Lethal Outlook: A Psychic Eye Mystery (22 page)

“That’s why you haven’t been overly worried about her disappearance,” I said. Jamie nodded and her eyes welled up again.

“I thought she was off on a mini-vacation, just trying to clear her head a little.”

The room fell silent while we all considered what she’d said; then Candice asked, “Jamie, did you know that Bailey is getting divorced?”

My brow rose. We didn’t know that for sure; it was just something I’d picked up in the ether. “She is?” Jamie asked.

Candice nodded like it was a known fact. “She’s moving out of her house. She’s leaving her husband.”

Jamie sniffled loudly. “Well, that’s not much of a surprise. Chase Colquitt is a total douchebag.”

I couldn’t help it; I snickered but quickly covered it by clearing my throat. “How long have Bailey and Chase been together?” I asked.

Jamie thought for a moment. “Not long. Bailey met Chase about a month after Kendra and Tristan got married. The two got serious real quick. They were married in the same year they first got together.”

“That’s fast,” Candice said.

Jamie nodded. “I know it sounds weird, but I always felt like Chase was the rebound guy for Bailey after she hooked up with Tristan.”

“Rebound guy?” I asked. “But I thought they only hooked up that one night.”

Jamie stroked her pup’s ears. “As far as I know that’s true,” she said. “But like I said, it was pretty obvious to me that Bailey was in love with Tristan. It’s still obvious, actually. Every time I talk to her, she winds the conversation back to Tristan. It’s like she’s obsessed with him, which was one of the reasons why I stopped talking to her. It was always Tristan, Tristan, Tristan.”

I turned my gaze to Candice, who was looking back at me with a raised brow. Could Jamie have just provided us with a motive for Kendra’s abduction and murder? Candice stood up, making a point to note the time. “We should get out of your hair.”

I got up too. “Thanks so much for letting us talk to you, Jamie.”

“Sure,” she said as she set her pooch on the floor and walked us to the door. “And if you have any more questions about Kendra, please just call or come by. I can’t imagine what her parents must be going through. Or little Colby.”

Jamie began to well up again, and after giving her a brief supportive hug, we left her in peace.

T
he next morning Dutch and I had an argument. It was one of those fights that starts off being about one thing and turns into a squabble about every little issue that’s been bugging you both for the past four years.

By the end of it, I was storming (aka hobbling with emphasis) out of the house, suggesting he go…er…
make love
to himself. (Swearing doesn’t count when you’re having a big blowup with your fiancé.)

The moment I slammed the door behind me was the instant I realized my car was still at the office.

“Son of a…!” I growled. Rummaging around in my purse yielded another unpleasant surprise: My phone was missing. I muttered a few more choice expletives (swearing doesn’t count when you’re furious with your fiancé and you can’t find your phone) and puffed out a couple of big breaths, knowing I’d have to go back inside and hunt for my cell. As
I mentally went back through the previous evening, trying to find a moment when I could last remember seeing my phone, the memory of Cat waving it triumphantly came back to me.

Had she returned it? I tapped my new cane on the step a few times. No. No, she hadn’t. “Frick, feck, frog!” I groused, turning reluctantly around to go back into the house. Dutch was gathering up a few files before he headed to the office, and I caught him looking up at me when I came back in, but I lifted my chin, averted my eyes from him, and headed straight to the house phone in the kitchen. Picking it up, I was about to dial when I realized I had no idea what Candice’s number was. Whenever I needed to call her I just looked her name up in my iPhone’s contacts list.

“Goddammit!” I growled, slamming the phone back down on the charger. (Swearing doesn’t count when you’re furious, just had a fight with your fiancé, forgot that your car’s not in the driveway, realize your sister’s stolen your phone, and can’t remember your best friend’s number.)

Dutch pretended to ignore me and continued to mess with his files.

I glared hard at him. The
last
thing I wanted to do was ask him for a favor, but unless I wanted to miss my appointments for the day and irritate five new clients, I’d need his phone to call Candice. You’d think that was a no-brainer, but I still thought about it for a good two minutes before I cleared my throat and said, “Dutch?”

“I’m late for work, Abby,” he replied evenly.

I could feel my brow lower to the danger zone, but I kept
my own voice calm and collected. “I need your phone to look up Candice’s number.”

“Where’s your phone?”

I took a deep (deeeeeeeeeeep) cleansing breath and let it out nice and slow (slooooooooow) before answering him. “Cat has it.”

Dutch stopped messing with his files and lifted steely eyes to me. We had ourselves a little staring contest for a few beats before he walked over to the dining room table and picked up the box with my wedding present, or as I liked to call it, “argument subject zero,” as it’d been the thing that’d started our fight in the first place.

Laying the box on the counter in front of me, Dutch said, “You can have Candice’s number if you promise to take your gun to the shooting range to practice.”

“I promise,” I said quickly. The next time I was at the shooting range, I’d take the stupid gun. Of course, the next time I intended to visit a shooting range was going to be one minute past
never.

Dutch was onto me, however. Holding up a finger, he said, “And you have to promise to visit the shooting range sometime in the next seven days.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why wait for the shooting range when I have a perfectly good target standing right here in front of me?”

“I’m serious, Abby,” he growled.

“So. Am. I.”

Dutch scoffed at me. “You probably haven’t even gotten
bullets for it yet.” He didn’t know Candice had loaded it, and I didn’t feel like telling him.

“I can still hit you over the head with it,” I countered. The man was well on to my last nerve.

But Dutch wasn’t backing down. He held up his phone and wiggled it with emphasis. “Do we have a deal?”

