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She paused for a second, considered making an appointment for a session, then dismissed the thought.
“Afraid of what you’ll find out?”Jay’s voice asked.
“Never,” she said loudly, and an older man in a hat and overcoat walking in the other direction sliced a look her way. She lowered her voice. “The whole psychic crap thing isn’t real, you know that, you’re a scientist for God’s sake.” And then she heard herself. “And you’re not real, either.” She considered telling him to leave her alone but wasn’t certain that’s what she wanted. Besides, the conversation, at least his side of it, was all in her mind.
Right?
She kept walking, her coat billowing in the breeze, and told herself that she didn’t believe in psychics or the paranormal, or any of the otherworldly things she’d found so fascinating in college. But that wasn’t true, was it? Didn’t she have the uncanny ability to see a person’s color change to gray just before he or she was about to die?
“You’re a fruitcake,” she said as she reached her car and unlocked it remotely. This time, thankfully, no one heard her.
Except Jay, who said,“You might not want to piss off all your friends, Kris. There’s a good chance that you’re going to need them.”
“Oh, yeah? And how would you know?”
“Because I know you, Kristi, better than anyone does.”
“Is that right? Then you’ll get it when I say I don’t think you’re real. Okay. You’re just a manifestation of my guilt or my grief or whatever. But you are not real.”
“Whatever you say.”
She started the car and began to pull away from the curb only to hear a loud, impatient honk as a pickup whizzed by.
Kristi’s heart bounced around in her chest.
The Silverado’s tires hit a deep puddle, throwing up a curtain of water that rained all over her car.
She told herself to get a grip and then checked her mirror before managing to meld into traffic.
All the while she told herself that Jay wasn’t with her, that she imagined his voice, that she wasnotgoing mad.
But she didn’t believe it for an instant.
* * *
“I’m tellin’ ya, cuz, I haven’t heard from him,” Luis said as Montoya, on the other end of the wireless connection, paced on his walk from the front of the house to the street, cell phone pressed hard against his ear, as if the more tightly he gripped his phone, the more likely he’d get the answer he was looking for. “Not for years. We were tight in school, yeah, but, you know, life goes on. Look at you. A damned detective.¿Quién lo hubiera pensado?”
“Who would have thought?” Montoya repeated in English, but grinned nonetheless.
“Yeah, man, you were bad-ass.Un gran alborotador!”
Montoya couldn’t deny it. He was a troublemaker. Probably the worst in the family. Except for Cruz.
“And now you’re a cop.¡Increíble! Es un maldito milagro.”
Montoya laughed. “Not incredible. Not a miracle,” he said, and sobered. “Just let me know if he shows up or calls or texts. If you hear anything.”
“You got it.” Luis hung up and Montoya closed his eyes in frustration. He should take Bentz’s advice and let it go. Cruz would show up when he damned well chose, but still, why would the jerk-wad call in a panic, tell him he was going to be arrested for a homicide, insist he was heading to New Orleans, and then just disappear, become a goddamned ghost in the wind?
Cruz always had been an egocentric prick.
Growing up.
In the military.
In college.
Every damned where.
