Cindy Dees - Her Secret Spy

“It’s the least I can do for you after you saved my life.”

“I wouldn’t go that far in describing what I did. I only interrupted a mugging. Any passerby could have done the same.”

“They could have, but that doesn’t mean they would have. He was going to kill me.”

How did she know that? Was she a psychic, too?

“I was just planning to heat up some leftovers. Let me fix you a plate.”

“Can I help, umm, prepare it?” He eyed the hot plate and metal washtub askance.

“Nah. I bought a Monte Cristo sandwich earlier and I’ll just pop it in the microwave. It’s a lot more than I can eat alone. I’ll split it with you.”

“Sure. If you’ll let me buy the next meal.” The words were out of his mouth before he stopped to think about them. There couldn’t be a “next meal” for the two of them. She was an innocent, not mixed up in her aunt’s mess and of no use to him. He would deliver her to Bastien in the morning, and then he would get the hell out of her life and never look back.

Chapter 2

Lissa’s hands still shook a little as she handed a paper plate with the batter-dipped, multilayered, fried ham-and-cheese sandwich to “Max Smith.” Which totally wasn’t his name. It didn’t take special powers to hear the evasion in his voice when he’d given her the name.

She was more rattled by tonight’s attack than she wanted to let on, even to herself. Thank God this stranger had been there to swoop in and save the day. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened had he not come along.

Speaking of which...“I’ll be right back,” she blurted. “There’s something I have to do.”

Max looked up at her in alarm. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Heavens no.” She ducked into what would have been the spare bedroom had her aunt not gutted it and dug around in her big trunk of art supplies for a sketch pad, pastels and her set of drawing pencils. Tucking that under her arm, she scooped up her easel and wrestled it out into the main room.

Max leaped to his feet to rescue the easel from her. “Where do you want this?”

“Over by the lamp. I’ll need the light.”

“Drawing something, are you?”

Crap. She couldn’t admit she wanted to capture the face she’d seen in her attacker’s mind as he’d attacked her. “It’s, umm, therapy. Helps me calm down when I’m upset.”

“You’re an artist, then?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I’m just a dabbler.”

She pulled a stool over in front of the easel he set up for her. In a few minutes a face started to take shape. She turned out to be a pretty girl, not unlike herself in features and overall coloring. Which was frankly creepy. Was her attacker a serial killer, maybe?

Once she’d captured the girl’s initial bone structure, she pulled out the pastels and really brought the face to life, drawing quickly and surely from memory.

“Who’s that?” Max eventually murmured from directly behind her.

She jumped, startled. She’d been concentrating so hard on the picture that she’d forgotten he was there.

“I have no idea.”

“It’s just a random sketch?”

There was no way she could explain it without sounding like a crazy woman, so she didn’t even try. Instead she lied. “Yes, it’s just a face.” And if she were a normal person, that was all it would be. Right, then. She’d determined to be normal; therefore, this was just a face.

Except why did the girl’s eyes stare out at her from the paper beseechingly, following her as she shifted right and left, checking the sketch’s perspective and making tiny corrections to the features?

It. Was. Just. A. Face.

Max moved in close behind her to study the sketch. “She’s pretty. You have a good hand for portraiture. You’re sure you’ve never seen this person before?”

Rather than answer his question, Lissa leaned forward to release the sheet of paper from the easel’s clips. “Here. Lay this on the floor in the corner and spray it with the fixative in the can over on the end of my work table while I put my art supplies away.”

It physically hurt Lissa to deny the girl’s fear and pain coming off that sketch. She had to get away for a minute and catch her breath. You poor, poor thing. Lissa jammed her pastels and pencils in a drawer in her dresser and slammed it shut. She wasn’t a psychic anymore. She didn’t listen to dead people anymore, and she didn’t draw the faces of murderer’s victims anymore. She was just a regular person living a normal life.

If only her gift didn’t seem to be tied to violence. Maybe she would have been able to live with predicting the sex of babies and telling people when to ask for a promotion at work. But her visions were, almost without exception, tied to death. She saw dead bodies. Sensed killers. Heard dead people. Saw death moving in to claim people. With a sigh, she returned to the main room.

Abrupt exhaustion swept over her. It was as if her psyche had held all her reaction to the earlier attack at bay until that sketch was out of her system. Now she felt on the verge of collapse.

“Are you okay?” Max asked quickly. The guy was pretty perceptive himself.

“I’m a little tired all of a sudden.”

He nodded knowingly. “Aftermath. The adrenaline drains away, and you feel like death warmed over.”

“Yes. That.” She sighed.

“Did your aunt leave a working bathtub in this wreck?” he asked.

Normally she would take offense at him calling her place a wreck. Even if it was true. She preferred to think of it as a work in progress. “Aunt Callista left the tub. Probably because it’s cast-iron and weighs a ton. I couldn’t even move it to scrape the linoleum from under the claw feet.”

“Then I suggest you go take a nice, long soak in a hot bath and go to bed.”

“Thanks for everything you’ve done for me. If you don’t mind, I’ll let you see yourself out. You’ve been more than kind, particularly since we’ve never met before tonight...” She trailed off, tilting her head to one side and staring at him as a little voice inside whispered that he knew her better than she could possibly imagine.

What was that all about?

She moved into the master bedroom and closed the door. Callista had not messed with the apartment’s original cast-iron claw-foot tub, and Lissa planned to take full advantage of that tonight. A bath was just the thing for quieting the voices rioting in the back of her head, clamoring more loudly than usual for attention.

* * *

Max waited until after the light went out under Lissa’s bedroom door to get up from the silly Victorian sofa and ease down the stairs. He avoided the step he’d registered as the squeaker on the way up and crept downstairs to the shop. Now to have a look around and see if he could figure out where Callista might have put her complete customer list.

Surely the woman had kept such a thing. Based on the criminal clientele he’d been told she served, she’d have been insane not to keep the names tucked away somewhere for self-protection, if nothing else. Of course, if she’d had a decent dead man’s switch in place based on such a list, Callista probably wouldn’t be dead now.

He reached the shop floor and looked around in dismay. How did a person even begin searching this maze? He started at the back corner and worked his way around the edges of the surprisingly large space. His mind boggled at the variety of odds and ends. He felt a little like Alice must have when she’d first fallen down the rabbit hole.

He examined an exquisite collection of small enameled boxes. As an art dealer, he would pay double what Lissa had them marked for, and he would mark them up even more for resale. He made a mental note to mention it to her in the morning.