Mind Tricks (19 page)

Ginny had been stabbed seven times
in her car.
Seven times.
Jake had
thought that whoever had murdered her had hated her or been in the grip of
drugs.
He
hadn’t hated Ginny. But
drugs… His stomach lurched. He’d been found in the early morning with drugs
gushing through his system.

Maybe he
had
done it. Sometimes Rohypnol unleashed violence in a person.
Maybe it had spun him into a fury, and he’d stabbed Ginny like a maniac.

His guts buckled again, and Jake
threw up the last bits of his breakfast.

Hands shaking, he swiped his mouth
with a wad of toilet paper and then flushed. There was nothing left inside for
his stomach to kick around, but it still twisted like an angry knot, making him
breathe long and deep through his nose until it settled into a trembling
sourness.

At the sink, he rinsed his mouth
and splashed his face. Wiping his face dry with a towel, he stared at himself
in the mirror.

He appeared just the same, if a
little paler, as he had this morning. Before he’d wondered if he was a killer.

No.
He hadn’t killed Ginny. Drugs or no drugs, he wouldn’t have done that. Emma
must be mistaken.

He straightened and stared at his
reflection.

No, he wouldn’t believe it. He
knew
he was a man innocent of murder.
Guilty of other things perhaps. But innocent of murder.

Sure, Emma believed him guilty. But
did he believe Emma? The way she’d picked those thoughts out of his head had
been uncanny, but it didn’t mean she could see memories he himself couldn’t
access.

Yet if she could…perhaps she held
the key to proving his innocence.

• •

Amazingly, Emma was still at their
table when he returned. She looked jittery around the eyes, but she had pulled
a wall of calmness around her, and she hadn’t run away.

“You can read people’s minds, too,”
he said as he sat down. “Not just pets.”

She hesitated and then nodded.
“Sometimes. By accident, mostly.”

“What about deliberately?” He
tapped the back of her hand resting on the tabletop. She almost managed to
conceal her flinch. What a nice girl. “Like you tried just now.”

The hesitation lasted longer this
time. “Yes.”

“Can I test you?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Test you. You know. I think of a
number, and you tell me what it is. An easy test: a number from only one to
ten. Not one to three billion, or anything like that.”

She rolled her eyes but lightly
touched his fingertips resting on the table. “Seventeen,” she said immediately.

Jake’s breath hissed out.
O-kay.
So she was the real deal.
Amazingly, impossibly, she read minds.

Then her face scrunched up into
annoyance. “You said the number would be from one to ten.”

He just barely stopped himself from
rolling his eyes. “Emma, you seem to have seen something in my head—I don’t
know what—that makes you think I killed Ginny. Can you blame me for trying to
prove that you’re wrong? Especially since I still don’t believe that I did it.”

“I knew you believed you weren’t
guilty,” she said softly, her eyes weary. “That’s why it threw me when I saw
what I did.”

His heartbeat was echoing in his
skull, drowning out all sounds. “What did you see?”

“Blood.”

Blood?
That shook him, and his stomach did another pinwheeling dive. He sucked in a
half dozen deep breaths.
Blood.

“Ginny’s?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know.”

He gritted his teeth. She didn’t
know, or she was trying to keep him off balance, just as she had for the last
few days?

But she looked troubled as she
continued. “It was blood on the front bucket seat of a car. The passenger’s
seat.”

This story was starting to sound
dodgy already. His breathing eased. “How could you tell it was the passenger’s
side?”

“No steering wheel cut through my
view. And I was looking through the windshield from outside, so I would have
seen a steering wheel.”

“But you didn’t see Ginny?”

Emma swallowed. “The driver’s side
of the car was in shadow. It was only because a streetlight was shining into
the car that I could see the passenger’s seat.”

Jake sorted through the details.
Bloody passenger’s seat, no obvious body, and the view was from outside the
car. His view, presumably. “That doesn’t mean I killed her,” he said. “It just
means I saw her car. Saw into her car. She wasn’t found in her car, you know.
She was found by the water.”

“But she’d been killed in her car.
I read that in the papers.”

