String of Tears, page 20
Hurricane instinctively wanted to say that the person behind all this was male, but that was a little too blasé of him to count on. Profilers utilized all kinds of science in order to make their best guess as to who could be killers, and, sure, more often than not they were males, but Hurricane didn’t want to discount any possibility just yet.
Then he stopped, thought about the energy that he had felt inside that vortex, and realized he really couldn’t discount it anyway because all that energy had been female—powerful, angry, furious female energy, raging inside that torrent. He shook his head at that and deliberately disconnected from that memory, so he could continue to research the paperwork in front of him.
When Grant phoned him an hour later, he asked, “Did any of it make sense?”
“I’m still going through the files,” he replied, “and, yes, it does make sense. Jewel’s gone up to her room. I don’t think she really wants to get too involved in this part.”
“I can understand that,” Grant stated, “but I was hoping that you had gotten to the pictures.”
“I have sketches that she drew of some of the women, and two of them definitely match up.”
“That’s depressing,” Grant replied.
“And here I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I did, yet I didn’t. Yes, we want confirmation that these IDs match up with the photos of the murdered women, yet that woo-woo confirmation isn’t the kind of confirmation I really want.”
At that, Hurricane laughed. “No way you have lived with Maddy all these years and not come to terms with this.”
“Sure, but I prefer a criminal I can lock up and throw away the keys, not a criminal I can’t even see.”
“Regardless, so far as the records we’ve got, Anna’s seventeen-year-old murder case would be the most recent we can confirm.”
“That’s not very recent at all,” Grant muttered.
“If we don’t find out who had possession of this necklace over this time span, then we can’t really begin to link the murders to the pearls, much less track down this one lead to find out who on earth was doing the killing.”
Grant replied, “One of the things I have is an email from Jewel of the person who contacted her, but he sent the necklace by courier. I contacted the courier, and they don’t have anything other than a P.O. box number and the name John Smith on the end of it.”
“Which, of course,” Hurricane muttered, “is not likely to be his name at all, and the P.O. box was probably closed right afterward, I suppose.”
“Indeed,” Grant agreed cheerfully. “But this is exactly the kind of criminal I deal with,” he noted, “so I’m happily off on a hunt for him, while you can go off into the ethers and hunt all you want. But let me know if anything else gets your attention or if you can confirm any of these other victims.”
“Will do,” Hurricane agreed. And, with that, they ended the call.
Just as he was about to start on another folder, he heard an odd sound. He looked up to see Jewel coming down the stairs, but, from the look on her face, she wasn’t exactly conscious. He set aside the laptop, got up, and raced up the stairs, his cell phone camera videotaping her, as she headed to the safe. She immediately opened the safe. Then, leaving it open, headed to the kitchen, bypassing him on the stairs, not even acknowledging his presence, and heading to where he’d hidden the bracelet above the fridge.
He hadn’t even realized that she had known where he’d put it. And even now wasn’t sure if she knew or was following some energy trail, without even being cognizant of what she was doing. As he watched, she took the bracelet out and immediately carried it back to the safe, putting it inside the safe, before locking it up and heading back upstairs.
As soon as she was back in her room, he quickly separated the two pieces again and hid the bracelet, knowing she wasn’t even available to see this transfer. Plus, this time, he wouldn’t inform her beforehand. As a test it wasn’t great but something. Then he sat back down and waited.
Sure enough, not an hour later, she came back down the stairs again, her eyes wide open but completely disconnected from the world around her. Again she removed the bracelet from where he’d hidden it and took it back to the safe.
This time he stepped in front of her, as she went to go back upstairs, and called to her gently. “Jewel, wake up.”
She stared up at him, but her eyes were blind. He reached out a gentle hand and slid just a feather-light brush of energy toward her. She just stared, motionless, her body not moving forward or back, frozen in time, almost buried in her own mind. He frowned at that and reached out again, gently increasing the energy surge. She flinched and stepped back.
“Jewel, wake up,” he ordered, his voice commanding. But again nothing.
He reached out a hand and gripped her shoulder, and this time she didn’t flinch, she didn’t do anything, she just stared up at him. “Oh, crap.” He peered into her face. Then he gave her a hard shake and called to her. “Jewel, Jewel, wake up. Snap out of it!”
When she blinked and stared up at him, comprehension finally coming into her gaze, he shuddered with relief and pulled her into his arms.
“What happened?” She spoke in a whisper against his chest.
“Yeah, I’ll have to show you that on video.”
He led her to the couch, sat her down beside him, then opened up the video that he had taken of her that showed her as she first came down the stairs, went to the kitchen, then removed the bracelet, only to go and put it back together with the necklace.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, staring at it in shock. “How?”
“As I said, you’re connected to it somehow. I assume because of all that’s happened to you. Now you have this connection to it, and it won’t let you go. It’s using you to bring the rest of the pieces together.”
