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“No. Not yet. But mark my words, Cullen Bodman.” She slammed the door on her way out.
They hadn’t spoken for almost a month. Luna was not only his sister, but she was also his best friend. He felt terrible about it. Then one day his phone beeped, indicating an Instagram message was waiting. It was from Luna’s friend Barb. He furrowed his brow. Barb rarely, probably never, sent Instagram photos to him. Her text read:
Where are you in the photos?
He peered closely. It was a photo from a recent party. Was that Nora? With her arm around some dude? She was hanging on him like a Christmas ornament. It was the party at the Biltmore Estate Winery, the weekend he was in New York on a business trip. He stared at the photo again and again. He didn’t recognize the guy, but Nora seemed to know the guy rather well.
He phoned Luna right away. “Hey, sis. I want to apologize. You were right about Nora.”
“Oh? How so?” Luna could barely contain her excitement. Her plan had worked. When Luna had received the pic from Emily, she didn’t want to confront Cullen herself, so she asked her friend Barb to forward it, asking where he was in the photos. Luna never told Cullen that she had asked Barb to intervene, but after that incident, Cullen never questioned his sister’s sixth sense. Even if it made no sense to him.
Luna Bodhi Bodman had long, wavy, ash-blond hair. Occasionally, she would put colored streaks in it. Red for Valentine’s Day. Green for St. Patrick’s Day. Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Whatever the holiday or cause, you could see it in her hair. She would often wear it in a braid when not wearing a headband around her forehead, harking back to the 1960s and the 1980s. The granny-style wire-rimmed glasses and hippie-type bohemian wardrobe emphasized her spirit.No pun intended. She had a keen eye for design and a talent for charcoal drawing.
As a child, Luna was incredibly creative. Her imaginary playmate, Debbie, was a big part of it. Luna was convinced that Debbie wasn’t imaginary at all. She was simply invisible to anyone who didn’t believe that she existed. Luna was quite adamant about Debbie being real, so her parents decided to let her have her fun. They hoped she would eventually grow out of it. What they had not expected was how soon that would occur.
The night before her first day of school, Luna’s father sat her down and explained that Debbie couldn’t go to school with her. Luna confidently replied, “I know, Daddy. She’s moving to California to play with another little girl who is lonely.” Luna’s dad was taken aback. He had no idea his five-year-old daughter knew there was even a state called California. Luna also seemed totally fine with her playmate’s moving away. “I’ll have other friends to play with, and Debbie needs company. So does the little girl in California.” She was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.
Her big brother, Cullen, was also relieved. He didn’t want to get into any fights on the playground defending his kooky sister. He loved her to pieces, but sometimes she could get on his nerves, as undoubtedly happened with all older brothers and younger sisters. But as they got older, he began to appreciate her knack for “knowing things.” When they were in junior high, Luna had a “feeling” about one of Cullen’s pals, Harry Johnson. She couldn’t explain it, but she had “bad vibes” about him. He was the Eddie Haskell of his class. Always putting on an obviously feigned, polite front. At least it was obvious to Luna that it was just a front. So she argued with Cullen, telling him he should keep away from him, but Cullen was a very loyal friend, always assuming the best in people. A week after her warning, Harry was arrested for breaking into an electronics store and stealing a few thousand dollars’ worth of inventory. An electronics store. Didn’t Harry realize they would have extreme security? Not only was he a thief, but a stupid one at that. Cullen shrugged it off as a wild guess on Luna’s part, but in his heart of hearts he knew she had sensed something.
As they matured, Cullen knew not to argue with his little sis’s woo-woo messages. Growing up, there had been too many incidents where those messages were right on the mark. The most common type was when she would make a phone call, and the person on the other end would exclaim, “I was just thinking about you!” It became so commonplace with her best friend, Barb, that Barb would answer the phone with a witty, “What took you so long?”
Luna could pick a winning racehorse by going to the paddock and looking into the animal’s eyes. Cullen referred to her as “Dr. Doolittle,” among other things. Her percentage of being right was better than Michael Jordan’s basketball shots, something she would remind her straitlaced, basketball-crazed big brother about from time to time. The words “woman’s intuition” had been said in the house way too many times to ignore. Eventually, he learned to trust her intuitions. He didn’t always act on them, but then again, many people don’t listen to their doctor’s advice, either. “Eat less meat.” “Stop smoking.” “Get more exercise.” And that advice came from people with degrees!
