Linda O. Johnston - Not a Moment Too Soon

He couldn’t help raising his eyebrows. This all was her imagination…except that Margo had confirmed that Andee had been taken.

“And no hints about how to find this so-called ‘Big T’?”

She shook her head. “Hunter, the thing is…” She hesitated, then turned her back and opened the refrigerator door.

“Andee dies at the end,” he supplied through gritted teeth. Prepare himself? Hell. Nothing could prepare him for that. “Right? Why else wouldn’t you want to tell me?”

He heard a sound that might have been a sob. But when she turned back to him, a package of coffee in her hands, she looked composed. “Yes, Hunter. That’s the end of my story.”

Big T swooped down and reached behind a couch in the middle of the warehouse floor, lifting his Uzi. Before he could begin spraying bullets, Hunter ducked, rolled and came up shooting. His first volley got the guy in the gut.

The kidnapper fell to the hard concrete floor, moaning, as Hunter ran to kneel beside him, his weapon still leveled on him.

“Tell me where Andee is, you perverted bastard. Now.”

Blood spurted from between Big T’s fingers as he clutched his middle. “Too late.” His gasp was a ghastly laugh. “Good luck finding her.”

His eyes closed. He was dead.

Somewhere close by, but not near enough for Hunter to find her, Andee weakly cried “Daddy” for the last time.

Of course Hunter had guessed the ending, despite Shauna’s reluctance about telling him. And maybe that had been what she wanted—not to have to say the words herself.

Still, when she acknowledged he had guessed correctly, she winced inside at the pain that crossed his face, only to be replaced an instant later by stoic blankness.

“I still want to see it.” His voice held as much emotion as if he had requested the day’s weather report.

What he didn’t know yet was all Andee went through, all he went through, before that awful end. The story wasn’t always specific, but their torment was stark and real.

But she knew he wasn’t about to give up. He would fight it. Hunter always fought everything, and everyone, that didn’t comply with what he perceived as right and just and the way things should be. He wrestled with wrongs till he had them fixed, or at least wrapped up and within his control. That was why he’d made such a good cop.

And why things had gone so wrong for him at the end of his job with the Phoenix police.

“Okay,” she said quietly, realizing she had no choice. “I’ll get it in a minute.” She took the coffee carafe over to fill it at the sink first, buying herself a little more time.

“Forget about the damned coffee,” Hunter exploded.

She took a deep breath and put the carafe down. “Okay.”

She glanced at him before she left the kitchen. He was watching her, brows locked in a glower she remembered too well from their last days together. It signaled his impatience. The way he blamed her for not listening to him.

Oh, she had listened then. She’d heard too much, most of it things he was thinking, not saying. She didn’t need her special gift to tell her—only her eyes searching his, the mirrors to his very troubled, very angry soul.

Damn, how that had hurt her then.

It wouldn’t now, no matter what he thought or said or didn’t say. She wouldn’t let it.

The inside door to the kitchen opened onto a long, narrow room that was supposed to be used as a dining room. Shauna seldom entertained at home, since it was much easier to throw parties at Fantasy Fare. That allowed her to maintain the privacy of her home more easily, too. As a result, she had turned the would-be dining room into her office. She loved spending time in it, writing in it—except when her fingers spewed her tales of painful prediction—with its wall of multipaned windows overlooking the desert garden that was her backyard. Her antique door-desk sat right in the middle, on a wood panel that protected the room’s pale berber carpeting.

Ignoring her reflection in the large mirror along the inside wall, she sat at her desk chair and pulled open the top right drawer in one of the wooden file cabinets that acted as her desk’s legs. She had put the printout of the story in a folder right in front, and as she pulled it out, she couldn’t help scanning through it again. Surely she’d missed something, some glimmer of hope at the end that would mean—

“Is that it?”

Startled, she looked up. Hunter had sneaked into the room without her hearing him. Right behind her, he appeared to be reading the story over her shoulder. He stood so close he could have ripped the papers from her hands. So close that, if she rose, she could easily throw herself into his arms….

He was the one who would need comforting, not her. She wasn’t to get emotionally involved.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Here it is.” She turned enough in her seat to hand him the papers. “It’ll be more comfortable in the kitchen. The only seat in here is my desk chair. You can use it if you’d like but—”

He muttered something that she took as refusal to move. His straight black brows were furrowed in concentration as he read the story.

She studied him as he studied the words on the page. She could tell what part he was reading by the alternating anger and scorn and concern in his expression. Not that those changes were obvious. When she’d known him before, when he’d been a cop, he’d prided himself on his ability to keep his face blank, unreadable. And it had been, to everyone but her.

But she knew the scornful twitch at the edge of his lips—lips she had once licked and tasted and kissed so often that she’d known their texture better than her own. The almost imperceptible hardening of his cool stare that signified fury.

Concern hadn’t always been readable on his face, but was there in the briefest of caresses from those strong hands, the way he held her in his arms.

And now, she recognized pain in the way he closed green eyes that didn’t flash but flickered and died, then opened again to read more. If only she could hold him, could comfort him…

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He barely responded. “Sure.” And then he looked at her, his scowl fierce.

Once, her heart would have shriveled beneath that scowl. Today, despite her efforts to the contrary, it still hurt.

“I don’t believe things will happen this way,” he spit. “They can’t.” The last two words were lower, evincing grief.

Stay detached. Yet Shauna wondered if there was a way she could physically restrain herself from trying to ease his pain. The way she wished someone had helped her…

And then Hunter demanded, “I want you to get on your computer and write a different ending. Maybe that’ll convince you what you wrote is nonsense. It can’t possibly come true. Then I’ve got to get the hell out of here, to go look for her.”

“All right,” she said calmly. “I’ll write a different ending.” But it won’t be me who’ll be convinced.

She turned on her computer, a laptop she left set up on her desk connected to a printer, then waited while it booted up and Hunter paced impatiently. In a minute, she got into the file where the story had been saved.

“Look over my shoulder as I do this.” She scrolled till she came to a part near the end that was a turning point, where Andee had nearly been found. She deleted everything after that and quickly wrote a new, happy ending. What would Grandma O’Leary say about it if Shauna could talk to her? Nothing good, she was sure. “Okay with that?” she asked Hunter.

“Good enough.” Hunter’s voice sounded grudging. “Go ahead and save it.”

Her brief laugh was ironic as she tried to do just that. She closed the file, then opened it again, going right to the page where she’d made her changes.