“What happens when they’re all together?” she asked, looking up at him.
“I have no idea, but the energy that’s in there is dangerous, and it’s highly explosive.”
She winced as she stared at him. “How come the term explosive was never mentioned before?”
He smiled. “Because most people don’t want to think about that type of explosion,” he murmured. “However, when you get something as volatile as this, it is dangerous.”
She stared down at it. “What happened after that? What did I do when I was done?”
“You went back upstairs, so I hid it again,” he told her, “and look what you did again.” He showed her the second video, and she stared at it in shock. “That’s when I woke you up, and honestly it took a lot to do that.”
She reached up and scrubbed her face. “My God, I don’t even remember having a shower.”
“Your hair is dry. Did you have a shower?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. I went and laid down, but it’s like this singing came in my head.”
He straightened and looked at her in concern. “What were they singing?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, just music. Some music, nice, soft, and gentle.”
“Like a lullaby?”
“Yeah, that’s what it was,” she agreed, looking up at him with a smile. When Jewel noted the look on his face, her smile fell away. “You’re telling me that’s not good.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted cautiously. “Do you normally have lullabies in your head?”
She shook her head. “My gut says never. At least never before. Wait. … I heard it earlier. I heard it when I was working on the necklace.”
“That should tell you something right there,” he stated. “That is just one more sign that this is all connected.”
She nodded and stared toward the safe. “I need it out of here,” she cried out.
“Oh, I hear you, but one of the things I would suggest is that you contact whoever gave it to you, tell them that the job is done, and have them come collect it.”
She looked at him eagerly. “Yes, we can do that.” Then she frowned. “Yet the job isn’t done.”
“How much damage was there on it?”
“Not a lot. Just some of the threads were getting bare and needed to be reinforced, so I was rethreading it,” she explained. “I … I’m pretty well done. That’s why I was doing the energy work. I was trying to make it better.”
“Of course you were, and don’t worry about that. At this point, we need to have a talk with whoever it is who sent you the necklace.”
“You don’t suspect him?”
“I don’t have any reason to—unless that memory of that man at your door, asking about the necklace, is the owner?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed.
“I’ll be here with you the whole time. Just remember that. Otherwise, setting aside a partial and unsubstantiated memory, the necklace was damaged. It came to you to get repaired. Outside of the fact that Grant can’t locate him through a trace of the original necklace delivery—”
“That may not mean anything though, if the pearls were stolen as some point,” she suggested.
“Has that happened to you before?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I was asked to repair an item that was stolen, though I didn’t realize it at the time. When the police came to my door, we found out that it had been stolen quite a few years earlier, and, when the supposed owner came to collect it, the police caught him.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“Why would I?” she asked, looking at him. “It’s just one of the hazards of doing this work.”
“How did the police find out?”
“I happened to post a photo of it on my website, as a piece that I was working on,” she noted. “It never occurred to me not to. Nobody said anything about keeping it quiet. Like, Hey, this is stolen. Can you keep it under wraps? Anyway, I guess somebody recognized the piece and reported it. So the police came, checked it out, and took it away.” Jewel shook her head. “A hard lesson. And I no longer put things on my website like that. Not trying to be shady, just not wanting any trouble. I also didn’t get paid for the repair of the item. Since a fair bit of work had been involved, that sucked. Yet, at the same time, it was stolen property, and it went back to its rightful owner. So that, at least, felt good.”
“Except for the fact that you never got paid for the work you did.”
“One of the hazards of being self-employed,” she stated. “I mean, just because I expect to get paid doesn’t mean I will.”
“Yet you should have.”
“I should have, yes, but I didn’t. So what am I to do?” She shrugged. “That’s life, and it isn’t always the way we want it to be.”
He smiled at her. “Do you know who that customer was?”
“Sure. I don’t remember his name right off hand, but I’ve got the files.”
“That’s good. We could at least double-check that it has nothing to do with this matter.”
“Why would it?” she asked. “It’s not as if that client had anything to do with what I was doing with this client.”
“I’m glad to hear that. How long ago was this?”
She pondered his question. “Maybe a year and a half ago.”
“I can always get the detective to look into that.” He pulled out his phone, quickly sent off a text, and asked, “Do you remember anything about the stolen piece?”
“A pendant,” she murmured. “I think the police had told me something about it being part of the Royal Crescent heist.” He typed that into the text and sent it off. She got up, wandered around the living room, then stopped and looked at the safe. She turned and wandered around some more, then stopped and looked back at the safe again.
“Is it calling to you?”
“It is. I feel like I want to take them both out of their cases and put them together.” She held out her hand and shook her head. “However, that seems like a bad idea.”
“I would think so, but I can’t be sure. When you go back to sleep, I plan to separate them again.”
