Reunion (10 page)

“No.”

His heart started to pound.

“No.”

His hands started to shake as he lowered his head on his knees and closed his eyes. How had this happened? The man in his dream had had a bloody neck. And now he did?

Shocked by what he was thinking, he closed his eyes and began to pray. Guilt, coupled with a fear he couldn’t name, shook the very core of who he’d imagined himself to be.

“God help me. What have I done?”

L
aura turned on the lights as she entered the kitchen, but when she saw the outside door ajar, her hopes fell. Heart pounding, she stared out at the darkness, afraid to go farther and afraid to stay put. Somewhere beyond the safety of these walls, Gabriel moved within a world not of his making. She didn’t know how to explain it. She just knew it was so.

In her dream, the danger had been so clear, but now she wasn’t so certain. Dreams weren’t always cognitive patterns for the future, not even for her. Sometimes they were nothing more than a mixture of hopes and fears. She prayed to God this was one of those times. She was just getting used to the fact that Gabriel would one day make love to her. Accepting the fact that he would also try to kill her was not only frightening, it was impossible to believe. The Gabriel she was coming to know was angry, yes. But he had a right. Those who are left behind when a loved one dies always experienced anger in some form or another. But not many channeled that anger into indiscriminate murder.

The sound of a siren’s scream made her jump, and without thinking, she ran to the door, intent on slamming it shut. Then she thought of Gabriel, and her conscience pricked. If she shut the door, she would be shutting him out. Life had already slammed too many doors in his face. She couldn’t bring herself to shut another.

She stepped outside, staring into the night as the siren faded in the distance. Where on earth could he be? Was he sleepwalking again, or was something she didn’t want to believe, something more sinister, going on?

He’d already told her the roses left with the bodies had been missing their thorns, but the newspaper accounts of the deaths had made no mention of that fact. She didn’t know if it was something he had just imagined, or if it was true and the police were withholding it. Denuding the stems of their thorns was something his mother had practiced. Maybe that fact had gotten mixed up with everything else he was experiencing until he believed it was so. And then again, maybe not.

So far, the victims had all died of broken necks, reportedly from a single blow to the head. Only a person of great size and strength would be able to accomplish such a feat. Gabriel Connor was very tall…and very, very strong.

She shuddered. She couldn’t believe, wouldn’t let herself believe, that he could be capable of such rage. If he was that kind of man, she would have known…wouldn’t she?

Then she sighed. She wouldn’t get any answers by second-guessing herself. She lifted her chin and stepped out into the grass.

Dew dampened her feet and the hem of her gown. A faint night breeze molded the fragile lingerie against her skin, outlining her legs, as well as the narrow indentation of her waist.

Her senses heightened as she moved beyond the halo of light spilling from the open doorway. In the dark, everything seemed more pronounced, from the brush of fabric against her body to the cooling breeze on her face. Even the rustling of the leaves sounded like whispers. Secrets. The world was full of secrets.

She moved farther into the darkness, tilting her head to listen—both to the whispers on the wind and the whispers in her mind. A sense of anxiety drew her farther and farther away from the house—away from safety. She had to find Gabriel, and quickly.

Long minutes went by as she searched the immediate grounds surrounding the house. Although her search came up empty, she refused to panic.

Five minutes became ten. Ten became twenty. She wanted to give up, to go back inside where it was safe, but a sense of urgency prevented her from following her instincts. She continued to search until more than thirty minutes had passed. Just as she was about to give up, she saw him in the distance, and the posture of his body was proof of his despair. On his knees, with his head thrown back and his neck arched in silent agony, he looked to Laura like a man awaiting a death blow from an unseen executioner.

“God help me,” she whispered, and started to run.

The grass felt like wet silk between his toes. The air moved across his face like a lover’s breath. The scent of roses was thick, drugging his senses and filling his mind with bittersweet memories. Moisture fell onto his cheeks, and he flinched.

Rain?

He opened his eyes to the sky. It was cloudless. Stars dotted the darkness above him, tiny pinpoints of light too far away to illuminate anything but a soul.

There was a knot in his belly and another in the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. That was when he knew it wasn’t rain on his face, it was tears. With a groan, he pulled himself upright. As he felt the dampness of the grass beneath his feet, the hopelessness of his situation suddenly struck.

“Ah, damn.”

The urge to hide was overwhelming. He turned, intent on going back to the house, then forgot what he’d been thinking.

He thought she was a ghost. With the hem of her nightgown brushing the grass, she seemed to be floating, rather than running, across the grounds. It took a few seconds for him to realize it was Laura and not the ghost he had first believed.

He watched her coming, puzzled by the urgency with which she ran. It wasn’t until she came closer and he could see her face that he realized her concern was for him. Touched that she cared enough to come in search of him, his eyes suddenly burned with fresh tears.

At that point, emotion hit. Hard. Fast.

Remembering the death he’d just witnessed, his hands curled into fists. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, fighting a sudden need to feel life, to remember that he was alive. He wanted to take her in his arms and make love to her. Over and over. Without promises. Without regrets.

She was closer now. So close that he could see the motion of her body beneath her gown, the bounce of her breasts, the flat of her belly. He no longer saw her as the psychic who’d come to lay blame but as the beautiful woman she really was.

Yet there was an obstacle between them that he couldn’t ignore. No matter what she was willing to offer him, she was little more than a stranger.

His heart began pounding, his muscles tensing. He tried to call out to her. To warn her to go back, because right now he needed more from her than she had come here to give. But hesitation cost him. Within one heartbeat and the next, she was reaching for him.