“Right, but what if I’d seen her
car after she’d been killed and taken away? What you saw doesn’t prove me
guilty,” he pointed out. “Or innocent,” he added reluctantly when Emma opened
her mouth. “It just means I was there.”

“Somehow that’s not exactly
comforting,” she murmured.

Understatement of the year. “No
kidding.”

“For me either,” she pointed out.

It took him a few seconds to
understand, and a flash of anger burned away good sense. “Hey, if you’re so
worried that I might knock you off to keep you quiet, go tell the police about
this.”

She let out a sharp laugh. “Oh,
yes, they’re sure to take my word for it. You’re not even taking my word for
it.”

That was a funny thing to say. Like
they were so close that he should believe whatever she said.

His anger burned out as quickly as
it had flared, leaving only cynicism behind. “We’re too well connected publicly
anyway, with lunch the other day, breakfast here, and Ian and Cynthia seeing me
at your place a bunch of times. It’s in my best interest for you to stay
alive.”

Emma eyed him.

“Here.” He held out his hand to
her, palm up. “Go nuts. Poke around, pull out other memories, see if I’m
telling you the truth now.” When she didn’t reach out, he huffed out an annoyed
breath. “Jesus, Emma. I don’t want to kill you.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

Then why had she been touching him
before? He started to pull back his hand. “Fine.
 
If you won’t believe—”

She grabbed his hand and squeezed
her eyes shut. Frozen, Jake could only stare.

Then she dropped his hand and
opened her eyes. “All right. I believe that at this very moment, you don’t want
to kill me.”

“What the hell?” He wiped his hand
on his jeans and suddenly felt like he was a little boy wiping a girl's kiss
from his cheek, afraid of cooties.

“If I did it the way you wanted me
to, you could have deliberately filled your head with thoughts meant to deceive
me. By touching you when you weren’t expecting it, I saw your real thoughts,”
she explained.

Jake sat back in his chair,
disgruntled, though he wasn’t sure why. He’d persuaded her, hadn’t he? Of
course, it would’ve been more satisfying if she’d trusted him enough to take
his hand the first time instead of ambushing him.

Trust. They didn’t have a lot of
that flowing between them. There was enough that they’d sit at the same table,
discussing the possibility of him murdering her, but not enough that they were
on the same team.

He gazed at her slim but strong
hand—no rings, no nail polish—resting on the table by her coffee cup. They’d
been on the same team a few days ago. He missed that.

A thought occurred to him. As he
turned it over in his brain, the more it made sense. “When did you, uh, see my
memory of the bloody seat?”

She dropped her eyes. “Right
after…” And she pointed from him to her and then back again.

“Okay,” he said. “That explains a
lot.” Nice to have one thing cleared up, at least.

He looked around. The café was
slowing down, and the clock above the counter read ten o’clock. “Well, we’ve
given Mickey more than enough time to arrive, so it looks like he’s officially
blown us off. Do you still want to drive around and mentally look for Brutus?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Do you?”

“Sure—now that I know it’s probably
not a waste of time.”

Emma snorted, but he thought she
looked secretly pleased. “Fine.”

“I like Brutus. I’m not especially
thrilled about chauffeuring a woman who thinks I’m a murderer, but I’ve been
dealing with that all week. Also…”

“Also…what?”

“Also, maybe you’ll see something
else in my head. Something that will mean I’m innocent.”

She nodded. “Maybe. I hope so.”

She didn’t say anything more, but
she didn’t have to. Jake knew what she’d left out. If she saw something that
proved he was guilty, he was the last person she would tell.

Emma pulled her concentration
around her like a cloak, trying to block out the sound of asphalt hissing
beneath the car wheels, air moaning past the open windows, and Jake’s aimless
humming.

For a man who’d been told he might
be guilty of murder, he was in a pretty decent mood.

Ugh. She had to stop thinking about
him, about Ginny’s killing, and about her own growing conviction that despite
what she’d seen in his mind, he truly was innocent.

Concentrate. She had to focus on
Brutus.

Jake turned his head and caught her
eyes on him. “Any sign of the mutt?” he asked.

