True Vision (3 page)

And now she was dead. Unable to do whatever it was that she’d intended to do with her life. Such as be the journalist who could actually make a difference, if not in the world, then at least in this small town.

For the first time, Charlie realized—or, rather, for the first time she
acknowledged
—that no matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t be the journalist she wanted to be in Lake Avalon, not when important news stories went unreported for fear of angering advertisers, or the powerful movers and shakers who also happened to be good friends with her father. The Dick’s story wasn’t the first one suppressed, and it wouldn’t be the last.

All Charlie had ever wanted was a job fighting the good fight, pursuing justice, helping those who had no voice. Investigative journalists seemed to be a dying breed these days. In Lake Avalon, the breed had been dead and buried a long time ago.

Maybe her older sister had known exactly what she was doing when she’d fled Florida right after high school. Maybe Sam had somehow known that the secret to happiness was looking for it somewhere else.

Charlie fished her cell phone out of her bag and called the newspaper. Tonight was David Adams’s last night on the copy desk at the
LAG
. He’d passed the bar exam a month ago and planned to start his own law practice.

“David, hi, it’s Charlie.”

“Well, hey. Didn’t you just give me a big good-bye hug half an hour ago?”

“I was missing you already.”

His laugh was heartier and easier than she’d ever heard it. All because he was facing a fresh start. “Yeah, right,” he said. “So what’s up?”

“I have a proposition for you.”

CHAPTER
SIX

C
hicago police detective Noah Lassiter parked in front of Charlie Trudeau’s small, peach stucco house on Avalon Street and killed the rental car’s engine. The driveway was empty, so he settled back in the driver’s seat to wait for her to come home.

Laurette’s sister Jewel had called him this morning to tell him about the accident that had claimed his friend’s life, had begged him to go to Lake Avalon to look into it. He didn’t tell her Florida was way outside of his jurisdiction. He’d listened to her broken voice and hadn’t been able to say no. So now here he was, camped out in front of Charlie Trudeau’s home, waiting. He’d heard on the radio that she was the only witness to the hit-and-run. A huge break, considering she was also the woman Laurette had come to Lake Avalon to see. He hoped like hell she’d have something to offer that hadn’t been reported. Otherwise, he’d be forced to approach local law enforcement.

He put the Mustang’s top down, despite the temperature hovering in the midsixties, and leaned his head back to gaze up at the sky. Stars were so bright and dense that they formed a pattern blown like dust over a midnight blue backdrop.

Awe swept through him. He’d never seen such brilliant stars in Chicago, probably because of the city lights. Not that he would have noticed, since staring up at the nighttime sky wasn’t his thing. Laurette had chided him about that not too long ago after he’d called on her to help him pry a confession out of a killer. She’d listened to the slimeball’s spiel, nodding and looking sympathetic, even after shooting Noah her “yep, he did it” look.

He readily admitted that her gift, her ability to
know
, had scared the shit out of him. Not because he feared the unknown or supernatural, but because he feared what she might see in him. His soul was black, sullied by years of neglect.

But Laurette didn’t seem to notice. The night they’d nailed their last killer, she’d suggested they clear their heads, and warm up, by checking out the view from the ninety-fourth-floor observatory of the John Hancock Building, but Noah hadn’t been in the mood to mingle with tourists.

“You need to stop and look around yourself once in a while,” Laurette had said. “To the left, the right, up at the sky.”

He feigned a scowl at her. “You want me to stop and smell the goddamned roses, too?”

Her laugh was light as she linked her arm through his. “Noah, Noah, Noah. Why do you act like such a hard-ass when you’re not?”

He chuckled at that. She didn’t know him at all. “Yeah, I’m just a marshmallow on the inside.”

“Crusty on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside. I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

A warm feeling had flowed through him on that chilly night. Well-being. Acceptance. Camaraderie. He’d felt some hope that maybe he could change. Maybe he could make up for what he’d done.