“Gabriel?”

He heard fear in her voice. It cooled the fire in his blood in a way nothing else could have. He and fear were on an intimate basis. The last thing he would willingly do was pass it on to a fellow human being. Again he thought of his dream—of the man at the door and the dog that had been silenced forever—and wondered if he was kidding himself. Unless he was terribly wrong, there was every possibility that he’d already passed on more than fear. God help him, but the man at the door had been Sadie Husser’s houseman, Stevie, and Stevie had recognized his killer. He’d called him by name. He’d called him Gabriel.

He looked into her face and just for a moment pictured it broken and lifeless, like that of the man in his dream. Just the mere thought of causing her harm made him sick with fear. Seconds later, his fear turned to anger, both for her and himself.

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

Laura froze. The anger in his voice startled her. Every rational thought she had told her to turn and run, but her instincts held her fast. She stared into the shadows, intently searching what she could see of his face, needing more than the tone of his voice before she would let herself panic.

“Looking for you.”

“And now you found me,” he growled.

She took a step forward.

“Be careful,” he warned.

“Of what? Of you?” She grabbed him by the hand. “First you wanted my help and now you want me to leave. What are you afraid of, Gabriel?”

He slid out of her grasp and then took her by the shoulders, moving them both until they were out of the shadows of the trees and standing fully beneath the glow of a three-quarter moon.

“I’m not the one who should be afraid,” he said harshly, all but shaking her to make her understand. “You’re the one treading on unfamiliar ground. You don’t know me.” His laugh was a bitter expletive of sound. “I don’t even know myself.”

But Laura wouldn’t budge. “Then let me see where you live,” she said softly, touching first his heart, then his head. “Will you trust me enough to let me come in?”

Her question took him aback, and as the meaning of it finally sank in, his first reaction was to refuse. Then he thought, what the hell? The way he figured, he was already damned. Having it confirmed might actually be a relief.

“How?”

She took him by the hand, urging him toward a nearby bench at the perimeter of one of the rose gardens. He complied. Not because he trusted her, as she’d asked, but because he was tired of fighting.

Laura pushed him down and then sat beside him.

“Don’t you think we should be doing this inside?” he asked.

Her voice wrapped around him like silk, soft but binding. “Darkness gives its own measure of anonymity,” she said.

He frowned. She was right. He felt somewhat easier just knowing that she couldn’t clearly see his face.

“What do I do?” he asked.

“Just sit. The rest is up to me. Now give me your hand.”

He did as she asked, but when she lifted his hand to the side of her own face, his heart skipped a beat.

“What are you—”

“Trust,” she said softly. “It’s all about trust. You must relax. Don’t concentrate on anything but the sound of the wind in the trees and the grass beneath your feet.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered.

She didn’t respond but merely shook her head, clasping both his hands and then holding them as she would have held an injured bird, cradled against her breast. When he settled, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Her touch was light, her fingers small in comparison to the size of his own, but Gabriel could no more have torn himself away than he could have stopped his own heartbeat. Her head was tilted slightly toward the moon, as if searching for light by which to see, but her eyes were closed. It was a staggering thought to know she needed no light to see truth. At least not now. Not this time. Not when the place she was looking was inside him.

As he stared at her face and the intensity with which she seemed to be focusing, he caught himself holding his breath. He relaxed, exhaling on a shiver.

Although she didn’t look up, she shook her head, as if remonstrating him to silence.

For Gabriel, it was almost impossible. He forced himself to focus on her frown, then the shape of her face, then her lips. When his gaze fell below the level of her chin and began measuring the fullness of her breasts and imagining what their weight would feel like in the palms of his hands, he suddenly flinched. Had she
seen
what he was thinking? If she had, what would she do if he acted upon the thought?

In that moment, his defenses went down and Laura Dane slipped into his mind.

To Laura, the union of one mind with another was a little like flying. There was the sensation of weightlessness, coupled with the intimacy of having been separated from earth. She let herself go, accepting the images that came to her without trying for identification, knowing that the time for that would come later.

The blur of a woman’s face. Her soft gasp as a man’s hand moves upon her breast, touching, then caressing. Roses spilled upon the ground…no…upon a grave. A barking dog.

Laura stiffened. The images she was receiving went almost immediately from sensual to sinister. It was like standing in a doorway and looking into a room, then past that room into the room beyond—one room light and beautiful, the second dark and threatening. The urge to stop was strong, but for Gabriel’s sake she stayed, determined to see as far as he would let her go.

Once more she focused, letting herself move past the obvious to what was hidden within his thoughts.

Fear…no…pain. Terrible, terrible pain. A stranger’s face. Smiling…then questioning…then dead.

Silence. Blessed silence.

She moaned, unintentionally tightening her grip on Gabriel’s hands.

As he watched the changing expressions on her face, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Either she was damned good at pretending or—

Get out!

Both Gabriel and Laura jerked. The intrusion of the second voice into Gabriel’s head startled him as much as it did her.

She blinked and then swayed where she sat, staring at him in quick confusion as he tore away from her grasp and stood.

“That wasn’t me,” Gabriel said harshly, and walked away.

She followed him, running to catch up.

“Wait!” she begged.

He spun. “Wait for what? People are dying! I can’t live with this anymore. I’m going to the police in the morning.”

She grabbed him by the arm. “And what are you going to tell them?”

The words were there in the back of his mind, but they wouldn’t come out. Twice he tried to form his thoughts, and both times he failed. He hit his leg with his fist in frustration.