Read Sixth Sense (A Psychic Crystal Mystery) Online

Authors: Marilyn Baron

Tags: #Contemporary, #Suspense

Sixth Sense (A Psychic Crystal Mystery) (3 page)

BOOK: Sixth Sense (A Psychic Crystal Mystery)
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Jack choked. “Australia?” He looked at Katherine.

“Yep. He’s gone Down Under.”

Jack turned to Katherine. “How did you know? Did Sarge tell you?”

“This is the first time I’ve mentioned it to anyone,” Sarge said. “We’ve been asked by the police to fly to Sydney to see if we can be of assistance.”

“We?” Jack asked warily.

“You and Kate.”

Jack shook his head. “Not going to happen.”

“Listen to me, Jack. They didn’t ask for you. They asked for Crystal Ball Kate. I’m sending you along as her escort.”

Jack bristled.

“They’ve seen her on TV and they feel she could help them break the case.”

“They don’t need a pseudo-psychic who couldn’t see the future if she tripped over it. She doesn’t know the first thing about murder. I’m the legitimate law enforcement professional, the one familiar with the case.”

“Sour grapes,” Kate mumbled.

Sarge’s eyes narrowed and skewered Jack’s. “Your vast knowledge about the subject hasn’t done you much good in solving your case, has it? You
will
go with her and make sure she gets anything she needs to solve this case.”

“You mean like her assistant?”

“Whatever she needs.”

Katherine smothered a smile. She was mocking him. In front of Sarge and all the guys standing around doing a lousy job of pretending they weren’t listening. He didn’t find it the least bit amusing, but apparently everyone else thought it was hilarious.

“I’ll go home and pack, Sergeant,” Katherine said pleasantly.

After she left the precinct, Jack gritted his teeth and faced the captain.

“She sells art for a living,” Jack said. “The kind of art with lines and shapes and colors that don’t look like anything.”

“I don’t care if she’s a dog walker. Her track record speaks for itself. Now you go to Sydney and keep close tabs on her. Don’t let her out of your sight. You got a problem with that, take it up with the lieutenant or the captain. The orders come from higher up. My hands are tied. But if anything happens to her, I’m holding you personally responsible. Make sure the department looks good. Don’t screw this up.”

Jack stewed all the way home. He didn’t need this aggravation. He wasn’t going to be a cop the rest of his life. He was going to law school at night, and he was close to graduation. As soon as he got his degree and passed the bar, he was going to be a lawyer. Maybe it was time to quit. His father had loved being a cop. Jack didn’t. But he wanted to catch the serial killer who had terrorized Midtown. That was a matter of personal pride.

He was sure the murderer in Sydney was not the same man, despite what Crystal Ball Kate had said. But what choice did he have? He could either go to Sydney with the wacko psychic or quit the force. It would be so easy to call in his resignation.

Jack walked into his condo and looked around at the clutter. What kind of a mess had he gotten himself into? He wanted to give Crystal Ball Kate a piece of his mind.

Frowning, he picked up the phone and started to dial.

Chapter Three

En route to Sydney, Australia

“Miss, are you all right?” The flight attendant spoke in hushed tones. Katherine felt Jack’s arms reach over and gently shake her shoulders.

“It’s just another bad dream,” Jack assured her. “She’ll be okay.”

“Take your hands off me,” Katherine said, jolting forward until the tug of her seatbelt yanked her back against the uncomfortably stiff seatback. Agitated, she gripped Jack’s wrists and hung on for dear life.

“You were having that dream about the plane crash again. You’re scaring the other passengers. Go back to sleep,” he ordered.

Easy for him to say. Within minutes, the man was snoring like he didn’t have a care in the world, although in sleep Jack fidgeted as much as when awake, adjusting his hulking frame to find a comfortable position. Katherine almost felt sorry for him.
Almost
. The seats were too cramped even for someone of her size, and he had almost a foot on her. Her thighs rested in an awkward position on the hard seat cushion. She looked over at Jack. They’d been sitting next to each other on this plane for almost twenty hours. And he’d been stuffing his face for most of that time.

Whenever Jack stood, his head bumped into the overhead luggage compartment. He was probably a bed hog, too. As if she’d ever share a bed with a man with all that body hair. She didn’t care much for cavemen. He had probably been a linebacker in college. A linebacker who’d gotten his head bashed in one too many times. He didn’t seem too bright.