The memory broke off when a small SUV turned into Charlie Trudeau’s driveway. Not wanting to spook her by approaching her outside after dark, he stayed put while a slim woman in khaki slacks and a light green polo shirt got out. He couldn’t make out her features as she opened the back door and retrieved a laptop case, but her skin was pale in the moonlight, her long dark hair captured in a ponytail that had all but come loose. He’d give her ten minutes to get inside and get settled before knocking on her door and introducing himself.

In the meantime, he took in the nighttime sky some more, wishing he’d made the effort to get closer to Laurette. He’d suspected she was interested in more than just friendship, but he’d resisted the idea, certain a man like him wasn’t worthy of a woman like her.

Too bad life didn’t offer do-overs.

 

Charlie slipped her key into the lock and pushed open the door into the house that had belonged to her father’s mother. The house still smelled like Nana, like lemons and soap, and she paused on the threshold to remember what it had been like to walk in when her grandmother had been alive. Nana would be standing at the sink, washing a potato to peel for dinner and smiling at her as if the sun had just come out on a dark day.

Closing the door behind her, Charlie dropped her laptop bag on a kitchen chair just as a large black and white cat ambled in from the living room with the gait of Eeyore. Oh, bother.

“Well, hello, Atticus.”

The cat rubbed against her pant leg, softly purring.

“How was your day?” she asked, bending to give his head a quick scratch. “Did you get a lot done?”

After checking his bowls to make sure he had adequate food and water, she stopped in her office to e-mail the auto dealer story to David at the paper. Her hand shook a little as she used the mouse to click the “send” button. It was done.

Resigned to being unemployed in the morning and having a very pissed-off father, she headed for her bedroom and the shower. As she walked, she shed her T-shirt and unbuttoned her pants. In the bedroom, she toed out of her shoes, kicking them toward the closet, and turned to toss her polo at the hamper. She’d stepped out of her khakis when a rustling sound near the closet startled her. Then she relaxed.

“Atticus, you silly cat—”

She broke off when a presence bigger than the cat came at her from behind. She’d barely managed to take half a step toward the door when a cord looped around her neck and cinched, jerking her back. Shocked, choking, she stumbled, ramming into the body of her attacker, who bumped against the closet door with a grunt. She tried to dig her fingers under the cord biting into her throat, but all she did was gouge her fingernails into her own flesh.

Bright lights began to explode in her head, and she twisted desperately, trying to loosen the noose. The attacker held tight to the ends of the cord, silent and still behind her, seeming to know that all he had to do was wait for the air in her lungs to run its course. As the strength drained out of her legs, she dropped to her knees with a lurch, a sickening black wave building inside her head. Oh, God, oh, God, she was going to die.

The sudden move must have unbalanced the attacker, because the cord slackened, and Charlie heaved in a jagged, burning breath, at the same time grabbing at the cord to yank it away from her throat. She expelled her second gulp of air with an eardrum-shattering scream as she wrenched around and crabbed backward, out of the bedroom and into the hall toward the living room and the way out.

The intruder, in one of those black ninja masks with only a slit for the eyes, came at her in a blur. Latex-gloved hands lunged for her throat, but Charlie frantically scooted back until her shoulder blades hit the side of the sofa and she struggled to her feet. The ninja, in loose black pants and a black long-sleeved T-shirt, kept coming, and Charlie lashed out wildly with one fist, making bone-jarring contact with the cloth-covered skull. The ninja jerked back with a pained gasp, but before Charlie could do anything more than scream again, he drove forward, smacking her in the forehead with a blinding head-butt. Her head reeled, and she slumped sideways to the carpet, fighting the black hole that spun up at her. No, don’t let go, hang on,
come on
.

The ninja grabbed her shoulder, wrestled her easily onto her back and fell on her. A forearm braced across her throat, and Charlie grabbed at it, clawing, her head spinning, her strength fading. She thought she heard a loud, repeated banging noise and muffled shouting, before darkness began to spread from the edges of her vision and her oxygen-starved lungs convulsed.

And then she could breathe. She sensed rather than saw the ninja leap up and tear toward the kitchen. The back door slammed open and shut, and Charlie felt a warm night breeze wash over her nearly naked skin. She was alive. Somehow.

