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‘Go on.’
‘He was roaring drunk but he had quite the audience. He started spouting off about frauds and fakes and charlatans. Got himself quite hot under the collar, and it was entertaining to watch until the end when he kind of peaked.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he’d wipe them all off the face of the earth if he could.’
FORTY-TWO
It was almost eleven when Terence let himself back into the house. The heavens had opened during his walk back and he was soaked through, his hair plastered to his head, but it didn’t matter. His heart was soaring.
A quick walk around the outside of Stacey’s property had told him that her bedroom lay at the rear of the flat, and it hadn’t been hard to scale the gate to access the alley that ran behind the house.
He had stared up, willing her to come to the window so he could get a glance at her. The moment that she’d peeked out before drawing the curtains had been intimate and special. A moment between the two of them, when the security light had illuminated him and she’d realised that he was there. Just for her.
She may have thought that he couldn’t see her, but she hadn’t turned off the hallway light, which gave him not only a perfect view of her but a view of the hallway, enabling him to work out a rough floor plan of the flat.
He knew she had seen him. Now she knew that he would protect her.
If he’d had any doubts about her feelings, they had been squashed when she had repeatedly appeared at the window for the next two hours. Every visit had gladdened his heart further and reaffirmed that she felt the exact same way. She had been looking for him. She had been willing him to be waiting in the shadows, watching her, protecting her. That same spark that had electrified him during their first meeting had been there for her too.
He felt just a frisson of concern as he removed his coat. Whatever he’d done for Charlotte hadn’t been enough. However he’d tried to prove his love, she’d wanted more. He’d taken it slowly and it hadn’t worked.
He didn’t want to make the same mistake with Stacey. He knew what he had to do. He had to try harder, work quicker to show her just how special she was to him. That he would love and treasure her like no one else ever could. He would show her that she had settled for the wrong person but it was okay.
He was here to rescue her now.
FORTY-THREE
After a restless night where sleep had remained just outside her clutches, Kim parked the bike outside the small house in Dudley, aware that the events of the night before were still on her mind.
The journey back from Wolverhampton had been silent. Tiff had travelled off into her own world and had been uncharacteristically quiet. Kim had dropped her home with the request that she attend the morning briefing. She’d changed the time to 8a.m., to give Richard a chance to get in, and it also offered her an opportunity to make this early house call. Her mind was unsettled and there was only one person who could help her restore order. She knew this meeting wasn’t going to help her solve the case, but it might help her settle her own mind.
The door was opened by a woman who showed no surprise to see her despite the years that had passed. And somehow Kim didn’t think she had changed one bit, even though she was hovering around her mid-seventies.
‘How lovely to see you again. Come in, Kim,’ she said, stepping to the side.
Eloise Hunter had come into her life a few years back, when she’d been investigating the abduction of two young girls. Eloise had tried to insert herself into the case, claiming to have divine knowledge. It was the same case on which she’d first met Symes. Eloise herself had been placed in danger, and had survived only because she and Bryant had found her in time.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ the woman asked, guiding her to the kitchen.
A second mug was sitting beside the kettle.
‘You knew I was coming?’
Eloise chuckled. ‘No, dear, I saw you pull up and it’s just gone seven, so why wouldn’t you want a cup of coffee?’ The kettle boiled and Eloise poured the hot water into the mug. ‘Although, it’s progress on your part that you even asked that question.’
Kim said nothing as she followed Eloise to a small conservatory that was catching the lightening sky of the sunrise. The garden was an overgrown wilderness of small trees and thick shrubs. She counted three stocked bird feeders around the small space.
‘What troubles you, my dear?’ Eloise asked, placing Kim’s mug beside her own on a wicker table that stood between two chairs. She closed her book and folded her reading glasses neatly on top.
‘A case I’m working on. I have two dead psychics.’
‘Gifted or not?’ Eloise asked.
‘One definitely not and the other I’m not sure about, but I don’t really know what gifted is or if it truly exists.’
‘Ah, that’s why you’re here. You have questions.’
