Angel's Dance (7 page)

She saw a sign for a drive-thru burger
joint and her stomach growled. She wasn’t sure if it growled out of
hunger or because the thought of food was still repulsive, but she
figured Grant needed to eat. “Are you hungry yet?” she
ventured.

“
We can stop if you are,”
Grant replied casually.

“
We don’t have to stop,”
Clear qualified, pointing at the next sign. “I mean, we just got on
the road.”

Grant shrugged. He took the exit and
pulled into the drive-thru. After placing his order he turned to
Clear. She despised fast food, but didn’t really have any option.
She hesitantly ordered yogurt, apple dippers and opted for a glass
of water. Grant smirked at her out of the corner of his eye, but
placed the order anyway.

As they waited for their order, Grant
said, “I didn’t know you were a vegetarian.”

“
Are you kidding me?”
Clear gasped. “I don’t think there is a vegetarian in the entire
state of Montana!!” She shook her head.

“
Well, your breakfast
choice…” Grant began.

Clear waved him off. “Ha!… Hardly! But
the crap they serve isn’t real meat, or real eggs for that matter.
Besides, grease just isn’t a really good idea right now.” She
winced as her stomach gurgled loudly to illustrate her
point.

Grant nodded. “I was wondering about
the burger last night. Makes sense.” He took their order from the
woman at the counter and passed it all to Clear. She divvied up the
food and offered him his sandwich. He nodded and she opened it for
him before handing it over. There was a moment of silence as they
both began to eat.

Grant took a swig of his large coffee.
“So do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

Clear was caught completely off guard
and chewed her apple slice slowly, wondering what ‘it’ he was
referring to. There were so many ‘its’ she wanted to talk to him
about, but she sort of felt like most of them were off limits. Such
as the ‘it’ that had happened after their last case, the ‘it’ that
had happened in her living room, the ‘it’ that had happened in the
hotel room, the ‘it’ that was the reason they were on this trip in
the first place.

Swallowing her completely masticated
scraps of apple, she coughed. “Which ‘it’ are you referring to?”
she asked as delicately as possible.

“
There’s more than one?”
he arched that eyebrow at her and she had a sudden urge to rip it
off. Groaning, she turned away.

“
We don’t have to. I was
just offering,” Grant grunted.

“
There are plenty of ‘its’
to talk about.” Clear pointed out, starting with the safest it.
“For example the ‘it’ where I didn’t even know you had a daughter.”
She sighed looking out the window. When he didn’t respond, she
looked back at him. He was staring very sternly out the window. She
figured he wouldn’t answer that and she had even hit him with a
relative softball compared to all the ‘its’ running through her
head right now.

After several more moments he replied
through clenched teeth. “And when exactly was I supposed to tell
you that I had a daughter? During the case while we were tracking
down a madman? Or when I found you lying in a puddle of blood?
Maybe when I shot the guy who was trying to kill you?” There was a
long pause. He ground his teeth and took a deep breath. “Sorry, it
just didn’t come up.”

Clear thought
‘
It could have if you had
called’
. Then she slapped herself
mentally. She took a deep breath. “Was there another ‘it’ you
wanted to talk about?” she asked, carefully keeping the bite out of
her voice.

Grant eyed her warily. “I was thinking
of the ‘it’ that had you almost hypothermic in the shower,
‘it’.”

Clear glanced out the window. Funny
how that was not even remotely on her mind anymore. She shrugged.
“I had a vision. I got caught up in it. Nothing more to talk
about.” She sniffled as unbidden tears pricked her eyes.

“
Well, it wasn’t nothing,”
Grant insisted. “You were obviously upset. I don’t… well..” he bit
off what he was saying and Clear glanced at him. There was a
softening around his eyes, despite the fact that his lips were
clamped shut.

“
I’m sorry if it upset
you. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now,” Clear responded,
immediately needing him to feel better.

He gave her a half smile. “For what it
is worth… I don’t like to see you sad… or upset… or.. hurt,” he
seemed to struggle with the last part.

Clear gave him a sardonic grin.
“Nothing you can do to stop that.” She wrapped her arms around
herself. “It is just a part of who I am.” Yet she couldn’t help
thinking that he hurt her a lot by not calling. Of course, he
couldn’t see that, so she supposed it didn’t really count
then!

“
But it might help to talk
about it,” Grant offered again. “Talking can sometimes help chase
the demons away.”

Clear scoffed, “Says the expert on not
much to say!”

They sat quietly in the
car for a few moments. It was an awkward quiet. Finally Clear
sighed and told him what had happened. He sat patiently and
quietly, nodding at the appropriate moments. When she was done, she
realized that it
did
feel much better to tell someone about it. He sat quietly
digesting what she had told him.

“
And there was nothing… to
tell you who or where she was?” he finally asked.

She shook her head. She decided not to
mention that if he had left her alone for just a minute longer she
might have been able to get more. She also might not have. No point
in bringing that up.

“
I can see how that would
be… difficult,” Grant muttered, his brows furrowed in deep thought.
“And this sort of stuff happens to you pretty much all the
time?”

