String of Tears, page 21
“That would be good,” Hurricane said. “At least if we can do that, we could see if he’s connected with this.”
She stared at him. “You’re not really suggesting we have a modern-day soul stealer or something, are you?”
“That’s not a thought I want to entertain,” he replied, “but don’t you want to make sure that your client, whoever he is, is not the person who did this?”
She frowned and then abruptly nodded. “Yes, that I do want to know. I’m not at all sure how to protect myself from the usual con artists after my money, my designs. However, in this case, I want to know how to protect myself and other women from this dark energy. And, if my client thinks I’ll be one of his next victims, he’s got another think coming.” Then she laughed, almost hysterically. “Listen to me. I’m talking as if I actually know what I’m saying.”
“You are speaking as if you know what you’re saying, which is kind of an interesting point,” he noted.
“Back to that whole I might be involved thing?” She frowned at him, starting to get angry. “That is getting irritating.”
He smiled. “I imagine it is,” he agreed. “Drink your coffee.”
She snorted but picked up the cup and had a sip. She sighed happily, as the hot brew slipped down her throat. “Wow, I don’t know what you did to my coffeepot, but this tastes extraspecial.”
At that, he stilled, then turned and stared at her. “Yeah, how? In what way?”
“I don’t know. It’s just hitting the spot today, I guess,” she replied lightly. She looked over at him and said, “I didn’t mean to imply anything odd, different, or abnormal about it.”
“Okay,” he replied agreeably, turning his head back to his laptop.
It suddenly felt like she was walking through a minefield, her words registering for him very differently than the way she intended. “Would it mean something if the coffee were very different?” she asked, not being able to stop herself.
He smirked. “You mean, besides the fact that I’ve obviously mastered the art of your coffeemaker?” But his gaze was watchful.
She sighed. “Ugh, I hate this. I feel like everything I say is misconstrued. Each word is being judged and weighed in ways that I don’t intend.”
“Only in the sense of my experience and anything that I’ve come across up until now,” he confirmed. “Have I sensed anything more about you? No. Do I have a clue if you’re involved? No. So let’s just keep working and see where we end up.”
On a sudden impulse, she hopped up and asked, “Are you up for bacon and eggs?”
“Are you kidding? I’m always up for bacon and eggs,” he muttered, as he clicked away on the keyboard.
“Good enough. I’m hungry, like, really hungry.” She headed around the island counter to the kitchen, where she opened up the fridge. She knew instinctively that he was watching her, with that ever-intensive gaze of his. She sighed. “Am I not allowed to be hungry either?”
“Hunger is a good sign,” he stated, his tone suspiciously neutral.
She glared at him. “Somehow that’s not making me feel better.”
He flashed her a cheeky grin. “I said it’s a good sign.”
She relaxed and smiled. “Thanks for that. I’m starting to get a complex about everything I say to you.”
“I don’t want that to happen because it could impede sharing some crucial information,” he murmured. “It really is good that you’re feeling better. No memories back though?”
She shook her head. “None that I can really think about, outside of what I told you earlier about contacting the client when the repairs on the necklace are done. I’m supposed to send an email and arrange a time for payment and a courier for delivery. But that’s just standard business practices. No big revelations there.”
“Any idea how he would pay? And does he always want a courier?”
“No, we didn’t get that far,” she replied. “He was in a bit of a rush about it all, so I’m surprised he hasn’t contacted me yet.”
“Maybe he has,” he suggested.
She frowned. “Maybe. I didn’t see an email from him yesterday, but today’s a new day. I did go to bed early last night.”
“It wasn’t that early,” he noted lightly.
She smiled as she reached for the bacon. “If you say so.”
He chuckled. “I do say so. How’s that bacon coming along?”
“It’s not, as you can see and smell,” she quipped, with a bright grin. “Just give me time, and I’ll get there.” She sensed his gaze again, as she headed over to the stove and got started. By the time the bacon had mostly cooked, and she was cracking eggs to scramble, then she whistled gently. She was feeling really good, if she were honest, suspiciously so. At that she stopped, frozen. She slowly turned to look at him, frowning. He was staring at her. “Okay, what the hell’s going on?”
His eyebrows shot up. “What?”
