“Stop lying,” she snapped.
He glared at her and pointed. “Just drive.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Then you don’t have to,” he replied. “I’ll walk home.”
He went to open the car door, but she reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Stop.”
He glared at her. “I’m not someone to be ordered around.”
Ya think?The two of them stared at each other, both of them strong-willed and probably not the easiest people to get along with. And neither one of them was very good at backing down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It didn’t help to get bugged by my team because you were outside, waiting for me.”
“I got it,” he noted. “And believe me. If I’d had any other place to go, I would have.”
She closed her eyes, sank back against the seat, then turned off the engine. “Tell me what’s going on.”
When he didn’t speak, she opened her eyes, rolled her head toward him, and added, “Please.”
He frowned and hesitated again. “It’s stupid. I mean, it’s really stupid,” he repeated, “but very few people are in my world that I can actually talk to about this.”
“I’m hardly the one to talk to,” she stated. “I can barely even believe half of what I hear coming from your mouth.”
“Very true,” he agreed, with a quirk of his lips. “Sometimes I don’t either.”
“I think that’s why I keep hanging around,” she suggested, “because sometimes you appear to be completely thrown off by it all, and I worry about you.”
“There’s nosometimesabout it,” he snapped. “I don’t get what’s going on at the best of times, but I have to deal with it because it’s my life. I can’t just close my eyes and walk away. This is just what happens.”
She nodded. “And I get that. So tell me what happened this time.”
Slowly, grudgingly, and a little bit at a time, he managed to tell her about the voice in his head, the woman still screaming, and the feeling that she was dying. And because Simon couldn’t help her, he shared the complete frustration of being frozen, lost, and helpless.
“This isn’t how I’m used to feeling,” he burst out, waving his hand. “You know it’s not like somebody comes and picks on me at a bar or on the street. It’s not like anybody out there is attacking me. At least not now, not at this stage of my life, not when I’m fully grown and can fight back,” he added in frustration, glaring at her. “This insight into these women’s worlds isn’t something I’m comfortable with, not at all. To know that they are in pain and are as helpless and as victimized as they are is… it’s devastating.”
When Simon’s words finally stopped rolling, she realized that the person facing her was the real reason she was with him. This man was all heart. It was too big and soft, so he kept it encased in iron, so nobody could beat it up. But these victims were attacking it from the inside, and he had no defenses against them. He had no way to protect himself; he had no way to deal with the onslaught of these visions.
Whether his visions were right, whether they were wrong, whether they were true, whether they were lies or somehow made up in his mind, they were the real deal, and having seen just enough of the examples he’d given her and the help that he had offered her, she knew that some of this psychic business of his had to be real, that some of this had to be true. And the fact that it was scared her to death.
But it also scared him, and she knew that. She didn’t know whether it was just the fact that it was possible or it was more about these particular cases or maybe because he’d lost his own grandmother, but the pain rang true, and it tore him apart. She realized that instead of gripping his wrist like she had been, she was now holding his huge calloused hand in hers. She gently stroked his palm and his long fingers, soothing him, somehow trying to find that place between them where they could meet and talk, without getting angry, without boiling over into something that was so much more.
When he finally fell silent and just turned to stare at her, she could see the guilt, the horror, and the terrible conflict inside him. She could also see that he was waiting for her to berate him for something.
“Are you expecting me to tell you to do more?” she asked quietly. “Are you thinking that I’m your grandmother or your mother or some unknown sister, who will either tell you it’s all stupid and you should ignore it or that you have to do something about it? I can’t be any of those people. I can only be me.”
He closed his fingers around hers, let his head fall against the headrest, and nodded. “And maybe that’s the attraction,” he guessed. “That you’re just you. You don’t put on airs. You don’t try to be something you’re not. You’re here. You’re doing a job, and everything else around you is either black or white because that’s what your life has been up to this point. You’re no longernotopen to the possibility of something else because you can see that there is something else. Yet you can’t believe in it because it’s not yoursyet.”
When he emphasized theyet, she winced. “There have just been so many things that you’ve told me that have been true,” she murmured, “that I have to consider the possibility that there is something else.”
“And because you’re willing to consider the possibility,” he admitted, “I feel compelled to always be nearby, knowing that at least you’re willing to hear me talk.”
“And where does that leave us now?” she asked. “I don’t know how to find this woman in your head. I’m doing everything I can on the ground, and, if she’s related to my cases, it means my case is even worse than I thought because we had hoped that this was a one-off from many years ago. The fact that it’s happening again and that we don’t know whether it’s an imitation, like a copycat, or the same person causing trouble again, is frustrating all of us on my team,” she murmured. “What I can tell you is that I just don’t have any answers.”
“And again, that’s what I like about you,” he said. “You don’t try to push me off with a nice little PR statement that you’re doing your best. You tell me that you don’t have answers. It’s black, and it’s white, so far for you. And when color is there, you’ll tell me.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s exactly what I’ll do,” she confirmed. “In the meantime, I’m doing everything I can to find out what’s going on. And, if this woman connecting to you is a current victim, if this woman, indeed, needs help, I need you to reinforce that connection as much as you can, so you can tell me what you can about her. So maybe we have a chance of saving her. If not today then at least tomorrow.”