“But you would have been fine, right?” When he didn’t answer, she pressed heavier.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was connected, but I don’t know how it works.” He shrugged. “It’s my first time to experience this—fully. I don’t know. I’ve tried to snap free, and I did manage to one time. I couldn’t snap free this time.” He stopped, frowned, and looked out the window. “It’s almost like I can see that water again right now. But I don’t feel that she’s there. I feel that, for her, this is her end result, and it’s just a matter of the timing.”
“Do you feel that she’s being pressured?”
He nodded. “Yes, she’s for sure pressured, but I don’t know if she’s doing the pushing. For all I know, she’s conflicted, and one part of her is saying,Do this, and the other part is saying,Don’t do this.”
“I think every suicide victim is torn, and mental arguments like that one are part of the norm,” she murmured, as she looked over at him.
“All I can tell you is, when I came home, I got sucked into this vision, and that’s where I was stuck. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get in.”
“Do you know why?”
Part of Simon’s worry was, if he was connected to this person, and then she died, what would happen to him? “You’re looking for a reassurance, and I don’t have it to give. I can only follow this plan, this program. I don’t know the rules of the game. I don’t know the borders and the boundaries of human behavior here. I don’t understand how the psychic energy works. I don’t understand why I’m picking up on her and only her. I’m learning as I go. As for uncertainties? Blocking it completely? That’s the one thing I guarantee you that I can’t give you.”
At that, she turned and walked out of the apartment, leaving him alone.
Chapter 17
Kate’s Thursday Morning
Kate walked intothe station the next morning, exhausted, frustrated, angry, and depressed. Even though she’d given herself a bolstering talk this morning, she knew her expression would tell the rest of her team the reality of her rough night.
Rodney got up and said, “Hey, let me grab you a coffee.”
She looked at him in surprise and then nodded, without saying anything. She sat down at her desk and turned on her computer.
In the background, Lilliana quietly asked, “Are you okay?”
She lifted her thumb up and said, “I’m just peachy.”
Obviously from her tone of voice, Kate wasn’t peachy at all, but it was also fair warning to everybody to stay the hell away, that she was dealing. The problem was, she didn’t know exactly what she was dealing with. This was too stupid, too sad, and too extreme for anyone to even begin to help her.
“Well, if you want good news,” Lilliana said, “we’ve got an address for your Tex guy.”
Kate spun in her chair, looked at Lilliana, and said, “Seriously?”
“Yes,” she said, “but what we don’t have is any a motive. Did you consider that?”
She shook her head. “No, one of the two guys at the station said that he’d gotten into trouble for stealing something.”
“Interesting. Any idea what he took?”
“It wasn’t proven, but they alluded to car parts. But, if he did that there, maybe he did it somewhere else. We need to track him down and see what his next place of work was.”
“We have nothing on record after that garage,” Lilliana said.
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t work for somebody. He could have been working for cash under the table.”
“Yes, but we don’t have anything where his social insurance number was used.”
“Right,” Kate said thoughtfully. “Well, I’m up for having a talk with him. See what the hell he knows.” Kate looked over at Rodney.
He nodded, as he came back with coffee. “You want to have a little coffee and go then?”
Kate said, “Yeah, I need to check in with Forensics and deal with emails, and then we’ll go,” she said, reaching for the coffee. “And thanks for this. I need it today.”
As Rodney sat at his own desk, running through his emails, he asked, “Problems in paradise?”