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“I should stay here,” Laura said vaguely, glad that she had an excuse not to continue the conversation—and guilty that she felt glad. “I need to make sure that Zach’s okay.”
“Right,” Chris said, and Laura got the distinct impression that he wasn’t inviting her anyway. “Well, I guess I’ll see you.”
No specific date or time. No specific plans. Just, I’ll see you.
Even though Laura knew that she was the one who had pushed back against making a specific date—not wanting her vision to come through, though it hadn’t worked anyway—it hurt. It hurt to feel like he was pushing her away. That he might not ever want to meet with her again.
That maybe, just like with almost everything else in her life, Laura had finally managed to screw this up for good as well.
Chris turned and walked out of the room, hesitating in the doorway.
“Zach’s in ward four,” he said.
And then he was gone.
Laura heaved a sigh, giving him a moment to disappear down the hall before leaving and going in search of Zach herself.
CHAPTER THREE
Laura looked through the window before she headed inside. Zach was lying on a bed, seemingly a shrunken version of his normal self. His grey hair made him look ancient now, not just distinguished. Everyone always looked awful in hospital beds. That was something she had learned as a child watching her father lose his battle with cancer. It didn’t matter how large you were in life—in a hospital bed, you were always small, weak, and shrinking.
She was still toying with whether or not to go in when Zach looked up, noticed her, and waved.
Laura cursed inside her head and opened the door.That was the problem with psychics, she thought wryly. They always knew when you were coming.
“Zach.” She moved to his bedside, standing awkwardly, glancing up and down the bed as if she was looking for a visible sign of discomfort. She didn’t know what she was looking for, really. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better,” he said, giving her a weak smile but one that tried hard to be dazzling. “Thank goodness your friend Christopher was there. He really was in the right place at the right time.”
“Yes,” Laura agreed. “You were lucky.” She didn’t want to admit that, with all her training, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to do anything but freeze if Chris wasn’t there.
“What happened back there?” he asked, frowning and turning serious. “You…pulled out your gun on him.”
“I know.” Laura sighed deeply. She glanced around; there was no one else around to hear them. Apparently, Chris had used his connections at the hospital to get Zach an upgrade to a private room. There wasn’t even a nurse in sight to check on him. Still, she couldn’t help feeling like she always did—like she was about to talk about something that she’d always tried to hide out loud, where anyone could hear it. “I had a vision.”
“A vision about Christopher?” Zach asked, his keen eyes seeming to pierce right to the heart of the matter immediately.
“Yes.” Laura sighed. There was a chair next to the bed, and she sank into it. “I saw him stabbing you. It was so dark, so hard to see—like they all have been lately. I…I got it wrong. I thought he was killing you, not saving you.”
Zach gave her a look of pure understanding. “Ah. And when it happened, you reacted on instinct, wanting to stop him from hurting me.”
“I didn’t realize what was really happening until it was too late.” Laura let her head drop into one of her hands, rubbing her forehead. “Chris thinks I’m losing it.”
“And he would probably think that even more if you told him the truth,” Zach said, with a smile that confirmed he knew this special type of dilemma from his own experience. “Right now, maybe the best thing you can do is let him think whatever he thinks. He’s a doctor. He won’t abandon you—he’ll try to help you. And, you know, maybe a mental health check-in every now and then isn’t a terrible thing to have to submit to.”
Laura narrowed her eyes at him. “You think I’m losing it too?”
Zach chuckled. “I think you work an incredibly stressful and high-pressure job, and you have a big secret you have to hide from the world,” he said. “You’d be weird if you weren’t losing it.”
Laura chuckled in spite of herself. “I guess you’re right. These visions aren’t helping. I can barely see anything anymore. What I do see ends up not being all that helpful most of the time.”
“I’ve been finding the same.” Zach scratched at one of his arms near an IV site.He must have been put on fluids while they observed his recovery, Laura thought. She had no idea about how to recover from a heart attack. Was Zach going to be here for a while or discharged later today? She didn’t want to ask. Selfishly, part of it was because she didn’t want him to ask for help. She knew he was alone here in Washington, D.C. because he’d come to find her. But she had enough responsibilities already—chief among them being her daughter, who couldn’t share a tiny apartment with a strange man her Mom barely knew. If he asked, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to say no, not with him looking so small and old in that hospital bed. “Everything’s dark all of a sudden. It’s worse than I’ve ever had before. I just can’t explain it.”
“When did it start, for you?” Laura asked. There was only one way she knew how to get to the bottom of a mystery, and that was to be a detective.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Zach frowned a little, rubbing his chin. “You know, I think it might have been around the time that you first mentioned that you were experiencing it. I was fine at first, but it wasn’t long after—maybe even the next day. But, of course, I don’t have visions as often as you do in the first place. Maybe I just didn’t have the opportunity to find out until then.”
“So, we both started experiencing this at the same time?” Laura asked.
