Rebecca York - Sudden Insight

It was still early, and the Quarter was crowded with tourists and locals out to have a good time, many of them walking along carrying cups of beer or mixed drinks.

Everybody appeared to be having fun, but she was feeling as if she were going to her own funeral.

Maybe she should just forget about this meeting, turn around and go home.

Since that wasn’t really an option, she made her way through the crowd, pulled forward by the aura of danger surrounding the woman who had asked for a meeting that evening.

And not just around Evelyn Morgan. Rachel knew deep down that her disquiet had something important to do with herself, as well. And the man who had invaded her dream. Not invaded. He’d been the reason for the dream.

That was a strange notion, but again she couldn’t shake it. Lost in thought, she turned the corner and stopped short, suddenly assaulted by the flashing red-and-blue lights of several police cruisers.

They seemed to be flanking the door of the Bourbon Street Arms, but she couldn’t be sure because a crowd had gathered to watch the action.

“What happened?” she gasped as she stared at the cop cars and the bystanders.

“Don’t know,” a woman answered.

“Some lady’s dead.”

The breath froze in Rachel’s chest. It was Evelyn Morgan. She knew it.

She brought herself up short. She didn’t know that. Not for sure, but she couldn’t drive away the sick feeling gathering in her throat.

Uncertain, she looked around the crowd of gawkers. She could stay here, or go home and turn on the television where she might get more information than by hanging around.

She was starting to back away, looking to her right and left, when her gaze came to rest on a tall, dark-haired man who was craning his neck forward.

His features were a little rough around the edges. As though he’d done more living in thirty years than most men did in a hundred.

He drew near her, and she studied his blade of a nose, his hooded eyes, the shock of dark hair that he obviously had trouble controlling.

It was him. The man in the dream. Standing right on the street only a few feet away.

Oh, Lord, he was here, too, and no way could that be a coincidence.

As she stared at him, she realized what she hadn’t been able to figure out after the dream. He was Jake Harper.

She’d seen his picture in the paper at charity events and at the opening of a new housing development for residents who’d been displaced by Katrina.

He’d interested her, and she’d done some reading on him. She remembered he owned some restaurants and antique shops and also a construction company. But he never talked about his background. She gathered he didn’t come from money, but he’d worked his way into New Orleans society, although getting mentioned in the papers didn’t seem to be his goal. It just happened from time to time.

What was he doing here?

The same thing she was.

As though he knew she was watching, he turned toward her, working his way through the press of bodies.

Just before he reached her, someone jostled her, and she almost lost her footing.

As she fought not to get trampled, Jake surged across the four feet that still separated them, catching her arm to steady her. And as his fingers closed around her flesh, everything changed.

A sizzle of electricity shot along her nerve endings, the way it had in the dream. She tried to jump back, but the crowd around her was too thick, and his grip was too tight for her to escape.

Jake’s heart was thudding, and at the same time his head was pounding. He wanted to let go of the woman, and at the same time he wanted to keep holding on to her forever.

The contradiction whirled in his brain along with a confusion of impressions that were more vivid than the street scene around him.

A shop in the French Quarter. Tarot cards. Tuna salad on a bed of greens. A woman alone in the swirl of humanity. Not just here but for as long as she could remember.

The thoughts came from her brain.

She was like him. Alone.

Her head turned toward him, her eyes wide with shock, and he knew that she was getting the same kind of impressions from him that he was getting from her.

Impressions and memories. Some of them recent. Others older.

A cute little girl walking home from school by herself. At the movies trying to understand the emotions of a love story. The same girl, sitting in her beautifully decorated room weeping.

Things that would be impossible for him to know, yet he was sure he wasn’t making them up.

And under the thoughts and memories was an aura of danger gathering like a dark cloud around them. Was she going to attack him?

Not likely. They’d met by chance in the middle of a crowd. Or was it by chance? Had someone sent her to ambush him?

Another image leaped into her mind. A woman with dyed brown hair. In her sixties. Walking with a limp. Wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she’d come to see him.

She was the only one who knew he’d be here.

“Evelyn Morgan,” she breathed.

“What do you know about her?” he asked, hearing the shock and uncertainty in his own voice.

He’d forgotten the people around them. Now he remembered they were standing in the middle of a crowd, speaking in low voices, but they might as well have been alone for all the other people mattered.

The woman raised her chin. “She asked me to meet her tonight.”

“Are you lying?” he demanded.

“Why would I?” she challenged.

Could she lie? After all, he’d pulled the information from her mind.

He held on to that extraordinary thought as he kept his hand on her, drawing her back through the mass of people until they had emerged into a clear space in the middle of the street.

A man in a wrinkled shirt strode toward the hotel. It was Detective Moynihan, whom Jake knew from his work with kids at risk in the city. “Detective,” he called out.

The cop stopped and looked at him.

“What happened?” Jake asked.

“You know I can’t give out any information.”

Jake’s hand was still on the woman. He was close enough to reach out with his other hand and touch Moynihan.

He wasn’t sure why he did it, but as his fingers closed on the detective’s sleeve, information leaped into his mind.

Evelyn Morgan. Lying in a pool of blood, her limp body on the floor of her hotel room.

Jake stared at him, struggling not to let the shock he felt show on his face.

“Got work to do,” Moynihan said and pulled away, making for the hotel, leaving Jake alone with the woman.

“Let me go,” she demanded.

“Not likely.”

When she tried to wriggle out of his grasp, he held on to her, afraid she might run if he gave her the chance. Or was that her thought?

He wasn’t sure. He’d never been less sure of himself in his life. Well, not in years.

He steered her a little way down the street, under one of the balconies that ran along the second floor of the buildings, providing shade during the day and shadows at night. His head was pounding, making it hard to think.

When they were alone, he dragged in a breath and let it out. “What just happened?”

“Evelyn Morgan was murdered.”

“You picked that up?”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t been asking about the murder. That was a given. He was asking about the two of them.

“Will you take your hand off me?” she asked.

“Why?”

“You’re making me nervous.”

He dropped his hand to his side, ready to reach out again if she decided to turn and dash away. At least she looked as confounded as he felt. That was something.

“Who are you?” he asked.