Karma Patrol (13 page)

“Why don’t I tell you what I saw and then you can tell me whether or not you’d like to offer an explanation?” At her go-ahead gesture, he continued. “For starters, I saw you stop a woman from walking out into a crosswalk just before she would have been hit by a car.”

“Shouldn’t you be offering me a medal for something like that, not following me back to my apartment and trying to intimidate me?”

“Normally, yes,” he agreed. “But you backtracked to that crosswalk specifically to wait for that woman, and you did it before you could possibly have seen the car or known which way she was going to walk. That made me curious, so I kept following you, and do you know what else I saw?”

There was a long moment when he suspected she was at war with herself, deciding what to tell him, and he wondered whether she would come clean or if she would keep lying to him.

“Take off your shirt,” she said finally, and he blinked at her.

“Excuse me?” he replied, trying desperately to ignore his arousal at her words.

“Take off your shirt,” she repeated, impatient.

He eyed her with suspicion, trying to figure out what her game was, but she returned his glare with an implacable gaze, and eventually he sighed. He was the one who was on shaky ground here. At any point, if she decided she wanted him to leave, he could do nothing from an official standpoint to make her talk to him, and there was a good chance he could get fired if she decided to complain to his captain. He had no solid evidence to back up his investigation into her, and if she decided she was upset enough about him following her today to file a complaint, he might even end up in legal trouble for harassment. If she wanted him to take off his shirt, he didn’t have a lot of standing to argue with her. He also had to admit there was a part of him that was hoping this was the beginning of a romantic overture, despite his absolute certainty that there was something off about her.

He shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over the back of the sofa, then loosened and removed his tie, feeling a little uncomfortable when confronted with her unreadable expression. His oxford shirt followed the rest of his clothing onto the back of the couch, and he turned to Jade with his arms extended.

“Well?” he prompted her, and she gestured for him to stand up.

“Turn around.”

He did a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn for her, showing off his well-muscled chest and back for her perusal and wondering whether she was checking him out or looking for a wire. The hint of a smile on her face suggested it might be a little of each.

“Is this for your own personal enjoyment, or did you have some sort of goal here?” he asked, doing his best to sound irritated instead of intrigued, and was rewarded by the light pink flush of her cheeks.

She was cute when she blushed.

“You can’t be too careful these days,” she informed him primly. “Do I need to have you strip the rest of the way to prove you aren’t wearing a wire?”

“Why would I be wearing a wire?” he inquired, honestly curious. “I was following you around on a fishing expedition, looking for evidence that you were involved in the shooting, and instead I saw you doing… whatever the hell you were doing. Who would bother to listen in on that?”

Her lips quirked in a reluctant smile. “You’re the only one who believes I have anything to do with any of this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“This could cost me on my performance review,” she sighed, sinking back against the couch cushions. “I don’t suppose I could convince you not to mention to my boss that you actually noticed what I was doing on the street today. Oh, for heaven’s sake, put that away,” she added, seeing his right hand creeping toward the gun holstered at his side. “I’m not in league with the killer, Detective. I’m trying to stop him, the same as you.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Jade Bailey,” she replied easily. “I’m a southern belle from a little town outside Charleston. I’m a freelance photographer and an inveterate shopper. I’m also a karmic account enforcer.”

“You… you’re a what?” he asked, mystified.

“I’m a karmic account enforcer.” She took a sip of her coffee, assessing his expression for a long moment. He wasn’t sure what she was reading there other than confusion. “The freelance photography thing is a fun hobby, but really I just use it for extra pocket money and an excuse to go wandering around the city doing the kinds of things you saw me doing today.”

“Saving inattentive New Yorkers from reckless drivers?”

“Keeping people’s free will from interfering with their intended karmic consequences.”

He knew he was looking at her like she was insane. Truth be told, a part of him was wondering if she actually was insane, and he was mentally reviewing the criteria for involuntary psychiatric commitment as she kept talking.

“It’s an ability you have to be born with in order to do the job. It tends to run in families. My father and my sister can do the same thing. Basically, when I look at people, I can see their karmic balance: the current sum total of all of the positive or negative actions they’ve chosen. I can also see their intended karmic consequences, assuming that they’re about to come due.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he told her with the gentle sort of patience people used with the very young and the mentally ill, and she sighed in frustration.

“It’s like that woman in the crosswalk today. Her karmic balance was positive, which means she’s probably a nice person who does nice things for other people. The path stretching out in front of her should have been green, which would lead her to a positive reward for her choices, but it was blinking blue, which means it was in danger of being interrupted by someone’s free will. I backtracked to that crosswalk because I could tell something was about to happen that wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t know what it was until she turned toward the crosswalk, and then I saw the car out of the corner of my eye. I stopped her and kept her on the sidewalk until the car passed because she wasn’t supposed to be hit by that car. She didn’t do anything negative to deserve that outcome, so it’s my job to keep it from happening. And the little boy with the manhole, if you saw that one? That was a misappropriation of karmic balance. The punishment was supposed to be for the mother, but the boy was going to fall in first, so I interceded. That’s going to screw up my numbers for today, since it means the mother didn’t get her own intended negative consequence, but Karma always recovers. It’ll come up with a new plan for her, and hopefully that one won’t endanger her son by mistake.”

He’d been mulling over her words while she talked, trying his best not to believe her. It all sounded completely crazy, but the more she talked, the more he wanted to believe it. It was a good explanation for how she’d known what was going to happen out on the street earlier, assuming he was willing to suspend his disbelief about the whole karma thing.

“So you’re—what? In charge of making sure that what goes around comes around?”

His skepticism was audible, but he was at least giving her the benefit of the doubt and hearing her out, which seemed to surprise her. He guessed it was more than she’d been willing to hope for, given the general attitude he’d demonstrated since she’d met him.