She shook her head in a slow, heavy motion. She almost felt like a rhino about to charge, but she had nothing to charge at. He continued to stare at her quizzically, when she took a deep breath, then slowly released it. “I’m feeling really good,” she stated emphatically.
“Good.” Now he was frowning. “Why is that cause for concern?”
She hesitated and then spoke. “As in, I’m feeling better than expected, like suspiciously good.”
He slowly let out his breath. “Ah, so you’re afraid that something is wrong? As in, did I do something to you?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Did you?”
He looked at her and stated, “Tell me exactly how you feel.”
“Like I had a great sleep, a great night and everything, in a way like I’m on the top of the world.”
“You’re not used to feeling that way?”
“No, never,” she admitted. “That’s not true. I mean, not never, but it just seems like it’s been a very long time since I felt comfortable, happy, and not stressed. I should be stressed. Look at what’s going on in my world,” she noted, “and yet … I’m not.”
“I would take that part as a good thing,” he replied. “I get that we have a tendency to overcomplicate things in our lives, but there really isn’t any need, especially if we don’t have to.”
She nodded slowly. “If you say so.” She turned back to the bacon and flipped it again. “So, are you saying you didn’t do anything to make me feel really good?”
“No,” he confirmed, “but you did sleep. Maybe something in your brain just reset because you got some restorative and uninterrupted sleep.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what that means,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “No, I can see that, but, at the same time, let’s not bury your head in the sand just because you don’t want to face the truth.”
“That’s not really my style, I think,” she muttered, “at least not before, before all this crap was let loose.”
“I didn’t think so. However, when dealing with too much—and we still have a lot of unanswered questions—we need to just take it easy, take things one by one, as much as we can. So maybe take the fact that you feel really good right now as a gift and go from there.”
“I can do that.” She quickly removed the bacon from the frying pan, put it on a paper towel, and tossed the scrambled eggs into the bacon grease. When she turned to see him looking at her with amusement, she glared at him. “Now you’re laughing at me.”
“I just never thought you’d be somebody who loved bacon grease.”
“I do love bacon grease.” She checked the pan, frowned, and asked, “Is it too much?”
“Not by me. I’m totally okay with it. It depends on how many eggs you put in there.”
“There wasn’t a whole lot of grease, and I’m really hungry,” she muttered. “So I threw in seven eggs.”
“Four for me and three for you?”
She stared at him with stunned surprise and then shrugged. “I guess, if you’re that hungry.”
“I’m definitely that hungry,” he replied immediately.
She laughed. “Okay then, I guess that’s the way it works. … Unless you want me to throw in some more?”
“Only if you’ll take some of mine,” he replied, with a smile.
“No, I’ll be good with three. However”—she faced him again—“is an appetite like this a sign of anything having to do with energy?”
“It certainly is for me. I need to eat when I wear down, but I was going on the assumption that you had a good night’s sleep and weren’t doing things in the night.”
“Did you stay up and watch?” she demanded.
“Not the whole night. On the other hand, I did set up the camera.”
Turning off the eggs, she finished tossing them around until they were done, then quickly served up breakfast and put a plate in front of him. “We’ll look after we eat.”
“Good, I can’t wait.”
She stared at him. “Have you seen it yet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“So you don’t know if anything’s on there or not? You’re just being suspiciously you?”
His eyebrows shot up. “I’m always being me. I can’t help it.”
“Yeah, I know,” she agreed. “Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s damn irritating.”
He burst out laughing. “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” she agreed, with a half smile. “Still, it’s a little disconcerting.”
He nodded. “It’s all good. Remember. None of this is bad news, just gathering facts.”
“Yeah, says you,” she muttered. Then she handed him a fork and said, “Let’s eat.”
*
As soon as Hurricane and Jewel were done eating, he got up and came around to her side, crouched down beside her and opened up the recording on his phone. He logged in, and, as soon as it started to play, nothing happened for the longest time.
She sat back, relaxed, and smiled. “It’s all good then.”
All of a sudden, in a mad scramble on the video, she raced down the stairs, looking a little wilder than he was expecting. She sucked in her breath. “Good God,” she whispered. “I look like I’m crazy.”
