wrong way, like when you pet a cat backwards. Something wasn’t quite right about Brody Williams.

Annie stood by the door
, messenger bag slung over her shoulder. "I’m starving, and I want to go to the Hilton for breakfast."
 

Pierce appeared in the connecting doorway. "Who the hell are you?" he asked with raised eyebrows. "The A.J. I know doesn’t do tourist."
 

"I like their fruit platter and the coffee is good."
 

 
Pierce slipped his shades on and headed for the door. "Let’s eat," he said, catching my braid in his hand. "Like your grandmother’s."
 

It hadn’t been a conscious act, but somehow it made my day seem brighter. "Yeah—" I smiled at him— "except her braid was every shade of silver and gray, and mine’s just ordinary red."

"Not the word I’d use to describe it." His voice bordered on husky.
 

We strolled along Waikiki beach toward the Hilton, and I began to understand why slippahs were the footwear of choice in the islands. They slid on and off with no fuss and could be stored in a pocket. We rinsed the sand off our feet at an outside faucet, and then wandered through the Village area of the Hilton until Annie spotted an outdoor café. She ordered the fruit plate and steamed rice for all of us before Pierce and I opened our menus. It was a good choice—fresh pineapple, papaya, mango, avocado, oranges, and grapes.
 

Halfway through breakfast, Annie pushed her chair back and looked around with a wild glint in her eyes. Annie doesn’t do wild.

Pierce stopped eating, scanned the area.
 

I did my own quick reconnaissance. Nothing caught my eye, and there were no pricklies running over my skin. "What?" I asked around a bite of pineapple.
 

A gong sounded for the second time, its reverberations shimmering in the air around us.

Annie was up and jogging toward the sound before I swallowed my pineapple.
 

Pierce grabbed my arm and hauled me to where Annie had stopped—in the courtyard, her hand shading her eyes, and her attention completely focused on the gazebo. So much for having two bodyguards, and that realization scared the holy hell out of me. Annie was nothing, if not an excellent agent, and this behavior was so far off the norm it belonged on one of those stars with letters and numbers instead of a name.
 

"A. J.?" Pierce—impatient.

Annie didn’t respond. I followed her gaze, and was rewarded with the vision of a young Asian couple dressed in wedding finery. There were photographers and a bunch of people around, probably wedding guests.
 

"What’s going on?" I asked.
 

"Oh." She turned to me, startled, then looked back at the gazebo. "Wedding. They have a chapel here."
 

"And this is important, why?" A rip-roaring case of the twitchies had set in, so I reached toward her with the intention of leading her back to finish breakfast.
 

She jumped out of my reach. It threw me completely off because I thought we’d come to terms with my touching quirk years ago.
 

"Sorry," I said, raising my hands, palms-up. "I wasn’t going to touch you. Not like that."
 

She huffed out a sigh, and headed back to our table in the café, not saying a word until the three of us had resettled, our half-eaten plates of food in front of us.
 

Pierce forked a mouthful of rice and papaya, chewed, then folded his arms on the table. "Talk."
 

I bit my cheek to keep from laughing. Good to know I wasn’t the only one he used that tone with. I savored a swallow of the delicious Kona coffee. Annie’d been right about them serving the good stuff here.
 

Her gaze darted between us. "The thing is—" she placed her empty orange juice glass on the table— "I’m not ready to talk about it."
 

Pierce slid his sunglasses down his nose, pinning her with the blue-eyed stare. I had the distinct impression they’d frosted over and I was really glad I wasn’t the target of his attention. I’d have peed my pants.
 

Her gaze skittered away from him. "It’s nice here. In the islands," she said, pulling out her cell phone.
 

My mouth dropped open. Without looking, Pierce reached over and tapped my chin with his index finger.
 

Annie punched in a single number. Apparently someone answered because she stood and took a couple of steps away from us. Didn’t do much to ensure her privacy, since we could still hear her, but it probably made her feel better. "I need to tell El and Pierce," she whispered. "You okay with that?"
 

A minute later she snapped the phone closed, tucked it in her pocket, and ran her tongue along her bottom lip. "The thing is…she faced us. Sean-and-I-are-getting-married."
 

Ten

Married? Annie? My mind fogged
, and the white noise of the busy café disappeared into hazy mist. I sorted through the jumbled mess of words Annie had tossed out. "Married? You and Sean?"

Free fall. No parachute.

Pierce leaned back in his chair, balancing on the hind legs. His gaze centered on Annie without so much as an eyelash flicker.

A smile crinkled the soft skin around her eyes. "As soon as he gets here."
 

"You sure, A.J.?" Pierce’s chair landed on all four legs with a dull thud.
 

She wrapped her hand around his. "Very sure."
 

My fingers itched. They weren’t about to stay out of news like this unless I sat on my hands—and even then it’d be touch and go.

Annie grinned at me. "Here." She offered her hand. "Touch me and take a look before you explode."
 

I rested my fingertips against her palm and watched the images play across my internal movie screen. Respect and kindness flowed between Annie and Sean, and…oops. I jerked my hand back as the pictures became a bit more personal. Heat crept up my neck and into my cheeks. "Oookay then," I stammered.

Annie angled her head to the side, her smile mischievous. "See more than you bargained for?"
 

"Um." It was all I could manage.
 

Pierce huffed, sighed, shifted to retrieve his wallet, and tossed some cash on top of the check. "How about we find Makani Maliu’s killer instead of debating A.J.’s sex life?"
 

The loss of my grandmother was a constant ache that had settled over my skin, and I had to move ahead, stand for her, defend her in death, especially since I didn’t have a chance to protect her while she’d been alive. And I needed to focus on finding the friggin’ pond scum who ended her life.
 

But not yet. The living had to come before the dead. I stood, took one last swallow of coffee-gone-cold, grabbed Annie’s hand, and led the way to the gazebo. "Is this where you’re planning to get married?" I asked, waving my hand toward the graceful white arches. "That’s why you ran over here? To check it out?"

Annie nodded, her cheeks flushed the pale rose shade that looked so good on blondes.
 

"Excited, much?" I asked.

"Sean liked the pictures on the website." Her smile blossomed into a full-out grin.

I wandered around the path that ringed the gazebo, spotted the door to the chapel, and held it open for Annie. "Now is as good a time as any to see if it suits you. Pictures won’t do justice to the energy it holds."
 

Pierce shoved his shades firmly against his nose and shook his head.
 

I poked him in the pecs, my finger bouncing off the well-defined muscles. "If we don’t do this now, it’ll nag at her all day, distracting her from everything else. Besides, I want to be sure there aren’t any negative vibes hanging around in there."
 

"Negative vibes?"

Pierce didn’t know about my latest hinky touch experiences, the ones where the walls had started talking to me. And it wasn’t something I wanted to explain, so I gave him my best imitation of a Tynan Pierce shrug instead of an explanation.
 

By the time we caught up to Annie, she was chatting with the receptionist—the perfect employee for a wedding chapel, her sparkling brown eyes dancing with the promise of happily ever after. Easing from behind her desk, she pointed toward a beige and pink marble staircase. "Go ahead. It’s right upstairs. I’ll give you a few minutes, and then come up to answer any questions, but we need to be clear of the area in twenty minutes because there’s a wedding scheduled soon."