He was also a total pig, or else he had a tapeworm. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was eating. The man was perpetually hungry. Every time she came back from the lavatory, the flight attendant had delivered another snack. For someone his size, there was not an ounce of fat on the man, but he was so damn big, he was constantly crossing over into her personal space.

Katherine didn’t tell Jack that the subject of her latest dream was not Rivers’ plane crash. She had started flashing on the Sydney strangler again, the same man who had gone on a killing spree in Midtown Atlanta, then abruptly changed continents without changing his MO.

The Down Under dream episode had exhausted her, drained her so completely she could hardly keep her mind focused. It wasn’t easy for her to fall back asleep. But the flight attendant had appeared unflustered. This plane wasn’t going down.

“Now I know where I’ve seen you before,” announced Perky Patty. Correction, Shelby was the name on her badge. Sexy Shelby, then. “You’re Crystal Ball Kate, that psychic on TV, the one who predicted Ocean Rivers would die in the plane crash.”

Katherine frowned. She hated her new moniker.

“How do you do that?” Shelby asked.

“Do what?”

“Make those predictions. Have you always had magical psychic powers?”

“They’re not magical powers,” Katherine objected, rolling her eyes and picking up a magazine, pretending to read it. “I just see things.”

“Your magazine is upside down,” Shelby persisted.

Katherine turned the magazine around and shoved it into the seat pocket in front of her.

“If you can read my mind, then what am I thinking?” Shelby challenged.

Was she wearing an invisible sign that read Free Readings on Board? Katherine reached up and pressed the button to turn off her overhead light. She knew exactly what Shelby was thinking. The woman was easy to read, since her mind was as porous as a sieve, with silly thoughts leaking out of it at a steady rate. She was hovering, probably hoping Jack would wake up. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know Shelby had been coming on to Jack the whole flight. The flight attendant was a shamelessly transparent bubblehead.
Is there anything I can do for you, Detective Hale? Anything I can get for you? Can I freshen your drink? Show you around Sydney after we land? Show you what’s under my uniform?
Well, she hadn’t said that, exactly. But she was undoubtedly thinking it.

Shelby knew Jack was a police detective because he’d had to inform the airline he was carrying a weapon onto the plane. A cop with a weapon was a total turn-on to some women. And why should she care? They weren’t a couple. But Sexy Shelby didn’t know that.

Katherine yawned, hoping Shelby would get the hint and start paying attention to passengers in another row.

As the cut-rate Koala Blue jet streaked across the sky, rattling like an enormous wash bucket, Katherine had the chilling feeling the Sydney serial killer was about to strike again. She could sense him stalking his next victim. She wasn’t sure they would arrive in Sydney in time for her to prevent the senseless death of yet another young woman.

Since the New South Wales Police Force in Sydney had contacted the Atlanta Police Department inquiring about Katherine’s ability to help in their case, she had seen the Sydney strangler in a number of visions. He was young and handsome, blond, and innocent-looking. His victims were, too.

She had described the man to Sydney police over the phone, but they wanted her in Australia, in person, to wring every bit of knowledge out of her, to bleed her mind dry.

In the past, the closer she came to a crime scene, the stronger her visions were. So perhaps it was better for her to be on the strangler’s turf where the action was. But she needed to detach herself. She worked better if she could clear her mind of all emotions.

Katherine grabbed her bottle of water and swallowed two more aspirin. The more powerful the visions, the more painful the headaches. That’s the way it worked. Pharmaceuticals never seemed to help. She dug the heel of her hand into her forehead to blunt the total terror she was channeling from the victims.

Katherine had the urge to call ahead and alert the authorities, but what exactly could she tell them? What clues could she give them she hadn’t already shared? She desperately tried to remember details of the images she’d seen. Where the strangler was holding his prey, something, anything that would help the Sydney police locate the latest victim before her fate was sealed. When he did strike, Katherine would blame herself. Because she wasn’t fast enough, perceptive enough, good enough, to keep it from happening again.

Still groggy, she tried her best to relax and wondered how long she had been out. Her watch was still on Atlanta time.