“
Well… not all the time,”
Clear amended. “This is actually the first time I nearly died from
exposure in a room!” She felt better, as he smirked at her snarky
comment. “A lot less often when there aren’t so many people around.
When there are a lot of people it is much worse because I get
everything, not just what is happening, but what people are
thinking about happening, what people are remembering already
happened, what people are dreaming… it’s not usually all so graphic
or traumatic… but there is so much of it that… well, it gets… I
don’t know….”

“
Overwhelming?” Grant
suggested.

Clear sighed, “That doesn’t really
give it scope, but… I can’t really think of a better word to
describe it, so yeah.”

They had been sitting silently for
several minutes. Grant was still very shaken up. He was not good at
emotions, and in the course of an hour he had felt panic at finding
Clear missing, terror at how blue she had been in the shower,
frantic at trying to warm her, lustful as he touched her skin and
felt it warm under his hands, embarrassed when she obviously didn’t
want him to, angry when she would not talk to him, sad for her
obvious pain, awkward by her discomfort of sharing with him. How
could two people who had shared something so beautiful together
only months before, now not even be able to talk to one
another?

“
How bad does it get?”
Grant asked, forcing a casual tone.

Clear shrugged. “I don’t know now that
Anne and I have been working on blocking it, I might be ok. We
hadn’t really put it in practice in any real-world scenarios yet.”
She picked at a cuticle. Grant watched her for a moment thinking
how vulnerable and tense she looked. How could he put her through
this? He hadn’t really considered how bad this could be for
her.

Unbidden, their
experiences six months ago came to his mind. Her bathed in blood.
Her throwing herself from his truck into the road, bouncing and
rolling at 35 mph. The wildness in her eyes after “seeing”
Rebecca’s abduction. No, he
did
know how hard this was going to be. He was just
more worried about Kat. He had not considered the complications it
could present, though. Clear’s ability was hard enough to interpret
with only one psycho tormenting her. He used to work the crimes
unit in Chicago. He knew how many psychos there were in
Chicago.

His hopes of finding Kat with Clear’s
help began to dwindle.

Chapter Five

They pulled into Chicago in the mid
afternoon. Clear was curled up asleep and Grant didn’t bother
waking her. He pulled out his cell phone and called his
ex-wife.

“
Laura, its
Grant.”

“
Where are you?” she
snapped.

“
Just got in. I should be…
at your house in about 30 minutes.” Grant gritted his teeth. He had
almost said home. “Any word?” He knew the answer before she spoke.
She would have called if there were.

“
No. The police have
already gone through everything and I’m just trying to clean up
after them.” She sighed exasperatedly. “There is printing powder
everywhere.”

“
Anything
unusual?”

“
How should I know? They
didn’t say anything. What took you so long?”

“
I… I had to take care of
some things. I have a friend with me who is going to try to help.”
Grant gritted his teeth yet again. How would he ever explain a
psychic to Laura? He certainly didn’t want to do it over the
phone.

“
A cop from Montana?”
Laura sounded surprised.

“
Um, no. A consultant,
really.”

“
Oh.” He could hear the
questions in her voice.

“
Anyway, wanted to let you
know we are here. We’ll be there soon.”

“
Alright. See you soon.”
With that she hung up on him. He put the phone away and looked at
Clear sleeping soundly. He really did have a way with making women
hate him. If only he could figure out why. He suddenly felt very
lonely.

Clear awoke as the car came to a halt.
She looked out the window at a steel, cold, grey sky. Groaning, she
stretched and saw buildings all around. Some were so tall that she
could not see the roofs.

“
Hey sleepy head. Welcome
to Chicago.” Grant waved his hand half-heartedly. “How was your
nap?”

Clear glanced in the mirror under the
visor and quickly unwound her ponytail, combing through it with her
fingers, she put it back up. “Fine I guess. My neck has a wicked
crick in it.” She rubbed the knot, knowing it was from the way her
head had rested because of her ponytail.

“
Well, we’ll check into a
nice hotel after we go to my daughter’s house. Gotta check in with
the ex and… well… maybe see what you can see?”

Clear glanced at him surreptitiously.
“That’s why I’m here,” she nodded nonchalantly. Despite reinforcing
her mental walls, she could hear and feel peoples’ thoughts around
her. It was simply faint whispers, murmurs, emotions as thin and as
transparent as the wind, but already her head was feeling a bit too
crowded. She rubbed her temples gently, focusing on breathing and
trying to ignore the energy around her.

“
You ok?” Grant asked with
a note of worry in his voice.

“
Sure,” Clear muttered.
She was very nervous about meeting his ex. Grant never really spoke
about her or what had happened to cause them to split, but Clear
had found out on their first meeting that he still held deep
feelings for her. A mental image of some shapely petite woman
throwing herself into Grant’s arms when they walked in made Clear
groan inwardly. She needed to get over this! She needed to stamp
down these stupid feelings for Grant and just focus on the task at
hand. Help him find his daughter. After that she figured he owed
her a long “talk” about what happened before, so at least she could
get closure.