He patted her hand and pointed. “Let’s just watch.”
She came downstairs as far as the safe, quickly opened it, and then raced around the kitchen, heading first directly to the two different hiding places she’d retrieved the bracelet from earlier, then finally came back with it and slowly, carefully, put it back into the safe. As she did so, she murmured something to it and then quickly locked up, tossed one final glance in his direction and raced back upstairs again.
“Good God,” she whispered. And they continued to watch on Fast Forward, until the video was over. “What did I say to it at the end?”
“I’m not sure, but I think something about staying safe.”
She nodded slowly. “That sounds about right.” She stared off in the direction of the safe, and he wondered just what was in her thoughts. “I have no idea what this thing is doing, but it really does feel like I’m trying to keep it safe,” she murmured.
“I get it,” he agreed, “but from what?”
“I’m presuming from the dark energy worker who had put them in those pieces.” She looked at him. “What else?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking you.” Obviously she didn’t like the way he had phrased that question.
“And you lied to me. You told me that you would keep the necklace and the bracelet together, so I could get a good night’s rest.”
“I said, I could leave them together, hoping you got a good night’s rest. I made no promise, so I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you my plans beforehand. And, even though I separated the pieces, even though you put them together again, you did sleep well, didn’t you?”
She continued to glare at him, but she didn’t say anything else, which was good because he was still trying to figure out just what he’d seen. The fact that she had looked as harried and as half wild as she had really concerned him because it certainly wasn’t her that he was seeing but something else entirely.
“Is that what you expected to see?” she asked him.
He nodded.
“So how do I disconnect from this thing?”
“I think we have to disconnect everything from it,” he guessed. “I don’t think it’s simply a case of disconnecting just you. We have to disconnect all of the dark energy from it.”
“I don’t have a problem disconnecting. I just don’t know how.”
“When you were asleep, did you recognize that you were being called?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she recalled softly, “but then I wouldn’t have expected this to happen either.”
“Even though you knew that it had happened before.”
“Sure, but I slept well. I slept great.” And then she frowned and looked at the safe. “Do you think they had anything to do with it?”
“They?” he questioned.
She flushed. “I mean the pearls, or the souls within the pearls.” She winced as she said it. “God, it sounds terrible to speak it out loud. The fact of the matter is, I did sleep well. I do feel good, and yet I shouldn’t. I mean, I should have been more than a little irritated, upset, and stressed at the separation of the two pieces, but instead—maybe because of that reuniting, maybe after that—I slept like a log and woke up feeling quite refreshed.”
“Let’s not worry about the how and the why for the present but just be grateful to be feeling so much better,” he stated, hoping to keep his tone noncommittal. He could only wish that she wouldn’t sense it, but unfortunately she did.
“Now you are definitely not telling me something.”
He hesitated, then shared, “I just worry that, if your deep restorative sleep was brought on by these souls, what is it that they want?”
“Obviously they wanted to be together,” she stated, staring at him.
“Sure, I get that part, and it makes sense. I mean, if they’ve been separated for an eternity, then maybe they would want to be together. Maybe they want to be together just because they’re the same, because they have been through the same tragedy, and their victimhood is their connection. But, if it were you, would you want to be in there?”
“No, of course not.” She frowned at him. “So I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
He smiled. “What’s happening is the same as what was happening yesterday,” he pointed out. “It’s nothing different. It’s nothing new. We just have something, a connection to this scenario, that doesn’t make either of us very happy.”
“I would feel much better if I weren’t being affected by it, and they didn’t catch me while my guard was down.” Then she froze.
He stared at her. “What’s the matter?”
“Something in my mind, something’s there.”
“What?”
She stood up slowly and looked over at him again. “I have to be crazy now. No, I mean, it is crazy. It can’t be.”
“Let me decide that, please, and I can’t make any truly informed decision if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
She frowned, then asked, “Do you have any idea, any details on these murders as to how they were found?”
“Why? Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters,” she stated, her voice getting faint.
He pulled up the files on his phone and said, “I’ve got some of them here, but I don’t have all that much data, since I just received a truncated version of the police records.”
“Call Grant,” she stated, her voice urgent. Hurricane stopped to study her, and she shook her head. “Now you have to trust me. This is important. Get him on the phone.”