“Basically, yes,” she replied. “But only for Midtown West.”

That explained why she’d resembled a patrolling officer today, walking the streets of Midtown and looking for any signs of abnormal activity that might indicate a deeper problem.

“You’re a beat cop on karma patrol?”

She nodded. “And when you’ve decided you’re going to believe that, even just for the sake of argument, then let me know and I’ll keep going.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and she returned his gaze with a beatific smile. Eventually he decided he was already far enough down the rabbit hole that he might as well go all the way to Wonderland, so he nodded.

“Go ahead. I’m with you so far—for the sake of argument.”

“All right. The second part is that you’re the only person I can tell about this.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you’re my soulmate.”

He was glad he hadn’t accepted her offer of a drink, because he would have choked on it. “I’m your
what
?”

“You’re my soulmate.” The sudden smirk was vastly out of place on her face, which was designed more for cheerful smiles than for sarcastic expressions of any sort.

He wasn’t sure where he’d lost the thread of this conversation, but now he was hopelessly mislaid and becoming increasingly more concerned about Jade’s mental state.

“You and I just met yesterday,” he began, and she nodded.

“And so far, I think you’re a cranky, irritable killjoy whose most redeeming features are the possession of a steady job and a very nice set of pecs,” she replied, raising her coffee cup to toast his bare chest. “But the Karma Division isn’t the only one in our organization. We also have an Interpersonal Relations Division in charge of making sure that people meet the people they’re destined to, and the representative for Midtown West made a point of calling me yesterday morning after I left that crime scene to let me know I’d just met my soulmate. She showed me a picture of you and everything.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, Luke. We’re destined to end up together, and you can’t change destiny.”

“I don’t believe in destiny,” he informed her sharply, and was surprised to see the flash of hurt on her face. “What? Jade, you sound insane. You know that, right?”

“Is the problem that you don’t believe in destiny? Or that you don’t want to end up with me?”

“You—” He found himself at a loss. Jade had just dumped her entire bizarre, delusional worldview on him, and now she was upset because she thought he didn’t want her to be his soulmate? “No. You know what? If this was all true and there were such things as people destined to be each other’s soulmates, then I’d be happy to have you as mine. Okay?”

“Really?”

He might have thought she was certifiably crazy, but that didn’t stop him from recognizing the time-honored tradition of a woman fishing for a compliment.

“Really. You’re a good-looking woman and you seem pretty smart. I think you’re crazy, but if we’re operating under the assumption that all of this is true, then you aren’t crazy, which is a big bonus. Most of the other good-looking women I’ve met in my life were almost as crazy as you sound right now.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, a small smile gracing her lips. “I really am, Luke. Because I’m not crazy, and we are destined to be soulmates.”

“You have to know how insane that sounds,” he persisted, and she nodded.

“Part of how we get our work done without interference is the overwhelming public belief that none of what we do is real. I can prove to you that it is, though.”

“All right, I’ll play along,” he agreed, knowing this was the point where she was either going to change his entire belief system or expose her mental illness. He was inclined to believe she was psychotic, but he couldn’t shake the memory of her walk through the city this morning, the way she’d known what was about to happen and managed to intercede before any normal person should have been able to. “Prove it to me.”

“Come over to the window.”

He followed her over to the tiny apartment’s equally tiny window, looking out onto the street, and was surprised when she handed him a pair of binoculars.

“Spying on your neighbors?” he guessed, and she smiled.

“Look down at the sidewalk,” she prompted, taking a second pair of binoculars from the drawer of the end table under the window and joining him as he looked obediently outside. As she pressed closer to him, sharing the small space in front of the window, he was hyperaware of both her hair brushing against his bare chest and her proximity to the handgun in his holster. As a cop, he’d been trained never to let anyone near his weapon, particularly anyone whose sanity was in serious question, but as a man he physically ached to pull her closer.

He pushed the urge away, shifting his stance to keep the gun out of her reach, and did his best to focus on the pedestrians down below.

“The woman in the red shirt,” Jade said, interrupting his train of thought. “See her?”

“I see her.”

“She’s going to spill that coffee, and when she stops short because she’s surprised, the guy behind her is going to bump into her and trip. She’ll be fine, but he’s going to hit his head on the sidewalk.”

He watched for a few seconds. As the woman approached the edge of the area visible from the window, she tilted her coffee cup too far to the left and spilled hot liquid on her hand. She jerked to a stop, cursing and juggling the coffee cup to the other hand in order to try and wipe the coffee off of her hand. Just as Jade had predicted, the man behind her ran into her, overcompensated in an effort not to knock her to the ground, and ended up falling awkwardly on one arm and banging his head on the sidewalk.

“Is this a setup? Did you tell them to do that?”

She gave him a pitying look and his face heated. He knew his question was farfetched, but the alternative was even more farfetched.

“Why don’t you pick someone and I’ll tell you whatever I can see about them?” she offered. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from making an inappropriate remark and put his binoculars up to his face again, looking back down at the little melodrama playing out on the street. The woman who’d spilled her coffee was offering her hand to the man who’d fallen, and he took it and let her pull him to his feet. He didn’t look injured, and the expressions on both of their faces suggested that maybe the accident hadn’t been all bad.

“Are they soulmates?” he asked, watching as the woman smiled up at the man.

“No idea,” she replied easily. “Not my division. I only know about you because Shannon told me.”

“Who’s Shannon?”

“The woman from the shooting yesterday, remember? The one who was standing next to your car when we came out of the hotel?”

“The one who made the crack about the handcuffs,” he agreed, realization dawning. “She said something about dating a cop. Was she talking about you and me?”