Trust Me (Last Stand 1)

“You’re still moving home, right?”

David winced as he stared into his son’s tortured eyes. Somehow he had to stop the pain. For all of them.

“Dad? You said you were moving home.”

“I will, bud.”

“When?”

David clenched his jaw. “Soon.”

Grinning widely, Jeremy threw his little arms around David and gave him a big hug. “Yay!”

Rain always made Skye a little uneasy, but tonight the hollow, echoing patter on her roof unnerved her more than usual and drove her from her bed. Sometimes, if it was a big storm, the sloughs would overflow their banks, break through the levees and wash out the roads. It was fairly common in winter, part of life in the delta—the excitement of which she’d loved as a child. But knowing Oliver Burke would soon be back in Sacramento, free to roam wherever he wished, transformed the anticipation she’d once felt into raw anxiety. It wasn’t a good time to be worrying about getting cut off from the rest of civilization.

God, if she was this unsettled before he got out of prison, what would she be like afterward? She’d been this way all weekend.

Fixing herself a cup of tea, she turned on the television and tried to focus on the news. But when the immaculately groomed anchorman launched into a story on the disappearance of a “Del Paso Heights man in his early forties,” she turned it off. Sean Regan. She hadn’t rescued him in time.

But she was doing what she could, right? Jonathan had started on the case last Friday. He’d find Sean eventually.

Unfortunately, that didn’t make her feel a whole lot better. Sean was out there somewhere, in the storm, like so many other victims….

Using exercise to work off her excess energy, she did fifty push-ups, two hundred stomach crunches and a half hour of yoga but still couldn’t relax.

After making another cup of tea, she settled at the kitchen table to call Jasmine. They’d spoken briefly over the weekend—Jasmine had called the second she heard Burke was about to be paroled, but she’d been with an FBI agent at the time so they hadn’t been able to discuss the situation in Ft. Bragg. Skye hoped Jas was in her hotel room now. She needed to talk to someone, and she was eager to hear how Jasmine had been received by the small, conservative police force that had requested her help.

“Hello?”

Skye winced at Jasmine’s raspy, exhausted voice. She was in her room, all right, and had probably been fast asleep before the jangle of the phone. “Did I wake you?”

“Skye?”

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t been in bed long. Are you okay?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Why me? I’m fine. I guess,” she added.

It had been on the tip of Skye’s tongue to tell Jasmine to go back to sleep, that they’d talk tomorrow, but the concern she felt over the “I guess” overcame the concern generated by the fatigue in her voice. “You don’t sound too sure.”

“This isn’t going to be easy.” Skye could hear the bedclothes rustle as Jasmine moved. “I have an especially hard time whenever a child’s involved.”

Most people had a more difficult time working a case that involved an endangered child. But Jasmine’s qualms went deeper than that. One hot August day fifteen years ago, when she was only twelve years old, her own sister had been taken from their home and never found. To this day, Jasmine had no idea what’d happened to her. She could use her psychic abilities to find others but drew a complete blank when it came to her own sister. She’d been to hypnotists, counselors and other psychics, all in an attempt to break through the mental block. But she couldn’t even help a sketch artist come up with a good likeness. The trauma she’d experienced back then—and since—had been too much. Which was probably why she embraced each abduction case.

If it turned out that the Ft. Bragg girl had already been killed, how would Jasmine react? Would she feel responsible? Have a breakdown like the one she’d had ten years ago? As it was, she blamed herself for the fact that they’d never been able to recover Kimberly. She’d seen the man who took her sister, had even spoken to him, but her inability to recall enough details to identify him still devastated her.

“How old is the girl you’re looking for?” Skye purposely used the present tense. She refused to believe they’d already lost the child when they were doing everything they could to recover her.

“Only three.”

So young… That meant they couldn’t rely on any help from her. At that age, she wouldn’t know her own telephone number or even 911. “Are you sure she didn’t wander off?”

“I’m sure.”

“How do you know?”

There was an audible sigh on the other end of the line. “I just do.”

In other words, she could “feel” it. She didn’t like saying so because she knew it sounded hokey and unbelievable. Jasmine explained her gift as a sort of sixth sense about certain people. She was the first to admit she couldn’t read minds or envision the past or future. Neither could she lead police directly to a kidnap victim or perpetrator. Rather than crystal-clear answers, she received impressions, which often resulted from touching something that had belonged to the kidnapper or victim, or being in their homes, cars or workplaces.

Combined with all the study she’d done on criminal behavior and psychology, these impressions had been enough to save more than a few victims. And Jasmine seemed to be getting better as she learned to trust her intuition. A few of her cases had even garnered national attention. In the Ubaldi case, a child had been stolen from a school playground and Jasmine had assisted authorities in tracking down the middle-aged woman who’d taken her. She’d known the woman lived near the school, had been adamant that they continue to check the houses on the same block.

“This was a crime of opportunity,” she was saying. “It was someone who either lives close by or has been visiting the area.”

“Have you canvassed the neighborhood?”

“There isn’t really a neighborhood to canvass. The mom’s single but living with her boyfriend in an older home set off in the woods.”

“Do the police have any suspects?”

“They believe the mother is covering for the boyfriend.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

The rain pounded harder, but Skye ignored it. Block it out. It won’t flood. She’d be able to drive away anytime she wanted. “What’s her story?”