He immediately dialed Grant’s number. When he answered, Hurricane began, “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but Jewel has some urgent questions.”
“Okay. Hey, Jewel. What’s up?”
“I’m not sure what’s up, but we’re back to the woo-woo stuff.”
“Great,” he said, with a note of humor. “I thought you had some questions that I could answer.”
“The women,” she said, “the ones you do have the case files for.”
“Yes, what about them?”
“Do you have any information on how they were found?”
“I have a little bit here. Why?”
She hesitated and then replied, “Particularly Anna and Rhea. Those are the ones I have the strongest connection to.”
“Yeah, what about them? I’m bringing up the files on my computer now. Give me a second.” She heard the clicking of a keyboard, then he came back and said, “Okay, I’ve got those two files ready. What is it you want to know?”
“How were they found?” she asked urgently.
“Looks like they were both found on a highway.”
“Right,” she replied. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. They were naked and tossed on the side of a highway.”
Grant sucked in his breath, even as Hurricane stared at her. “Yes, that’s exactly what Anna’s case file states.” He hesitated and then asked, “Isn’t that how you were found?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly how I was found.”
She looked over at Hurricane. “It sounds like a bigger connection here than I’m, … than we were aware of.”
Grant asked, “What does this mean, Hurricane?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted slowly. “Yet the fact that she was found in the same situation as these two women is very concerning.”
“Yeah, you think?” Grant quipped. “That’s a distinctive MO, linking these cases. You won’t let her alone anytime in the next while, will you, Hurricane?”
“No, that’s a given,” he confirmed. “How about Rhea? What was her situation?”
“Let me check.” After several clicks on the keyboard, then he sighed. “Same thing. She was found nude, comatose in this case, almost dead but not quite, on the side of a highway.”
“What color was her hair?” Jewel asked.
“Jet-black hair, alabaster-white skin.” And then Grant swore. “Didn’t I see something in your file that your hair was dark and that your skin was pure white?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “That’s exactly what you read. Only it wasn’t before all this happened. I used to be a strawberry blonde with peaches-and-cream skin, definitely not jet-black hair and alabaster-white skin.”
She stared at him. “You’re not really suggesting we have a modern-day soul stealer or something, are you?”
“That’s not a thought I want to entertain,” he replied, “but don’t you want to make sure that your client, whoever he is, is not the person who did this?”
She frowned and then abruptly nodded. “Yes, that I do want to know. I’m not at all sure how to protect myself from the usual con artists after my money, my designs. However, in this case, I want to know how to protect myself and other women from this dark energy. And, if my client thinks I’ll be one of his next victims, he’s got another think coming.” Then she laughed, almost hysterically. “Listen to me. I’m talking as if I actually know what I’m saying.”
“You are speaking as if you know what you’re saying, which is kind of an interesting point,” he noted.
“Back to that whole I might be involved thing?” She frowned at him, starting to get angry. “That is getting irritating.”
He smiled. “I imagine it is,” he agreed. “Drink your coffee.”
She snorted but picked up the cup and had a sip. She sighed happily, as the hot brew slipped down her throat. “Wow, I don’t know what you did to my coffeepot, but this tastes extraspecial.”
At that, he stilled, then turned and stared at her. “Yeah, how? In what way?”
“I don’t know. It’s just hitting the spot today, I guess,” she replied lightly. She looked over at him and said, “I didn’t mean to imply anything odd, different, or abnormal about it.”
“Okay,” he replied agreeably, turning his head back to his laptop.
It suddenly felt like she was walking through a minefield, her words registering for him very differently than the way she intended. “Would it mean something if the coffee were very different?” she asked, not being able to stop herself.
He smirked. “You mean, besides the fact that I’ve obviously mastered the art of your coffeemaker?” But his gaze was watchful.
She sighed. “Ugh, I hate this. I feel like everything I say is misconstrued. Each word is being judged and weighed in ways that I don’t intend.”
“Only in the sense of my experience and anything that I’ve come across up until now,” he confirmed. “Have I sensed anything more about you? No. Do I have a clue if you’re involved? No. So let’s just keep working and see where we end up.”