She unbuckled her seatbelt, shifting her gaze to the right. She was virtually trapped between Jack in the aisle seat on her left and the woman wearing a face mask, who had been coughing her brains out in the window seat during most of the flight. She probably had the swine flu. Why hadn’t Silly Shelby isolated her and contacted the CDC?

The cabin was dark. A movie was running, some frivolous comedy she hadn’t been in the mood for since she’d already seen seven movies on this never-ending flight from Atlanta to Sydney.

Beauregard Lee Jackson Hale was a mouth breather. Was it possible for a sleeping man to look smug? Somehow he managed it. His beard seemed to be sprouting tufts. She didn’t trust men with beards. Beards could hide a lot of secrets.

At the moment, Jack’s head was pressing like a granite boulder against her bare shoulder, and his beard was scratching her flesh. She had half a mind to snap his picture and upload it to Facebook. Either that or wake Rip Van Winkle up with a baseball bat.

Katherine shifted her body away from Jack’s thick head, allowing it to drop down to rest on his own shoulder. What did she care if he woke up with a stiff neck? She wobbled out of her seat. Her legs were cramping and she was dying to stretch them, but first she had to slip past The Incredible Hulk and into the aisle. She eased around Jack, careful not to wake the sleeping giant.

The captain’s melodious voice wafted over the loudspeaker. “We’re making our final approach into Sydney.”

“Kate?” Jack groused. “Where are you going? Get back to your seat. You heard the captain. We’re about to land.”

Darn. Jack was awake. Did the man sleep with one eye open? Maybe all cops hovered in a perpetual state of alert. Why was he acting like an annoying big brother, like she was some kind of irresponsible child he was stuck babysitting? He was treating her like she was under house arrest,
which
she wasn’t. She was a civilian consultant and should be treated accordingly.

The man was unbelievable. His captain must have given him specific instructions not to let her out of his sight, and he had taken his marching orders literally. Jack’s boss had no doubt charged Jack with keeping her on a tight leash to make sure she didn’t cause any more embarrassment to the department. She might as well be wearing an ankle monitor. He’d hardly taken his eyes off her, when he wasn’t sleeping or eating, except when she had to use the bathroom, and even then the permanent scowl on his face made it clear he was pissed because he was left to cool his heels outside the lavatory.

“I’m just going to the restroom. Stop following me. Give it a rest, Bobo.”

“Why don’t you try calling me by my real name for a change?” said Jack, unfastening his seatbelt.

“Beauregard Lee Jackson Hale?” Katherine snickered. “You have more names than the Prince of Wales. Bobo is easier to swallow.” That made her think of the story about Jonah and the whale. Beauregard was as big as a whale, and he looked big enough to swallow her whole.

“Just call me Jack. I hate Beauregard. My mother calls me Beauregard. I let her get away with it because, well, she’s my mother.”

And we all know how Southern boys feel about their mamas,
Katherine thought.

“Okay, jackass, I mean Jack, I don’t want you to have to chain me to the seat with those handcuffs.” Katherine’s eyes sparkled as she reached out to lift the restraints from Jack’s pants pocket when he attempted to get up from his seat.

He grabbed for her, but she slipped through his fingers.

“You’re not my boss, and you don’t scare me,” Katherine said, power walking to the restroom, jangling the cuffs for effect, a wide grin breaking out on her face, feeling the best she’d felt in twenty-four hours.

Jack rushed after her and grabbed her arm. “That’s police property. You’re asking for it.”

“Asking for what?” she teased.

She thought she could outrun him, but the very moment she thought she was home free, she felt his fingertips on her back. He was going for her T-shirt, her favorite Michael Kors T-shirt. It was already too tight. She didn’t need him to stretch it. She zipped down the aisle, but he was closing in fast.

Breathless, she ducked into a vacant lavatory, locked it behind her, and splashed some frigid tap water on her face.

Jack knocked on the door.

He had seen her go into the restroom. Did the man think she was Houdini? They were at a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. Where did he think she was going?

“Look, I need to take a leak before we land.”

“Who’s stopping you?” Katherine called out. “Do you need my permission? Or do you want me to stand guard while you relieve yourself? Use another restroom or hold it. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Don’t wander off. I want you in your seat when I get back.”

“Where do you think I’m going to be, idiot? In an overhead luggage bin?”

BOOK: Sixth Sense (A Psychic Crystal Mystery)
8.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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