She nodded. “Well, you can, but it doesn’t seem that it’ll make much difference. Based on your two videos, it’s likely that I’ll just keep putting them together again. And, if I don’t, if I try to do something to keep them separated, it feels like the power is building and heading for some sort of collision.”
“Agreed,” he murmured. “I’m just not sure what that collision is trying to do.”
“Explode all of the souls free, I’m hoping,” she replied, “but I guess it could be an implosion too.” She turned and frowned at him. “Right?”
“Yes.” He nodded, with a grimace. “Can you go back to sleep?”
“Sure. Will you leave them in there so I can sleep?”
“I could do that,” he suggested, “as long as they’re in there and separated as much as they are, maybe it’s okay.”
She pondered that, then shrugged. “I need sleep either way.” She reached up, gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek, and said, “Thank you.” Then she ran lightly up the stairs, heading straight for bed.
Chapter 18
Jewel woke the next morning, with a stronger sense of well-being than she’d had in days. Feeling remarkably better, she headed downstairs to the kitchen to find Hurricane already there, drinking coffee, his laptop open in front of him.
He looked up, smiled, and asked, “Hey, how was your night?”
“Peaceful, relaxing, and calm,” she stated, returning his smile. “Yours?”
He shrugged. “Maybe not quite so good as that, but fine.” She frowned at him. He smiled again and added, “I’m fine. It’s okay, Jewel. You’re the one who needed it.”
“And you didn’t?” she asked. “After what happened in the vortex maze thing?”
“Nope, I didn’t,” he stated, “at least not yet.”
Not at all sure what that meant, and not willing to ruin her morning by asking questions with answers that wouldn’t help, she walked over, poured coffee, returned to the kitchen table, and sat on the bench beside him. “What are you working on?” she asked.
“A timeline of the victims.”
She winced. “Great, that sounds like a lovely thing to wake up to.”
“You don’t have to look,” he said immediately. “Enjoy your coffee.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s even possible, now that you’ve brought it up.”
“Didn’t mean to,” he replied in a cheerful tone, “but it’s not something I can really put off. Time is going by pretty fast on us.”
“Am I the only one who thinks that the time will be an issue?”
“No, I’m pretty sure we all are considering that. Whatever is going on has a time frame, either for the energy to be the strongest or for something to happen that will change this completely.”
“All because I unlocked the energy?”
“Yes, but not because you opened the pearls.”
“Right, and definitely a difference there, correct?”
“Exactly. You can’t torture yourself for having done what you did. It’s not as if you did so knowingly.”
“Good thing. Imagine the chaos I could have created if I had known.” He just smiled. She hesitated and then added, “One of the thoughts I woke up with this morning was how, in all the sleepwalking or whatever, it felt like it had an element of trying to help them.”
He canted his head, then shook it. “I wouldn’t be shocked at that. Believe me. I don’t think you were trying to hurt anybody, when you inadvertently started this.”
Relieved, she nodded. “I did wonder, since you keep mentioning that you think I’m involved.”
“That’s not really fair to you. You may be unconsciously involved. I just know that something is calling to you, and I just want to ensure that you stay safe.”
“Yeah, me too,” she agreed, with feeling. “Yet, at the same time, a part of me is horrified about what these women have experienced, and, if I thought I could do something to make their lives—eternity or whatever you want to call it—better somehow, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Do you think that’s what you were doing when you were putting the two pieces together?”
“They were lost,” she tried to explain. “They were lonely. They were calling for each other.” When his expression stilled, she gave a headshake. “No, forget it. I don’t know where that came from,” she muttered. “Probably makes me sound even crazier than before.”
“No, it just confirms what I already mentioned about you being connected.”
“You keep saying that, but what does it even mean?”
“We don’t really have an answer yet, but we’re working on it,” he stated. “You keep trying to do your best and believe that we will find out.”
“Sure,” she muttered, as she stared at him, “but that’s really not all that helpful.”
He smiled and gently stroked her cheek. “You just look after you, and I’m helping you to look after them.”
“Are you though?” she asked, looking at him intently. “Sometimes I feel like you’re much less concerned about those poor women than you are about this whole scenario.”
“You mean, about the fact that it’s weird and wonderful and all that good stuff?”
She nodded slowly. “I really need to know that you’re here to help the women.”
“I am,” he declared emphatically, “but, at the same time, we have to balance that against the potential for you getting hurt.”
“That’s not likely to happen though, is it?” she asked curiously. Then she frowned. “That’s a stupid question. Sorry. Of course it could happen. Spending eternity imprisoned inside a pearl isn’t how I want to spend my life.”
“Thank you,” he muttered, “because it really could happen. Will it? I don’t have any answers. And in order to get those, we need to find out who sent the necklace and bracelet to you and get ahold of them.”
“How fast? I’m supposed to let him know when they’re ready.” She stared back over at the safe, frowning.