On a sudden impulse, she hopped up and asked, “Are you up for bacon and eggs?”
“Are you kidding? I’m always up for bacon and eggs,” he muttered, as he clicked away on the keyboard.
“Good enough. I’m hungry, like, really hungry.” She headed around the island counter to the kitchen, where she opened up the fridge. She knew instinctively that he was watching her, with that ever-intensive gaze of his. She sighed. “Am I not allowed to be hungry either?”
“Hunger is a good sign,” he stated, his tone suspiciously neutral.
She glared at him. “Somehow that’s not making me feel better.”
He flashed her a cheeky grin. “I said it’s a good sign.”
She relaxed and smiled. “Thanks for that. I’m starting to get a complex about everything I say to you.”
“I don’t want that to happen because it could impede sharing some crucial information,” he murmured. “It really is good that you’re feeling better. No memories back though?”
She shook her head. “None that I can really think about, outside of what I told you earlier about contacting the client when the repairs on the necklace are done. I’m supposed to send an email and arrange a time for payment and a courier for delivery. But that’s just standard business practices. No big revelations there.”
“Any idea how he would pay? And does he always want a courier?”
“No, we didn’t get that far,” she replied. “He was in a bit of a rush about it all, so I’m surprised he hasn’t contacted me yet.”
“Maybe he has,” he suggested.
She frowned. “Maybe. I didn’t see an email from him yesterday, but today’s a new day. I did go to bed early last night.”
“It wasn’t that early,” he noted lightly.
She smiled as she reached for the bacon. “If you say so.”
He chuckled. “I do say so. How’s that bacon coming along?”
“It’s not, as you can see and smell,” she quipped, with a bright grin. “Just give me time, and I’ll get there.” She sensed his gaze again, as she headed over to the stove and got started. By the time the bacon had mostly cooked, and she was cracking eggs to scramble, then she whistled gently. She was feeling really good, if she were honest, suspiciously so. At that she stopped, frozen. She slowly turned to look at him, frowning. He was staring at her. “Okay, what the hell’s going on?”
His eyebrows shot up. “What?”
She shook her head in a slow, heavy motion. She almost felt like a rhino about to charge, but she had nothing to charge at. He continued to stare at her quizzically, when she took a deep breath, then slowly released it. “I’m feeling really good,” she stated emphatically.
“Good.” Now he was frowning. “Why is that cause for concern?”
She hesitated and then spoke. “As in, I’m feeling better than expected, like suspiciously good.”
He slowly let out his breath. “Ah, so you’re afraid that something is wrong? As in, did I do something to you?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Did you?”
He looked at her and stated, “Tell me exactly how you feel.”
“Like I had a great sleep, a great night and everything, in a way like I’m on the top of the world.”
“You’re not used to feeling that way?”
“No, never,” she admitted. “That’s not true. I mean, not never, but it just seems like it’s been a very long time since I felt comfortable, happy, and not stressed. I should be stressed. Look at what’s going on in my world,” she noted, “and yet … I’m not.”
“I would take that part as a good thing,” he replied. “I get that we have a tendency to overcomplicate things in our lives, but there really isn’t any need, especially if we don’t have to.”
She nodded slowly. “If you say so.” She turned back to the bacon and flipped it again. “So, are you saying you didn’t do anything to make me feel really good?”
“No,” he confirmed, “but you did sleep. Maybe something in your brain just reset because you got some restorative and uninterrupted sleep.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what that means,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “No, I can see that, but, at the same time, let’s not bury your head in the sand just because you don’t want to face the truth.”
“That’s not really my style, I think,” she muttered, “at least not before, before all this crap was let loose.”
“I didn’t think so. However, when dealing with too much—and we still have a lot of unanswered questions—we need to just take it easy, take things one by one, as much as we can. So maybe take the fact that you feel really good right now as a gift and go from there.”
“I can do that.” She quickly removed the bacon from the frying pan, put it on a paper towel, and tossed the scrambled eggs into the bacon grease. When she turned to see him looking at her with amusement, she glared at him. “Now you’re laughing at me.”
“I just never thought you’d be somebody who loved bacon grease.”
“I do love bacon grease.” She checked the pan, frowned, and asked, “Is it too much?”