In college, Luna’s undergraduate psychology curriculum offered several electives in the paranormal, a phenomenon beyond the scope of scientific understanding. It included extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and psychometry. She was particularly fascinated with psychometry, leaning on the theory that since everything is made of energy, one could get “vibrations” from inanimate objects. When asked for an explanation of the phenomenon, she would quote Sir Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation, or cite Neil de-Grasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium and successor host of the TV seriesCosmos, first developed by Carl Sagan. If neither of those worked, she would talk about electroencephalograms and brain activity, the development of neuroscience, and electromagnetic impulses. After the first minute and a half, the eyes of whoever had asked about it had glazed over and they had moved on to a different subject.
When she was in her teens, she had worked at her parents’ shop during the summer and weekends. Her eye for art and décor did not go unnoticed by customers.
But for the most part, she kept her interest in “the unknown” on the down-low.
When Luna graduated from college, she had no plan. When people asked, “What are your plans?” she would answer, “My plan is not to have a plan. I’m just going to be goin’ with the flow.” The idea sent shivers up and down her parents’ spines, but they knew she would be OK. How? They weren’t sure, but Luna was resourceful and perceptive.
They breathed a sigh of relief when she got a job with the county doing evaluations for children’s services. She also interviewed potential foster parents. With her insight and understanding of body language, she could spot an abuser more easily than most. When she could match families with kids, she was overjoyed. But when it came to the ugly situations, of which there were many, she was thrown into a black hole. One of her coworkers, who also understood a bit of psychic stuff, would remind Luna of psychiatrist Judith Orloff’s definition:An empath is an emotional sponge. Orloff felt so strongly about the vulnerability of overly empathetic people that she had written a book about it,The Empath’s Survival Guide. “I’m surprised you haven’t read it inside and out,” the coworker noted.
Luna had read the book. Many times. But it was a good reminder.
Chapter Two
North Carolina
In Luna’s third year of working at children’s services, an AMBER Alert had gone out to the surrounding area. A three-year-old girl was missing from her yard. The local sheriff’s office conducted an extensive hunt of the area and came up empty. After twenty-four hours of searching, the authorities were beginning to suspect it might have been an abduction. Even though there hadn’t been a ransom note, they called in the U.S. Marshals Office of Missing Children.
Luna volunteered to help with the search, taking her dog, Wiley, a border collie she had adopted from a shelter, with her. The original owner had thought the dog would make a good “tracking dog,” but Wiley had other ideas and been surrendered to the shelter. Wiley must have sensed Luna’s innate ability to communicate with animals. On more than one occasion, he found her purse when she had left it in the car. It was another example of those unexplainable things. Luna would be rummaging through the house when Wiley would run to the front door and start to bark softly. “What is it, pal?”
Wiley would scratch at the door. Luna would let him out, and he would run to the rear passenger door of her car. Naturally, Luna would follow him. And, sure enough, there her purse would be on the floor in the back.
“How did you know I was looking for my purse?” He gave a soft woof in reply. “And how did you know where it was?” Another woof. “OK. But we have to keep this between us. Enough people think I’m a little loony. We don’t need them to know that I carry on a two-way conversation with my dog.” Wiley nudged Luna under her arm. Luna gently grabbed his ears and kissed him all over the top of his head. She wasn’t sure if he could help finding Avery, but even if he couldn’t, he was good company.
When Luna and Wiley arrived at the search party base, she was introduced to U.S. Marshal Christopher Gaines. The minute she shook his hand, she got all goofy. His deep, dark blue eyes were framed with thick black eyelashes, the kind women pay a lot of money for. He reminded her of the actor Jay Hernandez, who played the newMagnum P.I.on television. And that smile. Even though it was a somber occasion, his smile was warm. He exuded authority in a very nonchalant way. Confident but not cocky. Luna estimated he was maybe a couple of years older than Cullen. Gaines had a hint of gray at his temples. He was slightly taller than Cullen and a little more buff. Fit but not a muscle head.
Gaines gave her the two-handed handshake. One on top of the other. She got what she would often refer to as the jolt. It could be a good thing or a bad one. In this case, she wasn’t sure. It was a bit unnerving for her normally grounded but eccentric persona.
“Thanks for coming out. We need all the help we can get.” A genuine smile crossed his face. “And who do we have here?” He bent a little closer to Wiley, who sat still like a good dog, with his tail going a mile a minute. Wiley held up his paw.
“This is Wiley.” Luna could barely get the words out. The jolt she had felt was physical chemistry. The kind that makes you giddy and excited.
Gaines bent over and took the dog’s paw. “Nice to meet you, Wiley.” Wiley woofed a sound of approval. “Border collie, eh?”
“Ye-yes,” Luna stuttered. “He was trained to be a tracking dog, but his original owner couldn’t seem to get him on track, so to speak.” Now she was nervous, trying not to sound trite or daft. “At least the owner had the good sense to bring him to a shelter, where he could be adopted.”