I glared at him for all I was worth, but he only stood there with raised eyebrows and that stupid wiggling phone.
“Fine!”
I snapped, swiping for his phone, but he lifted it out of my reach and moved to the table. Writing down Candice’s number on a legal pad, he dropped the pen when he was done, grabbed his files, and walked out without a backward glance.

I think that hurt most of all.

Candice got an earful when she picked me up a half hour later. I think if she’d known that she was going to get said earful, she would’ve left me at home. “Why’re you two still arguing about this?” she asked when I’d run out of substitute expletives and was searching for one I could use to cheat without her demanding a quarter.

“Because he just won’t drop it!” I yelled.

“Seems like it’s important to him that you get comfortable with his wedding present,” she said reasonably. “So why not do him this one little favor, and take it to the range for one round of practice? I mean, it can’t be as bad as arguing with Dutch over it and ruining both your days, can it?”

I turned toward the window and stared out at the passing scenery for a while. Why did Candice always have to be so fecking reasonable?

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I said after a moment.

“What principle would that be?”

I turned back to her. “The principle is that you don’t give your new bride a
gun
for a wedding present!”

But Candice only shrugged. “You know, Abs, you can’t be sure that you won’t need that gun someday. I mean,
really
need it. It’s not just that it might come in handy. It’s that it could
save your life
. And if you ask me, that’s the best wedding present Dutch could ever give you.”

I turned myself back to the window and did some really good pouting all the rest of the way to the office. The moment we parked, I got out of Candice’s car without thanking her or looking back. I merely gimped my way to the elevator, got in, punched the button, and rode up alone.

Once I was settled into my office, I managed to hold on to that anger for a whopping ten minutes, but eventually reason returned and I began to realize what an ass I was being. (Swearing here counts, and I socked another quarter into the swear-jar kitty.) I was just about to go apologize to Candice, in fact, when my first client of the morning walked in.

Vowing to make up with Candice after my client, I focused on getting through the session. Luckily, the reading went smoothly, and I managed to land a few really great hits. Buoyed by the energy of having done well, I went in search of my partner, but she wasn’t in her office, and I wasn’t even sure if she’d come up from the garage. For all I knew, she could’ve decided to give me some space for the day.

I checked her side of the suite after my next two readings, but if she’d come and gone or hadn’t come in at all, I couldn’t tell. What’s more, I couldn’t call her because I’d stupidly left
the paper with her number at the house, and I couldn’t call Cat because I couldn’t remember her number either.

Still, there was one number I did know by heart simply because it ended in the digits 5050. I dialed it, waited out three rings, and heard, “Harrison,” on the other end.

“Brice?” I asked.

“Abby?”

“Yeah. Listen, my sister has my phone with all my contacts in it and I need to talk to Candice.”

“Isn’t she at the office?”

“No, and I can’t remember her cell. Can you give me her number, please?”

“Sure,” he said, and I heard the sound of a drawer being pulled open. I imagined he was going for his BlackBerry. “You got a pen?”

I wrote the number down and was thanking him when he said, “Say, Abs, I know this is none of my business…”

Uh-oh.

“…but did something happen between you and Agent Rivers today?”

I paused. “Why?”

“Because he’s been distracted and biting everybody’s head off all morning, and I need him to focus on this bombing case.”

Great. Not only had I been exceptionally rude to my best friend, but I was very likely ruining my fiancé’s career. “Can you transfer me to his line?” I asked, laying my head down on the desk in defeat.

“That a girl,” Brice said, and a second later I was listening to hold music.

When Dutch picked up the line, I said, “Hey.”

Dutch answered me with silence.

I sighed and swiveled around in my chair to face the window. “I’m sorry,” I said a bit stiffly.

The cold silence on his end continued.

I sighed again, cooling my jets, and softening my voice, I tried again. “Seriously, cowboy, I am really sorry. I know you’re just trying to look out for me, and I feel bad that this whole gun thing keeps sparking an argument between us.”

“I am,” he said at last.

“You are what?”

“Trying to look out for you, Edgar. I need to know that you can defend yourself. Otherwise, I won’t be able to go to work every day and do what I gotta do. And if I’m distracted by thoughts of you in danger without the means to protect yourself, then I leave myself open and vulnerable too.”

That hit home. “I get it. I’ll go to the range next weekend.”

Dutch’s skeptical silence returned.

“I swear, cowboy,” I insisted. “I really will. And if you’ll come with me to give me a few pointers, I’d appreciate it.” I threw that last bit in out of desperation. I no more wanted Dutch to come with me than I wanted my highly impatient, curmudgeonly alcoholic father to teach me how to drive again.

Still, it seemed to work because at last the granite tone in his voice cracked and I got a hint of a chuckle. “Deal,” he said. “And I’ll even spring for the bullets.”

I smiled. “No need. Candice already hooked me up.”

Once I was sure that he and I were back on good terms, I clicked off and dialed Candice’s line. A ringing sound right behind me caused me to jump. Whirling around, I found her standing in front of my desk, arms crossed and a big old grin on her face. “All better?” she asked.

“When did you get back?”

“About five minutes ago.”

“How much of my conversation did you hear?”

“Enough,” she assured me, that grin getting bigger.

“That apology extends to you too, Cassidy.”

“I figured,” she said, reaching down next to my desk to retrieve my purse. “Come on. We’ve got an interview to get to.”

I looked at my watch. “But it’s my lunch hour!”

“We’ll eat on the go,” she said, heading out the door.

I was left to grumble and reach for my cane.

I caught up with her at the elevator, and seeing it reminded me of my earlier behavior. I chilled out quick, even allowing her to enter first when the doors opened.

Once we were in her car again, I remembered to ask, “So who’re we interviewing?”

“Garrett Velkune. He’s an attorney.”