“Not by me. I’m totally okay with it. It depends on how many eggs you put in there.”
“There wasn’t a whole lot of grease, and I’m really hungry,” she muttered. “So I threw in seven eggs.”
“Four for me and three for you?”
She stared at him with stunned surprise and then shrugged. “I guess, if you’re that hungry.”
“I’m definitely that hungry,” he replied immediately.
She laughed. “Okay then, I guess that’s the way it works. … Unless you want me to throw in some more?”
“Only if you’ll take some of mine,” he replied, with a smile.
“No, I’ll be good with three. However”—she faced him again—“is an appetite like this a sign of anything having to do with energy?”
“It certainly is for me. I need to eat when I wear down, but I was going on the assumption that you had a good night’s sleep and weren’t doing things in the night.”
“Did you stay up and watch?” she demanded.
“Not the whole night. On the other hand, I did set up the camera.”
Turning off the eggs, she finished tossing them around until they were done, then quickly served up breakfast and put a plate in front of him. “We’ll look after we eat.”
“Good, I can’t wait.”
She stared at him. “Have you seen it yet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“So you don’t know if anything’s on there or not? You’re just being suspiciously you?”
His eyebrows shot up. “I’m always being me. I can’t help it.”
“Yeah, I know,” she agreed. “Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s damn irritating.”
He burst out laughing. “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” she agreed, with a half smile. “Still, it’s a little disconcerting.”
He nodded. “It’s all good. Remember. None of this is bad news, just gathering facts.”
“Yeah, says you,” she muttered. Then she handed him a fork and said, “Let’s eat.”
*
As soon as Hurricane and Jewel were done eating, he got up and came around to her side, crouched down beside her and opened up the recording on his phone. He logged in, and, as soon as it started to play, nothing happened for the longest time.
She sat back, relaxed, and smiled. “It’s all good then.”
All of a sudden, in a mad scramble on the video, she raced down the stairs, looking a little wilder than he was expecting. She sucked in her breath. “Good God,” she whispered. “I look like I’m crazy.”
He patted her hand and pointed. “Let’s just watch.”
She came downstairs as far as the safe, quickly opened it, and then raced around the kitchen, heading first directly to the two different hiding places she’d retrieved the bracelet from earlier, then finally came back with it and slowly, carefully, put it back into the safe. As she did so, she murmured something to it and then quickly locked up, tossed one final glance in his direction and raced back upstairs again.
“Good God,” she whispered. And they continued to watch on Fast Forward, until the video was over. “What did I say to it at the end?”
“I’m not sure, but I think something about staying safe.”
She nodded slowly. “That sounds about right.” She stared off in the direction of the safe, and he wondered just what was in her thoughts. “I have no idea what this thing is doing, but it really does feel like I’m trying to keep it safe,” she murmured.
“I get it,” he agreed, “but from what?”
“I’m presuming from the dark energy worker who had put them in those pieces.” She looked at him. “What else?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking you.” Obviously she didn’t like the way he had phrased that question.
“And you lied to me. You told me that you would keep the necklace and the bracelet together, so I could get a good night’s rest.”
“I said, I could leave them together, hoping you got a good night’s rest. I made no promise, so I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you my plans beforehand. And, even though I separated the pieces, even though you put them together again, you did sleep well, didn’t you?”
She continued to glare at him, but she didn’t say anything else, which was good because he was still trying to figure out just what he’d seen. The fact that she had looked as harried and as half wild as she had really concerned him because it certainly wasn’t her that he was seeing but something else entirely.
“Is that what you expected to see?” she asked him.
He nodded.
“So how do I disconnect from this thing?”
“I think we have to disconnect everything from it,” he guessed. “I don’t think it’s simply a case of disconnecting just you. We have to disconnect all of the dark energy from it.”
“I don’t have a problem disconnecting. I just don’t know how.”
“When you were asleep, did you recognize that you were being called?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she recalled softly, “but then I wouldn’t have expected this to happen either.”
“Even though you knew that it had happened before.”
“Sure, but I slept well. I slept great.” And then she frowned and looked at the safe. “Do you think they had anything to do with it?”
“They?” he questioned.