“No, nothing.” Easier to say that
than admit that her head was too full of her own thoughts that there was no way
she’d pick up Brutus’s doggy ones.

Her cell phone shrilled, and she
flipped open the screen:
private caller.
Someone phoning about Brutus?

“Hi, this is Happy Dog Kennels.
Emma Draper speaking,” she answered.

“Hey, hot stuff, it’s Jennie. You
sound very professional when you answer the phone.”

“Where are you calling from?” If
she’d seen Jennie’s number pop up, she wouldn’t have answered the phone. Too
awkward, considering her companion in the car.

“Jeff’s soccer game. My battery
died, and I borrowed a friend’s phone. Poor kid’s team is down by five goals,
so I snuck away to call you. What’s going on with your friendly neighborhood
murder suspect?”

Emma cringed and swung her eyes
toward Jake. Could he hear Jennie? But he kept humming softly, his gaze on the
heat-shimmered blacktop.

“Can I call you back later?” she
asked her sister.

“Why? Is he there?” Jennie chuckled
at her own wit.

Ten yards ahead, nosing out of a
side street, a car pulled out, apparently not seeing them at all or assuming
they’d stand on the brakes. Jake slammed their speed from thirty-five down to
zero, causing the car to shudder like a hypothermia victim. “Out-of-town
idiots,” he swore. “All tourists should take a driving test when they cross the
state border.”

“He
is
there,” Jennie said gloomily. “Emma, should I assume this means
you checked out the brain within his handsome skull and that he’s as innocent
as you hoped he was?”

Ha. She wished. “Everything’s
fine,” she prevaricated.

Jennie was no dummy. “Everything’s
fine, my ass. You call me when you’re alone, or I’m showing up on your
doorstep. Understand?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you. Bye.” She
shut the phone and sagged against the seat. She was juggling a kidnapped dog, a
possibly murderous semi-boyfriend, and an angry sister. Cripes, she needed a
vacation.

Jake glanced over. “We’ve covered
this area pretty thoroughly. Do you want me to swing south, toward Baymill?”

“Sounds good.”

He took a right at the next
intersection and then another right, and soon they were back on the main road
that ran up and down the coast. Their speed was too fast for her to catch
anything by opening her senses, so she shut her eyes and let her skull drop
against the headrest. One more hour of searching, and then she’d go home and
nap. Or maybe not nap but sleep flat-out until sunset. She wanted to patrol the
kennels tonight as well.

Jake’s voice jogged her. “We’re
here.”

Emma opened her eyes and blinked
away the film blurring them. They were in Baymill—at least ten minutes away
from where they’d been when she’d closed her eyes.

She must’ve slept. Apparently she
had no self-preservation instincts at all.

“Want to stop and grab some
coffee?” Jake glanced at his watch. “Or lunch? It’s almost one.”

Hunger roared in her belly like a
dragon. “Lunch.” Coffee would just scorch hole number 45,493 into her stomach
lining.

Baymill had only one sandwich shop,
and they managed to seize a table out on the sidewalk. Orders had to be placed
and picked up inside, so Jake went in and grabbed the food while Emma sat in
the sunshine, letting the chatter flow around her from the tourists and the locals
out and about on a spectacular Saturday.

She liked this place. She liked her
friends here, few though they were, and her pet business. If Brutus wasn’t
found, though, she’d probably have to get up, move, and start all over again.

The sunlight beating warm against
her closed eyelids, she sighed.

Glass bottles clanged against the
metal tabletop, and she popped her eyes open in time to grab a toppling Coke
slick with condensation. Jake slid the sandwich-heavy plates onto the table and
then sat beside her, his arm brushing her elbow as he lowered himself onto the
wooden bench.

At the touch of his skin, Emma
tried to grab on to his memories of the night of Ginny’s death, but they
slipped away, determined to be elusive. Looking for those memories
was
like putting her hand into a wild river thronged with furiously
swimming salmon and trying to grasp a small diamond lying among the stones at
the bottom. Absolutely futile.

She
needed him to be passive, maybe on the verge of sleep, when his rush of thoughts
would be slow. Then she might be able to slide past them and find the memories
lurking behind.