Rolling onto her side, she curled into a tight, protective ball and began to cough uncontrollably. When a big, warm hand lightly squeezed her upper arm, she unfolded onto her back, ready to fight even as images of furiously kicking in a closed door filled her head.

The hand pressed her shoulder to the floor, easily but gently pinning her in place. “It’s okay. I’m a police officer.” The voice above her was deep and soothing. “I’ve called for help, but I need to check the house for other intruders.”

She blinked up at the man who belonged to the voice, saw a lined, rugged face, messy blond hair and striking green eyes. She had no idea who he was, but she felt immediately safe.

“You can breathe okay?” he asked.

She tried to say yes but ended up coughing. Chills quickly followed, and she curled onto her side again, coughing and shivering.

The blond man rose, and she sensed him standing over her, looking down at her in contemplative silence while her coughing settled down. She was all but naked yet couldn’t bring herself to try to cover up. She didn’t have anything to cover herself with anyway, but it seemed she should at least make the effort. Better yet, she should get up. There was a strange man in her house. Someone, a freaking ninja, for the love of Pete, had just tried to kill her. But she couldn’t seem to move, and she felt she had to concentrate just to breathe in, breathe out. Perhaps this was a dream. What a relief that would be.

Instead of waking up, she heard the stranger who’d said he was a cop walk away. She let her eyes drift closed. Maybe when she woke, everything would be fine.

Footsteps forced her eyes open again. The cop was returning. God, he was huge. Muscled thighs filled out faded jeans that would have looked baggy on a regular man. Broad shoulders stretched a white T-shirt taut across sharply defined pecs, and short sleeves molded to upper arms that were muscled but not too bulky. It took her a moment to notice that Nana’s afghan, the one she’d always tucked around her legs in the rocking chair, hung from his large hands.

He draped it over her shivering body. “Hang in there. I hear the sirens already.”

He had a soothing voice, but she sensed that in other circumstances it might boom so loud it would vibrate the floor under her feet.

“I’m going to take a look around, okay?”

Sure, fine, whatever.

She didn’t try to speak, or even move, instead focusing what little strength she had on breathing. Her throat felt bruised from the inside out, swollen. What would happen if it swelled shut?

Don’t think about that. Just breathe.

The shivering gradually abated, as though the throw carried leftover warmth from spending so much time on Nana’s lap. She wanted to get up, wrap the afghan completely around her, sit on the sofa and look at least halfway alert when the Lake Avalon police arrived. But her muscles refused to obey her brain’s get up commands.

She heard the front door bang open and the running footsteps of at least two men. “Police!”

The man who’d covered her with the blanket calmly spoke from somewhere behind her: “I’m a cop. My badge is in my back pocket.”

Then Detective John Logan was on his knees beside her. “Charlie? Charlie!” He turned his head away and yelled behind him, “Get the paramedics in here!”

Oh, good. Logan was here. He’d take care of everything.

She closed her eyes and toppled into the dark.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

S
o you just happened to be sitting out front when she was attacked?”

Noah returned the Lake Avalon cop’s belligerent stare, telling himself the guy was just freaked about the attack. Not that Noah could blame him. He was still shaken, too, but that might have been from how much Charlie Trudeau resembled her cousin Laurette. Same long, rich, reddish brown hair. Same tiny birthmark on her cheek where a dimple would be. Charlie, though, was the more feminine one, all curves and smooth skin and long, graceful legs. Even in the intensity of the moment, he’d have to be dead not to notice that she was nearly naked. He remembered how her lace panties had matched the delicate material that clung to round, palm-sized breasts . . .

Christ, he needed to stop thinking about that. She’d been helpless and vulnerable, and he should have immediately gone to get the blanket to cover her. But he’d been so shocked at how much like Laurette she looked, and yet how different, how . . . female. He remembered the moment when she’d started to shiver, how her nipples had hardened under that tasty-looking white lace, and guilt sliced through him for letting her get cold. He was such a jerk. Apparently, a horny jerk. But surely no man could have stopped himself from looking, from appreciating. A woman shaped like that—