She flushed. “I mean the pearls, or the souls within the pearls.” She winced as she said it. “God, it sounds terrible to speak it out loud. The fact of the matter is, I did sleep well. I do feel good, and yet I shouldn’t. I mean, I should have been more than a little irritated, upset, and stressed at the separation of the two pieces, but instead—maybe because of that reuniting, maybe after that—I slept like a log and woke up feeling quite refreshed.”
“Let’s not worry about the how and the why for the present but just be grateful to be feeling so much better,” he stated, hoping to keep his tone noncommittal. He could only wish that she wouldn’t sense it, but unfortunately she did.
“Now you are definitely not telling me something.”
He hesitated, then shared, “I just worry that, if your deep restorative sleep was brought on by these souls, what is it that they want?”
“Obviously they wanted to be together,” she stated, staring at him.
“Sure, I get that part, and it makes sense. I mean, if they’ve been separated for an eternity, then maybe they would want to be together. Maybe they want to be together just because they’re the same, because they have been through the same tragedy, and their victimhood is their connection. But, if it were you, would you want to be in there?”
“No, of course not.” She frowned at him. “So I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
He smiled. “What’s happening is the same as what was happening yesterday,” he pointed out. “It’s nothing different. It’s nothing new. We just have something, a connection to this scenario, that doesn’t make either of us very happy.”
“I would feel much better if I weren’t being affected by it, and they didn’t catch me while my guard was down.” Then she froze.
He stared at her. “What’s the matter?”
“Something in my mind, something’s there.”
“What?”
She stood up slowly and looked over at him again. “I have to be crazy now. No, I mean, it is crazy. It can’t be.”
“Let me decide that, please, and I can’t make any truly informed decision if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
She frowned, then asked, “Do you have any idea, any details on these murders as to how they were found?”
“Why? Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters,” she stated, her voice getting faint.
He pulled up the files on his phone and said, “I’ve got some of them here, but I don’t have all that much data, since I just received a truncated version of the police records.”
“Call Grant,” she stated, her voice urgent. Hurricane stopped to study her, and she shook her head. “Now you have to trust me. This is important. Get him on the phone.”
He immediately dialed Grant’s number. When he answered, Hurricane began, “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but Jewel has some urgent questions.”
“Okay. Hey, Jewel. What’s up?”
“I’m not sure what’s up, but we’re back to the woo-woo stuff.”
“Great,” he said, with a note of humor. “I thought you had some questions that I could answer.”
“The women,” she said, “the ones you do have the case files for.”
“Yes, what about them?”
“Do you have any information on how they were found?”
“I have a little bit here. Why?”
She hesitated and then replied, “Particularly Anna and Rhea. Those are the ones I have the strongest connection to.”
“Yeah, what about them? I’m bringing up the files on my computer now. Give me a second.” She heard the clicking of a keyboard, then he came back and said, “Okay, I’ve got those two files ready. What is it you want to know?”
“How were they found?” she asked urgently.
“Looks like they were both found on a highway.”
“Right,” she replied. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. They were naked and tossed on the side of a highway.”
Grant sucked in his breath, even as Hurricane stared at her. “Yes, that’s exactly what Anna’s case file states.” He hesitated and then asked, “Isn’t that how you were found?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly how I was found.”
She looked over at Hurricane. “It sounds like a bigger connection here than I’m, … than we were aware of.”
Grant asked, “What does this mean, Hurricane?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted slowly. “Yet the fact that she was found in the same situation as these two women is very concerning.”
“Yeah, you think?” Grant quipped. “That’s a distinctive MO, linking these cases. You won’t let her alone anytime in the next while, will you, Hurricane?”
“No, that’s a given,” he confirmed. “How about Rhea? What was her situation?”
“Let me check.” After several clicks on the keyboard, then he sighed. “Same thing. She was found nude, comatose in this case, almost dead but not quite, on the side of a highway.”
“What color was her hair?” Jewel asked.
“Jet-black hair, alabaster-white skin.” And then Grant swore. “Didn’t I see something in your file that your hair was dark and that your skin was pure white?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “That’s exactly what you read. Only it wasn’t before all this happened. I used to be a strawberry blonde with peaches-and-cream skin, definitely not jet-black hair and alabaster-white skin.”
